#also ignore the fucked up looking ghost in the last panel

[magnusthepuppet]

saw this headcanon on another post and i had to draw it.

…it was also an excuse for me to draw waffles…

[mythsandheather]

Because I already brought this up on Reddit, let’s talk about it here too.

LONG POST ABOUT HADES, HERA AND AVOIDING ACCOUNTABILITY LIKE THE PLAGUE INCOMING.

Persephone knows that Hera and Hades had a thing now, right? So after guilt tripping herself all day for feeling insecure, they finally talk about it. Hades admits to having feelings for her once. Feelings, let’s be specific. He hasn’t yet said they had a relationship or a centuries long affair behind Zeus’s back.

Persephone, as any sensible person would, asks a very fair question. Let’s ignore how disconcerting she looks for a second.

Now the response any normal fucking person would give here would obviously be “no”, right? Or some variation. “No, I’m not.” “No, we’re just friends.” “No, that’s in the past and I love you.”

That’s the normal, reasonable, acceptable response…but this is Lore Olympus. So naturally Hades doesn’t do that.

“Let me just preface this” oh I just know I’m about to hear some male manipulator bullshit. All that shit he just said when he could have simply said “no”. Also, why the pause?

Never fails to make me laugh how LO Hera is supposed to be this glamorous, sympathetic, strong, aspirational figure that Persephone and the audience alike should revere, when all she is is a racist, classist, deadbeat parent and chain smoking drunk whose primary hobby seems to be putting on too much mascara just so she can cry it off every other chapter.

Also, Hades, if you had a lot of respect for Hera, you wouldn’t be telling Persephone all her business without her knowledge or consent.

JUST SAY NO YOU ANTISEMITIC LOOKING MOTHERFUCKER.

What does that even mean? “What we are now is a ghost of what we used to be.” What a weirdly vague yet specific choice of words.

What did you used to be? Hades never says what they were or how long it went for and he still never fucking says it’s over. Now it’s just…a ghost? What’s that then, Papa Smurf?

Are you still haunted by this relationship? Is it like a ghost in the sense it’s going to come back cuz that’s what ghosts do? Cuz I’m not hearing “that phase is completely done”, I’m hearing “this phase is on pause and will most definitely be picked up on again the second the opportunity presents itself”. 

Like I said, it’s such a weird, specific choice of words.

To quote Mabel “Madea” Simmons, “look at him try to throw it on you now. It’s like if he tries to get Persephone to engage and agree with him, then it’s all okay and he’s successfully excused himself and distracted from the question at the same time.

First, a couple of petty things. One, look at how wonky his eyes are. Those were adjusted last minute and you can see it. Also his hairstyle changed with each panel. 

Second, there have always been a lot of immortal beings around. At the specific time we’re talking about back when Hera and Hades first got together, for example, there was already a whole mess of chthonic gods running around. There were nymphs, satyrs and other immortal creatures that were and are perfectly viable dating options. 

Hades just so happened to want the woman who was dating his brother and banging his dad, and Persephone just so happened to get involved with two of her cousins and then marry her uncle.

This whole “the immortal dating pool” comment feels like a disclaimer to avoid the fact that, try as she might to avoid it, Rachel ended up right back in the incest pit that all Greek mythology adaptions inevitably try to avoid yet fall into in the end.

I’m also not going to pretend that these two having such a limited word view on dating options doesn’t stem from the fact that they think basically everyone else is inferior to them.

But, in conclusion, Hades was asked a fair question that required a one word answer. One word, two letters…and he could not do it. 

Instead we get dragged on this purple prose wannabe, “I’m 14 and this is deep” diatribe that barely skims the surface of what his entanglement with Hera really was. Immediately following this, Hades goes on to explain Hera’s golden traitor title and her history with Kronos. This is also the infamous chapter where he claims Zeus has no trauma.

He was more comfortable discussing his father abusing and then brutally maiming Hera, and more comfortable minimising what happened to his brothers, than he was just saying “no, I don’t love Hera anymore”. 

Rachel does this for Hades a lot. Hades is, at least in my opinion, not one of the more interesting greek deities and the fact he’s the male lead of LO and her celebrity crush’s insert means she feels the need to beef up how important, how powerful, how desirable, how vulnerable, how lonely, how angry, how complicated he is, but does not possess the skill to do so.

So she writes herself into a corner and the mountain of evidence for Hades being a fucking awful person gets bigger. 

For example, as we just saw, Hades had a thing with Hera. He’s soooo sexy and so hot and so kind and so perfect and so irresistible and desirable that even Hera can’t resist him! But wait! Making Hades and Hera have a centuries long affair behind Zeus’s back and with Hades going into another relationship where he cheats on his current girlfriend, Minthe, with Persephone, doesn’t reflect well on poor daddy Hades! What to do??

The simple and logical route, other than just not having the stupid affair in the first place, is for Hades to just admit he made a mistake and he regrets it and is trying to do better. But wait! Daddy Hades is a complicated and edgy bad boy…but he can’t actually do anything bad cuz he always has to be in the right! 

So instead of ever admitting he’s wrong, god forbid he do that, let alone apologise, every time we get treated to what a piece of shit he is and the consequences of his bad actions and Rachel’s bad writing, we get tormented with more faux-deep prose that’s meant to paint him as a helpless lonely victim and remove any blame from him, while conveniently always minimising and dismissing someone else’s suffering.

I’d kill to see what sad, poetic, overly-wordy garbage he spins when he inevitably cheats on Persephone with Hera, because this whole exchange all but screams that the door is very much still open.

Persephone felt bad about herself for being insecure by the chemistry and contact that Hera and Hades still have, because how could she even think of misjudging poor dear Hades? IMO, she’s not worried enough. Homegirl is already on her way to ending up where Minthe was.

[asksintheapartment]

ok, here you go *🍄 hands Ranboo a stack of paper, each paper being a different gen, the last paper looks....strange*

Gen 1

Only RGB trio alive

Lives in the mall

Someone else is watching, they are calling themself “Bishop” which in name form means ‘Overseer’

No one else is at the mall (As of right now)

Bishop: Any and all pronouns, is nice but maybe it’s an act?

Ranboo sees the anons as people.

Found a control panel that plays parts of the social experiments, so that way fun/s (Also, Ranboo saw Charlie as the slime/blood demon for a second)

Theory: The anons are ghosts and because Ranboo was dead for a while they can see us.  

 Gen 2

Ignore the Theory it’s not important THEY ARE IN A TIME LOOP (And so are we I guess)

Bishop is a bitch and is trying to blame us! (Bishop good now don’t worry)

Ranboo can’t speak 

Some of the others might be alive now (Nope)

List of people I want to stab if I get a body: The founder, Hetch (I guess not anymore… :/), whoever is the person talking in red, Bishop’s mom (But I won’t because Bishop says no). 

Ranboo has figured it out! They all now know that they are in a time loop.

We can’t say Bishop’s name, but that won’t stop me from trying to hint at it >:)

I think they are still in the show, it is the only way to explain how they can get stuff and money for stuff. 

Can’t say any more things to them. Hide stuff better and do more hints.

Bishop is un-mind controlled now, They are good.

I accidentally revealed that to the founder, but we are going to fix that……hopefully….

Got Sneeg to help look for Checkers (What we are calling bishop now) so hopefully we find them.

Checkers looks like security to everyone but us (Sometimes) and Ranboo.

Got it fix we good

Gen 3

We are not good, the looped rest. if this happens again I’m going into my villain arc :D

No filter this time, Yippie 

Checkers says that we should stay away from Ranboo this time, at least for now 

Ranboo got mind control by a mask

Hetch caught on quickly, he is not mind control but we just good old-fashioned gaslighting gatekeep girl bossing that’s happening, we’ll figure it out. (what was I even trying to say here???? How much sleep did I get???? How late did I write this????)

Gen 4

Going to be worse this time, be extra careful.

Back to talking in hints and riddles, yippie/s

Don’t know if anything changed

New(?) person, don’t know their name but they are a bitch

Checkers is missing

Ranboo got out of the box by themself and they are hurt, a lot……I really hope they remember…..(They don’t remember us D:)

Red text (The new person) is an AI,

Ranboo can’t see or feel us anymore :( I want to hug them so bad……(Head pat them, they don’t like hugs anymore)

Ranboo doesn’t want to leave this time

THERE WERE RED EYE FOLLOWING RANBOO

The power is out

Everyone is split up (Fun :D/s)

Bishop is ok :D but I want to check if they are being controlled again as soon as I get the chance (Worried about Ranboo now, Bishop is fine (Bishop is NOT fine))

Ranboo found their notebook :D

Ranboo is mind-controlled D: by the earpiece

“Ranboo” wants to cut off all the cameras, AKA, send us back to the void :(

Bishop was masked and was being controlled (Fucking called it) and we met the founder and Hetch fucking stabbed Ranboo and-

Gen 5

Charlie and Sneeg are out of the mall

Charlie finds us in their backyard

Ranboo is still trapped at the mall (I figure the same with Bishop)

No one remembers still (wHy :( (Ranboo remembers))

Charlie and Sneeg are staying at Sneeg’s old house. (I don’t think that’s the truth it way too close to the mall (it is the truth….hun…..)

Going to go save Ranboo and Bishop (And whoever else we make our friend) after Charlie gets Sneeg.

Never mind, Ranboo is at the house now. (Still need to safe Bishop)

They all reliving the last 3 years (So like, 2026?(We in the future >:D))

Ranboo can feel us again :D (don’t give hugs just head pats)

Ranboo has an old friend, feels like this is important, like they will be trapped as a Showfall worker or something.

New mission, make Ranboo smile and let them be happy :D

Ranboo has been forced to watch gore for the past 3 years, so if we get a chance to hurt Hetch and the founder, make sure they are at least closing their eyes.

Sneeg and Charlie are being mind-controlled or something because they are saying some shit that they would not say. (If they are not being mind-controlled I’m going to slap them, or throw myself at them, one of the two.)

Charlie locked Ranboo in a room

We are in Ranboo’s dream now :D

Ranboo’s friend goes by any pronouns

The dream was an old memory of when Ranboo found the taps, we met Ranboo’s friend in that dream but their face was blacked out, and after Ranboo stopped playing along with the dream the friend was yelling at Ranboo to say their name until Ranboo woke up

Also apparently Ranboo lied to us, not mad, tho I do want to know what they lied about.

The door to the room is unlocked

Don’t know where Sneeg and Charlie are

There are flys and bugs outside the house and in the house

There is a dead raven in the backyard :(

THERE IS A DEAD BODY-

Gen 6

It fucking reset again, Ranboo quickly found us and we are now figuring out what happened (Ranboo stills remembers don’t worry)

Snowfall workers hunted Ranboo around the mall, killed them, and then they would wake up the next day revived.

Wait this is the first looped where Charlie didn’t find us……bit weird but it’s ok :D

Ranboo has wires in their skin

One of the wires glows red, I think it when they lie that it glows…….I’ll feel so bad if I’m wrong :( (I was wrong fuck I’m giving them so many head pats to make up for it……and hugs if they are alright with it now(They are not, stick to head pats))

Gonna to test to see if we can still give them head pats. (We can lets go :D)

Therapy (Seriously Ranboo looks insane sometimes they need it, and I’m sure everyone else will need the same)

Went to go cause some chaos against Showfall, found something to break, Ranboo cut a wire and everything went dark for a moment but now we are with Bishop again (I thought I killed us for a moment, not going to lie)

Ranboo got killed again but they will be revived tomorrow 

I finally got a chance to show Bishop their fan art :D

We found a Secret tunnel :] and it leads to the revile room…..

Found Ranboo, they are currently dead so we have to wait or find a 100% safe way to speed it up.

We reviled Ranboo but some of their memories are missing (Like all the time loop ones) so we are now going to fix that :D

BISHOP IS RANBOO FRIEND!!!! :D

Ranboo still blames themself so we are going to fix it.

Talking to Checkers now while Ranboo relaxes (I swear if someone touches them while we are not there I’m haunting someone) and we going to see what happened during their past :D

Little clues from other gens that I believed hinted at Ranboo’s and Bishops’ friendship: How Ranboo was drawn to the Bishop chess piece,

HETCH IS BISHOP’S UNCLE!!!!

Checkers doesn’t have siblings

We going make Showfall pay for their therapy >:D

Talked to the founder

THE FOUNDER IS OUR PARENT????? (They created the anons (I still don’t get why I look different from the others tho….))

Ranboo gonna leave while the anons and Bishop kill the founder >:D

Gen 7

BISHOP IS TIED TO A CHAIR IN FRONT OF THE BOX!!! D: 

There is a robot clone of Ranboo? Very weird (Past me ssh Ranbot is the best :D)

Bishop now knows that Hetch is their uncle.

Ranbot (Robot clone of Ranboo) is just a little guy, they are so fucking adorable and we are going to get them out of here too :D (They were in fact, not just a little guy)

I FUCKED UP :D

Going to try to fill in the real Ranboo of this and hope they believe me.

Back to Bishop up now

They are being used as the power source

Ranbot good again 

Got Bishop unplug woo! :D

Going to get some stuff to deal with the founder now >:D

Bishop having a nightmare :(

I did not write down any of the other stuff…..fuck-...........I’m not there anymore….. :(

Gen ???

WE BACK BABY >:D

Between gen 2-3

Started with Charlie and Sneeg outside the cabin room

Going to go see if Ranboo’s ok

BISHOP FROM GEN 7 IS HERE :D They were just about to kill the founder

WAIt- the founder went back on their deal >:(

Ranboo has the box on their head……but they are walking around and find????

Ranboo is reminding me of Ranbot when we first met them….

BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD-

It was just a….nightmare…….I’m still here………how do I have the is note…

it was not real it was not real it was not real it was not real it was not real it was not real it was not real it was not real it was not real it was not real it was not real it was not real it was not real it was not real it was not real i̸t̵ ̸w̴a̶s̷ ̸n̶o̷t̶ ̴r̷e̵a̶l̸ ̷i̴t̴ ̸w̸a̴s̶ ̴n̶o̷t̷ ̷r̵e̶a̵l̶ ̸i̴t̷ ̴w̴a̴s̷ ̶n̸o̴t̷ ̵r̵e̴a̵l̶ i̷̙̾̑t̵͕̪͘ ̷̧̟̈͗w̸͎̭̎a̴̬̚s̵͔̹̉̀ ̸̟̊ń̵̟̪̍o̶̪̗͌́t̴̥̊ ̵̢̱̌̂r̷̮͑̈́ȅ̷̡̉a̷͈͑̚l̴̻͐ ̴̟̦̀i̶̥̊̚ť̸͖̠ ̵͙̬͑̈w̴͈̓̎å̶͖̣͘s̴̫̅ ̷̢̆n̴̦͈͑̉õ̵͇̰̀t̵̪̓͆ ̸̧̳̂r̴̳̩͛e̸͓͗͊ả̴̳̣̑l̷̪̰̔̌ ̶̧̨͝i̶̫̝͛͒t̵͖̭́̚ ̶͛ͅẅ̶͎́͊a̸̤͛ͅs̷͕͑ ̶̱͝n̶̟͓̋o̷͚͔͒̇ṯ̴͋ ̶̩̊͘ŕ̷̲̈́e̷̞̙̕a̵̤̙̽l̴̳̣̆!-

-🍄

[lost-generation-au]

ok, just warning you tho, It's a lot. Both in length, and content.

Gen 1

Only RGB trio alive

Lives in the mall

Someone else is watching, they are calling themself “Bishop” which in name form mean ‘Overseer’

No one else is at the mall (As of right now)

Bishop: Any and all pronouns, is nice but maybe it’s an act?

Ranboo sees the anons as people.

Found a control panel that plays parts of the social experiments, so that way fun/s (Also, Ranboo saw Charlie as the slime/blood demon for a second)

Theory: The anons are ghosts and because Ranboo was dead for a while they can see us.  

 Gen 2

Ignore the Theory it’s not important THEY ARE IN A TIME LOOP (And so are we I guess)

Bishop is a bitch and is trying to blame us! (Bishop good now don’t worry)

Ranboo can’t speak 

Some of the others might be alive now (Nope)

List of people I want to stab if I get a body: The founder, Hetch, whoever is the person talking in red, Bishop’s mom (But I won’t because Bishop says no). 

Ranboo has figured it out! They all now know that they are in a time loop.

We can’t say Bishop’s name, but that won’t stop me from trying to hint at it >:)

I think they are still in the show, it is the only way to explain how they can get stuff and money for stuff. 

Can’t say any more things to them. Hide stuff better and do more hints.

Bishop is un-mind controlled now, They are good.

I accidentally revealed that to the founder, but we are going to fix that……hopefully….

Got Sneeg to help look for Checkers (What we are calling bishop now) so hopefully we find them.

Checkers looks like security to everyone but us (Sometimes) and Ranboo.

Got it fix we good

Gen 3

We are not good, the looped rest. if this happens again I’m going into my villain arc :D

No filter this time, Yippie 

Checkers says that we should stay away from Ranboo this time, at least for now 

(OOC:ask Bishop about their past at some point, Maple seems to want to rant about that :D)

Ranboo got mind control by a mask

Hetch caught on quickly, he is not mind control but my just good old fashioned gaslighting gatekeep girl bossing that’s happening, we’ll figure it out. (what was I even trying to say here? How much sleep did I get? How late did I write this?)

Gen 4

Going to be worse this time, be extra careful.

Back to talking in hints and riddles, yippie/s

Don’t know if anything changed

New(?) person, don’t know their name but they are a bitch

Checkers is missing

Ranboo got out of the box by themself and they are hurt, a lot……I really hope they remember…..(They don’t remember us D:)

Red text (The new person) is an AI,

Ranboo can’t see or feel us anymore :( I want to hug them so bad……(Head pat them, they don’t like hugs anymore)

Ranboo doesn’t want to leave this time

THERE WERE RED EYE FOLLOWING RANBOO

The power is out

Everyone is split up (Fun :D/s)

Bishop is ok :D but I want to check if they are being controlled again as soon as I get the chance (Worried about Ranboo now, Bishop is fine (Bishop is NOT fine))

Ranboo found their notebook :D

Ranboo is mind-controlled D: by the earpiece

“Ranboo” wants to cut off all the cameras, AKA, send us back to the void :(

Bishop was masked and was being controlled (Fucking called it) and we met the founder and Hetch fucking stabbed Ranboo and-

Gen 5

Charlie and Sneeg are out of the mall

Charlie finds us in their backyard

Ranboo is still trapped at the mall (I figure the same with Bishop)

No one remembers still (wHy :( (Ranboo remembers))

Charlie and Sneeg are staying at Sneeg’s old house. (I don’t think that’s the truth it way too close to the mall)

Going to go save Ranboo and Bishop (And whoever else we make our friend) after Charlie gets Sneeg.

Never mind, Ranboo is at the house now. (Still need to safe Bishop)

They all reliving the last 3 years (So like, 2026?(We in the future))

Ranboo can feel us again :D (don’t give hugs just head pats)

Ranboo has an old friend, feels like this is important, like they will be trapped as a Showfall worker or something.

New mission, make Ranboo smile and let them be happy :D

Ranboo has been forced to watch gore for the past 3 years, so if we get a chance to hurt Hetch and the founder, make sure they are at least closing their eyes.

Who I think Ranboo's friend is: an oc, Aimsey (Because Ranboo’s friend goes by any pronouns and Aimsey does as well, I think(Not Aimsey)) CrumbToast because they go by any pronouns (I checked this time) and since they have not faced reveal it makes sense that its face is covered :D (Update:IT’S FUCKING CHECKERS :D)

Sneeg and Charlie are being mind controlled or something because they are saying some shit that they would not say. (If they are not being mind-controlled I’m going to slap them, or throw myself at them, one of the two.)

Charlie locked Ranboo in a room

We are in Ranboo’s dream now :D

Ranboo’s friend goes by any pronouns

The dream was an old memory of when Ranboo found the taps, we met Ranboo’s friend in that dream but their face was blacked out, and after Ranboo stopped playing along with the dream the friend was yelling at Ranboo to say their name until Ranboo woke up

Also apparently Ranboo lied to us, not mad, tho I do want to know what they lied about.

The door to the room is unlocked

Don’t know where Sneeg and Charlie are

There are flys and bugs outside the house and in the house

There is a dead crow in the backyard, I wonder how it died….probably from a baby zombie (I’m sorry I can’t stop myself :D(never mind it was a raven I’m stupid))

THERE IS A DEAD BODY-

Gen 6

It fucking reset again, Ranboo quickly found us and we are now figuring out what happened (Ranboo stills remembers don’t worry)

Snowfall workers hunted Ranboo around the mall, killed them, and then they would wake up the next day revived.

Wait this is the first looped where Charlie didn’t find us……bit weird but it’s ok :D

Ranboo has wires in their skin

One of the wires glows red, I think it when they lie that it glows…….I’ll feel so bad if I’m wrong :( (I was wrong fuck I’m giving them so many head parts to make up for it……and hugs if they are alright with it now(They are not, stick to head pats))

Gonna to test to see if we can still give them head pats. (We can lets go :D)

Therapy (Seriously Ranboo looks insane sometimes they need it, and I’m sure everyone else will need the same)

Went to go cause some chaos against Showfall, found something to break, Ranboo cut a wire and everything went dark for a moment but now we are with Bishop again (I thought I killed us for a moment, not going to lie)

Ranboo got killed again but they will be revived tomrower (I don’t know if it’s their time or our time)

I finally got a chance to show Bishop their fan art :D

We found a Secret tunnel :] and it leads to the revile room…..

Found Ranboo, they are currently dead so we have to wait or find a 100% safe way to speed it up.

We reviled Ranboo but some of their memories are missing (Like all the time loop ones) so we are now going to fix that :D

BISHOP IS RANBOO FRIEND!!!! :D

Ranboo still blames themself so we are going to fix it.

Talking to Checkers now while Ranboo relaxes (I swear if someone touches them while we are not there I’m haunting someone) and we going to see what happened during their past :D

Little clues from other gens that I believed hinted at Ranboo’s and Bishops’ friendship: How Ranboo was drawn to the Bishop chess piece,

HETCH IS BISHOP’S UNCLE!!!!

Checkers doesn’t have siblings.

We going make Showfall pay for their therapy >:D

Talked to the founder.

THE FOUNDER IS OUR PARENT????? (They created the anons)

Ranboo gonna leave while the Anons and Bishop kill the founder >:D

Gen 7

BISHOP IS TIED TO A CHAIR IN FRONT OF THE BOX!!! D: 

There is a robot clone of Ranboo? Very weird

Bishop now knows that Hetch is their uncle.

Ranbot (Robot clone of Ranboo) is just a little guy, they are so fucking adorable, and we are going to get them out of here too :D (They were in fact, not just a little guy)

I FUCKED UP :D

Going to try to fill in the real Ranboo of this and hope they believe me.

This is not even talking about the socail experiment, fucking hell

- 🍄 

[childeapologist]

I was scared to ever no-filter vent about this situation on here bc I knew one of the people involved followed me but since they seem to have purged my existence from all their social media and ghosted me instead of bothering to TALK about anything I hope I’m in the clear now. Even if they do see it honestly go ahead. Read it. This is how I feel about you and your incessant need to over-correct me over every little thing all the time bc you just NEEDED me to be problematic for the sake of your narrative or something.

But last year when I took a vacation to stay with some of my friends who are a couple, on my last night there starting Attack on Titan together. They had both only seen the first season 10 years ago when it first aired, I’ve read the entire manga and seen all of the series that is out, and I have probably seen the first season 5+ times.

And this girl, the wife, starts conversation over the episodes like “I heard that in the manga there was this whole story arc about the outer wall refugees being made into slaves and that the anime cut it out and it was really controversial bc they are like devaluing slavery by doing that” and I was like, “I’ve read the whole manga and that isnt true, you must be mistaken or conflating it with something else” and it’s been a year and I cant remember my exact words but I was nice about it, literally just making conversation. People hear incorrect things. It happens. I wasn’t aggressive, but I do care about factual information so maybe I was assertive.

She just doubles down on me without looking up any new info. Which is wild to me, like I’ve READ THE MANGA can you not just trust me? She keeps doubling down, implying that I am prepared to defend the devaluation of slavery just bc it’s one of my fav medias.

And then I brought up the panels on my phone to show her. And the conversation just kind of ends, like I got ghosted IRL they just stopped responding to me. They ignored me trying to show the panels.

Later I ask her husband about it like “what happened back there?” and he tells me that “Oh she looked it up herself and realized she was wrong, and she didnt know how to approach you bc youre mean” and also just blames it on her period.

LIKE GIRL, HELLO? “oOPS i looked it up and I was mistaken, sorry!”

it really isn’t that hard?

And things like this just kept HAPPENING. 

And THEN I try and bring this up later, approaching the husband bc like. Im like “this girl couldnt even handle being told she was wrong about an attack on titan trivia fact. how do i approach her about boundaries and accountability?”

So I try approaching her husband for pointers in talking to her. And he just deflects everything, basically tells me that Im just “super mean and intimidating” and that I just want an “I TOLD YOU SO” moment. And it is like no I want my input to be respected? I want my friend to be able to be wrong about something so simple and not turn it into this weird thing? This isnt even about that stupid argument anymore, it’s about what this says about the overall dynamics here and your wifes inability to be wrong and take accountability. I deserve better treatment, I deserve respect and if I dont get it, this friendship is over. and they purged me on all social media after that without even attempting to reconcile or talk to me

am i crazy?

how can you be so inable to hold yourself accountable and try and gaslight ME into being the problem?????????????????????

unreal

UN

FUCKING

REAL

HOPE YOURE READING THIS GIRL! GROW THE FUCK UP!

[sonic-hot-takes]

@blikakis

(Frontiers spoilers inbound)

Music is really good, I’ll give you that, but almost every Sonic game has good music, so it’s kind of a moot point.

Story is honestly kind of a mess, which was both a surprise and let down considering that’s what I was initially the most excited for. You can tell that Ian’s finding his footing when it comes to writing a game of this scale. I have a lot of posts queued about this, so I’ll try not to repeat myself too much:

Sage’s arc was butchered by the pacing, which is a big problem because that’s supposed to be the emotional crux of the story. I feel like if this were a comic or even a more linear game, Ian would’ve done her more justice. (Also, personal note, I really don’t like Rei-type characters, which is what she’s trying to be)

The main antagonist is somehow a more generic evil alien planet destroyer than Black Doom and was a twist I saw coming miles away. The End doesn’t even get a cool design, it’s just a giant meteor thing.

Sonic’s friends are completely passive throughout. I get it, they’re ghosts, but most of their dialogue is expository or speculative. There’s a cute character interaction here and there, but they’re few and far in between. Not helped that most of these interactions are barely animated. They deus ex machina Sonic out of a cyberspace induced coma, which reminded me a lot of that null space cutscene from Forces that everyone hates.

This is really nitpicky, but what the fuck is up with the Ancients? One of the Egg Memos says they’re distantly related to Chaos (as in the water guy from Sonic Adventure), but Chaos was a mutated Chao. Are the Ancients just super mutated Chao? Is this a retcon? It’s never explained. For someone as detail-oriented on the lore as Ian, it really bugged me that this didn’t get addressed.

I’m sure there’s more that I can’t remember off the top of my head this late at night, but I’ll save those for another time.

Ignoring the fact that I shouldn’t have to download a fan mod to improve something as fundamental to a video game as the physics, there’s a lot more problems with the gameplay. Once again, I’ve got a lot queued for this, so I won’t say too much. The open world really gives off a tech demo vibe, with rails and platforms strewn about without a ton of rhyme or reason. This both makes the world feel very empty and very cluttered at the same time. It’s also really fucking annoying when you accidentally run into an automated dash panel while trying to run from point A to point B and then get spit out miles away from where you were and/or were trying to get to. The pop in of said level geometry is also some of the worst I’ve ever seen in a game like this (though I did play it on the Switch, so take it with a grain of salt). Collision is janky as hell, too. The islands themselves aren’t charming enough to make up for it, with very boring aesthetics (people call this game breath of the hedgehog, but even BOTW had more style than this) and very few memorable locales.

Look, if you like Frontiers, that’s great. I’m glad people like this game, even if I’m very mixed on it. It is nice to have a Sonic game that isn’t instantly memed on the way that the last decade or so of games have been. But just because we’re not dealing with Pontac and Graff anymore and the game is longer than three hours total doesn’t make it a 10/10 masterpiece. Come the game awards, the only thing I think this game deserves a nomination for is Best Music. It just didn’t land with me.

Also, consider the blog url, my guy. I will admit that I have made some posts that were mostly inflammatory just for the sake of it, but I’m being brutally honest here. If I had the same 11/10 opinion that most Sonic fans have of this game, I wouldn’t be posting it here.

Frontiers is an unfinished game. 6/10, and that’s being generous.

[pinkbalrog]

Of Gods and Tombs

A Noragami Lost Tomb AU I decided to actually write up. Apologies for cultural errors. I probably could have researched more. No offense was meant. :) Feel free to comment. I consciously tried not to sink too much focus into this because I am a perfectionist and would have brooded over this for weeks, and I do have other projects! All supernatural elements are improvised, perhaps badly. I also wasn’t sure of Xiao Er Ye? Thoughts? I don’t know Chinese : (. 

Mentioning @jockvillagersonly because they have been ridiculously nice. :)

Here we go!

Pangzi stared. The man stared back, holding Pangzi’s wilting incense in one hand. He’d been, savoring it? Maybe? Wide eyes stared back over a thin trail of smoke and, was he blushing?

“Who the FUC-”

“Shhhh!” the man lunged forward. He dropped the incense, wincing and grabbed Pangzi’s arm. “You’ll wake something up!”

“You’re something!”

“We can talk but—yes, I am?”

Pangzi got a handful of silk. Where did he get the hanfu? He jerked him close, eyes narrowed, grinning so hard his cheeks ached. “You,” he grated, “are not part of the expedition”.

Wide eyes blinked at him. “What expedition?” Pangzi cuffed him.

“You think I came in here alone? You did not come in with us.” The guy wasn’t frail, was pretty solid actually, but he had the look of a bird plucked out of a net.  

“No. Obviously?” Thoughts moved rapidly behind his eyes, and he scanned Pangzi, taking in his sweat stained shirt, abraded hands, and his unshaven face. “You came with a group then, and you came up.” He pried off Pangzi’s grip and took a step towards the dark where Pangzi had dragged the heavy door mostly into place. “At least that’s the only way you’d be in this corridor, it’s inaccessible on this level.”

Pangzi gaped. He exclaimed, “Then how the hell did you get here?” The man ignored him, squatting down to look at Pangzi’s sleeping bag. Pangzi stepped in front of it defensively.

The man continued, “They must be dead, otherwise you wouldn’t be alone, and you need help”. He nodded at Pangzi, as if they were having a discussion. They were not.

Pangzi loomed over him. “Again, how are you here?”

The man rolled back on his heels, straightened, and damn well held his hands in front of him like he was lecturing. Long sleeves slid back from thin wrists. His hair was short, and not neat at all. “I’ve been here for a long time, and I need help too.”

“You,” Pangzi sputtered, “you need help. You look, look you’re not a ghost right? You would have already tried to kill me. Right. I’m sitting down for this.” And he threw himself down on the platform of the pitiful, wedged open coffin, nearly squashing his back pack. He crossed his arms. “Well, what’s your name?”

The guy, whoever he was, smiled hopefully. “You can call me Xiao Er Ye.”

Pangzi grunted. “Wang Pangzi”.

Xiao Er Ye bowed, weirdly formal.

Stretching out his legs, which ached from walking uneven corridors for literal days, Pangzi idly rifled through his bag until he had a good grip on his gun, then he pulled out a water bottle and let it hang from his hand. “And what are you anyway?”

“I’m a god.”

The bottle thunked on the floor. “What?”

Xiao Er Ye smiled wider.

Pangzi sneered. He waved his arms. “A god. Bullshit.” Whoever lost their lunatic in that pathetic village was probably wondering what hole they fell into. Pangzi’s hole apparently.

Xiao Er Ye regarded him steadily. “It’s true. Did you wonder why I had your incense?” Pangzi scoffed,

“Becasue you’re a weirdo?”

“Because your offering allowed me to appear to you.”

“Right. And that seems like a reasonable explanation to you?”

He was ridiculous, but he was really clean. There was fat on his bones, and his nails were neat. Pangzi let go of the gun, considering. The guy clearly got in here very recently, which meant there was a way out. Could Pangzi humor the lunatic to get out of a literal death trap? Hell yes.

“Oookay,” he drawled, “So you’re a god. I can see you. What do you need my help for, your holiness?”

Immediately, Xiao Er Ye sat close beside him. “I can’t leave here because someone is here in a trap meant for me. I can’t free him because the trap is meant for me.” He paused to see if Pangzi was following. Pangzi smiled wide. Apparently reassured, Xiao Er Ye went on, “and I’m having a hard enough time keeping the trap from doing what it’s supposed to do, which is make the whole thing even more inescapable. You’re mortal, so you can free him”.

Taking a drink, Pangzi considered. So yes, Xiao Er Ye was off his rocker. He put the cap back on and asked,

“But do you know a way out of here?”

“Yes, many.”

“And you’re still here.”

Xiao Er Ye set his jaw, obstinate. “I need help.”

Pangzi tapped the bottle. So, do one nonsensical thing and finally get out? Or do nothing and lose what might be a chance. He remembered red hands, gleaming wetly.  

“Okay,” he said, and watched Xiao Er Ye light up. He was ridiculously easy to read. “Say I believe you. How does this work?”  

“I lead you to the trap, and you follow my instructions. Then we get out.”

Pangzi eyed him incredulously. “Then we get out. No real plan for that?”

Xiao Er Ye grinned, gestured at the tomb around them, and said, “That’s the easy part.”

Pangzi snorted. “Easy he says.” He made a production of standing up, and folded, “You better not screw me over, your holiness.”

“Thank you.” Pangzi paused. Xiao Er Ye’s voice was soft, earnest, “Thank you Wang Pangzi.”

Pangzi huffed a laugh. Atleast this was a harmless idiot. “Yeah, you’re welcome, let’s go get your boyfriend, or whatever, and get out of here.”

Xiao Er Ye’s voice pitched up, “my whatever?” and he kept talking.

Ignoring him, Pangzi faced the door. Damn it, he had to shift it again.

 . . .

Pangzi reconsidered this decision. He reconsidered it strongly. Ripping another lotus arrow out of his shirt he threw it at Xiao Er Ye. Xiao Er Ye dodged, and it clicked on the floor with all the others. This was trap number six. He tried to stay calm.

“And why,” he hissed, “Are you setting off every trap in this godsdamned tomb? How are there even this many left? Didn’t you come this way? Why aren’t you dead? Are you dead? Are you a fucking ghost because so help me I will hit you.”

Turns out, Xiao Er Ye was right about the corridor earlier being inaccessible from that level, but you could climb up another pit trap. Pangzi was getting very tired of squeezing up pit traps, and apparently this guy just clambered up and down them? Without getting dirty? Without seeming flustered in the least? Maybe his people put him in the hole on purpose. Was this all just enrichment? Even the spear traps? It was a fucking blessing that they seemed to be malfunctioning, or aged past effectiveness.

Xiao Er Ye looked sheepish, shrugging. “I forgot to worry about them? I’m usually not materially here when I walk around, but you need to see me and get past them so...”

Pangzi took a deep breath and counted to ten. “I need a drink”.

“Are you hurt though?” and now Xiao Er Ye was all sharp-eyed and attentive, all his focus on Pangzi, on his bruises and battered ego. Pangzi’s shoulders slumped.

“From this?” he shook his head and clapped a hand on Xiao Er Ye’s shoulder, “I’m fine. Can we just—what is THAT?”

There were hands, white, emaciated hands pressing through the stones at their feet. Black writhed up. Shrieking, Pangzi stomped, and stomped again.

Xiao Er Ye was stomping too, ranting, “Oh not again, no no I will not humor you. Do you want to be dead? Really? I told you no!”

The hands shrank back with a plaintive keen and one last lingering caress on Xiao Er Ye’s leg.

Pangzi and Xiao Er Ye stood there, breathing heavily. Their eyes met. Xiao Er Ye wore a strained smile and he looked, desperate.  

“So,” Pangzi stepped past Xiao Er Ye, careful not to step on any cracks, “Where next?” He didn’t look back, but he heard Xiao Er Ye take a shaky breath.

“Down this way. We’re almost there.”

. . .

“Almost there” was a lie. Pangzi sympathized, he did. It seemed Xiao Er Ye really believed a friend of his was down here; but the longer it took to reach, whatever it was, the more Pangzi worried he wouldn’t get the chance to talk Xiao Er Ye down, and nudge him towards showing both of them out of the tomb. He did not want to wander until he starved, or end up like his former team mates, spattered across the walls of a noisome pit.

The corridors were getting smoother, more ornate, and Pangzi swore he could feel fresh air vented in from somewhere. Xiao Er Ye was silent now, heading doggedly forward. Finally, he turned a corner, and, in the light of Pangzi’s flashlight, there were massive doors, green gold bronze with jade inset panels. They glimmered, untouched by dust. In fact, and here Pangzi swung his flashlight around, splendor wasn’t confined to the doors. There were murals faded but intricate all over the walls of the corridor.

There was no way to smuggle those doors out, but Pangzi wanted. His fingers twitched. Why had the expedition come in on a lower grade? If they’d realized the tomb was mostly vertical, that stuff like this was at the top, well, this would have been a different raid altogether. It was quiet, hushed but for the sound of Pangzi’s and Xiao Er Ye’s foot steps, the sound of their breathing, and the rustle of Xiao Er Ye’s ornate coat as he strode forward.

The doors swung open at a touch, soundlessly, and, hesitating in the corridor, Pangzi believed for the first time, that maybe Xiao Er Ye was non-human, at least a little. Was this really real? He pinched himself, which hurt. Nothing changed.

What prayers had he used, when he lit the incense? He lost track sometimes. Was he even doing any of them correctly? “Pangzi?” Xiao Er Ye’s voice echoed.

Pangzi swallowed his nerves, steeled his gut and called back, “Yeah, yeah I’m coming.” Inside was a riot of gold statues, positioned as an audience, a circle of jade set into a stone platform, intact the whole way around, and a man suspended in the air, curled defensively, dark hair falling over his shoulders. Long sleeves of richest, deepest blue, hung from his slender frame, and as Pangzi crept closer, rapt, he saw that the man’s face was ridiculously pretty. He seemed asleep. He was definitely, no doubt about it, floating.

“What.”

“I told you,” that was Xiao Er Ye, his voice grim. He was standing at the edge of the jade circle, intent on the characters carved inside it. He was holding out his hands, and for the first time, in the weird eldritch light the whole thing gave off, Pangzi could see scars on Xiao Er Ye’s palms and wrists, as if they’d but cut with a straight blade. Xiao Er ye shook, straining to reach with everything in him.

“Please, Pangzi, you can break it.” 

Pangzi felt, calm, as if he was in his home town, standing outside the Lucky Frog bar, staring into the fervid eyes of old man Wei. His voice was even,

“What happened to your hands?”

“My hands?” Xiao Er Ye drew back, glancing at his palms, “What does it matter?” he looked back at the circle, “I tried to put more of me in the circle, to get it to grab me but blood didn’t work, or hair. They just, evaporated, or fell apart on contact and nothing works. Please, break it.”

“How long have you, right—What do I do?”

Xiao Er Ye’s instructions apparently, amounted to “break it” all his easy words gone. Pangzi tried wedging the jade up, but he couldn’t get any purchase, and blunt force didn’t even dent it. He sat, panting, and chugged the last of his water. Xiao Er Ye stood by, fretting.

“I can’t, not like this.”

“What?” Xiao Er Ye hunched, looking very small.

Pangzi stood with effort, and stretched, turning to loosen the muscles of his core. “So you’re a god huh, sure it’s not that guy? He looks more, holy.”

Xiao Er Ye’s face was stone. It was unnatural. “I’m a god. He’s Xiao ge” and he said Xiao ge as if, of all things in the world, that he was most sure of.

“So you can get us out, if say, I blow up the room?”

Xiao Er Ye burst forward, breathless and all glimmering silk, “You can do that?”

Pangzi bared his teeth, “Oh hell yeah.”

. . .

Turns out it was a good thing he’d lugged all those incendiaries up so many floors. It took a while, but Xiao Er Ye had surprisingly steady hands once he had something to do with them. He talked to Xiao ge as he worked, but it wasn’t any dialect Pangzi knew, and he didn’t ask. At the last, Xiao Er Ye made Pangzi stand close, so close that he could smell incense and something like petrichor.

Xiao Er Ye met his eyes and Pangzi hit the trigger.

. . .

The world was dust. Dust and nothing. No sound or feeling, like the world fell away. It cut back in as a blade to the throat.

A literal blade. Pangzi was suddenly, viscerally aware of sun, beaming down on him, of the rumble and clatter of stone as the chamber collapsed around them, radiating outward. He ached, he was thirtsy, his stomach drew in, his breath caught, and they were out.

Xiao Er Ye was standing behind Xiao-ge, who was awake, with a predatory gaze pinned on Pangzi’s face. He held a black and gold sword against Pangzi’s throat and one arm was held out in front of Xiao Er Ye. Xiao Er Ye blinked, looking dazed.

“Uh” Pangzi tried again, throat dry, “Xiao Er Ye?”

The god shook his head, drew a deep breath, and noticed Xiao ge. “Xiao ge!”

He threw himself on him dragging him away from Pangzi. Xiao ge went willingly raising a long fingered hand to Xiao Er Ye’s arm, gazing into his face with an intensity that hurt to look at. Xiao Er Ye, reverent, cupped his face, grazing his thumbs beneath ink dark eyes. He breathed out, bright eyed, “You’re awake.”

Pangzi found somewhere else to look. All that shattered gold looked promising.

. . .

The chamber they’d broken was indeed, at the top of the tomb, and had seemingly been built atop an older structure, carved out from inside the tomb so that it was built on top of a place of death, so that it would draw Xiao Er Ye up. From where, Pangzi didn’t ask. What he knew was that there were trees, green and rustling, and sunlight warm on his face. The underbrush was thick, but they managed to find a route that wouldn’t exhaust them within an hour. Pangzi got out his kukri, and Xiao-ge put his sword to better use.

Together, they made their way through the trees, Xiao-ge going ahead, presumably to clear the way of threats, like squirrels. He’d tied back his heavy sleeves and accepted a torn bit of silk from Xiao Er Ye to pull back his hair. Pangzi watched him go, then turned to Xiao Er Ye, who practically glowed. Was he literally glowing? It was hard to tell. The god stood on his toes, soft eyed and open, watching where Xiao ge went.

Pangzi cleared his throat, and asked, “So if you’re a god, what’s he?”

Xiao Er Ye started, then settled back on his heels. “Oh! He’s a Hafuri vessesl!” Pangzi looked at him, dead eyed. “Oh, it means he is the most loyal and, potent? Of shinki, of named spirits that serve a god.”

Pangzi mulled that over. He dug out a few protein bars and made to hand one to Xiao Er Ye, who declined. “Named spirits?”

“Gods give spirits a new existence with a name. He is Xiao ge. He becomes a tattoo! It’s beautiful.”

Pangzi unwrapped his bar and replied, “Right. A tattoo.” He drew himself up, and bit the bullet, asking, “And what god are you?”

But it was Xiao-ge who answered, stealthy as a cat creeping up on them, regarding Xiao Er Ye with a warm gaze, “Qinguang Wang”.

Pangzi choked. “What?”

The God of death and misfortune ducked his head, then smirked impishly, leaning into Pangzi’s personal space. Neatly, he swung Pangzi around to face forward, and rested his with an arm over Pangzi’s shoulders. “And you’re a Priest now!”

Pangzi stopped dead. “What.” He blinked, raised a hand to his chin, and asked carefully, “Are there perks?”

The god’s laughter pealed out, obnoxiously loud. Xiao ge’s lip twitched upward. He glanced at Pangzi, and intoned, nodding gravely, “Do well.” He resumed his walk ahead of them.

Pangzi shrugged off the—his god’s arm and stomped after him, “And what is that supposed to mean? I haven’t even agreed to this yet!”

. . .

Pangzi insisted that the shrine have a full size kitchen and more than one Hello Kitty egg timer.

Fin

[pitynostars]

ok let's go favourite moments from each ep:

TWWFTE: the sonic from spoons scene is sooooo... I love a Doctor who tinkers. My personal headcanon here is that after the whole "same software different case" shenanigans from the 50th, 13 downloads all the old sonic software onto this new template when she finds the TARDIS in ghost monument in case something like that happens again

Ghost Monument: the reunited scene !!!!! When 13 strokes her panels w that soft smile 🥰🥰🥰

Rosa: Ryan meeting MLK (lbr the whole ep should have been the team working WITH the black activists)

Arachnids: the team pulling the lever together, wish that visual was used again would have been a really fun bookend

Tsuranga: the mechanics of the pilot's heart & eve was so fascinating

Demons: the end credits theme/ost this ep is so haunting I think about it daily....

Kerblam!: Actually love this ep right up until the end. The oppressive feeling of the warehouse, Kira's creepy upbeatness... All sort of leading us to unpacking megacorps like Amazon and the way warehouse workers are treated (ignoring the last ten mins where it doesn't even drop the ball but tosses it to the other side of the pitch)

Witchfinders: this is one of those eps that no matter how many times I watch it it's in one ear out the other can't remember a single moment .. I remember yazs outfit being cute ??? 🙈

ITYA: frog frog frog universe !!! FROG UNIVERSE !!!!

TBORAK: like WF doesn't stick w me but the idea of the Ux FUCKED it could have been so interesting to explore religion (especially as Yaz is RIGHT THERE with her relationship w religion unexplored)

Resolution: the actress from ghosts making a Dalek hot sorry. SORRY. also the way 13 plays off it is rlly nice

Spyfall: 13 in a suit like that >>>>>>> I'm a simple bisexual. Bark bark etc. Dhawan masters reveal is also so good the way he plays O is sooo good on rewatches

Orphan 55: don't @ me for this but Ryan's romance subplot 🙈🙈🙈🙈 it was so embarrassing but exactly the sort of shit you know 19 year olds in a pressured situation wld b like

NTNOT: watching this the first time w my bff in another country ❤️. Hits different !!

fugitive: RUTH DOCTOR MY BELOVED ❤️❤️❤️❤️ her reveal is sooo fucking cool I love the way she and 13 play off each other sm

Praxeus: honestly the colour grading this ep was so cool it w as so vibrant !!!! the imagery is so vivid, the cinematography, the body horror work (I think which was practical effects (?)) Just the Look of it is so good and distinct

CYHM?: Yaz giving the older cop the 50p back... I'm lying on the floor sobbing

THOVD: ashad's design FUCKS. his whole energy is so good he's so creepy the bit w the baby especially... Fuck yeah. Also 13 being like I won't lose anyone else to that the stratosphere speech first watch I was going FERAL w her finally she snaps !!!!!

Ascension: weird Irish guy flash-asides ajksjdka ... Idk the vibes r just immaculate

TTC: ....maybe the cyber time lords design? The gallifreyan on their casing is p (excuse the pun) metal

Revolution of the daleks: Ryan ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ just everything abt him this EP, the convo w the doctor, his like overly apparent apathy that culminates in him being like. Aight I'm out. (: Wanna play video games w my mates. I have to kin I'm sorry.

Flux

Halloween apocalypse: dan/karvanista my beloved bickering soulmates

Sontarans: that moment when 13 circles the TARDIS and there's no door ��😱😱😱

Once upon time: ok strap in for a shock this is maybe my fave ep of her era. It's so weird. We get to see Ruth!doctor's past (ish). Yaz and Dan are stuck in those confused planes. Mandips acting in the scenes where she has to play vinders superior... IM BISEXUAL. Introduces bel (love of my life). Cinema cinema cinema.

Village: that town on the edge of the universe shot is sooo good .... Every time I see it I'm like 😱😱😱😱

Survivors: TECTEUNS DIVISION SHIP BETWEEN UNIVERSES.... THE TREE IN THE MIDDLE.... OH MY GOD. THATS WHAT I CALL SPACESHIP DESIGN BRING IT BACK... Also "are you from Liverpool Dan? Whyve you never mentioned" I'm 99% sure was this ep

Vanquishers: thasmin hug 🥹🥹🥹 the recent PotD commentary that said they purposefully split mandip and jodie for COVID reasons makes that scene hit different too because you just KNOWWW they were so happy to be together again

Eve of the daleks: honestly... Aisling Bea's character's (Alison(?)) Phone calls w her mum. I felt that in my BONES lmfao

LOTSD: it was so badly choreographed but Yaz and 13 w swords...... 🥰

TPOTD: mandips acting once again winning me over ohhhh my god... Her faces reacting to the master pretending to be the Dr.... When she breaks down when 13 starts regenerating fr.... GOD. CINEMA.

gonna force myself to make a list of at least one thing I love from each ep of chibs' era tomorrow. this is my comfort show I WILL find joy in it where I can 🥹

[translations-by-aiimee]

Dig a Grave to Dig Out a Ghost - Chapter 23

Original Title: 挖坟挖出鬼

Genres: Drama, Horror, Mystery, Supernatural, Yaoi

This translation is based on multiple MTLs and my own limited knowledge of Chinese characters. If I have made any egregious mistakes, please let me know.

Chapter Index

Chapter 23 - Child Ghost

Twenty minutes later, each of the three hooligans sat on the bench in the hospital corridor in a daze, each clutching a bottle of fresh orange juice. The nurse had just scolded them for disturbing the rest of the patients in the surrounding rooms, and they all looked a little bit ashamed. A-Yan's face had some colour brought back. After drinking a few sips of the drink, he calmly said: "I c-can't exorcise it completely. I can only figure out the source of this thing. Maybe it's a good thing that it's harder to expel."

Lin Yan asked what he meant, and the little Daoist priest explained: “As the saying goes, 'He who never wrongs others does not fear the knock in the night*.' Although this girl is weak from her illness, there must be other reasons why, out of so many other patients, this thing chose her. If we can find the reason, then maybe it will leave by itself."

*(T/N: 不做亏心事，不怕鬼敲门 - means if you've done nothing wrong, you don't have to worry about any retributions.)

"It-It keeps repeating 'Why haven't you come yet?' It may be a wandering spirit who hasn't fulfilled his dying wish. His Yin energy is very weak. He probably died not that long ago."

Lin Yan's heart skipped a beat. He suddenly thought of Xiao Yu, and couldn't help but reveal his recent doubts to the little Daoist priest. After a long while, he turned his head and looked at the ghost next to him, and whispered: "Last time, I was only concerned about getting rid of him. I never asked him anything."

A-Yan sat curled up in the chair and listened to Lin Yan while gnawing on the cap of the orange juice bottle. He looked like a kitten. He jolted up and said: "Ghosts are divided into different categories. Today, the one here can only manifest by attaching itself to a living person and it will disappear once that person dies. However, the one that follows you is very, very strong."

A-Yan continued: "A ghost has no form at first, but if the soul is resentful and the body is buried in a place where the atmosphere has heavy negative energy, it's very likely to turn into a powerful ghost. A ghost will cultivate for a hundred years with a phantom body and, after a long time, it will develop a real body. When they have a real body, they don’t have to resort to 'bump around' like today, and they can even move around in the daytime without fear of Yang energy. They aren't so much ghosts as they are demons or animals." A-Yan clenched his fingers: " The most difficult evil spirit to deal with is known as the true body of the ten thousand clans. It requires special formations, plus needs to be done at the right time and place, so there's not much room for error. Once a part of the process goes wrong, the exorcist is likely to be drowned by the energy, go insane and instead be harmed by the evil spirit."

"L-Last time the formation was set up, Master made a fake one to fool the ghost, and he found the gap in time he needed. Otherwise, if you wanted to eliminate him, I'm afraid that you would have to gather more than fifteen boys in a Mandarin Duck Formation to have any hope." A-Yan suddenly gave Lin Yan a strange smile: "That was because he had just re-entered the world and was still confused when we tricked him. Now, I'm afraid. . . Brother Lin Yan, at this point, he should have already remembered something, right?"

Lin Yan thought back on all the things that happened at the lecture and the ghost's increasingly human-like behaviour. He was secretly surprised; was this ghost really recovering his memory? He nodded and replied, "He told me lots of things the day of the lecture. He can talk, just not very much."

A-Yan smiled nervously: "Y-Your four-pillar pure Yin is the most suitable alignment to feed ghosts. The longer he follows you, the more physical he'll become, and the more he'll remember."

"But. . ." A-Yan looked into the distance with a glaze in his eyes, his fingers tightly squeezed the drink bottle. He turned back and grinned at Lin Yan: "Be very careful."

"All I can say is that every action has a reaction, and I can't help you with anything at that point."

He didn’t know why, but Lin Yan felt that the way the little Daoist priest spoke seemed to imply something. Feeding ghosts. . . Lin Yan harshly inhaled the hospital’s air mixed with the smell of disinfectant and frowned. “Let's not talk about it. We have to save A-Zhou's cousin first and figure out the reason for the possession. Do you have to find out who the deceased is first?"

A-Yan nodded. Yin Zhou held his glasses, a little confused: "We don't have much time left. Dozens of people die in hospitals every month. We don't have time to go through each of them individually."

Lin Yan sighed: "That's no other option. Go and pull up the records of everyone who's died recently in the hospital. Maybe there's a clue somewhere."

After all, there were several people now that were exhausted from the attempted exorcism, paralyzed on the bench and not wanting to move. Lin Yan discreetly adjusted his position. Xiao Yu suddenly walked over to him, squatted down and grabbed his knees with both hands.

Lin Yan turned his face and snorted. "Weren't you ignoring me?"

Xiao Yu didn't answer. He gently lowered his head and put the side of his face on Lin Yan's knees, long hair cascading behind him like a waterfall. Lin Yan instinctively wanted to reach out his hand to touch his head, then he thought that he was probably still angry, so he put on an indifferent air and cold expression, not acknowledging him.

After a while, Xiao Yu raised his head. He pressed his hands firmly against Lin Yan's legs, stood up, turned and walked further down the corridor.

"Where are you going?" Lin Yan asked in a low voice. Seeing that he didn't answer, he had to follow a few steps behind. Xiao Yu quietly returned to the door of Xiao Yang's room and went straight through the door panel. Lin Yan was full of doubts. Peeking carefully through the door glass, he saw that Xiao Yang's mother was tired from crying and was sitting on the side of the bed, dozing off with her arms propping up her forehead. The girl, on the other hand, waited by the window again in the same manner as when Lin Yan had first arrived.

Xiao Yu walked to the girl's back and patted her shoulder lightly. What happened next left Lin Yan dumbfounded. The girl with her rolled-back eyes turned around and quietly "looked" at Xiao Yu, showing a normal human on her face for the first time. The corners of her mouth were pulled downward, a look of aggravation painted clearly on her face. Xiao Yu was tall, so he simply squatted in front of the girl and stroked her hair very softly. They were talking, and Lin Yan's eyes widened. Although he could not hear them, their expressions and slightly moving lips convinced him that they were indeed communicating in a language he didn't understand.

The little Daoist priest and Yin Zhou also followed at this time. They curiously holding the windowpane and looking in. They couldn't help but be shocked by the girl's appearance now.

"She's talking to herself?" Yin Zhou was surprised: "What's she saying?"

"Mortuary language." The little Daoist said in a deep voice. "The language used in ancient rituals to communicate with the dead."

Lin Yan looked at the harmonious picture in the room, unconsciously picking at the crack of the door. He grit his teeth and indignantly thought you're Xiao Yu. At home, you're fierce and want to kill me, yet you go talk to a young girl with such a tender look. You just look at such a pretty young girl that I don’t want to let it go. Zhu Xi's Neo-Confucianist teachings have really gone to the dogs. It’s useless for you to think about it. I decided ages ago. When she's a few years older, I'll take her to watch movies and visit the amusement park. Let's see what you can do. . .

"Hey? Are you going to follow him inside?" Yin Zhou patted Lin Yan on his shoulder. Lin Yan had been distracted internally cursing Xiao Yu, and he was so frightened that the hairs on his neck stood on end.

"Holy shit, when did you get here? Were you trying to scare me to death by keeping quiet?!" Lin Yan grumbled, clutching his heart.

"Did you really not hear me talking so loudly before?!" Yin Zhou said in surprise: ". . . Why are you blushing?"

A-Yan smiled and gave Lin Yan a deep look, not making a sound.

The conversation in the room seemed to be over. Xiao Yu stood up. He leaned over and rubbed the top of the girl's head and walked out. Xiao Yang reluctantly turned and stood by the window again. Lin Yan gritted his teeth and waited outside. He internally decided he wouldn't fall for any more of his tricks considering he seemed to do them with anyone. . .

Xiao Yu had already returned to stand in front of him while he was distracted. Lin Yan turned his face away from him in anger, but Xiao Yu didn't care. He took out the memo and the soft-tip fountain pen Lin Yan had bought from his pocket and began to write.

"Jesus fucking Christ!" Yin Zhou looked at the pen and paper hanging in the air and stared in shock.

Xiao Yu shoved the note into Lin Yan's hand, then retreated to stand behind him. Lin Yan looked down. The light green note had two lines written on it. The first line was a series of capitalized numbers: "Three-Five-One-Zero-Zero-Four." The second line was a sentence: "He's waiting for his father."

"Father?" Yin Zhou looked at the words on the note and suddenly clapped his hands: "Hey, I got it, no wonder it came to Xiao Yang. Xiao Yang's mother is a single parent. My uncle passed away last year. I came to the hospital to watch her overnight last week and heard her say she missed her dad and it felt like he was still there with her. . . Then what does that row of numbers mean?"

Lin Yan was also puzzled holding the note. When he asked Xiao Yu, he shook his head and didn't speak. Lin Yan couldn't help muttering, "What the hell? You touched her head and smiled for a long time without asking anything. . . It’s not because the little girl looks good..."

"A g-ghost's memories are incomplete. They can only remember what they want. It would be nice if they can remember the numbers." A-Yan suddenly opened his mouth, his eyes sharply focused towards Lin Yan. Lin Yan's face grew hot, and he hurriedly lowered his head to cover it up. He explained to him that he was searching for people, why did his mind take such a strange turn. . .

That being said, why did he always get distracted by a dead person? This isn't going to work, no. Lin Yan secretly squeezed his fist.

Yin Zhou saw that the two of them were acting strangely. He crossed his hands behind his head and looked around in the corridor. When he saw the computer in front of the nurse on duty at the staircase, his eyes suddenly lit up, and he whistled frivolously: "Look, dude. Time for some fun."

With Lin Yan's girl-pleasing good looks and Yin Zhou's series of honeyed compliments, the three stooges quickly got their hands on the nurse's sister's computer. Yin Zhou stared at the screen intently. His fingers flew across the keyboard and the mouse clicked rapidly. After 15 minutes, the corners of his mouth stretched upward. His whole body suddenly leaned back in the swivel chair. He squinted his eyes and exclaimed: "Done. Turns out the info comes from this hospital. Makes it much more convenient not having to check other systems."

Lin Yan leaned in front of the computer, and the homepage showed: "351004, Zhou Jintian, male, 11 years old, died on May 11. Cause of death: internal organ rupture causing extensive abdominal hemorrhaging." A scanned copy of the body claim form was attached below. In the lower right corner where the family members signed, the family name was written in two large characters: "Zhou Mo" with a small red seal next to it.

"From the deceased's information from the database, this line of numbers is the bed number from the morgue." Yin Zhou touched his head: "This ghost is a child. No wonder he's standing by the window all the time, waiting for his father to pick him up from school."

Lin Yan took a picture of the page with his phone. He smiled and pushed the back of Yin Zhou's head: "Good job."

At the spicy and sour noodle shop across from the hospital.

Lin Yan always disliked eating near hospitals. He always feels that there were grieving patients’ families and infectious bacteria floating everywhere, but these spicy and sour noodles were particularly famous. Lin Yan drove the car for a while, and after a lengthy internal struggle, he turned back. Lin Yan scooped a spoonful of spicy soup and was satisfied that a delicious dinner was definitely worth it.

The little Daoist priest left for a shift in the restaurant where he worked. Yin Zhou stayed in the hospital to see the patient and verify the information. Lin Yan sat alone at the snack bar, a greasy orange plastic table with two bowls of spicy and sour noodles in front of him. One was placed in front of him, and the other was pushed to the opposite side. The "person" only he could see was sitting in the opposite chair with his face turned sideways in a daze. It seems that the ghost really didn't need to eat. Lin Yan sighed and asked in a low voice: "You don't eat or sleep, you follow me every day, aren't you tired?"

Xiao Yu ignored him. His slender fingers propped up his chin, and the outline of his side face looked very beautiful in the dimming daylight. The table was near the window, and the warm yellow halo of the street lamp brushed over the bridge of his nose. His skin looked as fine as porcelain. It felt like porcelain too, icy cold.

Things were still awkward.

"Excuse me, can I borrow the chair? We don't have enough." A childish male voice sounded and Lin Yan raised his head. A boy dressed as a high school student was holding the back of Xiao Yu's chair. He saw Lin Yan looked confused and pointed to the boys and girls chatting at a large table next door. The girls were wearing heavy makeup, the boys wearing ear studs, their school uniforms covered in black and blue pen doodles. There were so many people in the store that they were missing several chairs.

"Someone's using it." Lin Yan replied quietly.

"I know you've been sitting here for a while, no one's there." The boy was unyielding.

"If I say someone's there, someone's there, and if they aren't there now, they will be later." Lin Yan was a little impatient.

"Nutjob, it's just a chair, why so angry?" The boy muttered. Before leaving, he rolled his eyes at Lin Yan.

"Sorry." Lin Yan mumbled to the boy's back. He wasn't sure why. No one could see Xiao Yu, which always made him a little anxious. Lin Yan hesitated and for the first time took the initiative to reach out and touch Xiao Yu's statue-like fingers and whispered, "It's lonely, isn't it? Of all the people in the world, I'm the only one who can see you and I treat you badly."

[soyouareandrewdobson]

Andy on Asian Animation or SYAC: The Master Review 2

Let’s talk a bit about anime and Dobson’s work relation with it.

I think we can all agree, that starting from the late 90s and early 2000s on, anime and manga became extremely popular in the western world. Sure, Japanese animation was nothing completely new to us (Speed Racer, Nadia-Secret of Blue Water, Samurai Pizza Cats, Sailor Moon, Kimba and Akira e.g. come to my mind as properties already known in the west before 1995) but it really was around this time that thanks to “mainstream” stuff like Dragon Ball and Pokemon people became aware of how different Japanese animation was from western. Eventually resulting in the really good shit (like Cowboy Bebop, Black Lagoon, Kenshin and Heat Guy J) coming over and enriching nerd culture for more than just a few people who knew of it as an obscurity at that point. Now, if you know anything about Dobson, you likely know that his relationship with anime is rather… complicated to say the least. Or, to let him explain it with his own words…

Dobson essentially likes silly and wacky 90s anime. But later on he hated anime in general, because it got too popular and a bad experience with an anime club in college soured his enjoyment of it. Furthermore, he put the blame on his lackluster art style and storytelling capabilities as seen in the likes of Formera, Patty and Alex ze Pirate, on anime in general, while also claiming that Disney pulling the plug on 2D animation is the result of the “anime inspired” Treasure Planet, meaning anime in a sense deprived him of his chance at working at his dream job and “ruining” western animation.

Which to me has always been ignorant as fuck. For starters, I can understand not liking certain stories or genres, either for objective or subjective reasons. But to hate on an entire nation’s form of entertainment (not just individual shows or genres), depriving yourself of the chance of potentially watching a lot of good stuff while also being rather insulting to these other works and people enjoying them? Especially when the stuff you can supposedly “stomach” has been rather simplistic compared to other things?

 Second, blaming Japan for “poisoning” your art style? What, did the ghost of Osamu Tezuka possess you and FORCE you to put sweatdrops on your characters forehead while also going for the rather simplistic character style of Rumiko Takahashi, as well as emulating the slapstick of the likes as Slayers and Ranma ½?

 Next, if he had emulated them successfully, I say he would have actually managed to tell decent enough stories worth to read online. Not create Uncle Peggy aka “Discount Happosai” or the bland proto-Isekai known as Formera.

I mean, let’s give some context here: There have been people who successfully managed to emulate certain anime and manga aesthetics into western animation and make it work. Otherwise we wouldn’t have gotten the likes of Avatar-The last Airbender, Samurai Jack, the Animatrix, Thundercats 2011, Super Robot Monkey Hyperforce Go, Kim Possible, W.I.T.C.H, Megas XLR and Wakfu. You know, shows that are actually awesome as hell.

Heck, Dobson’s favorite animated show of the last decade, Steven Universe, is heavily inspired by anime aesthetics to the point of being embarrassing.

 But Dobson… well, he emulated anime aesthetics in his work the same way as these crimes against animation did.

Combined with his general shortcomings as a storyteller it is no wonder his initial comics did not do well.

 Lastly, and sorry for digressing here a bit, but if the Wikipedia entry on Treasure Planet is something to go by, there was no real inspiration by anime involved in making this movie.

Supposedly the idea of making an animated Treasure Planet in outer space movie was already pitched by Ron Clements WAY BACK in 1985 but only came to be after Michael Eisner greenlighted stuff in the late 90s. Design wise the movie was supposed to look 70% traditional and 30% sci-fi inspired and people took inspiration for the art style by illustrators associated with the Brandywine School of Illustration. A western style of illustration established in the 19th century, that had a big impact on the illustration styles for many 19th and early 20th century adventure novels and short stories.

What, is anime supposed to be the only form of animation allowed to have sci fi elements or steampunk in it? Fucks sake, The Lion King and Atlantis, which came out one year earlier to Treasure Planet, were likely more inspired by anime. Don’t believe me? Watch Atlantis and then a certain anime by Studio Gainax called “Nadia-Secret of Blue Water”. Or read up on the controversy surrounding the two.

The truth is, it is not entirely clear what caused Disney to shut down 2D feature film animation in the early 2000s. In fact, if anything, most people put the blame on Michael Eisner and a certain change in the publics taste in movies in general, combined with Disney trying to turn almost every movie they had into a franchise via cheap follow up movies on video and DVD.

And even if Disney did not shut down, are we really supposed to believe that a certain guy with fedora would have made it big at Disney to the point Alex ze Pirate would have been made into a feature film?

But Dobson could never quite understand this and instead of “reinventing” himself properly, he would rant about anime and its fans in one form or another…

 And on the peak of his hissy fit create this little art piece he baptized Anime Sux. Alternatively “West vs East”. Or as I like to call it, slap a jap.

Now, the pic was done in 2008 and Dobson claimed sometimes in the last decade, that he no longer holds his old opinions. Unfortunately, by that point he would also more or less use the chance to vent in his webcomic about anime (or rather its fans), which brings us finally back to SYAC.

 While Dobson never outright thematized in more detail WHY he hates anime and manga in SYAC (likely cause if his comic reasoning was even slightly like his reasoning in his blogs, people would have torn him apart like a bag of paper) he did use the format to punch down on anime fans and their preferences.

 For example, for someone who has a 4chan story going around of having been rather arrogant towards others in college for not liking Ranma ½, Dobson has THIS little college related comic to show off, where he portrays an aspiring manga artist as a delusional jackass.

Then in this strip titled manga, his manga fan is essentially portrayed as a young woman dressing up like a very stereotypical high school anime girl, who is in the wrong for even just DARING to draw her comics in the direction manga are read.

On one hand, I get Dobson’s point. She could be at risk of alienating a market of readers as she is obviously drawing for a western audience. Then again, if she doesn’t draw a traditional western comic but a manga, why shouldn’t she? I mean, as long as she enjoys it, which I assume she does as she seems genuinely just happy when stating that she likes manga, why not let her? Plus, this comic was drawn in the late 2000s. I think by then most people kinda knew how to read from right to left, so Dobson’s claim she would alienate or confuse people is kinda redundant. If anything I find a) Dobson getting angry at her just very petty (just let her have fun) and b) portraying a western manga fan as someone who would be confused by the sheer idea of reading stuff from right to left is also in itself just really dumb and insulting. What is Dobson trying to imply? That anime fans are so stuck in the way they consume certain media, they can’t act according to “western standards” again?

Then there is this strip where yet another female anime fan is essentially portrayed as the embodiment of how “ignorant” manga fans are of the idea of different art styles...

Which becomes rather laughable once Dobson describes his style as a mixture of European, American and  Japanese. Why? Because he is the one oversimplifying things, rather than the anime fan.

You see while anime and manga of all sorts do share certain aesthetics (like the black and white art style, emphasize on the eyes of characters, the way hair is drawn, recurring tropes within certain genres and so on) style wise (both in art and storytelling) there can be severe differences, depending on the artist alone. Akira Toriyama’s style differentiates significantly from the likes of Eichiro Oda, Rumiko Takahashi, Kentaro Miura, Tezuka, Kaori Yuki and so forth.

The same also goes for many western artists. Herge had a significantly different style from Uderzo and Goscinny. Don Rosa has a different style in which he drew Scrooge McDuck than Carl Barks did. Rob Liefeld and Jim Lee draw mainstream superheroes differently compared to how Jack Kirby, George Perez and others did. Heck, Ethan Van Sciver and Jim Lee were closely associated with Green Lantern in the 2000s and look how they differentiate.

 Which btw is the kind of skill level Dobson would have needed to have, to make it in the mainstream industry

So when Dobson says “I draw in a combination of American, Western and Japanese” all I can think is the following: THAT DOESN’T NARROW IT DOWN! WHAT THE HECK HAVE YOU LEARNT IN COLLEGE ABOUT COMICS? WHICH ARTISTS, WORKS AND STORYTELLERS DO YOU TRY TO EITHER EMULATE OR HAVE BEEN INSPIRED BY?

Then there is this little thing…

Where do I even begin? How about the fact that Dobson’s hand in the last panel looks like he has lost a thumb? The fact that the little boy, anime fan or not, is aware of Sae Sawanoguchi, a character from a short lived OVA and anime series from the 90s, which considering his age, I kinda doubt he would be aware off. Unlike Dobson, who got into anime in the 90s and admits in fact within the posts I loaded up earlier, that he had watched the anime in particular, known in the west as Magic User Club.

Then there is the implication by Dobson, that anime is so “corruptive” as a medium, little kids don’t even know the most basic characters in western animation because of it. I expect in a next panel, that all of sudden some 50s PSA guy comes along and lectures me that if I want this kind of thing not to happen at MY convention, I need to teach little kids more about the GOOD western animation, instead of the BAD eastern one. Then there is this rather unflattering portrayal of a shonen ai/shojou ai fangirl…

 Which makes me laugh cause honestly, even some of the worst shonen ai and shojou ai can do better in portraying a “realistic” gay relationship than Patty if you ask me.

Also, as much as I think fangirls can be extremely thirsty (I have read my fair share of extremely stupid yaoi and yuri fanfics) I think that in hindsight Dobson is really not anyone to complain about shipping obsession and sex when he himself has KorraSami, the Ladybug fandom and a certain rat pirate under his floppy belt.

As you can imagine, Dobson would get heat for those comics, considering how he himself has been greatly inspired by anime and manga for his major comics. And while I don’t have any explicit deviantart posts of him reacting to criticism in that regard, I do have this comic which addresses it directly.

 And yeah, if I were schoolgirl number 4, I would just sigh and walk away after telling Dobson that his mistakes and shortcomings are not related to having consumed anime, but rather by what sort of anime (and other stories) he had consumed and the amount of effort he had put in creating his stories instead of emulating just something more popular. Plus, if you really want people to draw more from life, how about drawing more from life yourself down the line? And no, tracing Star Wars movie frames does not count.

Finally, Dobson, considering how very little most people think of your work, I say mission accomplished: People have learnt from your mistakes and know not to be a Dobson.

And at last, there is this comic, which kinda wraps up Dobson’s “vendetta” with anime and manga fans within the pages of SYAC.

By trying to mock anime fans and make them look just as shallow as he is. I at least suppose. Honestly, the message of this comic is rather muddled. On one hand, I would say the strawman accusing Dobson hates anime just because it is popular is very simplified. After all, Dobson has made his reasons for not liking anime clear in a few more details. It’s just that the details in and on themselves in real life are still rather shallow and boil down to a lot of personal bias rather than an objective criticism of actual flaws. Which I think is worth pointing out.

But frankly, what is Dobson trying to say or point out here? That the strawman is not so different or even dumber than him, because he hates Justin Bieber for “shallow” and superficial reasons too?

Okay, this doesn’t quite work as well as Dobson wants. First, the argument Dobson’s strawman makes is in huge parts based on some verified statements Dobson made for not liking anime. Second, he just says a name and that triggers the guy to express his hatred for Bieber. We don’t know why the guy hates Bieber and you could make in fact the case, that he hates him not because he is popular, but because he has a genuine issue with the artist, his work or his behavior as a human being. Third, if you want to make yourself look like the better person Dobson, try to argue with the guy and make solid arguments why you don’t like anime. Instead you just deflect the criticism by changing the subject and then try to make yourself look like the “smarter” person in the room by mocking your critic in the most condescending manner.

Which as I think about it, sounds like your modus operandi on twitter and tumblr.

Weirdly enough, that more or less marks the “end” of Dobson tackling anime fans and the beef he has with them within the pages of SYAC. Despite how much Dobson’s negative reputation especially in early years was build around him hating on anime and belittling its fans, he didn’t really do more afterwards in the Dobson focused pages of SYAC. And mind you, those strips were also separated by other strips in-between, focused on Dobson just being at conventions.

Unfortunately for him, the strips didn’t really help in any way to diminish that negative reputation and instead just confirmed for many, that Dobson can’t handle criticism about his flawed opinion on anime. If anything, it just made people think even less of Dobson, as the strips just painted him as someone who would rather portray his critics as strawman he can be “rightfully” annoyed at, instead of fellow humans with slightly different tastes in entertainment, who are still worth listening to.

So, now that we have the anime fan related “annoyances” out of the way, what other sort of silly problems in making webcomics would Dobson cover in his strips and are “relatable” to everyone?

Lets see some of these examples in the next part.

[aahsokaatano]

King I would love that essay about Changing Channels

Fjdjshjdhdjd thanks for reading my tags Jesse you're the real VIP here.

Okay SO "Changing Channels" is the 8th episode of the 5th season of Supernatural. I give this information bc it's important in looking at the context of the episode - now I've complained a LOT about how SPN is terrible at giving us canonical timeframes within the episodes (y'all i was SHOCKED to discover the first season is supposed to cover a little over a year's worth of time, I thought it was like... 4 or 5 months) so I can't say for sure how long before and after the other episodes happen in-universe around "Changing Channels" BUT

The episode before is "The Curious Case of Dean Winchester" where Dean and Bobby bet years of their lives in a game of poker with a witch. The episode after is "The Real Ghostbusters" where Sam and Dean end up at a fan convention for the in-universe Supernatural novels.

Why am I pointing this out? Because it's important, please, no audience participation, this is like a Brian David Gilbert panel.

[under a cut bc this got...... STUPID long. Who knew I still had this many opinions about SPN in 2020?]

Okay first of all I wanna talk about the cinnamon topography of this episode - I love the way the first 5 seasons are shot because you really feel the americana gothic horror aesthetic they were going for (I have a whole ‘nother rant about the first 5 seasons vs the last 10 but thats for another time). Everything is a little washed out and grey-toned, the camera angles generally serve to make Sam and Dean appear even taller than they actually are (larger than life - again, another post for another time), and there’s honestly a LOT of shots from the ‘monster’s’ perspective, which is really neat! I’ve said it before (on another blog - YES i have a dedicated spn rant blog, don’t @ me hdjfhfjfh) but the episode that really got me hooked on spn back in the day was the second one, about the w*ndigo. Yes, it’s a racist, culturally appropriating shitstorm, but the way its SHOT is fantastic. I’m honestly not a horror fan, but that episode could have easily relied on jumpscares and they DIDN’T and it was scary as all fucking hell and just - fuck okay getting off topic. 

In “Changing Channels” we get that distinctive grey-washed tone in the beginning and the very end of the episode, but the middle? When they’re in TV Land? Everything is bright. Almost comically so, I mean - okay look at these two shots of Sam (apologies about the crappy phone pics, netflix won't let me screenshot)

This one is from the start of the episode, in the "real" police station

And this is from a little later in the "TV" hospital

Ignoring that my phone is washing him out a lot in both pics, you can still see the warmer tones in the hospital shot as compared to the cold greyness in the police station one

Okay, now look at this picture

Dean inside the Impala, and those warm tones are back. Why? Because even though Sam and Dean believe that they’re back in the “real” world, they aren’t - so instead of the grey-washed shots that we’re used to, its the bright and warm shots that we see in “TV Land”! So the viewers pick up, even if its just subconsciously, that the boys aren’t out of the woods yet - everything is still too bright to be the in-universe reality we’ve come to expect from SPN by season 5

Which is also why i love this shift so much

These shots are literally SECONDS apart. The first is in "TV Land" and the second is in the "real" world. I have some red strip lights behind my bed, which are reflecting off my laptop screen - notice how much brighter they seem in the second picture? That’s because literally all of the warm colors have been drained out of the shot. As soon as Gabriel snaps them all back into “reality,” things get so much colder.

Okay, so the second thing I want to talk about is some of the very pointed dialogue choices within the “shows” the Winchesters take part in. Not between Sam and Dan and Gabriel, but from the, for lack of a better term, NPCs within the shows.

In the hospital, Dr. Piccolo tells Sam that he is “the finest cerebrovascular neurosurgeon I have ever met - and I have met plenty! So that girl died on your table; it wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. Sometimes people just die.” Standard cheesy soap opera dialogue - but lemme just swap some words here and - 

“You are the finest hunter I have ever met - and I have met plenty! So that girl died on your hunt; it wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. Sometimes people just die.”

Or even - 

“You are the finest hunter I have ever met - and I have met plenty! So Jessica and Mary died above you; it wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anybody’s fault [but Azazel’s]. Sometimes people just die.”

Keeping in mind that the NPCs are basically Gabriel’s mouthpieces, its easy to see why so many people ship Sabriel. I’d actually love to see a fic that explores them talking about this moment in particular later on and the kind of gentle forgiveness that Gabriel can give Sam... getting off topic again.

In an abrupt about-face, the herpes commercial (much meme’d within the fandom) is straight up Gabriel shaming Sam. Because if you replace “genital herpes” with “demon blood” it’s.... dark. And very intentional.

So that’s what I did! (I combined all spoken lines to make the message easier to read, rather than splitting them up across 3 speakers as in the episode)

“I’ve drank demon blood. I tried to be responsible... did I try. But now, after being forcibly detoxed, I fight my addiction every day to reduce the chances of passing back into that toxic mindset. Ask your loved ones about a demon blood intervention today. [...] I am doing all I can to slightly lessen the chance of drinking demon blood again. And that’s a good thing.”

Like... the subtext throughout this episode sure is. Something.

Okay this is getting ridiculously long so I wanna wrap up by talking about The Best Scene In The Whole Goddamn Show

I’m talking, of course, about Gabriel’s Confession

“Max,” you might be saying, “there are so many better scenes out there, even within the first five seasons!” and to that i say, again, no audience participation, please. Also, you’re WRONG and here’s why!

Gabriel’s confession hits every goddamn emotional chord that the fandom begged for on this show - fear, rage, grief, pain, guilt, and even, yes, absolution. 

Okay, here’s the scene again for those of you who don’t think about it at least once a week like me

Now this video is missing some of the conversation, but most of it is there, enough for you to see what I’m talking about. Gabriel up to this point has been, essentially, a nameless antagonist - this is the third episode he appeared in, and before this, we didn’t even know he was going by Loki. He was just referred to as ‘The Trickster’. But here, not only do we get a name (a real name at that), but we also get a glimpse of his backstory and a hell of a lot of character development in less than 5 minutes. I mean, Sam didn’t get this much character development throughout the entirety of season 1! There’s a good reason Gabriel has been a fan-favorite for a very long time, and I think a big part of it is this particular scene.

Because here, we get to see Gabriel being vulnerable. And we even see Dean show a little vulnerability, as he can empathize being the third party to explosive arguments between the two people who mean everything to him.

I mean... okay, it will never see the light of day, but I wrote a little bit of a Reverse ‘Verse fic (because I’m a sucker for Reverse ‘Verse) and this was the scene I started with. Not s1e1, not even the resurrection in s4e1, but this scene. Because this scene, more than any other, is critical to the way not only Gabriel’s (first) arc plays out, but also to how Sam and Dean conduct themselves for the rest of the season (and maybe a bit beyond, it’s been a hot minute since I watched s6 and later). Dean is angry but determined, he has a point to make, he is going to save Sammy and if he can’t do that, then he’s going to damn well die trying. But Sam... it’s after this episode that we start really seeing how bone-achingly tired Sam is. It’s after this conversation - where one of the other archangels, one of the few beings who can truly understand how powerful Michael and Lucifer are - says that there’s no other way around this that Sam seems to start inching towards giving in. Saying yes.

Sure, in the actual episode, he seems outraged by the idea, practically scoffs at it - “you want us to say yes to those sons of bitches?” - but it’s after this where Sam really seems run down.

I mean, look at the episodes before and after (HAH you thought I forgot about that first point I made at the very beginning of this post! I did, briefly, but I’ve circled back to it, thanks for being understanding). In “The Curious Case of Dean Winchester,” Sam behaves much as he did since the start of s4, which is to say, ‘annoying little know-it-all brother tossed into the middle of the apocalypse and just trying his best’ and it works well for the mad scramble for any scrap of information that’s happening in s4/early s5.

But in “The Real Ghostbusters” it’s different. This is another funny meta episode - except, while Sam and Dean are technically aware of the joke, they aren’t as amused by it as the audience is. And it’s not because of the ghosts. It’s because they’re just... done. Especially Sam. Dean has that nice little moment with the cosplayers at the end of the episode, but Sam... threatens to shoot Chuck. Sam ‘goes darkside’ more often than pretty much any other character in the show, but that moment is different. It’s a flat promise, not a threat. He’s not being an asshole, like he is after losing his soul. He’s just... done. And it’s obvious to see.

Gabriel’s confession is the turning point for Sam in s5, and it informs a lot of his behavior through the rest of s5, and possibly beyond! Like I said, I haven’t watched past s5 in a very long time, so I don’t feel confident enough to analyze that specific sort of character line, but I feel confident in saying that hearing one of the most powerful beings in the universe basically say “it doesn’t matter what you do - your destiny is unavoidable” and then he’s proven right (Sam says yes to Lucifer, and Dean eventually does say yes to Michael down the line!)... like, that’s really gotta fuck up your world view that was built on free will and throwing off the shackles of fate. Sam managed to avoid his ‘destiny’ in s2... but then it turns out that that wasn’t ever his destiny. Lucifer was his destiny.

Talk about an obscured view of the inner self.

[bird-in-a-cage]

Inspired by that prompt

012

It was August, 1986, when Billy was released. He didn’t have much. A bag of second hand clothes that had been donated to somewhere at some point, nothing of which had ever fit right or would have been anything he’d chosen to wear voluntarily. The keys to a basement apartment underneath a general store, two small windows up high near the ceiling the only natural light source. Basic furniture. Only enough to survive, nothing homely. A tracking bracelet around his ankle. A thick black box that weighed more than it looked, hidden by baggy jeans that were kept up by a belt he had to stab extra holes into.

It might have fit him properly last year. But that was last year.

He kept the letter they gave him pinned to the small refrigerator next to the sink. This apartment is owned by the US Government. You are not to leave Hawkins until we say you can under any circumstance. You are not to take off the tracking bracelet for any reason. You are to report in to the number below once every two weeks, same time and day. Failure to do these tasks will see you readmitted.

Neil’s abuse was fun in comparison to that possibility.

It had been a long year. The longest of Billy’s short life. A year of surgeries, rehabilitation, endless tests. Having his hair shaved off. Losing his muscle mass. Losing his tan. Being kept in rooms with no windows. Alone for weeks. Being stitched back together like a jigsaw puzzle made of skin. A sock with a hole in it. Being treated like an animal, an experiment. Being poked and prodded by miles of needles. Blood and plasma. Bone marrow. Lumbar punctures. Spinal fluid. Staring into bright lights for hours until he went temporarily blind. Patch worked with pads to listen to his brain. His heart. His lungs. His stomach. Every different face wearing the same masks, the same gowns, the same gloves. Never feeling anything real apart from pain.

Sometimes he still felt like a prisoner in his own body. What was left of it. What he didn’t recognise was his anymore. That thing still in his arm. In his head. Alone at night he would still hear it whisper. But it was different now. It had no power to control him. So Billy tried to ignore it. Just keep going somehow, this would get better eventually. If he did well in this test he’d be allowed a coke. If he did well in another he could sit next to a window. He could, and did, work his way out of the Building, away from being a lab rat directly.

He’d come out with 012 tattooed on his arm, just under the crook of his elbow. They must have done it when he was passed out at one point. Everything else about him had changed, it made sense there would be something new added as well in amongst the web of white scars that spanned his entire body. Thick like elm roots on his chest, the epicenter. Thin and fine on his arms and legs and the backs of his hands, a few up the back of his neck. He kept everything hidden under thick clothes. A donated Slazenger jacket became his best friend. Grey and waterproof. Sleeves that fell to his fingers. Old jeans that someone probably died in. Dirty white sneakers. Everything the opposite of who he was before. It felt right somehow. He wasn’t that person anymore. He’d never be that person again.

A government appointed talking person had advised Billy to take everything day by day. The world was very different from what was inside the Building and its grounds. The one tree outside to look at to guess what season it was. Doing too much at once would upset things. Getting drunk wasn’t an option. Getting high wasn’t an option. Working out wasn’t an option. Getting a job wasn’t an option. Walking was fine though, practically encouraged. Enough time had passed, there was a very low chance of being recognised. Legally he was dead. He should probably think of a new name for himself. The government would help with paperwork when he was deemed ready for phase three. It would pay for him to live, exist, in phase two.

Billy never saw her face. But she had a calm voice throughout. Hidden behind the two way mirror and through the phone that had no numbers to dial. No outside line. He liked to imagine she had green eyes. The closest thing he had to a friend, even though he never said more than yes or no in return.

It took two weeks before Billy went further than the store upstairs. Three weeks before he went more than two blocks. It was odd to feel a breeze again. Odd to feel a cold that didn’t come from within. Odd to feel hot from the sun. Odd to hear multiple voices and vehicles coming from everywhere. Odd to hear children. Odd to hear joy and laughter. 

Odd not to hear beeping white boxes, the crinkle of sanitised plastic casings being unwrapped and opened. Hollow footsteps on a tiled floor. Count back from ten. Nine. Eight. 

Hawkins didn’t look any different. It had the same amount of stop lights, stop signs. The same amount of parking spaces outside the diner and town hall. The same amount of benches in the park. The same playground equipment. The same graffiti under the slide. The same names scratched into the hard orange plastic, autographs of teenagers hiding out and getting high with their friends after dark. Billy thumbed over his own name. The night he and Harrington buried the hatchet over a joint and a half bottle of whiskey. Both hiding from home and wanting to just feel young and stupid again. Both tired of fighting.

That Billy had no idea what tiredness was.

Billy spent every day just walking. Retracing his steps over the whole town. Streets he used to drive down with abandon, screaming along to music or just screaming for the hell of it. Now he was ignoring how his lungs burnt when every step too far. Walking through pretty little neighbourhoods with white picket fences, perfect front yards. He felt like a ghost. No one looked at him twice. He really had died. There wasn’t a grave for him at the church. He didn’t expect there to be one, that required his family caring about him. They didn’t care before. Why would they care now he was the reason the fancy new mall ‘burnt down’?

The house was the same. At least from the outside on the other side of the street. 4819 Cherry Lane. The same broken steps. The same mailbox. The same windowed front porch. The same dead grass. The same dead trees. He could still be there but he couldn’t. Schrödinger’s Hargrove. A part of him wanted to go and knock on the door. Look through the windows. See what happened to his room. If any part of him and who he was still existed in those walls. The government wouldn’t like that though. He was dead. It was hard to accept it was better to stay dead. The box around his ankle felt heavier.

The centre of town was busier than the suburbs. Billy worked his way there last. Built up a tolerance for noise and engines and people over a few months. Step by step. Day by day. Getting used to being dead. Watched the stripmall from the other side of the parking lot. The auto repair shop he visited a lot for parts for his fallen camaro. God knows what they did with her. The arcade where he dropped Max off more than once. He tried not to think about her. About what could happen now he was gone. The broken great wall. He sat at the bus stop for a break. His lungs felt like they were about to tear open again. His chest was heavy and tight. Five minutes. Then he’d keep going. Keep carrying on. 

Keep fighting. 

A sharp scream dragged his head up from his sneaker laces. Two kids piled out of a BMW. A brown one that looked expensive. A shock of red hair that had been long but was now just short to shoulder length in a dramatic line. Jean shorts and a yellow t-shirt. A denim jacket. Billy’s denim jacket. The sleeves had been cut off. Someone had painted a skull smoking on the back panel. Probably the wearer herself. It wasn’t unlike Billy’s first tattoo. The one he used to have on his arm. The one they cut through and scars took over from both sides took over and removed.

Max. She’d screamed. But she didn’t look scared or worried or even sad. She was smiling from ear to ear. Sunglasses pushed into her hair. She looked taller. She’d screamed at a boy in a baseball hat. Billy vaguely recognised him from long ago, somewhere in the back of what was left of his old mind. He winced and made a show of fixing his ear with a finger. Probably complaining that Max was too loud. Billy had told her that before. When things were different. When he was different. When he was younger but old.

They both went to walk through the doors when the driver got out of the car. Harrington. Of course it was him. He looked exactly the same. Big mane of brunette hair effortlessly styled. Stupid mom jeans. He tossed forgotten backpacks at both of them. Sounded kind as he said he’d pick them both up in two hours so don’t be fucking around in there. He’d already been hat kid’s surrogate brother by all accounts, it looked like he just picked Max up too. Another lost duckling to add to his gaggle.

Watching them live out their lives made Billy feel even more in the ground. A part of him wanted to walk over, say hi, I’m not actually dead. But he knew that was a bad idea. The whole town had moved on by way of nothing changing. The mall had been brushed over. It was a building site now. All the people that Billy took, they had been forgotten too. Someone had planted a heather bush in the town square. She hadn’t been forgotten. But that was it. People just carried on. As if nothing ever happened. As if those people had never existed. As if Billy had never existed. Max clearly remembered him if her attire was anything to go by, but did anyone else? He didn’t expect to be remembered at all. But then he also wasn’t dead yet. But he was a memory now. Nothing more. Even though he was sat right there. The cold plastic of the bus stop bench sinking through his denim covered thighs.

Max smiled at Harrington. Really smiled. Said thanks and squeezed his arm before the two kids went inside, into all the noise and lights that even the thought of following made Billy panic. Not as much as fireworks did. Harrington yelled after them to not lose all their money and sunk back into his car. Watching it all was like watching tv. Billy couldn’t interact with any of it. His body wouldn’t let him. His mind wouldn’t let him. Stuck frozen on the bench. Stuck frozen in the past while the world moved on. Left him alone with his scars and memories and regrets and apologies to people who would never hear them.

He’d apologised to Max so many times in his head it wasn’t funny anymore. He had so many regrets they consumed him. Being alone for so long at the hands of the government, he longed to be out. To be given a second chance. He regretted not being nicer to Harrington. He was a good guy. Too good for this town. He regretted just not being an asshole to his sister. Wanted a chance to not treat her like some second class citizen. Their situation wasn’t her fault. He’d just been so blinded by rage and hate about things he couldn’t change he took it out on her. She didn’t deserve that.

It had just taken dying to truly realise it.

She needed someone to make sure she was okay, now stuck alone at Cherry Lane with no one to stop angry fists and hateful words. She had Harrington.

Harrington was better than Billy.

He watched the BMW drive away, the kids long inside. The scene resetting itself. Billy sighed shakily and got to his feet, rubbing over his chest where his heart ached behind inches of scar tissue inside and out. Starting to walk back to his basement.

It was better he was dead. Unmourned and forgotten. It's what he deserved.

[scribeofmorpheus]

As Fate Would Have It (part 21)

Paring: WinterSoldier!Bucky x Spy!Reader

Catch Up here | Masterlist | AO3

Taglist is open. Send an ask.

Warnings: Themes of mental illness, violence... eh, some other stuff.

Note: tripple post! | Vocabulary: Snezhinka is russian for ‘Snowflake’ and  Vot der'mo  roughly translates to ‘Shit’. Also, Voroshilov is a tank named after a military general.

--

Your white tactical gear was washed out by the snowy terrain. Alexei held two unconscious guards under his shoulders by the necks. He dropped them with a loud thud.

You checked your guns clips and silencer twice before kneeling next to the facility’s baulky doors. Your knife working to remove a panel to reveal intricate wiring. You wanted to square away any doubts before charging headfirst into trouble. Unlike the last time you did something risky, you didn’t want there to be any doubt.

“Alexei,” you said, stripping wires. “I need to know something.”

Alexei sighed, his big chest deflating more than you thought possible. He knew what was coming. It was obvious. “You need to know what, Snezhinka?”

“When I was a spider—” your saliva went dry. “When I was a Blackwidow…I did things.”

Alexei huffed, warm breath mixing with the crisp air. He sniffled, “We’ve all done things.”

The wires sparked and your fingers gained a burn mark, “I know. But I did something and I think I’m responsible for…your eye. And I think you’ve known this since before we met.”

The door opened and you stood to face Alexei. Guards on the other end of the corridor raised their weapons. You fired two precise shots. The silencer as quiet as a mouse. The guards dropped to the floor not as quietly.

“I gave them the research. For their super soldier project. Kathy said—”

“She wasn’t delusional,” Alexei said in confirmation. “It is as you think. The boy she spoke of was me.”

You narrowed your eyes to focus on his facial twitches, “And you don’t blame me? I gave them what they needed to experiment on you. I’m resp—”

“You’re not responsible,” he moved into the warmth of the facility, dragging the guards that were at his feet with him. “We are products of our makers. But that does not mean that is all we can ever be. You made choices. Those choices affected my choices. And now they will affect someone else’s. We are all dominoes falling blindly.”

“Why did you lie?” You worked on the inner-door, trying to keep a poker face.

“Because I know you,” Alexi began setting the C4 charges. “If I told you the truth, you’d blame yourself.” He took a long and deep inhale. “Truth is, I requested to be your recruiter. I wanted to meet the woman who…” His jaw worked over and he exhaled. “You were not what I expected. I realised, in that bar in Moldova, that we are all lost children looking for direction.”

The door began cranking open, slower than the first one.

“How do you not hate me?” You were confounded.

Alexei shrugged, “This Voroshilov you are risking your life to save, he has done terrible things…unspeakable things, no?”

You hesitated to answer and Alexei took that to mean you didn’t have the heart to.

“But you still want to save him?” Alexei cocked his head to the side. You nodded. He smiled, “It’s the same for me. You are my partner. I go where you go, Snezhinka. ”

Except you can’t go where I go , you thought. You turned to look at your ageless face reflected in a reflective surface.

The door ground to a halt once it opened fully. Your fingers reached for anything to fumble with. In that moment you felt an ache for the photograph Bucky—the Winter Soldier—had taken from you in Paris. You wanted to look at Sal’s young face. At Steve’s big, goofy grin and terrible posture. At Annie’s flirtatious wink and Hal’s perpetual scowl. At you and Bucky immortalised in a simpler time.

You let out a breath and were surprised to hear the shudder in your voice. “Promise me something, big guy.” You held your chin high to look over Alexei’s face one more time. To memorise every edge and curve, dip and line, spot and wrinkle. “If I don’t make it to the extraction point—”

“Don’t speak nonsense!” Alexei frowned.

You patted his chest affectionately, like a big sister reassuring her younger brother there were no spiders under his bed anymore.

“If I don’t make it…Don’t come back for me.” You waited to see if he’d argue against your order.

Alexei’s eyes fogged over as he let his chin fall, “The plan is to get the two of you somewhere secure until you can knock his bell straight.”

You chuckled at his improper use of the phrase, “Swear to me, Alexei. Swear you will find another partner. Swear to me that you will give them an annoyingly on-the-nose nickname and buy them two bottles of vodka on the first day.” You moved your hand from his chest to his cheek, patting it twice. “Swear to me you will shave more often.”

He laughed weakly, “I won’t have to. You’ll be there to set my ass straight. Now, let’s go save your boyfriend, da?”

You stepped away from the giant Russian, “No, Alexei. I’m going in alone this time. You’ve set the charges. I can handle the rest. Just hand me the detonator. Wait by the snowmobiles. If I don’t make it out, you’ll know.”

He started swearing in the mother tongue.

You yanked his jacket and shouted, “It’s best it stays this way!”

Alexei grumbled, but he could see the conviction in your eyes. He couldn’t fight against you this time. He conceded and handed you the detonator. Then he unloaded his clip and handed it to you.

“Just in case.” He pulled the hammer and the bullet in the chamber popped out. He caught it and took your much smaller hand in his. Placing the bullet on your palm as if it were a treasure. “I don’t own anything except this jacket and it’s too big for you, will only slow you down.” He feigned a laugh. “There is a saying where I come from, ‘there is no first and the is no last bullet.’” He scratched his eyebrow with his free hand. “No, that’s—Nevermind that. I’m trying to say this isn’t goodbye.”

You balled your fist around the bullet. “I’ll keep this safe.”

“Keep it until you don’t need to anymore, da?”

You nodded and walked into the elevator. As you pushed the button for basement, Alexei shouted: “Carter!”

“What?” Your heart started racing as the doors of the heavy elevator started retracting.

“In the bar, you asked me who we were. I never met them all. But I know who signed our checks—” Alexei had to squat and tilt his head so you could see his face is the small crack between the doors. “Her name is Carter.”

“Carter,” you whispered. You’d seen that name at the museum. It had been attached to an image of a beautiful woman’s newspaper cut-out on Steve’s compass flashed in your mind. “Oh…That Carter.”

The doors closed. The elevator started heading down. You had the strangest sense of Déjà vu. And then you remembered the heist to steal the serum from the military compound.

“Right,” you checked and rechecked your gun again. The doors opened to show several tactically clad men pointing submachine guns at the elevators entrance. “Showtime.”

The two gunshot wounds in your back stung, but not nearly as hot as the flamethrower burn on your arm. You had barricaded the door into the cryo-lab. The banging of soldiers going unheard due to the rapid pulse of your heart.

Bucky was in one of these pods, you could feel it. Home wasn’t a hopeless dream anymore. It was becoming real—tangible.

You felt hopeful for the first time in a long time. Granted the situation wasn’t ideal, but you didn’t fucking care anymore. Hope was hope.

Your feet dragged slower than your body wanted to move, the blood loss made your stomach swirl. It was like being seasick on land.

A flutter of air left your mouth. Your heart skipped what felt like a hundred beats. Everything went quiet and for a moment you wondered if you were actually alive or if all this was some elaborate lie. Then your heart knocked against your chest harder than it had in a long time and you knew it was real.

There he was, cold and unmoving and trapped behind glass, but alive. You laughed, hobbling to get to the cryo-pods.

You disengaged the cryo sequence and waited. When the cold air turned to moisture on the chamber’s glass, Bucky screamed awake. Startled, you took two steps back.

“Gaaahhh,” Bucky fell out of the chamber. You tried to break his fall but you were too weak. You fell together. He shuddered over you, scrambling for purchase.

“Bucky,” You reached out to him and he recoiled. His mind as in a state of confusion and panic. This wasn’t the soft Bucky you’ resurrected in the safe house in Paris and it wasn’t the trained killer you’d fought bloody. This was the man in-between. Half broken and half patchwork. “Hey, Bucky listen to me! We don’t have much time, I have to get us out of here.”

“N—no!” He swung his arms like he was fighting ghosts. “Whe—where…Hhnnnggg!” He braced his head.

You held out your hand, “Come with me and I’ll explain everything.”

His head craned up and then down, fingers holding onto his ears till they turned red. “Arrrghhh! Don’t. Make. Me…Kill them…arggghh!”

You rushed to his side and forced him to look at you, “Soldier! I need you to snap out of this. There’s men coming for us on the other side of that door.” You yanked him hard, ignoring the fact that his breathing was wild and erratic. “I don’t care which version of you I’m dealing with, I just need you to get your shit in order long enough for us to get out of here!”

He removed his fingers from his ears and reached out to trace the outline of your jaw, “S—safe…harbour.”

You gasped, choking on air. You looked into his thunderous eyes, too frantic to tell which version of him had said those words.

Hope was blooming brighter and you whispered like a prayer, “Bucky?”

He dropped to his knees and groaned. “Make it stop!”

“I will. I promise baby, I promise I will. But first,” You slinked your smaller frame under his shoulder and heaved. You held back a whimper as you felt blood rush out of your back. “Get up, baby.”

Bucky steeled his legs, his weight not as heavy on your frame. He eyed you in strangely, with a glint of disconnect. The looked was wiped away by another grunt of pain. His eyes squeezed shut as you directed him towards the door that led to the secondary elevator.

You pressed the call button but nothing happened. “No, no, no.” You slammed the button three times and kicked it once for good measure.

“Lockdown,” Bucky answered. His voice cold one moment then shivering when he stammered: “H—how do I know that? What is happening to me?”

“I don’t know,” you answered truthfully. “But we can’t go back the way I came.” You hitched him higher onto your shoulder to take a second to stretch. “You must know another way.”

“I—I don’t…”

“Think!” You snapped at him.

“I don’t know!” He shouted back. Louder than you’d ever heard him shout before. Your instinct told you to move away from him, your heart was tired of this game of ‘is he or isn’t he the man you love?’

His eyes went large, as if he wanted to apologise and then he said: “Below. There’s an abandoned storage facility.”

You were about to question how he knew that when the door you’d barricaded indented, “How do we access it?”

“Maintenance access,” he nudged towards a grate with a turn wheel.

You set him down and pried it open.

The lower level smelled of damp and what could only be wet rat. Bucky had quieted down now. You moved slower due to the poor lighting from the flare.

Bucky suddenly flinched and you set him down.

“Hold on, I’’ll try and find the exit hatch,” you tucked a loose strand of long, sweaty hair behind his ear. “All the years I dreamed of you, you never had long hair. Now I’ll probably only ever dream about you with long hair.”

Bucky’s eye twitched, a slight discomfort from how intimate you were being. You were hurt by his reaction. You swallowed and apologised then turned to look for the door hatch he’d told you about.

“Do you know what this place is?” You asked as you scanned the room.

He replied clearly, “Old cryo storage.”

“Any others like you down here?” You jigged something you thought was a lever. It budged and let out a putrid gas. You quickly sealed it back up as you gaged.

“We don’t keep them here.”

“We?” You froze. The flare slipped from your fingers. You knew. Somehow, the entire time, you knew it had been too easy.

You pressed your lips tightly, sniffling back disappointment; heartbreak. “You’re not him, are you?”

There was no reply. You back was tingling from exposure. Self-preservation dictated you look your enemy in the eye. Defeat killed any last morsel of fight in you.

You pulled the detonator out from your pocket, “This was a trap.” It wasn’t a question, but he answered anyway.

“Da.”

You turned around slowly to face him. One last question left to ask. “Do you know me?” Tears splattered on the metal floor.

The Winter Soldier’s eyes went small and then impartial, a thought working its way in his brain. He reached for something that you couldn’t see. It looked like the edge of a paper. When his hand dropped back to his side, his head was lifted higher. “No.”

“Then…” you licked your lips. “If I can’t save you, we’ll just have to burn together.”

You pressed the detonator. The sound of explosions going off above you. Dust shaking from old pipes. Water burst out of the stone wall, a blown pipe undoubtedly. Then parts of the ceiling began to cave in. A metal beam came crashing down above your head. A flicker of emotion ghosted Bucky’s face and he lunged to pull you back.

The two of you collided on the floor. You head hitting it hard. Fake stars blotted out your vision. And then you saw them again. Pink petals raining down in the dark. The smell of peach blossoms in the air.

Your muscles were numb. Like you’d left them under a running tap in the middle of winter. Your jaw felt frozen shut, pent up energy screaming for release against unresponsive muscles.

“Jesus Christ,” a man said in disbelief. “She hasn’t aged a day.”

“Neither have we,” a darker voice said, gruff and afraid.

“How long has she been on ice?” The sound of machines filled the room. When there was no answer to the man’s question, he asked again, “How long, Buck?”

The other man’s voice went softer, “Almost forty years.”

Bucky? You wondered. Who’s Bucky?

[simplysparrow14]

Why I absolutely hate Korra.

 Gifted Children do not make good protagonists. 

I really hate Korra. Like, I fucking cant stand her as a characters. She’s honest to god one of the only characters besides Kylo Ren that I just full on hate. 

She’s whiny, She’s cocky, she’s too brash for her own good. She got the biggest overinflated ego the size of Mount Fuji. She bitches and moans when something doesn't go her way, and then as the balls to blame other characters or blow up in their faces when she’s starts the fire herself!  

She leaps into battle before she thinks and when the villain of the season kicks her ass to the curb, we’re supposed to sympathize with her and feel sorry for her, even though She deserved everything she had coming to her

Her god complex is bigger then the fucking sun and she gets all pissy when someone even mildly calls her out on her bullshit or even gives her polite constructive criticism on her Avatar duties. 

She never learns diplomacy or peacekeeping or patience or empathy for others around her or when to shut the fuck up and take a step back before you get the shit kicked out of you. 

One of the prime examples of her being absolute stupid was when She and Mako go to one of Amon’s rallies, and after figuring out that Amon was a bloodbender who locked his own brother up in a cage, they decide to go to the rally to boldly claim that Amon is a bender without presenting any physical or damning evidence that suggest otherwise.

“How in the world do we beat him?”

“We cant. Any attack we throw at him, he’ll redirect with his mind. That’s how he’s been able to challange any bender.”

“So much for our ambush....If we stay here, we’re toast. But there’s another way to beat him!”

“How?!”

“This whole time, Amon’s been one step ahead of us. But finally, we have an advantage...We know the truth about him!”

“If we expose him as a bender in front of all his supporters, we can take away his true power!”

.......huh...... WHAT?..... A-are you serious?! THAT’S YOUR ADVANTAGE AGAINST AN ALL-POWERFUL BLOODBENDER ?! WE’RE REALLY GOING TO  BLATANTLY CALLING HIM OUT IN FRONT OF ALL OF HIS FOLLOWERS WITHOUT EVEN A SHRED OF EVIDENCE?!

what makes matters worse is that they don’t even take Tarrlock with them. They just leave him in his cage. Like, yeah, he tells them to go because he doesn’t want Amon’s supporters and the rest of the public to know he was Amon’s brother, but honestly, that hasn't stopped Korra before from forcing someone to give her what she wanted. She’s not lik a regular person who has to abide by the rules of Rebublic City, she’s the goddamn fucking avatar: If she wanted a fucking statue erected in her honor, she would order that in a fucking heartbeat. 

ANd  May I remind you, lovly readers, that Korra literally  manhandled a non-bender activist to give her information about Amon’s next rally not just a few episodes before this?

So her acting this respectful and this pulled-back is so out-of-character and jarring to watch because the show clearly states that Korra is a bad bitch and if she wants something really badly, she’ll fucking get it herslef, no questions asked.  

 And then when Amon corners them in a storage room and beats the shit out of them with bloodbending and chi-blocking, we have to feel sorry for them. We have to feel sorry to Korra  All because her “expertly” constructed plan didn't work out, and that Amon took the brats bending away when she  busted into his rally uninvited without evidence to show to his followers,  or even a half-ass plan on how to effectively beat the shit out of him if he refused to go down easily.

Look, I get that we have to have dramatic tension for the story, but that doesn't mean that the characters have to lose a majority of their very limited brain-cells  in order for it to happen. We should not have to sacrifice a character’s personality in order to progress the story. 

There’s also the fact that during Season 1 when Korra literally barges into Tarrlocks’ office unannounced to let the non-benders out of jail and berates him about how he’s intimidating people into falling in line with his views and opinions 

I

“You’re using your power to oppress and Intimidate people!”

Its only when Tarrlock pulls the Reverse Uno Card on Korra’s superiority complex that we as the audience get the first and maybe last good spot of introspection and interesting character development within this show 

“And you don't? Isn’t that what you came here to do? Intimidate me into releasing your friends?” 

But then, its all thrown out the window when Korra goes full ape-shit and tries to fuck-up Tarrloq, and we’re again supposed to feel bad for her when Tarrlok fuck her up right back with blood-bending, kidnaps her and locks her up in a metal box. 

Your avatar, every one. 

All throughout these scenes, we never get any notion that she’s gaining character development. 

She never takes a step back, never looks into the situation, She never shuts the fuck up,  never considers that maybe, just maybe, her plan might not work. There’s no patience in her what so ever and it infuriates me to no end! 

And yet, the show treats her as through she did nothing wrong! They treat her like a goddamn goddess, and its so....

There’s also the fact that throughout the series, Korra goes through more pitty parties and anger bursts then most characters have in their entire series run and in the end, her woes/ temper tantrums are forgiven because, well, she’s the protagonist.

Your boyfriend calls you out on your bullshit about the civil war happening between your home-tribe and the sister tribe? Crash his place of work and throw his desk across the room and tell him that he’s a traitor just for doing his job--A job he;s wanted to be apart of since he was little, no less. 

Cant figure out how to work with the wind panels without getting punched around? Don't be the leaf and burn a historic Airbending training device to ash!

“That was a Two-thousand year old historical treasure… WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!”

“There’s nothing wrong with me! You’re a terrible teacher!” 

Cant handle being called a wuss?  Challenge the mastermind of a political movement with chi-blocking and blood bending to a fight under your previous incarnations statue and then cry like a bitch when he kicks your ass. 

No Korra, you don’t get to cry when it’s clearly you’re fault it happened in the first place. Look, I get that you’ve just had a low-key high-key traumatic moment.....But you don’t have brain-cells. You knew he could take away bending--You saw it at their rally not just a few days ago-- so i don’t know why you thought that challenging him to a one-on-one duel in a dark, abandoned place where no one can hear you scream was an perfect idea you dumb bitch.  

Aparently,

Its also apparent within the series that she never has to work for her character development, or work for what she wants. 

People often remark that Korra was coddled at the Avatar, but I feel as if Spoiled is the best word: 

In the beginning of the series when the White Lotus comes to the southern Water Tribe to Search for the Next Avatar, we're Introduced to Korra punching a hole through the wall, spewing flames from her fists and using water to put out the fire. Hell, the first sentence that we hear from the brats mouth is “I’m the Avatar. You gotta deal with it.”  

 Look, no one likes gifted children (unless those children are yours). Gifted Children are probably the worst type of main character to have, because the whole point of your main character is that people are suppose to relate to them. People cant relate to gifted children, because we, as normal human beings, are not all gifted. 

Cut to 15 years later, and we learn that Korra hasn't even left the Southern Water Tribe.  Teachers have been flown into the water tribe to teach Korra more on the elements. And at the every start of the first episode, we see her pass her her fire bending test, with her commenting on how already she’s mastered Water and Earth.

 The whole point of the Avatar journey was that the Avatar had to journey to find their teachers and experience the world they needed to protect. When you take away that Journey, you’re just leaving the Avatar to be handed everything on a silver platter. 

During Season 2 when Kaiju Korra nearly gets her ass handed to her, Jinora force-ghosts her way into the battle and gives Korra the upper-hand during the battle with Vaatu, almost entirely erasing any the trace amounts of danger that the battle was trying to portray. 

There’s also the fact that in the middle of Season 2 when she’s fighting Eska and Desna, suddenly out of no-where she can Spirit bend (Or as I like to call it, Spirit-pacification) without so much as a single day of training. Like, talk about pulling out an ability out of your ass. 

There’s also the fact that during her visit to the Su-yin’s home, she  masters Metelbending out of no-where and then has to gawl to show off in front of Bolin, who’s been trying to metelbend for a while.

There’s also the fact that she’s never punished for any of her actions. 

When Amon takes her bending away, she never as a moment to reflect on how her actions affected her future or the rest of the avatar cycle.  We never see her come to terms that facing Amon head on resulted in her losing her bending. And when it looks like it does have an impact on her, Ghost Aang pops up right out of nowhere, takes pitty on her and gives her back her bending. Oh, and we’ll also throw in the Avatar State as well, as a treat. 

Right after she destroys the alleyway in the first episode of Season 1, Tenzin busts her out of jail and says to Lin that he’ll cover all the damages Korra caused! 

There’s also the incident where Tenzen told Korra not to go to the Pro-Bending tournament. And when Tenzen does have to drag her ass back to Air-temple Island, he remarks that Pro-bending is what she needed, completely Ignoring the fact that she disobey’d a direct order from her master and thus is never punished for it! 

 She’s never called out on her bullshit regarding her very sudden kiss with Mako when the man openly and explicitly said that he was dating another woman. 

(Like, girl, i get it. you have feelings for him, I get it. But when someone says: “I’m already dating someone right now.” and they admit they might be also have very confusing feelings for you as well,  You back the fuck up and give them time to make a decision. You just don’t go: “Oh you already have a girlfriend? oh, smoochy smoochy time then.”) 

Omg, it’s like the show was entirely written by male writers who have no idea how to write romance or develop unique and interesting characters who are not homicidal bat-shit insane brats who cry’s when they’re not the center of attention 

I guess my big question towards Korra’s character is… Why? 

Why do we have to root for a character who doesn't struggle, doesn't think she has to try to master her bending and that everything should come easily? How are we supposed to connect to someone when they blow up and get all pissy when someone even just lightly insults their god complex? 

Why is she a waterbender when she has the temperament of a fire-bender? Why is she getting her ass kicked by every villan if she’s the all powerful avater?  Why is she the avatar when she doesn't  have when a shred of humbless or appreciation for the bending she’s been given? Why do we have to put up with a brat of a protagonist for 3+ seasons? 

She is, in the bluntest term I can say, a meaningless character. She holds no purpose to the story or its messages or its themes. 

Aang was meaningful because it was his story and he was a 12 year old with the weight of the fucking world on his shoulders as both the last living Airbender and the Avatar, all while trying to navigate a world that did not and would not uphold his peaceful beliefs. 

Katara was meaningful because she broke down social norms by not only mastering the both the female -only water-bending techniques and Male-only water-bending fighting style, but also the scary-as-fuck-blood-bending. She showed the duel sides of being a bad ass strong independent woman. 

Toph was meaningful because she was an all-powerful earthbender who was fucking blind, showing that disabilities cant stop you from kicking ass. 

Sokka and Suki were meaningful because they were two badass people who didn't need bending to kick fire-nation ass. You don’t need to be like everyone else to save the world. 

Zuko was meaningful because his failures,and mistakes and abuse and scar showed people that no matter how awful your current situation was, you’re able to build a better life for yourself through hard work, self-love and good people who love you. 

Korra is meaningless. She is selfish, and spoiled and the only message she has to tell “Be a brat, cry a lot, and throw temper tantrums until you get what you fucking want.” 

Fuck Korra.  Fuck her character. I’ve never seen a character so poorly executed in my life, and I surly hope I dont ever get to see that ever again. 

[dangerouscommiesubversive]

banjou at a gym with the other build characters

Ok, I shit you not, my dear, I have been thinking about this prompt all goddamn day, and I’m grateful to you, because it’s giving me the chance to go back to a fic idea I wrote about half of two months ago and then abandoned. The original thing was inspired by Dorian Electra’s track “Man To Man,” which is a very beautiful song about the inherent eroticism of beating the ever-loving tar out of your bro as a viable alternative to a confession of love. This story is...not that, but bits of its genesis remain.

Surprisingly, it’s Kazumi’s idea first, pacing like a trapped cat in the lab until finally Sento asks what his problem is and he says, “Look, I’m going fucking crazy with all this waiting, can we do something? I saw a gym a few streets over, do you think it has a pool or something?”

Banjou perks up, and Gentoku says, “It’s worth checking, at least,” and Misora and Sawa both agree that swimming could be nice, and Sento is dubious but finally acknowledges that at the very least he needs to go outside for a bit.

The gym was busy only a week ago, a popular spot for the city’s few professional sports players and occasional wealthy fitness enthusiasts, but now that almost everyone’s evacuated it’s a ghost town. They didn’t even have to break the lock to get in; whoever was last here left it open--maybe it was an oversight, but it’s just as likely that they didn’t care.  The place is untouched, anyway, equipment dusty but in pristine working condition, the water still running, the refrigerators in the little shop still humming along as they preserve a variably-absurd selection of sports drinks.

Unfortunately, there’s no pool, but there are heavy bags, and the tension visibly goes out of Banjou’s shoulders when he sees them. “I’m gonna...” he gestures at them vaguely. “It’s been. So long since I actually got to punch something in a normal way.” He steals a package of hand-wraps from the shop, strips off his shirt, and in moments he’s off in his own little world, methodically beating down whatever opponent his chosen heavy bag embodies.

After a minute of staring at this, Misora and Sawa grab a bag of pretzels, find a bench to sit on, and settle down to watch him.

“I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing here,” Sento says to the air.

“You could also watch Banjou punch things.” Misora offers him the bag. “It’s not like you don’t spend enough time staring at him as it is.”

Sento turns bright red, makes an indignant noise, and then sits down next to her and takes a handful of pretzels.

Gentoku wanders around the room for a few minutes, looking at the various machines, and then grabs another two packages of hand-wraps from the shop and throws one to Kazumi. “Hey, Potato. Fight me?”

“I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with these things, Beardy.” Kazumi waves the package at him. “Also, since when do you box?”

“I was in the judo club in high school until the meetings started interfering with Model UN. And I boxed a bit in college. You don’t know how to wrap your hands?”

“No, who does that? I mean except him, he’s like. A professional. Me and the boys used to fight for fun, but we never used these things.”

Banjou stops dead and turns a disbelieving stare at him. “What kind of fighting were you doing?”

Kazumi shrugs. “You know. Boxing. Clear out a space in the barn, get some whiskey, fight until everyone’s either bored, unconscious, or too drunk to stand up.”

“You used to fight bare-knuckle in a barn?”

“It’s moments like this when I remember that I’m surrounded by city people.”

“I don’t know if this makes me respect you more or less.”

“Yeah, that’s part of my appeal.” Kazumi’s already pulling off his coat and shirt. “Nobody can make up their damn mind about me.”

“This is much more fun than I was expecting,” Sawa says to nobody as Gentoku and Kazumi start circling each other. “I mean, no pool, but I think this is better.”

For the next ten minutes or so nobody really talks. Banjou beats up the heavy bag. Gentoku and Kazumi feint at each other and land very few actual hits. Misora and Sawa watch them, passing the bag of pretzels back and forth and occasional murmuring to each other. Sento also watches and has some pretzels, but then he pulls a piece of the Hassyar out of his coat pocket and settles in to repair it.

The silence is finally broken when his precision screwdriver clatters to the floor and rolls away. “Fucking--”

Banjou steps away from the heavy bag, grabs the screwdriver, and brings it back over, crouching down to hold the piece steady while Sento screws the panel back on. “This shit’s tiny, how do you do this without getting a headache?”

“I don’t, I always have a headache. And my hands cramp up.”

“Maybe you need wraps.” Banjou takes the piece and the screwdriver from Sento and sets them aside on the bench before taking one of Sento’s hands in both of his. “Here, one of my instructors taught me this for dealing with arthritis stuff, it’s really good for--” and stops. “Sento, when did you break your finger?”

Sento frowns. “What? I didn’t break my finger.”

“Don’t bullshit me, this finger was broken. And not set right. It wasn’t, like, a big break, but it was definitely broken.” Banjou frowns down at Sento’s hand. “So was this one. And this one might have--lemme see the other one.” He grabs Sento’s other hand over Sento’s irritated protest. “I’m seeing...at least two breaks here, and none of them healed right.” Beat. “Sento, make a fist.”

“Why?”

“Just do it, asshole, I need to see something.”

Sento scowls and curls his right hand into a fist.

Banjou looks at it closely, and his eyebrows draw down. “Who taught you how to punch? Isurugi must have--he just put you in the suit but didn’t teach you how to hit someone?” At Sento’s flinch, “Look, don’t answer that, just. I mean at least your thumb is outside your fist? That’s something? Because otherwise you would have broken your thumb and you would definitely have noticed that. Have you just been breaking your fingers all this time and ignoring it? Didn’t you care that they hurt?” As he’s talking, his hands are busy, adjusting the curl of Sento’s fingers, the position of his thumb.

Sento sounds more weary than anything when he says, “All of me hurts, Banjou. I don’t know why my hands should be any different.”

Everyone is already turning politely away as Banjou goes a bit red in the face and says, quietly, “Well, I care that your hands hurt.” Then, louder, “Come on, stand up, I’m going to show you how to punch.”

“Can’t I just watch you three and figure it out?” Sento isn’t actually fighting as Banjou pulls him to his feet. “I have things I could be working on.”

“No, you can’t just watch me, you have to feel how it works. And you definitely can’t watch them, because they have terrible goddamn form,” said loudly over his shoulder in the direction of Kazumi and Gentoku, who pause in the middle of trading headlocks to flip him off. “And also when’s the next time I’m gonna get to be the one who knows something you don’t know?”

“You’re never going to let me forget this, are you.” Sento pulls off his sweater. His mouth has a familiar twitch at the corners, as if he’s trying desperately to suppress a smile.

“Hell no, I’m gonna be riding this high for at least a week.” Banjou grins at him. “Come on, smart guy. Punch me.”

[angelaiswriting]

Children (4 of 4) | Michael Gray

[Photo by Pixabay from Pexels]

✏️ Pairing: Michael Gray x wife!reader

✏️ Summary: Michael is back from the war, but is he really? Life is still difficult and the Gray family is falling apart under Y/N’s helpless gaze. (Requested by @duckydae)

✏️ A/N: wow, I reached a new level of angst. @kind-wolf will not be happy haha 

✏️ A/N 2: also, another note, just as a sort of background info. The whole America thing (and obviously Gina) didn’t happen, everything’s peachy between Michael and Tommy (and the rest of the squad fam). :)

✏️ Warnings: angst and a slight hint of smut and ‘mature’ themes (sort of PTSD talking, drugs use, depressive moments ?), so for safety measures, 18+ only! I hate it when you guys are minors and cheat me, don’t think I’m stupid.

✏️ Word-count: 5,613

<< part one: children <<  |  << part two: anna and john <<  |  << part three: a bigger table <<  |  PART FOUR: WARHORSE

There has never been this much silence in the Grays’ house―six years have done plenty to change the precious status quo of things. Even the children are afraid to step on those floorboards that creak a little louder than the rest.

“The children”―they have stopped being children a long time ago, when their Daddy had to leave for the continent, Y/N reasons. They’ve grown up quicker than she did when her time had come, when the war had come crashing against the shores like a tide and had brought her father away in its muddy waves.

John and Anna are now adults―probably too young to be such―definitely too young―but it doesn’t matter, not in 1946. John is eighteen, Anna just two years younger, and while Y/N always sees them as her babies, she knows that what she’s looking at is the result of something she never thought would come again.

Even the twins don’t feel like the fourteen-year-olds they’re supposed to be. Rebellious, headstrong, Henry and Paul get in more trouble than she can count and there’s nothing she can do to help. Nothing she can do to stop that barbaric destruction her children are going through.

Michael doesn’t help. Michael can’t help―he can’t even help himself. He sits in their bedroom with the curtains drawn and the lights switched on―he’s afraid of the outer world, but he is even more of the darkness. And of what the darkness carries in its hands when it clouds his vision and the ratatat of the artillery fills not only his ears, but his veins as well.

Bill can’t help his Daddy. Bill, with his angelic face and curly hair, with that omnipresent smile on his face and that silence that always accompanies him around. Bill, from the hill of his ten years of age, can’t help his Daddy, can’t bring him back to the Brummie countryside where everything is as quiet as he is.

He’s hated―Y/N knows it and refuses to acknowledge it at the same time. His father can’t bear his company, can’t bear his presence. And it’s not because he’s mute, but because his silence fills his father’s void with screaming creatures and living horrors he just wants to forget, to delete from his memory, a burning rod scraping and digging into the grey matter of his brain.

He’s mute, too, Michael, but for a completely different reason. His lips are sealed during the day and while he’s started to finally eat again, his tongue doesn’t move, his lips don’t give shape to any kind of words.

There are screams during the night, though―blood-curdling screams that give her nightmares in the waking hours of her days―that make her skin crawl as she turns on her left side to face her husband. The screams are worse than the bombings, worse than the shrilling yells of the air-raid sirens that sometimes still thrum in her lungs and in her stomach.

But tonight is different. Tonight Michael doesn’t scream―and that’s because he doesn’t sleep. He can’t sleep, can’t bring himself to close his eyes, to see the walking skeletons that still plague his every breath with the same violence of the silence in this house. He lies there, on top of crumpled sheets, butt-naked, staring at a ceiling that’s giving him visions. He sees waves in the stucco decorations watching his every move from above, and he hears voices, whispered voices that ring like a mixture between Russian and German to his frustrated ear.

The need to scream is there, tickling the base of his throat with those chilling cold fingers that scrape at the sides of his brain every day. But there’s no sound leaving his lips.

He thinks of snow. It’s the first time in forever and the need is so strong that it’s making his mind spin, his vision blur, the muscles in his thighs cramp. He thinks that if only he manages to find some―he’s sure John uses some every once in a while―then everything will be alright. For a few hours, that is. His wife doesn’t need to know, doesn’t need to hear a thing. All he has to do is get up from that bed of thorns, walk down the corridor and into his first son’s room, and look for that God-damned magic white powder that will make him leave his body for a few, precious hours.

But when he sits up, a man possessed by his need for cocaine, the bedsheets whisper under his ass, the mattress moans and holding his breath is of no use because his wife is already turning in his direction. She didn’t fall asleep in the first place―she just can’t if he doesn’t fall asleep first, these days.

Hate bubbles up in his mouth like vomit―and it’s so sudden and unexpected that it would make him shiver if only war didn’t skin him alive. And it’s hate that makes him seethe that Go back to sleep through gritted teeth.

“Where are you going?” Her voice scrapes his eardrums, removes layer after layer of membrane from his brain. Even the faint sound of her breathing makes the nerves under his skin come to life, tense and creak like a branch ready to break and fall to the ground.

“Go back to sleep, Y/N.” It’s the most he’s said in the five months he’s been back home and he all but hates the sound of his voice. It’s foreign to his own ears, and it’s strained, paper-thin, dry like fallen leaves on a winter day.

He wants to tear his throat out with his own bare hands.

She doesn’t answer and he feels the mortal combat going on in her soul, feels it in the air like the static electricity before the storm comes. But the storm never comes. And despite his raging need for some drug-induced happiness, he sits and waits like a man staring out at the never-ending expanse of the sea.

His mouth is dry, his tongue a dead weight pressing against the back of his teeth. It weighs him down, loads his muscles with lead and cement and ashes. So many ashes that he can smell his own flesh burn and combust, baring his bones for the world to see.

“Come sleep with me.” It’s a whisper and the sound of his wife’s voice is worse than the furious march of tanks. 

He’s repulsed by his wife―and repulsed by the fact that he’s repulsed by his wife.

*

There’s a mist of constant anger following Anna and her mother can’t read its reasons behind it. She wants her father back―she needs her father back now that she ended up pregnant with the child of a veteran more dead than the dead.

She’s only sixteen and she’s having a baby she doesn’t want with a man that doesn’t see her through the curtain of what he’s already seen.

‘46 is the year Love died, or so it feels as Y/N cries bitter tears in the desolate solitude of the kitchen. It’s like war didn’t end, like it brought back a monster that still has to exhale its last breath.

Sometimes she thinks she sees it. In the vacuous look in her husband’s eyes. In John’s stubborn studies. In the mess the twins give birth to every single day without cease. Even in William’s eerie silence, and she’s glad he’s off to school, now, she’s glad the week has finally started again and has brought him away for a few days.

There is no escaping what the monster does to people. Anna could get rid of the baby if she weren’t that scared, but she can’t get rid of her husband. Can’t kill off the only man she’s ever loved and that has always treated her like a queen, worshipping her like one worships God in a temple.

“Why doesn’t he say anything?” Rage burns her only daughter’s voice as she stomps into the kitchen, purposefully loud as if she’s trying to catch her father’s attention, to rile a reaction out of him the way warm water and baking soda help you vomit. “Why doesn’t he say anything?!” Voice louder, tears are burning hotter than her anger on her cheeks and there’s no stopping the furious movement of her hand, which reaches up to wipe them away.

“Anna-”

“NO!” It booms and echoes in the cramped space of the kitchen of that countryside house. It rattles against the dishes in the cupboard, scratches the wood on the walls, hits the thick panels of the windows as it scorches the girl’s throat, threatening to punch out her teeth. “Don’t do this, don’t treat me as though I don’t understand shit!”

They cry―it’s unwanted and almost humiliating, for everybody’s trying to ignore the elephant in the room, but they still do cry together, clutching at each other like they both were unyielding rocks under the onslaught of the sea. They cry and they do so in vain, for Anna’s still pregnant and Y/N’s still hated. Those tears don’t change the new reality of things and while the hiccups disrupt the otherwise gravel silence of the house, nothing happens.

Nothing can happen.

Probably nothing ever will.

“I need him and he’s a fucking ghost.”

When they look back at it in a few hours, neither will be able to say with complete certainty who pronounced those words, for they belong in both of their mouths. Y/N craves love, Anna - a father, and neither can have any.

*

John is high. He’s so high it’s a miracle he’s not floating mid-air and while his mother knows how good snow can feel, she still cries bloody tears when she sees her son like that.

John, ahead of his peers and studying psychology to help build a better world from the inside, is just as shattered as everybody else. He lies on the grass, under the shadow of an oak and the blue sky of a late-May afternoon.

And for a blind moment, Y/N thinks she’s lost him to the family’s very own sin. And she almost pukes right then and there, turned away as she is towards the flowerbeds she’s spent so much time tending to―it doesn’t matter that the house is surrounded by flowers planted in the hopes of forgetting, for nobody seems to be able to see them anyway.

But then he smiles, and he calls her over, and for a second she can see a glimpse of how Michael used to look like. The boy lost John Shelby’s looks and resemblance right before turning ten and has since then started down a path that was bound to make him stand out like his father’s very copy. Beautiful and strong and just as passionate about life and horses as one could be.

Life and horses and Tokyo.

“You are so beautiful, Mum,” he says, knocking the air out of her lungs as she stands there, frozen in time and space as she stares down at him. “You shouldn’t cry so much. Red eyes don’t look good on you.”

For a weird, unknown reason she bursts out laughing. She doesn’t know when the last time she laughed was, and John doesn’t recall it either.

It feels good, liberating, even. She didn’t think she still had it in herself to produce such sound, to let go in a burst of unexpected laughter induced by a second-hand high. But it’s good and for a moment, it makes her forget better than gardening has ever done.

“Where did you find it?” The words are out before she can stop them―she doesn’t want to know. She doesn’t want to know who gave her precious son a pinch of that artificial happiness that’s still staining his nostrils.

John looks happier than he’s ever looked in the last six years and a half. He looks like himself once again and she’s terrified to the bone by this thought―by this realisation―by the fact that there’s still a glimpse of the real him just because he’s managed to find the Devil’s powder somewhere she can’t even name.

“Charlie,” he answers with a chuckle almost as if to ask her Who else do you think has coke to spare, uh, Mum? The name also rings like an accusation, acid and scorching like an unwanted truth―It’s always been in the family and always will be. We’ll turn into snow when we die. And then we go straight to hell. “It’s good shit.” His dreamy eyes are more terrifying than the appalling screams tearing her husband’s body apart from the inside. “Have some with me.”

She doesn’t. The need to is strong, buzzing with a life of its own in her very veins with the same intensity it burned in Michael’s just a month before, the night he ordered her to go back to sleep before walking out naked of their shared room.

“Isn’t this the best feeling in the world?” Johnny asks and she lies―Yes. Yes, it is.

But she’s crying. She’s crying silent tears that stream down her ashy face like rivers. Their saltiness tastes like blood between her parted lips and she’s sure that they’re staining her teeth red, turning her mouth into that of a monster.

That’s the first time she thinks her family is dying, slowly falling apart between her numb, useless fingers, under her heart as heavy as a tombstone. It wrecks her from the inside out, a little more with each minute she passes staring into her son’s blissed-out eyes.

Yes, it’s the best feeling in the world, she cries, holding him between trembling arms as she feels old and decomposed inside.

*

Tommy’s visit is unexpected that night. And for a moment, his possessed face is all Y/N can see as she does her best not to recoil in front of that ghost as she keeps the entrance door open.

“Can I come in?”

His voice rings foreign to her ears, paper rustling in the wind, aged by years spent smoking―and then screaming. His whole face appears alien, a haunting vision out of a blood-freezing nightmare.

She doesn’t answer, but she does step back―enough to let him see the bare hall but not enough to let him pass. And it’s not because she doesn’t want him in her house, but because she can’t move, rooted as she is to the stone floor she scrubs every morning, from four to six, just to keep her own mind distracted after the restless night she’s had.

Henry and Paul follow the man with their heads hanging low and they, too, look like a spectral vision. Bloodied faces, crumpled clothes. Two fourteen-year-olds suddenly aged into old men.

She’s on the verge of fainting.

She’s weak and trembling inside, eyes almost bulging out of their sockets and she doesn’t even know why. Doesn’t know why the world is spinning and her throat constricting, vomit threatening to make an appearance after the tasteless dinner she’s still recovering from.

Yes, it’s the best feeling in the world. She now wishes she had kept her son’s cocaine because she could so use a snort right about now.

If nothing, it’s a blessing that Michael is in bed already―that he hasn’t moved from the mattress the whole day. A lack of reaction on his part is what would make or break her―break her most likely.

“Where is Michael?”

She doesn’t answer. Her tongue is knotted and her mouth is stuffed―with what, she doesn’t know, but it has the strangely familiar taste of nightmares. Her hand is still on the door handle: if she lets go, she’s going to fall. She’s going to fall knees first to the floor and there’s nobody there willing to pick her up―not her sons, not her husband’s cousin.

He’s seen too much already―Tommy. He’s marched through two wars and the extra years he’s been granted in France after the Great War have been wasted away between France and Germany now, possibly even Italy―she doesn’t know for sure―doesn’t want to know for sure.

Y/N wants to speak but can’t. Wants to ask her children what’s wrong with them and why do you want to break your mother’s heart? You stop being you the moment you give birth to your children, or so she’s always thought. Life starts again with a new Day One and all that came before that was extra. But now motherhood feels like lead shoes, pulling her down to the bottom of the ocean as her lungs fight against the salty water, fight for oxygen, fight for-

She doesn’t know, not anymore.

“They’ve been going at it again,” Tommy says, looking around and taking in the bare walls of a once well-decorated house. There had once been wind chimes hanging from the ceiling on the middle of the hall, but they’re not there anymore. And Tommy knows why. “Paul more than Henry.”

He says this almost as though Y/N knows what he’s talking about. The truth is, she doesn’t. And as soon as he’s going to leave, the twins are going to go upstairs without even glancing in her direction. That’s how it always goes, how her heart keeps on breaking day in and day out. There’s no rest. Absolutely no rest from that kind of torture.

“I’ll keep an eye on them, but…” He trails off, averts his eyes from hers almost as though the sight of her has burned him. He breathes in deeply and for a moment he keeps the air there, somewhere in-between his nose and his brain, afraid he’s going to smell blood or gunpowder or the acrid stink of war. “You keep one on them, too.”

The best feeling in the world―she’s not even sure she remembers what such a thing is. Nor if it even existed and she was there to witness.

She nods, and it’s all she can do.

“Keep them home for a week. The waters need to calm down.” These words make her gag, but she’s quick at swallowing it, at looking away―from the devil and from her sons. Then, Tommy reaches the door again, takes her hand off the handle. It’s not a gentle touch―he pries her fingers off the brass knob and that’s it. Dead fingers touching dying fingers―it doesn’t matter that her nails are painted a calm shade of pink, pale cyclamen on a spring morning. “Two is better.”

He leaves without turning back, without telling her it’s all going to be okay, that he’s there for her and her family, that he’ll come back, sooner or later. There’s no solace for her soul, sick and tired and on the brink of the abyss, staring up at her with its raping, hungry eyes. There are no words for wives like her, for women like her, left behind even when the husbands are back, breathing.

The best feeling-

She’s sobbing before she has the chance to feel the sob, to feel the tears sting her desensitised eyes. And she’s clutching a hand over her mouth because she can’t make a noise, can’t make a noise, can’t make a noise. Not in this house, not in this world.

“Mum?”

She wants to scream at them, wants to kick them out―out of the house, but not out of her life, she couldn’t take it, couldn’t-

“Mum?”

There’s a hand on her shoulder and the contact makes her jolt―almost jump out of her fucking skin.

They can’t see her like that.

And at the same time, part of her wants them to see. Wants them to know they’re not the only ones suffering.

Greedy bastards.

And she’s scared of that sudden, intrusive thought in the desolated land her mind has become.

“We’re sorry, mum.”

And when they hug her, Henry from one side and Paul from the other, she cries even harder because she’d do anything in her power to give her children a better alternative ending, but she can’t. She doesn’t have the power, doesn’t have the strength.

“So sorry.”

The best feeling in the world is that of the memories long forgotten in the deepest part of her mind, inside that red room she’s had to securely lock back in ‘39. A sunny September day it had been, still tasting like August and summer and the lovemaking sessions under a starry sky her husband had gifted her.

This is…

This is not…

“We’ll be better.”

And she cries because she knows the promise is sincere―fate just isn’t. Fate is against them, a growing tide ready to kidnap anything and anyone on the shore, staring up at an unforgiving moon.

It will last for a day, maybe a week, but soon enough she’ll have to witness her twins’ return home bloodied and battered, and she’ll have to live this moment again.

And again.

And then once more.

And one day Tommy will come home to tell her that her boys have died, that someone has stabbed them both to death and Quick! and Come! Before they bleed out in the middle of the street!

Her worries leave her mouth without her knowing she’s spilling them, bullets of a machine gun travelling a thousand miles a minute, hitting flesh and bone and brick. And soul.

They let her cry until there are no tears left, until she can barely stand on her feet, her right hand back wrapping around the door handle.

The best feeling in the world is a cocaine-induced orgasm, but she doesn’t tell them.

*

Bill is home from school. One more week and she’ll have to endure his presence for the whole summer. She’s terribly aware of how wretched a mother she sounds like, but she thinks this for his own good.

She doesn’t want him at home, at home where everything hurts and the silence eats him alive. Eats them all alive. She wants him away, in some far-away boarding school, someplace where nobody has ever heard of war or grief or silence and every day is a blessing.

Where is Dad? he wants to know with a smile on his face.

He’s a kid―he’s still her baby, the one she held in her loving arms back in ‘35, when shit still had to pop. She’s loved him then and she loves him now, but she’s a liar.

Y/N is a mother and a liar.

“Sleeping,” she answers, stretching a terrifying smile across her lips.

She’s making apple pie―the family’s all-time favourite―and Billy is helping her, pouring cinnamon on freshly cut apple slices with those tiny-but-growing hands of his.

Do you think he’ll enjoy his birthday present?

Oh, honey, I’m not even sure Daddy knows what day it is today, she wants to say but keeps quiet. “He’ll love it, baby.”

William always blushes when she calls him ‘baby’―I’m not a baby anymore, Mummy. And she smiles because he still calls her ‘Mummy’ when the rest of her kids have stopped calling her that before they turned ten. He’s her precious ray of sunshine on a stormy day, somehow managing to pierce the thick layer of clouds covering all sources of light.

But he doesn’t complain today. William is mute, not deaf, and he knows his Mummy cried herself to sleep in the living room last night. It’s his favourite, he signs, fingers wet and sprinkled with cinnamon.

And she hums and for a moment she feels like singing as she’s always done in the past. But she doesn’t, she can’t feel the music inside herself, can’t even conjure up the names of the notes. “We all love it,” she adds, turning back towards the dough she’s somehow correctly making. “You’ll be an amazing chef one day. Everybody will know William Gray’s name from Los Angeles to Tokyo.”

She’s glad Will doesn’t know what Tokyo can be―nor that she’s had a pinch, a few days before, and that that’s been her fuel for a whole day, keeping her up on her feet when all her knees wanted to do was give out under her weight.

It’s almost four in the afternoon when Anna joins them, baby bump barely peeking from underneath the yellow sweatshirt she hopes would help brighten up her day. Andrew hung himself the month before and the unexpected baby won’t have a father for real, now.

She’s used coke, too, a couple of times. Probably not the best choice when there’s a baby involved, but snow always helps everybody, whether it comes from the sky or some back-alley pusher.

“Hey, Billy-boy.” She ruffles William’s loose curls and everybody knows he hates it, but he still smiles at his sister from underneath beautifully long lashes.

Ten years old and he’s probably the more mature in the house. He sees right through the lie, but doesn’t make you feel guilty for lying, doesn’t kick you with the donkey-kick of a priest. Hey, Annie-girl.

She chuckles at the nickname and before she can second-think it, she kneels down and kisses his fingers one by one and then the tip of his nose and hugs him as tight as only a big sister can do. The sight warms Y/N’s heart and for a moment she stands there, tea cloth in one hand and wet kitchen counter forgotten.

The best feeling in the world has the taste of her children hugging, not the bitter one of snow. And it’s warm and bright and breathtaking―utterly breathtaking even now, on the edge of the unknown.

“You’re a good kid,” Anna murmurs in her brother’s ear and then she gasps and freezes and it takes Y/N a while to look up from her kids to see what has shocked her daughter so much.

The world stands still for a minute as she stares at him from the other side of the kitchen. It’s a scary view, it truly is, but it tastes like the sweetest lie, even if he doesn’t say anything, even if it looks like he barely registers his wife or two of his children’s presence in the room.

And then, the spell snaps and it breaks and all Y/N can see is the revolver in his left hand.

The children are out before they have the chance to complain, to tell her that they’d rather stay, that I’ve heard of shit happening, Mum, and I don’t want to bury you in that sweet and worried voice of her daughter that will plague her forever if things go wrong.

“Baby.”

She hasn’t called him ‘baby’ in forever and the word has a weird weight on the tip of her tongue right before it jumps out. The tea cloth is on the floor, forgotten, and she takes slow steps in her husband’s direction, bare feet against bare stone as she tries to ground herself in the moment, to not let her mind wander off. This is not a rabid dog she can shoot in the back of the head, this is her husband, her best friend, the love of her life.

“Baby.”

He’s breathing hard and fast, and when she’s close enough to touch him, she can feel his warmth―his heat. There’s no need to touch him to know he’s feverish, no need to read more in the goosebumps dotting his skin than the temperature rising higher in his body.

“People were here to hurt you.” It feels like each and every word he speaks pains him as his chest rises and falls and the air comes out scorching hot from his flaring nostrils. “Hurt you.” He cradles the side of her face with his right hand and the gun in the other presses its side against her cheek. There’s no menace in the action, just a husband holding his wife’s face and forgetting about the weapon he’s still clutching on to. “Hurt you.”

He doesn’t see her―his gaze is vacuous and distant―and it’s almost as though he can’t feel her, for the pads of his fingers press harder into the soft flesh of her cheeks.

There are tears on his face and those are the first thing John sees when he rushes into the kitchen from the door that gives on the back yard and the fields beyond, where Anna or William probably found him right after leaving the room. And they’re what stops him in his tracks, ready as he is to lunge himself on his father and push him away from his mother.

“Killed the kids,” he’s saying―Michael―and he sounds pained, more pained than he does at night when the horrors behind his closed eyelids wake him up. “Wanted to rape you.”

Anna is late at covering William’s ears, at shielding him from words whose meaning he doesn’t know, not yet. Snow and rape are still terms in the vocabulary he hasn’t reached yet―and hopefully he never will.

“They wanted to hurt you.”

It’s a blessing that John has managed to hide all the bullets he found in the house and that his father’s gun is not loaded. If it comes down to violence, he knows it won’t end with a bleeding hole in his mother’s chest.

“Dad?”

Michael moves almost as though he’s standing in the fog, fog so thick that both sound and light get distorted into nightmarish visions and sounds.

“Come outside, let Mum go.”

*

Summer ticks by painfully slowly and out here, in the country, the nights are silent. Cicadas are quieter than they ever were and it’s almost as though they know they shouldn’t disturb the warhorse.

Not even when he’s awake.

It’s a foreign feeling, that of being touched by her husband once again, of having him pumping inside her as he keeps himself propped up on his elbows, his hands cradling her face, his eyes focused on a spot right above her head, on the pillow.

It’s not love, it’s barely the shadow of what love used to feel like between the two of them, but it’s not violence, either―Michael came back many things from the war, but not a violent man. It’s the desperate attempt of going back to normalcy, of feeling alive again even when your limbs are cold and your loins feel dry. It’s tasteless and mechanical, but not meaningless.

This is not the best feeling in the world, but it can be, one day. It can be.

It will be again, Y/N knows it, and she’s willing to wait, she’s willing to help if he allows her.

Even now, her hands are soothing on the tense muscles of his back and on the ridgy scars left behind by God knows what kind of horrors. And her lips are warm against the cold sweat layering the skin of his neck, and her words soft―honey-like in his ear as she tries to bring him back home, bring him back where he’s loved and cherished and safe.

It’s silent. Their new lovemaking sessions are silent even when he pants above her, lost in some memory of his, in some feeling of his as he thrusts into her, trying to remember what it used to feel like.

He’s not back yet, Billy said that day in the kitchen, too wise for his own age and sake. But he will be. Don’t worry, Mummy.

She doesn’t worry, not when her son’s words meant the world to her back then―not when they still mean the world to her right now.

There is still hope and this is what she thinks of when Michael lies on his back, skin flustered and sweaty and breath short and ragged, his eyes staring up at a ceiling she doesn’t know if he’s seeing or not. He’s trickling out of her, down her thigh and onto the mattress, but it doesn’t matter, she doesn’t care.

She looks at him and she thinks that there’s still hope, that one day they’ll be back in their Birmingham bedroom and he’ll take out those stupidly expensive Parisian earrings from her ears and he’ll unclasp her diamond necklace. And he’ll let it fall to the ground―as carelessly as only he can―as he worships her body with his own.

Her fingertips are butterfly wings on the skin of his abdomen―still tight and soft as ever, maybe just not as full. She traces one of his scars, circles her bellybutton, and then plays for a moment with his happy trail. She stares at it and the only thought in her mind is, Oh, how I wish you still knew what the best feeling in the world is!

He’s ticklish, he’s always been, on his abdomen, behind his knees. He’s not as much now, but his body still tenses under her touch, an involuntary reaction she’s quite sure he’s not even aware of. She doesn’t know whether he felt her around him just a while ago, doesn’t know whether he’s heard her sweet nothings whispered like prayers in his deaf ears.

But when she looks up at him, she finds him looking down at her, brows slightly furrowed in a questioning expression, almost as if he’s wondering When did she get here?

He doesn’t touch her, doesn’t move his hands―his right one from his stomach and the other from the mattress. He doesn’t touch her but his eyes still caress the features of her face, trail down her naked body and then back up. It’s like he’s seeing her for the first time after a long absence, like he’s not just been sheathed inside her for the better part of the last two hours, trying to make himself feel something again.

“I’ll be waiting for you,” she says, and her whisper floats up to him and makes his eyes sting. “However long it takes.”

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