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sw1ft-ela · 2 years ago

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Fallout: The Garden

The Garden Wasteland, the remains of what once was the state of New Jersey. Nestled between Ghoul York and the ruins of Philadelphia, the Garden is one of the few places that still has fertile soil with the potential of being a bread basket for the mid-Atlantic region.

The Enclave, after being driven out of the Capital Wasteland, fled to Philadelphia and the Brotherhood eventually drove them into the ruins of Camden where they still are today. Camden is still riddled with raider gangs, but the Enclave is working hard to subdue them as well as to get the USS New Jersey fully operational.

To the east is Great Lanta, the nation of freed slaves, who are in constant conflict with slaver bands in the Pine Barrens. The Pine Barrens are also home to the Pineys inbred degenerates not too dissimilar to the Swamp Folk of Point Lookout.

Up in the Ramapo Mountains are the remains of the Ramapough nation, known today as the White Stags. These solitary hillfolk are wary of outsiders but some communities are open for trade. The Stags do partake in the practice of raiding but there is one community that makes it their lifestyle; they are known as the Jackites.

Then there is Ghoul York, built out of the ruins of New York City this east coast Necropolis is composed almost entirely of ghouls and mutants. Ghoul York’s governed by various mafia style groups in an uneasy alliance, if they unite they could be a regional power.

In Paterson there are the Equalizers, a cult centered around Samuel Colt and his inventions. "God made man Samuel Colt made him equal" is their guiding philosophy, making their livelihoods manufacturing and selling weapons to those they deem worthy to receive them. Impeccable weapon smiths, they can always be found carrying their Equalizers (colt navy's) which they use to great effect against local raiders.The only people they deem unworthy are raiders and those that are already heavily armed. The latter because they don't really need the Equalizers help and they are not in true mass production yet. They also have something against energy weapons.

In Edison there are the Wizards Men, a cult worshiping Thomas Edison. Known for homemade energy weapons and a dedication to rebuilding the power grid. They are waiting for the day that the radiation levels are low enough in Ghoul York to turn the lights back on in the city that never sleeps.

Just north of Great Lanta is Long Haven. Once known as Long Beach Island, this strip of beach front paradise is now a home for all the raiders and slaves that were driven out of Great Lanta. Refurbishing old fishing and pleasure craft, they now set off on pirate raids along the Jersey coast. They are opposed on land by the Grey Guard, which are basically discount minutemen/desert rangers. The Grey Guard are also involved in conflict with the Stags to the north.

Besides the Pineys and Grey Guard, there is another faction in the Pine Barrens. They are the Barony of the Pines, led by The Baron of the Pines they are a glorified band of raiders and slavers. Terrorizing the inhabitants of the Pine Barrens, the only thing that is feared more than them is the Jersey Devil himself.

I'm treating it as cannon in the same way Bethesda treats Tactics as cannon. The big things happened and I can pick and choose from the smaller ones. For The Garden, the Enclave after fleeing Navarro went west along I80 through Chicago to DC following Eden's call. The difference is that on their journey the Enclave picked up a cargo cult of tribals that followed them east. Once in DC President Eden ordered them purged but Col Autumn decided to send them on a suicided mission to Philly to establish a foothold in America's first capital. The Brotherhood still arrives in DC but with different reasons as to why. Originally they were sent out to reign in the Midwest brotherhood but they got lost and hit Pittsburg and they did what they did in cannon. Once the scourge is completed they come across an Enclave eyebot and Lyons decides to go to DC. To Lyons, the Enclave is his white whale that he wants to destroy most and to facilitate this he allows open recruitment of wastelanders into the Brotherhood. Project Purity is just part of a hearts and minds campaign the Brotherhood is engaged in. The Outcasts still split off and do their thing. Fallout 3 happens mostly the same as it did in canon but without the lore breaks and that the Brotherhood doesn't care about Project Purity until the Enclave gets involved. The Lone Wander passes the speech check at the end to get Autumn to leave Project Purity and he makes plans for an emergency evacuation to Philadelphia. Those loyal to Col Autumn head north while those loyal to Eden make their final stand at Raven Rock and Adams AFB. The Enclave is no longer in DC and the Brotherhood commences clean-up operations to eradicate Super Mutants in the region.

Alright now onto the stuff that happens right before The Garden. After Lyons' death, elder Maxson orders a detachment of paladins to go to Philadelphia to clear the road for the expedition to Boston. They encountered the Enclave and a force was assembled to drive them out. The Enclave was forced across the Delaware after heavy fighting. Maxson, with his obsession with destroying the Institute, denies requests to cross the Delaware to pursue the Enclave in order to launch his expedition to Boston on schedule. Leaving the Enclave to regroup and rebuild in the gang-riddled streets of Camden.

Here’s a map I made of it:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1Z-DAv6KRFkGV6LOXdl5d_2BaIeZxuWqt&usp=sharing

#firstpostnoideawhatimdoing #fallout #new jeresy

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angryschnauzer · 3 years ago

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Undercover Honeymoon

Summary; Having survived a helicopter crash that killed off the gang you and your senior agent had infiltrated, you hide out from the storm that brought the aircraft down by pretending to be Honeymooners at a boutique hotel... but what will 24 hours with August Walker bring you? Trouble, that’s what, and the best possible kind.

Pairing: August Walker x Female Reader (no race or body type specified)

Warnings: NSFW, 18+, Smut, honestly this is entirely smut, its a crack fic too. Sigh, here goes: face slap, murder, August in a hoodie and grey sweatpants, oral sex (female recieving), blowjob, drunken antics, impared judgement, titty fucking, fingering, unprotected sex, anal sex, inappropriate lube, multiple orgasms, dubious consent, choking, dom-vibes, Sugar Daddy arrangement (but no Daddy kink).

I do not run a tag list, but if you go and follow @angryschnauzerwrites and hit notifications, you’ll get an alert to any new stories i post. All previous fics can be found on there or on my Ao3

Undercover Honeymoon

The helicopter spiralled out of control, the tall pines looming through the storm of the century rain, screaming filled your ears, unsure if it was the sound of the engines failing or coming from your own lungs. The aircraft made contact with the trees and everything went black.

“Agent… AGENT!” a slap across your face sprang you from your unconscious state, your vision blurred and you winced at the sharp pain that shot through your temple as the face before you came into focus.

“Walker?” you muttered; “Can’t blow our cover…”

Strong arms gripped your shoulders;

“Wake UP! Everyone else is dead”

The next hour was surreal. Agent Walker - your superior officer - had pulled you from the wreckage of the helicopter, past the lifeless bodies of the gang you’d infiltrated, some of which had injuries that looked suspiciously like gunshot wounds. Either way you were alive and so was the other undercover agent, and having spent the last four days running bank robberies you were relieved to be rid of the brutal gang.

Agent Walker had half dragged half carried you through the forest, and even though it was the middle of the day, the torrential rain and dark storm clouds above made the way feel like you were travelling at twilight. When you stumbled on some roots he caught you, his arm firmly around your waist;

“C’mon Agent, not much further now…” his voice softer than usual, reassuring even.

“Where’re we going?”

“Out of season ski lodge… should be quiet this time of year, just a couple of wildlife watchers no doubt”

What you’d been expecting was a cute little place with checkered curtains and cutesy decor, what you’d arrived at was a luxury boutique hotel. Agent Walker had managed to spin a very convincing tale of your car leaving the highway due to the weather and he’d arrange to get it recovered after the storm so you could continue your ‘honeymoon’. The receptionist had smiled warmly and offered the pair of you the luxury suite, August merrily peeling $100 bills off a stack he’d produced from his pocket, the paper band that held them together from the robbery slyly crumpled up and you quietly picked it up from the floor, a tiny smirk on the corner of his face when he spotted you covering his rare mistake.

Ten minutes later you were settled in your shared room, starting to peel yourself out of your soaked boots and clothing as you eyed the enormous bathroom and ultra fluffy robes that were provided.

“I’m going to go to the gift shop…” he announced, breaking the silence; “They do hoodies and stuff, i’ll grab some dry things to change into…”

“Thanks Agent Walker… I’m going to take a bath…”

He nodded quietly, standing at the door;

“It’s August… call me August”

You must have fallen asleep in the bath, as the next thing you know there is an insistent knocking on the bathroom door;

“Honey? Honey, everything ok in there?”

“Y-yes, Sorry, fell asleep…”

“Ok Honey, just got room service here delivering some lunch”

“Thanks Aug… Augie…”

Augie? Where the hell did that come from? You mentally chastised yourself. An hour ago he was your senior agent and all round grumpy supervisor, now he was ‘Augie’? You actually facepalmed yourself before taking a deep breath and climbing out of the bath. A few moments later once you were dry, wearing the fluffy robe you stepped out of the bathroom and into the bedroom, your breath catching in your throat;

“Augie… we have company?”

Agent Walker was standing in the middle of the room in his shirt, underwear and socks, talking to the room service attendant as he tipped the young man;

“Darling, lunch is here, you must be famished” he let a warm smile spread over his face as he turned to the staff member; “We must have a bite to eat… expending lots of energy, it is our honeymoon after all…”

Once he’d ushered the man out of the room he cleared his throat and his expression dropped, his face serious again;

“I got your new attire… it fits more with the location” he motioned for you to follow him to the bed where there were a number of things laid out, however your feet were rooted to the floor; “What?”

“You’re… you’re in your underwear…”

He looked down, almost in shock to discover he was without his cargo pants;

“Yes? And you’re completely naked beneath that fetching white robe” he motioned to a side of the bed where a bunch of things were sat on the pristine white duvet; “So unless you wish to eat lunch having me know you are naked save for a glorified towel with sleeves - and that would be a delightful thought - you may want to get changed whilst i shower”

Without another word he smirked, his blue eyes sparkling with mischief and grabbed a pile of clothing on the bed, before sauntering into the bathroom, leaving you open jawed at both his sassiness and his tight ass in snug jersey boxers.

Turning back to what was laid on the bed you looked over what he’d managed to get in the hotel’s boutique; a daringly short floral summer dress, a hoodie with the Hotel’s logo on, a pack of novelty thong panties also with bears on, and the highest heeled wedge sandals you’d ever seen. Although none of this surprised you, it was after all the kind of hotel where in good weather, the rich and famous could have cocktails on the deck as they overlooked the Rocky mountains, the fact he’d managed to find your exact size in everything was impressive.

Leaving the heels off for now, you pull the panties and dress on, throwing the hoodie on unzipped to cover up a little, before going to investigate the food, realising that you probably hadn’t eaten for close to 24 hours. You were bent over the service trolley scrutinising the various dishes that had been delivered when you heard his voice;

“Huh, didn’t need to buy you a wallet, those tiny panties show off your silken purse beautifully Princess”

Spinning around you gasped, about to give him a piece of your mind but your train of thought stopped like a record scratch. There before you stood Agent August Walker, grey sweats hanging dangerously low on his hips, chest bare as he pulled a khaki green hoodie over his still damp curls. You noticed how his beard was a little beyond stubble, his mustache curling as a small smile tugged as his lips. Your gaze unashamedly ran down the length of his entire body, emphasis on length as it was clear he was without any underwear, and those rumours that were quietly whispered in the ladies room at the Pentagon were looking to be true as to exactly why they called him ‘The Hammer’.

Still holding a cooling French Fry he sauntered over to you before grabbing a sandwich from the platter;

“My apologies… that was inappropriate” he took a bite, before talking with his mouth full; “Been a crazy 24 hours huh?”

“Y-yeah, you could say that… so, what’s the plan?”

Just at that moment an incredible gust of wind rattled the windows to the point you thought they would blow in, the lights overhead flickered before settling back to bright as he answered;

“Eat, Drink, Sleep. We’re stuck here at least overnight. We don’t have any cells or electronics people can trace, and having checked the map this is not the closest civilisation to the crash site so even if people did come looking for us, this isn’t the first place they’d think of… however in this weather the roads are impassable, at least two rivers have breached their banks, we’re basically cut off from the rest of the world here in our own little bubble” he took a bite of sandwich before grinning at you; “So eat up, the bar downstairs is well stocked, dinner is apparently served in about 4 hours, and there’s a game room if you’re up for a round or two of pool…”

Giggling you both tumbled into your suite, August flicking the light switch up and down before realising the power had gone out at the exact moment he’d unlocked the door;

“Oooh dark… are you afraid of the dark Princess?”

The pair of you stumbled and turned, pushing the door shut and you found yourself pressed between it and August’s body, his lips finding your neck as he pressed kisses along your jugular, his facial hair leaving behind a trail of tingling skin in its wake;

“Depends who i’m in the dark with…”

He was so close, in the faint last traces of daylight as the storm took hold of the night you could see the outline of his face, how his long eyelashes rested against his cheeks as he closed his eyes, his breath warm on your skin as you were surrounded by his scent, pine soap and single malt whiskey;

“A monster…”

“I was never afraid of monsters…”

He dropped to his knees in front of you, pressing a kiss to your clothed stomach before his hands were beneath the skirt and pulling your novelty panties down;

“Hold your dress up Princess, show me that pretty pussy”

Doing as he told you, you gripped the pretty fabric in your hands as he hooked one of your legs over his shoulder, pressing kisses to your inner thighs before his thick fingers parted your folds and he dived in. His mustache and light beard pricked at your sensitive skin, but his tongue and lips soothed your aching core, desperate for attention and dripping with need as he went to town on you. He quickly brought you to orgasm before pushing you on for the next, his fingers now knuckle deep in your velvet walls, curling just right to find that spot that had you dripping, his tongue working against your clit to the point where you had to steady yourself by curling one hand through his soft chestnut curls, riding his face as you cried out his name.

Now over sensitive, you pulled his curls to get him to relent, a grunt of frustration coming from between your thighs;

“Augie… please… too sensitive…”

He quickly stood, lifting you to kiss you roughly, his tongue pushing into your mouth and you could taste yourself on his tongue as he gripped your ass as he carried you across the room before unceremoniously dropping you on the bed;

“Strip” he commanded as he staggered to the bathroom.

You ignored his request, instead reaching for a bottle of water at the side of the bed, taking a drink from he as he returned holding a bottle;

“August… what’s that?”

He looked down at the bottle, almost surprised he was holding something and blinked a few times before looking back at you;

“Baby oil. Its... Baby oil”

“Why do you have Baby oil?” you asked, already knowing the answer but with a sly streak wanting to get him to admit it

“Because they didn’t sell condoms in the gift shop so i cant fuck your pussy because i can’t check to see if you’re on birth control” he blurted out quickly.

Whatever you had been expecting, it hadn’t been that, and as you coughed on the water you had been about to drink, August got distracted and moved to light the candles that sat on the table in the centre of the room now that the only available light was the tiny light over the sink in the bathroom that was battery operated. You watched as he somehow managed to strike the matches and light the candles even though he was visibly drunk, before returning back to the bed and standing over you;

“Why aren’t you naked?” he frowned at you; “Don’t make me rip that pretty little dress off of you Princess”

Shimmying out of your dress you bit your lip as you watched him watching you, the low light dancing over your body and enough for you to see the obscene bulge barely contained by his sweatpants. He stood at the edge of the bed, towering over you before he took hold of your ankles and roughly pulled you to the edge of the bed before he pulled the grey sweats down and you finally got sight of his legendary hammer;

“Fuck…”

“We’ll get to that Princess, but first, suck”

Taking him in your hands he was hot and throbbing at your touch, his thick shaft patterned with veins, heavy and virile. You pumped your fist, your fingers unable to meet as you worked his uncut dick. You felt his hand on the back of your head, pulling you closer until you had no choice but to open your mouth and take him as deep as you could, gagging as he immediately hit the back of your throat and started to fuck your mouth.

Holding your head in place with both hands he rocked his hips back and forth, groaning as he stretched your lips almost uncomfortably. Soon you had spit running down your chin as he rained down a stream of degrading compliments;

“Cock hungry slut, look at you with my dick in your mouth… does it taste good, Jesus christ your tongue is perfect, yeah do that thing again, fuck, i can feel your throat tight around me…” with a gasp he pulled out, a trail of spittle hanging from your lips to his angry red tip, before he grabbed the baby oil and pushed you back until you were laying flat on the bed;

“Push your tits together, i’m gonna fuck them and cum all over your pretty face”

He climbed on the bed, straddling your lower torso as you found yourself pushing your breasts together. The click of a bottle of baby oil and it was being poured in the valley of your chest, before he settled his dick against the slick skin. He dropped the bottle and with a grunt pulled his hoodie over his head, revealing his glorious chest, covered in dark hair and thicker than you had realised.

His dick was heavy against your chest as he took your hands in his and showed you how he wanted you to hold your titties for him, rocking his hips bath and forth as his hot flesh slipped through your soft pillows, the angry tip poking out at your neck with each thrust;

“So fucking pretty, gonna cum all over that face… you wanna taste my cum you little slut? Yeah? Cock hungry slut, can’t get enough of my dick, can you?”

You didn’t answer, the lust in his eyes making you drunk with desire, instead you tipped your head to your chest and opened your mouth, letting August’s dick slide into your mouth, the salty tang of his precum hitting your senses.

His thrusts were becoming rough and violent, his hips squeezing your ribcage as he fought back against the urge to cum, but you wanted it, needed it;

“August, will you cum on my face, pretty please?” you batted your eyelashes at him innocently and it was the final straw, and you watched as he threw his head back and thick ropes of his creamy seed spurted over your mouth and cheeks as he groaned so deliciously. On the last spurt you leaned forwards and took his tip into your mouth, gently laving your tongue over the leaking slit, before releasing him softly. August had eased his gasp on your tits, and using his thick finger he scooped the cum from your cheek;

“Open wide Princess”

Sticking your tongue out you sucked the bitter treat from his finger, before he repeated it with the other cheek. Finally swallowing you grinned at him;

“Thank you August”

His hand paused on your cheek, softly cupping it;

“Anything for you Princess… now scoot up the bed, i wanna eat that pussy again whilst i get you ready for my dick”

He swung his leg over so you could wriggle up the bed, and immediately he was laying between your legs, both of your thighs over his shoulders as he started to sloppily eat you out again, except this time his lubed fingers strayed to your asshole and he already had one knuckle deep in your back entrance. You were writhing against his tongue, and although not as accurate with his targets this time now that the alcohol in his system was taking hold, that wide tongue was driving you to heaven as his fingers pulled you down into the dark pits of depravity that hell could only contain. You were uttering almost incomprehensible gibberish, begging for more which he eagerly gave, a second and soon a third finger stretching your ass as he prepared you for what was yet to come. You came with a scream as his wide tongue tormented your pussy until you had to physically pull him by his curls to stop, breathless as you watched him kneel on the bed and grab the baby oil, pouring some onto his hand to lube his dick before smoothing a considerable amount over your asshole and lined up his now raging hard on with your stretched hole. He paused, looking down at you;

“Final chance to back out… do you want me to fuck your ass?”

“Yes… please August, i want your dick in my ass, i want you to cum in my ass, treat me like a dirty anal slut”

With a groan he pushed forwards, slowly breaching your body and you felt the uncomfortable stretch of having a dick slide into your ass. Even with the prep and the oil it still took a while for your body to relax enough for him to push in, but when he eventually was balls deep in your ass you felt so full you were sure you would burst;

“Oh my god… You’re so big…”

“Taking me like a champ Princess, even with the oil your ass is so fucking tight i’m struggling not to blow my load right here and now”

“Fuck my ass August, do it hard, i wanna feel it in the morning…”

With a roar he started to fuck into you, holding himself up on his massive arms as his hips pistoned into you, filling your barren depths as his pubic bone rubbed against your empty pussy and your juices flooded his crotch;

“So fucking wet Princess, leaking all down your ass, its only adding to the lube so i can fuck you harder. Your poor little battered asshole, you’re barely gonna be able to sit tomorrow… apart from back on my dick as we have breakfast, don’t think this is the only time i’m gonna fuck your ass, i’m gonna use this hole until you’re loose and stretched, so i can just bend you over and slide my dick into your ass. Gonna hide those stupid panties i bought you, i want you walking around bare, my cum dripping down your legs where there’s so much inside you, you can barely keep it inside… shame the gift shop didn’t sell plugs, i woulda’ filled you with my load and have you plugged and ready lubed for me to use whenever i pleased…”

August’s dirty talk had you cumming hard, squeezing him tight and yet he fucked you straight through it. Laying limp as he continued to fill your ass he slowed and moved, kneeling on the bed as he moved your legs from either side of his lips until both your feet were over one of his shoulders, pushing and pulling you until he had one arm firmly wrapped around your knees and he could fuck into your ass as he held you like a rag doll. The new position was tighter, deeper, and as you started to pant out with lust his free hand rested on your throat, squeezing carefully but firmly;

“Harder…” you panted out, your head swimming as your airway was restricted, and as he pounded into your ass you were both getting close.

“Gonna cum in your ass, fill you up with a massive load, you want that Princess?”

You tried to say yes, but all that came out was a tiny croak as his massive hand gripped your throat. Before you could even try again your orgasm hit, your eyes rolling back in their sockets as you squirted, your body gripping him so tight he reached his peak, pushing in as deep as he could as he pumped your ass full of his cum.

August released his grip on your neck, pulling out gently as he softly lay your legs on the bed;

“Did so well Princess, such a good little slut…”

You could only hum out a response, your mind as used as your body was.

You woke to the sound of soft rain falling against the window, peering out from beneath the duvet you could see that the grey light of morning was filling the room, the storm seemingly blown mostly through with just a persistent rain now dampening the earth. Shifting on the bed you winced, everything was sore, but especially your ass. But then a warm body pressed to your back, a large hand smoothed over your stomach and a familiar voice spoke softly in your ear as stubble brushed against your bare shoulders;

“Rise and shine…”

“Hmmmmm no, i don’t wanna get up” you grumbled

“But…”

“Noooo. If we get up then we’ve got to think about things going back to normal, i just wanna pretend i’m able to stay in a hotel as nice as this when i’m not trying to escape a dangerous gang… too many responsibilities, too much stress… i just want another half hour of being treated like a Princess” you grumbled.

A quiet chuckle came from behind you;

“There’s no reason why we can’t do this again”

Turning in his arms, you looked at August;

“How? You’re my superior Agent, the CIA pushes and pushes and pushes, I never get enough time off to do something like this, If i had known i was literally signing my life away i would never have signed up for the academy. What’s the fucking use of earning a good wage if i can never enjoy it… and its not even that good of a wage to be honest…” you paused and narrowed your gaze; “Have you showered?”

“Yes. And i have a proposition for you…”

“Keep talking…”

August started to move, slowly climbing between your legs and you felt his hard dick resting against your folds, your pussy instinctively growing wet, slowly rubbing against you as he smiled down at you;

“As a senior agent i get a considerably better wage than you do, but i don’t have anyone to share it with, anyone to treat like a Princess and spoil with gifts that they deserve… but i also want someone that will be agreeable to my darkest desires…” he rocked his hips back before slowly parting his thighs, and you felt the nudge of his tip at your soaked pussy; “... someone, a woman i can treat like a Princess but will let me fuck them like a whore… can i fuck your pussy like a whore?”

The gentle nudge of his dick just stretching the ring of muscle that granted access to the heaven between your legs had you begging, pleading to be August’s Whore. He let out a sigh of pleasure as he slowly sank into your pussy, bare and unprotected filling you with his virile shaft;

“You’re my Slutty Princess…taking my dick like a pro”

In that hotel room August Walker became your sugar Daddy, and over room service breakfast you agreed the details of your arrangement as you sat on his lap, his dick in your ass as he fed you strawberries, before he grew impatient and bounced you on his dick until he came in your barren depths. Resting back against his chest, his softening dick still inside you he played with your pussy as he discussed the next step, trying to decide if a trip to an adult store or a jewellery store should be the first stop after returning to DC;

“How about a jewelled plug?” you suggested; “That’s the best of both worlds”

Holding your jaw he turned your head so he could kiss you, pulling away and grinning;

“See, that’s why you’re the perfect Princess, smart and sexy…”

You felt him start to harden in your ass again, wriggling and letting out a giggle as you felt him stretch your insides;

“Over the table or out on the balcony in the rain?” you asked

“Oooh lets do the balcony… its check out time so a few other guests will be able to see my little slut have her battered asshole filled with another load”

There on the balcony that overlooked the serene mountains August filled your ass again, your naked bodies soaked with the rain as he gripped your breasts whilst he fucked you from behind.

You couldn’t wait to be August’s play thing.

#august walker #august walker x reader #august walker smut #henry cavill

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qqueenofhades · 4 years ago

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i noticed that you like to write a lot of heartrender husbands from fedyor’s side of things (which makes sense cause fedyor is fun!) but i have to ask in the modern au, what was ivan thinking the whole first two months 😂??

like was he carrying the joke the whole time? did his brain short circuit around fedyor?? was he worried about what fedyor was thinking or did he just think he was shy? Did he think the first date went well ☠️?

This was supposed to be lighthearted, but then there came Feels. So here is Ivan's backstory in Phantomverse. Content warning for mentions of an abusive relationship, familial homophobia, implied sexual manipulation, and dark themes. Nothing graphic, but duly noted.

Also on AO3.

Brighton Beach, 2015

It’s safe to say that Ivan Ivanovich Sakharov Kaminsky did not ever, not in a thousand years, not in a million, imagine himself ending up here. At one point, even Moscow would have been a stretch, and that was obviously still Russia. The fact that he would be walking down a sidewalk in Brooklyn, under the elevated tracks of the Q train that rattles and bangs overhead, on a cool spring morning to do his shopping at the Brighton Bazaar – in, should this somehow not be clear, America – and then returning to his apartment and his husband is, quite frankly, something out of an alternate-Ivan timeline. One from the Twilight Zone, or whatever they are calling that kind of thing these days. Sometimes when he thinks about it too much, he gets afraid that it is in fact a dream. That no matter how long it has gone on and how good it has been, it will suddenly and inevitably end. After all, he is Russian. Sunny optimism has never been accused of forming a notable facet of the national character, and Ivan himself would never be described as the hopeful type. But God, for this, he does.

He reaches the bazaar – a bustling blue-awninged international supermarket with three-quarters of its signs written in Cyrillic – and steps inside, grabbing a basket and pulling a scrap of paper from his pocket to double-check his list. He knows what he needs, but he likes the tidiness of writing it down, and he proceeds into the crammed aisles, passing customers speaking English, Russian, Ukrainian, Uzbek, Yiddish, and several other languages he can’t identify by ear. Brighton Bazaar stocks all the Russian products necessary to satisfy even a homesick expat like Ivan, and he enjoys being able to navigate the store with ease and read all the labels at first glance. He can get by in English, if he’s pressed, but it’s easier to leave it to Fedyor, who is fluent, and in here, he can conjure the illusion that he will walk out on the street and be back where he truly belongs. He likes Brighton Beach a great deal more than he ever expected to, but it’s no replacement for the real thing.

Ivan collects his purchases, along with a few special extras, and takes them to the counter. He is greeted in Russian by the checkout clerk, who knows him well for always turning up at the same time every Saturday morning with military precision. As Semyon Pavlovich Kuznetsov (who is called Syoma by his friends, but he has not clearly stated that Ivan can use the diminutive and therefore Ivan does not) scans his items, Ivan consents to exchange a few gruff words of small talk on the weather (nice) how the Mets did last night (badly) and the old guy who apparently died of a heart attack two days ago in the Russian bathhouse on Neck Road (making Ivan glad he did not choose said day to attend). It’s this weird Russian-American hybrid of things, since Semyon is the teenage grandson of a Red Army veteran who fought at Stalingrad, but he was born and raised in Brooklyn, loves American video games, and is fully fluent in American pop culture. It startles Ivan to realize that while this kid speaks Russian perfectly, he has probably never done so in Russia outside of a few visits back to the old country when his family can afford it. That is a very personal question to ask one’s grocery clerk, however, and he does not.

And then there’s that other thing, which he would definitely never be asked in Russia, especially not these days. Semyon hits the button to tally up Ivan’s bill, informs him that he owes $56.77, and then says cheerily, “How is Fedyor?”

Ivan concentrates on digging the exact amount out of his wallet in cash, since he never had a credit card when he lived in Russia and is still somewhat leery of them. “Fedyor is fine,” he says curtly, in the tone that makes it clear that he understands this question is an expected part of an American social interaction, but that is all the information he is willing to venture. “Here is the money.”

Semyon accepts it, counts it into the till, and rings the transaction through, handing Ivan his bags and his receipt. “Have a nice day, Mr. Kaminsky!”

“Thank you, Semyon Pavlovich.” Ivan accepts his purchases and leaves the store, taking a deep breath of the salty, sunny air and the wind whipping off the seafront. It’s still a little too early in the year for there to be many bathers on the beach, though there are always people strolling on the boardwalk. It’s only a few minutes to the apartment, which is just off Brighton Beach Avenue and overlooks the Atlantic Ocean. Ivan buzzes into the old brownstone, takes the stairs to the third floor, and as he unlocks his front door and lets himself in, wonders, yet again, at the sheer impossibility that his life has led him here.

Ivan is the third of five boys, but he was the one who was named after his father. It was not, of course, because they had some special hope for him to be the great inheritor of paternal pride, but a simple matter of logistics. His oldest brother, Roman, was named after their paternal grandfather. His second-oldest brother, Oleg, was named after their maternal grandfather. When Ivan arrived, only then was it proper to name him after Ivan Romanovich, Ivan Sakharov senior, since rushing too fast to glorify yourself as an individual, rather than your community and your ancestors, could be seen as running contrary to the collectivist ideals of the great Soviet Union. By the time his two younger brothers arrived, his parents were hard pressed for ideas; Yuri (for Gagarin) and Vladimir (originally for Lenin, though that has obviously acquired a different connotation those days) were clearly obtained by putting the names of national heroes into a hat and picking.

Five children was quite a lot for a Soviet-generation family, and Ivan doesn’t know anyone else his age with that number of siblings. After all, more children meant more time standing in line at Municipal Grocery Store #5 for food that has to be shared among more mouths, more worries about how to clothe and educate and accommodate them, more chances for one of them to go terminally astray and betray the family honor. Ivan wonders sometimes if his parents only really wanted Roman and Oleg, but decided to keep going as a matter of gaming the system, so much as it was able to be gamed.

By the early 1980s, the aging, decrepit, dying USSR, run by aging, decrepit, dying men, was in the grip of a demographic crisis so extreme that it was a contest between worrying about which one would end them faster: crazy President Reagan with his finger on the nuclear button, or the whole country just keeling over of old age. The idea of what a family even meant had been under constant challenge since the heady days of the Bolsheviks, who denounced marriage as a construct of bourgeoisie oppression and preached for free love and sexual liberation. Then it went hard back in the other direction during Stalin and the Great Patriotic War, holding up the traditional nuclear family as the highest ideal and offering rewards to mothers who had multiple children. Then it lurched away again. Abortion and contraception had been legal and freely available since the days of the revolution and most Soviet women made good use of them. Plus, of course, the obvious difficulties of maintaining a sizeable family when it was increasingly impossible to obtain even basic supplies and foodstuffs. It just made no sense.

Desperately trying to counter this slide toward self-inflicted obsolescence, the late-stage USSR came up with a number of incentives to boost the birth rate by any means necessary. They allowed mothers to refuse to list fathers on the birth certificate, to avoid social shame if he was married, foreign, a drunkard, or otherwise unsuitable, and beefed up programs to support single women with children. They also went back to the old-school plan of granting extra stipends, housing privileges, and state recognition to families that had more than two children, and Ivan himself was the third of his. It doesn’t take a genius to deduce that he was almost surely conceived for the tax benefits.

Not, that is, that it didn’t work. When Ivan was born in 1984, the family lived in a tiny apartment on the tenth floor of a building with no elevator (or rather it did have an elevator, but it was always broken), crowded in with three single young men who were at the very bottom of the list for being assigned housing. By the time his youngest brother, Vladimir, was born in 1987, they had been moved to a small house of their own on the outskirts of Krasnoyarsk, not far from the bus that his father took two hours a day out to the mine. The cynical old joke in the USSR was that the people pretended to work and the government pretended to pay them, though in Ivan Romanovich’s case, the work was backbreakingly real, even if the money wasn’t. He would come home exhausted and filthy after a sixteen-hour shift and yell at Galina Sakharova to feed him, bark at his sons, and then fall asleep in front of the television, only to get up the next morning and shuffle off again.

Ivan Ivanovich has spent a lot of time after he left home trying to understand what that kind of life would do to a man, mostly because he didn’t do it while he was there. Of course he didn’t. He was a child, and it was simply what he was used to, the only way the world could possibly be. On the night of December 26, 1991, as Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev signed the United Soviet Socialist Republics out of existence with a single stroke of the pen, Ivan remembers his father crying and swearing and throwing things at the wall, the heavy yellow-glass ashtray that always seemed unbreakable, perched on the kitchen table to collect the detritus of his constant cigarettes, smashed to bits just like their country, their sense of self, their security. It wasn’t as if life in the USSR was so wonderful. It was just the only thing they knew. Beyond that, there was nothing but the terror of the utterly unknown.

At any rate, the world didn’t end. The oligarchs moved in and began snapping up Russia’s newly privatized economy. Ivan Ivanovich, of course, had no goddamn clue about this either, aside from overhearing his father curse about it some more. He trudged through secondary school and left at eighteen, without even trying to proceed onto university. Those weren’t for someone like him, he knew that. Instead he got a job at the ever-troubled Krasnoyarsk Aluminum Plant, and went straight to work on the factory floor.

It was around this time that the one disruption in his otherwise humdrum life, the one thing that stopped him from just settling into the same miserable existence as his father and going on like that forever, became too impossible to ignore. And that was the fact that no matter how much Ivan tried to squash it down, push it aside, or otherwise pretend it didn’t exist, he could no longer deny the fact that he was attracted to men, and only to men. He bought some of the cheap porn magazines from the tabak, tried to flip through them and get something out of the girls in heavy eyeliner and bleached-blonde hair, spilling out of their scanty lingerie, and just… didn’t. He wasn’t even interested enough to try a conversation with a real flesh-and-blood woman (not that Ivan had ever gotten through a conversation with another human being, especially a woman, without disaster) and see if it was different in the flesh. Nothing about the experience, even imagining it, appealed to him at all. But men…

He knew it wasn’t right, just because – well, you knew that sort of thing, you didn’t have to ask about it, you didn’t let on. But nonetheless, something, somehow, must have given him away, because one evening after the end of his shift, one of his coworkers cornered him in the back. His name was Konstantin and he was a few years older, big and bluff and constantly smelling like machine oil. He stood there, folded his arms, and said, “I will give you five hundred rubles if you suck my dick, Ivan Ivanovich.”

Ivan didn’t know how to answer. He had never spoken to Konstantin about anything aside from the job. He didn’t like him, he wasn’t attracted to him, and he didn’t want his filthy fucking rubles. He wanted to go home and take a shower.

And yet. He wanted to know. So when he went home, it was with five hundred rubles in his pocket, and a strange, indefinable feeling of something both excitement and shame. He looked it up later and found that it was barely seven American dollars, barely enough to buy a sandwich in this place he now lives. Then after that it became – not a relationship, not exactly. But he had done it once and Konstantin knew that he was at least theoretically willing, and there was no getting away from it now. Soon enough it became something of a regular thing, and then Konstantin wanted to try other stuff and not always pay, and if Ivan ever protested, Konstantin would threaten to get him fired from the factory or tell his family what they were doing. Ivan knew that he couldn’t let this happen, and besides, this was a relationship, or so he would tell himself. It was rough and it wasn’t very enjoyable and he didn’t like the way it made him feel, but it was probably the best he was going to get, here in this place, so he had no choice but to put up with it.

Until one night when his older brother came to pick him up from work, which he didn’t usually do. Something about it set off Ivan’s alarm bells, but he got into Roman’s battered old Zhiguli anyway. They didn’t head back toward the house. Instead they headed for the country, the narrow, crumbling road that led into the vast forests of Krasnoyarsk Krai. The city was often voted one of the most beautiful in Siberia, surviving even its long periods of grim industrialization with something of its soul intact. It wasn’t as cold as Yakutsk or Oymyakon, the places where it stayed at sixty below zero all winter long and boiling water froze when you tossed it out the window. Winters only got down to a few degrees below, and in Russia, that was par for the course. Ivan loved his hometown, and he was used to the outdoors. He was a sportsman, a natural athlete. He played hockey, bandy, football, rugby, and basketball (surprisingly popular in Russia). He swam and boxed. He was tall and tough and muscled and most people never bothered him. But when the car coasted to a halt in the middle of nowhere and Roman turned off the headlights, he was still terrified.

His brother said, “I hear you’re doing things, Vanya.”

Ivan didn’t answer.

“I hear you’re doing things with men.” Roman reached over and grabbed him violently by the shoulders, pinning him against the seat. “Disgusting things. I will not have one of those in the family, do you hear me? Do you hear me? If I find out that you have done it ever again, even once, I will make sure that you pay the price. Are you listening? Say that you understand.”

“Yes,” Ivan said. “I understand.”

What he really understood was that he was going to leave, when he had barely been out of Krasnoyarsk Krai in his life. Going as far as Novosibirsk for a shopping trip was unusual, and once, in school, he went to Georgia, which was the first time he had left the country (though of course, it used to be the country). But he knew that he could not stay here anymore, and in a moment of welcome serendipity, that was also when his conscription notice arrived. At the time, every Russian man over the age of eighteen had to serve two obligatory years in the armed forces (though it has since been lowered to one, of which Ivan does not necessarily approve), and his number had come up. So he quit his job, did not say goodbye to Konstantin or tell him where he was going, packed his few boxes of things, and moved four thousand kilometers and four time zones west to Moscow.

Ivan arrived in the capital trying not to present himself as a wet-behind-the-ears country boy, to act like he knew what he was doing, to show he was much tougher and meaner than any of these spoiled, pampered little children whining about how hard it was when they trudged into headquarters and presented their army notices. In that, he had a genuine advantage; he had worked hard for his whole life, he had already been through whatever could possibly endured with a father and four brothers, and he found the strict routines, harsh discipline, and predictable tasks of the army comforting. Everyone was scared of him, he didn’t need to try (though he did), and that was also gratifying. He worked hard and pleased his commanders, who tried to entice him to stay on as a full-time professional serviceman. There were many opportunities for a man of his talents, and more money than Ivan had ever dreamed of. As for his personal life, as long as he was scrupulously discreet and kept turning in good results, they would not trouble to enquire too closely. That was already better than from what he had expected with Konstantin. Once again, he thought it would be the best he got.

That was where, therefore, he met Aleksander Ilyich Morozov.

Morozov was his opposite in many ways – rich, well-spoken, well-educated, the son of a legendary KGB commander and the inheritor of comfort and privilege even in the lean last days of the USSR. He was about Ivan’s own age, but he had a self-possession and a gravitas that made him seem older. He had started training for a career in the Russian security services practically from childhood, and he had pegged Ivan as a particularly promising recruit. “You should come with me,” he said. “We would find an excellent career for you.”

Ivan was never sure how to respond when Morozov started talking like this. He admired the man and was admittedly attracted to him – not just the dark, elegant handsomeness, but the manifest air of being a person who mattered, who made the rest of the world sit up and take notice and play by his rules – and while he knew that Morozov was ruthless, he wasn’t bothered by that and was willing to do the same when it was called for. Ivan didn’t see the world as some nice candy fairy place where good deeds were always rewarded and violence was always wrong, not least since he knew full well that it didn’t work like that. He didn’t have time for these idiots who thought they would get out there and hold hands and change the world with the power of sunshine and kisses or whatever it was. He didn’t.

Then there was one night when Morozov was at Ivan’s apartment, and they had been drinking and making big plans for ruling the world behind the scenes, and Ivan forgot himself entirely and leaned over the table and kissed him. He tried to pull back almost at once, but Morozov didn’t resist. In fact, he leaned in and put a hand behind Ivan’s head and kept him there, and in that moment, Ivan knew that while this might not be personally objectionable for Sasha (his sexuality was undiscussed but evidently fluid), that wasn’t the reason he was going along with it. It was because he knew instinctively that it was a perfect way to control Ivan, to harness his attraction and his weakness and his willingness to go along with whatever Sasha wanted, and in that, despite all the big plans they had put together and the way Ivan had dreamed of his life changing, it was just Konstantin all over again, and Ivan was straight back at the factory on his knees, small and cornered and powerless. It was visceral and it was wrong and it wasn’t the best he would ever do and he wasn’t, he wasn’t taking that.

They pulled back and Sasha made an enquiring noise, like he wanted to know if Ivan was interested in sealing the deal, and instead Ivan ordered him to leave right now, get out. That was the end of their friendship; they never spoke to each other again, and when his third year in the army ran out, which he had already taken voluntarily, he left. He got a job at some Moscow industrial plant and it was there, through the friend of a friend, he met Nadia Zhabina. And it turned out that she was queer (the first time he had ever heard the word spoken in a good way, something he wanted to be, something he didn’t mind accepting, rather than as an attack), and it turned out after that that she had a friend she wanted him to meet, only it clearly meant that she thought they should go out. Like. On a date.

Ivan flatly shut her down. He did not date, he did not want to date, he did not think he would be good at dating, he did not want to meet some pansy city boy from Nizhny Novgorod who he would immediately dislike, and he was not going to do it, the end. Only Nadia really seemed disappointed, and maybe it was not the worst thing to try a little. This would backfire terribly, he would get over it, and move on with his life.

In Ivan’s opinion, the first date with Fedyor Mikhailovich Kaminsky was, at least on his own behalf, a modest success. He was unavoidably late, thanks to the bus running behind schedule, but he introduced himself, his hobbies, and made it clear what sort of person he was and what he was interested in. He even sent a polite follow-up text with an invitation to meet again. There. No questions, no confusion, everything very straightforward and clear. Nothing to complain about. That was how you did a date, yes?

It turned out, however, that Fedyor Mikhailovich was either very reticent, or perhaps confused, or maybe he did not even know that they had been on a date and Nadia had not clearly explained to him. Burned by his experiences at home, knowing how easily word could get out to the wrong people, Ivan did not want to bring up the subject explicitly, but he had to admit to a considerable confusion. Maybe Fedyor actually liked to just mince around Moscow city parks together, like something out of a Tolstoy novel, or to sit on his couch and watch bad American action movies together. (Later, Ivan learned that Die Hard is actually something of a cult classic, but it’s still slightly lost on him.) That wasn’t bad, because Ivan – to his great bafflement and wariness – liked spending time with him. Fedyor wasn’t like him at all, but they clicked nonetheless. He was the exact kind of idealistic activist that Ivan had long disdained, but it was different with him. When Fedya talked, he liked to listen, to dream about a world that really did work that way. It didn’t, but it felt closer.

Besides that, he was cute. He was well-put together. He was charming and vivacious and could talk to people that they met, while Ivan stood scowling with his hands in his pockets and wondered how long this was going to take. He really desperately wanted to kiss Fedya (and for that matter, do other things to him), and he found himself thinking about it a lot. But what if it was like with Sasha again, and it was either Ivan opportunistically taking it for himself, or Fedya selfishly trying to keep him there, to use him for his own purposes? Maybe Fedya was the idiot. He had to know they were together, right? Or were they together? Ivan suddenly wasn’t sure. Damn it! Why didn’t Fedyor subscribe to the school of just being clear about things? Ivan himself had nothing to do with the problem.

But then there came that night, and Fedya cooking dinner and stumbling through trying to ask him if they were maybe something, and in that moment, Ivan found it all so hilarious that the only thing he could do was sit there and let the whole thing play out. Then it turned out, of course, that they were together, and that Fedyor kissed him just as deliciously as Ivan had imagined, and maybe Nadia Zhabina was not so wrong after all.

Maybe she was not wrong in the least.

Ivan takes his supermarket bags to the sunny kitchen of the mostly-remodeled apartment and sets them down. Fedya has picked out all the colors and wallpapers and furniture and paint, and Ivan has done most of the work, since he is gainfully employed as a handyman and repair-person and he doesn’t want to pay some American to half-ass a job that he can do better. The apartment is really quite lovely now. The living room has been done in a pale, springy green, the white plaster moldings washed and repaired, all the junk of the previous owner finally cleared out except for one or two collectibles that they decided to keep. There’s a bookshelf and a desk filled with Fedya’s work things, a couch and a television and a coffee table and new curtains. The bedroom is big and airy, with a ceiling fan and new carpets. Framed pictures and art pieces hang on the wall. It looks like a place where real people live.

Ivan makes breakfast, cooking and stirring and brewing the coffee, and puts it all on a tray. It’s Saturday, so of course Fedya is still asleep, and Ivan pads through the apartment to the closed bedroom door, balancing the tray on his hip long enough to open it and cast a strip of light inside. It takes a moment, but Fedyor rolls over, groggy and tousled and very, very cute with his bed-headed dark hair and squinting eyes. “Vanya? What smells so good?”

“Happy birthday, my love.” Ivan sets the tray on the bedside table and leans down to kiss him, as Fedyor makes a happy humming sound and throws his arms around Ivan’s neck, cuddling against him like a barnacle. “I have made you breakfast.”

(His younger self was wrong, and he has never been so glad of it.)

(This was the best, this is the best, this was waiting for him, this kind of happiness could happen for him, and he is grateful beyond all words that he fought for it and believed it until it did.)

#ivan x fedyor #heartrender husbands #fivan #ivan kaminsky #a phantom in enchanting light #pel asks #anonymous #ask #fivan ff

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angelofthequeers · 4 years ago

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How is Zoe's comic racist? (sorry don't mean to question you, genuinely curious) Also, I admit I was also sucked into the salt fic whirlpool, but quickly left after I realized how toxic it was being. Could you also elaborate on GalahadWilder, if it isn't too uncomfortable for you? I'm sorry, I don't mean to be rude, or ask uncomfortable questions.

I can’t point out everything off the top of my head but the racism (along with everything else but that’s not the focus) is a large part of what made me throw my hands up and write this. And I won’t be answering any more asks about any of this because I just want to get it out there so people know (because of how many people genuinely don’t see it) and then go back to trying to forget that this shit ever existed, rather than dragging out some new fandom drama. Also keep in mind that while I’m West Asian/Arab, I’m also white-passing so if I get anything wrong, I appreciate call-outs. (Also I finally got my laptop charger today so I can snip my posts again 😭)

Her treatment of Max in ‘Gamer’.

It’s not unique to her; it’s a very common salter thing to utterly tear into Max for being a “sexist jerk” and daring to underestimate princess Marinette because she’s a girl. Never mind that they canonically aren’t close friends because of Chloé’s bullying, so Max probably had no idea that Marinette’s liked video games all this time, where Adrien is the new boy so it’s just one more thing to learn about him.

It’s especially heinous compared to how the other classmates are treated far more leniently for their own mistakes - they still get salted on but Max, aka the Black boy, always seems to get singled out and held to higher standards. Just look at ‘Chameleon’ and how the other classmates are mildly to moderately attacked by salters but Max gets utterly ripped to shreds because he “should know better”. (Never mind that just because he’s smart doesn’t mean he’s good at human interaction. They just want to attack him).

It also angers me because people like Nathaniel and Ivan are absolved of what they do as akumas (like kidnapping others and literally forcing someone to go on a date with them) because they couldn’t help it, yet Max is literally held responsible for what he did when akumatised (because he dared to go after Princess Marinette) and even for daring to get akumatised in the first place. Both these things just make him a sore loser, apparently.

So SL ‘Gamer’ was the final straw for me, especially with how she characterised Max as a smug arsehole, and it made me so angry that I just exploded to my friends, but I didn’t know how to directly call it out without looking like a petty bitch.

Here’s a post I made about salters and ‘Gamer’ if you’re interested in a more coherent and in-depth thing about it.

Alya’s treatment throughout the whole thing.

In canon, she’s an enthusiastic and passionate girl who sometimes gets carried away and goes too far and who idolises Ladybug because Ladybug stands against evil. Here? She’s treated as the butt of the joke for being so starry-eyed over superheroes that she idolises Scarlet Lady while Marinette mocks her behind her back. Never mind her iconic line of “all that is needed for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing” and this is why she loves Majestia in the first place. Never mind that she loves Ladybug because Ladybug is kind and passionate and strong and creative. Canon Alya wouldn’t want a bar of Scarlet Lady, who just sits around complaining, and yet SL!Alya worships her because...why? Running joke? The only Black girl in the series is treated as a gag to be made fun of by someone who’s supposed to be her best friend, just for the audience’s amusement. Marinette’s probably meant to look funny and relatable here, but she just looks like a major bitch to her new friend. Alya’s flaws are basically blown up and exaggerated for comedic effect, while Marinette in contrast is airbrushed to perfection, with no flaws and no anxiety that was only alleviated in canon by - guess what - being Ladybug.

It’s like Zoe wants to stick to canon while adding her own little “fun” twists for humour, like making Marinette snarky and perfect (which just makes her look like an utter bitch) and in the case of Alya, it does her so dirty that even Lila is more sympathetic. LILA. After SL humiliates Lila, Alya looks doubtful but buys some bullshit excuse so that she can continue to be the Scar-worshipping idiot. And then in the aftermath, her concern isn’t for Lila, the girl who was humiliated and bullied by a literal superhero and then ended up sick. No, she’s angry because...Lila lied on her blog. The blog that doesn’t have nearly as much recognition as in canon because SL would never validate her, unlike Ladybug. So her passion for her blog is exaggerated to imply that she’d say that a girl deserves to be bullied and sick because she told a few lies (since at this point, Alya doesn’t know about any possible malice on Lila’s part, just as in canon. All that’s known is the lying for attention).

It’s horrible hypocrisy, where Alya is held to higher standards than the other (white) characters and when she fails to meet those standards, she’s torn into. She’s not afforded any sympathy for being hurt that Lila lied to her; in fact, she’s demonised for feeling hurt, especially because of the running joke that her blog is focused on someone so horrible and she doesn’t see that. Lila is presented as the sympathetic one here. LILA. Just because Alya dared to believe her in canon.

Also, how she’s constantly trying to either tease Marinette for having a crush or insist that Marinette’s only doing what she does because of a crush...even though according to this ‘verse’s canon, Marinette is too good to make mistakes and do obsessive stuff over a crush, which is why canon Alya thinks this about her in the first place. That didn’t just come out of nowhere in the show purely for “woe is Marinette, her best friend doubts her”.

Like in the first part of ‘Gamer’, where she’s accusing Marinette of only entering the tournament to flirt with Adrien while Marinette so “coolly and calmly” rebuts her...why? By the ‘verse’s own logic, Marinette isn’t a flustered mess around Adrien. The only purpose of this scene is to glorify Marinette and her amazing calmness while making Alya look like a nosy idiot who dares to doubt her best friend. The logic of the ‘verse and of canon clash really jarringly in moments like this, and it becomes clear that the only purpose of these moments is to make Marinette look better at the expense of others. Most often her best friend, who’s an utter idiot for not seeing Scarlet Lady’s true nature and just can’t keep her nose out of Marinette’s business and so comes to wrong conclusions. Why are Marinette and Alya even friends in this ‘verse? SL!Marinette’s been nothing but condescending towards Alya most of the time.

Uh, and also the way she occasionally whitewashes Alya. Just look at the SL headers. She literally made Alya, aka a Black girl who’s one of the good guys, lighter than Lila, aka a white girl who’s one of the bad guys and not even that tanned in canon. Why do people make one of the villains darker and often whitewash one of the heroes? It’s not that hard to figure out.

(Also the way she really played into the aggressive Black girl stereotype in ‘Horrificator’ over a minor argument, even physically threatening Nino. Why? Literally why did she have to go full-on aggressive instead of just looking angry and scolding him or something?)

This all might not be conscious on Zoe’s part but the way Alya is treated is still disgusting, especially if you’re operating on internalised salt from other aspects of the salty fandom. I’ve seen her claims that she’s trying to help Alya improve and she’s not being salty but...even if she’s not being consciously salty, her salt is definitely still leaking over it and part of that salt includes racism. I also don’t see how making Alya a joke and exaggerating her flaws is helping her to improve when there was plenty to go off in canon but, well, that might just be me.

Even Marinette, who’s pretty much treated as white for 99% of it.

Marinette, aka the girl who’s only made visibly “Asian/Other” in SL ‘Reflekta’ with her Chinese-inspired Black Cat suit and name which is a one-off, while her permanent Bee outfit is just the bland tight suit that salters criticise Ladybug for having and her name is just Marigold. It comes across as using “Asianness” as a costume and it really didn’t sit right with me at first, but it took me a while to tease out why exactly this made me feel ick.

There’s nothing wrong with touching more on Marinette’s heritage and expanding on it in ways that the show doesn’t, especially because this is a big sticking point for salters, but again...it’s only a one-off. A costume. There aren’t casual hints sprinkled throughout the comic that just normally establish Marinette as half-Chinese, aside from like a page or two in ‘Timebreaker’ showing Sabine’s outfit. It’s another ‘Kung Food’ where it’s slammed into one episode and shoved into our faces that Marinette Is Chinese and it’s really jarring and unpleasant.

It just comes across as fetishising, is all. I don’t think it’s something most people would pick up on unless they’re used to being able to see this kind of thing.

Master Fu. Oh, Master Fu.

From an old man who made mistakes but tried as best as he could with the limited knowledge he had, he’s now a bumbling idiot who...put the earrings in Marinette’s bag instead of her room for some reason? To kickstart the plot? Especially because the ring was still in Adrien’s room. It’s very, very contrived.

And then in one of the most recent updates, Zoe has Adrien - a white boy - physically threaten Fu, aka an elderly Asian man. It’s disgusting. I was gobsmacked when I first saw it. And that’s the thing with salters: they tear into Adrien for being a white boy so they can look Enlightened when he hasn’t actually done anything racist, yet they then turn around and perpetuate actual racism in trying to “fix” him

There’s probably more but those are the examples that jump out at me of the racism in SL. There are plenty more problems but...whatever. I’ll be here all day if I try and cover those.

As for the Galahad thing...it’s personal. That original post was as much as I was comfortable revealing.

#ask #aotq babbles #miraculous ladybug #ml fandom salt #yeah there’s a lot here lmao #cw racism #antiblackness #ml analysis

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angelthefirst1 · 4 years ago

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Diverged 2021, and converging.

We are getting very close to Beth, the symbolism in Diverged is extremely exciting.

What are we watching? A combination of many things... 1. Mostly Beth's missing funeral story (symbolically) 2. Repeats from 510 Them, 506 Consumed, Grady and many more... 3. A recap of Carol's past including her constant desire over the years to run away... Beth as Jesus = Light, salt, water symbolically, remember that as we go. And also Leah's knife = Beth. The previously on clip is showing the past and future at once. It's a play on Carol at Terminus saving the group while covered in walker slim, her family took her back in then, because of what she did to save everyone at Terminus, even though she was banished for killing Karen and David.

But...Carol here is also a Beth repeat and Lydia becomes Daryl. Daryl will do something to stop Beth's body being eaten/killed after Grady/The tower (which was the hospital) He will put/pull her somewhere safe just as Lydia does here with Carol, stopping her from dying.

Carol then talks about food being scarce, and Maggie's people returning, so there are more mouths to feed. Repeating season 5 when Carol first comes across Maggie's new group (Abraham and co)

Terminus had just been destroyed and the group had no supplies. Its also repeating the second time Maggie's people return...to the church after the failed trip to Washington because Eugene lied. Not long after returning with her people the second time, Maggie finds out Beth is alive.

Carol talks about the decisions she's made being all to protect them. Repeating her season 4 self killing Karen and David to "protect the group".

Back then Rick banished her effectively separating Daryl and Carol, which is re-done here in Diverged, because she “killed” Connie. Carol leaves Rick in a car with a "I love my dog" sticker...

Repeating her-this time leaving with actual Dog... As I mentioned in my previous post on Diverged, Carol leaving at the crossroads with Dog is also a representation of Beth and Carol both ending up at Grady.

They are combining and converging every scene where Carol/Daryl, Beth/Daryl go in different directions... The opening scene shows Carol and Daryl walking together, Carol struggling to open her water bottle. Daryl offers to help, but Carol won't let him, just like this scene below from season 5, after Terminus.

Daryl offers to help carry the water, he even spills water on the ground, which he repeats when he gives Dog a drink.

Daryl then offers "Leah's" (Beth's) knife to Carol to help get into the water bottle, inverting Carol giving Daryl, Beth's knife in 510.

This scene is a combination of Carol following Daryl when looking for water in 510, giving him the knife and then leaving. In 510 Carol asks to come looking for water, Daryl says no but Carol says "You gonna stop me" repeating her jumping on the back of his bike in "Find me" even though he didn't want her to come...

He didn't stop her then or now, and we see them exchange knives and Carol go a different way, while Daryl wants to stay out longer to look. Just like 510, when they don't find water Carol says " We should head back" Daryl says "nah, I'll stay out a little longer" and then the knife exchange happens, it's reversed.

All this, is about repeating and converging the events leading up to Beth's Death, inverted they will lead to Beth alive... Past, present and future combined = infinity When Carol first gets back to Alexandria she comes across this scarf...

This scarf is a call back to her head scarf in 304, the episode Rick (Daryl) loses his wife (Future wife Beth). Carol lost this head scarf while in the tombs...

Carol and T-(dog) get stuck together while in the tombs where Carol loses her head scarf, which Daryl eventually finds and throws away on the floor.

Carol finds it on the floor and eventually puts it in the trash, at the end of this episode... Carol and T-(dog) in the tombs with her head scarf is also repeating Beth and Noah at Grady trying to escape.

Surrounded by walkers Carol/Beth shoot at them in the dark. The lights go on and off, but the opposite happens in that Beth doesn't escape Grady just like T-(Dog) while Carol/Noah do. The lost head scarf will eventually become Beth's, in that it will be used to wrap her head wound after Grady, but she then gets "lost in the tombs" or goes missing for all these years...

The one Carol finds even has a "gun shot hole",and she wants to "Fix it" because somebody (Daryl) loved it!

She finds the head scarf which someone dropped during "The evacuation" basically repeating Carol "evacuating"-running into the tombs from the past and in the future it will come off Beth's head when she "evacuates" or leaves her "tomb" because of walkers-around the time of her funeral. Carol offers to make soup (so around the time Beth's funeral/body is lost, someone tries to make food for the group) Stone soup is a story about strangers convincing a village to share their food to make soup for everyone.

Part of me thinks this will possibly come into play after Grady at the White houses, possibly with Chase, who was seen filming at the houses. Strangers will want some of the supplies the group found at the food bank before Coda and I have a feeling they will probably "pirate" the food, not so much "share it"-like the stone soup story depicts.

More like the book Carol picks up, mid way through making the soup would suggest...

So... we have: 1. A lost head scarf/bandage 2. An offer to prepare food. Possibly by a stranger. (Stone soup story) 3. A "rat" causing a... 4. Lack of food. 5. And Carol/Beth going missing into the "tombs" Beth like Carol will lose her "head scarf" or bandage as she "disappeared" into the dark "tombs" after her "funeral". Opposite to Carol

It’s during the time Carol is in the tombs, that Rick hallucinates Lori, the three stories combined (Carol, Sofia and Lori) will lead to Beth

Carol offers to make the soup with mushrooms...

Which could be what leads to Daryl hallucinating. As I talked about in Find me 2018, when Daryl was hallucinating Merle during his search for Sofia, Merle accused him of eating special mushrooms, which made him "see" the Chupacabra a blood sucking dog ("Walker" Beth after her funeral).

Daryl in the episode Chupacabra is looking for Sofia so it's fitting that this is repeated with his search for Beth (Sofia 2.0) If this "Rat"/"Stranger" convinced the group to let them make food for everyone, they could have "spiked" the food with special mushrooms. Leaving the group especially Daryl in a vulnerable state, unable to fight back and making it easy to steal their supplies and leave. Meanwhile Beth gets out of her "resting place" whether that's in a car or coffin and she leaves or gets taken away. (I'll explain this more soon)

Daryl then sees what he thinks is "Walker Beth" the blood sucking dog or Chupacabra fulfilling season 2 episode 5.

This delusion could also be in part the reason for the episode we now know as 2018 Find me. If he is somewhat intoxicated with some form of poisoning and then tries to find Beth, it could make some sense of 2018. Jerry says to Carol

Which is symbolic of Beth the "Light of the world" being broken or gone. Biblically it represents Jesus and his followers “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden" "Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven” Carol later in the episode fixes the lights with the solar panel using Leah's knife (Beth) but it ends up flashing on and off again too, when the rat gets away. Which would also = Beth leaving, because the two are connected, which I will go through soon...

Carol adds salt to the soup, and she uses "Beth's" knife to get into it just like the water bottle.

Jesus who we all know Beth's story is paralleling, is not only called the light of the world and the living water that wells up to eternal life...but his followers are called the salt of the earth. Jesus said: You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost its flavor, with what will it be salted? It is then good for nothing, but to be cast out and trodden under the feet of men. Salt is used as a preservative to save meat and food from spoiling, as Jesus saves and is the cure to mans soul being separated from God for sinning and falling from grace. This is why Beth is going to bring a cure at some point, because just as Jesus provides a cure to mankind, she will too... Beth the (knife, salt and light) is in the same location as the food and Carol. Carol adds salt to the soup but also throws salt over her shoulder which is something done as a superstition after a funeral, to keep away bad spirits.

Depicting this is about Beth's funeral. Carol then hears dog (Daryl) going crazy in the next room he is destroying the room trying to find the "rat". When Carol goes to check on Daryl the dog she leaves the knife (Beth) with the food. It's while Both Carol and Daryl are not around that the rat runs into where Beth and the food are kept. Someone in those 3 missing weeks is a "Rat" that compromised Beth and the group, leading to her going missing... This theme was backed up by Father G saying that they sacrificed one of their own, referring to the aftermath of events with Beth.

As Carol is trying to settle dog (Daryl) Carol picks up The Golden Age Of Piracy, a book about:

Whomever they come across during Beth's "funeral" and while food is being prepared will be a "pirate" or thief. But it's also referring to 509 when Ty on the radio hallucinates hearing about inhabitants of coastal towns being plundered and attacked. This will come into play again when Beth is back but a version of it would have happened back then too. Carol is telling Daryl the "dog" off, for going crazy because of this "rat".

The rat has chewed through or compromised Daryl's lamp or "light" (Beth) and Daryl the dog is not happy...

Dog then runs after the rat and in the process the little food Carol had gets destroyed...

Sirius reference is always about Beth, but it also now links Beth to the “missing” food.

I’m thinking that the car Beth will be left in will also have the groups supplies in it and the rat will take off with both.

The rat gets away, Carol banishes Dog (Daryl) and Carol tires to catch the rat so she makes a trap using Leah's knife (Beth), but then she needs butterfly pliers to finish it, so she goes and gets a set in Daryl's room.

The funny thing is that Daryl is doing the exact same thing on his mission, because the tubing on his vehicle has been “Chewed through” just like the lamp.

Carol then lays the trap for the rat and says:

Daryl repeats and inverts this later on when he kills the soldier walker... linking the "rat" to these "soldiers" So Daryl goes looking for this "soldier/rat" and finds it stuck in "a trap"... He looks for this soldier rat on foot because his ride is not working, and he doesn't have the knife (Beth) which he panics over losing...

He kills the "soldier" and takes back what the soldier/Rat "stole"... Food, ammo and a set of butterfly pliers...which is what Carol needed to finish the trap.

And again, along the way he sees "walker Beth" the Chupacabra...

Which he doesn’t put down...

They are repeating and inverting this, going one way with Carol and another way with Daryl, but Daryl and Carol's stories here are the same. Prior to this we see Daryl is out in his own and his main mission is to get his broken down ride (motorbike) going...

He is searching high and low through cars for a replacement tube. As i said before the tube has also been "chewed" from the looks of it, just like the lamp wire, by the rat.

His search though cars is not only repeating he search for the car with the white cross that took Beth originally, but it seems Daryl after Grady, will repeat this search for Beth who gets taken in a second car.

This bottom picture is from 509, while the top two are from 1021

The "Rat" not only drugs them and steals their supplies and Beth’s body, but also stops them following by "chewing" through or messing with their vehicle so it doesn't work... Again linking the "rat" to the problem's with Daryl’s vehicle... Daryl can't find Leah's knife (Beth), because he left it with Carol...

Carol does catch the rat, in her trap for a time, but it gets away, and runs into the hole in the wall which she then blocks up with the scarf...

So Carol may well have this rat trapped but lets it get away, leading to the events above and Daryl trying to follow and kill the rat to get Beth and the supplies back.

The hole in the wall = Beth's bullet wound which gets covered with the scarf... Symbolically I believe the wall with hole/scarf and the rat hiding behind it, is Beth in a car possibly being driven away and used as a “shied” by the rat...

So Daryl hunts the rat and sees the Beth walker at a distance but can’t get to her. Once he has killed the solider rat (there ends up being 3 of them) and gets the tools he needs, he starts fixing his bike.

This takes all night and while he works we hear wolves howling in the distance. A good sign that Beth is close considering she is the Wolf that will come home.

And a call back to 509 where Michonne stands in front of the Wolves not far sign. Carol and dog share a bed for the night and it's telling future Beth/Daryl romantic story, but also Daryl with Beth's “body” wanting to be close to her and possibly kissing her, because "the fights gone out of her"...

It's also depicting Beth and Carol at Grady with Dawn. Dawn talks about Noah coming back, because they always come back...

Obviously it’s a callback to Beth saying “you miss him don’t you” to Daryl regarding Merle.

And...Carol leaving the group after Terminus, Daryl comes along to stop her leaving and that's what leads to them taking off after the car with the cross and finding Beth.

Which is then depicted in the very next scene as Daryl gets his bike going and takes off along this road repeating this...

Carol and Dog (Daryl) then go down stairs with flashlights and look for the hole in the wall with the scarf (Beth) and the rat. Repeating but reversing Daryl and Carol back in Consumed looking for Beth when they sleep at an emergency accommodation at a place that Carol had been before.

Carol fighting through the wall, will be inverted with Beth fighting to get out of a car or coffin and that's why we see through it from the other side.

It's will also be what causes Beth's head scarf covering her bullet hole to get caught and left behind.

Carol sits down exhausted after trying to get through the wall and dog comes and sits next to her...

Repeating Carol being found in the tombs by Daryl, exhausted but alive-but not wearing her scarf.

Carol tells Jerry she had a bad day and Jerry figures out its because she didn't come back with Daryl, repeating Carol being taken to Grady and not coming back with Daryl. Jerry says 2+2 = Eureka

2+2 episode 22?

Let's hope! Carol tries to give Daryl Leah's knife back (Beth) But it stays with her because Beth the knife and Carol are symbolically both at Grady.

In the future we may see Daryl try to return Beth's real knife to her. Daryl and Carol end the way they began by going separate ways, but this time it's with doors closing.

Daryl and dog (Carol) go one way and Carol (Beth) the other. Carol goes into the “Car” garage, repeating Beth getting in to the car on the way to Grady. All why the music plays "Oh oh oh" (oh moment)

In the future we will see Daryl and Beth together and Carol go a different way. One last thing I want to talk about is this drawing in Daryl's room. While it's "Dog" front on, it's also a side portrait of 2 creatures touching noses or kissing...

Aw....

#team delusional #team defiance #bethyl #beth greene #beth is alive #beth is coming

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hello-im-not-a-possum · 4 years ago

Text

It takes a pack to raise a pup

“This is bad... What am I going to do?!” The gofer nervously paced around the infirmary, clutching the bitten arm in his hand before turning to face the Janitor “Please tell me that this is just a bad joke!” He pleaded “Please tell me that this is just a mistake...”

“Sorry ta break it to ya Bud.” The janitor lowered his cap down in sympathy. “But I ain’t jokin’ and I ain’t wrong about this: dat ova here is definitely a werewolf bite. I should know, I saw what my table an’ chair legs looked like after my first few full moons.”

As this was a very serious situation, he forced himself to hold back his laughter at the intrusive memory of his wife telling him that her solution to keeping him from turning the furnature into his chew toys was to swat his snout with a rolled up newspaper every time he ignored his bones and squeaky toys in favor of the table legs. This resulted in him letting out a noise that sounded like a cough.

“B-but what about my Ma and Grandpa?! They don’t even know that monster stuff goes down in the studio! How am I supposed to explain to them that every month, I’m going to turn into a blood-thirsty monster!?”

“If ya don’t wanna tell ‘em, they don’t have ta know.” Wally shrugged. “A lotta wolves don’t tell even their closest family members.”

“What if my Ma questions why all my clothes are getting ripped up?! What if Grandpa finds out when he sees me turn for the first- Oh no... WHAT IF I BITE THEM?! WHAT IF I EAT THEM AFTER I TURN?! WALLY, WHAT IF I END UP KILLING THEM?!”

Buddy felt sick to his stomach as he slumped down to the floor, Wally sat down next to him and patted his back.

“Hey Buddy, you’re gonna be fine. Trust me! There’s a ton of werewolves here at dis studio, none of us would mind showin’ ya the ropes or givin’ ya some good advice for dealin’ with this. Who knows, it might even be a little fun ta get a new pup in the pack.”

“Uuuugggggghhhhhhhhh...”

The Janitor’s words and smile didn’t reassure the nervous gofer, if anything, hearing that he and Wally weren’t the only wolves in the studio made Buddy wonder if the monster that bit him last week was one of his own coworkers. As he thought about it, The wiry music director who was in a constant state of irritation seemed like he was a good candidate to be the wolf who bit him...

He would be lying if he said he couldn’t imagine the man sinking those sharp teeth of his into a human being’s flesh.

“Buddy, c’mon, look at me. It’s gonna be okay, I’m not gonna lie to you, changing is always scary the first few times but you don’t have to do it alone. I can rally up the pack if ya need all of us or I can just keep this between you and me, but no matta what happens, I’ve got your back.”

“Thanks Wally...” He sighed as he still dreaded what was to come. “How soon can you get them?”

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“Ta-daaaaa! Welcome to werewolves not-so-anonymous!”

Wally unfurled the crudely-made banner as Buddy walked into the break room, Susie clapped, Henry smiled and gave a friendly wave, and Lacie looked bored and unamused but gave a thumbs up and a half smile.

The gofer let out a sigh of relief that he didn’t know he was holding in. Wally alone could’ve been an outlier among werewolves but not all of them. He knew most of these people; the voice actress was hands down one of the most infectiously cheerful people he’d ever met, The Head Artist was a patient and kind man who the gofer looked up to as both an artist and a father figure, and while he didn’t know the mechanic very well aside from the facts that she wasn’t the most friendly or social of people, she didn’t seem half bad.

These people weren’t monsters, he wasn’t a monster.

“Alright, I know a some of us here already know each other but others don’t so lets start ourselves off with some introductions. Who’s going first?”

“Okay. Hi, I’m Buddy, I’m the studio’s gofer and I got bitten pretty recently so I’m kinda scared about all of this...”

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On the day of the full moon, Henry rented a van with the intent to take the werewolf pack to a cabin in the woods so that Buddy’s first transformation would be in a secluded area.

“So how’d your folks take it?” Lacie inquired to break the silence. “They didn’t look happy when we picked you up.”

“They took it better than I expected, I guess?” The gofer sighed “I mean, my ma seemed pretty scared, but she seemed more scared for me than scared of me.”

“Yeah, that tends to happen...” Henry nodded.

“Guys, I have a question”

“Go for it.”

“If Sammy’s not a werewolf, then why is he coming with us? Wont he get turned?”

The music director rolled his eyes and took a very long sip from his coffee, he also wasn’t looking forward to tonight but for a very different reason.

“Nah... Don’t worry.” Lacie laid back and stuck her boots up on the dashboard. “Hell’s Songbird is cursed with something else so he’s immune to lycanthropy.”

Nobody noticed that the man had flinched at Lacie’s statement.

“...Is he basically an unofficial member of the pack?”

Wally and Susie’s eyes lit up at the question and they smiled at each other before answering.

“Yes.”

“Definitely.”

“Absolutely.”

Wally broke down laughing as Susie broke out her stage voice, even Buddy let out a soft chuckle at her dramatic movements.

“The grumpy banjo man is indeed the pack’s loyal brother, not by blood or spirit, but by true love-”

Said grumpy banjo man turned to face the back seat, the regular irritation in his voice gave way to a sarcastic, deadpan tone.

“If you people genuinely think I ‘love’ getting chewed, slobbered on, roughhoused with, pounced on, and ripped apart by a pack of near-mindless wild animals almost every single month, then you’ve probably been huffing too many ink fumes.”

“Yeah, yeah, so bein’ the ‘designated driver’ of da group isn’t always fun... But ya do it ‘cause you looooooooooove us!”

Henry sighed in a mix of annoyance and acceptance in a way that implied he knew exactly what was going to happen next.

“I’m a married man.” Sammy continued to deadpan. “I thought you knew that by now.”

This response only egged Wally on.

“Psssst! He’s not denyin’ it!” The janitor stage-whispered “So it must be true!”

“Shut UP Franks.”

Sammy huffed and crossed his arms, but not denying Wally’s statement, which led to a loop of Wally’s teasing and Sammy’s fruitless attempts to shut the conversation down, which was only ended by reaching their destination.

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Buddy felt goosebumps as the van pulled up to the cabin and the sun slowly started to dip down.

“Here we are.”

“Finally! I swear, every single car ride I have with that. walking. headache. becomes the longest one I’ve ever endured.”

“Hey!”

The cabin itself probably looked like a much more warm and inviting place during midday, but as the shadows of the trees started to cast down on the humble little abode, it looked almost sinister. Although, that could’ve just been Buddy’s imagination working against him.

He hoped it was just his imagination working against him.

“Fuck, it’s gettin’ dark real fast.” The mechanic remarked as she looked at the sky. “Should we slap the meat on the grill now or just wait after we change and eat it raw?”

“We should wait.” The animator replied. “At this rate, if we try to cook it we’ll change before it’s halfway done.”

Buddy helped carry things into the cabin; a cooler, a couple of blankets, a duffle bag filled with dog toys and bones, they all seemed like reasonable items, but he couldn’t deny he felt something was missing.

“Hey Sammy, you’re looking out for us after we change, right?”

“Unfortunately.”

“So where are the ropes and chains? And isn’t there supposed to be bear traps and tranquilizers or something like them?”

The musician raised an eyebrow at the gofer.

“...Why would we need those?”

“...To tie us up and keep us from killing people?”

Sammy’s Jaw dropped at Buddy’s suggestion.

“Holy fucking shit... kid, you’re not turning into a monster, you’re just becoming a glorified puppy.”

“But you said it yourself, you get ripped up!”

“So?” Sammy scoffed. “That’s just what all dogs do.”

“He’s more of a cat person than a dog person.” Susie called out from the kitchen “Take everything he says about werewolves with a grain of salt.”

“Easy for you to say!” Sammy called back. “You’re not the one who had to cover over ninety-seven miles in different directions to round up a bunch of whimpering wolves because SOMEONE decided to set off a bunch of firecrackers just as the moon rose!”

“Hey!” Wally called out. “I said I was sorry!”

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It was time.

Like it or not, he was going to become a beast.

He knew the others’ own transformations were happening right now, he heard their bones snapping and cracking, the changing shadows cast on the floor as he dashed to his own room praying that he’d make it in time.

In the madness, he saw a glimpse of what Sammy’s curse was. He wished he didn’t see that, it would’ve so much easier to trust Sammy’s protection if he didn’t know that burden of the musician’s curse was like a werewolf’s curse except the ‘wolf’ part was scratched off and replaced with something else. The chill that ran down his spine when his eyes met the monster’s also didn’t help.

Buddy locked himself in his room, quickly taking off his clothes so they wouldn’t get ripped during the change and wrapping himself up in the provided blankets to keep himself from seeing his own transformation.

His heart pounded against his chest as he heard someone whimpering and scratching at the door on the other side.

“Focus, Buddy...” He tried to reassure himself. “Deep breaths, don’t get scared...”

He highly doubted he’d be lucid for his first full moon, but the idea of losing his mind and becoming a ravenous monster just didn’t sit well with him, So he tried his best to stay ‘awake’.

No matter how hard it was.

The curse started off his own changes with either his skin, his senses, or his mouth. He didn’t know for sure as it felt like all three were happening at once as he spat out a bloody mouthful of his own teeth into his hands and watched fur sprout up all over his arms, the taste and smell of blood in his mouth and on his now paw-like hands, as well as the smells and sounds of everything else in the cabin was overwhelmingly nauseating.

“D-don’t freak out... the others have been through this lots of times... this is completely normal... Stay calm Buddy...”

He tossed aside the teeth and threw himself deeper into the blanket pile in spite of his body’s increasing temperature and new fur coat. The gofer couldn’t tell if the whimpering he heard was coming from the other wolves scratching at the door or from him.

The next thing the curse went after was everything else; muscles, bones, etc.

It was painful, but at the very least it was fast, he didn’t even have the time to whine for mercy before the malevolent force of the werewolf curse stopped. Buddy let out a sigh of relief as he dug himself out of his blanket cocoon.

He looked at the mirror and saw a frightened looking young wolf, his eyes still looked human and his fur seemed to match the color of his hair. While he didn’t like looking at this and calling it his reflection, he couldn’t help but feel a little bit proud of himself. In spite of fear trying to drive him to the same level as a wild animal, he was still him.

Or so he thought as he was startled by the sound of his door unlocking itself and creaking open.

He let out a yipe and started to bare his teeth and growl at the weird beaked creature that poked its head into his territory. The said creature was not impressed in the slightest and simply came into the room.

Buddy growled louder and snapped his jaws at the creature, his ears laid back and his hackles bristling straight up. While the creature did move away from his bite, it was still not impressed. Out of desperation, he lunged at the black-feathered beast, desperately trying to scare it out but the monster looked like it had dealt with this before as it glided out of the way of his attack and picked him up by the scruff of his neck.

The young wolf flailed, bit, clawed, and snapped at the creature. But he could swear that the beast’s only response to Buddy’s last-ditch efforts to keep himself alive were to roll its eyes and toss the wolf out of the room.

And into the line of sight of two other wolves. Both adults, one of them had pitch black fur, the other one had dark gray fur, but both of them had curious almost human-like eyes.

Thankfully, they smelled familiar to him. Even as a human, he could always recognize the smells of cleaning supplies, bacon soup, and ink. As he got a little bit more used to his new senses, while most of the smells and sounds were still new, and there was too much of it, he could at least identify what they were.

The black wolf came closer to him and sniffed his face before licking it. The other wolf pawed the first wolf’s face away from his own. Assuming that this was just some kind of greeting, Buddy sniffed the first wolf’s face and licked him back, the second wolf let out a noise that sounded like an amused snort.

THUNK

A loud noise from the kitchen that came with a new smell made him realize how hungry he was. Assumingly all thinking the same thing, the three wolves dashed into the kitchen to see the toppled-over cooler being raided by two other wolves. The bird like creature was biting and flapping its wings at them, clearly trying to keep them away from the coveted red meats the cooler held.

“STOP. EATING. PLASTIC!” The creature cried out to deaf ears of the pack. “YOU’RE GOING TO GET YOURSELVES SICK! JUST WAIT FOR ME TO UNWRAP THEM FIRST!”

This tyranny would not stand with the wolves, united as a pack, the five starved beasts joined forces against the giant bird-monster that stayed between them and their food.

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Buddy woke up groaning with a headache, sore muscles, and an upset stomach the next morning.

Last night was a blur to the gofer, like a dream, the most of what happened during the full moon quickly faded from his mind as he woke up. If it wasn’t for the fact he could still see the bird-monster form of the music director looming over him in the cabin’s rafters, he would’ve chalked the whole thing up to just be a bad dream.

“Sammy?” He groaned. “What happened last night?”

“As soon as I opened the door, all of you ran to the fields instead of the woods.” The music director sounded like he was too tired to be irritated. “I tried to steer you back towards the woods because there was a barn over there, but as usual, none of you listened to me.” Okay, maybe he was still a little bit irritated.

“Oh no... Did I eat anything there?”

“No, but you did get your head stuck underneath a fence and whined until I let you out.”

Buddy blushed in embarrassment as he wrapped his blanket tighter around him.

“Don’t beat yourself up about it, everybody does stupid things the first time they change.”

“So how come you didn’t change back?”

“My curse isn’t determined by the moon, it’s determined by... other things. I don’t like talking about it.”

Sammy wrapped himself up in his wings, ending the conversation.

“G’morning.” Wally set down a fizzing glass of water by Buddy, the Janitor looked more exhausted now than he did after a 12-hour deep clean of the studio. “Ya might wanna drink that, it’ll help with the headache.”

“Thanks Wally.”

He smiled as he sipped down the liquid, while the gofer knew that the changes weren’t going to be easy for him to adjust to, at least he had other people who were willing to help him through it.

#hauntober #moonlight #bendy and the ink machine #batim monster au #buddy lewek #wally franks #susie campbell #lacie benton #Henry Stein #sammy lawrence #fanfic #it's werewolf time lads #body horror #took all night to write this

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toloveawarlord · 4 years ago

Text

Ch. 6

Characters: Edgar Bright, Iris Adley, Sean

Pairing: Edgar x Iris

Tagging: @plumpblueberry

“You can’t blame them for being curious. No one knows what Sir Edgar is having you do as his second,” Sean said, lounging back on the perfectly made bed. He and all the others that were under the Jack of Hearts were hovering around me, asking an infinite amount of questions about the allusive and mysterious Edgar Bright…ever since he appointed me as his second.

I buttoned up my uniform shirt with visible annoyance. “I’m basically a glorified secretary, organizing documents, keeping notes about important dates and meetings, and pretending to be him when penning letters that he finds too boring while he sits on the sofa sipping tea.”

It wasn’t that he didn’t work. Soldiers came and went all day long with reports and documents. When he wasn’t in his quarters, he was in meetings with Jonah and Lancelot or officials in Central Quarter, on top of training his own troop of soldiers with a warm smile and steel fist. And yet, when we were alone, he turned into a candy gobbling child that enjoyed causing me a headache.

“Aren’t you tired? You don’t return from your duties until the early morning hours and then turn around and be up at first call at 7 like the rest of us.” He was just as intrigued by my new position as the others, but for more reasons. Every day he asked if we’d spoken about my predicament and the answer remained a stern no.

“Tired of his ridiculously idiot game? Yes.”

“Aw, that’s no way to speak about your adoring superior.”

The only slightly peaceful part of my day came crashing down at the presence of the Jack of Hearts. He’d let himself into the room without any warning, apparently a recurring trait of his. I can’t exactly complain, outwardly at least.

I rested against the bed to slip on my boots, tugging the laces extra tight while imaging the thin string to be around his neck. The whispers from the hallway not so quiet, nearly bringing a large commotion to the barrack hallway. “I’ll assume you’re here for business, sir.”

“Sean, you will be in Central Quarter today.” Edgar gave the order with a hint of edge to his voice. He received a salute and Sean scuttled off to leave us. One quick glance over his shoulder and the rest of the soldiers scattered before those mischievous jade irises were turned on me. “You will be accompanying to patrol the forest. Won’t that be fun, Iris?”

“Are you going to insist on calling me that when we’re alone?”

“It is your name. Besides, the expressions you make are worth any risk.”

I swiped my hat from the rack, settling it on my blonde locks, adjusting it with stiff movements. I made a silent vow to work on how I outwardly reacted to his taunts, if only to irritate him a fraction of how he irritated him.

Outside of his personal unit, the soldiers continued to treat me like an outsider. They glared when they thought none of the ranking officers were watching. They whispered in ear shot of me, insisting on being petty about my sudden rise in position. Only the ones within Edgar’s unit had begun to accept me, at least enough to not avoid me during meals and free time.

The leaves crunched beneath his boots, the Jack of Hearts strolling with a spring his step. His good mood almost contagious. It was strange, simultaneously keeping up my guard while also lowering it at times around him. He hadn’t broken his word and exposed my secret. “Iris, lost in thought, are we? I do hope it’s me on your mind.”

Jade irises mischievously reflecting my own clear, blue ones. Edgar’s face mere inches.

I took a step back only to hit a tree. The pain dull but grounded me back in reality.

Quick to close the distance, like a wild cat slinking up to its cornered prey, Edgar’s grin grew wider. “You make a pretty boy, but I prefer the real Iris.” Gloved fingers expertly removing the earring and pocketing it in seconds. “I’ll hold onto this until it’s time to return.”

Without the magic, nothing hid the fact that I was a woman. It would be unlikely for the army to send multiple soldiers on this patrol, but not unheard of. And yet, winning an argument with a rock was more attainable than reasoning with the gentle demon.

The forest was peaceful. Although not many ventured in due to the rumors surrounding it, bandits tended to gather on occasion. The town was abuzz with talk of some unsavory types moving between Central Quarter and the Forbidden Forest. Edgar had been tasked with uncovering and eliminating them.

“I did some digging, but there’s no record of where your brother disappeared to. Not even your parents have any inkling. I suspect that you have some idea.” He broke the silence as he adjusted his gait to fall in step with me.

“I don’t. He never told me where he was going. Only that the girl he’d fallen obsessively in love with was the reason he wouldn’t take his position in the army.” The night he’d left still seared freshly in my mind. It made little sense. He had been handed the fourth highest rank in the Red Army and he abandoned it for a woman.

Edgar hummed in response, gaze lifting to the treetops above us. “Peculiar, but I hear that love makes one do crazy things.”

“He’s an absolute fool. Love is an abstract idea that is fleeting. He barely knew her, and yet he threw away his whole life, making a traitor of himself, of our family. For what?” He’d said that he might be gone for a while, years. At that time, it would be much too late. Our family would be ostracized, the position given by birthright erased and passed on to some distant blood relative.

“You’ve never been in love, have you, Iris?”

I gave him a disgusted glare before replying, “No. I’ll wager you haven’t either.”

He snickered from behind his palm, not making any attempts to avoid my slap to his arm. “You’re right. I’ve little time for dalliances with women. I have been approached, but taking a wife is not of importance to me.” For a second, the facade slipped, and I saw the flash of melancholy cross his features. Then it was gone, replaced with that empty smile. “I imagine you’ve had plenty of men throwing themselves at you.”

“You mean at my father.” I shivered in absolute revulsion. None of them had approached me directly. Whispers of how I could be harsh and hard to please were always circling me like rampant sharks. Negotiations went through my father, and I never accepted a single one. “I have no desire to be someone’s wife.”

“You’d rather be a solider?”

There was no judgement or ridicule in his question, as it had been with all the men previous in my life. Any time I trained with a sword or learned hand to hand combat, they all had a similar tone. It’s not for a woman. I would prove them all wrong. “Yes. Only the Red Army has rules against women joining. It seems obvious that after 500 years, perhaps a different perspective might be advantageous.”

“War is not made for the weak.”

“Weak and female are not synonymous.”

Jade eyes crinkled as he smiled at me. “Oh, I’m well aware of your strengths, Iris. And I, for one, have no qualms with you being in the army. It’s not simply a matter of changing laws.”

The politics. It’s always about the politics among the Red elites.

The scent of smoke drifted through the trees, silencing our discussion. The rumors were proving to be true. We both became silent, like ghosts leaving no trace of their existence as we neared the campsite. Only one man guarded the camp.

“We’ll wait until nightfall, and all of them are to be captured.” His whisper carried the weight of his position. The teasing superior vanished without a trace, replaced with the Jack of Hearts giving his soldier an unbreakable order. His gaze only flickered to me long enough to see my nod before returning to our targets.

They came and went, five of them in total. As the sun began to slide beyond the horizon. Once the light faded, the group all gathered around the fire, clinking dirty glasses of stolen booze, and rifling through their treasures. Edgar gave a signal, directing me to circle to the other side.

Blending in with the darkness was easy. The moon cast slivers of silver light between the leaves rustling in the wind. I crouched by a thick bush, waiting patiently for our moment to attack. I hadn’t, however, expected him to announce himself.

“Good evening, gentlemen.” Edgar startled the whole lot of them, hand lightly gripping the hilt of his sword. The fire crackled as one choked on his drink at the sudden appearance of the officer. “You’ve caused quite the ruckus in town. It’s time to answer for your crimes.”

Swords and knives were drawn, all eyes focused solely on the single man in the crisp white uniform. Their bravery coupled with cowardice as they collectively moved the opposite direction with slow steps, save for their so-called leader. He alone faced the gentle demon with a scowl.

He gave a howl and lunged at Edgar, only to grab air and lose his breath as his torso connected with the Jack of Heart’s knee.

Tension rose through the campsite. Some were frozen in their spot, watching the imminent defeat of their boss. But one... there’s always one, who decides to save themselves and run.

Unlucky for him.

The wheeze that passed his lips when I wrenched my elbow back into his throat divided the attention. He collapsed to the dirt, body curling up as he clutched his neck and struggled to catch his breath. “How pathetic,” I said, drawing my own sword from its sheath.

There’s two of them?

Who cares! Just take them out and let’s get out of here!

They were barely worth any effort. Their form sloppy and no coordination between them. Although it hadn’t been too long since being under Edgar’s guidance, I had picked up on some quirks of his. In the beginning, the soldiers in the unit avoided me, leaving Edgar to spar with me most of the time. I’d learned his movements quite well.

“I’m impressed. You’ve done so well,” Edgar praised with a pat on my shoulder. He chuckled as I brushed it off.

I finished the knot on the last rope, creating a line of prisoners so they couldn’t try to escape. “I didn’t ask for your evaluation.”

“But that’s my job. Your hand to hand could use a little work. I’d be happy to teach you.” His eager grin disappeared at the voice of the leader of the bandits. I hadn’t witnessed the demon side of him until now.

Since when did the Red Army employ women?

I turned away, remembering that he still had my earring and no magic had shielded my features. Edgar slipped it into my palm without a word before slinking up to the angered prisoner.

“He is quite pretty for a boy, I’ll admit. You’d do well to keep your mouth shut.” The malice laced in his words paired perfectly with the dagger pressed a little too hard against his prey’s throat. His threat received with a silent nod.

I trailed behind, lost deeply in thought. It hadn’t been necessary. There was no reason for him to say anything. No one would have believed the word of a criminal over the Jack. There’s no logical reasoning behind why Edgar had protected me, nor why I can’t simply say thank you and move on.

My cheeks were unbearably hot.

Why did he confuse me so much?

#ikemen revolution #ikerev #edgar bright #iris adley #ikerev oc #finally #iris is beginning to have feelings #even though she has no idea what those feelings are

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howwelldoyouknowyourmoon · 4 years ago

Text

Letter from a disenchanted student of the Divine Principle

Many Unification Church members seem to think people who left the organization are like some kind of lapsed Catholics, but most of those people just recognized Moon’s absurd and contradictory rhetoric had absolutely no relationship to reality – I pointed out many of those obvious contradictions in my previous letter to Rev Moon. Even the vaunted Divine Principle was not his own teaching. Much of it came from a woman called Seong-do Kim whose revelations began in 1923. She stated that Jesus did not come to die (not new because other Christians had taught this previously), she also taught that the fall was a sexual sin (again not new because Jewish scholars suggested this long ago and anyone can recognize the association, even sex shops use a bitten apple to advertise their wares). She also taught about the change of blood lineage through the messiah – thus justifying all the deviant sexual activity involved in the pikareum rituals. Another source was a woman called Chong Deuk-eun who dictated a book called the Principle of Life in 1946-47. It was published in 1958.

The history parallels were taken straight from the teachings of Baek-moon Kim’s Israel Monastery – being the reason they finish in 1917, which was Baek-moon’s birth date rather than 1920 when Moon was born. The final Divine Principle book was composed by a committee guided by Hyo-won Eu with input from Young Oon Kim and various professors. So rather than being a direct revelation, the DP is actually an interesting amalgam of Christian theology, nineteenth century science, Oriental philosophy and shamanism – added to the insights and teachings that were taken from various Korean spiritual groups.  

This was why I felt free to approach much of the DP as almost allegorical because the main thing to emphasize was personal spiritual maturity – the development of a loving parental heart. (The real meaning of ‘perfection’.) I never believed that absolute Cain/Abel rubbish spouted by Moon and Japanese leaders. I remember one itinerant worker saying, ‘If my central figure tells me this red dress is blue then it’s blue.’ Absolutely insane – but this is exactly the kind of thing that has been propagated by the Moon family and their minions, especially in Japan, and it leads to all kinds of abuses.

  In addition to the DP we also have Rev. Moon’s great blessing theory, whereby through downing a glass of holy wine and being engrafted to his lineage we become capable of conceiving pure offspring, free from original sin. These ‘blessed’ children can then form the core of the heavenly kingdom on earth, of course with the ‘True Parents’ and their children at the absolute center. However, the proof of any pudding is in the eating – regardless of how good the recipe might sound. So let us look at the results, the fruits of the messiah and his teaching.

We can start with some of his own blessed children: Ye Jin – (Divorced.) Hyo Jin – was a drug addict, I saw him give a sermon one time when he was so stoned he had to hold on to the podium in order to stand up. He punched and kicked his wife, Nansook Hong, watched pornography, walked around with a gun in his pocket and beat up church members. (Divorced.) In Jin – was forced to resign her position because it became public knowledge about her affairs with two married members and the illegitimate child she had with one of them. (Divorced.) Un Jin – said clearly on TV that her father was not the messiah, and that the church was just about power and money. (Divorced.)   Hyun Jin, the kind-hearted business expert who wanted to cut the salaries of our church’s jewelry workers by a third – I saw a video of him calling a church leader an arrogant bastard and kicking him as the man knelt before him. No matter what the guy was guilty of, this was just one more example of the violence perpetrated by the Moon family. Which of course was epitomized by Cleopas, the black Zimbabwean supposedly embodying the spirit of Heung Jin, who went around the world viciously beating up men and women, putting some in hospital. He even threatened church members with a pistol. (All of it approved by Rev Moon who laughed at the beatings and had himself used a baseball bat on members.)  

Kook Jin – an arms dealer who said Abel wouldn’t have been killed if he’d had a gun. Divorced his wife and had himself re-blessed with a Korean beauty queen. He now has his own group of armed ‘knights’ willing to do whatever he orders. (Divorced.)   Hyung Jin, the heir apparent (according to him), lied about getting a BA from Harvard when he actually attained a lower qualification – and if he thinks the parable of the sower is referring to ‘absolute sex’ I think he needs to go back to Divinity School. His Sanctuary Church now promotes the owning of AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifles, and has ceremonies with participants carrying these lethal weapons while wearing bizarre crowns of bullets. According to one of his recent speeches, all the women of the world are ‘Brides of Christ,’ and he of course is now in that Christ position.

Don’t want to go into details about some of the others as I feel sorry for them.

  So this so-called true family demonstrates clearly that there is no difference between blessed children and any others. Rev. Moon said as much in Korea when he was talking about Sammy Park, his illegitimate son. He said, ‘The sons from the concubine are better because there is more passion involved in their conception.’ So much for the value of the blessing.   

(Of course Mrs Moon blames the bad behavior of her adult, absolute ruler children on the poor church members, as though they could do anything to control it.)  

So now lets look at the practical results of all the members’ sacrifice and offerings:   This Parc One court case (the conflict that began between Kook Jin and Hyun Jin) resulted in at least 700 million dollars of church money going to lawyers and outside companies. This is at a time when Japanese church members were being bled dry; many could not even afford to go to the dentist. (They were commonly referred to as ‘the toothless ones’ in Japan.)  

Cheongpyeong – you couldn’t make it up – they were selling apartments in the spirit world! People have to be completely away with the fairies to buy into that. Mrs Hyo Nam Kim (Dae Mo Nim or Hoon Mo Nim) after being denounced as a fraud, walked away with assets worth more than 230 million dollars (including one of the top golf courses in South Korea), so her spiritual real estate business must have been doing very well. It’s as crazy as charging money so that your ancestors can attend workshops with the spirit of Heung Jin, or paying thirty dollars for two bottles of Danjobi shampoo to get evil spirits out of your hair. (This all of course also being done with the consent of Rev Moon.)

Mrs Kim was supposedly channeling Dae Mo Nim, the mother of Hak Ja Han, which was actually a strange choice because Dae Mo Nim and another woman had spent two years in jail for beating a mentally ill youth to death in one of these frenzied ansu sessions (where they beat bad spirits out of people).

That whole Cheongpyeong providence is merely old Korean shamanism, and just because people have spiritual experiences there doesn’t validate what is going on. Something many members don’t realize is that God works to educate and reach people regardless of what religion they are following.  

Rev. Moon often praised Korean culture but Korea was a slave society for most of its history. Although the number of slaves had declined during the nineteenth century the institution was not legally banned until 1894, and the system survived in practice until the 1920s. At least one third of the population were slaves in the past, and the children of slaves automatically belonged to their masters – with most wealthy men keeping concubines. The Koreans always had that tradition of the Yangban, or aristocrats, being served by everybody else, even having a caste of sex slaves for that purpose.  

Another tradition was idol worship and shamanism. All this drumming and beating at Cheongpyeong is actually for drawing spirits into people, not driving them out. The disgusting business of putting Moon’s semen and blood into the holy wine is more shamanism. Shamans believe if you can get someone to imbibe your bodily fluids they will come under your control. By the way, Rev Moon’s children used to refer to Mrs Kim and her people as ‘the witches of Cheongpyeong.’ To put this in perspective there are still over 300,000 shamans or ‘mudangs’ plying their trade in Korea.   

Conferences. After working on some of them I was shown very clearly that all those big science, arts and other conferences actually had no purpose other than glorifying Rev Moon. He wasn’t at all interested in any results from those meetings, only in how many famous people attended.

  About 500 million dollars is donated each year by the Japanese church, but where does it all go? What great world-changing projects do you see it used for? Of what use are all these glorious palaces? The one at Cheongpyeong cost over a thousand million dollars. Just think what good could have been done in the world with such funds. This particular palace is now adorned with giant statues of Hak Ja Han with Jesus kneeling before her and a much diminished figure of Sun Myung Moon in obedient attendance. She has effectively created a new religion centered on herself by changing the basic teachings and proclaiming herself as the Only Begotten Daughter of God, the wife of God, the mother of God and God himself/herself. (What kind of mental gymnastics the present members are doing to believe this utter nonsense is beyond me.) 

 I know each national church lives in its own little bubble, in effect creating its own version of the Unification society and cherry picking which headquarters’ directions to implement. Each country also seems to hold onto its own view of the ‘messiah,’ effectively editing out anything that does not conform to this ideal. However, with the advent of the Internet this can thankfully no longer be the case.

It is the very core of the Unification Church that needs to be examined. The whole church has been built on lies. Even Rev Moon’s life story is full of falsehoods. Remember that picture of him carrying the man on his back; he let it be known for years that it was him before finally admitting it wasn’t.

The stories about Heungnam – I heard a testimony from one of those early disciples where she went to visit him and found him drinking tea in a nearby village! Chung-hwa Pak had been an officer in the military and was put in charge of the prisoners. He designated which tasks the prisoners should do. He was able to give Moon time off so they could talk together about his beliefs. Moon was not always being worked to death as he later stated. 

He said he graduated in electrical engineering at Waseda University in Tokyo, but he actually only attended night classes at a technical high school. 

The Church made out that Moon was arrested in North Korea for preaching against communism, but the charges were really for bigamy and adultery. Chong-hwa Kim, the married woman involved, was also jailed. His anti-communist stance came much later.  

The story about him meeting Jesus on the mountainside is also untrue. It was Seong-do Kim who first told people she’d had these Easter revelations, then Baek-moon Kim claimed them as his, and finally Rev Moon – whose lies gave him away as Easter did not fall on the date he gave for that year. In his most recent account of that meeting he calls Jesus a bastard, and originally taught that Jesus should have had sex with his mother to restore the fall. He also claimed to have met and talked with Buddha, but until his first visit to India he thought Buddha was Chinese.   

The Tragedy of the Six Marys. This book described the pikareum, or womb-cleansing, ceremonies conducted during the early years of the Unification Church. For years we were told it was untrue, but before the book came out in Japan they started giving lectures explaining the providential reasons why Moon had to have sex not only with the Six Marys, but also with all the wives of the 36, 72 and even the 124 couples. Some of the members listening to those lectures left the church afterwards so they stopped giving them, but they started them again in Korea from what I heard.

The Israel Monastery was a pikareum church with Baek-moon Kim doing the womb cleansing by having sex with the female members. Another similar one was the Olive Tree Movement started by Tae-Seon Park. This had 300,000 members and the churches had special rooms to practice the pikareum rituals. So there were plenty of examples of this grotesque idea for Rev Moon to draw on.  

The holy wine ceremony is a symbolic sexual act, but for the first years of the church Rev Moon actually had sex with the female members. This is the core of the church and it is both vile and ludicrous.  

I don’t say these things lightly because I needed plenty of evidence before I believed them, but I know people in both Japan and Korea who attended lectures where this behavior was justified. In America Hyung Jin and Kook Jin have admitted such things happened. It was admitted by Young Oon Kim, Papasan Choi, Chung-Hwa Pak, President Eu’s cousin (Shin-hee Eu), Annie Choi (the mother of Sam Park), Deok-jin Kim and many others. Rev Yong also went around the world giving lectures explaining the dispensational necessity of such sex practices.

  God of Day and God of Night. There used to be a shrine to this primitive Korean god to the east of Seoul. (Moon was incorporating any kind of rubbish into his mythology by the end of his life.)

I could report on even worse activities and crimes but I think this is enough for now. The Divine Principle itself is a wonderful construct, (Hyo-won Eu being something of a genius) the only problem being that it isn’t true. So much of the numerology, four position foundations, triple objective purposes and so on, is actually meaningless. There was no sexual fall and inherited original sin and Satan are non-existent. The history parallels are extremely contrived, and although interesting, prove nothing at all. There are many more aspects of the book that don’t make sense. Some parts of course are helpful, Jesus not coming to die and so on, but none of these are original ideas, so the book certainly doesn’t prove that Moon is the Second Advent.

▲ Baek-moon Kim was born in 1917. He devised the parallels of history.

  As predicted nothing happened on Foundation Day apart from a few pointless ceremonies. The church leadership knew this would be the case, which is why they were already telling people to prepare for 2020, the 100th anniversary of Moon’s birth. Mrs Moon is emphasizing witnessing now. (Because tithes are an ongoing source of revenue.) She recently told the Japanese wives in Korea that if they don’t do well then their descendants will pay lots of indemnity. She seems to have forgotten what her husband said on October 27, 1999, ‘No more indemnity is needed. The providence of restoration is completed.’

  I personally think anyone still teaching the Divine Principle has to examine all of the above, and then ask themselves if they are just helping to propagate a gigantic destructive fraud? Thousands of people have gone through real suffering to enrich Moon and his family. Many of them had their lives ruined by being matched and married to people they could not relate to. It’s hard to believe but Moon’s church even advertised for any Korean men who wanted wives to come to one of those big blessings – just to make the numbers up, although he charged them between two and ten thousand dollars for each purchased bride. He then matched dedicated Japanese sisters to men who weren’t even church members – some of whom were unemployed drunkards or worse. (One of these wives eventually killed her Korean husband after suffering years of abuse.) Again, ask yourself whether these matchings were the action of a loving father, or an evil despot with no concern at all for the happiness and well-being of others?

  If members were matched with someone they could love and be happy with, then they were in the minority, as it was mostly a matter of luck. Remember he matched physical brothers and sisters on at least four occasions that I know of, then changed the matching when he was told about it, so it certainly wasn’t God guiding him.

  If people want God in their lives all they have to do is invite him in. Knock and the door will be opened. You don’t need to go to God through Moon or anyone else, and heaven is a place for heavenly people, so if you aren’t heavenly then no blessing, white robe or inseminated wine is going to get you in there.

And just to be clear, arrogance and avarice are not heavenly attributes.

  I believe anyone who has sincerely tried to serve God and create a better world has certainly not wasted their time, because God will remember their efforts whatever religion they followed, but the Unification Church, FFWPU, or Hak Ja Han’s new name for it ‘Heavenly Parent’s Holy Community,’ is nothing but a despotic money-making, power-seeking, destructive scam that should not be supported in any way.  

My apologies people, no jokes this time, I’m too disgusted by the whole sorry mess.  

Sloe Gin

______________________________________________

Newsweek on the many Korean messiahs of the 1970s

Hwang Gook-joo and his orgies

The Divine Principle is constructed to control members

Sun Myung Moon’s Theology of the Fall, Tamar, Jesus and Mary

Sun Myung Moon – Restoration through Incest

Shamanism is at the heart of Sun Myung Moon’s church

Japanese member, Ms. K, was forced to marry Korean man she did not like

Sun Myung Moon makes me feel ashamed to be Korean

The Fall of the House of Moon – New Republic

Sun Myung Moon’s secret love child – Mother Jones

Cult Indoctrination – and the Road to Recovery

#Sloe Gin #Divine Principle

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midnight-moonlight-and-mars · 5 years ago

Text

Closed In

Pairing: Shy!Bucky x Reader AU

Warnings: None

Summary: Bucky was in love with his best friend Agent Y/n but always was too shy about well anything when it came to her. When Bucky confesses his love to her in a cramped situation, will Y/n feel the same?

“I don’t think that’s a good idea...” Bucky said to Y/n a bit concerned about her intense enthusiasm.

“Come ON Buck it would be suuuper fun. You’ll love it I promise. Pretty Please??” Y/n said dragging Bucky along nearly begging.

“I guess I can try it.” Bucky sighed giving in.

Y/n squealed with excitement at his surrender and proceeded to pull Bucky by the sleeve of his sweatshirt.

They trailed down the winding halls of the new S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters to a secluded room on the left. Swiping their cards to open the door, it only opened to more but darker hallways. Finally reaching their destination, Y/n swiped her card once more to open an inventory room with highly classified confiscated weapons and even ones considered too dangerous for using without specialized training.

Y/n ‘s mouth was nearly drooling at the sight of them. She wasn’t there to steal anything, as she was asked to test them. She was there mainly there for having explosive weapons in her hands. Y/n brought Bucky along because she wanted a back up in case something went wrong but also Bucky is her friend.

"Make sure you put this suit on. This is just a precaution if we find anything radioactive or with dangerous chemicals." Y/n tossed Bucky a spare suit while quickly slipping hers on.

"I can't believe they have this many just sitting here... You could weaponize an entire army with these." Bucky nervously gazing at the rows upon rows of shelves stacked with sealed black cases.

"Its amazing right?? Grab anything that hasn't been checked already and just have at it. We've got a lot to cover." Y/n said already picking her fair share of boxes.

Y/n traced the shelf with her fingers looking aimlessly for the perfect one to play with scientifically test for inventory. Bucky on the other hand was carefully reading each label on every box to see what would be fitting to test.

As Bucky finally picked out sonmething that appeared to be a glorified flamethrower, the S.H.I.E.L.D. red alarm went off. Sirens filled the room and echoed throughout the whole facility, causing the lights to dim and the walls to be painted with red flashing.

The red alarm means there is an intruder or a hostile situation like an attack or a fire on the premisis. Following the balring alarm sound, an announcement came over the P.A. system calling all available agents to the control room.

"Shit" Bucky and Y/n both said simultaneously muttered quickly trying undress out of their hazmat suits and seal away any weapons they moved or opened.

Just as Bucky was about to head out the door, he looked over Y/n to see she was struggling to get her suit off.

"Seriously?!! It's fucking stuck!" The suit zipper caught her clothes and began to rip them as she tried to untangle. The more she struggle the more the rest of the suit tangled as well causing her to fall over.

"Hold on." Bucky rushed over and swatted her hands away as he braced to ferociously rip the zipper off her clothes. Normally this would work, but of course in an emergency, it doesn't. He tried one more time, but instead just pulling the zipper off, he ripped her shirt in half. Great.

"Uuuuh.... Sorry." Bucky sat there frozen as he noticed the large chunk of cloth still caught in the zipper and a large part of Y/n midriff exposed.

"Seriously??! You had to just freaking destroy my clothes too??" Y/n said trying really hard not to hit him. After a moment of cursing and untangling from the suit, Y/n finally stood up and reached for the door.

Its locked. The door is locked. The door is FUCKING LOCKED. Refusing to believe her luck is this bad, Y/n shook the door handle, kicked it, tried hitting the now blocked window on it, and ultimately failing.

"Great. Just great. You know I was having so much fun already ya know? This is just the cherry on top." Y/n at this point was a nervous but angry wreck trying not to cry.

Bucky trying to be optimistic tried kicking the door doen and using his metal arm to punch a hole through but it barely scratched the surface. In such a high security room like this, they would obiously be using high security doors. It would be no use to swipe their cards either because those systems would be shut down or minimized to select areas.

Basically they were now stuck.

"Should we use the weapons? I'm sure there's something here we can use to break this door down." Bucky said looking towrads Y/n for confirmation.

"It'd be pointless. Most of the heavy duty weapons are connected to high tech cases that will shut down immediately following a lockdown. This room is also designed to withstand damage as powerful as a nuke inside and out. We're safe in here, but we're sitting ducks." Y/n leaned against the wall and slid to the floor thinking about how long they were goimg to be there.

"Great. So we're stuck for god knows how long when people are probably getting killed out there and there's nothing we can do." Bucky threw one last ear splitting punch to the door that still sustained no damage. Finally giving up, Bucky plopped down right next to her.

A moment of silence filled the space between them as the siren still sounded in the background. Bucky took a breath, then letting the reality of his situation finally sink in. He's stuck in a room with her. There is no one in the world he'd rather be with. Everyone knows the cliche story of people that like each other getting stuck in elevators together and how they confess how they feel and etc. This could be his chance.

He looked over to her and took in her features. Despite her looking dissheveled, sweaty, and exhausted, she still looked so beautiful. Every time he's around Y/n he feels shy but happy every time they spend time together.

Bucky's heart started racing just thinking about her and being alone with her in a closed space with lives on the line. This is not what he had in mind for his evening but he wasn't entirely against it. Everything he's tried to say suffocates him to silence. This was going to be a long wait.

"Wanna play a game?" Y/n said turning to Bucky at last breaking the tense silence like a knife.

"What kind of game?" Bucky said taking a breath of relief at something to do.

"Never have I ever?" She said willing to take suggestions

Like an dorky idiot, he regretfully agreed. Games like these lead to personal things and sometimes intimate things and Bucky wasn't entirely sure he was ready for that.

At first it was playful and even funny. Like never having sushi, or getting a parking ticket. Then, as always, gets deep and personal.

Without trying to sound pitiful or depressing, Y/n spoke on hee next turn. "Never have I ever... been in love."

Bucky was taken aback by her words. She seemed to say it playfully without realizing how it sounded. As he thought about it, she's never mentioned a boyfriend before or girlfriend for that matter. It also discouraged him to think that she might not have feelings for him after all.

"Really? Like ever?" Bucky asked just to be sure she wasn't just exaggerating.

"I mean I have wanted to be and wished I was but I've never really was sure of my feelings and being unsure feels the same as not. I have never lied about my feelings like I used to. The last time I did I hurt them and I don't want to do that anymore ya know? Doesn't mean I don't have feelings now, but I can a bit closed off..." It felt good to get something like that off her chest, even it stung a little.

"And that's fine, you're not obligated to and you can't force it either. But I have been in love and I think I am right now to be honest." Bucky said visibly nervous now but smiling thinking about just how much she doesn't know.

"Oh yeah? Who does the Winter Soldier have in mind?" Y/n pressed inching closer to him.

"Aw man she's amazing. She has this amazing smile and such a bright personality. She's also fiery and can have a temper sometimes but she still manages to have the biggest heart. Everything she does just makes me laugh and or feel butterlfies. I feel like she knows me better than most people and is always there when I need her and even when I think I don't she's there anyway. I wish you could to know her and see what I see when see her... she's imperfectly perfect." Somewhere along the lines he got carried away and wasn't shy when he talked about her as someone else. It was like confessing without implicating yourself, or in this case, someone else.

"Wow. Sounds like you're head over heels for her. She's lucky to have you. I bet she feels the same way about you Barnes. I mean she's gotta right?" Y/n said trying to guess about who he was talking about.

"Well we've always been just friends so I'm not usually this outward with my feelings about you..." Bucky said without realizing he just gave it all away. When he did, he felt his heart drop into his stomach like a stone. The siren still going in the background was the same sound that rang through his mind.

"What?So wait you're talking about me? You have feelings for me is what you're saying. You are joking right?" Y/n couldn't believe it. This whole time he was... maybe this was new or just a misunderstanding or... or... she doesn't know!

"Shit. Im sorry this is not how I wanted to tell you I was gonna wait to be sure if you felt the same it just slipped out and I'm sorry I didn't want this to be in the way of anything I just..." By now Bucky was crouched on the floor with his head in hands shaking. He couldn't talk anymore he would just make it worse for both of them so the best he could was try not to cry. He had a strong face but inside he felt weak and sick.

Y/n took a deep breath and made her way over to him. She stood there for a moment trying to find something to say but instead she just took him in a warm embrace. Bucky was suprised but didn't hesitate to hug her back. When she pulled from his embrace she finally spoke:

"I may have never loved before, doesn't mean I can't now. I would be lying if I said I never thought about us or how I feel about you. I don't know how far my feelings go, but I know they've gone the farthest and is still going. Hearing you talk about that girl you liked I admit I was a bit jealous thinking she was getting all of you're attention. Finding out it was me actually made me really happy on the inside. So if I'm being honest I think I might be in love with you too."

Now facing each other, Bucky couldn't help but kiss her and she most definitely kissed back. They might have gotten carried somewhere along the lines but thankfully it didn't go too far. Yet.

Pulling away to breathe, they held on to each other laughing at their messy hair and uncomfortable position on the floor and stood up.

As soon as they got their feet, the sirens and the lights go out and the lights brighten up the whole room. The doors slowly unlock and all the weapons cases whirr in electrical sounds as well as the other systems.

Bucky and Y/n jump and cheer and excitement that leads to celebratory kissing. To be honest, they forgot there was any danger at all.

The metal security doors finally slid open to reveal a very confused Steve Rogers seeing the two of them making out and parts of Y/n clothes ripped off along with both of thier messy hair.

"Sooo... Fondue?"

Tagged: @imaginechick

A/N: I took some liberites on this one. If anything is spelled wrong I apologize but im not fixing it lol i have edited this thing long enough. Hope you enjoy and please give me feedback! Thanks for reading💘

-K

#marvel imagines #bucky imagine #james bucky barnes #bucky x reader #the winter soldier #steve rogers x reader #the winter solider imagine #the avengers #marvel's sheild

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cecilspeaks · 5 years ago

Text

159 - Cat Show

Be the annoying goose you want to see in the world. Welcome to Night Vale.

This day was foretold and now it is here. Some doubted it would come, but the signs were clear. And I could not be more excited! It’s the annual Night Vale cat show. [laughs] I know, I rarely report on this event, but this year, I finally entered my own cat, Khoshekh, into the contest. Many of you remember that I found Khoshekh 7 years ago. He was floating 4 feet off the ground in the men’s restroom here at the radio station, and he’s still in that exact same spot, cute as ever with his furry little white paws! And elegant little black tail, and just the floofiest tentacles you could ever see.

My husband and I adore cats! We’re always ranking them, because love is above all else a competition. So we figured we should put Koshekh out there for an objective ruling on our own beliefs that he is the best cat in the world! It should be an easy win for our little boy, especially with the home field advantage. Koshekh is stuck in a fixed point in space, and the cat show is being held here at the radio station to accommodate his condition. Station Management is a bit unhappy about this, because they’re terribly allergic to cats. All morning, as the cat show organizers and competing cats have arrived, I have felt the sneezes of Station Management from deep below the surface of the Earth where they have burrowed into the warm, molten core of our dying planet.

I sent our new intern Simon Peterson out to pick up some Benadryl for the bosses, and he did, but now he’s having trouble navigating the 16 inch wide rocky tunnel Station Management dug into the break room, and Simon keeps saying he’s claustrophobic and that his greatest fear is to be stuck in a dark place where the long spindly arms touch and prod his feet, but he cannot see them. And even if he could, he would not comprehend them. Ad n the prickly limbs grab at him with increasing desperation and he does not scream, because he knows no one will hear him except the inscrutable.. thing that is now tearing open the skin along the bottom of his feet. And I was like Simon, this office is a no excuses zone, so get in that tunnel and do your job.

More on the cat show soon, but first the news. Strange men arrived in town today. They were wearing suits and carrying briefcases. They drove a black sedan. One of them wore sunglasses. They claimed to be from Washington DC from an agency called the National Transportation Safety Board. They were inquiring about a missing plane. The strange men, one of them had a blister on his upper lip, met with Sheriff Sam, and told them that on June 15, 2012, Delta flight 18713 from Detroit Mistigan to Albany New York disappeared. The NTSB still has not found the MT-90 aircraft. The men told Sheriff Sam that for many years, the agency believed the flight to have gone down in Lake Erie. Sheriff Sam laughed at this silly fake name for a lake and told the men – one of them had a swollen red lump along the cuticle of his right index finger –that they must be remembering some spooky young adult novel, rather than a real life event. The strange men – one of them had an unceasing nose bleed – said it was in fact true. They said that they recently found a report indicating that right before Flight 18713 vanished from radar, it was detected all the way down in the southwest United States, right here in Night Vale. “How is that possible?” the strange men asked our Sheriff. Sheriff Sam stopped laughing and said: “I know the plane. Or rather, I know someone who saw that plane. His name is Doug, Doug Biondi.” The strange men – one of them wore three wedding rings – nodded and said: “Take us to Doug.” Sheriff Sam said: “Doug is in the Night Vale asylum. He is dangerous. He is not allowed visitors. But…” and Sheriff Sam leaned forward, clasping their hands together across the desk and continued in a hush town: “I… could… assist… in an undercover operation. Disguise you all as new inmates, treacherous psychopaths who must be kept in lockdown in the world’s highest security mental hospital. Then, then… you would be able to interview Doug Biondi about what he saw that day in the elementary school gym.” And the strange men – one of them was weeping thick yellow tears – agreed that this was a great idea, and set out with the Sheriff to the asylum, deep within the Scrublands, to begin their covert investigation. I’m sure those strange men from the NTSB will emerge soon with a full report. More on this story as it develops.

But I have to get back – to the Cat shooooow! [excited] Oh ho ho, [gasps] so many cats have arrived! [laughs] Th-there are cages and carriers full of sweet kitties all over the station! Representing all four breeds of cat: long haired, short haired, smushyfaced and miscellaneous. When I was filling out the entry forms for Khoshekh, they asked me this breed, and he’s definitely smushyfaced, but also long haired although he’s short haired along his coddlespine and pincers, soooooo… miscellaneous? I guessed. Also they wanted Khoshekh’s last name, and I have never thought of a last name for our cat. Huh. I told Carlos we should put his last name as Khoshekh’s last name, because Carlos has a much more interesting last name than me. Plus Carlos is pretty well known and very well liked in town. Everybody knows his last name, and I thought that might carry some political weight in the minds of the judges. But Carlos insisted that we use mine, because I found Khoshekh and I adopted him. So there you go, little kitty. You are Khoshekh Gershwin Palmer. A champion name for a champion cat.

Let’s have a look now at the community calendar. This Friday night is the Tour of Lights in Old Town Night Vale. Participants can meet at Galway and 1st at 7 PM, where a tractor pulling a trailer full of hay will drive you around to look at the bright and festive holiday lights adorning the various historic homes. Last year’s favorite, the Victorian mansion owned by Harrison Kip, included a 40-foot tall Santa, his arms outstretched overseeing a vast army of toiling elves, while an old Victrola played “Ave Maria” over crackling speakers and clowns leapt suddenly from the thick shrubs, handing unsuspecting but delighted guests red and blue balloons shaped by long dead family members. Tickets are five dollars and go to support the Bilderberg Group.

Saturday evening is the bi-monthly pub crawl in downtown Night Vale. Every eight weeks or so, every bar in town becomes overrun with 7 inch long bugs that look like… a bit like earwigs but with human faces. All participating bars and pubs are offering two for one specials on well drinks and bottled domestics.

Sunday afternoon, the Tamika Flynn book club will be meeting to discuss their most recent book, the 2018 Husqvarna YTH-24K 14-inch riding mower owner’s manual. This month’s book was chosen by John Peters – you know, the farmer? They’ll be discussing the themes, symbolism and subtext of this seminal work of contemporary technical literature. The book club is open to anyone and there will be a potluck benefit.

Monday is running a few minutes late, but wants everyone to know we can go ahead and start without it.

The cat show is finally underway and wow! What a sight! I’ve never actually been to a cat show before today, it is, it’s fascinating! So, the judges take each cat one at a time. They hold up the cat’s tail to examine its posture and form. Then they pry open the cat’s mouth to check its teeth. Then four judges hold each of the cat’s paws and stretch it out into a furry X, as a fifth judge measures the cat’s latitudinal, longitudinal and diagonal lengths. I’m surprised at how gentle these cats are with all this rough handling. Khoshekh – [scoffs] Khoshekh usually tries to bite me or-or sting me when I feed him, and I appreciate that about him. It’s hard to respect a cat that would let any stranger look it directly in the eyes, let alone touch it. People sometimes think cats will behave obediently and chummily, like dogs, but cats are individualistic. They show love, yes, but it is conditional and judgmental. You must give a cat space to learn its environment and develop its own social rules. Plus those pincers really hurt! The cats they’re showing right now are really cute, but it’s [sighs], it’s hard to respect them, like the way they let these judges just treat them like slabs of meat. [shouts angrily] Stand up for yourselves, you glorified sock puppets!

Oh, I’m getting some nasty looks from the judges and other contestants. Good, good. (-) [0:12:26] is important in contact sports. Let them know who’s the front runner.

Amber Akini and her husband Wilson Levy are showing their cat now, a tiny fist-sized orange and white shorthair named Berthold. Berthold might be my second favorite cat, behind Khoshekh of course, because he’s a - oh, oh what to call that kind of cat with extra appendages the poly.. polydactyl, polydactyl, that’s it. Anyway, Berthold is a polydactyl cat. He has eight legs and a mesmerizing array of shiny black eyes covering his cute little face. I’m not so sure Berthold has much of a chance of winning, though. Because when the judges tried to check his teeth, he skittered up the wall and won’t come back from the web he built up there. Ah, well now Susan Willman is showing her cat. He’s a scraggy, but otherwise basic tabby with dirty teeth like Spanish rice and the sunken posture of a playground swing. Oh I didn’t catch his name, although it sounded like she called Dumpster. [chuckles] [low voice] Not a chance, loser.

OK, oh wait. The judges are all wide-eyed and cooing over Dumpster, like he’s a rare bejeweled artefact. Wait, they’re nodding to each other as if they’re impressed. I don’t get this! He’s a trash cat. That’s why she named him Dumpster of, knowing Susan, maybe that’s a family name. Ooh ho-ho! Oh, I’m getting a shush sign from the judges, and Susan is glaring at me. [chuckles] I had no idea how political this cat show would be. What a racket.

Let’s have a look now at traffic. There’s a slowdown on westbound lanes of Route 800 near Exit 19. There is no construction or accident. Highway patrol said that everyone on that side of the road simply started thinking about Urinus and giggling. Every single driver, simultaneously, remembered how the name of that planet always made them laugh in school. Scientists want to study Urinus. They thought it wants really probe the dense noxious clouds covering the rocky surface of Urinus. They considered in unison, their ruddy cheeks quaking above sore jaws and below tear-filled crackling eyes: scientists think the pressure inside Urinus is so great that here may be diamonds inside Urinus. The drivers all howled, the audible din enough to slow even the eastbound lanes, who were trying to think of a single funny thing about Saturn, but could not. I’m not sure I get why any of that is funny. But expect westbound delays of 20 minutes or take an alternative route.

It’s the big moment, listeners. The judges are visiting Khoshekh right now in the men’s restroom. I tried to tell them to use hazmat gloves, but they sneered and said: “We know how to handle cats, sir.” OK, they are professional arbiters of all things feline, so I believe them. They’re holding up Khoshekh’s tails right now, examining his nacreous scales. They brought in two other judges to try to hold Khoshekh’s tentacles down because, well he keeps trying to grab at the main judge’s face as the judge attempts to examine Khoshekh’s teeth. Oh, I wonder if they’ll deduct points for Khoshekh having more teeth than a normal cat. I mean he has five rows of them. OH, oh! Oh no. Ohhh, the judges are not controlling this situation well at all, Khoshekh has wrapped up all of the jduges in his many spiraling suctioned arms. They’re struggling to break free, but those tentacles secrete a sedative oil and the judges are wobbling.. They’re passing out, yup, not good. Every single judge is unconscious, and now Khoshekh is wildly flapping his wings and, while I cannot hear it I can tell, he is emitting a shriek that only other cats can hear. He does this when he’s upset. OH, there’s Berthold coming down from the safe haven of his web. There’s Dumpster, hollow-eyed and purring, waling toward Khoshekh. And all the other cats are coming too. Their mouths agape, emitting I m sure the the same ultrasonic tone, a harmon of protest, of uprising, of bloodthirst. They’re gathering now in the men’s room, eyes glowing, all slack-jawed and silent screaming at the sky. On yeah, the other pet owners are sobbing and they’re running for the exist, but they know they cannot leave. They would not leave even if they could. It is silent now in the station safe for the panting exhaustion of frightened human owners, and the strained wheezing breaths of unconscious cat show judges. I think Carlos and I have a great shot at winning this thing, listeners. an announcement of a champion coming soon!

But first, The weather.

[”Weather: “Fuzzy Disco” by Talkie https://talkie.bandcamp.com]

The judges woke up, but they no longer speak in English nor any human language. They are licking themselves and eating moths that they caught by the single swinging light bulb in our radio station’s interrogation room. Their brains are feral and feline now, as they hide under tables and hiss at the other cat owners. I tried to warn them about using hazmat gloves, but they didn’t wanna hear me. [big gasp] Or maybe they did! Perhaps this was their gambit all along, I mean this is after all my first cat show, I don’t wanna pretend like I know how these things go. No winners were announced. The judges joined the high-pitched catervauling of the other cats. And then they all left in a unified clatter, out the men’s room window and into the street. I can see them now, running toward the alley behind the CVS, several other cats joining their ranks, all except - Khoshekh, who cannot leave his spot in the station restroom. Four feet in the air.

I told Khoshekh that he’s a winner in my mind, and I put on my thick rubber gear and gently stroked his smushed little face! [giggles] Right between his middle two eyes! Huh. It’s hard to tell what cats are thinking or feeling, but I think Khoshekh is happy. He’s happy to have such a loving home and two doting dads. But something in his eyes tells me he wanted to run free with his new cat friends. I gave him a catnip plushie though, and he looks content, if a little coked up.

Stay tuned next for a noise you cannot hear, rallying a feral insurrection.

Good night, Night Vale, Good night.

Today’s proverb: Wanna feel old? Don’t worry, you will.

#welcome to night vale #wtnv #wtnv transcripts #episode 159 #cat show

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aliceslantern · 4 years ago

Text

Give/Take, a Kingdom Hearts fanfic, chapter 10

Ienzo has been too busy since the war to be overwhelmed by the past. But with little progress to be made in his work with Kairi, old nightmares start to invade.

Riku is a glorified housesitter. Lonely and faced with no choice but to wait for a way to find his friends, he eagerly accepts when Ienzo asks him to help do repairs around the castle. Before long, the two strike up an unlikely friendship, united by their dark pasts and their attempts to be better people.

But just as they begin to consider something more... Kairi wakes up.

Ienzoku (Ienzo/Riku), post-Melody of Memory, slow burn. Updates Thursdays until it's done.

Chapter summary: Ienzo arrives in Destiny Islands, and experiences quite a bit of culture shock.

Read it on FF.net/on AO3

---

It was raining in Radiant Garden when Riku arrived. He very nearly had trouble with visibility and the ship skidded a little when he touched down. He swore.

He'd offered his friends the opportunity to come along, on the one hand trying to get Sora interested in something, but he just said to "enjoy time with your boyfriend" with an eyebrow waggle.

He and Kairi had both been merciless, teasing him about it. Neither seemed that concerned he was dating someone who used to be Zexion. They both said Ienzo was a great guy. "Dating." They hadn't been on a date; he could fix that. They hadn't also called it that in so many words. Ienzo had, in his letter.

Riku's heart was racing. He checked himself one last time, making sure his hair looked alright in its ponytail.

Ienzo was waiting under an outcropping, a small duffle next to him. Riku dashed out of the rain as quickly as he could. “Beautiful day, isn’t it,” he said to Riku, and Riku noted that the subtleties of his tone had not carried over to the letters.

“Just perfect,” he said, feeling at a bit of loss for words. He was here, he could touch him.

There was a beat, a moment. Ienzo cleared his throat a little. “I’m not a mirage,” he said.

Riku chuckled. “Right.”

A bit awkwardly, Ienzo pulled him close. Riku got the notion that he didn’t hug much, and it probably didn’t feel natural to initiate. But it felt good, too good, to hold him, to breathe in his smell. He didn’t want to pull away, not yet. “It feels like ages, and yet an instant,” Ienzo said. “Let me look at you.” He pulled away and brushed his fingers across Riku’s cheek. “Your hair grows preternaturally fast.”

“Tell me about it,” he said. Riku realized for the first time that he was, in fact, now slightly taller than Ienzo.

Ienzo just stared at him as though he might disappear. Riku wondered if this time had been lonely, or difficult, for him. Ienzo cleared his throat a little. “Enough of the longing gazes for now, I think.”

“Right. Ah. But first.” He kissed him, and for a second they melted against each other. It felt exactly like Riku remembered. “Not sure I could’ve flown straight if I didn’t do that.”

“Well if it’s all in the guise of safety,” Ienzo said. “Do you need anything before we leave? Are you hungry?”

“I brought snacks,” he said. “Let me get your--” He picked up the bag.

“What a gentleman.”

They walked quickly through the rain back into the ship. “As many times as I’ve seen the inside of this on a video, I’ve never actually seen it,” Ienzo said. “It’s quite a lot smaller than I thought.”

“Yeah, no idea how the three of them managed,” Riku said. “You should see the size of the bunk rooms. But Sora’s a half-pint. You want to nose around a moment, go for it.”

“...I think I shall.”

Riku watched him poke around, looking into the tiny rooms, almost hitting his head on the door frames. His eyes were alight with curiosity. “These are so small,” he said.

“Sora always said they tried to avoid sleeping in it if they could.”

“I don’t blame them.” He turned back. “Well. Thanks for that. Should I just--”

“Sit wherever,” he said. “You only really need the straps for takeoff. It’s really safe.”

“...Quite.” He sat to Riku’s right and did up his harness. “Here we go, then.”

He smirked. “You nervous?”

“No,” he said. “But consider I’ve never much been off the ground.”

“It’s okay. I won’t kill us.”

“How reassuring.”

The takeoffs and the landings were always Riku’s favorite part, partially because it required the most input from him. Seeing the worlds disappear beneath him, and feeling the g-forces, was always a bit of a thrill. He tried to do so as gently as possible, keenly aware that as a first time flyer part of Ienzo’s calm was staged. He had his hands clenched very tightly in his lap. But once they were actually in the quiet of space, this seemed to disappear. “Is that really it?” Ienzo asked softly, gazing down at the world.

“Cool, isn’t it?”

“This is bizarre. It’s so… small.” He pressed his hand gently against the windshield. “Huh.”

Riku let him have the moment. “You’ll see more as we go along,” he said. “But it’s mostly a lot of rubble.”

“From the Fracture, I’m sure.”

“Could be.” He turned away and set the course. “We’ve got a good few hours before we get there.”

Ienzo undid the straps and settled more comfortably. “Is it very hard, to fly?”

Riku laughed. “No,” he said, and to demonstrate he lifted his hands from the controls, seeing Ienzo pale. “Aside from takeoffs and landings it pretty much flies itself. All of the positioning gummies. You wanna try?”

Riku could see him debating it. “Maybe on the way back.”

“All I have to do is keep an eye on the radar. If we’re lucky we might see some Heartless ships, but they’re generally getting rarer and rarer.”

“Do you fight them?”

“Yeah. There’s lasers, and a shield, the whole nine. Sora has it tricked out pretty good. Most of them are weak, anyway.”

Ienzo leaned over a little more to see the dash.

“There are other ways to travel around, but this is the most comfortable,” Riku said. “Using the lanes between… it’s like a motorcycle versus a car.”

“I’m going to pretend I’ve experienced either of those things.”

Riku chuckled. “Right. Well, you’ll see some of that on DI.”

He was quiet for a moment. “This is one of the first times I’ve physically travelled anywhere,” he said. “Whenever I… went to other worlds, I just… used a dark corridor. All it took was a few steps.”

“Do you miss it?”

“Travelling? Yes. Darkness? No. Always a stink that’s hard to get rid of.” He wrinkled his nose. “I haven’t been anywhere since I’m human again. ...And that’s nearly two years.”

“...I can’t exactly say the same.”

They chatted for a while longer, about nothing much, mostly about Riku’s new life back home. He was more excited than he thought to show Ienzo around, to give him a taste of normalcy as well. “Though it’s going to be a whole lot hotter than you’re used to,” he said. “Like, don’t be shy to tell me it’s too much. We can go back into the AC.”

Ienzo laughed. “It’s a good thing I like you.”

Riku felt his face flush. He tried to come up with something witty to say quickly. “...You said you had to tell your friends something to leave.”

“Yes. Well.” Ienzo leaned back and crossed his legs. “In their minds, one must always have a reason to go somewhere. Leisure isn’t exactly in their codebook. I said I wanted to check in with Sora and Kairi, make sure everything was alright, learn what I could about your journey. Ansem already knew, and asked if I would be visiting you, too. It was only a hop-skip-and-jump before the others figured it out. It… shocked them that I’d even wanted to pursue a relationship of any kind.”

“Why? You’re grown up.”

“To a degree they’re used to who I was , not who I am.”

Riku frowned and checked the radar. “I know how that is.”

Ienzo smiled. “I know you do. Does it bother you that I said something?”

“No. Not at all. Sora and Kairi have been teasing me about it. They think it’s hilarious. I’ve never really… shown that I had a crush on someone.”

“You have a crush on me? How sweet.”

“I’ve literally kissed you.”

The rest of the flight went smoothly, and Riku saw the familiar blue sphere emerge. “Ah, there it is,” he said. “Look.”

“How pretty.” He was already strapping himself in.

“We’re landing down on the play island. It’s basically the only inconspicuous place I can keep this thing. But it’s not far from there. And we’re a good few hours ahead of you for time, I think.”

“I see.”

His friends had helped him build the makeshift landing pad. The earth of it was different than the rest of the island, and they were on the far side where the ship couldn’t easily be seen from the mainland. The touchdown was easy. “Here we are.”

“I guess so,” Ienzo murmured.

“Ready?”

“Quite.”

He took Ienzo’s bag, and they started walking.

“You said this was a play island?”

“Oh, yeah. When we were kids we spent hours and hours here. Now we hang out here.” He pointed out the main landmarks; the shack, the waterfall, the treehouses. “It’s… a good place to come if you need to be alone. Lots of nooks and crannies.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“We’ll take my boat back to the mainland. From there it’s about half a mile walk.”

“A mile?”

“Right… uh…” He struggled to remember metrics. “Almost a kilometer. About ten minutes, fifteen if people stop us. Which they might. Sorry in advance.” He helped Ienzo down into the rowboat.

“Stop us?”

“Well, it’s a small island,” he said. “Everyone knows everyone, and everyone’s been chatting me up since I got back. A new face is gonna be interesting to them.” He started rowing. The surf was nice and gentle today, making it easy. He noticed Ienzo’s eyes flick to his arms and felt a flush of pride. “We’ll be staying with my parents.”

“Oh, I don’t mean to impose, I brought money for an inn--”

“Ienzo, no,” Riku said, with a small laugh. “You even bringing that up is gonna seem rude to my mom.”

“Oh… is that cultural?”

“I guess so?” He shrugged. “She loves entertaining, too. Besides, you might decide you want to stay longer than the amount of money you have.”

“I see--I didn’t even bring a hostess gift--”

“It’s alright,” Riku said. “That doesn’t matter here either. People like to host. They don’t expect you to do anything other than have a good time.”

He looked a bit embarrassed.

“Relax,” Riku said. “It’s going to be fine.” They were at the dock at last. He docked and helped Ienzo back out, taking his bag from him. The sun was starting to set now, casting the shore in pinks and reds.

“Oh…” Ienzo said. “That is lovely.”

“It kinda is,” Riku said. He rested a hand on Ienzo’s waist, and though he jerked a little at the touch, he leaned into it. “You know, I’ve seen a lot of sunsets here. But they’re always something.”

Ienzo nodded. After a few minutes, they headed up the shore to the road. They were standing close enough that their shoulders nearly touched, and Riku’s heart was beating hard. He wanted to touch him. He needed to. He reached out, groping for Ienzo’s hand, found it at last. Again, he jumped a little.

“I’m sorry--”

“No, I’m just not… used to it,” Ienzo said, squeezing his hand gently.

It was nice , walking up the road hand-in-hand like this. With my boyfriend, Riku thought. The streets were emptier at this hour than he thought, but then he remembered. “Oh, right, there’s a game going on.”

“A game?”

“Blitzball. On TV. I think it’s the playoffs. Well, better for us.”

“What is blitzball and what is TV,” Ienzo asked, not humorlessly.

Riku sighed and explained.

“Oh, almost like volleyball,” Ienzo said, with no explanation of what this was. “Though this TV intrigues me.”

“Well, I have one in my room, so we can watch later if you feel up to it.” If his parents didn’t chat them up until dawn.

They turned onto his street. The houses were fairly close together, with small patches of lawn. Ienzo looked around at it all, his eyes wide, curious. His eyebrows shot up when a car drove past them.

“That’s a car,” Riku said. “We use them to get around on land.”

“Fascinating. I’ve seen them on other worlds, but this looks different. How does it work?”

“Um…” He struggled to remember. “Well, they’re solar powered, so the sun charges the batteries, and the batteries… help make the engine go.” He laughed a little. “I don’t know anything about engines.”

“Do you know how to drive?”

“No. I don’t really need to. Almost everything is within walking distance, and if it isn’t, you can take the bus. Er. It’s a car that has room for lots of people, and takes them along a route.”

“Like a streetcar,” Ienzo said. “Radiant Garden used to have those.” He sighed. “I knew our worlds were different, but I didn’t realize… how much. I’m already sweating.”

“And this is night,” Riku said. “Wait til tomorrow.” He took his house keys out of his pocket. He could use the Keyblade, but that seemed weird, and extra. “This one.” The house looked like any on the street; a simple two-storey, three bedroom, with a small offshoot over the garage. The siding was a bright teal, and his mother’s well-groomed strelitzias were in full bloom.

“It’s cute,” Ienzo said. “Cozy.”

“I’ll give you “cozy.”” He laughed. “Alright. Prepare yourself.”

Ienzo sighed.

He put his key in the lock. Predictably, the door flew open before he could even twitch them. “Welcome home!” His mother said. “So glad you made it back in one piece.” She gave Riku a painfully tight hug. “You must be Ienzo. Oh, hello, dear, welcome to the islands.” Before Riku could stop her she’d swept him into a hug, too, and Riku saw the brief spasm of panic. “Sorry, I’m a hugger.”

Ienzo coughed a little. “Ah. Hello. Pleasure to meet you.”

“We’re so happy to have any friend of Riku’s.” She’d finally let go of him but was holding his hands tightly. “Dinner’s almost ready. You two must be starving after your long trip.”

“Sounds lovely,” Ienzo said dazedly. “Thanks so much.”

She waved her hand dismissively. “ Matsu! Your son’s back!”

“Watching the game?” Riku asked.

“ Glued. All afternoon.” She rolled her eyes. “Why don’t you two get settled and I’ll call you when it’s ready?”

A tall, slender man--Riku’s father--came out of the room. He had a well-groomed mustache, his hair close cropped to his scalp. “Smooth ride?” he asked.

“Went off without a hitch,” Riku said. “Dad, this is Ienzo. Ienzo, this is my dad, Matsuda.”

“Nice to meet you, sir,” Ienzo said, offering his hand. Riku saw how hard and how firm his father took it and winced.

“You know when Riku said you were from another world I was imagining a little green guy, but you look pretty normal,” he said.

“Dad,” Riku said. “I told you about the One Sky thing.”

Ienzo laughed politely, a little stiffly. “I’m very much human.”

“Well I think that’s good. Can I get you something to drink? We have it all.”

“...Drink?”

“He means alcohol,” Riku said, rolling his eyes. “Dad, don’t make Ienzo drink if he doesn’t want to.”

“Er…” Ienzo clearly wasn’t sure what the right answer was.

“You know what, I’ll get you two a cassis.” He disappeared into the den, where the liquor was.

“You okay?” Riku asked. “I’m sorry they both grabbed you like that. We’re… feelers, here.”

Ienzo shook his head. “I’m sorry, this is all new to me.”

“It’s okay. I think they both understand. They’re just trying to be friendly.” Riku kicked himself both for not preparing Ienzo better and for not telling his parents to chill.

Matsuda came back a minute later with two highballs of cassis orange. “Be careful with these,” he said, with a wink.

“Dad,” Riku said.

“Alright, alright, I’ll let you two get settled.”

Riku bobbed his head towards the garage door. “We’re up through here.”

“Does this have something to do with that long story?”

He sighed. “Yes.”

---

Ienzo followed Riku up a set of stairs to another door, which Riku unlocked. The drink was cold in his hand, and felt awkward to carry up. “Here we go,” he said.

It looked to be more of a studio apartment than a bedroom. There was an alcove opposite the door, which was just wide enough for a double bed. The alcove had a large window which faced the sea. Next to it was a tall dresser with a lamp. To Ienzo’s right was a small kitchenette, with a minifridge, a hot plate, a coffee maker, and a toaster oven. On the left was a sofa, which had been made up neatly with sheets and a few pillows. Near it was what looked to be a computer screen on a small stand, powered off, but with no accompanying console. The walls were a plain gray, and unadorned, and there were a few boxes labeled “RIKU--SAVE” shoved in one corner. The dark hardwood floors were clearly beautiful, but needed a good refinish. Everything smelled very clean, though there wasn’t anything that said anything about Riku as a person. “You have your own apartment,” Ienzo said.

“Ah--yeah, sort of.” Riku set down the duffle next to the couch. “I… used to have a bedroom in the main house, but then I disappeared, and my parents… went to grief counseling.” He turned red and couldn’t meet Ienzo’s eyes. “They were told it would help if they packed away my things, and they sold my furniture. They would’ve remade my room downstairs, but dad works from home now, so he kind of needs it as an office.” He cleared his throat. “This used to be my grandma’s apartment before she passed. They didn’t have the heart to rent it out, or anything.”

“Oh,” Ienzo said, very quietly.

“I like it, though,” he said. “Being close to them, but not too close. Having a sliver of independence.”

“I can see that.”

“We used to have an air mattress, but mice got to it. I hope the couch will be okay until we can get a new one.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine.” It was cooler in here, but not cool enough. Ienzo didn’t anticipate sleeping well anyway. He was still a bit shaky. He took a sip of the drink, found it went down easily.

“You don’t have to drink that,” Riku said.

“It’s tasty.”

He smiled a little. “He meant what he said when he said to be careful. He makes drinks strong.”

“Your parents. Do they know about us?”

“Yeah, I’m out,” Riku said. “Mom probably just didn’t want to push it.”

“And they’re okay with… us staying in the same room?” It made him blush just thinking about it, even if this was in the most innocent sense of the word.

Riku blushed too. “I know I said they’re suffocating me, but when I’m up here they try to give me privacy,” he said. “I don’t think they, uh, care what I do so long as I’m happy. And here. I’m an adult, after all.”

“Right. Understood.” Ienzo drank down more of the cocktail, partially because he was thirsty.

“...I hope you’re hungry. Mom cooks a lot , and I’m sure she’ll use you as an excuse to pull out all the stops. Show you islander cuisine and all that.”

He smiled a little. “Sounds lovely.”

A few moments later they were summoned. Riku’s house was similarly styled in bright colors, with a full living room. There was a shelf full of photos of Riku, and Ienzo couldn’t help his curiosity. “Oh, god, don’t,” Riku said quickly.

Ienzo smirked. “Look at you. Was this when you were a baby ? Look how fat your cheeks were.”

He turned redder than the drink in his hand. “I think she put these out specifically because you were coming.”

“I think it’s sweet.” He reached out and touched the frame in question. He felt a sudden stab of melancholy and wondered if there were any photos of him when he were little, if he’d have had this type of life if his parents hadn’t passed--

“Boys? Dinner’s ready.” Riku’s mother was slender and very beautiful; he looked more like her than his father. She brushed her hands off on her apron. Riku brought him through to the dining room.

The table was low to the ground, and there were no chairs, just small cushions. Most of the table was cluttered with lots and lots of small bowls of all sorts of things, some of which Ienzo could identify, some he couldn’t. He saw kimchi and poi, meats in some kind of sweet sauce, something that looked like dim sum. The mixture was eclectic but somehow it seemed to work, to make sense. And it all smelled delicious. He realized that, between the travel and being afraid to meet Riku’s parents, he was actually ravenous. “Oh no, you didn’t have to go to all this trouble for me,” Ienzo said.

“It was no trouble at all, dear,” she said.

“Mariko loves to cook,” his father said. “Besides, we’ll eat on it for the week.”

“Go ahead. Sit down.”

Ienzo did. It felt a little odd to be so low to the ground. “So you sort of take a little of what you want and use the same plate,” Riku told him.

There was also a pitcher of something pink that was passed around that he was also told was mildly alcoholic. Ienzo waited for the others to serve themselves before quickly taking at least a bite of everything onto his plate. But nobody ate. Instead, Riku’s mother and father both offered him one of their hands.

“They like to say a prayer first,” Riku said, a little embarrassed.

“Oh,” Ienzo said. “Sorry.”

Joined in an odd little circle, Matsuda bowed his head and the others followed, so Ienzo did too. “We’d like to give thanks to the gods for the meal we’re about to receive, and to give thanks for welcoming our son back safely home along with his new friend.” He said something in a language Ienzo could not understand, and Riku and Mariko both repeated it. “Alright, let’s eat.”

Everything was delicious and so interesting , not quite like anything he’d had before. He tried to remember the manners he’d been taught when he was young, but he noticed that all of them were even eating some of the dishes with their hands. “Everything is just wonderful,” he said. “I can’t thank you enough.”

“Aren’t you sweet,” Mariko said.

“...I like to pretend I’m something of a cook myself. Will you tell me a little bit about this?”

“Oh, don’t get her started,” Matsuda said.

Mariko told him all about islander cuisine and how it was prepared, down to the use of marinades, where their things were sourced, and on and on. Ienzo found it fascinating and wished he could write it down. “I’d be happy to share some of the recipes with you. Not all of it, though. Some of it’s secret.” She winked.

Ienzo wanted to keep eating, but he was already getting full and he’d been warned there was dessert. “I see.”

“What is it like where you’re from?” Matsuda asked.

“Riku’s kept it very hush-hush. Very mysterious,” Mariko said, approvingly.

“Oh… well, Radiant Garden isn’t all that special,” he said, thinking of how overwhelmed he’d felt on the island streets. Perhaps they would feel the same if they ever came to visit.

“Must be special enough if our boy’s going out of his way to see you,” his father said, though his tone was teasing.

“Matsu,” Mariko said. “Don’t embarrass the boy.”

Riku rolled his eyes a little. “Well,” Ienzo said. “For one, it’s quite a lot cooler there.” He told them a little bit about what the weather was like, about how the town was. He tried to not mention that Ansem had once been king, just that he was a scientist in the castle and that Ienzo had grown up there.

“A castle ,” Matsuda said, whistling. “Fancy.”

“Ah--not quite. Our world fell to darkness, quite like yours. So bits of it are in disrepair.” He didn’t mention Riku’s assistance there, not sure of the situation with his parents. “Coming here and seeing all these family homes has been quite refreshing.”

“So what is it you do?” Matsuda asked. “Do you go to school? Or work?”

Ienzo swallowed and took a sip of the pink drink. He drank so rarely that he feared he was a bit tipsy. “I’m a scientist, and a researcher,” he said slowly. “My main project lately has been restoration of the library’s collections.” A glamorous phrase for what he was actually doing.

“What is it you study?”

He blinked. “Well, historically, hearts. The metaphysical hearts in us all. But I’ve studied a fair share of lots of fields along the way.”

“Hearts. How romantic,” Mariko said.

“Ienzo’s work was actually instrumental in helping Kairi and I find Sora,” Riku said.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” he murmured.

“Oh, don’t be modest, you helped bring him back to us. For that, you’ll always be welcome here,” his mother said.

Ienzo blushed and looked back down at his plate.

“Are you boys ready for dessert?”

Hours later, more stuffed with food than Ienzo could comprehend, Riku gently pried them from the table. Both of his parents kept asking all sorts of questions about Radiant Garden, about Ienzo, about how they’d met (this caused quite an awkward moment). Riku just said they’d met when he was looking for Sora and only got to know each other later. Ienzo was a bit drunk and a bit dehydrated and definitely tired.

“Mari, we should let the poor boys sleep before you keep them up all night,” Riku’s father said at last.

“Please at least let me help with the dishes,” Ienzo said. He could only imagine what it must look like in the kitchen with all this food.

“I absolutely will not,” Mariko said. “You’re a guest, and you’re exhausted. Go on, get settled. Get. ”

“Thank you,” he said softly, and followed Riku back to the apartment.

The room was mostly dark; Riku flicked on the lamp. “How are you holding up?”

“So full I could burst,” Ienzo said. “But that was… lovely.”

“I’m sorry if they made you uncomfortable.”

“No, they didn’t. Not really. I’m…” How to put this without sounding pathetic. “I’ve never really… seen or taken part in such normal life.”

“No?”

“I was raised by five scientists in a lab. Sitting and having such an extensive home cooked meal was not a common occurrence.” He offered a smile. “Nor were either of the castles so homey.”

“Oh…”

“Don’t pity me,” Ienzo said gently. “That is just to say this all feels a bit foreign. You must be exhausted. You had a much longer day than I did.”

“The carbs don’t help,” he said.

“Is there… perhaps… some place I can shower?”

“Right--oh, of course, the bathroom’s through there. Do you need anything?”

“...Just a towel.” He dug into his duffle for his toiletries and pajamas.

Riku handed him one from a cabinet. “You can hang it on the door when you’re done.”

“...Thanks.”

After a cold, cold shower Ienzo felt a bit better. Riku had already changed and was sitting on his bed, braiding his hair. “If I don’t sleep with it like this it ends up a mess of knots.”

“...I see.” He identified the strangeness he was feeling--the odd intimacy of sleeping in someone else’s house, seeing them getting ready for something as mundane as bed.

“You wanna watch some TV?”

“I really am exhausted,” he said. “Maybe tomorrow?” Perhaps by then he’d feel curious.

He smiled. “Sure. Of course. Let me… let me know if you need any more pillows or blankets.”

“I sincerely think I won’t need more blankets,” Ienzo said. He sat down on the made-up soda. It was actually quite comfortable.

“Good night, Ienzo.”

“Good night, Riku.”

The light clicked off.

#give/take #ienzoku #ienzo/riku #ienzo #riku #ienzo is trans

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langwrites · 5 years ago

Text

Merc Work

I have no excuse for this other than needing a break from my NaNoWriMo break from Kei.

Be warned: It has no ending.

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

On a half-decent day, Kei would wake up with the dawn in a world without alarm clocks. If the day was especially good, she’d do so in her own fucking bed and not be on a ridiculous solo mission that’d gotten blown so thoroughly off track that she couldn’t see the proper path with the Hubble telescope. Waking up in an unfamiliar continent was already a sign of a bad time, and then the power of an unfeeling cosmic gearbox threw in the unasked-for bonus of pervasive xenophobia while surrounded by European fantasy analogues. Especially while being trailed by three Academy students on what should have been a harmless trip to visit the graves of their family.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was the comparatively minor setback of Kei being on third watch. Sleep was for people who didn’t have a demonic turtle sitting in their lap. And who weren’t “new meat” by local standards.

So, between having to join up with a mercenary band to avoid dealing with racist jackasses through the power of numbers and swords, the apparent tech levels not supporting indoor plumbing, the safety of her students, and sitting in the cold for two hours before sunrise… Well, Kei could be forgiven for feeling a bit crabby.

Ha.

You hush.

Never.

Kei considered the complete inability to actually keep Isobu from intruding on any conversation he liked, then sighed. There was such a thing as a hopeless fight, even for her.

Isobu folded his armored forelegs under his belly. Had you not been transported here alongside the children, would you have joined this mercenary band to begin with?

Kei made an “I dunno” noise without opening her mouth. I mean, the sheer isolation would be an absolute nightmare. I know my limits a bit better now.

The spiritual wreckage of her left arm attested to that issue.

Isobu looked down, over the edge of Kei’s lap and toward the forest around Remire Village. They were probably about ten meters into the crown of the oak tree Kei chose as her lookout post for the last week, with only minor modifications to the branches. The only real change between this night and others involved Isobu being a lookout alongside her, rather than haunting the nearby river and stealing fish for his own amusement.

And for feeding the kids, but that hadn’t happened since they’d joined the Jeralt mercenaries last month.

Even if Kei didn’t trust rowdy men and women to look after a bunch of kids with special powers, she did trust Isobu to keep track of them. If the mercenaries got into a skirmish with bandits or anyone else, Kei ordered Kaito, Aiko, and Roku to hide with their spiky guardian as their sole point of contact with the group. When the situation was safe, Kei would call for them. If it wasn’t… well, that wasn’t going to happen. Kei had seen the local idea of what “power” meant and was left unimpressed.

Nothing could get past me if it tried.

There’s a sentiment I can get behind. She’d survived worse than angry knights chasing her with spears.

The only one Kei wasn’t entirely sure of was the mercenaries’ second fiddle. The Ashen Demon, sole child of the Blade Breaker, went by Byleth Eisner (or just Byleth) to everyone else. They were half their father’s bulk and didn’t resemble him much in either coloring or general features. The lack of visible emotion on their face left most people around here fairly unnerved, but Kei found it was actually something of an advantage upon joining the mercenaries. Because people like Jeralt were already used to Byleth’s culturally-remarkable flat affect, they had an easier time giving some slack to Kei’s preferred mask of complete professional stoicism.

The kids didn’t bother hiding their feelings about the whole thing—they latched onto Byleth insofar as they did anyone, perhaps because they were the smallest adult available who wasn’t Kei.

But Byleth also had a job, and that job included enough of Kei’s personal stabbing quota to disqualify them from combat babysitting duties.

Though she’d asked once about it anyway.

Byleth’s microexpressions were difficult to read. She left the conversation with the impression they were more confused by Kei’s willingness to approach them than insulted by the presumption, and thus joined Kei and her ducklings at dinner on occasion like they had a standing invitation.

They basically did. Kei wouldn’t shoo away people who liked her cooking, and Byleth didn’t get loudly drunk all damn night.

Don’t worry, though. You’re still the indisputed babysitting champion of the battlefield.

Pah. Isobu swatted Kei’s hand with one of his tails.

Rowdy for a clone, aren’t you?

Insulting for a host, are you not? Isobu reversed it, because of course he did. And it is not as though this clone could be destroyed by anything less than your brute strength.

Fair.

Normally, Kei could have continued this line of thought for some time. Bantering with Isobu was a peaceful way to pass a watch shift. He had good night vision. She had the ability to interact with the world as a human being. These things were very complimentary.

And Isobu used his sensitive eye, adapted for exploring the sea, to spot the problem before Kei heard it. Smoke at night was difficult to see without decent moonlight, at least for humans. Isobu poked at her brain to draw her attention to it. Likewise, the orange flicker of distant flames was just barely visible in Kei’s periphery if Kei angled her vision, like she would if observing the stars.

That is going to be our problem in short order.

Isn’t it always? Kei replied, leaning as far sideways as she can to see through the modified canopy. Any farther and gravity would be held at bay only by chakra usage. Time to get up.

Indeed. And that was when Isobu opened his mouth to roar.

It was a tiny noise, relative to his true form’s size, but the sleepy village below them started to stir. The mercenaries were used to the sound of Isobu’s dying rabbit screams by now.

And down.

Kei shoved Isobu off her lap, sending his spiky ass tumbling out of the tree to land among the three kids piled up in their camping bags. Kaito stirred first, patting sleepily at Isobu’s ridged belly before sitting up. This dislodged Roku and Aiko in order, just in time for Kei to land about a meter away with her finger in front of her face in a clear shh gesture.

None of her three charges moved a muscle.

“All three of you need to hide,” Kei told them, in the language no one around here spoke.

One by one, she hugged each of them tightly enough to convey the seriousness of her request. Three pairs of cautious eyes met hers, in turn, and then they scrambled to hide their possessions under thickets in the village’s outskirts. No bandits could know there might be someone here to chase.

After about a minute, she picked up Isobu’s little clone and placed him in Kaito’s shaky arms.

The kids knew she’d come back. The mercenaries had fought in five skirmishes since they joined like glorified camp followers, and not one of those battles featured a single opponent Kei couldn’t destroy with her eyes closed.

But this was their comfort zone. Each time Kei left them, like a mother wolf leaving her den, she stripped that security like a worn bandage.

Even only after a month of immersion, the kids picked up the local tongue fairly fast. They were young and adaptable and Kei was the only human adult around who spoke Japanese to them. Until they heard it again, from either her or Isobu, they’d stay out of sight. The waiting, though, never really got any easier.

“They’ll never find us,” Roku said, tugging gently at Aiko and Kaito’s wrists. The oldest, at barely eleven, and already forcing himself to be the most responsible.

“Bye, Sensei,” Aiko said reluctantly, before Roku curled his arm entirely around her to keep her from running off.

“Stay safe,” Kei told her. She looked directly to Kaito and added, “Be good for Isobu-chan.”

Kaito didn’t say anything at all, instead just fixing Kei with a stare like he’d forget what she looked like if he didn’t. This lasted until Isobu ordered Roku to get all three kids away from there, and he did.

All three of them disappeared into the forest. They knew how to climb trees like bear cubs—or shinobi—which would have to be enough. And if a single enemy got near them, Kei would probably need to cut a grown man in half. Perhaps several.

Byleth would help.

I’ll let you know when it’s safe to be out here again, Kei thought to Isobu.

You should know that I was not designed for an arboreal existence. I have many prehensile tails, but I am not a squirrel.

But you’re so cute!

Flattery will get you nowhere. With that sassy rejoinder, Isobu did the equivalent of flicking Kei in the forehead.

Kei headed to the village’s front gate, cutting directly through the forest with the ease of someone who’d been in and around the wilderness her entire life. She could hear another group crashing through the woods at high speed, relative to normal human averages, and a larger group likely in pursuit.

Well, that wouldn’t do.

Hidden Mist. Though the hand seal for this technique was more of a stance, she could still put her detection trick in action. She just had to make sure it was concentrated on the pursuers, not the pursued. Deliberately leaving voids was useless for her strategies, but it probably kept people from breaking their necks unnecessarily.

And it let her know that the slower, louder group was thirty strong.

She kept going until she reached the village’s gates, spotting a mercenary named Arkady on duty. Backlit by torches, his five earrings caught the light and gave him away.

“Back from the camping trip already?” Arkady asked, a note of alarm creeping into his voice. “Where are the kids?”

“Safe,” Kei told him. She slid into place on the opposite side of the gate, hand on the borrowed steel shortsword that’d carried her for the last month. Her katana was not to be wasted on bandits around here. Or in sparring. “But hidden. Someone is heading this way.”

Arkady paused, eyed the forest, and then nodded. “I’ll wake the captain and his kid. Stay here.”

Kei let him go and drummed her fingers against her sword’s hilt, waiting. The crashing was getting closer, and her kids were fifty meters away in a tree. Even while dead certain Isobu was with them, her nerves refused to settle.

Strictly speaking, she didn’t need to keep herself and her team so far away from the mercenaries. They were a rowdy crew, but they were only of the rough-and-tumble sort. They expressed affection by going out drinking and slapping each other on the back and fighting shoulder-to-shoulder through wind and rain. Since Byleth had been with Jeralt since before he founded the company, presumably the various members would be at least peripherally trustworthy with children.

Kei, as a nineteen-year-old with dependents who had one half-cracked voice between them, only trusted the company on the battlefield.

Arkady returned without Byleth or Jeralt, but he did have Marcel. The two of them were like a pair of piratical brunet bookends and cracked jokes anytime they weren’t on the job. It made her students edgy around them, but they were well-liked within the boisterous mercenary crew. Like many soldiers of fortune, they wore a fair amount of jewelry to emphasize their success, which was some of the best advertising around. So was the mess of scars, though only Marcel was missing a chunk of his nose.

“What’s the matter?” Marcel asked, right before the group Kei’d been hearing for the last sixty-odd meters finally crashed out of the woods at nearly the same volume it started.

Three muddied, twig-strewn teenagers stumble up to the pool of torchlight, panting.

Kei pointed at them, because it was faster than bothering to explain herself.

One white-haired girl and a dark-haired boy, at complete opposite ends of the “has this person seen the sun in the last decade” skin tone spectrum, while the tallest is the blond boy in the middle. If not for the torches, Kei wouldn’t even be able to call them “kids” in any meaningful sense, but she did know what school uniforms look like. Kei wandered out of her education as a baby adult, by one reckoning or another. Both of them. She hadn’t been able to look up information on the internet for unfortunately obvious reasons, but in a world where bespoke tailoring is a norm rather than a luxury and damn near nobody wore customized clothing unless they were rich, Kei’s intuition was subsumed by screeching alarm bells.

Third watch on a morning when they were supposed to be marching north into the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus and now this. Kei’s private list of complaints kept getting longer.

“Scarface,” said Marcel, while the kids caught their breath, “why don’t you back up?”

Kei did so, because these kids were likely to react to Kei’s not-Caucasian features with the traditional xenophobia displayed by basically every non-mercenary person from Fódlan so far. If she had to deal with weapons swinging at her face before the sun came up, they’d better be attacks from people she already wanted dead. She didn’t have the patience this early in the morning.

The motion caught the eye of the boy with the yellow shoulder-cape, but little else about Kei was too distinct once she was out of direct torchlight.

Well, mostly.

Sort of.

She was wearing a haori, her armguards, and the local pants-and-boots combination because her sandals could be saved for special occasions. Instead of covering her face with a mask or even wearing her headband as intended, she tied it around her neck like an ascot. There was only so much point in pretending to be anything but foreign. Between her accent and facial features that she was not going to burn chakra trying to hide, it was something Kei kept in perspective.

And the yellow-themed kid was still looking at her.

“Kid, eyes over here,” Arkady demanded.

Kei silently cheered at even a token attempt to direct attention away from her.

At this point, Jeralt and Byleth arrived.

Jeralt was a huge, dull-orange mountain of a man with dirty blond hair and a braid and undercut combination Kei didn’t think would ever catch on. His scarred face told even more of a story than Kei’s did, and no one was quite sure how many battles he’d rushed into and out of alive. Nor were they sure how old he was. More than anyone else in the company, Jeralt was a cavalry commander down to his metal greaves and could be trusted to lead the group to victory come hell or high water.

Competing for second place was his shadow. Byleth, the quietest person in the company and therefore the one Kei’s students tolerated best besides the horses, was about Kei’s age. They were also one of the few adults shorter than Kei was. Their eyes were a distinct deep blue and their hair a dark teal, which almost blended in with the charcoal-gray clothes they preferred this late at night, punctuated by matte black armor along their arms and legs. The ghostly complexion stood out like the fucking moon by comparison.

The two of them commanded all the attention better than a weird foreigner did.

“Please forgive our intrusion,” said the blond one, bowing with his hand over his heart. Kei’s brain tried to calculate angles to assess formality before remembering that cultures were weird and American accents were weirder. He went on, “We wouldn’t bother you were the situation not dire.”

Jeralt visibly took note of the formality, then said, “What do a bunch of kids like you want at this hour?”

“We’re being pursued by a group of bandits.�� Oh for fuck’s sake. While the blond noble kept talking—and he was a noble, because Kei had much more experience with the blunter speech patterns commoners used. Couldn’t be anything else. “I can only hope that you will be so kind as to lend your support.”

“Bandits? Here?” Jeralt’s gaze flicked to Kei.

She nodded, because it was as good a designation for the enemy still shouting their way through the forest as any. Bandits had been trying to kill Kei since she was Aiko’s age. This wasn’t new.

Jeralt didn’t give the order to attack them just yet. Instead, he turned his attention back to the kids as they started talking.

The white-haired girl said, “It's true. They attacked us while we were at rest in our camp.”

Not a great sign. Why had three noble children been exposed like that? In Kei’s experience, nobility tended to spend a lot more time cloistered inside protective structures, and even traveling daimyo tended to take a proper procession with them. Where were the guards? People died when they were caught alone.

Maybe the fire she’d seen was a part of it?

As though to confirm her rising tide of suspicions, the noble boy in yellow said, “We’ve been separated from our companions and we’re outnumbered. They’re after our lives…not to mention our gold.”

Well, then. If they were anything like the bandits Kei ran into during the initial month she’d spent as her students’ sole reliable defense, this wouldn’t take long.

“I’m impressed you’re staying so calm considering the situation. I… Wait.” Jeralt’s body language went rigid. Like he’d just found an armed opponent in a darkened hallway. “That uniform…”

One of the group’s archers—Rickard—ran up with his bow drawn. He shrugged off Marcel and Arkady’s questions, attention locked on Jeralt so thoroughly that he nearly tripped over Kei on his way to report in. If she’d stuck her foot out, he’d have slammed face-first into the village’s defensive wall.

“Bandits spotted just outside the village.” Rickard gestured out at the forest. “There are a lot of them.”

Byleth turned their head toward Kei, making an inquisitive gesture with their hand. One of the many, many reasons Kei’s students liked them was because they were willing to pantomime nearly everything if necessary. And while body language didn’t often cross national boundaries, Byleth was willing to learn almost anything Kei put in front of them.

Kei held up three fingers on her right hand—counting her thumb—then brought all five of them together to a single point.

Byleth’s gaze sharpened.

Jeralt considered Rickard first, then said to the kids, “I guess they followed you all the way here.” He’d caught the gesture conversation with Byleth, and said to his child, “We can’t abandon this village now. Come on, let’s move.”

Byleth nodded.

“Hope you’re ready,” Jeralt grunted. “Kid, you take these three into cover and pick off anybody you can reach. Rickard, you’re with Marcel and Arkady. Rally the rest.” Then Jeralt only had Kei left to address. “And you. Your job is skirmisher. Don’t let them get around the village’s defenses.”

Kei bowed, arms held rigidly at her sides. “As you wish.”

Jeralt waved her off, so Kei decided this was an excellent time to make herself scarce.

#Keisuke Gekko #catch your breath fanfic #team kei #roku chigami #kaito yuki #aiko kasai #fire emblem #fire emblem three houses

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knifeonmars · 4 years ago

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Capsule Reviews - May 2020 - The Cape Stuff

I read a lot of comics in May. Here’s what I thought of some of the superhero and superhero-adjacent comics I read.

Arms of the Octopus

A nostalgia pick, the collection of several annual issues containing a crossover between Superior Spider-Man, The Invincible Hulk, and the All-New X-Men. It is an artifact of a very specific and bizarre time in Marvel Comics, when Doc Ock was Spider-Man, the Hulk worked for SHIELD, and the original five teen X-Men were stranded in their own future. For a pure, relatively straightforward crossover romp, it's quite enjoyable. Spider-Man is a jerk, the Hulk fights a robot, the X-Men are befuddled by the present, all of the major beats for that particular moment in the Marvel Universe are there, and it's got some really great art. Jake Wyatt, during his regrettably short-lived stint with Marvel and the great Kris Anka unfortunately overshadow the other contributors, but it's all very good, if not the most accessible comic.

Maxwell's Demons

I came to Maxwell's Demons having heard a lot of critical buzz and with my expectations set rather high. I did not care for this book at all. Ambitious is the best word for this series, and that's not a bad thing. It's got ideas, about the craft, about the genre, about philosophy in general. It never quite manages to carry things off though; it's not as smart as it wants to be, and the high-minded ideas are never incorporated in particularly elegant ways. Three of the story's five chapters are essentially extended monologues in which the main character rambles on about some glorified shower thought for 20-plus pages. The first and second chapters are the exceptions to this pattern, and are quite solid as far as pointedly derivative superhero riffs go, even if the second chapter's riff on "What if Miracleman #17 was significantly less intelligent" is more than a little shameless in its lack of originality. The fourth chapter, by contrast, is the nadir of the series, easily the most embarrassing Manic Pixie Dream Girl tripe I've seen played straight in literal years. I'm reminded a lot of Translucid, another superhero pastiche, which essentially sought to do for Batman what Maxwell's Demons seeks to do for Lex Luthor. I warmed to Translucid significantly on my second read and I wonder if the same will end up being true for Maxwell's Demons, but I find that Translucid simply did a better job of incorporating original ideas and stating its themes in ways less stupefyingly clunky than Maxwell's Demon's ever manages. I hate to call a book pretentious, especially an ambitious one, but at present that's how I feel about this book.

Twilight

Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez and Howard Chaykin's Watchmen-for-mid-century-space-heroes epic. It's good. Fabulous art, some really interesting ideas and a great premise. It's also more than a little Chaykin-y, with most of the male characters having fraught but amiable relationships with their much-too-good-for-them-and-they-both-know-it ex-wives. It has this particular brand of low grade misogyny that idealizes women but in doing so denies them interiority and, ultimately, humanity. Leaving that aside, though it is a major point to leave aside, it’s story of humanity rotting over eons of immortality, mad space gods, and humanity’s proclivity towards colonialism and genocide, it's great. It’s not an altogether pleasant book, it can be nasty and strange, in ways both intentional and unintentional, but it’s original and engaging and decidedly well made. Something of an overlooked classic of that era’s DC output.

Green Lantern: Earth One

Literally the only one of DC's Earth One graphic novels that's worth a damn. Where most of the other Earth One books choose to start things off in a world resembling our own, Green Lantern starts off in a scifi future resembling something along the lines of Ad Astra or The Expanse, with Earth controlled by an only alluded to totalitarian government, humanity colonizing and mining the solar system, and Hal Jordan as a spacefaring roughneck who dreads the prospect of returning to Earth. Earth One is the rare Green Lantern story that manages to make Earth as interesting as the rest of the universe. The bulk of the action leaves this behind to focus on unearth the lost legacy of the Green Lanterns and refits their mythology in a clean way which will be unsurprising for anyone with a passing familiarity with the original comics but is still satisfying ad fresh. Fabulous art, fun take on the mythology, I'm left both wanting more and being satisfied with what we got.

Spider-Man: Life Story

In a just world, Chip Zdarksy, one of Marvel’s best writers these days, would be writing both Spider-Man and Fantastic Four, instead of having been relegated to shortlived spinoffs. Because life just isn’t fair sometimes, instead he was given this admittedly ambitious project, his all-encompassing take on the Spider-Man story as played out in real time. In the end it’s bold and engaging, but more than a little clipped in execution. Each issue is a snippet of Peter Parker's life as we catch up to him in a new decade so readers only get a quick glimpse of the action and are left to fill in the substantial gaps by drawing on our knowledge of continuity. The obvious comparison is John Byrne's Superman/Batman: Generations, but where that story really only took the broad strokes of those characters' continuity into account in writing its decades spanning story, Spider-Man: Life Story is dedicated to the remixing of Spider-Man's publishing canon. So it can’t just take an archetypal view of Spider-Man and play that out to its logical conclusion, instead it’s stuck trying to incorporate version of prominent Spider-Man stories like Kraven's Last Hunt, Venom, and Civil War. The result means that there’s a ton of exposition in each issue, and frequent use of shorthand to gloss over things which have happened since the previous issue, and it never manages to explore the series’ original ideas in detail. Also, I'll die mad that Michel Fiffe, the genius behind COPRA and one of my favorite cartoonists, public pitched basically this exact story a year or so before this project was announced, and even if Marvel didn't actually steal the idea, I'll forever pine for Fiffe's take on this premise.

Star Wars: The Crimson Empire Saga

Long before the Disney's take on Star Wars, with their codified takes on the mythology and careful curation of the franchise, there was the old Star Wars Expanded Universe, where seemingly anyone could tell any story they wanted using the mythology of Star Wars. While it resulted in some good stuff, like Timothy Zahn's fondly remembered Thrawn books, the vast majority of it was workmanlike or even bad. Crimson Empire falls firmly into the category of bad, a dumber than dirt story about an extremely cool space guy and his code of honor. It's the kind of story where multiple characters say "He's just one man!" right before or right after seeing their legion of anonymous flunkies getting demolished by the hero. It's got an inexplicable and bad love story. In the three miniseries collected here it spends about two pages total dealing with the idea that maybe, just maybe, the fact that it's main character is dedicated to the lost honor of Emperor Palpatine, a space fascist, maybe his code of honor is completely fucked. Of those three miniseries, only the first story is anywhere near something that could be called good. I wouldn’t called Crimson Empire utterly abysmal, but it’s not unironically good. If the name Kyle Katarn means anything to you, you might get something out of this as a nostalgia trip, but otherwise it has no redeeming qualities.

Deathstroke: Legacy

The first of the New 52 Deathstroke stories, which was never well regarded until Christopher Priest took it over with Deathstroke: Rebirth, I was driven to read this by a conceptual fondness for this era's Deathstroke basically looking and acting like an action figure. Through that lens, it's quite enjoyable. It's not as obviously in on the joke in the way that the classic Taskmaster: Unthinkable is, but it's over the top, has fun designs and baddies, and Joe Bennett (years before his career best heights in Immortal Hulk) provides consistently good art. As a pure action comic, it's good.

Wolverine MAX: Permanent Rage

Here's the thing about Wolverine: There are very few good Wolverine solo stories. Wolverine is a genuinely good character, but most of his solo stories are dumb action affairs, and there's literally never been a Wolverine comic that's even halfway as good as the Logan movie. Permanent Rage, the first storyline from the Wolverine MAX series though, is actually pretty decent. It plays out a lot like you might imagine a Wolverine movie made around 2004, with no superheroes, a Japanese setting that allows for some distracting orientalism, unrelenting violence, and a noir-inspired storyline. The present day storyline is all well and good, not great, but solid and relatively low-key, but what makes the book is the presence of Sabretooth as the main villain. His relationship with Wolverine, fleshed out through flashbacks drawn by some really talented artists, is probably one of the best takes on that relationship that Marvel has ever put out. The casting of Wolverine and Sabretooth as two lonely immortals, bound together by hate and the knowledge that they are each other's only true companions, absolutely makes this book. Is it great? No, but it's got enough interesting things going on that fans of dark superheroes stories would probably find something to enjoy. Subsequent volumes of Wolverine MAX moved even further from the character’s superhero trappings and supporting characters, which is a pity, but this one remains readable and enjoyable on its own.

Marshal Law Omnibus

A collection all of the non-licensed and non-text-only Marshal Law stories. It's weird, it's punk, it's violent, it's sick of superheroes but self-aware about it own silliness in a way that Garth Ennis' work like The Boys has never been (Incidentally, the fifth story contained here, Super Babylon, is just every self-righteous complaint Ennis made about superheroes in The Boys but presented with a modicum of good humor). It's quite fun as a mean-spirited anti-superhero romp, but anyone who is particularly invested in the moral rectitude of, like, the Flash, might find it an unpleasant read so I would advise avoiding it if that's you. It's also not perfect, even for what it is: it's approach to sex work and kink is very dated, it relies on sexual violence a little too much, and by the time you get to the final story, Secret Tribunal, it's come to revel in its previously ironic fascist and misogynist imagery and characters just a little too much. The third installment, Kingdom of the Blind, is for my money, the strongest of the lot, featuring both the most straightforward premise and the most incisive satire the collection has to offer.

#capsule reviews #words

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machinakrp · 5 years ago

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>> OPEN KIM TAEOH’S FILE …

:// AGE — 27 :// OCCUPATION — mechanic :// CLASS — elysium native

>> LOADING DEVELOPMENT …

:// MODIFICATIONS —

ARMS /

cybernetic arm: as a reckless teenager with a hoverbike, an accident left him with a severely shattered arm. things seemed to be healing decently, but an unfortunate byproduct of being broke and in elysium with little access to beneficial healthcare meant a serious staph infection took root and required eventual amputation. thereafter, he had his basic prosthesis replaced with a custom built (by himself) prosthetic of a more cybernetic nature. it is, however, not particularly subtle. he didn’t have the money or the expertise to manufacture any synthetic skin. instead, his arm is fully mechanical in nature, and it’s not exactly shiny chrome. he’s installed a customized shoulder socket allowing him to remove it for easier repairs, but the process is painful - both for attaching and removal - and it obviously leaves him in a precarious position.

magnetic systems: prior to losing his arm, taeoh was a street magician who used sleight of hand and a magnetic node built into his arm to manipulate metal objects, seeming to make them fly. he used this, additionally, to pickpocket from the crowds that gathered to watch his performances. after replacing his arm, he traded out the uncouth system for a more sophisticated set up, though the magnetic system in his human hand is wired only to the hand, the robotic arm has a broader range of output, though still lowgrade enough to avoid hurting sensitive equipment.

EYES /

protective covers: a retractable second eyelid designed to protect against gasses, particulates, fire/heat, and other potential damage that comes with this job as a glorified mechanic. it’s mostly geared towards being a replacement for very unsexy and clunky safety goggles, allowing him a greater peripheral vision range and more flexibility.

vision magnification: a simple enhancement to his optical range, this allows him to trigger a zoom effect, effective in close range. while he can’t zoom in on distant details binocular style, he’s able to magnify things that are in front of him, allowing him to more easily and accurately work with minute machinery.

retinal display: this retinal display doesn’t only focus on pure communications, though of course that’s a component of it. he’s also worked with adept programmers to write in a capability to sense and suggest the appropriate tools for specific problems he’s looking at, as well as an ability to quickly call up troubleshooting data or suggestions.

>> LOADING BIOGRAPHY …

tw. injury, hospitalization

the anatomy of a boy begins with

B O N E S.

the lattice work that supports the flesh, his story begins piecemeal but whole. a mother with wide eyes turned outward, skyward, away. there’s a distance in her that he never quite breaches, a gap between them that he can never close. she hangs faded maps on their walls and dreams in stories of places none of them are allowed to go. she pets his head and calls him by a twist of his name. they christen him taeoh but she twists the knife in her own gut each time she presses tongue to teeth to stress the counterpart name, theo, theo. some relic of a place she can’t go, a world closed off to them. it sounds all but the same, but she insists on scrawling it on the tags of his clothes and in the margins of his birth certificate as theo, each pen stroke carrying her dreams of eiffel towers and hover cars drifting over top the river seine at sunset.

his bones are made of dreams - his mother’s forgotten daydreams and his father’s desperate optimism. if skin could wear away his father’s fingertips would protrude shining and white from the tops of his fingers. maintenance in a city like elysium is brute work. he’s covered in oil and bone tired at the end of exhaustive shifts but it’s “honest work, theo, and you should learn to appreciate that.”

what good is being honest, in elysium?

the anatomy of a boy is layered in

M U S C L E.

as he grows, he knots together the best pieces of his parents, cherry picking useful attributes with calculating eyes, to make himself into something. like pinocchio he feels set apart from the world. a strange slant to his vision. he tinkers with his father’s old tool box, fusses with old radios and tunes into frequencies he shouldn’t be able to access.

he hears stories from worlds away and his mother never resists the chance to tell him they weren’t meant to be here, trapped in this sick city, destined to be consumed by the rot of it. it had all been an accident. an accident, in fact, of her own birth. her parents had been visiting family, infant daughter in tow, when the borders had closed and their nomadic life had come to an abrupt end alongside it. it’s nostalgia passed down with guilt, his mother’s frustration at having been the sacrificial lamb to her parents’ distress, their desire to escape exhausting their good will and finances in those early years of isolation. he’s born into hand-me-down guilt in a hand-me-down house with hand-me-down expectations layered onto his shoulders, and he resents the lot of it.

maybe that’s when the escapism begins, really. he’s a child with a light heart and quick feet, scrambles down side streets and shimmies down drain pipes. his parents get used to him “running away” and returning days later scuffed and dirty but mostly fine, all in one piece.

the anatomy of a boy is controlled in the

B R A I N.

taeoh is one of the few to attend school on the regular, even when he’s skipping out on his home life. that doesn’t stop his fascination with machinery, doesn’t keep him from finding an old motorbike and fixing it up. its a painstaking, oil staining process that leaves him with more ruined pairs of jeans than anything else in his closet, smells like petrol. he races through the streets, winding between the seemingly perpetually gridlocked traffic and skidding through narrow alleyways. curses follow in his wake as he takes corners a bit too quickly, banks a little bit hard.

he lives for the moments he can feel the wind in his hair, the ghost of a sky that barely peeks through between the cracks of looming buildings. he builds his own freedom and constructs his own stories. he takes his work from the purely mechanical to the artistic. found and salvaged sculpture plenty of peers are happy to denounce as garbage, but taeoh thinks in the frame of salvation, elevation.

it’s the cycle that takes him out in the end, barrelling down a tunnel, repurposed subway tracks, his characteristic adrenaline chasing grinds to an abrupt and screaming halt. what remains of his left arm is a mangled and shattered thing, a mash of blood and splintered bone, tangling sinew on the concrete floor.

the stain remains, long long after they cart him to a hospital he can’t afford.

the anatomy of a boy is replaced by

G E A R S.

it takes them two months to decide to amputate the arm, in the wake of an infection that renders him delirious and feverish, racing through his blood stream and eating at his heart. it’s the fault of the hospital in the first place, a botched and bungled effort, underfunded and low staffed and the sanitization protocols are clearly not up to par, but it’s not like taeoh can pay for better. h e can’t even pay for this.

he’s left with pins and needles and a sense of absence, a strange echo of a limb that once was. he’s a man who works with his hands, works with his body, and he goes home to a room full of bits and bobs he can’t build with in the same way, elements he can’t sculpt how he’s used too. everything becomes a bit more daunting, a little bit harder, and taeoh wonders what it was all for, what the point is to grind his way back up from the bottom one armed. it’s a bitter depression that tangles around him, thorns driving into his heart.

it takes months, before his father dumps a box of parts onto his bed and gruffly informs him it’s time to stop fucking wallowing and live his life.

in the end, it takes him six months, but he does it. makes an arm. it’s a labor of love and necessity and it’s not one that allows for much luxury. he’s relearning himself just as much as he’s learning to create, to apply his mechanical knowledge to the biological.

the result isn’t beautiful, but it is functional and customized. it’s removable, with a socket build into his shoulder so he can take it off for ease of repair, or to sleep without being completely miserable. it’s a very mechanical construction, bared metal and the clink clank of machinery sliding back and forth when he moves. cracking his knuckles has become a symphony of metal now. there is no shining chrome here, no paint, no synthetic skin. just mechanics on display.

he loves it.

the anatomy of a boy is driven by the

H E A R T.

even now, out on his own in the world, half man and half mechanized, with more than enough money to cover up his arm in something more palatable, more aesthetic, taeoh clings to the click clack clang of his first arm. there have been many iterations since then and many improvements, maybe additions, but the look has never changed. still raw, more machine than augmentation.

his work is careful and creative but it’s never the groundbreaking and pioneering effort from more polished figures in the industry. he’ll hack it, he’ll crack it, he’ll redesign and customize it, but first time installations are out of his wheelhouse - except, of course, on himself. he’s happy to be a bit creative in that respect, to modify and adjust himself to his fullest limits - as much as is possible of course. he is a mechanic, a handyman, an artist. he’s still that bright eyed boy chasing highs in oil stained jeans, climbing on hastily rigged scaffolding to complete a piece.

he turns his arm into a performance of it’s own, a range of magnetization in hands and arm becoming the catalyst to apparent magic, a call back to his child hood attempts of gaining pocket money through sleight of hand, a street performer with a penchant for “magic” tricks in a world where real magic exists. the magnetic fields now give him a chance to up the moves to performance piece level, a range that endlessly entertains him, though his friends might be well sick of it.

he’s an analogue creature in a digital world, negotiating the bounds of mechanic and artist, man and machine, takes on the in-between the worlds notation his mother had scrawled so often and leaves it on his work, engraves it in steel and iron, carves out his place in a world that seems to have no room for him. theo.

#neobio #neoicarus #neo kim jongin

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d3ngar · 7 years ago

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I don’t really know if this is something anyone cares about but I’m running a Star Wars RPG campaign, and this is what I have written for the first arc! Fair warning: it’s quite a long read. But the first session went well and I’m optimistic!

PART I: IMPERIAL ENTANGLEMENTS

OPENING CRAWL:

It is a period of unrest in the galaxy. With the rise of EMPEROR PALPATINE'S New Order, oppression and corruption are rampant throughout the stars, and countless beings are forced to make due in their difficult lives under the yoke of the GALACTIC EMPIRE.

While the REBEL ALLIANCE fights to restore peace and justice to the galaxy, their war creates discord. Through this discord, certain individuals are able to prosper. Mercenaries, smugglers, bounty hunters, and colonists make their way in the Outer Rim, where the reach of the Empire is more restrained.

After stealing a ship called the KRAYT FANG and blasting their way out of Mos Shuuta on the planet TATOOINE, one group of fringers looks to earn their fortune on the Imperial factory world of DRUCKENWELL....

SETTING: Druckenwell, in the capital city of Il Avali. Shortly (a few weeks) before the Battle of Endor. Druckenwell is an Imperial-held planet that is significant because of the BlasTech manufacturing plant found there. The city of Il Avali is like most other large cities in the Mid Rim. Generally safe, but with a seedy underbelly if one feels so inclined to look for it. However, there’s a sizable Imperial presence on the planet, which makes trafficking illicit materials very difficult. The main streets are very wide to accommodate foot traffic and landspeeders, while airspeeders move in carefully-organized lanes higher up amongst the skyscrapers. Il Avali is organized into multiple different districts. Like many cities, the outskirts of the city are mostly residential. There is little of importance out here, so the crime in these areas is mainly petty burglary. Unless the party wants to rob some innocent factory worker, they probably won’t spend much time here. However, it’s possible that there is some info to be found here that can’t be found anywhere else. The north side of the city is where the Il Avali spaceport is located, so it’s appropriately referred to as the Spaceport district. BlasTech wants the city to put on a good face for any Imperial visitors it may receive, so the main streets leaving this district are lined with some of the nicer stores and restaurants in the city. Bright holosigns and displays attempt to lure in travelers that have more than a bit of weight in their credit pouches, and they usually succeed. Despite the noise from the ships constantly coming and going, members of the Druckenwell elite spend most of their time away from home in this district. However, just below the surface, the Spaceport surface hides many of the shady cantinas and dark alleys that one tends to associate with spaceports. On the east side of the city, the party will find the Industrial District of Il Avali. This is the lifeblood of the city, and it’s where the BlasTech factory is located. However, it’s also the most polluted district, and the air is always filled with smog. The ground is dirty, and on some streets, empty crates and barrels and debris litters the ground. The city has a fairly robust hover train system, and many of those trains end up in the Industrial District. The trains are usually populated either by factory employees on their way to or from work, materials heading to the factories, or finished products heading back to the spaceport to be shipped off to distant planets. As a result, the trains usually smell of grease and sweat. Some factories are rather rough places to work. However, since the trains are almost entirely automated, they’re reliable, and they aren’t always that hard to sneak onto for free.

The southwest side of the city is unofficially referred to as the Alien Quarter. It lies between the Industrial and Market districts, having all the problems of both and the benefits of neither. While not an officially recognized district, it’s where a vast majority of Il Avali’s nonhuman population resides in glorified slums. Druckenwell is an Imperial-held planet, after all. There are apartments that are little more than tenements, a few cantinas and spice dens, and constant crime on the streets. Along the main streets, there are street vendors selling all manner of different foods and products from hundreds of worlds. There’s also yelling. Lots of yelling. However, the underbelly of the town is basically based here, so this is the best place to hunt for information. It’s dirty, crowded, and smelly, but for many people, it’s home. Though they’d probably leave if they could. Despite this, most residents are very kind and empathetic to all types of beings, which makes the Empire’s oppression of them even more reprehensible.

The west side of the city is where most businesses and restaurants are located. It’s fairly clean and safe, but things still get a little rough down towards the Alien Quarter. There isn’t much to say about this area. The shops sell what Ioma sells, and the people don’t know anything useful. It’s very crowded, though, so there are opportunities to disappear into large groups of people.

We meet the group in orbit over Druckenwell, having just entered the system. They’re still outside the flow of traffic bound for the city, so they’ll need to request permission to dock as well as avoid getting in trouble with the Imperial patrols (read: TIE fighters, Golan-IIIs, and varying shapes and sizes of frigates).

OBJECTIVE: Meet with the “crooked” Imperial that’s trying to make money selling arms on the side. Once they establish contact and work out a plan, the party needs to steal the blaster shipment and get it to Tatooine with all possible speed. This buyer tends to be a little impatient. Originally, Roshana had been in contact with Trex to handle this job, but seeing as how he’s no longer in possession of his ship, the party has been contacted to take over.

DETAILS: By looking through the logs of the Krayt Fang, the party has learned that an anonymous moderately-ranking Imperial officer, Roshana Vey, supervises production at the BlasTech plant in Il Avali on Druckenwell. Vey has pulled some strings and moved some shipments around to free up an entire order of blaster rifles of all shapes and sizes that they plan to sell off. The officer already has a buyer lined up in Mos Entha on Tatooine, so the job is on a bit of a tight schedule. The group has just landed on Druckenwell, about a day before they’re supposed to go meet this mysterious officer.

PLAYER TASKS/PLOT POINTS:

Meet up with the officer to arrange the details of the job. All communications in Il Avali are heavily monitored, so everything needs to be arranged in person. Vey has set the meeting at an upscale cantina known as the Lux Lounge in the spaceport district.

The Imperial wants them to pick the shipment up directly from the factory, but is unable to provide disguises.

Once the plan is made, everything needs to be prepared. Players (might) need:

A speeder truck to get the blasters back to the Fang

A plan to retrieve and extract the weapons shipment

Some decent equipment in case things go wrong

Otherwise, just let them explore!

NPCs:

Roshana Vey - our crooked Imperial officer. She’s got black hair, pale skin, and narrow eyes. She’s never been particularly powerful within the Imperial military (middle of her class at the Caridan academy, average service record), so she’s decided to use her low level of notoriety to make some money stealing from the Empire. She ranks relatively highly in the shipping department at the plant, so she thinks she’ll be able to move things around in such a way that will allow her to sell the weapons on the black market while remaining undetected by her superiors. She reaches out to one of the players in the party and asks for a meeting with the team in order to put her plan into action. Of course, she doesn’t really have a plan. She just knows that she’ll be able to have the blasters where the team needs them when they’re ready to pick them up. She’ll direct them to the Alien Quarter to find information that will help them plan this heist. However, if she is discovered at any point, she will turn on the party, even if it means giving them up while they’re still in the facility.

Leyhek Kapuna - A green-skinned Twi’lek with one normal, greenish-brown eye, and one that is milky white with some sort of injury. The skin surrounding that eye displays some heavy pockmark-like scarring, suggesting some kind of accident (or torture). He’s a small-time spice dealer that hangs out in the dark back alleys and seedy cantinas that dot Il Avali. He may have something that he needs taken care of, and the party might be the ones to do that for him. If he’s satisfied with their work, he’ll sell some of his “specialty” items to the players. These items could prove useful in trying to carry out Vey’s plan, or one of their own.

Items he might have:

Poisons

Electronic lock breaker

Slicer gear

Comm scrambler

Various types of spice, death sticks, etc.

Location: an alcove in an alley behind a meat processing plant on the Industrial edge of the alien quarter

Side quest: Rough up some thugs that owe him some money. According to Leyhek, this group has recently come into possession of a small number of Imperial uniforms, which could be used as disguises for getting into the BlasTech factory. The thugs are located in a run-down apartment on the fifth floor of a building in the Alien Quarter.

These thugs are in the employ of Varja Kuyinh, the local Arkanian crime lord. Small time, but still dangerous. This won’t come up until the party tries to leave the planet. She will lead her henchpeople on an assault on the team right before they get to the Krayt Fang, which might draw some Imperial attention. If they escape, I don’t think she’ll let them go that easily.

Ioma Radoon - the Ithorian owner of Ioma’s Emporium. Her size can make her seem rather intimidating, but she’s actually one of the kindest beings in the galaxy. However, her kindness should not be mistaken for friendliness with the Empire. Her prices are fair, and she’ll even give discounts to people that help her out in various ways. Always wears a bright yellow jumpsuit for some reason. Her son, Luda, works for her in the shop. He’s quiet, but kind like his mother.

Location: inside her store

Just a general store where players can buy pretty much anything that isn’t rare/black market.

Because of her straight nature, she doesn’t know much about the underworld of Il Avali, and can’t help the players much in that regard.

Side quest: Track down a speeder full of medical supplies that was bound for her shop. If the players find it successfully, she’ll share some supplies with them and give them a discount on other purchases (of most items), as well as let them have use of the speeder to do with what they will, as long as they return it mostly in one piece.

Unaw Tharn - Bith owner/bartender of The Thirsty Gizka, a run down, yet comfortable, cantina in the Alien Quarter. It’s generally a quiet place, and Unaw is a good person to go to for information. He’s the type that knows a little about a lot of things, so he certainly won’t be giving away any major secrets. His lips aren’t the loosest, however, and he responds more positively to nonhumans.

No side quests, but is able to give some useful info

Knows where to find all of these other NPCs, except Roshana

PLACES:

The Lux Lounge - this is where the group was told to meet the anonymous Imperial. It’s a VERY upscale lounge, and the group will probably get a few weird looks. It’s dimly lit, and there’s a stage on the far wall where a local singer is performing, a bar on the left wall, and the rest of the medium-large room is taken up with tables. It’s fairly crowded, but there are some free tables (Vey is at a table in the far right corner next to the stage). As the group walks in, everyone in their immediate vicinity turns their head towards the door with looks of disgust, but the team gets the impression that these (almost entirely human) patrons are used to spaceport riffraff wandering in. Seiji and Niduma especially get some very weird looks. The bartender will refuse to serve them, but the bouncers won’t move to throw them out if they don’t cause any trouble. If they do, Roshana will find them outside and be furious. But the conversation will continue from there.

Possible encounters:

If the group causes trouble, the bouncers will throw them out. They’re Herglics, so don’t fuck with them.

If the group gets violent, there are plenty of Imperial Army troopers that patrol the streets and will definitely hear any kind of commotion and get involved. A group of three will show up, and if the group hasn’t vacated by then, a group of four.

If this happens, Roshana will contact them through the Krayt Fang’s comm.

Ioma’s Emporium - a fairly small, but very well-stocked general store on the Alien Quarter edge of the commercial district (think Ollivander’s from HP). It’s cramped, but somehow cozy as well. Ioma and Luda have a little bit of everything, and sell most any non-black market/non-weaponry/non-rare item the party wants to buy. The walls are lined with all different manner of electronics and knickknacks, and it doesn’t look like they could stock anything else if they tried. There’s a counter as you walk in, and a door behind that counter that opens to reveal the staircase that goes to the Ithorians’ upstairs apartment. The apartment is very basic and contains little more than appliances and necessities. (I certainly hope no one tries to come up here.)

The Thirsty Gizka - a large cantina in the Alien Quarter. It’s generally pretty quiet, but there are some rougher types that lurk in the shadowy areas, so the party could get into trouble. It’s dimly lit with brightly-colored signs and the soft glow of holovid displays showing various types of sports from around the galaxy. The displays are mounted on pillars around the space. It has a circular bar in the middle of the room, with tables on the same level as it spread out throughout the. There is also a slightly-raised tier of booths that go around the outside of the circular room.

Possible encounters:

A group of three Aqualish thugs, if the group provokes them enough. One will bump into a party member as they’re leaving the bar after talking to Unaw.

The Apartment with Varja’s Thugs - pretty much what you’d expect. It’s a dingy, dimly-lit three-room apartment. It opens into a medium-sized main room with a bed in the corner, and a couch facing a holo display on the far wall. To the left is a small kitchen, and a refresher is off to the right.

Possible encounters:

Three street toughs. These are Varja’s thugs, and they’re in possession of some Imperial uniforms that the party can use to sneak into the BlasTech facility. These uniforms will need to be “liberated,” and the best way to do that is probably to kill all of the thugs. However, if word gets back to Varja, there’s gonna be some problems later on. However, the disguises come with access keycards that can give the party basic access to the factory.

The BlasTech Facility - here it is. The big score. This is a fairly sprawling complex with very tight security. There are many buildings, but only three of any real importance: the admin office (where Roshana will be), the main factory building (which is HUGE; four stories tall), and the shipping/receiving warehouse, which is where our party will need to get. Luckily for them, the Empire does lots of civilian contracting (under close Imperial watch, of course) to move their equipment around Il Avali in order to minimize the attention being drawn to it, so as long as the group has at least one member in disguise with a keycard, they’ll be able to access the shipping warehouse with their speeder truck. However, getting elsewhere in the facility will require some degree of social engineering. Outright combat will almost definitely get the group killed, as there are many, many Imperial Army troopers, as well as legit stormtroopers that patrol the area. In reality, the pickup should be fairly uneventful.

Possible encounters:

Two squads of four Imperial Army troopers. If the group is discovered inside the facility, this will be the first response team. However, if the group takes more than ten rounds to win/vacate the area, then the next group of Imps moves in…

...a squad of four Imperial Stormtroopers. These guys hit like tanks, so the party will want to get out before they show up. Make sure to give them some kind of warning so they know that their shit will get rocked.

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