#and about characters who hate authority turning into cops

[chaoticfandomthot]

"But it's canon!" Not to me. Not if it's him.

[lonelyhobi]

The Seventh Precinct 01

summary. As a newly transferred Detective you join into the Seventh Precinct, Expecting professionalism, structure, and a chance to prove yourself. What you actually get instead is one scooter crash, a group of the most handsome detectives in the department , and Jeon Jungkook—tattooed, cocky, annoyingly hot, and apparently allergic to you.

pairing: jeon jungkook x f!reader

genre/warnings: coworkers x lovers ,slight rivals to lovers, budding romance, crack, slow burn, smut (eventual)

chapter warnings: Chaos, character intros, Jimin being a pain in Jungkook's ass, Jungkook being a pain in the ass in general, where's yoongi?

word count: 6.1 k

authors notes: hiiii! So I've been rewatching Brooklyn 99 and forgot how much I loved the show. I decided to make a Bts version and hope you guys enjoy. this is just chapter one and im really excited to share and let me know what you guys think xx

extras:

Episode One: New Badge, Who Dis?

< previous episode next episode >

“Keep the change.” You say as you grab your coffee before you continue your way to your first day of work at a new precinct. Luck was definitely in your favor as you got signed to the 7th precinct. One of the best in the department. 

You smoothed down your jacket as you excitedly made your way to the building. There were so many great things about this team. There weren’t enough good things that could be said about Captain Kim Namjoon. He was one of the youngest in the police force to make such a high rank. You could not wait to learn from him and the other members of the tight ship he ran. 

As you take the elevator upstairs you have a moment of peace and quiet when you try to calm your nerves. Nothing could prepare you for what you were going to experience at the 7th, but you would do your best to prove yourself to the team and the Captain. 

Taking a step you immediately notice an oddly calm bullpen. About two steps in you’re stopped by a beautiful man in a grey button down shirt and a black slacks. His boots definitely cost more than your rent.

Before you can muster anything out he gives you a once over before breaking out into a mischievous smile, which could be a good or bad one you weren’t sure yet. 

“New blood?” he asks, seeming to already know. As you’re about to nod he speaks again.

“Well officer, I’m more than happy to show you the ropes. Let me guess. You got transferred here because your last precinct couldn't handle all this.” He says throwing in a wink which you hate is extremely attractive. 

Being in a male dominated profession was tough, especially as a cop. You had your fair share of creeps hitting on you in the workplace, but someone as hot as this guy you hadn’t experienced. 

Before you’re able to answer, a man comes over rolling his eyes at Detective Flirty. He was also extremely handsome and you were starting to think they purposely kept all the hot cops in one precinct given that the Captain himself was gorgeous too.

“Jimin, don’t scare the newbie. We need her to stay at least until lunch.” He says stepping in. 

“I was welcoming her, with a little flavor.” Detective Flirty who you now know as Jimin smirks.

“Well I think we need to unseason you” The nameless guy says rolling his eyes. As Jimin's own widened, turning.

“Captain! We need a new precinct orientation video. I suggest one starring me. Shirtless. For transparency of course.” He says playfully as he turns to shoot you another wink. 

From your point you can see the Captain pinching the bridge of his nose and shaking his head as he focuses back on the papers at his desk. 

“He loves me. That’s just how he flirts—with... boundaries.” he says to you as the other guy gives out his own sigh as Jimin walks over to his desk. 

“Sorry about him. Well actually about everyone. I’m Sergeant Jung Hoseok. I read your file. Very Impressive Detective L/N. We're extremely excited to have you joining us here at the seventh.” The Sergeant smiles brightly at you and you can’t help but feel a wave of calm enter you as you smile back.

“Thank you Sergeant I’m very honored to have been assigned here. I’ve heard such great things about your squad. I look forward to working with your team of dedicated proffesi-” as soon as you're about to finish your sentence you're cut off by a man riding a scooter into the room. Making both you and Hoseok jump. 

The man clutching a manilla folder through teeth as he yells "Coming through!” stopping skillfully at what you suppose is his desk.

“Jungkook, I already told you, no more racing Jin on scooters. Last time Namjoon tripped on it and flew into the file cabinet, remember?” Hoseok states, staring at the guy as you took a second to assess him. 

He was wearing jeans that seemed to hug him well, a black button up shirt that was rolled up at the sleeves exposing a tattooed arm, along with a lip and eyebrow piercing to match his unpredictable mode of transportation. You had to force yourself to look away as you thought to yourself. Great, he’s just my type.

The guy, Jungkook, you deduced stares at his Sergeant with wide eyes, looking more like a deer in headlights as he quickly speaks holding the folder “This is official precinct business. Very important. Definitely not racing Jin again"

As if on cue another scooter speeds in this one not stopping gracefully as another model like man flings off of it and into an already dented file cabinet. Hoseok and Jungkook flinch as the guy falls.

Jimin from this desk doesn’t even look up from his phone as he says “Hey watch out, file cabinet.”

“You guys are not making a good first impression.” Hoseok groans as he stares at the group, the man you assume is Jin standing up holding his back.

“Us? Yoongi’s asleep half the day and you never say anything!” Jungkook complains, his lips pouting.

It then that you all turn to the corner desk and realize that there was in fact a person there who was sleeping at their desk. 

“Yoongi’s a genius, Jungkook. You might have more solves than anyone in the precinct but he’s… scary” he mutters as Jungkook shakes his head.

“Yeah, well speak for them. I never make a bad impression, right newbie?” Jimin states from his smirking at you once again. 

At this Jungkook turns to finally take a look at you. Your eyes meet for a brief second before he’s addressing Jimin. “Seriously, Jimin? It’s 9:12 in the morning.”

“Oh, sorry. Didn’t realize flirting had business hours.” Jimin responds with a faux sweet tone. 

You hear what sounds like a windshield wiper slowly dying, and realize it’s the guy who just crashed—Jin, you’re guessing—groaning dramatically as he rises from behind the dented cabinet.

“I’m fine in case anyone was wondering!" he says, way too loudly. “I meant to do that. It was… tactical.”

Hoseok mutters something about filing an injury report.

Jin dusts off his pants, straightens up like he didn’t just eat laminate flooring, and turns to face you with a dazzling smile.

“Hi,” he says, offering a hand like he’s about to hand you a rose on The Bachelor. “I’m Kim Seokjin—lead forensic analyst, certified genius, and visual king of this precinct.”

He pauses. Blinks slowly. “You’re new. I would’ve remembered your face.”

“Detective Y/N L/N,” you reply, shaking his hand.

“Lovely name,” he says. “Do you model? If not… have you considered it? I happen to own a ring light.”

“Okay,” Hoseok cuts in, rubbing his temples. “Let’s maybe back off the office flirting for five minutes? She hasn’t even seen the breakroom yet let alone needs to write an HR report.”

“I’ll give her the tour,” Jin offers quickly.

“You say that every time someone remotely attractive transfers in,” Jungkook mutters under his breath.

Jin doesn’t miss a beat. “Jealousy doesn’t look good on you, Jeon.”

“Neither does the road rash on you Hyung,” Jungkook fires back, jerking his head toward the cabinet.

“These cheekbones soften any impact,” Jin replies, snapping an imaginary fan open.

Sergeant Hoseok claps once. Loudly. Like a preschool teacher trying to regain control after juice time.

“Okay! I think that’s enough chaos for one morning. No more scooters. No more flirting. No more file cabinet casualties.” Before he turns to you with an exhausted smile. “Sorry about the intro. Things aren’t usually this—”

As if on cue a door that seems to lead to a courtyard opens up with far too much enthusiasm.

Another man who is way too beautiful to be a detective walks in with a dog? 

A golden retriever follows him as he takes a seat at the desk next to Jimin.

Everyone freezes staring at the man.

Hoseok breaks the silence first. “I—Taehyung. Why is there a dog?”

“This is Justice,” Taehyung says, as if it explains everything. “She’s our new emotional support consultant.”

“We don’t have an emotional support dog program.”

“Not with that attitude.” He states before nodding over to you. “Who’s that?” He questions as Justice walks over to you sniffing your shoes before looking up.

You blink. Justice blinks back.

“She passed the vibe check,” Taehyung nods as he calls over Justice, Jimin happily squatting to pet her head.

Hoseok opens his mouth. Closes it. And then pinches the bridge of his nose.“Namjoon’s gonna have an aneurysm.” he groans. 

“Well I would apologize again but I think you would just get tired of me repeating that all day. So once again I’m Hoseok, Jimin, that’s Taehyung, thi-” 

“And Justice” Taehyung smiles at Hoseok brightly.

“And Justice” Hoseok sighs as he continues to point out the squad. “Jin, Yoongi, and Jungkook.”

You nod politely as Hoseok speaks up again. “Everyone this is Detective Y/N L/N. She comes highly recommended and I hope you are all welcoming but not too welcoming” he cuts himself off pointing to Jimin who holds his hands up in defence.

“Your desk is right here in front of Jungkook’s” He says pointing to the empty spot. “Funny enough Kook, Y/N here had the highest clearance rate at her old precinct like you here. Hopefully she keeps you on your toes!” He smiles tapping the desk. “Well I’m going to let you get settled” he says before disappearing away.

You're left seated at your desk as you feel Jungkook eyeing you suspiciously. You look up to see his gaze “Yes?” 

“Yes?” you ask, raising an eyebrow.

Jungkook leans back in his chair, spinning a pen between his fingers, eyes still locked on you.

“You just don’t look like someone with the highest clearance rate,” he says finally.

You blink. “What’s that supposed to mean?” You brace yourself hoping your hot desk mate isn’t a sexist asshole.

“I don’t know. I expected someone… older. Meaner. More jaded.” Thank God he didn’t say woman.

“I can be jaded,” you reply. “Give me a few hours.”

That earns you the tiniest curve of a smirk from him.

“Kinda weird that Hoseok put you right in front of me, though,” Jungkook adds. “Maybe he thinks we’ll become best friends.”

“Or maybe he just needed to keep you in line.”

“Please,” he scoffs. “I’m a model employee.”

“You literally crashed into a file cabinet five minutes ago.”

“Tactical maneuver,” he says smoothly, repeating Jin’s earlier excuse. “Besides, I didn’t crash. I landed. You should’ve seen the form.”

“Uh-huh.”

He’s watching you again, but it’s different now. Less sizing-you-up, more… curious. Maybe even impressed.

“Where’d you transfer from?” he asks.

“17th precinct. West side.”

“Oof. Isn’t that where that one detective got arrested for running an illegal llama ring?”

“Allegedly,” you say, deadpan. “And for the record, the llamas were rescued.”

He grins—finally—and you hate how cute it is.

“Okay,” he says. “Maybe this won’t be so bad.”

“Working with me?”

“No,” he says, eyes flicking to your desk. “Having someone to beat.”

You lean back in your chair, mirroring him. “Funny. I was thinking the same thing.”

As Jimin stares at the two of you raising an eyebrow as he looks around the room as if to say “is anyone seeing this?”

Jungkook holds your stare as you look at him confused.

“Just trying to figure you out.”

“You could try introducing yourself like a normal person instead.” You reason, trying not to get distracted at the way his muscles look bigger when his arms are crossed.

“You already know my name. Everyone yelled it when I landed.”

“True. But I like to hear people say it themselves.” You say raising an eyebrow at him.

He blinks. Then his lips form a smirk. “Jungkook.”

“Y/N.”

“Cute.”

“The name or me?” Immediately you kick yourself in the brain but school your features not willing to show him your embarrassment. You didn’t mean to say that out loud.

A pause that feels like eternity passes between the two of you. You regret everything. His eyes narrow slightly, mouth twitching into a half-smile.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” he says, clearly enjoying himself.

“God,” a voice cuts in. “If the sexual tension gets any thicker, I’m gonna need goggles.”

You both glance to the side. As Jimin, still seated diagonally, chin in his hand, is watching you like it’s the best Netflix original he’s ever seen.

“Don’t mind me,” he adds, sipping from his cup. “I just live here.”

“Don’t you have paperwork?” Jungkook mutters.

“I do,” Jimin says, flipping open a file. “But your new little work crush is way more interesting.”

“There’s no crush,” you both say in unison.

“Sure. Tell that to the way you’re both mirroring each other’s body language.” At that you and Jungkook immediately uncross your arms and sit differently.

Jimin just sips louder.

You glance over at Jungkook—he’s looking down now, fiddling with his pen. For a split second, he looks almost… shy? But then—

“Don’t worry,” he says without looking up, “Jimin thinks anyone who breathes near someone is flirting.”

“No,” Jimin says. “I think you’re flirting. And I think she’s good at it.” He winks at you. “Don’t let him get away with acting cool. He’s a closet romantic.”

“Am not.”

“Are too. I saw the playlist labeled heartbreak gym mix.”

You barely stifle a laugh as Jungkook throws a paperclip at Jimin.

Just as you're about to retort, a familiar clunk sounds from the corner. You look up.

Namjoon’s blinds creak open like a dramatic soap opera scene. He opens his door with the energy of a man who planned this speech all weekend.

“Gather up, detectives,” Namjoon says, adjusting his tie. “It’s time for our Monday motivational address.”

Jimin whispers, “Oh god, here we go.” Jungkook mutters, “Brace yourself.”

You sit up straighter, smoothing your blouse and aligning your notebook like it’s an FBI interview. Jungkook watches this with mild amusement.

“Someone wants a gold star,” he whispers.

“I happen to admire structure and competent leadership,” you reply, beaming toward Namjoon like a golden retriever discovering God.

Jungkook rolls his eyes. “You’re like… a human syllabus.”

“And you’re a red flag with abs.”

“You noticed my abs?”

“You literally rolled in wearing a sleeve tattoo and a smirk. You were begging to be noticed.”

“Damn,” Jimin says under his breath. “This is gonna be fun.” 

Hoseok appears again standing next to your desk about to ask you something as the final member of the 7th walks out of his office. 

Namjoon stands at the front of the room, clasping his hands behind his back. The room falls quiet (mostly because Hoseok gave everyone the look).

“Team,” Namjoon begins. “This precinct, the Seventh, is more than just desks and badges. It’s a system. A living, breathing organism. Like… a river. A river of justice. Constantly flowing, cutting through stone, never backing down from erosion.”

Jungkook, next to you now, leans in and whispers out the corner of his mouth: “Did he just call us moist rocks?”

You shush him immediately, scribbling a note on your notepad with wide, focused eyes.

“A river…” Namjoon continues, stepping forward like he’s addressing the UN, “…needs structure. Banks to hold it in. A foundation. That’s you. That’s us. We are the riverbanks of this city.”

Namjoon, now holding a coffee cup like a philosophical prop: “If one of us breaks down, the whole system collapses. We are interlocked. We must be alert. Sharp. Aware of the emotional landscapes of our fellow officers. Because justice isn’t just about facts—it’s about feeling.” 

You can’t help but stare at your eloquent captain as if he put the stars in the sky unaware of the way Jungkook was staring at you as if you were deranged for enjoying these insane speeches.

“Okay now he’s just freestyling,” Jungkook says under his breath.

You turn and whisper toward Jungkook with a sweet, smug smile, and whisper “God, he’s so inspiring. I feel like I should go donate blood or something.”

“You have a crush on him,” Jungkook accuses, grinning.

“No I don’t,” you lie. “I just respect intellectual men with leadership presence and good forearm veins.”

“That’s the most specific way I’ve ever heard someone say ‘yes’ in my life.”

“You’re just intimidated because he uses metaphors and you use a scooter.”

“Yeah? Well, my scooter never put anyone to sleep.”

“Namjoon’s voice is soothing,” you say, crossing your arms. “Like an audiobook. For people who care about justice.”

“Oh my god,” Jungkook says, clearly trying not to laugh. “You’ve printed a whole narrative in your head.”

“Some of us like competent men. Sorry if that’s a foreign concept.”

He scoffs. “You like competent men who deliver justice monologues and alphabetize their snacks.”

Namjoon finishes with a bold declaration of “Let’s be the river, detectives,” and everyone claps out of respect and/or confusion.

You clap like it’s a Grammy speech. Jungkook side-eyes you with a smirk.

From the back, Jimin fake-wipes a tear and whispers, “I just love when the team comes together.”

Namjoon sets down his metaphor-laden coffee cup on Jungkook’s desk and smooths the front of his cardigan like he just gave a TED Talk on leadership and river metaphors. Before he turns directly to you.

“And you must be Detective L/N,” he says warmly, extending a hand.

You freeze.

This is it. The moment. You knew he’d talk to you eventually, but not this soon. You were not prepared. Your palms are suddenly sweating like they’re in an interrogation room.

“Yes! Hi—Yes, sir! Captain. Namjoon. Captain Namjoon. Sir. Uh—Captain. Of course. That’s you. I know that.”

Standing you reach out to shake his hand but accidentally knock over your pen in the process. Then your notebook. Then your dignity.

Namjoon politely pretends not to notice. “It’s good to have you here,” he says. “I’ve heard great things from your former precinct.”

“I’ve heard great things from… yours too!” you say brightly. “Big fan. Of, uh. Leadership. Your… leadership. Big fan of leadership in general, really.” You can’t help but ramble in the presence of your new boss and your face flushes.

Jungkook—from his desk—is straight-up choking on a sip of water. He turns his chair so he can fully enjoy the crash and burn.

Namjoon, still endlessly patient, smiles like a proud dad watching a toddler struggle to walk in shoes three sizes too big. “Well, if there’s anything you need, don’t hesitate to ask.”

“Absolutely. Questions. Asking. That’s something I do. Not in a bad way. Like, smart questions. Okay.” You spit out not being able to stop the awkwardness and need to stop talking.

He gives you a nod and heads toward his office again, probably to pretend like he didn’t just experience the strangest introduction to a member of his team.

You stand there, blinking, trying not to internally combust and gather your thoughts before you’re interrupted.

“Big fan of leadership?” Jungkook snorts behind you, voice dripping with amusement.

You turn slowly, fixing him with a look. “Shut up.”

“You looked like you were about to salute him and cry at the same time.” Jungkook says as he smiles clearly enjoying your suffering.

“I panicked! He has a presence!” You say in defense.

“So do courtroom sketches, doesn’t mean you need to fall in love with them.”

You flop into your chair with a groan, your hands coming to cradle the sides of your head.

Jungkook leans forward on his desk, grinning. “Don’t worry. You nailed it. Super smooth. Extremely normal. I’m sure he didn’t notice the part where you said his name like five times.”

“You’re enjoying this too much.” You say, eyeing him from between your fingers.

“I mean, a little,” he shrugs, still smiling. “But also…” He pauses. His eyes scan you for just a second too long.

“It was kinda cute.”

You glance up at that but he’s already looking away. Just as Hoseok's cheery voice cuts through the questioning gaze you're giving Jungkook. “Alright, team! Back to work. Jin, can you give Detective L/N the grand tour?”

“With pleasure,” Jin says, already adjusting his collar like he’s about to show you Buckingham Palace.

But before Jin approaches, already extending his arm to guide you, Hoseok squints across the room.

“Wait… has anyone seen Yoongi?”

Everyone looks around. Yoongi’s chair is mysteriously empty. Again.

“He was just here,” Taehyung says, confused.

Jungkook shrugs. “He’s like a cat. He just… disappears.”

“Maybe he’s in the evidence room?” Hoseok offers.

“Or maybe he’s in a submarine under Seoul. Tracking black-market uranium with just a Nokia flip phone and a dream.” Jimin reasons as you stare in confusion. Jungkook takes in your expression before explaining. 

“At some point Yoongi just disappears to work on some secret project. We’re not really sure what it is so we kinda just make shit up until we figure it out.” he shrugs as you nod.

“He might be coding the next Google in a janitor’s closet. I heard typing sounds.” Taehyung says.

Jin turns to you, “Last time he vanished like this, we got a fax from Interpol. No explanation. Just a smiley face.”

Hoseok sighs like this is completely normal. “Okay. Well. If anyone sees him, tell him I still need the forensics report from Friday.”

“Good luck with that,” Jungkook mutters.

“You’re just mad he’s cooler than you,” Jimin adds.

“No one’s cooler than me,” Jungkook argues.

“The scooter says otherwise.”

You watch this all unfold with the kind of bewilderment that’s either mild shock or falling in love with your new job. Possibly both.

Jin claps once to bring you back to attention. “Anyway, ready for the tour? Not only am I the most senior detective here, I’m also the most handsome. That means you get the premium tour.” 

You glance at Jimin, who silently mouths, he’s serious.

Nodding you follow behind him as he leads the way.

Jin points to the only door across the bullpen, “Namjoon’s office is here—approach with caution, bring a notepad, and prepare to feel like you’re disappointing your parents even when he’s complimenting you.”

“Noted.” You say as you stare admirably at the Captain who seems to be fixing or ruining a Newton’s Cradle he has for some reason.

Jin walks you out of the bullpen towards some doors off to the side.

“This is the break room. We don’t talk about what happened with the microwave last month. Jimin’s banned from reheating seafood, Taehyung is banned from kombucha experiments, and Jungkook is banned from protein anything.”

“Did he cause an explosion?” You say cautiously.

“He caused… a situation.”

You eye him strangely, still not really knowing what to make of this crew considering they were supposed to be the most efficient squad in the department but really just seemed to be a bunch of kids at daycare. One detective in particular with the tattoos and the eyes you just couldn’t stop thinking back too.

Continuing the tour Jin points to a caged room “Evidence lock-up’s this way, but good luck getting the key. Yoongi keeps it in some kind of cursed vault that only opens for him and God.”

“So Yoongi’s like… always doing top secret stuff?”

“Either that or he’s just really committed to the bit. We still don’t know if he’s actually employed.” Jin shrugs as if that makes perfect sense. 

You pass a bulletin board where someone’s pinned a post-it that says “Who is Yoongi?” and under it, another that says “Deadass. Where does he go?” Jin laughs adding a simple “Jimin and Tae” as if that also just makes sense. And it kind of does.

As you make your way back walking past the bullpen you walk out into the courtyard door that Taehyung had entered through and see a staircase. Jin motions for you to follow with a nod of his head. 

“And this… is the roof. Where we come to scream into the void or pretend we don’t hear Hoseok yelling at us through the windows.”

The city skyline opens up in front of you. It’s weirdly peaceful.

“Pretty great view,” you admit.

“Yeah. It’s also the only place Tae’s allowed to test his theories about pigeons being secret government drones.”

“That’s not a joke, is it?” You ask, staring at him.

Jin smiles. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

I take a deep breath as I grasp the railing closing my eyes for a second. I don’t see the way Jin’s eyes soften but I hear the kindness in his voice. “How are you feeling?” I crack open my eyes turning to face him. “Honestly? Scared.”

He nods as if telling you to continue.

“Well. Joining a team isn’t easy. Especially one like this one. You guys seem to have the perfect flow and logic to the madness, I guess you could say.” My hands come up to wiggle around in circles as I stare down the steps. 

Jin's snort breaks through the silence. “Look, I get it. It was all of our first day once. It’s nerve wrecking especially coming into such a close team. But there’s a reason you’re here and we really are excited for you to be a part of our family. You wouldn’t have been sent here if you weren’t a good detective. So just relax and enjoy. You seem like the very high strung type.” He says his arms resting on your shoulders. “Perfect for Namjoon.” He laughs. “And Jungkook,” he adds.

You roll your eyes slightly. “I am not high strung. And I also don't date cops. Or people who work two feet from me” Your statement causes Jin’s own eyebrows to raise. 

“So we weren’t just having a moment?” He asks, confused, making you giggle. “Moments over” You laugh walking towards the steps. 

“So it was a moment?” He calls out after you while you walk down the stairs and back to the bullpen.

Jungkook watches from his desk as Jin leads you away, one hand already gesturing wildly about something dramatic. You’re smiling. Listening. Laughing at one of his jokes.

Jungkook clicks his pen. Then clicks it again.

“You’re going to break that,” Jimin says without looking up from his phone.

“I’m not doing anything.”

“You’re definitely staring at her.”

“I was staring at Jin,” Jungkook deadpans. “I find him inspiring.”

Hoseok strolls over with a coffee. “Alright, what’s the early consensus, gentlemen? What do we think of the new detective?” Jungkook asks changing the subject but keeping it on you.

“Bright. Organized. Slightly terrified of Namjoon, which is the correct reaction,” Hoseok says, nodding.

“Great hair. Bold mouth. Totally has a crush on Jungkook.” Jimin smirks staring at the youngest detective.

“She does not,” Jungkook says too fast.

“Says the guy who had heart eyes when she nerded out over crime stats.” Jimin retorts as Hoseok hides his smile by taking a sip.

“I didn’t have heart eyes. I was blinking.”

“Aggressively. Like a Victorian man seeing an ankle for the first time,” Jimin adds.

Taehyung finally looks up from sketching Namjoon with a wizard hat. “She smells like lemon and productivity. She’s good for the energy.”

Jungkook groans. “You guys are literally making things up now.”

Hoseok sips. “We’re just saying, if you weren’t interested, you wouldn’t be acting like someone kicked your scooter every time she talks to someone else.”

“I’m not—”

“You are.”

Jimin smirks. “You’re threatened.”

Jungkook crosses his arms. “By Jin? Please.”

“By her. You’re threatened by how much you like her already.”

Jungkook doesn’t answer. He just clicks his pen again watching as you walk back into the room Jin hot on your trail. Jungkook was the best detective in the 7th. He was used to being the star of the show, everyone marveling at his solves and doting on him as the youngest and best. But since you got here this morning everyone’s been talking about how you’re soooo great and pretty. It was honestly starting to annoy him. Not because he was jealous but because Teahyung was just as pretty and everyone seemed to brush over that when you entered. He wasn’t gonna let you be a distraction no matter how cute you really were.

You walk back into the bullpen with Jin still mid-sentence about why your zodiac signs are probably compatible.

“Anyway, I’m a Sagittarius, but don’t hold that against me,” he finishes dramatically.

You laugh lightly as you reach your desk. “No promises.”

Jin gives you a double finger-gun and spins on his heel toward the break room.

As you sit, you look up—and of course, Jungkook’s already staring. Again.

“So,” he says, leaning back in his chair with a little too much casual confidence. “How was the grand tour? Did Jin show you all his mirror selfies in chronological order?”

“No,” you say, pulling out your notepad. “Just the top 10. There was a slideshow.”

He snorts. “Sounds about right.”

You glance up. “Are you always this charming, or is it just me who gets the special treatment?”

“Oh, I’m super charming to everyone who tries to steal my thunder on their first day.”

You raise an eyebrow. “Ah. There it is. The Thunder.”

“I am the thunder,” he says, gesturing vaguely like that explains anything.

“Okay, Thor. Relax.”

He leans forward, resting his elbows on the desk between you. “Don’t get too comfortable. Hoseok might be impressed with your numbers, but this place isn’t just about solve rates. It’s about instincts. Experience. Vibes.”

You tilt your head. “Did you just say vibes like it’s a valid policing metric?”

“It absolutely is. Ask Tae.”

“Oh, I did. He told me my aura was yellow.”

Jungkook smiles, almost despite himself. “That sounds right.”

“You don’t even know what it means.”

“Doesn’t matter. It suits you.” He shrugs eyeing you from his desk across yours.

You pause, caught a little off guard. It’s the first thing he’s said all day that didn’t sound like a challenge. Before you can respond, he adds quickly:

“Yellow’s annoying, right? That’s probably why.”

You throw a pen at him. He dodges it. Barely.

“You’re lucky I don’t report assault on your first day,” he says with a grin.

“You’re lucky I haven’t quit already,” you fire back.

“Oh, please. You love it here.”

You look around the bullpen—Taehyung is humming to Justice, Jimin is flirting with himself in the reflective window, Hoseok is talking to a vending machine like it’s his therapist. You smile. “Yeah… I think I kind of do.”

Jungkook catches that smile and doesn’t say anything.

But he definitely clicks his pen again.

The day continues to flow with mild interruption. Surprisingly, everyone seems to have actually gotten to work. Jungkook typing away, while Taeyung set off to the interrogation room with Justice as his consultant, Jimin was also working on some files, and Jin was typing away. Yoongi, the only detective you hadn’t really met, was still nowhere to be found.

You sat at your desk completing the last of your first day paperwork that the Sergeant had left with you. As Namjoon steps out of his office with a clipboard in hand and a calm but commanding tone.

“I need someone to check in on a community tip—possible illegal vending operation on 8th and Garson. Shouldn’t be anything serious, just follow-up and documentation.”

You perk up immediately.

“I’ll take it!”

Namjoon smiles. “Thank you, Detective L/N.”

Jungkook mutters, just loud enough for the bullpen to hear: “Of course she volunteers. Teacher’s pet energy.”

“You’re just mad someone raised their hand faster than you.” Hoseok chuckles from his own desk.

Namjoon looks up. “Jungkook, accompany her. Make sure it’s not a repeat of the churro stand grenade incident.”

You blink. “Grenade incident?”

Jungkook groans. “It was one time and it was not a real grenade.”

“Still. Go.” Namjoon says in a no nonsense tone that has you staring at him with admiration and your crush fully showing.

Jungkook stands with a dramatic sigh. “Fine. Let’s go solve the case of the black-market mangoes. But I drive.” 

You glare at him as he steps past you already heading towards the elevators. Following you both head down to grab a car and head to the scene.

Sitting in the passengers you can’t help but feel excited as you take on your first job on the 7th. But Jungkook is sitting next to you puffing like a petulant child.

“You don’t have to act like I dragged you out of the building,” you say, glancing over.

“You kind of did.” 

“You’re the one who got smart and now we’re both here.” You say looking at his face making note of the little mole under his lip.

“I was making a valid observation about your excessive need for praise.” He snorts glancing sideways at you, feeling his neck heat up under your stare.

“Wow. It’s almost like I’m a functioning adult who respects her superior officer.”

“Namjoon isn’t God.”

“I heard you begged to join the 7th after you met him” I say, raising my eyebrow with a smirk.

Jungkook squints. “…I didn’t beg.”

You can’t help but laugh lightly, shaking your head. The rest of the ride was silent but you were still eager. You two pull up to the scene. It’s a harmless fruit cart. The vendor is apologetic. He didn’t know he needed a permit. You both take down the info, issue a warning. It’s all routine.

But somehow… fun.

Jungkook tosses you the clipboard as you walk back to the car. “Okay, not the most thrilling case, but I’ll give you this—you didn’t cry or beg me to do the paperwork, so that’s a win.”

“I’m not scared of you, Jungkook.” you roll your eyes as you stand by the car.

“You should be. I’m terrifying.” Jungkook says stopping in front of you.

“More like mildly annoying.”

He steps closer, smirking. “Think you could out-detective me?”

“Easily.” You laugh slightly as you cross your arms.

“Wanna bet?”

You pause. “Bet what?”

Jungkook leans forward, eyes glinting with mischief. “Solve race. End of the week. “Loser has to take the winner on the perfect date.” 

You blink. “Wait—so you want to take me on a date?”

“Oh, no no no,” he says quickly, grinning like a menace. “When I win, I’m planning the worst, most embarrassing date of your life. I’m talking matching outfits, a clown-themed restaurant, interpretive dance. And you have to pay for all of it.”

“You’re psychotic.” You marvel at him, your own eyes hiding your amusement.

“I’m inspired.”

You drop your arms, smirking. “You’re really that confident?”

“You should be asking if I’m that cruel.” He states standing almost too close to you.

You hold out your pinky. “You’re on.”

He links it. “Prepare to suffer.”

You smile. “You wish.” spinning on your heel and head toward the car, hips swaying just enough to make Jungkook blink.

Jungkook stands there for a second too long, watching you.

His smirk fades slightly.

Wait… what the hell did he just do?

He jogs to his side of the car before he can think about it too hard.

Or admit to himself that he’s actually hoping he loses.

The bullpen hums in the background—phones ringing, someone yelling about missing yogurt, and Tae loudly asking Justice if aliens are real.

You’re in the break room, dipping your tea bag into your mug slowly, almost hypnotically.

Your eyes drift toward Jungkook. He’s laughing at something Hoseok said, head thrown back, sleeves rolled up, dimples out and fully weaponized.

You don’t even realize you’re smiling.

“God, he’s cute,” you mutter softly.

“Huh. Figures.”

You jump, the mug nearly slipping from your hands.

“What the —” You turn around, heart racing.

A man stands just inside the doorway, casually biting into a rice cake. Dark hoodie, tousled hair, sleepy expression.

You squint at him. “Who the hell are you?”

He raises an eyebrow, clearly amused. “Yoongi.”

Your jaw drops slightly. “You speak?”

“Sometimes.” He takes another bite. “Usually when people admit out loud they think Jungkook’s cute.”

“I— You— That was—”

He turns to leave, already done with the conversation.

“Wait, where did you even come from?” you call after him.

Yoongi glances back with a lazy smirk.

“Around.”

And just like that, he disappears down the hall. No footsteps. No sound.

You stand frozen for a beat, clutching your tea like a lifeline.

Great.

You glance out at Jungkook one more time.

This time, you keep your mouth shut. But your heart? Loud as hell.

[casscainmainly]

I think I know why, but could you share your thoughts on why Duke would hate Kate?

My thoughts aren't as clear-cut as usual on this subject tbh, and in canon Duke gets along fine enough with Kate, so this is very much just me! The biggest obstacle is Kate's military background - though not a cop, she's authority-adjacent, and a LARGE part of her story is about the military and her belief in the code. Kate frames her superheroics through the idea of military:

Detective Comics #860

This is different from, say, Dick, who although he was briefly a cop, does not funnel his philosophy through a cop lens. But for Kate, the military is what she grew up in, what she aspired to be - the Bat symbol is a way for her to serve. There is no untangling Kate from her belief in the U.S military and authority in general; in Detective Comics (2016), for example, she is very much The Leader of the team. This kind of authority (and Kate's belief in it) is antithetical to Duke's ideals, and I do not believe they'd work well together.

Of course the events of Detective Comics (2016) would drive a wedge between Kate + Duke too. When Kate kills Basil (to protect Cass and the city), Luke sides with Kate while Cass sides with Bruce against them. Based purely on who's on each side, Duke would side against Kate; based on his own philosophy, I think he'd see the killing as militaristic and, well, cop-like. Duke doesn't have the depth of anti-killing code that Bruce and Cass do, but he's very much pro-rehabilitation, and I do think police violence and the consequences of anti-Blackness underlie his own aversion to killing.

But Duke and Kate also have lots in common! Honesty is a huge part of their characters - it's what gets Kate kicked out of the military, because she refuses to compromise on her identity. This is something Duke would respect a lot! Kate, in turn, would like Duke's straightforwardness. They both highly value family, too. But I don't think these similarities would negate how fundamentally opposed their codes and upbringings are.

Actually their interaction in Detective Comics #952 is very fun:

"You're telling me" is a peak Duke line omg. But anyway, even from this short interaction there's some tension here: Kate in the first panel indicates that the cops tonight are different from usual, and Duke rebuffs that immediately; then in the next one Kate is the one rebuffing Duke. They are on different wavelengths, not outright hating each other but not fully liking each other either. It's different from normal Duke haterisms because I think there's less of a chance Duke & Kate would ever see eye to eye.

Caveat that I'm nowhere near well-read on Kate so this might all be wrong, but it's certainly an interesting relationship to think about! And also read Batwoman: Elegy!!

[eris-snow]

heyy! I was wondering if you could write monoma x reader dating hcs/monoma pining (or any other ideas you have for him). Not sure if you even write for him (and if you don't please feel free to disregard this request!) Tysm if you *do* decide to write this and have a very wonderful day!!

Author’s note: Honestly, I don’t know how to write Monoma and he isn’t one of the characters under my radar, but I really wanted to try writing him, so thanks for sending in this request! (This was something I instinctively wanted to turn into a oneshot for some reason, so I enjoyed writing this request!)

----

Monoma doesn’t really know what he’s thinking when he fell for you.

He swears that he wouldn’t if he could, because dammit of course he has to choose someone insanely out of his league.

It’s not even your looks, it’s how you carry yourself.

Your mannerisms, your aura, all of that makes him gravitate to you so easily it scares him.

He’s so overwhelmed by your entire aura that his default words to you are all insults.

He’s a carbon copy of Bakugou, wrapped in a different outer package for purely the same reasons.

It had taken a long time for you to get into the status of ‘friends’ during third years, and Monoma will forever wonder just how he did it and why you took him in

He knows he’s an ass, he knows he’s insufferable, and he knows your friends hate him.

Shiny, attention-grabbing Class A, he secretly wishes to be one of them, one of you.

He’s working hard to strive for excellence, but every time he looks at you, you’re somehow already 12 steps ahead of him.

It’s what makes him hate you, but love you so much.

Like an onion, Monoma has layers upon layers of himself. Bit by bit, you end up peeling them and getting small glimpses of what he really thinks under the bravado and the slander.

You learn that when he’s crude, he’s twice as hard on himself. You learn that when he seems arrogant, he’s the biggest critic on himself.

You tell him that his Quirk is freakishly awesome, and validate his hard work.

He shakes his head, so you say it often, daily, frequently. Because then, you hope that he’d know that at least one person has seen his blood, sweat and tears shed.

Your relationship is an exploration. Everyone has a side that others don’t know about, and just as you discover his vulnerabilities, he discovers yours.

Your perceptiveness is sometimes a curse rather than a blessing, and your sensitivity often a poison rather than a tool.

Woven between your good traits are double-edge swords that paint you as more insecure of yourself than he thought.

You’re a human, not a character, he’d say. You might have flaws, but in his eyes, you’re perfectly imperfect.

Dating is a very natural shift. Good cop, bad cop. Angle, Devil. He knows what he plays.

But still, he doesn’t really think it’s so bad. After all, who cares what hordes of critics he doesn’t give two shits about says about him when you, the sole person who sees him as who he is still believes that he’s good?

Transparent, layers unveiled, in tears, with facades, splintered dreams, shattered hopes and ambitious, longing desires: You’ve seen it all.

He boos your class once more and sees you sigh, giving him a crooked smile—imperfect, but still beautiful—like he’s a children’s book with big, bold letters on every page.

Yeah, fuck everyone else. All he really needs is you.

[averagewriter-inthedark]

The Good Guy's Dress in Black 🕶️ | Loki Imagine

Marvel masterlist

Characters & Pairings: Loki Laufeyson x MiB!reader (romantic)

Content Warnings: fluff, profanity, flirtatious banter, canon divergence | female!reader (she/her) | wc: 2.3k

Requested 📨 yes/no | Based on this headcanon

Premise: You know what they say: the good guy's dress in black. And for a certain God of Mischief dealing with the aftermath of his failed alien invasion, maybe exposing a secretive government agency led him to the good he needed in his life all along.

note: HE'S COMING BACK FOR AVENGERS: DOOMSDAY LET'S FUCKING GO THE MAN THE MYTH THE LEGEND HAS RETURNED!!!

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

“I think I should take the lead on this one,” Loki spoke from the passenger seat as she sped toward the location at speeds that surely would’ve had them pulled over and ticketed but she managed to avoid every possible cop car without detection. 

“Absolutely not.” 

“Come on, Darling--.”

“We’ve been over this before, Loki,” her focus remained on the road, but caught the pouted expression he bore from her peripheral. “You are still technically a civilian consultant and therefore are not authorized to be handling anything other than what is restricted to you.”

A dramatic sigh left his mouth, head tilting back against the leather of the seat. “But it’s a bore.” That earned him a scoff.

“Finish your training, slick. Then you can have a say in how things go.”

“But that’s going to be another three weeks,” comes his complaint, tilting his head to look at her, to which he takes a moment to appreciate the beauty before him before adding, “We’ve been together for years now. I do not understand why I must go through all this when I’ve been a helping hand for so long. Is it Agent K?” He accuses lightly, “I know that old man has it out for me.”

Her laugh brings warmth to his chest, followed by a grin she no longer can contain. “Because that’s how things are done, Loki. We have to keep some things the way they once were and this is part of that. The MIB had to do a lot of housekeeping when you exposed the existence of extraterrestrial life.”

“I knew it,” he shakes his head with a sigh, “He hates me. This is all his doing--he never approved of our relationship and now he means to prolong my membership as a form of punishment.” 

“If Agent K hated you, he would’ve never let you be a consultant all these years and he would’ve never allowed you to become an agent.” She pauses to send him a knowing look, “Now he definitely had his concerns and doubts, but you’ve proven yourself to him. So please, my love, for me at least, don’t let your impatience get the best of you. Three weeks will go by in the knick of time.” 

Loki stays silent for a moment, but ultimately relents, a small smile peeking from his lips. “I guess I can wait--I’ll still complain about it,” he points a finger up, making her chuckle. “But I won’t do anything rash.”

“Thank you, baby.” His cheeks turn pink from the endearment, warmth consuming his chest once more. Loki couldn’t believe where life had taken him since that fateful day in New York where one moment he was leading a Chitauri invasion on behalf of Thanos, the next he was in custody of the Avengers trying to talk his way out of a lifetime in prison, and now he was on his way to becoming an agent of the Men in Black. 

The Men in Black. 

The once secretive, highly classified organization deemed to investigate and handle good and evil occurrences by aliens, vampires, mutants, and all legendary creatures, now public and collaborating with worldwide governments to ensure Earth was protected. 

Had the invasion not been on the scale it was, the MIB were really the ones who had jurisdiction over the matter and would’ve arrested Loki in the first place. Unfortunately, by the time they managed to get all the details of what the fuck was going on in New York, the damage was catastrophic and the whole damn world witnessed the event. There was no possible way for the MIB to step in and completely cover it up. And to make matters worse for the agency, it resulted in their exposure to the world. 

Loki bore witness to the first time the MIB made their presence known. And boy just like the rest of the bystanders in Stark Tower he was captivated, and intimidated to say the least, by the flock of agents dressed in crisp black suits and sunglasses holding badges with simply a letter as their agent identity. K, J, O, AA, it went on and on. Then his eyes landed on a woman holding a sleep device that resembled a pen addressing a group of people near the doorway who were having a hard time processing what had happened. 

“What is going to happen to us, ma’am?”

“I want to forget--I can’t live like this!” 

The woman adjusted her glasses, pushing them up the bridge of her nose, “Well I can assure you all that everything you want to know,” she lifted the device, pointing to a glowing red bar, “is right here and all you have to do is stare at this little light for me and all your problems will disappear.” 

A blinding flash filled the space that Loki had to squeeze his eyes shut to block it out. Unsure of what the hell happened as he opened his eyes to see the dazed expressions from the group. The woman removed her glasses, pocketing the device while removing a stack of cards to pass out to each of them. “Now, you have all been spared from remembering the worst of what took place this morning and I recommend you seek professional assistance as you navigate through this new reality of your life.”

Immediately the God was intrigued, desperately wanting to know the woman behind the blinding light and what it meant. As the remainder of agents dispersed to talk with the government officials and the Avengers, Loki took his chance to approach the woman who was now sitting at a high table. Pen was moving across a notebook frantically and she did not look up when Loki appeared next to her. “What can I do for you, Mr. Odinson.” 

It took everything in Loki not to growl at the name, scowling as he corrected, “it’s Laufeyson.”

“My apologies,” she sounded sincere, and he relaxed his face. “Our records have you listed as the brother of Thor Odinson and therefore I assumed you two shared a name.” She placed the pen down and closed the notebook to place her folded hands on top. This time she looked at him, and Loki felt himself still at the beauty before him. “What can I do for you, Mr. Laufeyson?”

For a moment Loki forgot why the hell he approached her in the first place. Shuffling on his feet as he said, “I couldn’t help but be curious of the interaction I witnessed between you and those civilians.” He lifted a hand toward the group, who were seated in a lounge area with a grievance counselor. “What exactly was that?”

“They were nueralized per their request.” 

His brows furrowed, not familiar with the term nor its meaning. “I’m sorry?” “The neuralyzer is an electro bio-mechanical neural transmitting zero synapse repositioner that we use at MiB to erase the memories of individuals and replace them with something new,” her explanation was so formal it felt like she was a robot spitting off information, but Loki understood it was just the agent in her being professional. Oddly enough, it made him ten times more drawn to the woman, not to mention what she was saying was fascinating in itself. “However, given the circumstances of today and what it means for the future of our agency, we’ve decided to change several principles of the practice.”

“Circumstances as in…” he trailed off sheepishly. Knowing it was his fault the secretive agency was now exposed. He couldn’t imagine what they were having to do to adjust their operations. It sounded like a nightmare. 

“Yes,” she smiled tightly, clearly not happy with the unexpected, and immediate, change. “But it was bound to happen sooner or later if I’m being quite honest. The minute Mr. Stark decided to announce himself as Iron Man, along with your brother Thor arriving on Earth, there were already plans in order for the MiB to begin public collaboration with agencies.”

Loki attempted a grin, arms going out in a dramatic flair. “So it isn’t fully my fault when you think about it.”

Her smile softened a tad bit, not as guarded and unwelcoming. “You could say that.” 

“I’m Loki,” he extended a hand, pleased when she accepted it and returned the firm grip.

“Y/I.”

Now he was puzzled, “Y/I?” Then he shook his head, cursing at himself as he remembered, “Oh right. You lot do not go by full names. Only letters--forgive me.”

“Not a problem,” she replied, letting go of his hand. It didn’t take much for a conversation to strike up between the two. Long enough to pass the time given the place was bombarded by agents and press, everyone arguing over authority and what not.

Whenever Loki looked back on that day it felt like a lifetime ago. Pretty much was considering it’d been several years and he was now at the happiest he’d ever been. No drama--for the most part, at least involving him--no house arrest, nothing. He happily lived on Earth in an apartment in New York with his love and working for the MiB as a civilian consultant on his way to becoming a full fledged agent. 

Talk about a happy ending. One he never thought was possible after discovering the truth of his lineage. 

Thankfully it seemed most people were happy for the God. His brother, Thor, in particular was rather ecstatic as was their mother. Their father….eventually came around, a couple years after the ordeal when Loki brought Y/I to Asgard having been summoned by the King. The Avengers were relatively cautious--and who could blame them really. What brought them some solace was the fact Y/I was an esteemed--and no nonsense--agent who didn’t hesitate to put Loki in his place when he stepped out of line. 

“I just think it would be beneficial if you--.”

“No.”

“Can I drive this time?”

“No.”

“What does this red button do?”

“Do not touch that, Loki.” 

Then there are the times where clothes are mixed up. Literally. Loki loves a slick, black, suit. It’s his staple and given Y/I’s uniform happens to also be a crisp, black suit, there’ve been several occurrences where items of clothing end up in the wrong pile. Especially when they send the suits to the dry cleaners together. 

“Loki, they gave me your trousers again.” Y/I will sigh when she unravels the plastic and notices the dress pants are not hemmed the way they ought to be. He’ll walk in from the closet with a blazer over his shoulder, tossing it to the bed where the rest of her suits are saying, “That one’s yours.”

Their favorite moment of clothes mixing up was when they attended a banquet at Avengers tower and were in such a hurry to dress, they completely disregarded that what they were picking up was in fact theirs. Y/I fasted the belt, Loki tied his tie. Rolled up their socks, buttoned their blazers, and hauled on their shoes as they were walking toward the door. It wasn’t until they were out of the car and up the elevator that they got a good look in the mirror from the reflective glass. 

“Hang on a second,” Loki murmured, eyes squinted as he leaned forward to examine his appearance. Then he turned to Y/I, who matched his expression and looked down at her suit. “Did we…?”

“I think we did,” she finished the sentence, thumbs brushing against the belt secured on her waist. She typically wore Tom Ford. This belt was Armani. “This isn’t my belt.” Looking up, she caught his hands on the tie and let out an amused chuckle. 

“I’m wearing your tie, aren’t I?”

She untucked her tie from beneath the buttoned blazer, lifting the bottom to see the label. Armani. “Yup, you sure are.” 

Loki released a huff, but couldn’t hold back the grin from curling on his lips. “Should we switch then?”

“Seeing we are about five levels away,” she began with a knowing look, “I don’t think that’s wise on the mere chance we don’t finish in time and have to explain to our friends why we’re in the middle of pulling our belts and ties on in the elevator.” 

Pink makes its way onto Loki’s cheeks, understanding her implication. “Understood--yeah, you’re right. I don’t need Stark jumping to conclusions that’ll have him bestowing another ridiculous nickname.”

Y/I laughed, squeezing his arm affectionately. “Awe, you don’t like Reindeer Games?”

“Don’t start.” 

“What about Rock of Ages?”

Loki grumbled, playfully nudging her hip with his. “Keep it up and I’ll tell K you faked being sick to go to an Imagine Dragons concert with Romanoff.” He got her there, the agent parting her lips in surprise, but he could tell she was impressed by the loose threat. He’d never actually sell her out. 

That would have him sleeping on the couch.

Another squeeze to his arm before she let go, “As you wish, Slick.” 

Despite the many years together, the fun adventures, and the countless jobs they’d been on….she still refused to let him drive her car. 

The vehicle came to a slow halt as she pulled up to a curbside space and began to parallel park so swiftly it had bystanders stopping to gawk. “Can I at least--.”

“No.”

“You didn’t even hear what I was going to ask.”

“I don’t have to hear,” She undid her seatbelt, cutting off the ignition. “You’re not to nueralyze. Complete your training, pass your exam, and once you’ve been fully sworn in then I will let you steer and nueralyze when the time calls for it.” Pulling on her sleek black Ray Bans, she sends him a cheeky smirk. “For now, follow my lead.”

Loki grins with a wink, his own Ray Bans going to the bridge of his nose, “I always do, darling.” 

[eddiemunson-reader-shame]

Good Morning Hawkins, I Am Tormented™️ By Eddie Munson x Hopper’s Kid!Reader

A/N: This is gonna be a little headcanon list that will probably evolve into more, not sure. Let’s see how it goes? I really loved the idea of Eddie and Hopper's eldest falling for one another. Especially considering the fact that we can have some genuinely funny and contradictory character attributes for the kid of an authority figure.

I’m also going to try something new with my banners. I want to make more inclusive banners for folks because I’ve had the conversation many times that a lot of aesthetic banners for inserts often don’t account for the fact that not all readers are cisgender white women.

So, I want to include more variations of women to represent reader in my banners. There will be quite a lot of different ones as well. I also had to include some for myself because I’m in that weird category where depending on the city I’m in I often am considered white passing, but I don’t relate to a blonde coded reader.

Also, we’re going full Rogers and Hammerstein Cinderella rules at all times in these inserts just so you know. If Whoopi Goldberg and Victor Garber can have Paolo Montalban as their biological child and no one ever questioned it, then Jim and Diane Hopper can have a child with some melanin in them. There’s whole ass aliens that eat people’s faces and psychic powers. We’ll be alright.

These headcanons will be more fluff than nasty. So, enjoy.

Tag List: (Please DM to be added) @writhingg @melodymunson @ali-r3n @amandahobblepot @twihard28 @hiimjulie @jozstankovich @eddiemunsonmash @mothmans-left-buttcheek @i-trash-about-things

Credits: banner by @strangergraphics

Well, good morning Hawkins. I have an idea as to how a relationship between Eddie the freak and Little Hopper got into a funny ass relationship.

These two are star crossed lovers and Hawkins’ own Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting, I am so serious rn. (RIP To my forever scream queen ❤️)

You and Eddie were always aware of one another, having grown up in such a small town and going to the same goddamn schools when there isn’t much of a choice in districts to attend.

As a kid, everyone didn’t really know what to make of you. All they knew was that your dad was a cop, and that he’d put the fear of god into one of the boys on the playground who kept trying to look under the skirt of your Gunne Sax dress.

Because of scary Hopper, everyone mostly left you alone during your early elementary school years.

Everyone except nosey ass Eddie Munson.

That little mop of curls followed you everywhere on the playground. Talking your ear off about music, dragons, knights in shining armor and princesses with hair long enough to climb.

One day he just saw you eating a spam sandwich alone, and decided you were going to be his.

He saw you reading a book about horses and just began info dumping about knights and the kind of horse armor they had during the medieval times and “did you know that Peter S. Beagle said that unicorns are more beautiful than horses because horses can only pathetically attempt to mimic the grace of a unicorn?”

Thems was fightin’ words.

Especially to you, Little Hopper, who grew up obsessed with Black Beauty, National Velvet, and any other horse media you could get your hands on.

“Excuse me?! Have you never even seen a horse when it’s at full gallop? You’re really stupid if you think a horse isn’t graceful!”

After you socked little Eddie Munson in the stomach for saying unicorns were better than horses, you two became inseparable.

When you were younger, everyone mostly felt sorry for Eddie rather than starting off outright hating him. His momma just died, and he was often the one kid in class who was poorly taken care of. Usually people felt sorry for him.

But Eddie was the class clown. He tried so hard to get any kind of attention, be it negative or positive, and he was just so damn clumsy that eventually the pity turned into anger.

No one ever quite got why he didn’t just “get it together” or “get over it” after his momma died.

They told him the same thing your parents often told you at six years old: Grow up. Pick yourself up by the bootstraps.

Jim and Diane weren’t the best parents when you were growing up. They say the first baby after a marriage can come at any time, and the second one always comes nine months after. You weren’t stupid. You knew you were the “oops” baby after their brief encounter when dad came back to Hawkins on leave in ‘65.

It was something you and Eddie could relate to— kids who were the result of dads wanting free love in the 60’s, now suffering the consequences in a red state with parents who hated each other.

When Sara was born, you spent a lot of time hiding out at Al Munson’s janky two bedroom home.

Things often got overwhelming with a new baby sister adding to the mix. Mom quit her job at the utility office to raise the baby and become Julia Child, dad kept on getting promotions at the precinct, and you were left confused and angry at the fact that only now had they decided to get it together.

So when the baby got overwhelming, you’d bike to Eddie’s house while Al took off on a bender elsewhere, often states away. You two spent hours in his bedroom taking every mismatched kitchen chair and blanket to make forts by the bed, playing cards or with old toys that had seen better days.

Everyone thinks you and Eddie are polar opposites: you’re the one on track for the really good academic scholarships and you still wear your cute prairie and medieval style dresses from the 70’s.

Meanwhile Eddie’s cutting up old blanket lined denim jackets and getting into harder metal.

Yet both of you are still the two nerds who will escape into music, and into the good old pages of a fantasy novel or the world of Greyhawk.

Of course you play D&D with Eddie, and you always have to specify exactly what kind of horse your elf fighter has. I think you spend more time describing the goddamn horse than you do the character.

Eddie always lobs a d4 at your head when you spend too much time talking about how your character’s horse is a dapple gray, not a flea-bitten gray.

In your older years, your dad is ready to tear his hair out because you absolutely refuse to stop going around with the town fuckup.

I think you would most likely be the one to stay in Hawkins living in the trailer park with Eddie and Wayne, married at eighteen, expecting at nineteen.

You also have that Older Sibling™️ rage built up, so any time you get a screaming lecture from your dad, you match his energy.

He’s basically given up on trying to make the two of you stop seeing each other because you always circle back to ignoring him for a week because you “don’t talk to pigs”.

Eddie secretly loves the audacity you have.

Eddie also loves to tease you because you and your dad have the same shitty, grumpy attitude.

He calls you Little Hop, and you always threaten to throw a brick at his head.

One thing Eddie also likes to do is tease you like every old woman in Hawkins does, with the “aww you look so much like your daddy!”

It always makes you feel like this:

[lacunammmm]

A character I hate is mineta. Of course there’s the obvious of his behavior of harassing women and not getting into trouble with the staff at school but I also hate how his character isn’t really anything more than perving on girls to provide fan service for the audience > get punished by his classmates > joke repeats. Any good qualities he gets are overshadowed by his bad qualities

He's a completely empty character with zero redeeming qualities. His best moment was him standing up to All For One to save Tokoyami from having his quirk taken, when that's the bare minimum we'd expect from other characters. Mineta is a liability and the show would objectively be better without him in it. I'd go as far as to say that he and his great value brand copy, Kaminari, should go with him. He's like if Master Roshi taught nothing of value. He's Jiraiya if he shit his pants anytime there was a fight and had to be badgered into actually contributing. He's like Issei if he didn't have the Boosted Gear and no courage. The typical anime pervert formula is that you have a character offset his bad qualities with good qualities, but the author didn't care to do that. What makes it worse is that this is a school for heroes. They're basically just super cops. They're civil servants who exist to police quirked crime and do some degree of community service. But then they keep this sexual batterer here. It actively destroys the believability of this world, since the author isn't trying to say anything about the setting with Mineta's actions. If Hero Society was meant to be utilitarian and the usefulness of Mineta's quirk was deemed more valuable than the discomfort everyone experiences in his presence, then sure, he makes sense. But that's not what they're going for here. It was jarring, for example, how no one especially cared that Hawks killed a man or had ANYTHING to say about Endeavor's crimes besides him failing to stop the villains. If Mineta was the first link in that chain, then it becomes expected. The principal here is that if someone is useful, they'll be kept around. Their world is transactional and it's always about costs/benefits. It's an escalation then. But by definition Mineta would actually have to be useful to justify anyone caring about him. I'll go into next how Mineta's existence actively makes the characters around him worse. Aizawa can expel 154 students across his career and he claims he does this to give students a "taste of death" by making it seem like their dreams will die. But he re-enrolls them after in a retcon meant to soften him. So why not expel Mineta? You can hand out expulsions willy nilly. Yet another example of this man being a toothless dragon. He can expel people for nebulous reasons but he keeps this kid who's causing ACTIVE harm around? Just like how people even still associating with Mineta makes them look bad. If the school insisted upon keeping this walking sexual harassment lawsuit around, why would you want to be friends with him? We don't see Mineta excluded from anything, or treated like the weird little prick he is. We don't see him getting hazed or beaten up during training exercises where people can punish him without getting in trouble. Everyone still wants to be his friend and treats him like a member of the group. We see again that when it suits the author's needs, all of the characters have the exact same voice and attitude. You'd think characters would hold a grudge for him objectifying them, perving on them, or groping them. I guess Deku and Kirishima just don't care about their friends getting groped, huh? Mineta is a cancer. The show would have been better off if he was the first fatality shown on screen when Shigaraki gripped his face and turned him to dust at the USJ. One, because it removes this worthless waste of space and keeps us from having to look at him any longer. And two, because it means Tomura actually gets to succeed at killing somebody, which he utterly failed at for most of the series. He did a true injury to UA that can't be fixed or wiped clean. Let's say three, is that Izuku can also be motivated to be a better hero, I guess, since he saw a classmate die in front of him. Anime perverts are a trope that should have been left in 2006.

[biggie-chcese]

Why I think Yomi Hellsmile should've died in Chapter 4

(this essay isnt what you think it is. spoilers for the whole game btw)

Alright so let me preface this by saying that this is not a Yomi Hellsmile hate essay. I like Yomi. He's my favorite peacekeeper. He's funny, he's entertaining, and he makes for a very effective antagonist. So why have him die? Well, for the same reason I wouldn't have Yakou live: I think it makes for a better story.

So here's the true title of my essay: A Critique of how Rain Code's Narrative Handles the Peacekeepers (and by Extension, Yomi) and their Downfall

Let's start with Yomi's downfall in canon. Yuma and Vivia find out his role in Huesca's murder and, ultimately, Yakou's death, and are angry beyond belief. But they're also helpless to do anything as they escape the labyrinth with vengeance on their minds. Of course, this gets shut down immediately, and then Makoto ex machina comes in with Martina in tow to arrest Yomi for his money laundering and bribery. And right then and there, in one fell swoop, the peacekeepers are completely eliminated as a threat in the story to be replaced by Makoto.

But okay... isn't that super underwhelming? The peacekeepers and Amaterasu corp have been the main driving force of the game's primary conflict, and yet somehow they are completely eliminated as a threat because Makoto grabbed a few files off screen. And also, this brings me to my first major issue I have with this ending:

Part 1: Why the fuck do they care?

No I'm serious. Why do the peacekeepers care? So what if Yomi bribed his way to the top? You mean to tell me that the cops who spent the entire game assaulting and antagonizing civilians give a shit? They're never shown to have any sort of problem with their corruption. They send people to be executed on whims and knowingly, regularly falsify evidence on murder cases. At best the peacekeepers are indifferent to the suffering they cause, and at worst they are gleefully complicit in it. So, again, why do they care about Yomi's money schemes? In fact, they only benefit from Yomi's rule because he gives them the power to freely instill fear in Kanai Ward's citizens. The game never, at any point, has an "are we the baddies?" moment from them nor does it ever even try to have at least one peacekeeper question Yomi's authority, even when he's throwing them under the bus. Throughout the whole game, they stand as a completely one-note, cartoonishly evil representation of police corruption.

So why the sudden heel turn? The resolution of chapter 4 feels so jarring to me because the game has zero buildup to it. This also applies to Martina's return. Actually let's also talk about her.

Part 2: So... Martina's return lowkey is kinda lame

Don't get me wrong, I was pretty hype when she came back. But also, the magic wore off pretty quickly for me because I didn't understand why she was suddenly a whole different character. I suppose her brush with death gave her some time to contemplate her actions, or perhaps she felt indebted to Makoto and asked him what she should do, or maybe Makoto held her life over her head and told her to change her act or he's letting her get cubed. Who knows? We get nothing expanding on this so it could be anything.

I feel like people kinda forget that Martina was just as corrupt as Yomi? Like, she is not his helpless victim. I'd even argue that their relationship isn't abusive. Martina is in it with her own interests in mind in addition to just being a massive sadomasochist. I cannot stress this enough: whatever tf she and Yomi had going on, she was completely into it. Even at the end of chapter 2, she was drooling over him and the idea of punishment... until Yomi crossed a line.

Y'see, Martina thought she was special. She thought that whatever punishment Yomi had for her Aetheria Academy blunder, she'd come out of it alive, because she's his beloved right hand. Yomi then showed her that she's just as disposable as the rest of his underlings by ordering her to be brutally executed. That is when she becomes a victim.

Anyway, I'm saying all this to make a point that Martina hasn't shown any interest in being an honest cop until chapter 4. It's completely out of nowhere, just like with the other peacekeepers.

"But Biggie," you may be thinking, "why would Yomi dying fix these issues?" Well I'm so glad you hypothetically asked!

Part 3: We love missed potential, baby!

Kodaka sometimes does this thing where he introduces an interesting concept that plays with the rules of the game... and then doesn't commit to it. Think like the double murder clause in Danganronpa V3 chapter 3, where they mention that if two separate murderers act in the same day then only one of those murders counts. Then they do nothing with this, and instead create a very weak chapter.

This is a similar problem I have with the tail end of chapter 4's mystery labyrinth, which is a really amazing labyrinth that introduces a really amazing concept: taking down a secret mastermind. After reaping the culprit's soul, they have this cool, brand new secret area that... does nothing. No, I'm serious. Nothing happens. All it does is piss Yuma and Vivia off and waste everyone's time. They find out Yomi's involvement in the case, but they still don't do anything with that. Sure it brings a whole new feeling of hopelessness, but doesn't that make Yomi's downfall literally five minutes later through the mundane actions of someone else off screen seem all the more underwhelming? From a gameplay and storytelling standpoint, I think this is just... a cop-out. I think it'd be cool if he was involved enough in Huesca's murder to count as an accomplice, then with Vivia and Shinigami at his side, Yuma reaps Yomi's soul. It's a decent payoff for the NDA and the player while supporting the game's message about the importance of finding the truth. And god does the game need support in that regard, because the Mystery Labyrinth almost never helps and Yuma instead gets saved by someone else (which would've been nice to expand on if we go this route bc there's something interesting about Yuma calling for the labyrinth to kill people for ultimately no reason, but they don't do anything with that and that is a WHOLE other essay lol).

But this is not my main reason that Yomi should've died here. I wouldn't feel so strongly if that was the case. No, my problem lies with a character that isn't Yomi, and what is part of the entire reason Rain Code's plot exists.

Part 4: Is Makoto fucking stupid?

"/lh" by the way. Makoto is my second favorite character in this game behind Yuma, and I adore him. His story, his motivations, his undying will to be a protector of a people that no one else will protect, by any means necessary... he is such an incredible character and antagonist and I genuinely adore him. But I have one eensy weensy, teeny weeny little issue with him:

Why did he need the detectives to oust Yomi?

Makoto claims in the ch 5 labyrinth that the reason the detectives were brought over was to oust Yomi, which leads me to believe the command for the detectives to come to Kanai Ward was his work, not Number One's, then Number One simply caught onto this and took advantage of the situation to sneak in. Though, that's just a guess on my part, mind you. So I suppose he was just desperately hoping at least one of them would take care of Yomi, but isn't that weird?

The detectives don't ever find the evidence of Yomi's money laundering and bribery. Makoto does. The detectives don't ever bring Yomi's corruption to light. Yomi... already does that without their help. Actually, why didn't he secretly team up with the Resistance for that? Too busy ignoring Dohya District's glaring issues, Makoto? Too busy turning a blind eye to your people's suffering?

Uh. Anyway, the only detective that actually does something beneficial for Makoto and kills Huesca is Yakou, who was already in Kanai Ward. And don't tell me that Makoto accounted for Fubuki and Desuhiko's fortes here because that part of the plan was all Yakou's idea. If Makoto could've predicted this, he would've just called the detectives necessary to this plan instead of luring in a bunch of them at once to get slaughtered.

Tons of detectives died coming to Kanai Ward to do... what? Distract Yomi? Could the World's Greatest Mind truly never come up with a better distraction for a guy who didn't even realize his Martina Cube™ order never came in? Yomi isn't shown to be some sort of hypervigilant supergenius nor is he nearly on Makoto's level. Could he truly not have outsmarted Yomi and led him astray long enough to grab a little binder of paper?

So, once again, you may be wondering how Yomi's death would fix this. Well, Yuma, a detective, is the one who kills Yomi.

Makoto is well aware of Yuma using the Book of Death at this point. So what better way to get rid of Yomi than to carefully manipulate the detective who has the Perfect Criminal Murder Tool™? Makoto can't just assassinate Yomi himself- that would make him the main suspect and he'd have to do a lot of PR maintenance to get the rest of Amaterasu Corp off his back. But Yomi mysteriously dying of a heart attack while Makoto isn't anywhere around... well, that's different.

"But wait," you may be thinking, "doesn't Makoto want to keep Yomi alive because he's a Kanai Ward citizen, and he loves Kanai Ward?"

Good point! But doesn't that also apply to Yakou, whom he also had a hand in manipulating into that crazy sui-homocide of Dr. Huesca? Or, what about Fink? Remember him? Makoto killed him for "knowing too much." I know that information is missable, but it's there. And don't tell me it's just because he's a hitman and has killed other Kanai Ward residents, because Yomi has sent many residents to their deaths without trial... not a huge difference. So a body count isn't really on Makoto's "should I kill them" conditions, it seems.

If Fink gets killed for "knowing too much," then Yomi shouldn't be exempt from this, especially when he was leaking homunculus information to the outside world. That goes far beyond "knowing too much." It just doesn't make sense.

But you know what does? Makoto actually using the detectives to wipe his hands clean of Yomi's mess. Yakou is used to take care of Huesca, Yuma is used to take care of Yomi, and Makoto gets to sit back, relax, and watch everything play out just as planned.

And later, in the next chapter, when Yuma learns about Makoto using him like this, he realizes that he's truly been had.

Part 5: How I think it should play out

I'm not being a hater. In fact, I deeply love this game and have a lot of respect for Kodaka and the writing team, so please don't take my little rant as some sort of effort to bash on my favorite video game because that's not what this is. I'm not gonna prop myself up as a better writer than anyone on the team because I'm not, but I'll still try my hand at rewriting this scene to fit my personal taste. So I would like for you to imagine with me, the end of chapter 4...

Yuma and Vivia find the secret area of the labyrinth and find out that Yomi has been masterminding Huesca's murder. Shinigami points out that, hey, that's why the labyrinth is falling so slowly: we haven't finished it off! Vivia stands by Yuma's side, and all of them, driven by their rage and desire to see justice be done, reap the soul of the true mastermind through one final strike of the solution blade. Labyrinth collapses, snap back to reality, oop there goes gravity, oop there goes Yomi, who collapses on the ground.

The peacekeepers are surprised and approach the body. They find that Yomi is dead. They're shocked, and as this is happening, Yuma isn't sure what to feel. Is he glad that he managed to avenge Yakou? Not quite, because Yakou is still gone, the hitman is still out there, and everything still hurts. But a part of him feels... vindicated. Vivia seems to have equally complicated feelings about this. For once, it was... kind of worth it to find the truth, even if a bit messy.

Well now the peacekeepers confirmed Yomi is dead, but now they're accusing the detectives of this. And they're honestly kinda right. Yuma and Vivia realize that they're in kind of deep shit, but the sound of Martina's voice comes from off screen asking what on earth is going on here, making everyone freeze.

Enter her, Makoto, and Seth (I'll say why he's here too in a moment). They're surprised at the sight before them, but Makoto only pretends to be. Then you see it... Martina and Seth go from visibly suprised... to relieved. And there's something oddly triumphant, yet a bit chilling about Makoto and the two people we've witnessed Yomi throw under the bus standing over his corpse. It feels thematic now, as if righteous judgement has come. And... it also solves the "what happened to Seth" question, lol.

Makoto shakes his head and sighs, stepping over the corpse and approaching Yuma and Vivia as he comes up with an excuse: "I always told him that those temper tantrums weren't good for his blood pressure. I guess his heart couldn't take it anymore."

He then nods to the others. Seth instructs the peacekeepers to clean up the body, as they rot quickly in this city. There's this foreboding feeling in the peacekeepers' obedience and efficiency, and Yuma begins to wonder if he did a good thing. Did his actions change the peacekeepers for the better, he asks himself, or did he simply shift the power over to someone worse? Shinigami tells him she doesn't know.

Makoto approaches them with good news: they found and arrested the hitman! Yuma, frightened, does not address that and instead asks him why the other high ranking peacekeepers are here. Makoto says that they... owe him a favor. Martina expresses her gratefulness for him stopping her execution order and asks if they can do anything else, to which Makoto replies telling her no, they're doing an excellent job. After some more conversation, Seth, Martina, and the peacekeepers then leave with Yomi's body to let Makoto talk privately to Yuma and Vivia. Makoto apologizes for their loss of Yakou and offers some faux sympathy. They're both... still conflicted about this conclusion, but Makoto tells them they're free to go, so they'll think about it later. Oh, but before they leave, he gives Yuma a little gift: a suspicious black box. Of course, Yuma can't open it just yet- it's a surprise!

Then the rest could play out pretty much normally (though an encounter with zombie Yomi chapter 5 seems inevitable and also awesome).

I think this alone would solve every issue I addressed before. The peacekeepers do not change out of nowhere. They simply reallocate power and there's still this feeling of them being a threat as they're now directly connected to the game's true antagonist. There's now a theme to Martina's return with Seth's presence as well. There's now a narrative purpose to that final section of the mystery labyrinth with proper payoff. And, most importantly, Makoto's motivations to use the detectives make more sense.

By the way, if any Yomi lovers think that he should stay alive for a potential return in the sequel... isn't it such a blessing that Yakou's DLC introduced this pretty neat little pill that could still make that possible? Just saying.

So yeah. Yuma, for the sake of narrative payoff and character writing consistency, please kill this clown. Thanks for reading <3

[nicstylus]

Yeah okay here you go. This was the most recent nightmare (I didn't have any last night!!)

If you care about the nightmare itself:

I lived an entire three months span as Atlas, one of the five that had been falsely arrested at a massive sting operation (wrong place wrong time) and sent to a prison camp erected solely to contain this cult/gang.

Cue three months of fighting, survival and trying to blend in because: a) the cult hates women for some reason? Who decided to put Cass and Atlas in there in first place?? b) the cult knows a bunch of the campers are undercover cops and if you're suspected you were beaten to death, yk, as a game c) all newcomers are suspicious by default

Me/Atlas: a tomboy with a sketchbook and HELLA anger issues. I was so angry the entire time. I mean I guess it's justified if I had to spend three months amongst people trying to assault and kill me, but damn girl you were angry even before you were arrested. Talks with her fists. Every time she's asked, she gives a different name starting with A. I went through Arin, Aris, Alex, Adrien, etc etc etc. Most of them were gender neutral but some weren't

Leroy: I changed his design on paper, but in the nightmare it was literally just my irl younger brother. I didn't get to be me, but he got to be him? unfair xD Very soft spoken and introverted, prefers his own company. Why he went with Atlas to a very loud and rowdy party I have no idea. That was honestly the funniest part in hindsight.

Cass: We (Leroy and Atlas) met her at the party/sting operation. She turned out to be an undercover guard around a month n a half into the nightmare. Atlas was pissed, but only for a little while because a) she was hot (really had my priorities straight there) and b) getting arrested had not been the plan and she was just as screwed/stuck as the rest of us. She'd been at the sting opp posing as a cultist with the plan being that she would organize the sting from the inside. After getting shipped off to prison she was pretty much forced to work as an informant for the guards, despite literally being a guard herself xD

Murphy and Devin: Honestly these two weren't super prevalent in my dream so I don't remember much about them. We met them at the party after we'd met Cass. They were not cultists or cops, they were just there for the food I guess?? Once we'd been shipped off to camp they wore their gang colors on the wrong hip, which immediately pointed them out as outsiders. That, combined with the fact that out of the five of us Murphy looked the most like a cop, and Devin was always with him... yeah we had to watch them as they got beaten to death. That was not a pleasant experience lol

Other relevant characters/groups:

The Warden: A dirty cop that ran the camp. She (strange, bc the cult 100% didn't view women as human) helped the gang sniff out undercover cops if she could, and basically made life especially hell for the five of us since she was pretty sure something was off about us, but she couldn't prove it without putting herself in danger.

The Cult Leader: I never met this dude. He was the reason all of this was happening in the first place. The Guard had information that whatever party we attended, the cult leader was supposed to be there. Obviously he slipped through the cracks because they didn't get him. The guard settled for just locking up his entire gang until they found him, and everyone that got caught in the crossfire (us) They did eventually catch him, at which point the camp was completely overhauled and anyone that wasn't supposed to be there (and was still alive) was rescued.

Cops/Guards: The authority. They weren't actually called cops but unless I want to start the whole ass worldbuiding process thats what I'm calling them for now This was a modern setting but it wasn't my country, and I have no idea where we were. Obviously the laws were super fucked up or straight up ignored, but hey it was a dream.

Dirty Cops/ Corrupt guards: Cultists that had infiltrated the authority. They worked for the camp/the law but they were loyal to the gang. They fed them information, contraband, whatever.

The Gang/Cult: I genuinely have no idea what the purpose of this group was for. They really liked fighting each other. They hated women and anyone deemed weak. They knew some of the campers were undercover guards, and since there wasnt shit else to do, most of their energy was used to either hunt these campers for sport, or fight amongst each other.

Undercover campers/guards: At the end of the three months it was revealed that literally a third of the entire camp was undercover guards. Some had been casualties of whatever horrible operations they ran, like Cass and were just trying to survive like us. Some were in there on purpose, trying to find information on the Cult Leader. A looooot of people were beaten to death for being even suspected of being undercover.

So yeah it was an utterly ridiculous nightmare, full POV, felt legit like I was living it, feeling it. I have no idea why it was so fully fleshed out, that rarely happens with my nightmares. But yeah. Now I have a whole novel waiting to happen I guess??? xD

I woke up n my first thought was "Christ, what day is it" bc I had been in the nightmare for SO LONG Fully thought it was October or smth lmao

[porcelainseashore]

Into the Ether (3)

Series Masterlist

Pairing: Vampire! Toreador! Leon Kennedy x Fem! Reader

Summary: At the all-night events cafe you run, you’ve become acquainted with an elusive patron, Leon, though you can never remember the last moments of your interactions together. After a harrowing encounter, a love-hate relationship develops between the two of you as you grapple with your newfound status in a world of darkness and investigate the reasons behind the untimely attacks.

Content & Warnings: 18+ Resident Evil x Vampire: The Masquerade crossover, horror, mystery, romance, slow burn, strangers to enemies to lovers, angst, fluff, eventual smut, swearing, smoking, alcohol, drug references, non consensual blood drinking, blood bond, vampire turning, violence, injury, mild gore, torture, religious themes, minor character death, RE ensemble, VtM concepts.

Author's Note: Suggestive themes, violence and mild gore ahead.

Taglist: @admirxation @angelstargel @miss-oranje-disco-dancer ❤️‍🔥

AO3 Link

Chapter 3: Fires of Rebellion

“So, talk,” you demanded, crossing your arms as you kept yourself at a suitable distance from Leon. 

Both of you were currently walking up north along Good Street towards the City College. The plan had been to take a left at some point and head over to the park by Warren Street, where hopefully there would be some benches for you to relax on. It was still early enough in the night for your surroundings to be relatively bustling with people, so you weren’t too worried that the man beside you would try anything risky or stupid. In any case, you knew where you kept your pepper spray at hand if things went south.

“You’d already sensed it from the beginning,” he stated, swallowing thickly. How was it this hard to tell you who he really was? If he could sweat blood, he’d fill a whole bucket’s worth. Pig’s blood. A cop in pig’s blood. He knew plenty of people who’d pay to see him drenched in the vermillion fluid. “That I’m not exactly normal.” That was what he settled with.

“What, you mean like a serial killer or something?” you scoffed, shaking your head in mild vexation.

“No.” His voice was solemn but firm as he glanced at you briefly, making eye contact. “I didn’t… assault you, not in the way you think.” He pressed his lips together into a thin line. “I just— I do things… that aren’t exactly normal.”

Great, Leon. You just made yourself sound like a fucking magician. Sighing, he pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers and paused his footsteps. “This is going well.”

You almost felt sorry for the guy. He seemed to be having such a difficult time articulating what he wanted to say. Was it some sort of kink he was talking about? The logical part of your mind berated you, insisting that this could go down far worse than you imagined, but you pushed it aside.

“Like what?” you asked, your morbid curiosity getting the better of you.

His jaw tightened as he shifted his weight uncomfortably from side to side.

Before he could respond, you took the initiative, positioning yourself in front of him as a form of challenge. “Show me,” you requested.

His head darted in every direction, scanning the area with an animalistic instinctiveness and you thought you saw his eyes illuminate in a different color. However, when you blinked a second later, it had returned to its original pale shade of blue. “Too many people,” he muttered. “I’ll do as you ask, but we need to head somewhere quieter.”

You should’ve ran off after he said that, but your legs stayed rooted to the ground. Your lack of self-preservation was alarming. “The park, then?” you suggested.

He nodded in compromise. “I could work with that.”

The rest of the walk there took place in awkward silence, as you dwelled on what he would do and whether you were walking into one big, fat trap. Well, at least Patrick had his business card. And P.I.s, they had a registered license, didn’t they? It was too late to back out now, you’d gone this far and you wanted to see it through.

When you had found a secluded bench at one of the shaded corners of the park, he spoke up again. “Do you remember the first night we met? When—”

“You offered me cigarettes in exchange for coffee,” you finished the sentence for him.

“Yes,” he said with a wistful smile, as if reminiscing about a day he’d cherished but had long since passed. “You felt it, didn’t you? Compelled to stay, but with no reason why.”

Despite your reluctance, you had to agree with him. That moment between standing by his table and sitting with him to share in a smoke had been like entering the twilight zone. You were you, but yet, at the same time, weren’t.

“I can do it again here, if you want,” he murmured, his eyes burning with an intensity that seemed to bore right into you.

It wasn’t the first time you had leaped before looking. You’d always been known to be a little more reckless than your peers, but it seemed like you never really learnt your lesson well. “Be my guest,” you gestured melodramatically, as your hand swept across in one grand motion.

“Now, you’re just mocking me,” he chided, though a ghost of a smile still lingered on his lips.

This time, there was a tingling sensation in your body, like an invisible warm light gradually enveloping you, except it seemed to exude from him. You were entranced by his stature, the minute details of his face, everything about what he was, to the point where you couldn’t tear yourself away from his gaze.

“Sit,” he directed gently, placing his hand along the back of the wooden bench.

You felt nothing but desire. Desire to do anything he wanted you to. Without a word, you sank onto the bench like a doll, still giving him that doe-eyed expression one would normally reserve for a celebrity they were starstruck by.

Taking his seat beside you, he urged, “Come closer.”

Obediently, you shuffled up along the bench towards him, except it wasn’t out of fear of punishment, but a strange, radiant love that emanated from within you. When you were just inches away from his face, he slowly revealed the tips of his canine teeth, which were pointier than usual, and seemed to grow with each passing minute. As his features eased up, you could feel the uncanny warmth dissipate from your core, and though you were still captivated by him, his face seemed to lack the same lustrous sheen it held moments ago. Like a wandering spirit, you had arrived back into your own body. You were you again.

His eyes latched onto you, waiting, watching, biding his time, to see what you would do. Though he remained poised and composed, the unsteadiness of his breathing and the flicker of trepidation across his irises gave him away. He was afraid that you would leave him, for good. And after what he had given to have the right to Embrace you, he wouldn’t know how he would live with himself if he were rejected.

It felt like hours had gone by until one of you spoke up. “Do you hate what you see?”

“No,” you answered, almost too quickly, cupping his cold cheek in the palm of your hand. He closed his eyes and sighed blissfully into it, releasing a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. It felt moist and heated against your skin.

You surprised yourself with how well you were taking all of this in. This shouldn’t have been possible and nothing about what he had shown you made sense. You blamed your tolerance on the late, sleepless nights and hanging around with the offbeat characters who frequented your cafe. 

What if monsters did exist? you humored. Maybe not in the literal sense of vampires, but someone who relished the flavor of blood, and who’d learnt a few tricks of hypnotism. You tried to rationalize it as much as you could, but there were still so many missing pieces you did not fully understand.

“How many times?” you asked. “Did you force me… each night?”

He lowered his gaze, marred by shame, while looking to his hands nestled in his lap. “It was just that once,” he whispered. “I wanted you to stay with me.” 

He pursed his lips. “The rest, later on… was you.”

“Did you—”

“Yes.” 

You didn’t even need to continue your sentence for him to know what you meant. Yes, he tasted your blood. Yes, he enjoyed it. Yes, he came back for more. And more.

“I’m sorry,” his voice cracked.

You didn’t acknowledge his apology, allowing even more time to slip through your fingers. A while later, you ran them along his cheek towards his lips, where his teeth which now looked more like fangs lurked. Right, how would you explain that away?

He didn’t stop you when you traced one of their edges, as if trying to figure out if they were real. He let you press the tip of your finger against its peak, purposely pricking yourself in some kind of deluded masochistic fantasy. The rush you felt from it was indescribable, like a spike of venom flowing into your veins, though it wasn’t as intense as the previous times to truly immobilize you. Grasping onto the back of the bench, you steadied yourself from the dizzying sensation.

A dark, ruby bead blossomed at the site of the puncture. His mouth lay open as he inhaled sharply, gripping the trousers on his thighs, and there was a wild look in his bloodshot eyes. However, he remained motionless, restraining himself somehow, as if awaiting your instruction.

“You like this?” A mixture of bewilderment and arousal seeped into your tone, as you brought your bleeding finger to rest just at the entrance of his mouth.

All at once, his veneer of calmness shattered. He swirled his tongue against your fingertip, causing you to gasp as it made hot laps around the miniscule droplet of blood you had to offer him. Dipping his head, he took the rest of your digit into his mouth, eventually sucking on it whole as he emitted a low groan in pleasure. When he finally let it go, a slick string of saliva connected to it from his lips, wet and hungry with need.

“I, um—” you shuddered, at a loss for words, as you retracted your finger, folding it into your hand.

Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he straightened up in his seat, adjusting his attire and hair, as if he had come back to his senses once again. “You don’t have to decide on this right now,” he assured you.

“Okay.” You nodded shakily, your mind spinning from all the events that had just transpired. “Could we take another short walk before I head home?” 

It would probably help to cool off a little, you thought.

“Anything you need,” he asserted, getting up as he took another glance around the park, before extending his hand to you.

You stared at it, contemplating further. “Just don’t—” you hesitated, pausing to rephrase your words. “I want to trust you, Leon.”

“I’ll earn it back,” he promised. “However long it takes.”

That was all you needed to hear from him. Perhaps you were naive to a fault, but you took his hand anyway, allowing him to lead you out of the park, and to whatever else fate had in store for you that night.

━━━━━━━━━━━

Over the course of the evening, a thin fog had developed, shrouding the sky and enveloping the moon and stars in a blurry veil, casting a muted light over the city. You and Leon had taken a short detour towards the more touristy part of town, where the landmark Saint Michael Clock Tower overlooked the grand waterway.

The ornate, Gothic structure loomed intimidatingly ahead, its roof cloaked in a wispy gray mist, though you could still make out the time on its huge clock face. Ten minutes past midnight. It was getting late, and although you were accustomed to working until the wee hours of the morning, you preferred to get some sleep on your nights off when possible. However, right now, a part of you wished that the night would last longer. 

There wasn’t such a wide distance between you and Leon as before. In fact, your fingers were nearly touching, but neither of you had taken it further to close the final gap. Even in complete silence, punctuated only by the sounds of the city’s buzzing nightlife, both of you had somehow agreed on which pathways to take, falling in sync with each other’s footsteps, pauses and turns, like an unspoken dance. It was nice like this, having no expectations of the other person, just walking and feeling the thread of connection that bound the two of you.

Every now and then, he peered at you inquisitively, and you wondered if he had something to say, but when you looked his way, he turned his gaze back to the street in front of him. Coming to the entrance of a tunnel arbor near the clocktower, you paused to admire the sight of the vines and flowers that were wound around the metallic arches, interspersed with marigold fairy lights. There were still a decent number of stragglers in the vicinity. Probably the remaining tourists for the day who didn’t quite want to wrap up yet, some of whom were posing for pictures near the picaresque arbors.

“Cat caught your tongue?” Always the instigator and taking the confrontational approach. That was what you were known for.

“Hm?” he deflected, yet smiled at you knowingly.

“Just looked like you had something to say.” You shrugged, placing your hands on your hips.

“Nothing escapes you, huh?”

He was teasing you again; you were certain of it. Though this appeared to be twofold, where the second part was meant as a misdirection to hide a secret from you. 

“It should be obvious that I like you,” he stated plainly.

Obvious to the point where he couldn’t afford to have one of those obnoxious Anarchs stake their claim over you, just for a bit of territory. You were worth so much more to him than that. Surely, it would be the lesser of two evils for him to be the one to Embrace you? It was all he could think about when he made that deal with Ada. Always justifying and compromising. That was what he was known for.

You couldn't fathom the sheer astonishment and joy that overcame him when Ada returned with the news a few weeks later:

“The Prince granted your wish,” she mentioned with an indifferent wave of her hand.

“How?” he choked in disbelief. “It usually takes years!”

“You underestimate me,” she scoffed. “Have you forgotten that I’m the voice of society?”

“No, of course not.” He hung his head in disgrace, as if he had just been told off by a parent.

“Anyway, I don’t have to tell you twice that you should thank him in person.” 

Lifting a bejeweled chalice to her lips, she tasted its contents, allowing it to linger on the palate before letting it wash down her throat. “And by ‘thank’, I mean ‘grovel’.”

“Yes, sire.” He bent down on his knee and kissed the back of her hand in respect.

A shadow of annoyance flickered across her face, morphing into a frown. “You do know this makes you look weak?” she questioned rhetorically. “Being unable to convince the Prince yourself?”

He knew better than to respond when Ada was in such a mood.

“Don’t embarrass me.” 

Her warning rang loud and clear in his ears.

“Who is it obvious to?” you challenged, pulling him out of his reverie. Maybe you had an undeniable urge to see him lose control over you again.

At this, he drew closer towards you, his eyes ablaze like a blue flame, as he snaked his arms around your waist. That was it — the thrill, the feeling you missed. It rippled through your body, leaving goosebumps in its wake. But before he could go any further, a sudden force tore him from his hold on you, hauling him violently backwards. He was flung in the air across a couple of yards, landing against the wall of a building with a sickening crack.

In the background, you heard screams coming from all directions, alongside whooshing sounds, followed by loud thuds. One soon popped up behind you and in an instant you found yourself smacked to the ground. There was a shrill ringing in your ears, your eyes watered, and your vision blurred as you started seeing double in front of you. You felt the back of your head. Wet. Sticky. Flowing. Your fingers were red and the concussion you suffered induced a dizzying spell.

A grizzly face appeared before you, but you couldn’t quite make out any distinguishable features, except for the familiar shape of long fangs that glistened under the arbor lights. There was no time to put up a fight or even cry out for help, as you began to sink deeper and deeper into unconsciousness.

Leon had watched the entire scene unfurl before him like a twisted snuff film coming to life. The attack had taken him by surprise, but he quickly got up from his fall, resetting his bones and shaking it off like nothing had happened. The whole place was awash in scarlet. Blood streaked the city streets, trickling into every gap and crack, as the victims were messily drained of their lifesource. Whoever was behind this wanted the world to know. And that was when he witnessed the first of them turn.

A Mass Embrace? These Kindred definitely reeked of the Sabbat, and if not, they weren’t anyone who had been presented before the Prince; he would know. There wasn’t a second left to spare — he had to find you immediately. In his line of sight, he saw one of the culprits feeding on you greedily, and the primal rage he felt within him almost caused his Beast to take over. He hunched over and growled ferociously. His features transformed into something monstrous and his eyes were crazed as globs of saliva dribbled down his mouth.

It was fanning the flames of a Frenzy, one where he would slaughter every being in his path regardless of who they were, tearing them from limb to limb, and eviscerating their carcasses for what they had done to you. But his concern for your well-being won him over. Mustering up his willpower, he resisted the Beast as much as he could, and though he was still enraged, he needed to think straight and prioritize getting you to safety. That was all that mattered.

In the bat of an eye, he zipped across, yanking the other vampire away from your limp body, as they traded rapid blows. Another aggressor joined in the fight, as Leon dodged their swift counterattacks with deceptive ease, before connecting his right fist to one of their jaws and dealing a precise uppercut with his left to the other’s ribs, catching both of them off-guard. 

Everything seemed to pass by in quicktime as he moved with an unnatural grace, spinning mid-air over one of their backs, only to grab the other from behind and slam him to the ground savagely. Gathering the rest of his strength, he took advantage of the momentum to stomp on the vampire’s head with the heel of his shoe. There was a nauseating crunch as his skull caved in from the blunt force trauma, splintering and sending blood splashing across the pavement, driving him straight into torpor. One down, one more to go.

The brutality of the violence he had displayed unnerved him, yet fuelled his excitement as adrenaline coursed through his veins. He attributed it to being partially influenced by the Beast the moment those bastards had put your life in danger. At least he had not fully succumbed to it. That was what he tried to tell himself while putting a lid on his unquenchable thirst for more. More violence. More bloodshed. They deserve it…

A cacophony of ghastly howls erupted from a distance, bringing him back to reality. Jill, it had to be, Leon realized. The Sheriff was coming to subdue this severe breach of the Masquerade. As the other vampire lunged at him, Leon’s reflexes took over, timing it such that he skirted the edge of the assault unscathed. Instead, he circled around, placing the attacker in an unyielding headlock. The vampire struggled vigorously, attempting to kick and claw his way out of Leon’s grip.

It was then that he heard Jill’s gruff yells in the vicinity, as the pack of dogs under her control barked and gnashed their teeth viciously at the remaining offenders, clamping down on their legs to prevent them from escaping. The Hound, a group of Kindred who reported to her, had arrived in tow, twirling wooden shafts in their hands, each sharpened at one end. Grinning menacingly, they struck at the assailants, staking them immobile before dragging them away.

“You need this one?” Leon called out. He might as well play by their rules where he got the chance, even if the Prince himself had decreed a perpetual Blood Hunt on the Sabbat. Anything to be in the former’s good graces. It was all for show, anyway.

Jill turned sharply, her mouth contorting into a wicked smirk, as she stalked towards him. “Leon… always at the right place, right time, huh?” Her voice was more akin to brutish snarl, but he knew when she meant her threats and when she didn’t. At this point, she was on his side.

“We have our hands full of the rebellious trash.” She jerked her thumb back to her crew, who were skulking around in the dark with their catch. “Kill this motherfucker.”

Without hesitation, Leon snapped the vampire’s neck clean, ripping his head off in the process as his lifeless body fell to the ground in a heap. Letting out a huff from the effort, he tossed the head aside, feeling nothing for the wretched being that lay at his feet. Or did he? He chose not to dwell on it any further, finding something else to distract himself with as he glanced down at his clothes, frowning when he noticed they were smeared with all sorts of fluids and innards. Dry cleaning was gonna be a bitch.

Jill signaled towards your body with her chin. “This one’s barely alive.”

“She’s mine.” A deep-seated possessiveness surged through him as he stepped between you and Jill, unwilling to let you be snatched away from his grasp again. Swooping down, he lifted you into his arms, ready to cart you off from this gruesome site. “Please, I don’t have much time.”

Narrowing her eyes, she tilted her head and a low rumble reverberated from her chest. “Alright, pretty boy. You’re answerable to the Prince though,” she warned.

“Understood,” he replied snippily, cringing at the nickname she often used to wind him up.

Directing her attention once again to her Hound, she commanded, “Torch the rest!”

The poor, newly created vampires never stood a chance, dealing with both the life-changing alterations to their bodies and the molotov cocktails now lobbed at them. They had no idea what was happening as they were set aflame in the towering bonfire, screeching and wailing until they were reduced to nothing but ashes. The smell of singed skin and flesh hung in the air.

Tightening his grip on you, Leon recoiled involuntarily in fear as he fled from the raging inferno. “Hang in there for me,” he whispered, praying to a long-forgotten god that he wouldn’t be too late this time. 

Racing like his life depended on it, he kept to the shadows, using the cover of darkness to navigate through the maze of Raccoon City towards his haven.

[white-collar-cannibal]

okay this is a breakdown of my four genloss poems it's gonna be long as fuck be warned. if you haven't read them go read them they're good i'm a for-realsies published poet.

The Magazine

i picked the cuntiest sounding county name in new york, i did Not mean to name it for either the silverware complany or the sex cult that the guy who killed james a garfield got kicked out of. that was not on purpose. anyway.

Fake Names

three of the poems get fake names for our characters to publish under, sneeg's doesn't because no way in hell is he publishing anything that emotionally vulnerable. Blackacre is a standard law school fill-in for an unnamed piece of land (along with Greenacre and Whiteacre but Blackacre sounded better to me). Cordwainer (literally, shoemaker) is the pseudonym that Paul Linebarger wrote under (Cordwainer Smith in his case.) These are the equivalents of "Stacy Fakename" but honestly no one is going to call them out on that. The double initial last name just. sounds really good to me. Kainabeth is both in reference to the unused name "Cainabeth" from the locked tomb series (removed from those books for being too trite but when has that ever stopped a fanfic author) and the Kains from Pathologic, who are in turn maybe names for the painkiller novocaine. also harkens to a draft line in the niki poem:

call me five-alarm; call me bad dog; call me Cainabeth, i promise i'm good for it

i know writers who use subtext and they're all cowards. it evokes a feminized, futurist kind of evil, and i think it's exactly the kind of vibe a post-escape glniki might try to give herself.

rehoming the k9s

Cops say the cop dogs can never go home, need to be put down, so give them money to keep the cop dogs.

i'm not gonna hunt down the og source cause idgaf but i'm fairly sure this was an argument used against legalizing marijuana, that if people had marijuana in their homes it would be untenable to try and rehome older k9 units and they'd have to be put down. overall the k9 unit or the attack dog serves a complex role within the dog motif: they are agents of immense violence and historical oppresion, but also deeply abused creatures. the phrase "rehoming the k9s" basically takes on the sense of "imagining sisyphus happy" for our characters, who are in much the same situation.

I have a heart full of blood and a mouth full of teeth and I left my soul on the other side of the state line, 

probably derivative of the mountain goats' i have two big hands and a heart pumping blood and a 1967 colt 45 with a busted safety catch but who knows

to my wretched of the Earth.

🎵 debout, les damnés de la terre 🎶. the internationale. a little commie spice.

Somewhere I am nineteen and beautiful forever. Somewhere I am nineteen and never coming home. Somewhere I am nineteen and proud owner of an empty coffin. Tonight I am twenty, picking grave dirt from my nails.

in a real way there is some intangible piece of them trapped there forever, in pixel and video tape. there is somewhere in the world that depiction forever, that frozen image, that unchanging thing. but not here. not everywhere. this hole is not your grave.

revelations, cosmogenic

i actually kinda hate this name it's too pretentious for the character i just hadn't come up with a title before posting it. i did write this entire thing in an hour after reading the timeline of the universe wikipedia page during finals week and feeling brand new emotions about it

on the eighth of the month you tell me how the world is going to end:  we’re just going to run out of heat gradients. nothing’ll ever become a new thing ever again. isn’t that terrifying?

one theory about the end of the universe, better known as the heat death of the universe, and from what i can tell the most agreed on. the idea is eventually the universe will reach maximum entropy, and no thermodynamic processes will be possible, the entire universe being one uniform level of energy. the "you" here is ranboo, and the fear comes up for them both because they've seen a vision of that in the stagnant showfall mall, and because they have no memory of their childhood, of their ability to grow and change, a fear of being disallowed from changing.

you’re a more modernist audience than i was raised on: you can’t help but cry when someone laughs.

you ever heard of this guy. bertohlt brecht. basically he thought the political and philosophical content of a play could only be communicated to an audience if they were sufficiently distanced from the characters and actions of the play, other wise they'd get caught up in emotional responses. the idea was to create a play that would, pithily, make the audience cry at those who laugh and laugh at those who cry.

it’s only that i sit where you can see me and you sit where you can see the exit. 

this is the thing that Gets me about this one is that both characters are doing this for prosocial reasons. parallels the "i watch my sister's 6" line from rehoming the k9s but more melancholy. charlie can't help but follow what he's been taught and ranboo can't find a way to express affection and belonging in a way they feel they deserve beyond the strict and militant behavior of keeping people safe. they care about each other but they speak such different languages.

it’s only that i say mal-du-pays and you keep your hand by your pocket.

"homesickness." i wonder sometimes about the interplay between the inextricable longing for the simplicity of your childhood, and the understanding that it was a dire, horrible place, and everyone might resent you if you voiced that.

i lied about my name. i lied about the house and the // oak tree. i lied about the dog. 

none of these are meant to be literal in-universe things, they're metaphors created by the character to express an emotion. the levels of obfuscation of writing a good emotionally true poem from a character's pov is. it is tough.

you ask me if i believe in god and you’re always thinking the same thing Job did: the kids, the cattle, the bullet someone put through you you’re still carrying. 

you know him. Job from Bible. god took everything from him as a test of faith and then restored him greater for his success. but was it worth it? those kids are never coming home.

no one was raised like me, if i was raised at all: cowbird, cuckoo, whydah.

all brood parasite birds. they lay their eggs in other birds nests and have them raised by those other birds.

in my dreams of the world ending i see the Big Crunch: the fireball at the end of everything so hot it’ll burn time up. one last bow. the brightest thing we’ll never see.

another theory of the end of the world, that the density of matter will eventually outpace the expansion of the universe, and it'll collapse back in on itself in a reverse big bang. some think it's possible that after the big crunch, another big bang might occur, and another universe created, which i think is thematic. after life, death, after death, life again.

unkillable city birds

i considered leaving this one unnamed but i just ljke the phrase too much. this is hypothetically part of a longer series of poems also written by sneeg but i didn't manage to polish the rest of them up to be like. readable. inspired and by that i mean deeply derivative of ginsberg's howl.

pretending i was Mary and goliath and the berlin wall; 

some gender happening here a lil bit maybe. idk.

house full of tripwires and landmines and excess munitions, house full of razor wire, house full of hand in the mouth of the dog, 

this poem is the reason the niki poem explicitly includes no houses and no dogs. egads. anyway there's a real militant theme in the way i explore these characters (weaponry shows up in all of the poems i think) because i'm trying to communicate a sense of not violent but violence-understanding care. a kind of world weary beaten down love that only expresses itself as practicality

um i don't actually have that much to say about this one so here's one of the drafts adressed to niki:

love you, please do not kill yourself, please remember we all wean ourselves off the opiate of martyrdom best we can, please remember we were not born beautiful in the world to die here, please remember i’m with you in this damned house, unforgivable house made of unforgiven people, where the taps bleed the same cursed red blood we’ve known for years, niki, i’m here with you in this gunpowder house, this screaming siren house, this dead memory house, roll up your sleeves and rise from the grave again, recite all your atheist prayers, your i do not die here i do not die here i don’t fucking die here and mean it. no one here loves each other without the shadow of blood and blood and blood and vitriol, but i have trusted you as my own right arm for years and i’ll have your hand in mine when the strikebreakers come, that’s the deal.

i went down to the river

made a deliberate attempt not to include either dogs or houses in this poem after them. showing up in all three earlier poems. i wrote a couple earlier drafts that ended up being way too moralistic and then read a bunch of richard siken and ended up with this. it's much more experiential than the others which i think is to its benefit. honestly the whole time i was trying to recreate the feeling of this:

Things now walking which ought to be crawling was all the gospel // from the cave. 

lovecraft, baby. from this work the festival, the original is "great holes secretly are digged where earth's pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk which ought to crawl" and like we all get that lovecraft sucks. it's an antiprogress sentiment i think showfall media of "a forlorn gaze into yesterday" fame might agree with.

i carried hope // as a louse where my tongue should have been.

my t-shirt that says "I ❤️ PARASITISM" in big letters is raising a lot of questions already answered by my shirt.

everyday my capacity for hate overwhelms me, underwhelms me, like // something so sweet all you can taste of it is the inside of your mouth. 

the most niki line of the poem. i think in addition to struggling with how to be a human being she also has a very difficult time figuring out how to be a good person without being Nice about it but i haven't entirely unpacked that yet for her

tonight i hate plastic straws and green olives and the dark. 

a siken-esque line including tangible, innocuous objects to advance the imagery, but "plastic straws" implies an environmentalist note, a fear of being let out into a world already dying, and "the dark" implies a childish fear of a monster underneath your bed. how many monsters were there really under their beds, in their closets, hidden in the dark at showfall?

gloaming red as a lithium flame,

☝️ lithium burns red. also lithium ion battery fires are a nightmare to control.

like Pilate, i wash my hands of it.

pontius. pontius pilate. you know him. from Bible.

[spiralinghours]

“Smoke Break”

Fandom: Saw franchise

Rating: PG

Characters/Pairings: Mark Hoffman; Adam Faulkner-Stanheight; hoffheight if you squint or want it to be; mentions of John Kramer, Lawrence Gordon, Amanda Young and David Tapp

Warnings: language, canon character death

Summary/Author’s Notes: Nothing more than a drabble about Adam and Mark… Because I just wanted to make observations on them interacting. Just a little something.

2004

“Great job,” Hoffman huffed languidly, leafing through the shallow stack of 8.5 x 11 glossies.

The falling dusk was beginning to cast a heavy veil through the bricked alley, making the black and white images appear a bit fuzzy in the violet shade. All the same, the images of Hoffman posed on his phone, walking with a coffee in hand, or getting out of his cruiser were captured perfectly to look candid. That was all he needed.

“Nice sweater,” Adam commented on one shot, rolling up on his toes to peek over the photo stack. It wasn’t clear if it was truly a compliment or not.

Hoffman gave a pouting sneer as Adam’s shorter stature butted the crown of his choppy black hair into his personal space.

“I gotta say, though,” Adam continued, easing back out of Hoffman’s bubble to light a cigarette, “I usually take actual candids. This posed stuff is not my typical bag. If it were I’d be rolling around in that model money.” He chuckled with small talk fakeness around his exhalation.

“You’re getting paid, aren’t you?” Hoffman muttered, reaching a leather-gloved hand into an interior pocket on his overcoat and extending a thick roll towards Adam’s face. “Anything else I ask for will be the real deal. This is the only posed thing I need.”

A shiver involuntarily coursed up the base of Adam’s neck, to his skull. Everything Hoffman had been telling him was vague and mildly ominous. The vague part was to be expected, as that was a major role in the investigative aspect of his work. Don’t learn too much about your subjects lest you want to end up on the other end of a gun. But Adam badly wanted to ask if Hoffman had anything to do with that other cop… Tapp, that was it. It did feel like too odd of a coincidence to have two detectives (well, one ex-detective) hire him for incredibly shady shit.

But he kept his mouth shut. Money was money, and it took a lot of it to live in a crap stain. Adam just breathed smoke around the wad of money, mentally calculating its worth before grabbing it.

Hoffman reached his now empty hand towards Adam’s lips, fingertips grazing a little too close. He snagged the cigarette and drew it up to his own mouth.

“American Spirits? Really?” Hoffman sneered again with displeasure. He kept dragging nonetheless.

“Hey! What the fuck?!” Adam blurted, hating how bratty his protest came out. “You’re gonna take my cigarette and complain about the brand?” He darted his fingers for the smoke, but Hoffman swatted him away, barely turning his head. “Fuckass,” Adam quietly grumbled.

Hoffman kept his lips softly embraced around the butt, side-eyeing Adam for all his frantic, jerky energy. It matched everything about his appearance: greasy, sweaty, pallid, and twiggy. Hoffman scoffed at what a malnourished rat he looked like. Handsome, sure, maybe, but underfed and annoying.

“I got one more assignment for you, then that’s it,” Hoffman announced flatly, flicking the chewed up button at Adam’s feet. “You don’t have to hear from my fuckass again.”

“I sure fucking hope not.” Adam grimaced at how low and stupid Hoffman’s voice grated at his ears. The very sight of the detective’s floppy dark hair and fat, blow-up doll face made him itch.

He hoped to never see him again once the job was done.

2008

Someone deep in the pits of Hell, or even some grand ethereal being out in the cosmos really had it out for Hoffman. The real answer was that John and Lawrence were the ones who had been conniving and scheming. It was always the people who were supposedly on your side.

But the end result was absolutely some cosmic joke.

In the blackness of the bathroom, Hoffman could just barely make him out from the green light leak just beyond the sliding door. He had seen him before Lawrence had left, the sickly overhead lights still on: Adam, slumped beside him, restrained to the same pipe. The contrast was jarring: no longer a skittish, sarcastic grin, but, rather, lifeless, exposed teeth, jaw rotting away; Head of black hair decayed over time with some mold peppered at the points where skull was wearing through.

Hoffman had watched bits of Adam’s game go down, despite Amanda and John taking the lead and doing the proper follow up. Through that he knew enough about what had been left in the room, with the remains of years—and victims—past.

He felt around the filthy, tiled floor, thick fingers trailing around until they had stumbled into what felt like Adam’s jeans pocket… Lo and behold, a crumpled cigarette and a near-empty matchbox remained. Even those felt dead and withered in Hoffman’s hand.

He struck one of the weak matches and managed to light the cigarette with the limited amount of fire it could muster.

“Never thanked you for the smoke,” Hoffman told the corpse, suddenly unsure why he was speaking to it, let alone out loud.

[thewickedlorchqueen]

I hate Lily's Star Wars oc

And I'm going to be straight forward here, it's because of her video's about heroinism. I love mary sue's, I love oc x canon, I say break canon for your own au and I don't care if one add's there own politics. Basically I love bad oc fanfiction, but Lily's whole moral code and how much she tries to force that Aliana is a good person despite being a psychopaths' that kills whoever she deems as the villain and is rewarded for it in the story just makes her unbearable.

And before anyone starts no this wouldn't change if Aliana was any other race. One of my favorite fic authors has several self insert black characters she even openly claims as Mary sues and I love them. My favorite is still her Beverly hill teens oc (again I love bad cringy shit don't at me) that becomes BFF with Bianca and humbles Lark (the main character, who I love but the fic is fun)

A bad character is a bad character regardless of race.

"But she only goes after rich bad people!" Firstly overhearing a conversation and deciding to kill people based on that isn't heroic, not to mention frustrating. She doesn't try to dismantle the system that holds them, (no just killing the big boss doesn't count), she doesn't find said 'poor slaves' and gives them a better home. She kills the traders and everything works out in the end.

Which becomes even more frustrating when it turns out that Luke kills her mom (a sith and a slave trader herself, the same one that transported Ray her love interest. But don't worry guys she felt super bad about it. She was even willing to raise Ray and Aliana as siblings!

) and is in the right to get revenge.

Yet isn't Luke in the same place as Aliana? A sith (you know the dark side, proven bad guys, a slave trader herself, possible over heard her bragging about her trades. A villian according to his beliefs and morals) was doing bad things so he killed her possibly saving who knows how many poor, innocent souls~ Yet is in the wrong because she was Aliana's mom. And that's just one of the Skywalkers.

Would that mean that any of the children of the people Aliana killed would be justified in getting revenge against her because they also felt 'super bad' about it but only talked big? What if they were acting tough and lying because said trader was trying to save their child that (like Ray) was being transported and unlike Ray's was trying to save their child? Then Aliana (based on a conversation she overheard) killed them, forsaking the child.

What if their morality justified the parents actions in the same way Aliana justified her own family? Not trying to justified slave trading but it would be interesting and a great way to strengthen Aliana as a character if she has to fight against someone who justifies their actions the same way she justifies murdering people. The same way she tries to say a sith can be a good guy despite history (and canon) saying other wise. You know an actual story besides teaching Ray "murder good, capitalisms bad, I'm always right" with some romance (which I'm not knocking or going into because Rays just the love interest. In a better or campier story I might like it more)

But nope all we got was an oc whose always right and all the bad fun camp one usually gets is sucked away because of grandstanding from a sith cop (kills who she wants based on her own morality, deems who is right and wrong it fits).

Lily claims to go into deep topics but I'm still waiting for anything besides "Aliana is always right, rich people bad (unless it her family) and watch as she murders people with justice,".

Anyway this fic is frustrating and now I want a fanfic where a child of one of the people Aliana murdered fights her.

[lord-squiggletits]

Something about being an IDW OP fan is that even in positive works about him I feel like his problematic aspects are brought up way too often even in an appreciative way.

Ignore the haters of IDW OP/other characters I'm using as an example bc I'm talking about how fans talk about their own faves.

Like with Prowl fans, they know he's problematic but they pretty much just go "yeah he's an asshole what about it" or just don't acknowledge it at all and write/draw what they want to see. Some might allude to ACAB stuff but they don't do a disclaimer on every post about him with "btw I know cops are bastards and war crimes are evil I just think he's neat"

Pharma stans make content about him, whether apologism or just fun haha chainsaw doctor, without having to constantly be like "medical malpractice is bad and all but" or "He kills people and that's definitely important to talk about but" they just write about Pharma being a tragic/evil character and that's that

Megatron fans definitely are willing to talk about him being problematic, but again that element of self consciousness isn't there and ppl write headcanons and fics and stuff without Megatron having to turn around in the narration and go "oh I'm evil I'm so awful no one should be like me" as a sign to the audience that the author doesn't condone Megatron's actions and thinks colonialism is bad

I'm sure I could come up with other examples but like it's just weird to me that even among ppl who like IDW Optimus (and I'm not immune to this either), there's like this self-effacing attitude where ppl can't just say "I like him" or "It was cool when he did this" without almost ALWAYS preceding it with some sort of "He is a cop but" or "He's kind of a jerk but" or "I would hate him IRL but" as if there's some sort of Transformers fandom panopticon saying that you're not allowed to talk positively about IDW OP without first mentioning all of his flaws/problematic aspects. People sort of speak about him as if he's enjoyable or well written DESPITE being problematic, or that enjoying him has to be justified bc him being problematic automatically makes him repulsive. As opposed to merely talking about IDW OP as he is, and the problematic parts of him are thinks you can talk about or not talk about just depending on your mood and what angle you want to approach. No, every post or conversation has to always allude to how "IDW OP is an asshole, but he also has positive traits" or "I know he's problematic, but hear me out."

Hell even tho I'm seeing a little more fic about IDW OP or OPs with more IDW elements, it still feels as if most writers put him in situations where he goes "yeah I'm sorry I'm problematic and did bad things" as if he has to confess his sins publicly before being allowed to be a person. Or that the author feels the need to write him as such to reassure the audience "No actually I know ACAB just because I like IDW OP doesn't mean I'm not progressive look here I'm writing a story about everyone calling him an asshole for being a cop and OP kisses Megatron's ass because revolutionaries are actually right and it's only state propaganda that maligns them as violent and capable of wrong."

Idk I just think that among people who enjoy problematic characters, there are still a lot of fans who are either immature or self-conscious in their enjoyment of problematic characters. Where they DO have that enjoyment but they feel the need to make public disclaimers constantly or write their stories in a moralizing way to demonstrate how well they know that character is problematic. To contrast, I think true "problematic character" enjoyment comes when people can just LIKE A CHARACTER and it's a morally neutral act where they don't feel the need to make demonstrations about how transgressive it is and how their taste in fictional characters definitely doesn't reflect their real life morality.

It's just saddening bc even tho these days, there are lots of people who like IDW OP and there's fewer people being assholes about him, it still feels as if content about him is self-conscious of the fact and won't let him exist as a character/funny guy in your brain/vessel of themes and plot and instead it's some sort of Hays Code-esque thing where every time he appears on screen at least one person has to call him a cop bastard so the audience knows the fanfiction isn't copaganda.

But what if instead IDW OP fans and fan content had the same energy as other problematic character fanbases like Prowl or Megatron and we could just go "yeah here's a story about my favorite guy" without making a whole disclaimer about it

[antikate]

I genuinely think romance is a deeply underrated genre that is sneered upon because of its associations with femininity; I think it’s utopian and hopeful and worthwhile and I crave good romance stories. At the same time I hate most romance novels that I try to read.

I had Covid this week and for a few days was too sick to even look at a book or screen so I downloaded a bunch of audiobooks from the library and I gave up on every single one of them:

1. Notorious by Minerva Spencer. I noped out of this a few pages in when one character was described as delectable and luscious and another character’s eyes were described as orbs. The book also comes with a whole heaping of misogyny and Islamophobia apparently.

2. Georgie All Along by Kate Clayborn. The first ??? 20 ??? Or so pages of this book consist of the heroine back in her home town and going into a deli to order a coffee and not having enough money to pay for it because she left her wallet in the car. 20 pages!!! It’s humiliating and is literally like being stuck in the head of the most neurotic person you’ve ever met. Page after page of this woman ruminating about what a loser she is. Exhausting! And I say this as someone who can ruminate at the Olympic level.

3. Pretty Pretty Boys by Gregory Ashe. This one is an m/m series about two cops who fall in love and I had hopes that it might be solid but the characterization was basically “whatever the author felt like writing”. Also the cops act like cops as in they’re abusive to random people and spend a lot of time being horrible, which I don’t really need in a romance.

4. Not Your Average Hot Guy, Gwenda Bond. Idk this was just. A bit? Boring? Also everyone was just a bit too self consciously sassy. The heroine runs an escape room but one of her props turns out to be actually a demonic book. I think one of my issues with this book and so many other romance novels is that banter is a real skill and most people can’t write it. But everyone, regretfully, tries.

5. Liar City, Allie Therin. There’s this one audiobook narrator who has such a snotty voice that I just cannot. This book might have been great but the instant I started listening I knew it was that dude. Maybe I’ll try it as an actual book.

6. The Blacksmith Queen by GA Aiken. This is one of the worst books I’ve ever tried to read. Truly. The heroine is a blacksmith and the hero is a centaur, which I thought sounded fun (also I was wondering how they’d have sex because I’m like that) but it was … puerile? Astonishingly stupid?

7.Capture the Crown, Jennifer Estep. This is also an absolutely idiotic book. The hero has amethyst eyes and the heroine has some other gem coloured eyes and someone else has sapphire eyes and if you took a shot every time it someone’s eye colour was described as a jewel tone you’d be hospitalised for alcohol poisoning by about page four.

8. A taste of gold and iron, Alex Rowland. This is decently written - as in the prose is solid - but the plot is half baked, the characters are tedious, and the world building is intriguing but paper thin. I’d say it’s a much better book than most here, but I still couldn’t bring myself to finish.

Not everything I’d read lately has been terrible so here’s some romance or romance adjacent books I have actually enjoyed:

1. The Heart Principle by Helen Hoang: This book is not going to change your life but it does what sets out to do with a slight if entertaining love story.

2. The Secret Lives of County Gentlemen, KJ Charles: I think Charles is one of the best and smartest historical romance writers I’ve ever read. Her books are everything I want out of romance: the characters are interesting, idiosyncratic, and sympathetic; the details feel right; the stories work; and the sex scenes are both hot and do important plot and character work. Her books are swoony and emotional and feel very real while still being romantic. (The audio narrator of this let it down a little because he took a lot of odd pauses but I’m being super nitpicky.)

3. A Far Wilder Magic, Allison Saft: This is a sweet YA novel set in an interesting fantasy world - I really enjoyed the prickly heroine and her dog.

4. In Memoriam, Alice Winn: This beautiful, heart-rending novel is not exactly a romance - it’s set during WW1 and has very explicit and realistic scenes set in the trenches. The trauma and suffering of the war are achingly portrayed. But it is a love story between two young soldiers, even if it’s not necessarily one with an easy or simple ending. Highly recommend with the caveat that Winn does not shy away from the brutality and senselessness of WW1.

5. Thornhedge, by T Kingfisher: This is a brief but resonant Sleeping Beauty retelling. Not exactly a romance but also not unromantic. My only complaint is that I wanted more. I’m a big T Kingfisher fan, and I adore her practical, earthy characters (like Toadling).

6. We Could Be So Good, Cat Sebastian: I’m here for everything Sebastian writes. Her books are low stakes but still compelling, her characters are likeable and complex, I actually enjoy her banter, and she has a knack for capturing historical details and moments. Her conflicts never feel fake and the resolutions are always earned.

[littlefankingdom]

~ Batgirl (2000)

They are sad and disappointed in themselves and they should be. What they did is not justice.

So, I'm mad about this issue, like really mad for personal reasons I will explain later. For context: a young girl has been kidnapped by a thief who escaped jail. It's not the first time said thief kidnapps this girl. This young girl, around 10 years old, is an artist and her mother exploits her, making money by selling her daughter's art. They are rich. This woman doesn't love her daughter, she loves the money she is making from her daughter. The man that keeps kidnapping this young girl? Her father. Her father that loves and cares for her, that turned to crime to take care of his daughter, and refuses to sell any art she makes because she made it for him, because she loves her father. And she pleads, she pleads Batgirl to let her with her father and not bring her back to her mother who doesn't love her, she pleads her to not put her father in jail. And what do Batgirl does? She stops the father, gives him to the cops and brings back the girl to her mother. On those panels, they are looking at a sad child with her abuser they brought her back to.

My mother doesn't love me. She will say she does to others, but it's not true and it has been the case for a long time, since I was very young. I wasn’t unwanted, I was just not what she wanted. My life was supposed to be centered, until my death, around taking care of my mother (she is not disabled or anything, she just wants people to do everything for her). Raised to make money I would gift to my mother, so she could have luxuries, but I was not successful in that. I grew up pleading for love, pleading for people to listen to my pain. Nobody did. I learnt that people prefer the comfort and peace of their lives over helping others. I learnt to distrust authority figures (teachers, doctors, any adults/people at least 5 years older than me in general), because either they were power hungry assholes who abuse kids, either they preferred to look away, who would tell me to be nice and listen to my mother. It's too much problem to help children. In the end, I could count on nobody but myself to get out. I can count on nobody but myself. I hate the system, and I promised myself I would never be like those who look away, I will defend any child that needs it.

So, to read a story where a little girl pleads a HERO to not bring them back to their abuser, only for said HERO to still bring her back to her abuser, to tell her to be nice and stay with her awful parent... I am furious. This issue is literally telling me that, if heroes existed, the heroes you adore since you are a child, they would not have saved you. They would have bring you back to your mother and told you to be nice, like everyone else. They would have let you go through those years of pain. Heroes would have looked away.

What is the logic here? Because it's neither justice or the good thing to do. That it is the law? Since when do they follow the law? I don't remember vigilantism being legal, or assault and battery, or owning all the weapons Bruce owns. Yes, it was still a kidnapping, her father is a criminal, it would not have been a good life for a child. But, the Bats could have tried to find a solution, instead of simply giving this child back to someone who will treat her like shit.

I know it's just a fiction, so it's not like a real child is being exploited and will be more abused later when she stops being good enough because her mental health deteriorated, nobody is going to become depressed and lose trust in heroes because the bats brought her back to her awful mother. And also, it's not the characters who are at fault, it's the writers. It's not about Cass and Bruce being bad people heroes, it's about who the fuck decided to write that. New entries in my list of enemies, Keller Puckett and Dylan Horrocks.