#and is ironically the Prime who died on the worst way

[susaken456]

I really like how Scavengers Reign pits individualism vs. collectivism through Kris and Azi, especially because Azi was a bit like Kris.

We see she’s rather introverted: she was a loner back at the Demeter (and pretty much all of her life), she didn’t want to acknowledge her night with Mia and she treated Levi coldly in the first couple of episodes; she could’ve gone down Kris’s self-reliant survivalism.

In my opinion, the reason she doesn’t is because Azi longs for human connection and she's willing to take the blind leap of faith an interpersonal relationship requires.

Mandatory spoiler warning™

Azi opens herself to Mia during the observatory flashback and Mia seems to successfully coax Azi into hanging out with others crewmembers; she accepts Levi's newfound conciousness despite not having a good answer for why it's happening, and both start building the bond she's longed for since the Demeter crashed.

Her worst time is when Levi’s destroyed and she’s all alone, stranded in Vesta.

Kris is always accompanied by her crew, but the dynamic of her interpersonal relationships with them is quite different. She relies on herself and they also rely on her; it’s a one way street paved with detachment. Every time she interacts with Terrence or Barry she’s leading them, demanding something of them. She never talks to them as equals and she always expects compliance, it’s subtle and that’s how it works on them. But Azi, who doesn’t hold any feeling of indebtedness to her, notices.

It's also worth noting how "cut-throat" a lot of her expressions are:

The way Azi treats both Terrence and Barry is a stark contrast to Kris's, but it's more noticeable with Barry. One of my favorite moments is in episode 9, when she trips and Barry gives her a climbing tip, which went on to a conversation about things each one likes. It's a small moment but it once more exemplifies Azi’s empathetic side.

I think Azi does become a substitute for Terrence, but, ironically, not in the way Kris intended. Terrence’s leniency juxtaposed Kris’s authoritarianism. He nurtured Barry’s childlike curiosity and didn't shut off Azi’s concerns about the survivors of the Demeter. When he dies, Azi fills his role.

Kris tries and fails to indoctrinate Azi into her individualistic way of survival. She tells her that the important thing is her, getting off the planet. But Azi refuses to do that at the expense of abandoning her fellow crewmates, whose lives hold inherent value.

I love the small moment when she checks on Barry after Kris leaves him because she shows more gentleness than Kris would and has shown. She has a surprising amount of moments like this: every friendly interaction she has with Levi, Ursula and her hugging after she saves Azi, her hugging Levi (2 times!), her reuniting with Mia...

When Kris leaves on the shuttle, it shows how conditional her loyalty is: the minimal deviation is enough to make her dismiss someone. We see this facet foreshadowed in her debut, when Terrence talks about settling down and very slightly teases Kris, which clearly irritates her and proceeds to shut him up.

Azi sees value in interpersonal relationships and connects with others through empathy and mutual respect. Kris can’t make such connections because her own self will always be her prime concern.

[thestargayzingetherian]

Shadow Weaver's "Redemption"

So I often see posts going around about Shadow Weaver's death scene and how she "deserved worse" or "doesn't even count as a redemption". In my opinion, like a lot of She-Ra stuff online, it ignores a lot of the nuance of the show's actual writing.

I don't really call her arc a redemption arc... but I do see this scene in particular as her finally, at long last realising how much harm she's caused to Catra and Adora. By keeping them apart... she's actually made Adora weaker, ironically, all those years of manipulation... and it's been for nothing. Adora isn't her perfect little pawn, she's weak and dying of green prime virus running through her and hurting at the thought of her best friend dying to Prime's little pet cthulu.

I see way too many people say that SW should have died sooner and to be honest, yes, if this was any other story, yeah they'd have probably killed her around season 3. If they genuinely did want her to have a redemption, they'd have made her arc in seasons 3 and 4 more genuine, have her work to really be an ally of the rebellion and not being the manipulative witch she'd always been. But that's not what Nate Stevenson wanted to do. By keeping SW around as long as the show did, they got do more with her and show how someone like her is in various environments, both in the Horde and on the side of the rebellion.

I genuinely think this WAS SW doing a "one good thing" like Catra did. And to be honest, it was the only good thing she could really do. There is no way that if she did survive this that she could truly make ammends for the harm and cycles of abuse she perpetuated, especially not at this point in the story.

Hordak was at least under the influence of his programming and war was the only thing he knew when he started the Horde. Sure, he's not entirely absolved of his actions in the war, but he's at least more of a victim and his compassion for Entrapta show's he's at least worthy of a second chance. Shadow Weaver was clearly a woman driven by power, a desperate need for control and that was her own choice, likely from being scared of being weak. (I believe she was telling the truth when she told Catra that Catra reminded her of herself, that she was once a weak and hurt young woman who hated being weak and wanted to be stronger and that began her lust for power.)

Also, what she says to Catra and Adora? "It's much too late for me, but your story is just beginning. I'm so proud of you. You're welcome."

She could have very easily just said sorry, much like Catra did when she rescued Glimmer.... but would ANY apology be really able to make up for what she did? No, probably not. Instead its just... "you're welcome" as if to say "you're finally rid of me, congrats". Because she knows that pain now and how it tore Catra and Adora apart. And the fact she does this with her mask off, without any hint of lies, as if to be finally honest for the first time in so long.

I know it's fun to dunk on SW and say she's the worst ever and yeah, I do enjoy that too... but I also know what her arc, if you can call it, that is about and why she is in the story. Like everything in She-Ra, she has a lot of nuance to her, even if you didn't realise it.

[druidposting]

Not to get sociopolitical in the cr maintag, but I think a lot of people arent understanding something VERY critical to the "gods good or bad" argument, so I'm gonna try and lay out these points as best I can.

(This ended up being very long, but if you enjoy analyzing CR through a sociological lens, it's all under the cut.)

To start, you have to understand that the Exandrian gods are immortal beings with immense power and influence compared to the mortals of the material plane. Yes, obviously gods have died/sustained wounds in the past, but comparing the power required to do any of those things to a god is like comparing the wattage of the Sun to that of a lightbulb. Its just incomparable.

In spite of this, however, I keep seeing posts about how its fucked up to kill someone just because they didn't give you what you wanted. For starters, the gods aren't just "someone" - as I said before, they're unfathomably powerful and immortal beings, and while they no longer have the ability to walk the earth and shape it to their whims, they absolutely have the ability to influence the ideas and ethics of the mortals that do walk the earth in very material ways (see the Angle of Irons cult, Tevan Klask the champion of Asmodeus we just met, and Pelor vs the Valley Coalition for examples). To put it in maybe more understandable terms, you can make a decent allegory between the gods and real-world political pundits, in the sense that while a president cant literally shape the world how they want, they have an overwhelmingly disproportionate ability to influence and shape how the people they rule over think and feel, and what should and shouldn't be morally permissible in their society. In a vacuum, the fundamental role of politicians in current neoliberal societies is to try and ensure their ideas and ethics are the dominant ones, so that the people they rule over can do the shaping of the world for them. This is why I find it much more permissible, and often necessary, even, to pass judgement over and rise up against (and wish death upon (in minecraft)) political pundits whos morals don't align with mine - their ideas have material influence on society, in ways that normal individuals don't, and I happen to agree with Marx when he said "the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas".

So all that said, I totally see why some Exandrian mortals would be very very upset with some of the gods for various reasons! And I fully support their desires and rights to protest and fight back against any proponents and arbiters of bad ideas and prescriptions.

HOWEVER. This does NOT mean I am pro destroying the Exandrian pantheon. I think that based on everything we know so far (especially with the new info from the latest episode), that would be a net bad for Exandrian mortals.

To understand why I feel this way even in spite of my above arguments, I think it will be helpful to outline what I think are the worst of the likely outcomes if Predathos is released;

A power vacuum opens with the gods eradicated, and Ludinus (or some other dictator, but likely Ludinus as I think this is his actual goal) promptly fills the position of god emperor of Exandria, With no external forces to restrict their actions, and free reign over how they choose to rule the people. The consequences of this are even less freedom for Exandrian mortals than they had under the oversight of the gods, which is in my opinion, very bad.

The swaths of demon armies who have been chomping at the bit for literal millennia to find any minute perceived weakness in the divinely appointed (whether by Prime or Betrayer god) defenders of the Material Plane from the Abyssal armies, are finally able to overcome these defenses and wage devastating war and eradicate all life on Exandria. This is something we're already starting to see happen in the Grey Valley in the current arc, and I have to say, this also seems like it would be really bad for mortals.

Predathos doesn't stop after eating the gods, and in the end, devours all of Exandria. That would probably also be pretty bad.

Even if none of those things ended up happening, the overwhelming threat level of any of those outcomes, and the fair likelihood of any of them happening, far outweighs the potential benefits Ludinus proposes. I'll liken it again to real-world politics in the US, because I think some useful parallels can be made here; Think of the Exandrian gods as the Democrats, and Predathos as the Republicans. No one likes the Democrats. They're cowardly, their polices are luke-warm at best and detrimental to human happiness at worst, they continue to bolster capitalism even though their constituents hate it, all of their politicians are way too old, and god damn do they ever come off as condescending. But compared to the Republicans? They are the bastion of freedom. The Democrats are far from perfect. The Exandrian gods are far from perfect. But when your other option for who gets to govern you and your society is a fascist, you must do anything to preserve the freedoms you currently have, even if they're limited. Under the Exandrian Gods, the limited freedoms mortals have are infinitely more favorable to the zero freedom they would have under a dictatorship or as a dead person. With the Exandrian Gods, individuals have the chance to rise up against oppressions they face from their disciples, and to make more and more gains over time that solidify and bolster their freedoms. This is just objectively not an option under any of the above scenarios if Predathos is unleashed. If you're facing down the existential threat of fascism in a neoliberal establishment, you do not toss the current establishment aside in favor of a better one - you buy time by bolstering the current establishment, and when the threat is lower, then you can look at revolutionary action and work towards better forms of governance again. I believe that similarly, Exandrians will have the best opportunity for the greatest freedom in the future if they're able to stave off Predathos and Ludinus.

Now with all this context, I can talk about something that Ludinus either fails to understand - or deliberately doesn't care about and misconstrues for the sake of enacting his end goal - that is key to this debate, that being the difference between positive and negative freedoms.

Very briefly, negative freedoms are characterized as freedom from external constraints on any actions they may wish to take. For example, freedom of speech allows an individual the freedom to speak whatever they wish without the imposition of government. Positive freedoms are characterized by the freedom to do something, the ability to enact your future goals and desires. Positive and negative freedoms are often at odds with each other. A good real-world example of this would be murder. I think everyone would agree with saying murder being a punishable crime is a good thing - but is it not an imposition on an individual's freedom to legislate against them acting on their free will, if murder was what they wanted to do? Technically, its a removal of their negative freedom to act without constraint, but outlawing murder is itself a positive freedom, as it allows people the ability to live without fear of death (and obviously grants positive freedom to the hypothetical victim in that they now have the freedom to live instead of having died to the murderer).

With Ludinus, the freedom he talks about, freedom from the meddling and imposition of the gods on the free will of mortals, is a negative freedom. But if the potential consequences of releasing Predathos could be as dire as the complete destruction of all mortals on Exandria, or the subjugation of all mortals to the dictatorship of whoever fills the resulting power vacuum, then I feel pretty safe in saying that Exandrians deserve the positive freedom to continue living without the fear of certain death or subjugation under a post-Predathos world, even if there's the possibility that the current gods continue to meddle with ideas as they have. A dead Exandrian can't rise up and resist the will of the gods and their disciples, after all.

[god-mouths]

I NEED TO HEAR EVERYTHING YOU CAN TELL ME ABT THE LAFAUX FAMILY

Will do! this one got long

First off I want to start with the name. LaFaux —> La Faux, which literally translates to “the faker/the false” in French. This of course applies to Casper more than anyone else for a myriad of reasons, but still overall. The whole family.

I’ll go in chronological order— first, the patriarch of the family, micheal lafaux. (Died age 70) He built this business from the ground up! World’s worst eccentric businessman.

Here he is. Fun fact! Every aspect of his personality and character design corresponds to each of his four children— except for Casper. Anyways I have been figuring out his character and boy has it been a genuine fucking delight. He’s such an asshole. He does coke but like. It doesn’t *do* anything to him he just likes putting stuff up his nose. He is always honest (ironic and a direct contrast to his last name)— but he is not kind. He has endless, boundless energy, at least in the prime of his life. The minute he hits fifty it all goes downhill. He loses his energy and his spark.

But, in the 60s or the 70s or whichever, he was a force to be reckoned with. He’s good at macguyvering inventions using random crap, which was how he built and maintained his business. Also he’s sort of a bigot, but not like actively it’s just a side effect of being an important guy in the 60s

A personal rule I have for drawing this thing is that his pupils shouldn’t touch the outlines of his eyes. Adds to that crack-addled look of his that he’s so keen on maintaining. Fun fact about micheal, he cannot wait to die. Not in a bad way, he just genuinely thinks he has it in him to kick the devil’s ass and rule hell. He thinks he’d have fun down there.

Next, Delphina LaFaux (neé Alta-L’Estandares. That’s “high standards” in Spanish. I think I’m funny.) aged ~68 or so at death

She is an assassin who is trying to kill micheal for his money and instead ends up in the world’s most miserable marriage as the man just won’t die. She is absolutely trapped in a hell of her own making.

To put it nicely, she needs micheal like an alcoholic needs a drink. She ends up taking care of the children, because lord knows micheal isn’t doing that. “The prodigal wife, the woman with so much hatred in her body that she's turned it into a living. She faces a challenge in her husband, him being the one person she can't kill. She'd switch gears and try something new, but....something deep in her mind begs her to stay here. Maybe it's destiny, or fate, or....just a prison of her own design. She's doomed. She knows she is. She's procrastinating getting out of the way of the moving train. she's not even tied to the tracks -- she's just standing there.

What's it like to be the dead wife before she dies?”

^ blurb I wrote for an are pee

Now onto them kids those rascals.

This is the firstborn, Peter. (38) He grew up when his father was still in his prime, so he knows the most about how the man actually thinks and talks. When his father dies Peter gets the house. He has no idea how to take care of the huge mansion, and sort of lets it fall into disrepair. He’s a bit frazzled and hides himself from the public eye, because he grew up in the eye of the camera due to being the son of a multi billionaire. He really just wants to live his life alone in peace. Definetly the most chill out of the lafaux family. He got that eyepatch because when he was a kid he looked directly into a bottle rocket just as it went off.

Old ass comic he really is just a fun guy

Onto Vivian, the second oldest. (35) She emulates her father the most, and caught the end of her father’s prime growing up. She is the favorite, and if she were a boy, micheal would have stopped having children literally right then and there. However, micheal wanted a man to inherit all his money. And since the inheritance goes to the youngest we simply can’t have that. The story of LEM is the story of a spy op consisting of criminals. VIVIAN is the one who creates this spy op in the first place, to rival her brother Casper. I haven’t draw. Much of her at all . This is the best image I have of her

I think this is like…2020? Art?? 2019? Still. She’s cunning. A fun gal.

Onto Casper. We all know Casper hi Casper (he’s like 26)

When his father dies, he is 16, putting him in charge of the estate as his sister at the time was too young to do so (13.)

His sister does not make it past age 13. He murders her—supposedly— for the inheritance, and blames it on a faked home intrusion. The rest of the living lafaux siblings are completely silent on this. They’re aware it happened, but have no way of proving it. Peter becomes more of a recluse as a result, and Vivian launches her spy op offensive.

Anyways, Casper renames the company business from “LaFaux Corporate” to “Blue Fox (Faux)”, merging all of the companies his father had dominion over into one giant conglomerate.

The lafaux last name applies to him the most. All he does is lie. His whole personality is a farce to a hidden maliciousness underneath. He is trying to emulate his father, and in doing so has made a suit out of a dead man’s skin. Don’t be mistaken, however. Casper doesn’t live in his father’s shadow- Casper is more famous than his father ever was. What Casper is doing here is making himself a grave in the shape of his father’s corpse. He’s much calmer, though.

Lastly, Beatrice LaFaux. 13, died. Sucks to suck.

[ocean-stuck]

A list of details that have gone unmentioned even after 3000 fucking words lmfao:

It is strongly suggested that the Rokkenjima Massacre could still happen in the Lion/EP7 timeline, despite Sayo/Lion, the one who lit the spark in the Prime timeline, being raised in the best of conditions, owing to just how fucked in the head everyone else is.

Eva is categorically better with money than Krauss. Despite this, Kinzo berates her for her ambition at being the successor because this is a patriarchal family and Women Don’t Do That™. He eventually acquiesces to her insistence on going to college and legally adopting Hideyoshi, but by then the damage to how she interacts with the world is done.

Krauss and Natsuhi were an arranged marriage that Natsuhi initially hated. She does eventually sincerely care for him, but is chronically stressed and neurotic from trying to save him from his own bad decisions and going unthanked for it. (She wants to be a “good wife,” see, in the sense that her birth family taught her.) She writes her early thoughts in some diaries, and in one arc a character uses these to try and frame her for her husband’s murder.

Maria is implied autistic (verbal stimming, special interest in occult shit), and I actually have to make a minor correction to the essay because her being bullied at school is actually the combination of that and being the child of a single mom. Rosa, worried about being inadequate as a parent, buys a shitty parenting guide around when Maria is a toddler and ironically ends up even worse as a parent than she might have been, in that she becomes an autism mom who blames her for being bullied and becomes hostile to her autistic traits.

All the siblings bully Rosa. It’s an impressive sort of terribleness given that according to math, they were in at least their teens while Rosa was still a little girl. The manga adds a stuffed rabbit named Uu-tan that Rosa owned as a kid, which her siblings then destroyed the way she later destroys Sakutarou (Maria’s stuffed lion, mentioned above). Immediately after destroying Sakutarou, her inner monologue has her start to feel guilty but then double down, angry that Maria won’t suck it up the way she was forced to. Maria has a stress dream about torturing her gruesomely in revenge.

Kyrie abandons the Sumadera family over Rudolf, only for it to go Like That. Her sister Kasumi ends up forced into the headship in her place and is mad about it; 12 years after the massacre she tries to assassinate Ange for her fortune (since she inherited everything that wasn’t blown up).

It is noted that Rudolf would’ve been made to divorce Asumu if not for the ruse with Battler’s parentage, which he didn’t want to do as he did care for Asumu (though not enough to simply not cheat in the first place lololol).

Ange is barely talked about at all smh. First off, she is conceived before Asumu has actually died, which is how Battler realizes Rudolf was cheating on his mother for years (according to him, he would have been uncomfortable but accepting if it was merely a fast rebound). It is strongly implied (by which I mean Kyrie outright says it in a scene whose broad strokes are known to be true) that Ange being conceived in the first place was a parent trap to push Rudolf into marrying her. After the massacre she is raised by Eva who understandably refuses to tell her her parents were the man and woman behind the slaughter, allowing Ange to grow up hating her and believing she did it--which isn’t to say Eva is innocent in their relationship, she sends Ange to the worst boarding school and ends up embittered to the point where on her deathbed, they’re casually threatening each other with the worst tortures imaginable. To make matters worse, the Rokkenjima Massacre becomes the obsession of occultists and true crime nuts due to the strange circumstances and Sayo’s murder-suicide fanfics washing ashore; some even create their own murder-suicide fanfic hoaxes, the most famous being the ones by mystery writer Tohya Hachijou (a fugue-state Battler trying to process his trauma; in the manga, Eva actually realizes it’s him from how on-point his characterization is). The result is that Ange is bullied and forced to hear gossip about her family’s worst sins for her entire childhood and eventually attempts suicide by jumping off a hospital roof. Whether she learns to heal psychologically is an ending split: in the good end, she changes her name and becomes a writer and orphanage director, trying to help other traumatized children and eventually getting to reunite with Tohya. In the bad end she kills her bodyguard and an innocent boat captain, convinced they’re in on a plot to assassinate her.

Propaganda for the Ushiromiya family

"PEAK weird family drama. Fighting over the inheritance leads to multiple people dying in gruesome ways"

"The whole plot of the game is that they all are so dysfunctional it would make sense for any of them to commit murder"

"Grandpa fucks an Italian who murders the entire family and then his grandson gets fucked by the same Italian in hell"

"The Rokkenjima Mass Murders would not have happened to a functional family"

"The parents claw at each others' throats for a vast family inheritance, the kids/cousins fool around, and then they all murder each other/get murdered"

"This family is dysfunctional and abusive on every levels. The parents are fighting for the inheritance, because the elder embezzled money. The grandfather, Kinzo, hides in his room and never shows up. Not unusual, he neglected his family his whole life. Seems that he preferred a mysterious mistress than his family. When he talked to his children, it was to scold them for being incompetents. The atmosphere is oppressive. The children of Kinzo were bully. Krauss bullied Eva, who bullied Rosa. Concerning the next generation: Battler is in conflict with his father because he cheated on his mother. Natsuhi is putting pressure on Jessica for her to become the heir of the family, and is losing contact with her daughter. Eva has deciced what the life of Georges is becoming, and that he will not marry a servant. As for the relationship between Rosa and Maria, this is just the best mother-daughter love-hate relationship ever. And everything ends in blood, for ever and ever."

"/*\ Major spoilers here /*\

This family is dysfunctional on *every* levels. The leader (Kinzo) neglected his wife and his children. We later learn that he hid a secret daughter that he raped. He neglected his family. Children were bully between each other. As Kinzo is approaching is death, his four children are fighting for the inheritance. We later learn that Kinzo is already dead but his first son (Krauss) and his wife (Natsuhi) are hiding his deaths, because they have embezzled money and if the death of Kinzo was public, their schemes would be revealed. The love/hate mother-daughter relationship between Rosa and Maria is amazing. Rosa is a single mother. She loves her daughter, but also hates her because she gets in her way in her personnal and sentimental life. She neglects her, but she stills love her. There is also the strange love conflict between the alters of the offspring of the grandfather with her own daughter and the grandchildren, but this is already a lot."

Detailed, 3000 word history of the Ushiromiya family below the cut:

Prefacing this with a CW for grooming, mentions of fascism, SA, attempted infant death, abuse, incest, suicide, child death, stillbirth, drowning and major Umineko spoilers.

So, what makes the Ushiromiya family so fucked up?

Well, it all starts back in 1923 during the Great Kanto earthquake when the mansion belonging to the Ushiromiya family was destroyed, most members of the family and their wealth perishing in the earthquake and the spinning mills, the things that made them so successful in the first place, were all destroyed in a fire due to the earthquake.

After this tragedy, for a while it was unknown who would be the successor to the Ushiromiya family, whether it be someone in the main family or someone in another branch of the family, like Kinzo was. Funnily enough, it seemed as though no one in the main family was applicable for the role of successor, and so it was decided that the successor would be none other than Kinzo Ushiromiya himself (partially due to his polydactyly (six toes) which was seen as a sign of good fortune in the Ushiromiya family).

Skip ahead about 20 years, during which Kinzo essentially disassociated (for lack of a better term) and ended up in an arranged marriage, producing 3 children (Krauss, Eva and Rudolf) and spending his time getting drunk and reading a LOT of Western books. During this time, Kinzo eventually started to feel as if he was slowly dying. Come WWII, Kinzo decided to enlist in the Japanese army so as to find a way to die and not feel like a puppet being controlled by a bunch of different people.

It's 1944 and KInzo is stationed on an island that functions as a military base. A submarine containing members of the Italian Social Republic (a group of Italian fascists who couldn't accept Italy's surrender) and a bunch of Italian fascism gold wind up on the island, one of the people in the ship being the 19-year-old Beatrice Castiglioni who over time begins to form a romantic bond with Kinzo who, keep in mind, was in his 40s at this time.

To skip ahead a bit, the Italians pull out the gold from the submarine, the Japanese soldiers get greedy and want some of the gold and tension starts brewing between the two until someone (in the manga it's revealed to be KInzo himself) causes a stunt that results in the deaths of *everyone* on the island minus Beatrice and Kinzo. They escape on a boat where Kinzo took Beatrice to a doctor (who would later become a lifelong friend of Kinzo's, for better and for worse) and Beatrice was stationed in an unused villa.

This is where Kinzo's double life began (living with both his arranged wife and his children who he abused and they in turn abused each other), years later their affair producing a child, Beatrice II (during this time, Kinzo had one more child with his wife, Rosa). Unfortunately, the birthing process resulted in the death of Beatrice Castiglioni. With the daughter of his love affair and after having used some of the Italian fascism gold to build connections and do some war profiteering, Kinzo bought the island where he met Castiglioni, named it "Rokkenjima," and built two mansions: one for his main life with his wife and kids, and another for Beatrice II, which would be named "Kuwadorian."

To skip more time, Beatrice II grows older and older and Kinzo falls deeper and deeper into the madness that his daughter was Castiglioni reincarnated, making her dress more and more like her until one day he raped his daughter and impregnated her with a child that he named Lion.

Sometime after Lion was born, Rosa met Beatrice II when she was 12-14 and Beatrice II around 19 years old. They became friends and an interest in seeing the outside world was sparked inside Beatrice II due to having been kept inside Kuwadorian for almost her entire life. So, Rosa took Beatrice II outside of Kuwadorian but, uh oh, she fell off a cliff and died leaving Lion all by themselves.

Kinzo gives the baby to Natsuhi (wife of Krauss) and this is where things get...complicated. There's two different timelines involving Lion: one where they (and a servant) are pushed off a cliff by Natsuhi due to the act of Kinzo giving her the baby making her feel like he was mocking her due to her then inability to produce a child (though she would later give birth to a daughter, Jessica), and one where they weren't thrown off a cliff and were adopted by Natsuhi and Krauss. For the purposes of this submission, we're going with the timeline where they were thrown off the cliff.

So, Lion is thrown off the cliff and severely injured but they're discovered by two servants: Dr. Nanjo (the doctor who originally tended to Beatrice Castiglioni) and Genji, a childhood friend of Kinzo's who later became a servant of his, and they tended to their injuries as best as they could (including amputating the baby's polydactyly but "carelessly" leaving a scar so that KInzo could identify them one day) and placed them in an orphanage house that Kinzo built for potential servants of his family (named Fukuin House), and they were given the name "Sayo Yasuda" and raised as a girl despite them being AMAB.

Meanwhile, while all this is going on, Eva got married to a man named Hideyoshi and had a child (George) to keep herself in the family registry and have a chance of becoming the successor once Kinzo kicks the bucket and Rudolf was married to a woman named Asumu but was two-timing her with another woman named Kyrie Sumadera and he impregnated the both of them but when they give birth 9 months later, Asumu's child was stillborn and Rudolf bribed the doctors into switching the babies so that his legal wife would be the one who gave birth to the surviving child and his mistress would've been the one who had a stillborn child. This surviving child would be raised as Battler Ushiromiya, a child that Kyrie would resent for the rest of her lifetime because of the belief that he was born from Asumu, a woman that she not only hated but was completely willing to murder because of her obsession with Rudolf.

Back to Sayo and, as she got older, Genji decided to fake Sayo's age and say she's 3 years younger than she actually is so that Natsuhi and Kinzo wouldn't be able to find out who she is. This included keeping her isolated inside Fukuiin House constantly with no friends so that they wouldn't notice any discrepancies between Sayo's physical body and her age. This all happened at the same time as Rudolf and Kyrie building a company, comitting massive amounts of fraud and driving their rivals into such huge debts that they committed suicide and, a few years later, Rosa creating a fashion company.

Skip ahead a few years to when Sayo was 9 but pretending to be 6, this is when Genji arranged for her to work as a servant under the name "Shannon," while Sayo herself treats "Shannon" like an imaginary friend and the ideal person that she wants to become.

Over the following few years, Sayo acclimated to life as a servant despite the teasing and mistreatment she receives from older servant/former Fukuin House members, and to cope with losing things, she creates a witch by the name of Beatrice who is responsible for her losing things. During this time, the servant Kumasawa helped Sayo learn various tricks to keep a hold of her things, framing them as magic rituals to keep Beatrice from stealing her things. The same happened when Sayo accidentally broke a vase that was important to Kinzo.

As a side note, because Sayo was disfigured due to the cliff incident and subsequently raised as a girl, her hormones are all fucked and she has a rather androgynous appearance which she despises along with her lack of periods, which resulted in her both despising mirrors and avoiding them at whatever cost and padding her chest. Keep all this in mind as it will come into importance later.

On a happier note, Sayo developed a love for mystery novels which she used to bond over with Battler, especially in regards to the motives of the culprits, over his multiple visits to the island of Rokkenjima during the annual family conferences the adult Ushiromiya family members would have over Kinzo's inheritance. Also around this time, Rosa's daughter, Maria, was born but Maria's father had abandoned her & Rosa shortly after Maria was born.

Skip ahead a couple years (now 1979) and the older servants have left the Ushiromiya mansion and new ones took their place, and Sayo, at this point 12 but pretended to be 9, was the one who had to train them. Being the kind of person she was, she told the new servants about the witch Beatrice, but one of the servants didn't believe her so she pulled a series of elaborate pranks that resulted in the servant believing in the witch, out of a sense of fear if nothing else, and because of these incidents, Sayo abandons the idea of becoming an ideal servant and embraces being a witch, revising her lore so that the witch Beatrice is now a close demon friend named Gaap and she is the witch named Beatrice instead.

One year later, in 1980, Battler, now 12, visited Rokkenjima for the final time and told Sayo, 13 who pretended to be 10, that when she was ready to quit being a servant he would come for her riding on a white horse and gave her until the next family conference in 1981 to decide whether she would accept or not. Meanwhile, George, now 17, would watch the interactions between Sayo and Battler and get extremely jealous.

However, before Sayo could tell Battler her decision, tragedy struck in the form of not only Asumu's death but Rudolf getting married to Kyrie shortly after Asumu's death (and have her give birth to Battler's sister, Ange), which pissed off Battler and caused him to not only leave the Ushiromiya family but also completely forget about his promise to Sayo. This, understandably, made her upset but she convinced herself that it was a trial of love from God and held onto this belief, even when Battler didn't show up for the family conference in 1981.

During the period between 1981 and 1986 (where the story primarily takes place), numerous years-long events took place, but the most important ones are: Maria meeting a priest who convinced her she's a child of God which led to her interest in the occult, Rosa starting to neglect Maria to go on trips with men which led to Maria getting isolated and bulled at school, Sayo started appearing as Beatrice during Maria's trips to Rokkenjima and convincing Maria she was a witch via magic tricks, Rosa getting a cheap plush for Maria but lying and saying it was made by her, Sayo building her lore by both pulling pranks on people and creating more magic OCs based on real people she knew along with magic OCs based on Maria's toys, Sayo becoming close friends with Jessica, Rosa assaulting a CPS officer and destroying Maria's plush (but using her wealth and influence to cover up everything) and Krauss embezzling Kinzo's money to the point of using the Rokkenjima mansion itself as collateral after multiple bad financial decisions.

In 1982, Battler does not attend the conference once again, which led to Sayo questioning if he was actually serious at all.

In 1983, Battler doesn't attend the conference again, but he sends letters to all his cousins but not to Sayo (either that or the one handing out the letters to everyone, George, stole the letter to Sayo). This incident broke Sayo completely, which resulted in her not only pushing her feelings for Battler onto Beatrice, but she also started experimenting dressing as a guy, specifically the servant Kanon (a representative of her negative feelings so that Shannon could be purely positive), which both Genji and Kumasawa were supportive of. Also during this year, Kinzo found out about Sayo's polydactyly and started to get close to her, which included him teaching her how to use guns.

In 1984, Kinzo hung a portrait of the witch Beatrice in the main hall of the mansion along with an epitaph that was a secret riddle that anyone could solve with the reward being not only the location of all the Italian fascism gold (which at this point had become a myth within the Ushiromiya household) but also the position of successor of the Ushiromiya family; in actuality, this was a final gambit Kinzo had pulled to see if the child of Beatrice II could solve it and inherit his position. During this year, George (now 21) and Sayo (now 17 but pretended to be 14) started to get more romantic in their interactions after a failed marriage interview at the behest of Eva. One day during this year, Genji had given Sayo a hint towards solving the epitaph and over the following months, she spends her free time solving the riddle.

November 29, 1984. Sayo solved the riddle and discovered the location of the gold. Genji had her put on the dress of the witch and go up to Kinzo's study, where she learned the truth that she's the product of Kinzo's incestuous rape of his daughter. Kinzo apologized for everything and, feeling content that he had tied up loose ends, dies after giving her the ring that signifies the head of the family, though she later asked the servants to continue to act as if no one had solved the epitaph and keep things going as normal.

After she learned this information, Sayo was completely destroyed by the fact that not only was she the product of incestuous rape, but also that her body could not bear children, the Ushiromiya family is one full of betrayal, abuse and bloodshed and the knowledge that her romantic attraction to George and Battler are both incestuous, which drove her into complete and utter despair.

In other news, not long after this, Natsuhi found out that not only had Kinzo died but also that her husband was embezzling his funds. She & her husband mutually decide to cover up Kinzo's death and act as if he's still alive.

In 1985, a man by the name of Gohda starts working as a chef at the Ushiromiya mansion, Sayo began feeling attracted to Jessica as Kanon (even though she knew this love was incestuous, further driving her into despair), and Jessica started falling in love with Kanon.

In 1986, multiple members of the Ushiromiya family fell into positions where they would need the gold and Battler had not only returned to the Ushiromiya family but also announced he would be attending the family conference that year. Sayo (now 19 but pretending to be 16), upon learning this news, is driven into madness by both her hopeless circumstances and the combined weight of the sins of the Ushiromiya family. From this point on, she would not only write multiple murder-suicide plans but also make extensive preparations to kill everyone at the family conference of 1986, including testing decades-old explosives, converting a billion yen's worth of gold and sending it to the families of the soon-to-be victims of her murder plans, asking the servants to be accomplices in the murder scheme (albeit in the form of them thinking it would be a fun little murder mystery prank, aside from Genji who knew the full extent of what Sayo wanted to do) and sending her murder suicide fanfictions into the sea inside wine bottles, effectively creating a catbox where anything could theoretically take place on the night of the murder.

October 4, 1986. Everyone in the main Ushiromiya family with the exception of a 5-year-old Ange staying home sick attends the conference. Maria reads out a letter from Beatrice (written by Sayo) convincing everyone to try and solve the epitaph before Beatrice started slaughtering the Ushiromiya family in return for them not solving the epitaph, and George proposes to Shannon.

Surprisingly, the adults actually solve the epitaph and find the location of the gold, effectively putting a stop to Sayo's murder plans. While the adults are overjoyed at first, tensions rise and a gunfight breaks out, resulting in Eva (accidentally) killing Natsuhi, Hideyoshi (accidentally) killing Krauss and Kyrie killing Rosa and Hideyoshi.

From this point on, Kyrie and Rudolf decide to slaughter everyone on the island, blow the whole thing up and take the gold for themselves. Kyrie shoots Eva and Sayo as Beatrice and they leave the room with the gold. Kyrie and Rudolf lie to the cousins and say that Kinzo is doing a test to see which of them is the most worthy of being the successor and ask them to come to separate areas. Jessica is killed by Kyrie, Rudolf kills George and, after they briefly meet up again, Kyrie kills Gohda, Dr. Nanjo, Genji and Maria. Eva wakes up and looks for Rudolf, finding him underneath the door of a chapel on the island, waiting for Battler. She kills him and, subsequently, kills Kyrie, running to Kuwadorian afterwards and surviving the explosion.

Meanwhile, Sayo survives Kyrie shooting her and changes her mind about the murder-suicide plan, finding Battler, rescuing him and taking him to the secret submarine area where the two of them attempt to escape in a motorboat before Sayo jumps into the water with a gold ingot to drown herself, Battler jumping in attempting to save her, with the result being that she, unfortunately, drowned to death and he was left in a daze that effectively erased his identity as "Battler Ushiromiya" and, for the most part, bringing an end to the dysfunctional, bloody and tragic tale of the Ushiromiya family.

[astradrifting]

This is kind of inspired by this recent ask I sent to @esther-dot about Jon’s characterisation and Jonsa shippers’ apparent disregard for it, because it made me think of another part of Jon’s characterisation that is really integral to who he is. Mainly, that Jon really loves his brothers. Especially Robb. His rival and best friend and constant companion. Jon envies him, competes with him, buried a formative traumatic memory where he was deeply hurt by him... but ultimately loves him. Complex relationships with his brothers, both the Starks and his Night’s Watch brothers, are a running theme in Jon’s chapters.

Speaking of Jon’s brothers...

Aegon VI and Robb have a lot of potential parallels, actually. The “Young” moniker, red-haired counselors who are also their parents, trained to be the heir to a great kingdom from a young age, the barely younger half-brother Jon borne of their father’s dishonour of their mother… one that they might both have a good relationship with despite that?

The show tried to play with Jon ‘accepting’ his Targaryen lineage through the jonerice romance, very unconvincingly because it was simultaneously undermining it at every opportunity, in what was maybe a half-assed attempt at Pol!Jon (”They’ll all come to see you for what you are” isn’t anything but a threat in all contexts).

Jon will ultimately choose the Starks over everything else, that’s not really a question. But if Jon were to genuinely connect with another Targaryen, it’d likely be easier for him to find kinship with a half-brother than with an aunt - he has a basis for positive relationships with trueborn half-brothers, while the only aunt figure he’s ever known about is a) long dead and b) actually his mother. I think it’d both make more sense and be more compelling for GRRM to leverage Jon’s existing complex relationships with brotherhood by having him interact with and build a relationship with Aegon, than a rushed and out-of-character romance with Dany. 

Jon also is already primed to believe that Aegon is the real deal, that he was saved as a baby, because he’s already done the exact same thing himself - he swapped out a baby of royal blood who was in danger for a common-born boy, and then sent him halfway across the world for safety (side note: if Septa Lemore is Ashara, and if the baby was actually Ashara’s son as theorised here by @agentrouka-blog, that would just strengthen the parallel, because it would be his body double’s mother caring for him, as Gilly has to do for Mance’s son).

They’re definitely going to come into conflict first - politically, Jon will likely be in a position of power in the North by the time they meet, maybe as the KitN through Robb’s will or regent for Rickon, and probably will fight for Northern independence, while Aegon is fighting to be king of the Seven Kingdoms, not 6. Personally, it will be hard to get past the fact that Jon is the direct result of Rhaegar dishonouring Elia, plus that the Kingsguard who should have been protecting her were all stationed in Dorne, guarding Jon’s mother (in whatever capacity). But these interactions, a conflict and eventual friendship/brotherhood between them, would all be a lot more layered than jonerice can really offer. If a relationship between Jon and Dany was truly all that GRRM has been building up to, then there would have been no need for R+L=J - it adds nothing to that storyline, it doesn’t even make it a forbidden romance, because aunt-nephew is hardly the worst incest the Targaryens have engaged in.

It’s almost inevitable that Da*nerys is going to kill Aegon VI/Young Griff in the books, likely by burning him with dragonfire, in the Second Dance of the Dragons. The weird Dragonpit meeting in the show was very contrived, but it does make sense for Dany to meet the ruler on the Iron Throne at least once in a semi-peaceful context. In the show, she used her dragons only to intimidate Cersei, but she didn’t have a personal grievance with her. Aegon is in much more danger during such a meeting. After all she will think he is a pretender, and she doesn’t much care for the rules of safe conduct, as she showed to the envoys from Yunkai.

Dany shrugged, and said, "Dracarys."

The dragons answered. Rhaegal hissed and smoked, Viserion snapped, and Drogon spat swirling red-black flame. It touched the drape of Grazdan's tokar, and the silk caught in half a heartbeat. 

[...]

"You swore I should have safe conduct!" the Yunkish envoy wailed.

"Do all the Yunkai'i whine so over a singed tokar? I shall buy you a new one... if you deliver up your slaves within three days. Elsewise, Drogon shall give you a warmer kiss." She wrinkled her nose. "You've soiled yourself. Take your gold and go, and see that the Wise Masters hear my message."

(ASOS, Dany IV)

"Ah, there is the thorn in the bower, my queen," said Hizdahr zo Loraq. "Sad to say, Yunkai has no faith in your promises. They keep plucking the same string on the harp, about some envoy that your dragons set on fire."

"Only his tokar was burned," said Dany scornfully.

(ADWD, Dany VI)

So Dany will burn the Blackfyre pretender, and everyone will be happy and cheer to see the rightful queen, the last Targaryen, Slayer of Lies, Breaker of Chains, Insert-The-Million-Other-Titles-Here. Right?

Except how would she prove that he’s an imposter? She can’t exactly roll up with an Alt Shift X video pointing out that Illyrio has said some weird things about Aegon. Is Varys going to have an attack of remorse and explain his whole plot, complete with Blackfyre family tree? Or maybe she’ll explain that she went on a vision quest in Qarth and Aegon totally matches up with the vague symbolism that a bunch of drugged up warlocks told her before she set them on fire?

I don’t think it’s going to matter if Aegon is fake or not, and we might never find out either way. The mystery of his identity isn’t his main narrative, and all of his significance to the story and to multiple other characters is removed if he’s proved to not be Aegon VI. Him being proved fake would just make this plotline a weird, unnecessary digression on Dany’s journey to being the righteous and true queen, his death just another #girlboss moment for her. That’s definitely going to be her perception of it, but once she reaches Westeros we won’t have to rely on only her POV of her actions. History is written by the winners, and no one’s going to miss that it’s a lot more convenient for Dany if the boy with a stronger claim than her turns out to have been fake all along. Arianne and the Dornish are definitely not going to take it lying down, and neither is Jon. He’s not going to fall in love with the woman who murdered his brother, especially by burning him alive. ADWD has plenty to say about how much he hates death by fire.

“Men say that freezing to death is almost peaceful. Fire, though … do you see the candle, Gilly?”

She looked at the flame. “Yes.”

“Touch it. Put your hand over the flame.”

Her big brown eyes grew bigger still. She did not move.

“Do it.” Kill the boy. “Now.”

Trembling, the girl reached out her hand, held it well above the flickering candle flame.

“Down. Let it kiss you.”

Gilly lowered her hand. An inch. Another. When the flame licked her flesh, she snatched her hand back and began to sob.

“Fire is a cruel way to die. Dalla died to give this child life, but you have nourished him, cherished him. You saved your own boy from the ice. Now save hers from the fire.”

(ADWD, Jon II)

Funnily enough, the same fire as a kiss imagery from Dany burning the envoy’s tokar appeared there too, also used as a threat. 

If he is not a kinslayer, he is the next best thing. [...] What sort of man can stand by idly and watch his own brother being burned alive?

(ADWD, Jon IX)

So Aegon’s death is not going to be a triumphant victory for Dany, after which everyone proclaims her the true queen. It’s likely to just solidify opposition to her, from every corner of Westeros. If it happens during a summit or negotiation, it’d be even more of a tragic parallel to Robb and the Red Wedding; the young king murdered off of the battlefield, at an event where he was promised safe conduct. Featuring Dany in the role of Roose Bolton and Tywin Lannister. Tywin’s already died a very undignified death, and Roose Bolton looks to be on his way too.

I think the tragedy of Aegon’s death would also hit harder if we see it through Jon, as a main POV, or at least the aftermath of it. Jon was integral at the Dragonpit meeting after all, and probably would be at a peace summit or negotiation between the leaders of Westeros and the invading force.

In ASOS, there’s a curious lack of Jon’s reaction to Robb’s death. We see his initial reaction to Bran and Rickon’s supposed deaths when he gets back to Castle Black, but he doesn’t even know about Robb’s death until Stannis arrives to defeat the wildlings, and we’re not shown the moment he’s told about it. He barely even thinks about it, not even a mention until he meets with Stannis on top of the Wall:

“Your brother was the rightful Lord of Winterfell. If he had stayed home and done his duty, instead of crowning himself and riding off to conquer the riverlands, he might be alive today. Be that as it may. You are not Robb, no more than I am Robert.”

The harsh words had blown away whatever sympathy Jon might have had for Stannis. “I loved my brother,” he said.

(ASOS, Jon XI)

And that’s literally all we get that is specifically about Robb’s death - the rest of Jon’s chapters, his guilt and grief is about the loss of all his siblings, and the idea of stealing Winterfell from them. It doesn’t really make sense for him to not think about it at all, considering how close they were. This reminds me of how he has a non-reaction to Sansa’s marriage to Tyrion as well, as talked about in this post by @agentrouka-blog. Part of this could be Jon’s tendency towards denial and suppression of all his feelings, but it also points to GRRM explicitly obscuring his reaction - perhaps because he’s going to explore it in the wake of another brother dying a very similar death? One that this time he’ll be there to witness?

[heartslogos]

newfragile yellows [1247]

“You're not the sort of type to say you don't believe in magic, are you?” Dr. Pavus asks, handing Ellan another cup of water. This one Ellana manages to hold on her own, though Dr. Pavus’ hand lingers close in case she falters. “We get those sort now and again. It’s always rough. Sera, Varric, Malika — those names mean nothing to you, of course. But they’re prime examples of people who all got the same metaphorical and literal veil ripped from their eyes, same as you, but took it in vastly different ways.”

The magic and supernatural are real. Ellana doesn’t struggle with that concept. Ellana’s hand a many headed wolf haunting her since practically birth. What Ellana struggles with is —

“But why me?” Ellana asks. “There’s nothing special about me.”

“Oh, I know,” Dr. Pavus nods. “Trust me, we all know. We’ve gone through your family lineage from to back almost ten generations now. Your family does have immaculate tracing by the by. It’s very impressive. Most people who aren’t in the possession of obscene and frankly dubious amounts of wealth don’t keep track past their great grand parents. But yes. No offense meant, but your family tree’s only distinguishing feature is that it’s remarkably intact and traceable. No one of note — well, not for our purposes. I’m sure that somewhere along those branches there’s someone important in some way.”

“We’re regular people with blue and white collar jobs. Upper middle class is the best it’s ever gotten for us.” Though certainly not the worst. “You can say it. We’re average. It isn’t an insult.”

“For some people it is.” Dr. Pavus shrugs. He crosses his legs, resting his elbow on his knee as he leans his chin on his fist. “And then there’s you. Ellana Lavellan. I’m technically not a medical professional you know. I am a scientist. I do have a doctorate. But I am not a medical professional. In a pinch I suppose I could be helpful to someone with actual medical knowledge. I’m a biologist. And, in the Inquisition, a part time mortician. I was called in to start checking your corpse.”

“I don’t feel like I’ve died.”

“I would say most people don’t, but most people don’t stay dead for seven hours and then come back to the living. You are quite special in that regard. Among others, I’m sure, but we haven’t gotten to that yet.”

“I have student loans, I live in a shared house, I work as a nurse in a retirement home,” Ellana rattles off. “I drive a second hand car that I got off of one of my cousins for cheap. I think the most expensive thing I own is my phone. There’s nothing special about me.”

“Except?”

Ellana closes her eyes, sitting back against the raised up head of the hospital bed.

“An affectation of childhood that grew with me.”

“There it is.”

“But my question isn’t as to whether that’s unusual or not. I know it is. If you say it’s magic or ghosts or whatever, then it probably is. I don’t have a better way to explain it. My question is — why me? Why did it choose me?”

“That’s what we’d all love to know.”

Ellana opens her eyes to see the woman from earlier has returned, again flanked by the same Qunari man and also joined by a red headed woman.

“I’m Evelyn Trevelyan,” the first woman says. “I’m the leader of the Inquisition. I trust Dorian’s explained everything by now?”

“Enough of it,” Ellana answers.

“This is Leliana, and this is the Iron Bull. They’re also members of the Inquisition. We’re going to try and sort out what’s going on here and see what we can do.” Evelyn pulls up a plastic chair next to Dr. Pavus’. “And I understand that this is a lot, especially if you weren’t born into it or given any gradual lead in. If you need to take a break you can say so. You aren’t under arrest, you aren’t being charged with anything. You are remanded into our custody, but you aren’t a prisoner. You can make phone calls, you can use your phone, browse the internet, go on social media, fact check everything if you want to. Within reason. We’d greatly prefer if you didn’t do a selfie and then tag this place. This was explained to you, right?”

Ellana nods. Someone had returned her phone earlier and helpfully loaned her a charger with an extra long cable, which is plugged into the wall next to her bed. Her bag had been salvaged from the scene of — whatever that car chase was — and is sitting on a table near the door. She’d half-heartedly gone through it earlier. Everything was there.

“What we would like to have explained to us,” Leliana says, “Is why the Acolytes of the Wolf seemed to be chasing after you.”

“I’m sure you’d like that explained to you also.”

Ellana shrugs. “As Dr. Pavus and I were saying to each other, there’s nothing special about me at all.”

“Everyone has something special about them,” Leliana says. “I’m not saying this to be nice.”

“She rarely says anything to be nice,” The Iron Bull says.

“I mean. I, myself, have nothing special about me. There’s no reason for any of this to come to me,” Ellana explains. “I’m pathetically average in every way. Whatever talents or traits of mine that come above that are balanced out by the ones that fall below. There’s only one thing special about me and I have no idea why — if it’s connected to any of this — it would choose me of all people.”

“What is it?”

Ellana’s eyes slide behind all of them, to the wall, the door. She’d seen it when people were coming in and out. The wolf. Shrunk down small enough to fit in the hallway of whatever kind of building she’s in. But its many eyes were still open. Watching her. Its mouths slightly open and panting.

“The wolf,” Ellana answers calmly. “The many headed wolf.”

[letsfluxshitup]

the mortifying ordeal of being cared for (ao3)

(tw injury/blood/stitches)(not permadeath btw <3)

Technoblade thought, with absolute surety, he was going to die.

He wasn't sure how he'd made it back to Pogtopia, fresh bloody handprints decorating the walls, and small pools of blood from where he rested a second too long.

It didn't matter if he died, he'd just respawn, it'd be fine, but that didn't stop the deep primal fear of death, of not coming back, of the respawn failing. 

He let out a deep stuttery breath as he fumbled open a chest, desperately searching for bandages, cloth, anything to staunch the bleeding.

He heard, faintly, some noise behind him, muttered talking that turned more frantic but he brushed it aside, it was unimportant, where was his medkit-

A hand on his shoulder startled him out of his desperate searching, and he automatically swung backwards, but he was slow, too slow, and the figure easily dodged. 

He reached for his knife, fumbling to his feet, knife first, all regards for tact and technique abandoned in his desperate swing. 

He wasn't sure what happened then, vision blanking from the rush of movement, but he knew he was knifeless and being cradled to someone's chest. Quackity's, he guessed, between the panicked shrieking and signature jacket.

It was slicked with blood now, and no, his jacket shouldn't look like that, and he tried to pull away, to mitigate the damages and prevent more blood spilling. Quackity only held him tighter, arms feeling like iron bars locking him in.

Since when was Quackity so strong, Techno thought. Since when was I so weak.

His memories after that were spotty as he slipped in and out of consciousness, mostly remembering the warm water and rag that cleaned his wounds, the bite of the needle from stitches, and Quackity's soft cooing as he ran fingers through his hair, a reassurance and distraction from the burning pain spreading up his side.

--

Quackity had decided that morning that he very much did not like Pogtopia. It was cold, Tommy and Techno(traitor) bullied him, and he could never find things where he left them.

Case in point, he was clambering down the steep staircase that had fallen many a foe, in a futile search for his misplaced pickaxe. It took a second to register the blood smeared on the walls, the scent of copper smothering in the air. He walked faster, ignoring his shoes sticky with blood, as he nervously called out a tentative 'hello?'

No response.

He walked faster, gaze sharp as he took in the ravine before him, and he wished it had been lit up a little better, fumbling through long stretches of burnt out torches. He followed the trail to Techno's door and his stomach dropped, if something had fucked him up so badly, what did that say for the rest of them? 

Praying that whatever he picked a fight with was either dead or knew better than to come back, he entered the room.

"Techno?" He started, trying to sound calm but quickly dissolving into panic as he rushed towards a hunched over and bloody Techno. 

He'd barely touched his shoulder when he lashed out at him, a sharp snarl echoing through the room, eyes unfocused and uncomprehending. He lurched forwards, half crawling half on his feet, and Quackity easily, too easily, pried the blade from his hands.

Techno then face planted into his neck, a pained sob making its way out of his throat. Quackity quickly dragged him back to the ground, curling his arms around him, trying to keep his voice soothing but he knew the panic was leaking through.

Techno squirmed weakly, before stilling, a dead weight in Quackity's lap. Quackity tried to calm down, take deep breaths, but the cloying smell of blood was making it difficult to even think.

He went through the first aid he knew, haphazardly cleaning wounds and his stitches sloppy and almost definitely going to leave an ugly scar.

At least he isn't bleeding out anymore, Quackity thought nervously, splashing a regen potion on the worst of the wounds. 

After assuring he wouldn't bleed out, he found a bucket that he filled with water, keeping it warm near the fire.

He carefully cleaned the blood off of the rest of Techno, scrubbing it out of his hair and nails. He used the knife Techno had swung at him to carefully cut away his ruined shirt, cleaning the blood off of him before shoving him into a nightgown he'd found when digging through chests for more medical supplies.

Quackity decided that once Techno was better he could tease him about it, but it would probably reflect poorly on him if he made fun of a half dead bed ridden man.

He absently wondered who had given it to him, doubting he'd bought it for himself. It was covered in potatoes and looked comfy as hell, so he couldn't really judge him.

Techno was relatively dead to the world anyways, so teasing him now would be pointless. 

The most response he had gotten from the man was a reflexive splutter when he'd accidentally dropped a water soaked rag on his face, and Quackity could only hope he wouldn't remember that.

He dragged Techno into bed, mindful of his stitches, and noticing the drop in temperature. He was still unnaturally warm by human standards, but unnaturally cold by... Techno standards. Blood loss would do that to you, apparently. 

Quackity hunted down every blanket he could find in the room, uncovering some from chests and the like before carefully tucking Techno in. He looked very... small, on the bed, face colorless and slack, breaths uneven and stuttery.

Quackity hoped he wouldn't have to do anything about his breathing, that was a bit out of his area of expertise. 

All of this was out of his area of expertise, actually, but that was fine. 

Techno was breathing, wasn't he? 

Well. Mostly.

--

Techno wasn't sure how much later it was until he woke up properly, but he was propped up in his bed, thoroughly tucked in. Quackity was slumped in a chair next to him, face buried in the sheets as he snoozed. 

Techno cleared his throat, and that hurt, and his mouth tasted awful and everything else was just pain.

Quackity sat up abruptly though, hair sleep ruffled and he hastily swiped away drool. He blinked blearily, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes before giving Techno a nervous lopsided smile.

"How's my favorite patient doing?" He chirped, standing up and carefully checking Techno's wounds. When Techno just grunted in response he waved a healing potion in front of him, and Techno was grateful for having at least a semi competent caretaker.

That gratefulness was swiftly shattered as Quackity waterboarded him with the healing potion, overzealous in his offering and spilling it all over his face and shirt. Thankfully the potion wasn't picky, and absorbed anyways, the healing effect settling in and making him feel tired.

He wanted to fall asleep, but Quackity was waving food in front of him, toasted bread slathered with sweet berries, as he stuttered out apologies.

"I'm not the, uh, best doctor-" Techno interrupted him with a snort, "but I'm the best you got for now, alright?"

Techno just gave him a flat look in response.

"Listen! Would you rather I wear a nurse outfit? Would that make you feel better?" Quackity huffed, arms crossed, and Techno made a show of shuddering in horror.

"Hey, fuck off! I have the fattest ass in the cabinet, you know! You should- you should be appreciative of- of my... Of my ass." He finished lamely, cheeks aflame as he waved his hands. "Listen, listen, let's just- we're gonna forget all that, alright?"

Techno snorted, and it hurt his throat and ribs but Quackity was grinning back at him, and he figured that made up for it.

--

He wasn't sure how long he'd been sleeping on and off, waking up only for the occasional healing potion and sip of water. Quackity never asked what had happened, and he was glad, not wanting to explain the circumstances that had almost led to his untimely demise.

Quackity insisted on brushing his hair every time he woke up for longer than thirty seconds, chastising him about proper hair care and tangles and if Techno could say more than a word at a time he'd point out the poor state of Quackity's wings. 

As Quackity deftly braided his hair from where he'd settled behind him, Techno focused on the apple he'd been given, carefully slicing off bits with a knife and alternating between handing them to Quackity and eating them himself.

He had to question the logic of giving a very out of it patient a knife, but he quietly revelled in the feeling of comfort it gave him, and the warm feeling spreading in his chest from sharing food.

When the apple was finished and the braid completed, Techno leaned his head back, resting on Quackity's shoulder. Techno couldn't understand what Quackity was saying, instead just humming and snuggling back, dead to the world in an instant. 

Quackity felt a small pang of pride at the blatant trust, before starting to settle in for the night. Day? He'd lost track of time, caring for Techno being his prime focus.

His communicator flashed with unread messages, but he had been busy, alright? Was still busy, he thought, eyeing the knife in Techno's now loose grip.

Quackity gently took the knife from him, setting it in reach, before settling his arms lightly around Techno's torso, protective of the hastily stitched gash in his side.

It took a bit of squirming before his wings settled comfortably on his back, but finally Quackity managed to fall asleep.

--

Quackity had been helping a shaky Techno into a new shirt when the door abruptly shrieked open. 

Reflexively, Quackity reached for the knife on the bedside table before turning towards the door. Techno had drilled into him that it was better to be paranoid than dead after Quackity had unthinkingly mentioned the condition Techno was in to the others.

Privately, Quackity thought Techno was being a bit paranoid, but it helped him relax a little and Quackity really was worried about the poor guy's heart.

Wilbur stepped in, taking in the scene before him with an impassive face.

"You're making friends." It wasn't a question, more of an accusation over anything else, and Quackity wondered why Wilbur sounded offended.

Turning back to help Techno, he absently looked over his healing wounds, checking for any damages or fresh blood.

Wilbur continued to stare past Quackity, studying his brother and oh.

That's why Wilbur was offended.

Techno opened his mouth as if to speak, but Wilbur cut him off, irritation clear in his voice.

"No, no, I get it. You're injured and need to be cared for so obviously you ask the flake with a complex." Wilbur's face had turned more snide, his voice disparaging as he planted his hands on his hips.

Quackity wanted to defend himself, and also ask what kind of complex Wilbur thought he had, and also ask what the fuck, low blow, asshole.

Techno moved like he was going to stand up, looking pissed, and Quackity waved his hands frantically, wings puffing up and blocking his view of Wilbur.

"Hey, hey, c'mon, buddy, you don't have to defend my honor or anything, stay in bed." Quackity carefully guided him back into bed but Techno still looked irritated.

"He's being an ass." He deadpanned, leaning around Quackity's outstretched wings to send Wilbur a scathing look. 

To Wilbur's credit, he managed to mainly suppress his flinch, but it was still noticeable enough that Techno shot him one of his more feral grins.

Quackity, realizing he was still holding the knife, set it back down on the nightstand. This quickly turned out to be a big mistake as without hesitating Techno snatched it up, throwing it at his brother. 

Between the injuries and not actually wanting to hurt his brother, it missed by a mile, and Techno punctuated the clear message with a snarled 'out'.

Wilbur looked hurt for a split second, before he settled back into an unbothered stance, leaving the room with a muttered 'whatever'.

"Your family's fucking weird, man." Quackity finally broke the silence, letting out a nervous laugh as he side eyed Techno.

Techno just nodded slightly, scrubbing at his face before settling back into the pillows.

"He's just lashing out because he's a theatre kid and doesn't know how to process his emotions any other way." 

Privately, Techno wished Philza was here, he was always a lot better at smoothing things over. Or riling things up, depending on the situation.

"Right." Quackity said, after a bit of silence, both deep in thought. "Do you want him to take care of you? Like, I know we've settled into this sorta thing, but, like, I'm not gonna be offended or anything if you'd rather have family watch over you, y'know?" 

Techno looked perplexed for a second, before shaking his head.

"Wilbur's been pickin' fights with me lately, should probably give him space or something." He looked towards Quackity, uncertainty written across his face.

"Oh! Yeah! That makes sense, absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that." Quackity nodded, self assured in that way only someone who wasn't entirely sure what they were talking about could be.

Techno snorted, before patting the bed next to him.

"Sleep?" 

"Sure. Y'know, big guy, you should feel special." Quackity grinned at him, as he settled into the bed next to him.

"Oh?" Techno raised an eyebrow, settling his arm around Quackity.

"Yeah. Not just anyone gets the Quackity into their bed." Quackity tried to hide his smile in Techno's shoulder, failing miserably once catching sight of Techno's expression. 

Techno stared down at him, eyes wide and looking... Confused? Mortified? Quackity wasn't that great at reading his expressions, yet. 

Unceremoniously, Techno shoved him off the bed, hiding his snorts in his pillow.

Quackity's hip hurt where it connected with the floor but he couldn't hold back his wide grin.

He stumbled up off the floor, flopping on to the bed and settling in against Techno, delighted he could make Techno laugh like that.

--

Quackity laid there in silent horror, staring down at the wet spot of drool on Techno's shirt. Techno would never sleep with him again. Not that he cared, or anything. Techno was just very warm and the ravine was very cold, alright?

"Techno." Quackity whispered, sitting up as best he could with Techno's arm locked around him. "Techno it's time to get up."

"No," Techno murmured, moving the arm around Quackity's waist to cup the back of his head and gently push him back into his neck. Quackity snorted into Techno's neck, before patting at his chest.

"C'mon big guy, time to get up." He squirmed out from under Techno's arm, patting at his cheek insistently. 

Techno's eyes fluttered open, looking mildly irritated, before he rolled, taking Quackity with him and pinning him underneath him.

He buried his face into Quackity's neck, free hand moving into Quackity's closest wing and lightly petting the feathers. 

Quackity huffed, batting at his hand because that was cheating, thank you very much, Quackity was going to fall back asleep at this rate.

"C'mon, Blade, we gotta get a move on." Quackity twisted the fingers of his free hand into the hair at the base of Technoblades neck, and tugged lightly.

Techno let out a warning growl, before rolling off of Quackity. Quackity side eyed him and, deciding may as fucking well, shoved Techno the rest of the way off the bed. 

He was mostly healed up anyways, and it wouldn't hurt him that much. Hopefully.

There was a beat of silence before Techno popped up from over the side of the bed, looking completely baffled.

Quackity jumped over him and made a break for the door, but Techno was faster.

He draped himself heavily over Quackity, nearly sending him tumbling to the ground, as he sighed obnoxiously in his ear.

"You're going to have to carry me, I think you broke my legs." Quackity could hear the grin in his voice, but didn't call him on it. He'd rarely seen Techno in any kind of playful mood, and he figured he could risk playing along if it made Techno happy. 

He'd only heard the man laugh a handful of times before, and all that stress couldn't be good for his heart.

Quackity barley made it another stumbling step before there was a sharp rapping at the door.

"Techno? Wilbur needs you." Tommy called through the door.

The change in Techno was immediate, the playful attitude rolling off of him as he straightened up and headed for his clothes and sword. The past... Dispute still fresh in his mind.

"Tell him I'll be there in a minute." Techno called back. 

He knocked his crown off of it's hook and Quackity reached down to grab it for him. He was met with a sharp look, Techno quickly snatching it up, the cuddly Techno from earlier replaced with a cold, more analytical persona. 

Techno whipped open the door, brushing past Tommy with barely an acknowledgement, deep in thought and looking mildly irritated. 

Tommy looked over at Quackity, shifting awkwardly. 

"Sorry about him. He's not much of a morning person." Tommy said absently, as he watched Techno move through the ravine.

"So! What do you want to eat, Big Q?" Tommy beamed at him, energy cranked up to 11 after his brother was out of sight. 

Quackity gave him an unusually soft look, before throwing an arm over his shoulder and knocking their heads together.

"What've you got here, boss?" Quackity practically chirped, letting himself be dragged away by an overly excited Tommy. He tamped down on his worry over Techno, as he settled into bantering with Tommy.

[olivish]

Very proud today - I finished the headcanon-turned-fanfiction where Mel meets Alex’s father, loses him, and then connects with Bennett in the aftermath. (previous instalment here).  

We start with some words from Wilford and then transition to Ben, 1st person narrative. I love Ben in this fiction. He’s brave in the mundane, everyday ways that good people are brave. Also, he tells Mel she’s “amazing in every dimension” and he calls Wilford an asshole. What’s not to love? 

Below the cut:

That wasn't love, Melanie. Nobody who loved you would have let you go back in that building. Nobody who loved you would have risked his life, his future with you, for strangers. He left you alone. Look at me. He left you by yourself, so he could be some big, hulking hero. And it worked. Got his name in the papers, didn't it?

You're so brilliant. Sometimes I forget how naïve and vulnerable you can be.

It was vanity. Not love. Once you accept that, you can leave it all behind. Every bit of it. Understand? This… situation is a burden you were never meant to bear.

.

It's days later when I find Melanie alone. Actually, find is the wrong word - I'm not looking for her, I’m not so heroic. It happens by accident. I’m on my way to the server room to complete the harmonic upgrades, passing through the engine chamber on the way, and there she is, sitting in the ring of fire.

It’s a cool fire - deep, oceanic blue. Even at threshold, that’s 100,000 kilowatts of electricity, and she’s right in the cradle, her face turned towards the coils, her one good hand pressed against the inlet.

It's like she's praying. Not wanting to disturb, I try to sneak away, but it doesn't work and she notices me. I catch my breath. Now I can see, she's been crying.  

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Sorry.”

“No.”

“I was just on my way-”

“It’s fine.” Melanie gets up, wincing as she moves, putting on a tight-lipped smile. “Your stochastic backup,” she says, looking at my computer bag.

“Yeah. Just finishing up.”

“That was a good idea.”

“Thank you.”

This is normally when I’d leave. Run, actually, from a coworker I’d just caught crying. It’s a common enough occurrence at Wilford Industries, though never with Melanie. To my knowledge, this is a first.

“How are you?” I ask.

“I’m okay. The hand is killing me.”

“If you need help with anything-”

“I know. Thank you. I’m actually getting pretty good with the left. And my toes.” After a pause, “That was a joke.”

“Very good.”

Melanie smiles, but she looks like she might cry again. I don’t know what to do. No, that's wrong. I do know what to do, but it terrifies me. I don’t talk about personal things. I don’t talk about feelings. That’s not how I was raised, and as for my friends… well, engineers aren’t most emotionally communicative bunch.

Melanie is a prime example. That’s why this could be the worst idea I’ve had in my life. Still, I press on.

It’s what Cee would do.

“Can I tell you something?” I ask, my heart in my throat. I’m sweating. God, this is pathetic.

“What’s happened?”

“It’s nothing to do with work. It’s personal.”

“Oh. Are you okay?”

“It’s not me,” I say. I can’t help but grin at the awkwardness. “It’s you.”

“Oh. Yeah, that makes more sense.” Melanie leans on the edge of the reactor. I’ve never seen her so resigned. The fact that she hasn’t told me she’s fine and I should go back to work is stunning in itself.

I sit across from her. I wipe my palms on my trousers and take a breath. After a final glance to make sure we’re alone, I tell her.

I tell her about the car accident, and I tell her about Ian. I tell her about the darkness that followed, and how Cee saved me by getting me some help. I suggest, maybe, she might consider seeing someone, too, if she isn’t already.

“I don’t know what happened to you,” I go on. “But I know what it's like to feel empty. And to be dead certain that it's never gonna change. You can get lost in that, yaknow?"  

The whole thing takes only a minute to get out, maybe two. But it feels like an hour. Even longer, when Melanie doesn’t say anything afterwards. I wait as long as I can.

“Well, that's it. That’s what I wanted to say.”

“Okay.”

“So, you’ll let me know if you want to talk, or-”

“Sure.”  

“Alright.” I stand up, feeling ridiculous. I might have to quit now. Change my name. Move to Morocco. “I’ll go back to work, then.”

I’m nearly out the door when she calls to me, “Ben?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry about your brother. I didn’t know.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“Still.”

“He was a good kid. Just… happy all the time.” I smile ruefully. “He was better than me.”

Her brow furrows. She nods in understanding. I look at the door to the server room. Then, I walk back to the reactor. I rest my hand on the smooth, concave surface, like she does. I figure, if there’s any way to connect to Melanie, it’s through the engine.

“I met someone,” she says, after some silence. She meets my eyes. “In Beirut. We were together when the earthquake hit, and he didn’t make it.”

“Mel, I’m s-“

“Now I’m pregnant,” she interrupts. For a moment, I don’t think I heard her right. But then she repeats, in a way that seems more for herself than for me.

“I’m pregnant.”

.

I open my mouth but no sounds comes out. I don’t know what to say.

Melanie lets out laugh. “Yeah,” she says. “That was my reaction, too, when they told me. It���s been two weeks, and I just keep coming in to work, trying not to think about it. Pretending it isn’t happening. Which, I realize, is not a long term solution...”

Again, I try to find the words. Again, I come up with nothing.

She takes a breath, “Concurrently, I’ve come to the realization that I have no actual friends to talk to about this. I tried telling Snowpiercer, but she’s got her own problems right now, so-“

“I’m your friend,” I say. Strangely, it feels true. “We’re friends, Mel. If you want.”  

“I do. I mean, I’d like that.”

“Okay. So. Good.”

“Good.”

“But I gotta warn you, I’m probably the most useless friend you could have in this situation. I can’t think of a single piece of advice, or-”

“It's alright. I don’t want advice. I just… I think I just had to say it out loud to someone. Hear the words. Make it real, so I can move on to problem solving.”

“You’re good at problem solving.”

“I am. When it comes to machines. Not… this.” Melanie gestures in the general direction of herself. “I don’t know anything about this.”

“There are books.”

“Books?”

“Sure. You walk into a bookstore and there’s a whole wall, a whole section of books dedicated to… that.” I gesture in the general direction of herself.

“Well, I am good at research.”

“You’re amazing at research.”

“But there’s a whole other dimension to this thing.”

“You’re amazing in every dimension.”

“It’s just…” She looks down at her hands. When she looks back up, tears spill down her cheeks. She tries to brush them away but they keep coming.

“Mel.”

“I don’t feel anything. I don’t feel happy. I don’t feel… anything at all. I know that’s wrong. I know it’s not normal.”

“Given what you’ve been through, I think it is normal.”  

“But what if that has nothing to do with it? What if it’s just how I am?"

"I don't understand."

"What if I can’t do this? I mean, nobody's good at everything, right? There has to be something I can't do. Maybe this is that one thing."

“I think… honestly, Mel. I think you can do anything. Especially this. And if you asked anyone who's met you, they'd tell you the same.”

Melanie smiles ironically and shakes her head. Somehow, I know she's thinking about Wilford. Neither of us says his name, but he's in the room with us. Disapproving. Of course he would. He's an asshole.

“You won’t tell anyone about this?” she asks.

“Of course I won’t.”

“It’s just, I know people talk, and I’m not ready for congratulations just yet."

"I promise. It’s in the bear vault.”

“Oh, the bear vault. I forgot about that.”

“Only you would forget about something like that. I mean, do you face off with grizzlies on the regular, when the rest of us aren't looking?”

Melanie flashes me a look that says, you have no idea, and we share a smile as she spins down the engine. She squeezes my arm as she brushes past, and I step in to assist with the shutdown sequence. She doesn't fight me, and when it's over, she offers help with the harmonic upgrade, which I accept.  

On our way out, I pause at the threshold of the server room. "Mel."  

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry. About your friend.”

"Oh. He was… it was only a month."

“Still.”

She could leave it at that, but she lingers. "His name was Alexander," she says. "He was… better than me."

We exchange a look of understanding. I feel the loss of Ian all over again, just for a moment, a jolt to my heart. Oddly, the pain isn't entirely unpleasant. It’s now that I realize, don't think about Ian enough. When someone like that dies, they should be remembered.

"Maybe you'll tell me about him one day."

"Yeah," Melanie replies. "Maybe, one day."  

[keire-ke]

No, seriously, they had to have written FatWS with the assumption Steve is not only dead, but that he died in his prime as Captain America. It just does not make sense otherwise: if Steve lived his whole long retired life, from the 50s on, then regardless of whether he is alive now, his legacy is personal gain and conformity, and Sam is too good for it.

Also, Bucky championing the shield in the name of his own self-esteem is certainly a choice. The worst things that happened to him were tangentially related to the shield or Cap, like dying the first time because picked it up, then the organization called SHIELD keeping him in their basement for decades, if you stretch there’s also his attempts at recovery being cut short because a dude wanted Cap and Iron Man to fight. The only way that makes sense is if Steve died heroically and Bucky wants him to be remembered as a hero.

Don’t get me started on the low-key you must have wanted it vibes, by which I mean the nods to all this agency Winter Soldier allegedly had. We are one episode away from “but what were you wearing?” and “why did you choose to fall next to a Hydra outpost?”

Like, so far (some of) the ideas they put forward are legit, and while I don’t love that the second MCU entry led by a black man is also about race, attempts are being made? But it feels like they are using the wrong characters for it, like it’s baby’s first fusion fic, and they needed to cast one IP with characters from another with little regard how it fits. Sure, Bucky does have white privilege he doesn’t understand, and were he a real person he should educate himself, but using him as the vehicle of delivering that storyline feels like a waste of precious screen time. What’s he supposed to do with it? “You’re right, the country that paid the Nazis who enslaved and tortured me is really messed up, thanks for bringing that to my attention?”

[aion-rsa]

Midnight Mass Ending Explained

https://ift.tt/39I2zkp

This article contains spoilers for Midnight Mass.

Ending a horror story is hard.

Perhaps no one knows that better than Mike Flanagan, the writer-director behind horror hits like Doctor Sleep, The Haunting of Hill House, and The Haunting of Bly Manor. After observing the occasional less-than-enthusiastic reaction to the endings of some of his other projects, Flanagan decided to end his latest, Netflix series Midnight Mass, on his own terms.

“I didn’t want to come up with an ending that I thought would please people,” Flanagan told Den of Geek and other outlets prior to Midnight Mass’s premiere. “I wanted to come up with the ending that would have the most to say down the line.”

So what, exactly, does the ending of Midnight Mass have to say? Let’s explain just what goes down in the conclusion of Midnight Mass and assess what it all means. 

What’s Up with Mildred Gunning and John Pruitt?

Monsignor John Pruitt a.k.a. Father Paul (Hamish Linklater) was, by all indications, a good Christian man. 

“The thing we kept coming back to is that authentically, through-and-through evil people are very rare. We’re all way more complicated. The humanity of Father Paul was something that was baked in relatively early,” Flanagan says.

Though Pruitt is not a bad man, per se, he is a deeply flawed one. A long time ago, before the “war” (probably World War II or The Korean War), Pruitt hooked up with the married Mildred Gunning and fathered their daughter Sarah Gunning out of wedlock. That is obviously a big no-no for a priest and Pruitt lived with the guilt of denying his daughter for decades. 

Pruitt finally got a chance to alleviate that guilt when he came across a curious creature in Damascus. In this fictional universe where the concept of a vampire is clearly not well known, John Pruitt made the understandable mistake of confusing a monstrous vampire for an equally monstrous angel. After all, the angels of the bible are so visually terrifying that they make a habit of telling those they visit “be not afraid.” 

Pruitt thought this angel had granted him the gift of eternal life, just like the Bible promises. He then decides to share that gift with his congregation. The priest’s major sin here though is pride. He didn’t share the angel’s gift with his congregation out of pure benevolence. He did it because he wanted many more years of life in his prime with Mildred and Sarah at his side. Catholicism means everything to Pruitt. And yet, he would cast it all aside for another chance to have the family he wanted. 

“If you showed up and asked me, I would have taken this collar off and gone with you. Gone with you anywhere in the world,” Pruitt tells Mildred after she’s been vampirified. 

That’s a touching sentiment from the artist formerly known as Father Paul but it’s unfortunately a destructive one.

“When it became clear that Paul could do bad things with pure motives, the show came into clearer focus. There’s only one character in the whole show who I think is evil and it’s not Father Paul,” Flanagan says.

Only one character who is evil? Who could Flanagan be referr….ohhh.

What Were the Vampires’ Plans?

Flanagan actually never confirms which character he sees as evil, but Bev Keane (Samantha Sloyan) seems to be the best fit…unless we count the angel, and he just seems to be a hungry, growing boy.

Bev is, let’s say, a real piece of work. As beautifully depicted by Sloyan, Bev Keane is the officious church lady who can’t keep her nose out of other people’s business. After Mildred talks some sense into John Pruitt, he understands that he and his congregation “are the wolves” and refuses to participate further. That leaves a power vacuum at the top, which Bev is more than happy to step into. 

Read more

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Now that Bev has a veritable army of superpowered vampires what does she intend to do with them? The same thing that all Bevs want to do: make more Bevs. Bev represents the worst of colonial Christianity and its historical penchant for converting all to its kingdom of heaven…through any means necessary.

When Erin Greene (Kate Siegel) finds out that Bev and friends have merely disabled the boats and not destroyed them, she realizes that their ultimate plan is to eventually take their vampire party to the mainland and create a whole planet of enlightened Christians who just happy to have an insatiable taste for blood and a severe UV-ray allergy. 

What Happens to Crockett Island?

Thankfully, Bev’s ultimate goal never comes to pass thanks to the careful plotting of the handful of human beings left in Crockett Island. Erin Greene, Sarah Gunning (Annabeth Gish), Sheriff Hassan (Rahul Kohli), and Annie Flynn (Kirstin Lehman) get to work on finishing the destruction that Bev started.

Ironically, it’s part of Bev’s plan that eventually dooms her and her kind. When one of Bev’s lackeys proposes putting out a fire that the human crew started because the whole island could burn to nothing like in ‘84, Bev’s eyes light up.

“I mean…the church didn’t burn in ‘84,” she says.

Surely this is Revelation. And Revelation means a hale mixed with fire and blood. There will be a flood of fire that ends the world and St. Patrick’s church will be the arc. That’s a great plan and all…as long as something doesn’t happen to the arc.

Welp. Sarah Gunning burns down St. Patrick’s and Sheriff Hassan and Erin Greene (with an assist from Hassan’s son) burn down the rec center. As if burning a church designated as an arc wasn’t symbolically compelling enough, recall that the rec center next to it is equally as symbolic of Bev’s greed. It was Bev who convinced Crockett Island to take the oil company’s money for ruining their island rather than pursuing litigation. And all they got out of that settlement money was that stupid rec center.

With the church and the rec center gone, there are no man-made structures for the vampires to hide from the sun in the coming morning. And that’s how an entire island of 120-ish vampires perishes simultaneously when the sun rises. 

Why Do Leeza and Warren Survive? 

All of Crockett Island perishes save for two actually. Warren Flynn (Igby Rigney) and Leeza Scarborough (Annarah Cymone) are spared thanks to some quick thinking. Putting the only two remaining non-vampirized children in harm’s way is not an option for Erin, Sarah, Hassan, and Annie. Thankfully, Warren knows of one secret canoe to reach the “Uppards” that Bev’s crew wouldn’t know about. 

The canoe doesn’t take Warren and Leeza to the mainland but it does get them away from the carnage to come. The last shot of the series is Warren and Leeza floating peacefully and Leeza announcing that she can no longer feel her legs. This means that the last bit of “angel” blood has likely left her system and with it Pruitt’s vampire legacy is over. 

Saving Warren and Leeza has practical, emotional implications for Midnight Mass’s characters but it also has some symbolic ones as well. The concept of witnessing and witnesses themselves are very important in the Bible. As a second-hand text (though purportedly with every word inspired by God) there would be no gospel without witnesses. Good news is only half the battle. Someone to witness and report on the good news is the other half. Now Warren and Leeza can report on the ultimate good news that the world is saved.

The fact that the kids survive while the adults succumb to their own adult nonsense has some major implications for Midnight Mass’s creator 

“That last moment of the next generation looking out at the ashes of what the grown ups made – that’s what my kids are gonna get no matter what,” Flanagan says. “That’s what all of our kids are gonna get. I wish it wasn’t as on fire as it it. But it really is. We’re never going to be able to explain adequately to our children what happened to the planet they inherited.”

What Happens to the Angel?

With all of Crockett Island burned to the ground, the world’s vampire nightmare is over, right? Well that depends on how well you think an angel can fly with torn wings. No, that’s not an aphorism or a poem, it’s the real question facing the end of Midnight Mass.

As if saving Warren and Leeza and upending Bev Keane’s plans weren’t enough, Erin leaves one last little gift for humanity before she dies. While the angel attacks her and drinks her sweet, sweet blood, Erin begins systematically, yet carefully cutting holes in its leathery wings. At first the angel is kind of annoyed but his hunger supersedes any level of discomfort or pain he’s feeling. 

Later on, while Warren and Leeza watch their home burn they see the angel flying away but in a halted, loopy pattern. The kids aren’t sure if the beast will have time to find shelter before the sun rises. According to Flanagan, if Midnight Mass is a parable (and he assures us it is) then the ultimate lesson of all this isn’t too hard to glean. 

“The angel doesn’t represent vampirism or horror but corruption in any belief system,” he says. “It represents fundamentalism and fanaticism. That’s never gonna go away. You might chase it away from your community for a minute. You might send it off to the sunrise and hope that that corrupting ideology will disappear. But it won’t. And the show could never show the angel die for that reason.”

With that in mind, the angel’s flawed flight pattern isn’t so much Inception’s spinning top but rather a promise that evil will find a way. And then we puny human beings will just have to find a way to stop it all over again. If that’s not Biblical then we don’t know what is.

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All seven episodes of Midnight Mass are available to stream on Netflix now.

The post Midnight Mass Ending Explained appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3ERuGMp

[suca-loca]

it’s been a long year since we last spoke (how’s your halo?)

Read on Ao3

Words: 11.5k 

Tags: Hurt No comfort, Angst, No Happy Ending, No beta we die like Wilbur

Warnings: Body horror, Blood, Death, Suicidal Implications/Thoughts, Mentions Of Torture, Beating/Fighting

Author's Note: I tentatively present you all this fic as my ticket to board the Dream SMP Fandom. I took some creative liberties with this, such as hints of Niki and Wilbur being childhood friends, as well as Niki living near Techno's cabin, and making Niki respawning to restock her hunger bar during her spiraling/villain arc one of her canon deaths. Also, despite Niki wearing a new skin she has stated that her character still wears Wilbur's coat. Just adding that in here so people don't comment that I got her outfit wrong during a certain scene. And finally, even though I feel this is obvious, this is about the characters and not the streamers themselves. With that out of the way, enjoy the fic!

Summary: 

"Time down here is like stars, Niki. We're dead, dead for thousands of years, but to them," he points up, "we still shine. It'll take light years for them to realize they are staring at just a memory."

She tries to take a step back, but she's rooted where she stands. "Wilbur," she weeps. "How long have you been down here?"

He laughs.

(There was a time it made Niki's heart stop. It still does, but for different reasons now)

"Eleven years."

Niki covers her mouth to stifle a broken cry.

or; Niki tries, unwillingly may she add, the whole being dead thing. Oh, and Wilbur is there to "help"

The worst part about it is that Niki's whole life doesn't flash before her eyes. It doesn't happen in slow motion and neither is there some comforting, bright light for her to walk towards. It's simply this: one second she's at Church Prime and the next she's falling into pitch blackness.

Then again, she should have known better than to expect any of that dumb cliche stuff 'cause it's not like she died or anything. Not really. Her communicator may say she did, but she knows the truth. She was teleported.

So why does this feel like dying?

foolish girl breaking at the seams from using the same stitching of a burning flag to put yourself back together again. you think the afterlife cares how you arrive? the entry fee is the same for all

She comes in screaming and doesn't stop even when that's all she is anymore. Her body is unrecognizable to her, turned inside out, muscles stretching and bending and snapping in an attempt to mimic the shape she once was.

(She wishes her muscles luck in regressing back into a memory because oh primes, oh dear primes did she try, try again to be the girl wore a white and blue uniform with pride, but that girl only exists now in dreams and sometimes nightmares)

But they can't, for her organs and bones and flesh do not know what it means to not be confined (but they should know, they really should, because she still finds it hard to breath in small spaces ever since Schlatt caged her between iron bars and dirt and Sapnap left her in a hole in the ground over a fish) and so they shake. Convulsing and spasming until she is just sound, just an echo of shrieks that are happening in the past or the present or the future depending on how fast it travels down this tight, narrowed cave she lands in.

Wait, lands in?

She finds herself laying flat on the ground. She blinks. Then does it again for good measure to make sure she's not imaging having eyelids.

She touches her face. Feels the crook of her nose, the curve of her chin, and her soft round ears.

It's all skin. No muscle, no tissue, just her.

Still her.

(For now)

Her body is back. Not whole though - never whole - for she will always be a walking empty space within a solid object, but for now, her body is right. Her body is here. She closes her eyes in relief.

Someone is staring down at her when she opens them again.

"Hello Niki," Wilbur says. "It's been a while."

(It's Doomsday. His name shows up on your communicator and so you become a lit match. The fire eats you away just like the bark of a tree, like the walls of a bakery, two things you once loved most, and you're watching them both burn with his coat over your shoulders, which doesn't help you ignore who you must look like, who you're acting like, whose footsteps you're following in; and doesn't it hurt to know that what's before you isn't just a friend but a reflection?)

She's already scrambling back before she's even fully sat up.

She doesn't get very far, not with the way her wrists twist and bend before finally buckling under the pressure, and she can't find the strength to stand up and run. So all that's left to do is hyperventilate at the way his eyes land on her face, roaming, analyzing, absorbing, trying to read her like a book, unaware she's ripped out the pages long ago. At the way his shadow covers her and maybe once it felt like a blanket, but that time has passed, now all it is is heavy, suffocating, pinning her down. At the way he wears his Pogtopia outfit, pressed and cleaned when the last she saw of it it was covered in ash and black feathers and red, so much red.

But it never comes. In fact, her lungs don't move at all. Almost as if she doesn't need to breathe. As if she hasn't been breathing since she's been down here.

Is that why it was so easy to keep screaming?

"You're not here," she whispers. "Not really."

Wilbur tilts his head to the left.

(Does it in a way a predator would while observing its prey from afar, waiting for the right moment to strike)

"Oh? Where am I then, Niki?"

"My head," Niki responds, practically blurting it out. "Yeah - yeah, that's right. This is just my head playing tricks on me again. A horrible horrible trick, but that's all it is. I - I know it."

Wilbur hums. He sits down as if this will take a while. As if she won't blink and he'll be gone. "Well, that's a damn shame. I was hoping it'd be a beach. Mexican Dream has been talking a lot about La Jolla lately. Sounds like a nice place."

He smiles, suddenly.

(No, not smiles, more like baring his teeth. His very normal teeth that give off the impression that they should be very sharp and very large and very deep in her throat right now)

"Let's hope I don't blow it up."

(Niki is shouting for Wilbur over the chaos when her communicator pings in her pocket. It gets hard to breathe as she reads what it says, and it isn't because every inhale of smoke and pulverized concrete from the tumbling buildings poison her lungs. There's a ringing in her ears, and it isn't because of the TNT that just detonated in front of her. She feels broken, and it isn't because the force of the explosion knocks her back and she skitters across the field, hitting rocks and choking on dirt until she stops on her stomach, limbs bent at weird angles. Her communicator lands right beside her, the screen shattered and static flashing, but she can still catch glimpses of what is on the screen, as clear as day, like a taunt: WilburSoot was slain by Ph1lza)

Niki scrambles to her feet, presses herself as much as she can against the walls, and maybe, just maybe, she'll glitch and go through it and suffocate in a block.

She immediately throws herself away from it when she realizes what she just thought.

Wilbur stands with her. "I'm kidding, I'm kidding," he says. "I thought it would lighten up the mood. So, how are you?"

"How am I?" Niki echoes. "I'm imagining my dead best friend even though I thought I was getting better and I could have sworn I was, I was I swear I was, and this place, this place, I don't know where this is but it, it just feels - I don't even know why - so familiar and so - "

She pauses.

She looks around.

She was so busy panicking from Wilbur's presence that she never took in her surroundings. She stares at the smooth stone walls, the occasional hanging vines, the little aquarium in the corner right next to the entrance, and, finally, the stand. The stand with two signs on the front that read -

No. It can't be. It just can't.

She won't believe it until she's seen the whole thing.

She walks further in, each step hesitant.

And she notices the way everything around her seems so devoid of life. Almost colorless. Close to numb. She thinks it's her body shutting down, the stress finally getting to her, but no. This is worse. Something's going on. She doesn't know what it is exactly, but she knows it isn't her that's wrong here.

(This time)

Wilbur follows closely behind and, as if to prove her point, his footsteps sound muffled, distant, apart from him, like in the way you hear something underwater.

Maybe she is underwater because everything is getting blurry and her face feels wet.

(Or maybe the better comparison is like hearing something behind glass. She's been tapping against the window of a caravan for months as men in suits discuss a country she bled for just as much as them, if not more, without her. The tapping turns to banging, but it is not the glass that shatters. Not the glass that breaks)

She stills as she catches sight of the small wheat farm in the back room, dried and frail and unkempt.

(Like a flower shop)

It really is her bakery.

"No," she mumbles. Then, more stern, as if it'll blow this place away, as Wilbur should have done the first time. "No no no no this can't… this can't be true. I, I shouldn't be here I - it doesn't make any sense, how how how - "

She whirls on Wilbur, the tears coming in waves now. "What are you doing to me?"

(It's his fault she's back here. It has to be, he's the reason you wanted to burn the memories why this is all gone why this should be gone why isn't this gone gone gone gone)

foolish girl who has become like the nation she despises, you are a crater, there is a hole inside of you where a soul once was and it was caused by your own hands because the only destruction you're good at is your own. you couldn't even kill a child with a nuke, so what makes you think you can end a small room on the side of some hill?

"What do you see?" Wilbur says, and the voice in her head disappears. She can't remember what it said. She shakes her head as if the words will fall out her ears.

Suddenly she can't remember why she's shaking her head.

Her next words come out frail.

"My… my bakery. But how? This shouldn't be possible I, I destroyed it - I - "

"Limbo is different for everybody," Wilbur interjects. "For me, it's a train station."

"Limbo? What are you talking about? What is going on? I was nowhere near L'manburg I was - " Niki's mind blanks.

(Smooth quartz all around her and she feels safe there, that she remembers because there is no killing here, the one place bloodshed does not haunt her, and then crushing disappointment that turns into actual crushing as her body gets shredded, mangled, undone like a ribbon except it does not look pretty)

Wilbur gives her a slicing smile. It cuts her down. "This is the afterlife, Niki."

She blinks. She tries to take a step back, but she's rooted to the spot. "What?"

"The afterlife," he continues, eyes sparkling. "Hell. The void. Eternal darkness. Whatever you wanna call it. I call it home."

"Home?" She repeats, shakily.

foolish girl with no place, no one to call home because she's an expert at finding comfort in things that don't stay, of course he sees this place as home. Although if he really wanted to surround himself in emptiness so bad then he just needed to wait a few months for you to become just that

"I'm not dead," she mutters. She attempts to laugh, because if she laughs then this will sound like a joke. Wilbur would joke about such a thing. After all, he poked fun at exploding L'manburg just a while ago. So of course this is a joke. It has to be. It is, and she will not allow her breakdown to be the punchline.

At Wilbur's unflinching smile she says it again, with more conviction. "I'm not!"

"How else do you think you're talking to me? How your bakery is still in one piece? Sorry to be your grim reaper Niki, but you're dead. And now you're here, in the afterlife, with me!" He leans in close, close enough that she should feel his breath on her.

There is nothing. He is nothing.

(And maybe, so is she)

"Isn't that great? We're together again! You and me, just like the old days. And look," His eyes glance at what she wears. It's the coat. Specifically, Wilbur's coat, wrapped around her shoulders.

"We're even matching," he coos.

She thinks she might scream.

She throws herself away from him, almost throws the coat too, but into the furnace next to her.

('I gotta burn the memories I need to destroy it I need to destroy it I need to destroy it,' she once screamed to no one but herself. History repeats itself)

How she ever found comfort in this ratty, old coat she'll never know. And she'll never care to find out. Not when Wilbur is acting like this, like before, like a loose city wire, all dangerous and unpredictable, each word an electric spark, and Niki is trying not to get stung. She remembers how that story ended.

But her's will not end. Not yet.

"I can't be dead," she argues. "I don't remember that I would remember something like that so I - I can't be dead, and I have two lives left so, no, no I can't be I'm alive I'm alive I'm alive and I'm in bed I'm alive I'm alive I'm alive and you're not real, just a nightmare. I'm alive I'm alive I'm - "

"It's really me, Niki," Wilbur says, and the fire from the furnace roars in response as if his words fan the flames. It's the first time something in this wicked place has felt alive. "In the flesh. Or, rather, a close imitation of it. I think my corpse must have liquified by now, swelling up for months before bursting open, leaving nothing but a skeleton behind. What about you? What did you leave for them to find?"

She covers her ears. "Stop! Stop it stop it stop it!"

"Remember it. Remember your last moments."

"Wilbur, please - "

"Feel your wrist," he says. No, orders. And she does. Because she, at her core, is still his soldier.

(She says that she is loyal to him and he responds by saying he wants her to be loyal to L'manburg. She remembers being confused, for she saw them both as the same. Wilbur is L'manburg and L'manburg is Wilbur, one cannot coexist without the other. A few months later, amongst the wreckage of her nation and a father's anguished screams, she'll realize too little too late how true her statement holds)

She doesn't find her heartbeat.

For a second she thinks she made a mistake. That she has her fingers in the wrong place, but no. A soldier knows where to look for life so that they may snuff it out. She can't be making a mistake.

Still, she presses her fingers down, harder this time, nails first, that blood draws, and sobs as she's still met with nothing.

She has no heartbeat.

She is dead.

She chokes. She clutches her chest, not because it hurts to know what she lacks in her chest, but because she remembers. Remembers it so intently, remembers it happening in the snap of a finger, literally, from a smiling God (and maybe it is quite a fitting end, for she goes out the same way she lived, giving second chances to men who don't deserve it) and how the world tilted as the ground slipped away.

But what's worse is the realization that comes after.

"I didn't leave anyone anything to find," she says.

Wilbur raises an eyebrow. "What?"

"I didn't leave anyone anything to find because I didn't die," she says again, but weaker. More horrified. "I was teleported. I was on the holy lands when - "

"Teleported?' Wilbur interrupts. His features, just a second ago, eccentric and mad, turn curious. "Wait wait wait, hold on a second, are you telling me you were sent to Hell, Hell, on the fucking Holy Lands? "

Niki weakly nods.

It goes silent.

Suddenly, a snort. A snort that does not sound like it once did, back before the war for independence, before the election, before banishment, before it all, when all there was was a caravan and the worst of their worries was getting Sapnap a vegan hotdog. It's meaner, more shrill, and laced with a madness that seems to roll off his tongue so easily nowadays.

If she weren't watching how hard Wilbur's shoulders shake she'd have never guessed such a sound would come from him.

But there's something else about this snort that chills her to the core. Although she never could have imagined it coming from Wilbur doesn't mean she hasn't heard this kind of laugh before.

It's almost breathless, almost like something left on a stove, steaming, almost like the sound of  -

(Dream and Wilbur worked together, both wanted L'manburg gone, both almost killed a kid, both cut off attachments, both lost trust in others, all things Niki has done too, and if Niki is like Wilbur and Wilbur is like Dream then that means - )

(No. Please, no)

"That is -," Wilbur wheezes, wiping away a tear. "That is horribly ironic."

"DreamXD!" She shouts, head tilted up. "Take me back! Take me back right now!"

Wilbur shakes his head. "Oh, no need to try that. I've been there. The whole shouting for help thing? Yeah, will do you no good. No one can hear you down here."

"DreamXD! I'm here!"

"Scream all you want, prime knows you don't need to breathe down here so nothing's stopping you from doing it for forever, but when your screams are all you hear for eternity… well, it'll drive any person mad."

"DreamXD," she shrieks. And her lungs don't shake, don't even give a small quiver, she knows it. Nothing in her does, for the gears don't need to be turning to keep this machine of a body that's been on autopilot since an explosion knocked her off her feet alive anymore. "Please!"

"You stop talking after a few years of just endless screaming for your voice becomes a reminder of your entrapment. But then the silence itself, after a few years, is unbearable. Yet you don't dare speak or make any noise, so it's just madness of a new kind."

She pushes her way past him and makes her way to the exit of her bakery. "I - I liked the magic trick, DreamXD! I really did! You - you can teleport me back now!"

"Too scared to make a noise, but too scared to keep quiet. So you stand still. Your body deteriorates, muscles numb from lack of use, and all you do is use your nails to scratch marks onto the walls to mark how many years have passed since… since absolutely nothing."

She stills. She slowly turns around.

(L'manburg is surrounded by a wall. A wall so mighty and tall she never thought she'd see the day it'd be torn down, much less by its own inhabitants. But this wall right here, the one between her and this old friend, this is a wall that will never meet the same end as its predecessor)

"Wilbur," she whispers. "What do you mean by years?"

Silence.

Wilbur has a far-away look in his eye.  

(That look was born in a dirt hole on the side of a small hill and Niki doesn't learn that lesson for she builds her bakery in a similar place. Two places, so small, so cramped, started with hope, have become their worst downfalls, their unfinished symphonies. She parallels him in all the wrong ways)

"Time down here is like stars, Niki. We're dead, dead for thousands of years, but to them," he points up, "we still shine. It'll take light years for them to realize they are staring at just a memory."

She tries to take a step back, but she's rooted where she stands. "Wilbur," she weeps. "How long have you been down here?"

He laughs.

(There was a time it made Niki's heart stop. It still does, but for different reasons now)

"Eleven years."

Niki covers her mouth to stifle a broken cry. She was paralyzed before but now, with fear pumping through her veins, she runs. Fear is a more dependent motivator than strength or bravery could ever be, for fear, unlike any other heroic emotion, can't be beaten out of you. Can't be threatened out of you by a friend on your birthday as you try to stop him from pressing a button. Fear only grows, like a weed, you can try to get rid of it all you want, but it multiplies the more you struggle.

She finally gets to the exit, nearly throwing herself at it, only to find a stone wall staring back at her. It's been cemented shut.

She's trapped.

(She is in a cage, a zoo animal for Manburg citizens to point and laugh at. It is cramped, it is humiliating, and it is her home, her everything in wake of becoming nothing to people she once considered friends, Schlatt tells her. Until Quackity frees her. But there is no one to free her now. Except herself)

She pulls up her sleeves and begins mining with her bare hands.

She's been torn apart before, but at least it was quick. This, the way her flesh slowly peels off at each scratch is its own kind of torture. Not because it's painful, but the torture in knowing what you're willing to do to yourself just to see the sky again.

She keeps going.

(She does not throw up at the sight of chunks of flesh dangling where nail once was because she is a soldier and she has seen worse. Seen a child trapped in a box screaming for help and she's unfortunate enough to have a seat in the splash zone. Helped patch up Ponk's wound where his arm should be, afraid she might lose him to blood loss because whoever chopped his arm off didn't cut across the joint to avoid the bone and therefore had to hack again and again and again to get through the bone. Sewed Fundy's head back together from when Schlatt beat him over the scalp with a beer bottle before dying in the caravan; it took a couple of hours to finish because his fur made it hard to spot the bits of glass sticking out his skin. This is not the first or last time she will wash blood off her clothes, she just has to hope it will continue to be someone else's and not her own)

Wilbur comes up beside her. He doesn't even try to stop her, much less flinch at all the red on the wall. "Don't worry, you'll get used to it. Tommy did."

She snaps her head to him, her clawing ceasing. "Tommy was here?"

He nods. "Arrived a few years ago. I have to admit, when a space opened up here I thought it would be him again, not you. Not that I'm complaining. Don't get me wrong he's a good kid but, well, you know how Tommy gets."

(Everyone you've ever hated, everyone you've ever sworn to end; Schlatt, Tommy, and although you do not hate Wilbur or Jack you're relationship with them is complicated because they remind you of when you spiraled, you lot are all connected now, bound together from sharing the similar experience of death. She can never separate herself from them. Will be rever grouped in with the people she can't stand most)

"How long was Tommy here for?" She asks softly.

Wilbur clicks his tongue. "Two months I think."

She closes her eyes.

(She wanted to look deep into the crater Tubbo's nuke made and confuse Tommy's charcoal, burnt body for obsidian. She wanted to catch Tommy's choked last breaths in a bottle and get drunk on it every night. She wanted to leave spruce wood on his grave as a sort of flag marking her latest conquest. She wanted to stop thinking that if Wilbur was wrong for believing in Tommy then that means he might have been wrong for believing in her)

She doesn't want Tommy dead anymore and although they're still not friends even she wouldn't wish this on him.

"Two months," she says, and it sinks in.

Is that how long she'll have to wait until someone comes looking for her?

That is if someone even cares to look.

(Puffy doesn't respond to any of her messages after their first date. She turns Jack away when he tries to pull her back into the obsession of caving Tommy's head in. Everyone grieving L'manburg remembers her setting L'mantree aflame. Anyone in the Eggpire is too far gone to even care about themselves. She doesn't have a Tubbo. Isn't anyone's disk. She's just Niki, forgotten, ignored Niki, the first ghost of the server before Ghostbur. Why spare a glance at someone transparent? Someone, not all there?)

No one will come for her.

Wilbur cracks his fingers, and Niki winces, for her bones are still on flesh display and slowly repairing. "Well, now that we've played twenty questions let's move on to a new game. You up for some solitaire?"

She rises to her feet and numbly nods. She might as well have something to do to, to try and prevent the inevitable insanity with a card game.

Might as well accept her fate.

Wilbur reaches into his pocket and pulls out the cards. He sits down on the ground. "Sorry," he says. "I'd offer we play on a table but there are no tables in a train station and I doubt your bakery has one either." He hands her half of the deck. "Help me set it up."

But Niki doesn't take them, for she's focused on the word table because -

(There's a table, a weird table, made up of this block she's never seen before. It's sponge-like, with a hole on top decorated by a blueish-green frame, and she's about to ask where they found it when Phil suddenly apologizes for exploding her bakery. At her shocked expression, he explains he'd like to air out all possible tensions before starting their first-ever official Syndicate meeting so that no past grievances keep them from working as an effective team. Techno merely snorts, saying it's not their fault her bakery was on government land, and Phil responds by shooting him a glare fit for his title as Angel of Death. She'd have laughed, she'd have cried because such a look was once how Phil got Wil to eat his vegetables if it weren't for the fact she tells them they have nothing to apologize for. Tells them she left the oven on the day before the attack and by next sunrise, it was already burnt to the ground. Ranboo doesn't blink once from where he sits across from her as she talks. She sees in his eyes that day, how her laughs and her wails blend in with the chaos around her, as if it belongs there, as if she is one with it. And maybe she is, for the fire that consumes her bakery grows and grows and grows but Niki just gets smaller and smaller and smaller as if she has to sacrifice bits of herself to keep the fire going. Perhaps she is, for every monster requires an offering, and her bakery is that. A representative of the old her burning alive to make room for the new, merciless, unhinged her. Good. She looks down at the flint and steel in her hand and in the reflection of the metal she sees a boy with mismatched eyes standing behind her, staring. And then he takes out his book and writes. It feels like Ranboo has placed a noose around her neck. The memory fades and she holds her breath. She waits for him to say something, to call out her lie. This time, Ranboo undoes the knot. He looks away)

Because she needs to tell Ranboo she appreciated his silence that day. Needs to joke about how all this snow reminds her of an ice cream shop and watch Ranboo nervously laugh as she lightheartedly punches him on the shoulder.

Because she needs to know how that story Phil was telling her about his adventures with Techno on another server, something about an Antarctic Empire, ends. Needs to feed the crows with him to make sure he doesn't stare at their wings for too long.

Because she needs to braid Techno's hair one last time while they talk about how pink is clearly the superior hair color. Needs to thank Techno for giving her these becauses, for they wouldn't exist in the first place had he not offered her a place in the Syndicate.

Ironically enough, she always knew she'd die before she could give back all that she owed them. But only because what she owed them was too long a list, too difficult to be expressed in any way that captured what they deserved.

(Somewhere, in a snow biome, there is a family. They're different from each other, too different at times, and yet Ranboo and Techno could wear each other crowns, each fitting perfectly on their heads and no one would know of the switch, except for Phil of course. Right now they're probably looking at their comms around the dinner table, confused by the last message. 'Nihachu fell from a high place.' They aren't worried. Not yet. But in a couple of days, months for her, they'll start to pace. Phil will stand at the edge of the roof, ready to step off, only to remember he doesn't have wings, can't look for her high up in the sky like he used to when she was a kid. Ranboo will force himself through experiments, lose sleep, break himself in, trying to learn how to teleport so as to cover ground faster in the search, to do more than just let his powers go to waste when they could be what brings her home. Techno will grab her rainbow sweater and put it to Steve's snout, but the trail will go cold every time until eventually all of Niki's clothes don't smell like her anymore. They'll do this every day. Nothing will change but their hope, dwindling away each day. So will they just stare at that last message, her unintentional goodbye, looking for some sort of explanation? For some secret message? Some coordinates until they go mad? They won't think she's dead until they've found a body. Won't stop looking, won't leave a corner of the server untouched. Won't stop till they have something to bury)

She can't do that to them.

She slaps the cards out of Wilbur's hands.

"No," she growls, trying to sound tough and less like a kid throwing a tantrum. Perhaps slapping the cards away was not the best start. "I am not going to waste my time playing Solitaire when I could be spending it finding a way back home. And I will if it's the last thing I do."

Wilbur frowns. Niki has the inkling suspicion it has more to do with the cards being all scattered about than from her declaration. "There is no 'last thing I do anymore.' You dying was the last thing you'll ever do. All you have now is this. This is your forever. Our forever."

She turns away from him, just for a second. Away from the sight of his furrowed brows and the crinkles in the space between them where her index finger would go to poke as she teased him. Away from the scrunch of his nose she would joke made him and Techno finally look like twins. Because despite everything, despite all the months that have settled into their bones since the last they saw each other and the wars they've fought on land and in their minds, it's still Wilbur's face. But only in the physical sense. After that, he stops being her Wilbur.

This would be so much easier if his face had physically morphed into a stranger, to prove to her how much he's changed, what he's become over the months, is not all in her head.

Somehow, she finds a way to start.

"You know, not too long ago I'd have stayed with you here. I wouldn't have even put up a fight. I'd have just laid down, closed my eyes, and let the vines on these walls grow over my body until I was just moss. I was… I was so tired, Wilbur. A part of me always will be. I understood. I finally got why you acted the way you did. There was a time I was on half a heart and instead of eating I would - "

Her body begins to shake so hard she almost expects to look down and she cracks in the ground from an incoming earthquake. The only cracks see she's are her own.

She can't say it. Not like that. Not yet.

" - I would respawn to restock the hunger bar," Niki chokes out instead.

(She respawns with dried blood on the back of her head and bones still rattling from the fall. Along her jutting spine, in an almost perfectly straight line that could be confused for an unkempt path lost to weeds and drought, are bruises. She doesn't feel them. All she feels is the urge to do it again)

She blinks and her hand is in her hair, looking for the bump. She pulls her hand away as if it's a hot furnace. "But I can't stay. Things have changed. I've changed. This is not the first time something dark has tried to consume me, but I can't let it win this time. I can't let this place turn me numb and unhinged, or worse, content. Not when I have people to go home to. Not when - "

She looks down at her hand, the one that traced her scalp, and sees it has clenched into a fist.

(At the count of three, Niki throws rock. She groans as she notices all the other hands make paper. Ranboo and Techno exhale as if the losing sentence wasn't shoveling the front lawn, but death. Or worse, going shopping with Phil for a refrigerator to put in the Syndicate meeting room. Ranboo lost that one. Niki points at Techno's hooves and says it's cheating since they can't ever tell which shape he chooses. She demands a rematch with the same tone one uses to declare war. A few minutes later, they're shouting, going over the rules of rock, paper, scissors, and they only stop when Phil comes home and pulls out the dad voice. They begrudgingly agree to do a rematch another time, once they've cooled down. That was yesterday)

She holds her fist close to her heart. The hand was never her rock, it was always three men in a snowy cabin, handing her a mug of hot cocoa. "Not when I have a lawn to shovel."

Silence.

Then, Wilbur sighs. "You know," he says. He places his arms behind him and leans back to get a better look at her. Somehow, even on the ground, he looks to hold all the power. "Years ago your determination would have been a sight for sore eyes, but here's a reality check. I've been here for almost a dozen years. Eleven years of letting the passing train rip right through me in the hopes it would send me to another layer of hell or maybe propel, heck, even drag my body to the next station. But every time I'd wake up back in the train station as if nothing had happened. Like my body breaking under the wheels was nothing."

He is an avalanche, growing and picking up speed with each word, and Niki realizes, too little too late, she's about to be buried alive. She tries to step back, but Wilbur is up quick and approaching. "There is no escape. The limbo is our stage and we have our lines, our cues, but we do not have a curtain call. We just keep going and going, an endless loop. You can't not play your part. It won't let you."

"I have to at least try," she says.

"Why? What's the point? They'll never know you tried."

Her fear turns to disgust. "Is that why you think I'll try? For the sole reason that one day they'll know what I've done for them? That's far from the truth."

(People built statues of Tommy, for all he's done, for all the influence he had on this server. Niki knows they will not give her the same treatment. But that's fine, more than fine. All she needs is a grave in the snow, beside a little cabin)

She didn't want to look at Wilbur's face before, but now, glaring at him straight on, all she sees staring back is Phil.

The day they found out Wilbur didn't inherit Phil's immortality was the day Phil looked like he should, centuries-old instead of thirty-three, the age when angels stop physically aging. Niki will never forget how deep the lines on Phil's face ran. They might as well have been cracks. And maybe it was, for Phil was breaking as he held his dying son - not dying now, but for an immortal, every second a mortal breathes is just inevitable death - in his arms.

But what still haunts Niki the most after all these years are his eyes. They carried the weight of the world in them. She could feel it, even now, pressing down on her shoulders. All the wars, the fall of cities, the birth of them, children with big smiles and even bigger graves.

Niki was not a soldier yet. She was just a nine-year-old girl who wanted to sleep over at her best friend's house.

She threw up in their sink and they mistook it as her reaction to the news. She didn't correct them.

The only reason she slept easy that night was from the knowledge she would never see those eyes on Wilbur's face. And yet, lo and behold, here it is, like a punch to the gut.

Except now, Niki has had time to numb herself to it. It's hard to get surprised by such a dead look when it's on the face of your roommate.

(Phil's screech - no, not a screech, a caw, high pitched and grief-stricken - is like an alarm clock. Except, instead of Niki waking up to the rising sun outside her window, it's to moonlight and blinking stars. This is the fifth time this month she's met Ranboo and Techno outside Phil's cabin, armed to the teeth, ready for war. The door creaks open, loudly, but they don't wince, for they know it won't wake him. Nothing really does when he's in this state, except for one thing. Techno holds him down and it's weird, will always be weird, to see Techno use such force, such retaliation, on Phil of all people, and then Phil nearly throws Techno through the wall with just a brush of his fingers, and she remembers it's necessary. This isn't Phil they're dealing with, it's the Angel of Death. It takes a while until Techno can get all of the Angel's limbs down, but even then they know it won't last long, and that's when Niki throws a slowness potion on him. Ranboo, meanwhile, turns around all the photos of Wilbur in the room, a safe distance away. They told him it's best he handles that since he's built like a stick, putting him anywhere near a powerful avian would be an accident waiting to happen. It definitely has nothing to do with them freezing up whenever they see Wilbur's smiling face, all happy, and so very alive. Phil's movements turn sluggish as the potion kicks in and Niki holds his face, murmurs soft words, and Techno gives his own weird, but comforting, comments. Something about how Phil can't afford to lose sleeping beauty to these night terrors, what with his old age. Niki snorts. Phil's eyes open immediately. Phil sucks in a sharp breath, like he's forgotten how to breathe, his fist clenching and unclenching. The eyes are back. Based on Techno's face Niki knows then she's not the only person that has seen them. They look at each other, nod, and hold him as he cries. They don't need to ask. There's only one person that could cause such a look. They force Ranboo, who is awkwardly standing to the side, to join. Eventually, they break apart, and Techno coughs. He says he hates them for making this all emotional and bans such an awkward event from ever happening again. And yet, when Phil keeps waking up with eyes too dark around the corners, Techno is there. And so is she and Ranboo)

She will not be the reason Phil's eyes age another year.

"It's about Phil, Techno, and Ranboo deserving someone who will never stop trying to find their way back to them," she says, with conviction. "I'm sorry you're too twisted to see not all actions stem from reward or acknowledgment."

She expects a laugh, a glimpse at his forked tongue spewing words so sweet she could use them as sugar in her desserts, only to take a bite and realize it was salt all along. But what she gets is silence. The type of silence before a storm.

"Phil?" Wilbur whispers.

Niki closes her eyes.

She should have never said their names.

She also should have never opened her eyes again, because Wilbur is looking more like Phil each second. Not because of the eyes. No, worse. Because she sees a boy, a boy with his arms spread open wide and flapping about in an attempt at mimicking his father's wings, and they're both running around in circles in the backyard as he tells her how she'll never have to walk anywhere ever again. He'll carry her when she's tired, when she's not tired, whenever she wants wherever she wants. They stop running around in circles flapping their arms when too much time has passed and his wings still haven't grown in, but the acceptance that it never would did.

She blinks and the memory is gone. Slipping through her fingers like sand.

"How is he?" Wilbur says. His voice wavers a bit. He hides it quickly with a cough, but Niki catches it. Niki thought she always would.

(But then a button was pressed and she realized just how untrue that was)

Niki hesitates. She thinks about the night terrors again. She almost mentions them but falters as she remembers Ranboo telling her how it was Phil who gave him a place to stay after L'manburg was blown up for the last time. How as Technoblade hibernates there's a blanket over his shoulders that wasn't there before and a stick missing from the fireplace. How he always places Niki's plate of breakfast down before the others, as if he knows of her first canon death.

He is a kind man, but that is not why he does these things.

"He misses being a father," she settles on.

Wilbur's shoulders slump. Somewhere, in a different life, Niki's hand is there, squeezing comfortingly. "Is he… is he mad at me?"

"No." She answers quickly. "He's just tired, Wilbur. We all are."

Wilbur laughs. It sounds defeated. Mournful. "Understatement of the fucking year."

He slumps against the wall and Niki is sure it's the only thing keeping Wilbur on his feet. His head hits the smooth stone when he suddenly throws his head back and laughs. Niki doesn't know if she winces from the loud crack the impact makes or from the shrill, unhinged laugh.

"I told him to kill me," Wilbur chuckles. His eyes are blinking rapidly. "I told him to fucking kill me."

(The diamond sword has collected dust. Sometimes, everyone jokes, Phil looks like he has to. Playful teasing about how he's a walking antique that should be displayed in a museum. Phil always laughs them off. But it's moments when he stands too still, alone in his thoughts for too long, that Niki wants to put him behind glass with signs that say 'do not touch,' because all it takes is one gust of wind for an artifact to shatter. But that is no way to live and Phil is not so easily breakable. Worn down a bit, rusted from the loss throughout the eons, yes -  who hasn't on this forsaken server? -  but not breakable)

Niki thinks she might throw up. "I know."

Wilbur looks at her. His eyes are red, but there are no tears. "You said you understood me. You get why I had to ask him to do it."

"Wilbur - "

" - And so you also understand why you have to stay here."

"What?"

"We've changed Niki," Wilbur starts. "For the worse. Don't you feel it? How that server has destroyed every cell in our body? A slow painful death eating us from the inside out until we've just withered away into someone new, someone unrecognizable?"

(Niki feels she's in a never-ending house of mirrors. Constantly encircled by reflections that are her and not her staring back, each representing different points in her life. Some are unrecognizable, stretched, or squished beyond identification, like a fuzzy memory of a girl carrying a backpack, skipping down a path she was told by a best friend would lead to a nation with yellow and black walls. Some are too terrifying, demonizing her features, giving her slits for eyes and claws for nails holding flint and steel over TNT. All of them she wants to smash)

Wilbur either ignores the horrified expression on her face or doesn't see it. "We killed our old selves as a sacrifice, an offering, to the monster we saw lurking in the edges of our mind. And once you let the monster in there's no going back. All we know from then on is to destroy, to rip apart all we once held dear with no remorse until there's just ash and dust. We thrive, no, revel in it."

(Nemesis, she names herself. Goddess of divine retribution and revenge. Maybe that's who Niki sacrifices herself to. Why she felt such an attachment to the name. A remorseless Goddess said to have led Narcissus to a pool, knowing full well he'd be too captivated to leave his reflection for food or warmth. He died there. It's no coincidence a few weeks before she lived the story herself, leading Tommy to his death in the form of a hot blast of air at the speed of light and seeing it as justice)

"I'm not having this conversation with you," she says, voice shaking. She whirls around, nearly tripping over her feet, fully willing to ignore him as she looks for an exit.

But his next words make her go still.

"Phil didn't know what I'd become. That's why he had to be the one to do it."

She winces. "Don't."

"He didn't even pull out the sword, his arms were too busy holding me, holding me, as if the shape of me still fit against his chest even though I felt so hollow, so much thinner - "

"Wilbur - "

" - he stroked my hair too. Even though it was dirty and unkempt and a mess like everything else about me and I'm pretty sure his fingers got stuck a few times he just wouldn't stop untangling each knot with such care and precision that I remembered my last thought being - "

"Wilbur - "

" - could he have brushed away all the knots and twists in my soul like this? Cleaned me up on the inside like he's doing on the outside? I thought I went crying, Niki. Maybe I did. I'll never know because all I felt was his tears ricocheting on my face - "  

"Stop - "

" - he tries to wipe them off. He's cursing at himself, apologizing profusely through hiccuping sobs and, and I don't understand why he's so sorry when it feels like, like when he'd lick his fingers and scrub the grimes of our faces after we played outside too long. Do you remember that Niki - "

"I don't wanna - "

" - because I do. We'd screech so loud, saying it was disgusting and unsanitary as we slapped his hand away and ran, but he'd always catch us a second later because of his wings. I don't wanna run away this time. I'm relishing it, craving every stroke because I'm starting to go cold - "

"Please - "

" - and I wish you weren't teleported here. I wish you had died instead - "  

"Wil - "

" - so you would know, so we could relate to what it feels like for the limbo to claim you. To mark you. It's like, it's like being mutilated over and over again. A mallet to your bones, a hole in your brain, everything from your skin to your tendons unraveling before you - "

"Wil listen - "

" - spilling out and about like confetti, and you, you are confetti! You're shredded pieces, everywhere and nowhere all at once, and just as the mangling begins it stops, replaced by the limbo trying to put you, no, force you back together again. It's the same sensation, but in reverse, almost a loop, a tunnel with no light at the end, and all you can do is scream  - "

"WILBUR SHUT UP AND LISTEN TO ME!"

Something shatters

Wilbur falls silent.

Niki looks down. There is a puddle, slowly growing at her feet. She looks to her left. Her hand has punched through the aquarium. Blood trickles down her hand, some get over the glass. She doesn't pull her hand away.

"You never listen," she mumbles, but it seems so loud to her ears. "No one does. No one wants to. I talk and I talk and I talk and yet no response. Not even from the wind. I am a voice box stuck on rewind, repeating myself as life moves on without me."

Niki can hear her voice ring down the bakery, bouncing around with nowhere to settle. Until it does, in Niki's chest, rattling, crackling like a fuse has been lit, and perhaps it has, for her anger feels sizzling. "You used to always say how words were powerful. How they could stop wars, how they could build nations." She lets out a laugh. It burns her throat. "But what would I know?! You and everyone else never gave me a chance to use my voice! Always talking over me whatever chance you could. Even before Pogtopia you walked all over me! Even when I was screaming at top of my lungs you'd - "  

She gasps. The glass presses deeper into her skin as her hand trembles. She does not feel it. "Oh primes, oh primes Wil, didn't you hear my screams? I came here screaming, Wil. I, I do know what it feels like for the void to take you. I still feel it, even now, why, why do I still feel it - "

Wilbur staggers to his feet, so quick he promptly falls. He catches himself halfway on Niki's wrist.

His hand scratches on the glass. He doesn't even flinch. Their blood mixes.

(They are one)

He doesn't even grip too tight, and yet it hurts. Stings. "You do understand," he grins. Wide, too wide for his face, that she almost expects his nose and eyes to sink into his skin to make more room. "You do, you do oh thank primes. I'm not alone in this. I've been alone for so long but now, now you're here and you understand! Oh, Niki, I'm so happy you're here."

"You're… happy, I'm here?" She mutters. "You're happy I'm dead?"

He nods frantically. "It's more than that Niki," he says. "DreamXD, whoever that man is, he's my hero for sending you here."

(Parallels between Wilbur and Dream and her and now Wilbur and Dream and DreamXD no no no she can't be them she can't she can't she won't she won't - )

"You don't mean it," she cries. "You don't mean that Wil. Say you don't mean it."

The grin, somehow, becomes wider. She realizes then his eyes don't have to disappear. They're already gone. Replaced by a black hole, too dark in the corners and its gravitational pull making it hard to look away even though she knows staring at it too long will get her sucked into an endless void.

He leans in close like he's sharing a secret. "I only wish he had sent you here sooner."

(Wilbur's life, Niki is realizing, is like a house of mirrors too. Except Wilbur has smashed every mirror. No, actually, not true. Niki sees, if she squints, that Wilbur has abandoned the sledgehammer and is observing a still intact mirror. He didn't keep the mirror depicting a little boy sitting on the steps of a home, their home, trying to play a song and failing because the guitar is too big for his body, but he refuses to buy a smaller one because "this is my Dad's guitar Niki! So, therefore, it's by default the best guitar in the world". Or the one of a father panting heavily on a couch, cursing his human legs while Niki is doubled over laughing because there is a baby fox is running on all fours around the house at 45 miles per hour who doesn't want to be put to bed. Nor the one of a leader, handing out purpose and meaning in the form of a blue and white uniform with a soft smile. No, it's the one of a man who's just pressed a button. Who long before L'manburg's destruction, always felt like he was breathing in smoke, but now kept warm by the ash and dust of his nation flying up to the red sky, it feels - for the first time in a long time - easier to breathe. Niki can't believe he didn't destroy it. He's… preserving it. Why is he preserving this version of himself of all things?)

foolish girl with dreams for a better nation, better server, better future, too much better somethings, you've ruined reality for no one but yourself. think for once about what is and not what was or could have been. he is different. changed for the worse. he's preserving it because he doesn't care about you. can't you see how happy he is over your death? how there's light in his eyes for the first time over yours being snuffed out? how he shows no sympathy in your entrapment here, forever away from Techno, Phil, and Ranboo because it benefits him. so give in and fight fight fight fight

She sees red.

Her fist collides with Wilbur's nose.

She doesn't even wait to hear the crack before she's already reeling back her arm for the next hit.

This time she aims for the jaw. She feels something split. It could be Wilbur's lip or bone. Maybe her mind. She doesn't know and she doesn't care.

What she does know is how familiar this is, having something break under her knuckles. It's easy, familiar even, throwing punch after punch, like some sort of autopilot response. Perhaps it is, for every punch is instinctive, out of body almost. No longer is there a before in the blows, only an after.

Except, that's not true. Not entirely. Because Niki is realizing why there is no before. Because before each blow there is always a struggle from your opponent. Flailing limbs trying to make contact with something, choked wheezes, an attempt to curl into a ball, and, sometimes, begging.

Wilbur does none of that. He's silent the whole time.

It's almost like he takes it willingly.

clever girl with hands too bruised, too scarred, too violent to ever be held so gently. a finger trained to pull the trigger is not meant to bear a promise ring. who's fault do you think that is? you've held back for so long, don't stop now. so give in and get revenge revenge revenge revenge

A swing at his eye. A swift kick to the ribs. A fistful of his hair so tight she could yank his scalp off if she twisted her wrist just so.

It's all a flurry of movements really, too fast for even her own eyes to catch. Half of the time she's lost on where the hits land, totally dependent on wherever the blood leaks the most and the bruises that weren't there a second ago to tell her. Eventually, the damage starts to blur, too much of his face has swelled up to spot any new marks and too many limbs bend at weird angles to differentiate what is and isn't broken, so she stops trying to guess.

Which is why she doesn't know which strike finally gets Wilbur to fall, all she knows is that he does. He doesn't even sway. One second he's on his feet and the next he's on his back.

It's kinda pathetic really, that this was her general.

For a second he's still, too still, and then he spits out a tooth. He licks his gums with a grimace, looking for the gap before finally speaking.

"I see Technoblade's been training you. Do you feel better now?"

clever girl who's seen her fair share of men with livewire tongues, spitting rogue sparks at your skin in the form of harsh words to quiet you down. do not be silenced once more. you let him speak before and it cost you a nation. this time silence him, and I will secure you a limbo without him. so give in and maim maim maim maim

She screams. She thinks she does. It's hard to tell over the deep reverberated banging of Wilbur's head against the stone floor.

The first slam simply causes blood to trickle down his forehead.

The second one caves in the front of his scalp.

The third one he's unrecognizable.

The fourth one there's nothing left to bash.

She keeps going anyway.

"Shut up," she pants between each crack and occasional splat. "Shut up shut up shut up shut up SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP."

Wilbur tries to say something. All that comes out is a gurgle, wet and sharp and loud. So very loud. And it keeps going, stringing along and along and along longer than the large chunks of skin and brain on the pavement. It shouldn't be possible, his mouth, along with everything else, is practically gone. Nothing but a small pit inside a bigger pit.

Yet it continues, getting increasingly louder in pitch.

And then she gets it.

He's scared.

clever girl of never-ending war zones, jumping from one horror to the next. this is the last one. and I know that's been said before but you can trust me. just end it and you can finally rest. wouldn't that be nice? so give in and kill kill kill kill kill

She smiles. It hurts her face.

She picks his head up from the ground one last time. She's humming, like a lullaby. Maybe it is. She's putting the baby to sleep. She knows he can't die again, but wherever he goes after this, if the limbo keeps its promise, it can't be pretty.

"I said," she laughs. "Shut up."

She brings his head down.

She blinks.

Her empty hand meets black stone slabs.

"Niki?"

She looks up and immediately regrets it. Everything is too bright, scorching, a burning gaze on every inch of her skin, but what really hurts are her eyes. She thinks they're sizzling, like actually sizzling, because her sclera feels as if it's bubbling and her iris is definitely melting into her brain and there are so many spots dancing behind her eyelids.

And then the voice, soft and familiar, speak's again.

"Do you have your stuff?"

It takes a while, and a lot of blinking, but her eyes eventually readjust.

She gasps.

The first thing she processes isn't that George and DreamXD stand just a few feet away or that it was George speaking. No, it was how absurdly colorful, everything was.

Here there was life. Life. It was like she poked her head through a kaleidoscope, what with how the specks of a rainbow illuminated itself in the clear blue water of the fountain and the sight of shimmering white quartz glistening under the sunbeams that poured through the purple-tinted windows. No longer was everything dulled around the corners and drained at the center like anything in her dreadful, cramped space of a bakery she shared with -

Oh primes.

Her bakery.

This isn't her bakery. This is Church Prime.

"She's back," DreamXD exclaims. He turns to George, bouncing on his heels excitedly as if expecting some sort of reward, but George pays him no mind/ He's too busy looking at Niki, or, more so, through her.

"What happened?" He asks.

She opens her mouth, then slams it shut.

She's alive. Dear primes, she's alive and she's back and she should be happy, cheering, jumping up and down to feel the livelihood ache in her bones but…

She looks back down at the floor. The floor should be covered in blood. Wilbur's blood, and his bits of flesh and tissue and muscle and -

Oh primes. What has she done?

Or better yet, what didn't she do?

"George," she whimpers. "I don't know what's going on. I, I don't know what's going on here."

She hopes it was her imagination. It had to have been. Otherwise, she hosted Wilbur's head up by the splits of his hair, pushed down as hard as she could and -

She wouldn't. She couldn't, not anymore at least. She left that side of herself in a gate full of slaughtered chickens as Jack demanded they try and kill Tommy again. That side of her is as dead as those chickens.

Right?

She prays so, for this is a church after all, and that means prayers have to be answered here. They have to come true. They have to.

There's a smile in DreamXD's voice when he speaks again as if he knows how much this torments her. "I sent her to hell and then I brought her back."

No.

She sobs. She looks down at her hands. Their bear and yet they feel so heavy. As if the ghost of Wilbur's blood and gore is still there, a new thick-coated layer of skin.

She tortured him. Broke him brick by brick again and again and again even as he tried to beg. Her best friend, her general, her family, begging at her feet, and she kept going, would have kept going too, with an ear-splitting grin, like it was some sort of game.

And it had felt so good to finally get a checkmate.

Wilbur is not a demon. He's just seen too much in too little time. Too much pressure on too little shoulders. Too tired to be all there. It's not an excuse for all the pain he's caused, far from it, but it shows his actions didn't come from a place of malice, but rather a cry for help. Niki knows this, she gets it, and she'll say it time and time again. But all she could think about at that moment, before the final strike, was how happy Wilbur was about her death. He deserved a piece of her mind, but not like that. Never like that.  

What is wrong with her?

No, no it wasn't her. It was that place, that voice. It was a parasite, burrowing deep within her brain and planting itself in the center, telling her what to do and what to say. Telling her to slaughter left and right. It was so loud, rattling around in her head and echoing like war drums. She couldn't just ignore it, it was too much. So, no, she is free of guilt, free of responsibility, hands all clean.

But she knows that at the end of the day the host still needs to be somewhat conscious for the parasite to thrive.

Oh primes. Is this what Techno deals with every day?

Then, she jumps to her feet.

Techno, Phil, and Ranboo.

It's coming back now, that memory of fury in her eyes, that fire in her voice as she told Wil she had people to go back to. How she was willing to claw her fingers down to bone to make an exit. But that voice, that stupid stupid voice, it told her she could rest, could get revenge, and against her better judgment she listened. It caught her at a moment of weakness, Wilbur's words of memory lane, of Phil, of everything that came before and after his death, she was at a low point. And like a moth to a flame, she was there one moment and gone the next. Back to the old her.

She thought she had left that version of herself behind when she joined the Syndicate. She was so sure she was getting better with Techno, Phil, and Ranboo around.

But all it took was one voice to ruin all her progress. 

Her chest constricts and her head feels heavy. 

She needs to find them. She needs to tell them what she saw. She needs to tell Phil. She needs… she needs…

She just needs them.

"What did you see?" George says, snapping her out of her thoughts.

This time, her mouth has no problem moving. "George," she starts, voice trembling. "I have seen things. I... I... I have seen things. I don't know what's going on here but I don't know if I should - "  

Niki gulps. It's getting so hard to breathe. She should feel thankful that she can breathe in the first place, but every inhale stings as her lungs try to remember to do a motion so foreign to her.

How long has she been down there?

She doesn't want to know.

She just wants to go home.

She walks away, backward, from the two, eyes fixated tightly on them and barely blinking. She remembers the last time she let her guard down around DreamXD. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry George. Good luck with him but I - "

She doesn't finish, because she's already out the door. She wants to run, but she's so sure her lungs would explode at the first push forward of her heel. So she walks.

And walks.

The world walks with her, with each rotation. As if they’re friends taking a stroll. As if it hadn’t cracked open and swallowed her whole, chewed up everything good in her and spat her out when she turned bitter. Returned her back to a world that didn’t change one bit while she was gone, despite her herself changing so much. 

It’s like what happened to her didn’t happen at all. 

And then she realizes a horrible thing. 

Everyone on this server is going to see today as a normal day. 

Is it bad that a part of Niki wishes something like the Green Festival could happen right now, so that they could all feel the monstrosity of today?

She stands still. Stationary, like this Earth wants her to be. She thinks she could do it, stay like this forever. She feels numb enough. 

Somewhere above, a crow caws. 

She burst into tears.

[floxalopex]

I don't know if somebody already did this specifically. But yh the heck let's go.

WARNING 1: THIS IS NOT A POST FOR SENSITIVE PEOPLE AND/OR MINORS. (it contains gore and sexual themes and more).

And yes, SALT. Lots of salt.

WARNING 2: this has nothing to do with Christianity specifically. Atheism isn't hate towards your god(s) and/or its believers. Although there are many forms of atheism (some of which are so strong and violent they make me furious) think about mine as a general form of indifference. I hate the Church state, yes, but sorry I have that "at home" so please don't blame me. I don't like Abrahamic religions in general, but I've grown up with one.

I'm thankfully not a cult survivor, but I can understand some things.

WARNING 3: living in a very religious contest I have many beloved friends and relatives (starting with my mother) who believe in their god a lot. So if my words are too disrespectful tell me, I really don't want to hurt anybody.

Okay.

So.

I've seen many similarities between the cult Horde Prime put his clones in and your very average, very white, very western idea of Christianity.

1) Theophagy:

First of all, I really don't know much how this thing is lived in other Christian countries, but in mine they put a lot of emphasis on the Eucharist.

As far as I've seen I think it's pretty obvious how much in ancient cultures there's a very carnal and very grounded idea of the spirit. That can result in believing the soul to be the "psyche", so literally "the breath of life", the coordination of your sinapsis togheter (to me a very poetic definition of how our whole being ourselves is just us being our central nervous system) or it can lead to you eating the ashes of your granpa so you get his good qualities (something some cultures still do today). They said that the head of Orpheus was buried in the island of Lesbo and that's why its land was filled with amazing poets like Sappho. There's this very, sorry, brutal idea of the embodyment of the soul, the talents of a person, that even a piece of corpse is considered a magic thingy.

This is no different in the very old, very ancient, very rural Christian religion (at least in the most common version of it, we have many flavours of one truth apperentely).

When I was in High School we studied a lot Bacchus and the Baccanalia, because there are several commedies about it. My teacher, being very religious, was almost ashamed to admit that a lot of acts of those festivities (let's say that the most normal thing was for women to give their milk to animal cubs) were actually not very dissimilar in their rawness to certain habits of the religion.

So, what about Horde Prime? (me *yh, what about it, stupid ADHD?*). I have seen a post in the past explaining that yes, even though spacebats have the dentition of a frugivore bat and not haematophagus bat, the scene of Prime recharging in his throne with all those disgusting cables filled with green liquid referred as "the life force" of his clones...well, it's surely something.

Looks like a sort of sci-fi vampire thing. Which is very cool and I love this headcanon. So again I kept thinking...what is THAT amniotic fluid? I am a student, so correct me if I say something wrong.

Amniotic fluid is a combination of water 99%, proteins, glucids, fats and some salts (...it's even effective for electric conduction...the heck is that pool).

The most similar body fluid is plasma, so blood less cells. Even the serum, so plasma less proteins, is very similar.

Now, stated that Prime is a manipulative jerk, stated that I don't know much about aliens' physiology, stated that that fluid can come from blood potentially, in Church they say this:

*and Jesus said: "This is my body/blood which I offer in sacrifice for you"*

Apart from it being very creepy, there's this idea in the whole religion-thingy: if you are human you are a selfish monster, so monstrous you made our Lord and Savior die for your sins for how messed up you were.

So basically you don't become a sinner, you are concived as one. Humanity is sin itself, it can never lead to something good.

So are the clones. That's why Prime, in his benevolence, feeds them with himself. To make them pure, to protect them from the outside world. To make them remember who their strenght comes from.

If you don't want to read all of this just go for the Futurama soda episode, it's basically the same thing. Bleah.

2) Corpse feticism and more.

Again, don't know you guys, but here we are filled with mummies. I went in a place in Palermo and ...my gosh why did I do that.

We have everything here, hands, heads, feet, teeth so many of them, dead babies, dead virgins, dead popes, dead elders, all of them for half the prize, but only if you call today.

We are. Filled. With these atrocities. At least we don't touch them anymore.

Sometimes I wonder if, apart from the "hygene", people in Middle Ages used to die at the honorable age of 13 also because they kissed those... thingies there.

So, can we please talk about Horde Prime collection of "previous selves"?

This man has a whole room filled with corpses of himself. In the Vatican you can find corpses of dead popes as well, preserved and even dressed in a very good way. In Italy in general we have these, I remember a whole room in a town near my city filled with skeletons of "saints". Personally I find it very disturbing because you are basically not allowing that body to rest and serve its last biological purpose, especially if you consider that most of these "saints" were mentally impared young kids who were killed brutally and died as "martyrs". In ancient Greece the WORST thing you could do to a corpse was to leave it unburied, without dignity.

It's getting darker now.

I like both headcanons for Prime, that of a spoiled (maybe even sexist) royal of a lost culture who wanted to conquer the universe and that of him being a sort of ancient evil spirit, but I personally like to stick with the latter.

Imagine the old bodies of the clones Prime used for himself. Pushed to their limits. Clones dying young is horrific as well, but like these people were forced to go on. Not to die. Not to age as much as possible. And now that they are dead they can't even rest. They are a show off for anyone to see. Their brains preserved and their literal dead flesh still tormented for reading.

One may ask me, then what about corpses in formalin for medical use? Well, one thing is a donor or a dead fetus or a corpse nobody claims. That's the story of the skeleton in my university, a young male who didn't eat much. A very lonely man. Well at least now he is well loved and appreciated, ah if only he knew that.

The point is, we respect them. We are grateful for the informations they give us. Gosh, I know I'm creepy, but I even cuddled one bone once. We know they probably suffered. Like, search for HeLa cells. That lady has my highest respect.

But Prime? Those are. Vessels. Just that.

Anyways, apart for the "respect the deads thing" I found Hordak's behaviour in that room that of high distress. Like, ehm, any normal person? Search for "Convento Dei Cappuccini", that place I was talking about in Palermo. The fact that I heard kids cry and "MEMENTO MORI" everywhere.

Everyone and everything is afraid of death, I just accepted that fear because it's normal. That doesn't mean I want to be reminded of it every week, especially if I'm a 7 yo kid.

Honorable mentions: that horrible art collection.

3) Double standards

When I went to catechism my teacher used a very feather hand on males and an iron fist on us ladies. We weren't allowed to wear trousers, to play football, to raise our voice. We were forced to be very clean, to sit with our legs as closed as possible. I heard it was worse before, at least we could play volleyball and weren't forced to knit.

We were however "encouraged" to sing and bake stupid cakes for Sundays. Mind you, I'm very feminine, but one thing is liking ribbons one thing is being a slave.

The boys...well, they could literally do anything. They broke things, used petards, beat each other. They were NEVER reproached, the teachers would say "oh, they are just boys". Like once I was so engrossed. I remember I had to sit behind a guy with his butt almost uncovered (because the lower you put the helm of your trousers the cooler you were) while I had to stay still with my head high, chest out, belly in and legs closed for 2h. The problem was: I almost pitied him. I was like "poor thing he doesn't know how to behave properly". That's so crazy, I was piting a free soul while I had my hands handcuffed because I truly believed the bullshit they put into my mind.

Now, imagine how did Horde Prime's clones feel about Catra and Glimmer.

They can dress as they please. Eat non amniotic fluid. Catra can even go wherever she wants.

To me, they didn't feel envious. As they should! That's how far an indoctrination can go.

Take Yudi interaction with Catra, he believes everything he is saying.

But I think deep down he knows, they all know, the truth, juding by his bitter reaction after being possesed. He knows he is the slave here, not the free man. But he wants to believe the other way round.

I think that yes, of course Prime kept Glimmer and Catra (and Hordak) because he needed them to conquer Etheria. But that is also a good way to show to the poor clones of how lost people far away from Prime's light can be. Slaves of their bodly needs and slaves of their individuality.

4) Sexual abuse

Do I need to explain this? Plus all those sick touches Prime gives not only to Hordak, but to Glimmer, Catra and Adora as well?

I don't know much about other countries, again, but here the Church is a real cancer. If a priest gets accoused of raping children he just gets put into another Church far away, and generally he keeps being a pedo even there and the game goes on.

I wouldn't exately say that Prime is a pedophile but clones are pretty innocent and neotenic to me so...idk.

Of course, Prime is his own state and his own rules, so yh. Raping all day. That's why I don't like to ship him with anything rather than a 100 m fall. Not even with his clones, sorry I know its kinky maybe but he is a monster.

Also, the way the clones feel like...honored to be raped. That's so sad. Maybe he convinced them this is the only right way they could experience sex and intimacy. I really don't know.

One thing I'm sure of is that Christian religion likes to often put shame on some "impure" acts. That's the name. The most impure of all is masturbation. If you are a male ...mmm well it's okay dear, it's not your fault you are male and so a sex starved animal. But if you are a girl? Ihhh oh dare you bitch.

Mind you, I fall in the ace spectrum but I did too have puberty and needs, and these thoughts in my head made me only conflicted.

Last thing. More of an asking. And more irriverent, so please stay away if you don't want to read.

So basically I understood I was atheist at 5 yo, just because I read two different versions of the birth of the Universe, one in my science book and one in my Bible (MY Bible, I still have it, was a gift of my aunt) and preferred the science version. I still felt conflicted, like once during a religion lesson at School (well...I don't blame Mussolini much in this case, I mean the Vatican wasn't still recognizing country indipendence and we needed a compromise) the teacher told me to stop drawing dinosaurs with Adam and Eve because they never existed. I mean...yes that's anachronistic but still I felt very sad, dinosaurs were cooler than that story. I remember I even made an experiment "if I say I don't believe in god will I get thunderstruck?". It didn't happen so I was like "oh cool, science wins". But then CATECHISM ecc ecc. The fun fact is that they think atheists are those who don't study religion, while I was the most zelous of the class.

So.

I just wonder...my baby boy Hordak is a man of science, what were his thoughts after his separation from Prime. I mean of course he still believed, but also not as much after some time. Entrapta is a support system for him of course, but he accepts her affection quite easily on canon. Which is amazing, still... maybe he was already doubting his devotion?

[cherrywoes]

ii. the girl in the foxes' den.

chapter two. heads for pikes.

The orphanage was a quaint little thing just on the borders of Shiratorizawa. Surrounded by a small lake dotted with water lilies, lily pads, and other winter resistant flowers that were the staple of your kingdom, it was perhaps the epitome of homeliness—what your brother aspired for the rest of his kingdom during his reign, a peacefulness that couldn’t be broken.

You had played at the lake as children, of course, when your father would sneak the both of you out of your mother’s insufferable tutoring lessons to mingle with the common folk. “To grow and learn,” he had said, but all you had learned was that people only believed in themselves, lived for themselves, and died for themselves. With the exception of Wakatoshi, maybe, you knew that the commoners were just as cutthroat as any other noble; just as worse, perhaps, or more so. You’d witnessed people, more than once, slit throats over the barest crumb of bread, and there was plenty to go around—and that was just amongst nobles.

Shiratorizawa prided itself upon strength and superiority, but that could only get you so far when you couldn’t even trust your neighbors not to stab you in the back.

“Wakatoshi can change that,” you mumbled to yourself. The smell of horse sweat, tangy and distinctly equine, assailed your nostrils; a comforting smell, despite how unappealing it sounded. You’d spent most of your life training or riding horses, after all, and paid quite a lot of attention to them when you weren’t busy wrangling disrespectful court women. Your mare nickered softly the closer you drew to the orphanage, where a singular crowd of children and a nun stood waiting for you to go to them. “Is it just me, or are there more orphans than before? Goshiki?”

The Elite Knight in question swallowed and swerved his head to pay attention to you. He, and another Knight, Semi Eita, had caught up to you as you were exiting the main wall that separated the main city from the palace. You recognized them as Wakatoshi’s close friends, nobles sworn into his personal circle after he was crowned King. They were never far from your brother’s side, so you had to wonder why he left them behind when he could have taken them with him. Tendou was far from the most physically capable man; his eagle form was much more sturdy in terms of battle.

“It makes sense,” Semi said instead, before Goshiki could stutter out an answer. He, like Goshiki, wore the same purple-tinged armor and sweeping crushed velvet cape. You’d found the whole ensemble ridiculous, right down to the plumage on their helms, but Wakatoshi was a stickler for tradition, at least in the uniform’s sense. “A lot of the commoners have come down with a sickness lately. Tracking down the source has been a pain; a lot of them died before we could get to them with a healer in time.”

You frowned, a distinct line on your face. Wakatoshi had always said you had a very foreboding frown, whatever that meant. “Why wasn’t I informed of this?”

Semi shrugged. You were tempted to kick him off his horse and drag him down into the grass to strangle him for shrugging at you. You didn’t know what Wakatoshi let him get away with, but you hated people you weren’t close with acting casual towards you. It was one of your worst pet peeves, besides girls trying to play Queen, and you were sure your glare was enough to smelt steel if you tried hard enough.

“It wasn’t your place then,” he explained, tugging the reigns to veer around a slab of stone depicting the orphanage’s name. “King Ushijima was adamant that you have no part in it so as to prevent you from catching the illness.”

“And?” With a huff and a subtle side-eye, you watched him move back into place at your flank, staring straight ahead and cleverly avoiding your gaze. “Illness is no issue for me. I am an Ushijima—I don’t get sick.”

And that was true; besides small sicknesses like seasonal allergies or colds, you were invulnerable to everything else. Even poisons, to an extent, as long as they were ones you had been exposed to previously in small amounts. Though you hadn’t gained your eagle form just yet, you had the immunity of a shifter, which your brother found endlessly perplexing. You were grateful for it: it kept you from dying so easily at the hands of an assassin, if it ever came to that. You had been trained well enough to be a deadly opponent since you couldn’t shift, not that anyone except Wakatoshi and your mother knew that. The nobles would have heart attacks if they knew their princess could disarm a man faster than she could finish a single stitch of embroidery.

“He didn’t want to risk it, my lady.” Semi reached up and adjusted the pin of his cloak from poking into the gap between his chain mail and pauldron. “That’s all.”

Your lips drew into a thin line, but you quickly found yourself without time to retort as children swarmed your mare. You squeezed your legs against her sides in warning and carefully dismounted, narrowly avoiding swinging your boot into a poor child’s head when he refused to move out of your way. Goshiki took your hand to allow you to get to the ground without falling and you gave him a grateful nod when another child went straight for your knees to grab ahold of you.

“Children!” The nun scolded, bustling forward with a shiny red face. Her robes looked particularly suffocating in the heat as she began rerouting them all into the tiny group that had been around her previously, giving each one a specific and deliberate warning that perhaps went over deaf ears. She looked at you, an apology in her eyes, although it was eclipsed by the intense dislikement that came from your presence specifically. “Crown Princess [Name]. I was not aware of your visit until early this morning. I’m afraid we aren’t prepared for you at this time.”

You smiled bitterly. You had expected this, of course; nuns, specifically this nun, had an extreme hatred for you whether you were kind to them or not. It all stemmed from one little fact: you were not your mother. They saw you as weak, as prime pickings when Wakatoshi was away. It was a common perception, the same one you had concocted with your brother, and while you were keen on keeping it up for the time being, it didn’t mean you didn’t feel some measure of irritation at being unable to freely express yourself around others. Because you played the docile, meek princess locked away in the castle, you had no true way of earning power except through deception. And that was what you had intended—there was more power in the dark than the light.

“That’s quite alright,” you replied soothingly, using the sweetest tone you could muster. You opened your saddlebag and produced a bag of gold—ones, ironically, with your face on them to be petty—to hand over to the nun. She looked at you questioningly, the weight heavier than she was used to getting from you or any royal, and squeezed the pouch thoughtfully. “To buy the children new clothes for the upcoming winter—extra for more food, since there are more than before, I hear?”

“Yes, your majesty.” The woman tucked the pouch away into her robes. You made a mental note to tell the local seamstress and hunters to make sure she only bought furs and shoes for the children—you didn’t trust anyone in positions of religious institutions as far as you could throw them. And that wasn’t very far. “Is there anything… else you needed?”

“No. I came to—” Your eyes caught on a woman lingering at the edge of the crowd of children, dressed in rags. She was fairly petite, blonde of hair, and looked completely out of place in Shiratorizawa as a whole, where brown hair and black hair was most common. She stuck out as much as Tendou did with his red hair. “Who is that?”

The nun turned to see who you were looking at. You were surprised to see disgust crawl over her features, more potent than if it had been aimed at you. “Oh, that’s a refugee from Karasuno—the neighboring Empire to Nekoma. She says while the King and his advisor are away, some other kingdom stormed their castle, raided their lands, and now hold their capital ransom until King Sawamura returns.”

Your eyes narrowed suspiciously. Wakatoshi’s aides hadn’t notified you of this. And judging by the alarmed looks on Semi and Goshiki’s faces, they hadn’t known either, which meant this was a very recent occupation, or someone had swept under their noses, past their borders, and invaded Karasuno without so much as a warning. And any kingdom who could be that discreet, that sly, was worth keeping a very close eye on.

“I see.” You forced your features to be more sympathetic, bringing your hand up to your cheek in faux thought. You might have even tried to cry if it wouldn’t have seemed so fake. “Well, she can’t just stay at the orphanage—what is her name?”

The nun shrugged, disgruntled, and waved for the woman. “You! Come here.”

The blonde haired woman startled, looking towards them with wide eyes. Her gaze darted between Semi and Goshiki with their armor and then finally settled on you, dressed less than princess-like, and the tiara on your head that you’d thrown on when you found it in your saddlebag before you left. It was, luckily, made with black pearls and onyx, so it fit well with your outfit and didn’t look too out of place.

“Your majesty,” she whispered when she drew near enough. Her feet were calloused from miles of walking, raw from running over craggy peaks and sharp cliff faces that separated Karasuno from Shiratorizawa, a feat in its own right. Blood still seeped from open cracks in her heels and dripped into the sand, turning it a deep red. Though her face was dirty, smeared with dirt and dried mud that hadn’t been cleaned, she was pretty underneath it all—and very clearly of some nobility. Her features were too aristocratic to be anything else, a bastard maybe, but clearly noble. When she curtsied, you noted the practiced ease and near perfect posture even with infected wounds and wounded feet. “I apologize for my appearance—”

“No need.” You held up your hands and reached over to straighten her. Gravel rolled beneath her heels and she shifted, sending a waft of sweat, days old blood, and what you could barely say was stale perfume towards you. You had to blink to keep your eyes from watering at the pungent scent; so as not to humiliate her, you smiled, though you had a hard time blinking the water from your eyes. “You are nobility, yes?”

The nun looked over, alarmed, but the girl was already nodding her head in a reluctant affirmative.

You stepped back and between Semi and Goshiki in thought. Her presence could easily be taken as an offense; she was here without invitation, despite her empire being occupied, and living in squalor at the orphanage, unbecoming of a noble, especially a woman. But she could also be a valuable asset: she was a well of knowledge about Karasuno and the current political situation. If you could wheedle enough information out of her, you would be able to yank Karasuno right out from under the invaders’ noses and instill Shiratorizawa rule, but you knew it wouldn’t be that easy—there was an edge in her gaze that spoke of a cleverness. She wouldn’t release her secrets so easily.

“Well, then.” You scanned her up and down and pursed your lips. “We can’t leave you here, Lady…?”

“Yachi.” She shifted uncomfortably. “Yachi Hitoka.”

“Yachi Hitoka,” you amended, the name foreign on your tongue but vaguely familiar. A family name you had heard before, perhaps in your studies. You would make sure to crack open the records whenever you returned back to the palace. “You can’t stay here. Return with me to the palace and we’ll see to getting you a bath and some food… Unless you would rather stay here?”

“Thank you, your majesty.” Yachi’s voice was quiet, but there was gratitude there—step one complete.

You smiled and turned to your horse. Semi knelt down and allowed you to step into his hands to settle your leg over the saddle, hooking your foot in the stirrup when you were settled. The mare tossed her head with a snort, eager to get going, and you patted her neck gently. You jerked your head towards Goshiki—the one least likely to say something rude about her smell—when you spoke to Yachi again. “You’ll ride with Goshiki. His horse is the gentlest, which will be better on your wounds in the long run. I wouldn’t want you to rip open the ones that have already healed.”

Yachi nodded. “Thank you, your majesty.”

You waited for her to mount with the help of Goshiki, watching as she struggled to support herself on hurt feet. He allowed her to sit in front of him rather than behind, even though, to your amusement, it made his face burn a bright red, so she wouldn’t fall off as easily. Semi snorted beside you at his babbled explanation and Yachi seemed to notice, her face flushing—you wondered if she also had a fever—and dropped her head to avoid your gaze.

You turned your head and nodded to the nun in silent farewell, turning your horse and heading back the way you came. You tried to keep quiet, to not pester her with questions, but your curiosity won out.

“So, Lady Yachi,” you called, looking over at her from your horse,”what banners did these… invaders fly with their troops?”

She looked uncomfortable at the memory, but answered,”None, your majesty. A banner with a black field was all I saw.”

“I see.” That made no sense. Any organized army with enough might to siege an empire could only be another kingdom or empire; none that you knew employed a plain black field upon their banner except for Karasuno and Nekoma themselves, and you knew Nekoma didn’t have the capacity to invade and occupy another empire without aid from another. No, this was something different—a mercenary group, perhaps? But that made no sense, either. “And did anyone else escape as you did?”

“I… I’m not sure, your majesty.” Yachi took on a look of genuine anguish at the thought and you had to pity her just a little. “But if they did, they wouldn’t have risked Shiratorizawa as I did—perhaps Nekoma, or Aoba Johsai.”

Yes, those two were indeed more likely. No one would want to brave the cliffs and hills that made up Shiratorizawa; they were made for eagle shifters and those who knew the terrain well enough not to fall to their deaths. It was dangerous for any other to go through them, which was all the more suspicious now that an army had seemingly snuck through without anyone noticing. You would have to dig deeper into this—and worm your way into Wakatoshi’s advisor’s good graces, too.

“Hmm.” You scratched your chin. “Semi, when we return, assemble a small group of men and head to Nekoma and then Aoba Johsai to search for survivors. Get their stories; I’m concerned about this new militant force, whoever it is. They could target Shiratorizawa next.”

“W-wait!” Yachi made Goshiki shove his horse forward. You raised an eyebrow at her inquisitively. “If you can—can you see if my friends made it out? You can’t miss one of them, he has orange hair, and is short—”

You looked to Semi for confirmation. It was his squadron he would likely be sending out; it was his choice. You had no interest in her friends, even if they were survivors. You just wanted their stories. When he nodded subtly, you inclined your head and looked back to Yachi. “Very well. They will look—but they will not hunt them down. That’s the best I can offer you, Yachi. I apologize.”

“That’s alright.” She smiled, a pathetic, weary thing. “It means a lot to me that you even considered it. I hope they’re okay, wherever they are.”

You couldn’t relate. Your kingdom wasn’t occupied by an unknown enemy force, hopefully it never would be. You could only nod and nudge your horse into a trot, eager to see if you had drove that arrogant little girl playing Queen out of the palace, only to see a procession—a very haphazard, unsteady procession—proceeding towards you faster than you could blink. Among them was an eagle shifter you knew well—Kenjiro Shirabu—and he never used his eagle form unless it was of the utmost importance.

Because he was smaller than the others, you were able to hold out your arm and allow him to land safely, even if he almost knocked you over in the process. His claws dug into your arm and ripped through your sleeve as he tried to steady himself, but he looked so terrified, so scared, even in eagle form, that your concern quickly overpowered your smugness.

“Shirabu?” You reached up and plucked a loose feather from his wing. “What’s wrong?”

“King Wakatoshi’s squadron—what was left of it—returned home moments after you departed.” He was out of breath, taking deep inhales through his beak to catch it, and you watched him with concerned eyes. “I was told to return and inform you.”

But that made no sense—what was left of it?

“What do you mean?” You squinted at him, understanding settling in your gut even though you denied it. “Shirabu?”

He avoided your gaze. “They were attacked. King Wakatoshi… King Wakatoshi did not return with them. Nor did Tendou.”

It was like someone had dropped a cold stone in your belly. “What?”

“Please hurry to the palace.” He was already rising, flapping his wings to gain altitude. You reached up to snatch him back down, but he evaded your grasp and hovered just above your reach. “The advisors are in a panic. They don’t know what to do—you’re the only one who can take charge now, Princess [Name].”

He was gone before you could stop him. You watched him fly away, in a daze, eyes fixed on his steadily shrinking form, much like when you had watched Wakatoshi leave that day. He had promised to bring you back honey from the forest.

“Let’s go.” You spurred your horse into a run, Goshiki and Semi following right behind you. You had to know if it was true. And if it was… If it was? “We… We need to do damage control.”

“I believe the damage is already done, your majesty!” Semi shouted over the roaring wind in his ears. He gestured to the outside of the palace, already in sight from the breakneck pace, as you merged with the retinue that had come with Shirabu. People rallied around the gate, rioting, demanding to know what was going on. Tomatoes and sour fruit flew and hit the men standing guard at their post. “We’ll go through the back way!”

You allowed Semi to take charge, moving his horse to the head of your group because, for once, you could make no decisions. Your thoughts revolved around your brother—undefeated, unconquerable Wakatoshi, so confident in his decisions and quiet and kind. Now he was gone, dead or missing, and you had no idea who had done it.

But when you found them, whoever had taken your brother from you and kept him from returning home, you would skin them and place their heads on a pike.

And you would start with Akira Saito.

one | masterlist | three

taglist (open): i don't think i got any requests for this taglist (if i did i forgot) so feel free to ask me again to add you if i did. <3

[fateology]

witness my brain rot. tma raven cycle au but i haven’t looked at trc in many years so probably even more of a mess than it fundamentally is as a concept

martin blackwood as BLUE SARGENT

this is a pretty obvious choice since i casted jon as gansey already. fox way women include jane prentiss/annabelle cane/agnes montague, who all raised him as a spooky polycule. helen is there also opening doors in his bedroom when he needs boy advice (she is not to be trusted)

he is also the number one aglionbyphobe in town. comes very close to spitting on jon during their first meeting, which is a great coincidence, because jon, too, was dying to spit on him

they work it out though but only after many books of disdainful co-adventuring

his dad may or may not have been a tree

jonathan sims as RICHARD GANSEY

what is he looking for? glendower? jonah magnus’ corpse? probably jonah magnus’ corpse. when he was eight he nearly died after being attacked by i dunno a very large owl but he heard A Voice and survived. now he will not stop until he finds that buried old shithead

picks up friends like they’re fun rings. he’s not even that sociable so no one’s really sure how it happens

sits awake in monmouth every night with gerry/melanie and builds little cardboard panopticons that he sees in his dreams. why is he looking for the corpse of jonah magnus? unclear. he sure knows a lot about the man though

owner of a terrible horrible car that martin has definitely succeeded in spitting on at one point. the car is an extension of his soul so it was the next best thing

georgie barker as ADAM PARRISH

certain about this because georgie could so be an adam. aglionby is co-ed here so she can hate from within the club. the number two aglionbyphobe, she would be number one if not for the fact that she actually is in aglionby, which bumps her down one spot

begins a very intense rivalry/mutual interest with this other awful girl jon’s acquired as a friend aka wtgfs as pynch!

later on she gets psychic lessons from fox way ladies. scries in the aglionby girls toilet by plugging the sinks when she should be in latin class

(georgie, eyes black: WHAT DID MELANIE KING GET ON HER GATSBY ESSAY. AND WAS IT HIGHER THAN ME

cracks in the porcelain, rearranging: 89

georgie: FUCK)

melanie king as RONAN LYNCH

she is one half of two ronans because i split ronan into two parts. she’s ronan prime. the number three aglionbyphobe. rouser of tempers, flouter of school rules, breaker of nose bridges

she and jon are friends because she broke his nose in phys ed after he ran into her on accident

super into the other awful girl jon’s acquired as a friend, will not admit it even to herself. proceeds to have four books worth of angry dreams about it

drives her dead father’s swanky car around all the time because what is the raven cycle about if not driving your dead father’s swanky car around all the time. brotherless, except for gerry, who is basically her declan. they’re both greywarens and the worst kind of bffs

gerard keay as RONAN LYNCH, DOS, or DECLAN LYNCH, LITE

gerry is also a lynch sibling except that he’s both declan and ronan somehow

mary is niall and eric is aurora. instead of grieving for mary’s death gerry goes frolicking in the hills out of sheer joy (ABOUT TIME! and with a TIRE IRON no less! this is everything he’s dreamed of)

but also eric is dream-asleep except when he’s in the forest...what was it called...cabeswater. so not a full win. cabeswater was a keay/king team effort

anyway gerry greywaren indulgence 💖 he would do great with a raven on his shoulder. he was the one who brought jon to the nurse after melanie broke his nose, providing jon with the absolute coup of two awful new friends in one day. fast forward some months and gerry’s bunkbedding with melanie in monmouth

lots of gay rivalries (4 to be specific) and gay car races, which brings me to the next thing,

mike crew as JOSEPH KAVINSKY

except less of a douchebag and more of an asshole. primarily because the witch at the middle of the figurative bog of my prolonged tma brain rot is gerrymike. actually this would be tma dream thieves au if i’m being honest

lichtenberg figure = mike’s dream monster. mike does the counterfeiting thing mostly with rare books because he’s looking for something to exorcise the lichtenberg from his dreamscape.

that feeling when your family is rich as balls and you are functionally or genuinely an orphan and also you can manifest objects in your real life from your sleeping brain. nothing to be done about it except have some homosexual car races with your rival who happens to be sexy and a goth. once more, driving your dead father’s swanky car around all the time.

his dream pack includes jude perry/michael shelley/mikaele salesa except it’s not His dream pack because he doesn’t have the kavinsky ringleaderitis and they’re just weirdos who hang out together and occasionally do dream narcotics

sasha james as NOAH CZERNY

classic. the secretly been a ghost all this time! got #murdered years ago so she’s glad that her friends don’t seem to mind. everyone just thought she was like anemic or something.

depending on where you began the story it was about sasha james...was more when she was alive etc etc.

definitely was a skater. got beat to death with her skateboard by her best friend who was also quizzically named sasha

timothy stoker as HENRY CHENG

i don’t think i have to say much but yeah. he’s gerry’s fourth gay rivalry. wildly aglionby-popular which is honestly not something he should be proud of (he knows this)

constantly getting dunked on by all of jon’s friends but he can dunk back just as good which is a relief for him

embroiled in a mystic dynasty of his own thru his mom but way more well adjusted about it than gerry or melanie (they dunk on him to cope)

hobbies include toga parties and joining other peoples relationships (aka jonmartim as sarchengsey)

no real plot to all of it because i can’t figure out who’s who in terms of antagonists. all of them are jonah magnus wearing different people’s skins probably

[a-student-out-of-time]

There's a good and a bad way to subvert expectations. Unfortunately what's been happening a lot lately is that many works go for twists for the sake of being twists, the Star Wars Sequels being a prime example of this. Or the later sessions of Game of Thrones. There is a fine balance between being able to surprise your audience and not being extremely predictable.

//I’ve absorbed more complaints and feelings from both those series through pop-culture osmosis than I have from watching them. I’m more of a casual observer, but I do have some feelings on both these points (which I will put under here if you’re interested.)

//tl;dr version: I think we should unbiasedly judge media on its own merits and look over what works internally within the story and what doesn’t, be willing to make our own judgements rather than jump on bandwagons and tell people what they should or shouldn’t like, and not treat opinions as straight facts.

//And also that I’m honestly tired of hearing about the sequels and GoT ^^;

//I disagree with a lot of people on the Star Wars sequels (aside from 9, fuck 9), but I’d rather not start a debate about it nor their quality overall. Only that I think people really overreacted to them  and many others jumped on the hate bandwagon when emotions were running high.

//Frankly, many of the criticisms I saw about the films felt either wildly inconsistent about what they’re upset about or what they wanted it to be (7 was criticized for being too much like old Star Wars, 8 for not being enough like old Star Wars) and others felt like they came from bad faith and I can’t take them seriously.

//And yes, the last season of Game of Thrones is trash and wrecked everyone’s storylines for the sake of being shocking, but let’s also be real: GoT was never going to have a happy ending if it wanted to stick to its “realism.” Whoever got on the Iron Throne was inevitably going to have to purge all opposition to consolidate power. That’s just how real revolutions and coups work.

//To be clear, Daenerys’ turn to evil murderousness was stupidly executed, but it wasn’t necessarily unprecedented. What I frankly dislike about fantasy in general is its tendency toward the Divine Right of Kings. That only certain bloodlines have the right to rule and you just need to put the “rightful heir” on the throne. In other words, giving absolute power to a magically omnibenevolent person will fix everything. I may be an optimistic humanist, but I know that simply doesn’t happen.

//The entire point of GoT is that DRoK is stupid and royalty in general really kinda sucks. If you go back, you see most of the lords we follow, including “good king” Eddard Stark, are either totally indifferent to the masses or are completely sadistic and torture them for funsies since the legal system doesn’t protect peasants.

//The Starks are no better than the Lannisters simply by virtue of being overall “nicer” than them. Both sides start wars that get thousands of people killed. Also, everybody loved John Snow, but he also fucking hanged a kid and I’ve never heard anyone bring that up since.

//Most importantly, Daenerys was a likable character with a sympathetic backstory, but even before the last season, she was fully embracing being a Targaryen by blood and was openly murdering people who got in her way while she was conquering territory after territory.

//Yes, a lot of the people she killed were slaveholders, but let’s be real for a moment: not everyone who participates in an evil system is evil themselves. It’s easy for us as the audience to judge them for participating in a slavocracy, but living in one comes with being told slavery is okay. That doesn’t make them evil by nature, just subject to the biases of their culture.

//Also, slavery is evil but conquering people is fine? And burning people to death for opposing you is acceptable since you’re going to be better and free everyone, or because you had a sympathetic backstory? These are the kinds of things that get villains criticized for, but is treated as a necessary evil at worst for the protagonists.

//This is protagonist-centered morality. The show is framing it in a way where you’re being drawn in to see it that way, but also telling you not to see blatant hypocrisies for what they really are. Daenerys was even called as mad as her father by Tyrion. It wasn’t well-executed, but it was going to happen regardless of how much anyone liked her.

//Violence for a good cause is still violence. If you’re going to burn people for disagreeing with you, then say that other people shouldn’t and should listen to others, that’s full-on hypocrisy. That goes for most of the characters in the show, frankly, and the message is executed well for most of it.

//That being said, don’t think this means I think the last season of GoT is good, that the Star Wars sequels are perfect, or that I hate all fantasy books ever. That’s not what I’m saying. I try to enjoy what’s good about them and point out their flaws regardless.

//What I’m saying is it’s important to, when you want to be critical of media, put your feelings and biases aside and judge the media you’re criticizing on its own merits. In my opinion, the claims that the sequels only did things to subvert expectations is unfounded. They were going their own direction, which was admittedly controversial and not what many people wanted, but just because you don’t want it to happen doesn’t mean it’s a bad twist

//Just like how a character isn’t a Mary Sue just because they’re too OP or you don’t like them. That’s not what that term means and hearing people use it like that irritates me. While I do have my complaints about characters, people use that term as if it’s a form of literary criticism that has more use than is necessary.

//If a character is OP, they’re OP. If a character is flat, they’re flat. If a character is poorly written, they’re poorly written. If a character is at the center of the universe and literally everything else exists just to amplify them and their role in things, then they’re likely a Mary Sue/Gary Stu. It’s not a label to slap on  a character you don’t like or to give a critique (or complaint) more weight.

//This is why I say DR3 Chiaki isn’t a Mary Sue, she’s just not a very well written character. All Mary Sues are poorly written characters, but not all poorly written characters are Mary Sues. She’s not terrible, but she’s not explored much and her only big roles are being the person who brings Class 77-B together and her death turns them to despair.

//While her death was tragic and brutal, we didn’t really get a good look at who she was as a person beyond just being nice and opening up to her friends. If they’d expanded on that a little more, maybe it would’ve been more effective, but the way she died felt...manipulative and shock baity in a lot of ways since it banked mostly on our familiarity with her despite it being a totally different person.

//DR3 honestly had a whole host of shocky and just plain gross scenes that I really don’t think needed to be there.

//But likewise, if a story has a plot twist that you don’t like, that doesn’t automatically make it purely shock bait or subverting expectations just for the sake of doing so. There’s a difference between “this character was evil all along and there were a lot of clues and we just didn’t want to believe it” and “this character was evil all along for reasons we’re dumping on you now.”

//Just so I don’t seem like a hypocrite, while I personally don’t like what happened with Mikan in chapter 3 of SDR2, it was an effective way of foreshadowing the truth of them being the remnants of despair. It was set up that every had lost their memories and this was a sign that getting them back wasn’t necessarily going to have a good outcome.

//And I’ll be real: I can’t take a lot of the complaints about the Sequels or GoT seriously because much of it carries overtones of racism, sexism and antisemitism. For those more into Star wars, I think you know what I mean already and that’s all I’ll say. As for GoT, I’ve seen reddit posts viscerally attacking the writers directly and even saying that we should’ve expected the ending to suck since it was “written by Jews.”

//Yeah, go figure I can’t read any of that. I know not all people who hated the show’s ending or the films are like that, but it’s impossible to deny that those attitudes are very real.

//In the end, if you want to be critical of media, the worst way to do that is to just watch a video of someone complaining about it for half an hour. Yes, those video essays can be fun, but the only way to be truly critical of media you enjoy is to examine it yourself and look closely at what’s in it and how it’s presented. That goes doubly for shows you like.

//I know not everyone will do that and all opinions are ultimately subjective, but don’t let someone else tell you that you should hate something or that something is bad just because they didn’t like how it ended. Watch or read it yourself and draw your own conclusions. Don’t just follow the crowd and also be respectful of people who don’t agree with you. You can learn a lot when you talk to someone with a different opinion.