#and it does sometimes kill us but it doesn't kill us often enough that we keep doing it

[clxssified-mirxcle]

God, I'm so Lovesick ᯓ★ Satoru

Satoru Gojo isn’t normal. Not as a sorcerer, not as a coworker, not as a friend, and certainly not as a friend with benefits. After all, why does he keep insisting on doing all the things that a couple does when you two clearly aren’t? It's almost like he likes you or something!

Containing:

Friends with Benefits, Satoru and you being complete idiots, Obliviousness, Unrequited (not really) love, Implied suggestive content, Denial is a river in Egypt...and also in Reader's head apparently, Impulsive confession

Notes: Mimi tries to avoid use of phrase "Y/N" at all costs; Wrote this with Fem!Reader in mind but tried not to mention it very often. Any feedback is appreciated esp when it comes to writing x readers in general!

Nowadays, it feels like you're waking up in his bed more often than not. Silk sheets, sun rays streaming through the floor to ceiling windows of the penthouse, and that grin of his. His hand messed up your hair when he noticed that you were awake, tangled from the activities that have become more and more frequent ever since you two made that deal.

Six months ago..

"Aren't you supposed to be on a date or something?"

You looked up from your paperwork- your students had just come back from another mission with a grade 3 curse. It was your co-worker, white hair and blindfolded in black. You sighed, wondering how he always knew. It'd been going on like this for a while now- you'd find someone to talk to, and just as you were to go out on a date, they'd cancel last minute or ghost you- it made you wonder if it was a curse sometimes.

"Does that Six Eyes of yours count towards other people's love lives or something?" You asked, rolling your eyes and signing the last page before filing it away. You hadn't even bothered to dress up this time- you felt like something happening was inevitable. You and Gojo were somewhat close, you supposed. Not enough to be on a first name basis, but enough to be friendly. He always laughed and said you were being too picky about it, to just call it being friends. So that's what you did.

You called it being friends, but with you both being sorcerers, it wasn't the most normal of friendships. He'd barge into your office proclaiming that the two of you should hang out, which often ended up with him lying on the couch and talking while you did your paperwork…and his as well.

It was nice, though, listening to him talk. You couldn't tell half the time whether his stories were real or not, and he'd usually bring sweets with him. Whether or not you had to bribe him to get them depended on how nice he felt that day about sharing.

"Shame. They're losing out," He commented as he swung your office chair to face him, a hand on one of the armrests. "We should go out for drinks then. You can drink your sorrows away, and I-"

"Gojo, you don't drink. It messes with Infinity, doesn't it?" You said, cutting him off with an unimpressed look. He probably just wanted to laugh at you while you cried and take blackmail photos. The man had a folder full of Megumi photos; he probably had one filled with ones of you at awkward angles too. It was comical how dramatic his face was as it fell, looking like you'd killed a puppy in front of him.

"You're such a party killer…but that's not a no to going out, is it?" He grinned, switching back quickly and leaning back. "Let's get milkshakes, then. I know this one American-style diner in Harajuku that specialises in them."

"…Do I even have a choice?" You asked, crossing your arms in your chair. When it came to sweets, the man was nothing short of ravenous.

"Nope!" Gojo chimed, using the sleeve of your uniform to pull you up and tug you with him as he headed out the door. "And stop with that 'Gojo' stuff, will you? Call me Satoru, like a normal friend."

The ride to the diner was…relatively uneventful, though you could feel his eyes on you the entire time if you weren't looking. You both were looking through the menu before you got fed up with his staring- he'd been staring, almost studying you over his menu.

"Spit it out, Gojo." You sighed, still holding up the pretence of looking through the menu. You'd decided on what you wanted a while ago, anyways.

"What do you mean, spit it out? I'm not doing anything of that sort." He said, a faux-innocent expression on his face as he put down the menu, calling over a waiter to order.

You finally looked up from your menu as the waiter took them and gave your order, leaving with a strange look at Gojo's white hair and blindfold. Your eyes narrowed as you both waited for your drinks. "You keep staring at me weird. Spit it out already." It was probably just a prank that he wanted to pull on Nanami or something.

"You ever heard of an arrangement called being friends with benefits?" He asked casually, one arm resting over the top of his booth chair, already talking before you could answer. The milkshakes had come by, and while they looked delicious, they sat abandoned for now. "I'm interested in one. With you. You don't need to worry about feelings, anything like that. If you're not into it, then I understand, and we can-"

Your first instinct was to say no. That it was a stupid idea. Your second was that it was a prank. Your third…considered it. After all, Gojo wasn't bad looking. Far from it, to be exact. White hair that you knew was soft because of how he once spent an afternoon talking about his hair products that perfectly matched his eyes. Oh, those eyes. You'd only seen them twice, but they were unforgettable. They had to be the prettiest ones you'd ever seen, a cross between some sort of gemstone or crystal and blue glacier ice.

Fuck it, you're sorcerers. You'd have to be dreaming if you expected to live a long life...though Gojo probably would, being the 'Honoured One' and all.

You were so caught up thinking…or admiring, sipping on your milkshake, that you didn't notice that he was still talking when you answered.

"I'll do it."

"That's totally fine! I don't want to pressure you into anything and- wait what?" You'd never seen Gojo so stunned before. You couldn't see his eyes behind that blindfold of his, and he was ever so thankful for that because he just knew that the way his eyes widened was embarrassing.

You couldn't help smiling, leaning back against the back of your booth as you relaxed. "I said that I'd do it, Gojo."

"Then call me Satoru. It's only right if we're going to be in this sort of relationship," His mouth turned up into a grin that you knew meant he was about to say something weird. "After all, I can't have you calling me by my last name while we're-"

You silenced him before he could say anything else by shooting him a glare. "Gojo, I swear to God-"

"What're you thinking about?" His voice, slightly rough from sleep. He had one arm around you as he leaned down, pressing his lips to your neck before you playfully swatted him away. "C'mon, tell me!"

"Ack- Watch it Pretty Boy! I just woke up!" You giggled, burying your body further in the sheets. "Just thinking about when we first made the deal." According to the man, you'd become a lot more cheerful lately, and you were inclined to agree. Probably because you two started spending time together a lot often.

"Oh yeah? Well… I don't know about you, but I'm thinking about spending the day together. I have a vision and everything." Satoru grinned, sitting up and tugging on your arm like he had that day, when your relationship with him changed. You couldn't help but laugh as he all but pushed you into the bathroom, closing the door.

He'd changed since then, too. Or rather, his behaviour towards you did, at the very least. Sure, there were the times when he'd barge into your office, but you'd rarely see him outside of Jujutsu High. Since the previous November, you found yourself seeing him nearly every single day…and often every night, with the nature of your arrangement. It was almost like having a boyfriend. Almost. Because he wasn't your boyfriend. The way he'd take you out, for dinners and to places that could've passed for dates? The way that he'd make breakfast for you in the morning while you were asleep even though he preferred to just reheat food? How he'd grin just a bit wider whenever you called him Pretty Boy?

It made you almost double guess yourself sometimes.

Because sometimes, you'd wake up to him asleep, his arm holding you close to him like you'd leave the moment you woke up, and you'd almost believe that this whole arrangement was something more. Because he'd sense that you just weren't up to it occasionally, and instead say "Let's just sleep tonight, I'm tired and it's late. You should just stay over,"

And so you'd wish for something more.

It was an impossible dream, really. He was Gojo Satoru, for heaven's sake. The strongest, whose birth shook the world of Sorcerers and humans alike to its core when his eyes opened to reveal a power that hadn't been seen for at least a century. It'd take nothing short of a miracle for someone like him to become remotely interested in you.

You came out of the shower to a new dress laid out on the already made sheets. He was clearly planning something fancy; from the soft fabric to the floral blue pattern that sprawled across the white cloth. It was beautiful, and not the first outfit he'd gotten you, but as you put it on…you couldn't help but wish that he'd given it to you because he liked you. Not as a friend, not as a co-worker, not as whatever you were now, but as someone to love. God, he confused you. He had to know what he was doing, acting like this.

He wouldn't tell you where you two were going no matter how much you pestered him, meaning you had to rely on your memory. He took you from train station before you two finally got onto a bullet train and watched as the city turned into countryside. Getting off onto some station in the middle of nowhere, Satoru grinned as he ignored your questions and linked your arms together, pulling you close to him.

"Sorry, Sunshine, but I couldn't have you figuring out where we were going." He murmured, winking. You hadn't even realised that he'd neglected to put on the blindfold today.

"Pretty boy, what do you mean-" Your voice was cut off by your own yelp as you felt the familiar rush of queasiness as your surroundings morphed.

Of course something felt off. He hadn't fucking teleported them.

"Satoru, I swear to-" Your voice that was about to raise faltered, as you looked around. "…Where are we?" Your lips whispered, mind, body and soul utterly entranced by the sight that lay before you.

It was beautiful. You and Satoru were standing on the bank of a lake that was filled with floating red lotuses, the overhead sun making the water that you could see shimmer with flecks of pale yellow and gold.

"Somewhere in Northern Thailand. Nice, isn't it?" He answered from where he was standing, one arm around you- you hadn't even noticed when he'd done it- with a smile on his face.

The words 'Nice is an understatement' were caught in your throat as you turned to look at him, lips slightly parted open in what was normal to him, but to you was in absolute awe.

Satoru was always a good looking guy, handsome even. But oh, he was radiant. His white hair was striking on a normally, but in the sun on a day like this, you swore that it was glowing like a halo around him. Blue eyes that looked like they were made out of stained glass and long lashes that looked almost frosted in snow that would never melt. You both were in your mid 20's, but the one word that came to mind when looking at him was boyish, and it made a smile rise to your face as he took your hands in his.

"Dance with me, C'mon!" He said, eyes sparkling in a way that made you second guess everything again, eyes widening and cheeks heating up in a way you knew you had many times before…though you were pretty sure Satoru never noticed. You nodded, slightly stunned as he started leading you in something resembling a waltz, a giddy laugh escaping your lips.

"There's not even any music to dance to!" You spoke, laughter seeping through the pauses of your words as you took one hand off his shoulder to try and get hair out of your face from how he spun you around.

"I got it all in here, don't worry!" He smiled, guiding your free hand to just over his heart, and you prayed that he couldn't feel how warm your skin was or how your own heartbeat sped up.

"You're so stupid…" You mumbled, looking away as that smile got to you again.

Really, you had to get a hold of yourself. This was getting unbearable.

"Stupid? After I got you this?" He asked, a shit eating grin on his face as he turned you around, taking out a small jewelry box. "I'd be crushed if you thought that of me after this."

You felt the smooth chill of metal against the skin of your neck, instinctively looking down. He'd gotten a necklace. Aquamarine set in silver, the metal swirling around it in fibers so thin they looked almost liquid in the sun. It was beautiful.

And so, so wrong. Because a gift like this was something you got for someone special, and you…you weren't special to Satoru. Not in the way you wished it to be. Not enough to warrant what you were pretty sure was a custom made necklace that clearly cost more than double your monthly rent

So why did it create that familiar pit in your stomach? That blockage in your throat which didn't go away no matter how hard you swallowed?

You turned around and could barely get the words out, voice quiet as you whispered, "…Satoru, I can't-"

"You can't what?" He asked, a mix between a confused look and smile on his face. "I know I've never bought you jewelry before, but-"

"I can't do this anymore!" The words came out of your mouth faster than you realised. His mouth was still open from when he was speaking, and his eyes were wide in what one could only describe as utter shock.

Silence fell over you both. He was looking at you like you were someone special.

Oh. You'd messed up.

Oh.

You felt wetness on your cheeks. Strange, it wasn't raining.

You were crying, weren't you?

Looking at Satoru, he was about to cry as well.

"Satoru, I- I-" Your lips were wobbly as you slowly stepped away, barely holding yourself together. You were trying to look at anywhere else but him, really, hands fisted in your clothing with enough force to worry about the fabric ripping.

"I'm sorry. I can't do this anymore. I just-"

You were cut off by Satoru's voice so quiet yet so loud, faltering in a way at the end that just made your heart break. "Did I do something wrong? Tell me, please. I can- I can make things better. I'll make it better. Whatever it is, just tell me and-"

"No, you really can't." You whispered, forcing out a smile as you wiped your tears, the necklace, as delicate as it was, weighing like a thick chain of solid steel on your body. "Because you make everything better, you see. And that's the problem. I've not been a very good friend with benefits to you, you see."

"I've gone and fallen for you, and the worst part is that I don't even know when it started. I just look at you and feel dizzy with how my heart starts beating so fast."

That's strange. Why was he smiling with the purest form of relief on his face when he had been fighting a look of utter despair beforehand? He had to have lost it. Congratulations, you're to be credited as the person who made Gojo Satoru, the strongest sorcerer, lose his mind faster than any curse. Fantastic.

"That's embarassing. I arrange all this, get you nice jewelry, and you still steal the first confession?" He said, half to himself as he ran a hand through his hair. "Maybe I should've listened and told you sooner."

You couldn't do anything else but stare, mouth agape with confusion as he stepped forward towards you, eyes filled with nothing short of adoration on his face.

"I had all planned out, really. I honestly had half the mind that you already knew." Satoru grinned, staring at you like you were the only one in the world. You were so close to him. Sure, you'd been closer, but everything felt different. Lighter. As if the necklace had lost all its weight since he had put it on you.

"You didn't know at all?" He asked, his fingers briefly resting on your hand before traveling up to rest on your cheek, bring your face closer to him.

"Not one bit." You breathed out, as you both leaned in, eyes closing and lips meeting.

It wasn't your first kiss, not by a long shot.

But you were pretty sure it was your favourite.

Taglist: [2/50, Comment to be added!]

@evilari111 @the2ndl

Credits ⋆ ˚｡ ⋆

Made everything myself on Canva! Got images from Pinterest!

© 2024 clxssified-mirxcle. All work belongs to @clxssified-mirxcle. Do NOT repost, translate or plagiarize in any way on ANY platforms. clxssified-mirxcle does NOT consent to having her work used to train AI in any form and does NOT support any form of AI 'art' whatsoever.

[sugarcoatednightshade]

I was just thinking of those Humans Are Space Orcs posts that talk about how humans are very poison resistant compared to most earth mammals. And how a lot of our medicines are really just poisons, and we just take them and hope they poison the right part of our body.

Generally I'm not a big fan of HASO stories where humans are uniquely insane or strong or poison resistant or what have you. It makes for a lot of really fun and exciting moments, but it's hard to carry a story just on those moments. So there I was, thinking to myself: well, there's probably not a lot of medical transference between alien races anyway. Biology is so complicated, what cures one race might kill another, humans medicine can't be uniquely dangerous. I mean, what if there's an alien species out there whose medicine is radioactive!

And then I remembered. Our medicine is radioactive. We treat cancer by blasting people with radiation.

Anyway there's really nothing I can think of that can top that level of crazy. Maybe our medicine is uniquely dangerous.

[aeolianblues]

There needs to be a way of describing 'the next four months' that doesn't sound like a business meeting, if someone in earnest said 'Q1' to me outside of work stuff I'd slowly back out, walk away and then probably spontaneously combust in flames five minutes later

[yinyuedijun]

translation

Aventurine doesn't like being understood, but he does like understanding other people. It is essential for manipulation, for scheming, for control. And he likes controlling you especially—for keeping you close but your heart a comfortable distance away, for opening your legs when he wants the pleasure of your body, for playing your emotions however he needs. And the day will come when that skill will be invaluable—the day when he must die without shattering you. (Or: You are the only person in the universe who understands Aventurine in his mother tongue. He often regrets teaching it to you.)

5k words. gender neutral reader, established relationship, angst, non-graphic sex (reader bottoms, anatomy neutral), themes of cultural loss, references to slavery, aventurine’s canonically implied desire to die. MDNI.

Aventurine cannot lie in Avgin.

Deception does not come easily to him in his mother tongue. His command of it is too weak—and too kind. The universe was a different place in the days when his life was coloured by the warble of Avgin dialect. It felt simpler, partly because he was a child and partly because Sigonia was yet untouched by outsiders. There were no corporations, no casinos, no commodity codes. His entire world was sand, desert, mother, sister, father (or more often—ghost), goddess, tent, wagon, luck, sin, rain, blessing, Avgin.

Katican.

Aventurine is sure that he knew more than just those words. He was fluent as a child. He had conversations with his sister that were complex enough to make his heart hurt, though perhaps his heart was just constantly aching anyway. But the rest of his early words escapes him. He could maybe dredge them up if he thinks long enough, but he also isn't sure if his tongue and lips could form the shape of them anymore. Sometimes he still counts in Avgin, memorises phone numbers in it, but he doesn’t remember the last time he actually strung together a full sentence in the language.

When Aventurine was first stolen into slavery (a word that he had not known as a child, and still doesn't know in Avgin), he wasn’t given a Synesthesia Beacon. He had to rely on his ears and his wits, deciphering the harsh edges of the Katican dialect and then the strange garble of Interastral Standard Language. By the time he had a Beacon installed, it was already translating all speech into Standard—his dominant language.

Sometimes he feels a little aggrieved by it, but at least it wasn't Katican. He'd have blown out his brains if it were.

But it is easy to console himself: Avgin is not a useful language anyway. Dead languages have no value, and the Avgin dialect was killed along with its people. You can’t perform commerce in a dead language, can't negotiate contracts, can't enter a gambling den and use your silver tongue to rob people blind. You can't use a dead language to fell governments and extract resources; you can't use a dead language to bring an entire planet to its knees. You can’t use a dead language to gamble your life; you can't use it to save yourself from the gallows.

You cannot deceive people in a language that is defined by sand, sister, goddess, ghost.

Aventurine cannot lie in Avgin. His command of it is too weak, and there is no one left to which he can lie, anyway.

When you ask Aventurine to teach you his first language, he gives you an amused look.

“Why Avgin?” he asks. “No one speaks it anymore. I can teach you Common Sigonian if you’d like. Or we could learn Xianzhounese together. Maybe Intellitron code? I know a little.”

“You speak Avgin,” you argue.

“Not often,” he says. “And badly when I do.”

“But it's still your language. And I want to understand you.”

Aventurine has to stop himself from laughing. Understand him? He hates being understood. When people understand him, it makes him predictable. And unlikeable. Hardly a position from which he can manipulate people in.

You understand him well enough to know that.

“You'll have to give me a better reason than that,” he says neatly. “Make it worth my while. Reward me.”

You look at him as you ponder, your eyes lingering on his. Perhaps trying to read him, though he prefers to think you're just enjoying the sight of them.

“I’ll teach you my language as well?”

“You mean—you'll reward my hard labour with more work?” he says, lighthearted.

You frown at him despite the joke. “You don't want to understand me better than what a Synesthesia Beacon would allow?” He blinks, pausing. “It’ll be convenient too. We can talk shit about other people in public and no one will understand us.”

Aventurine considers you. He doesn't like being understood, but he does like understanding other people. It is essential for manipulation, for scheming, for control. And he likes controlling you especially—for keeping you close but your heart a comfortable distance away, for opening your legs when he wants the pleasure of your body, for playing your emotions however he needs. And the day will come when that skill will be invaluable—the day when he must die without shattering you.

He also likes the idea of talking shit in public.

“I'm listening,” he says, voice lilting. You lean in, smiling. Sweet. It makes his heart feel something he isn't used to. Something addictive. Something disgusting. He scrambles to cover it with one of the usual tools: humour or distraction or maybe just plain old lying—his most reliable weapon.

“I'll throw in a kiss?” you try.

He hums. “Just one?”

“One per day.”

“Three.”

“You drive a hard bargain.”

“Well, I am a businessman.”

You snort, but he knows you're endeared. You have very noticeable tells when you’re flustered.

“Okay,” you say. “Three kisses on days you teach me.”

“Deal.”

Aventurine remembers more Avgin than he thought he would.

It comes to him slowly, painstakingly. You aren't interested in structured lessons, and he wouldn't be able to provide them anyway. He has a nonexistent grasp of grammar aside from this sounds right and that sounds strange, and Avgin dialect is both so niche and so dead that no textbooks are available. The scholars have abandoned the language as much as the politicians abandoned its people. Aventurine only has you, his fragmented memory, and whatever questions come to mind as you live out your days with him.

Mostly, you ask him about basic vocabulary. Sometimes you ask him to repeat sentences from your conversations in Avgin, like he’s some kind of multilingual parrot. Each prompt forces him to wade through the fog in his mind, the one that’s been shrouding his childhood memories until now. He's startled at how naturally the old words roll off his tongue: One, two, three, four. Good morning. Good evening. Good night. Sweet dreams. Five, six, seven, eight. You're lying to me. Why do you always lie to me? I don't know what you're talking about. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Welcome home. Have you eaten? Have some bread. I made you stew. Twenty, thirty, forty, fifty. That was dangerous. I thought you wouldn't make it back to me. Sometimes I think you want to die. One hundred, one thousand, one million, one billion. I'm sorry. Come here. Let me kiss you. Don't cry. Don't cry. Don't cry.

When you say, How do I ask you to let me hold you, he answers easily. He'd heard the words so often as a child: Let me hold you, Kakavasha. Let Mama hold you. His mouth forms the sounds without conscious thought.

He regrets it almost immediately.

When Aventurine hears it from you—stilted, halting, but no less gentle—he stops breathing. Let me hold you. You say it all the time in Standard, but it feels different in Avgin. More painful. A strange sense of panic closes in on him when he's wrapped up in you, thinking in Avgin, thinking sand, sister, goddess, ghost. He holds you tightly, like the rags cut from his father’s shirt, or his mother’s locket won back from the shell-slashers, or a bag of poker chips beneath a card table, clutched within his trembling grip.

“Aventurine, is something wrong?” you ask in Avgin, and he replies in Standard with his usual smile.

“Hm? No. What could be wrong if I have you here?”

Lying is one of his greatest tools. Sex is another one. So he says, “I think I'd like my reward now,” and he runs his lips along your jaw, your pulse, the spot over your heart (there's a word for that in Avgin but not Standard, he tells you), until you're laughing. I thought you wanted three kisses, you tease, and he replies, Who said I wanted to kiss you on the mouth?

But he coaxes open your thighs, and once he's inside you, he collects his payment properly. He kisses you, and kisses you, and kisses you—and you swallow his lies whole.

There are some things that Aventurine doesn't teach you. Mostly, they’re things that he can’t teach you.

There are countless gaps in his Avgin. His speech is painfully childish—probably more childish than it was when he actually stopped speaking it. He doesn't know how to swear (something that disappoints you) and he doesn't know how to flirt (something that devastates you). He doesn’t know any words that would be useful for work either: commercialization, governance, stakes, winnings, profit. When you ask him what his job title is in Avgin (“Was senior management even a thing in Avgin society?”), he laughs and gives you the word for gambler.

Then there are the words that he remembers—has remembered his whole life—but never says. Not to you, and not to himself. He doesn't teach you any prayers. He doesn't teach you any blessings. He doesn't teach you about Mama Fenge, or the Kakava Festival, or how the rain fell when he was born. When you ask him, What holidays did you celebrate when you were little? he shrugs and says, We didn't have any. Sigonia’s too bleak to do any partying.

Then you ask him one day, while your bodies are spent in the afterglow of sex, sticky with sweat and sweetness, how to say I love you. And he goes quiet.

Love is a cheap word in Interastral Standard. In the language of globalisation and trade, love has been commercialised, commodified, capitalised for power. You say it to him in many contexts: I love this, I love that, I love you. He hardly ever reacts, and he's never said it back. It would feel unnecessary and also cruel if he did: Aventurine has only ever said the words himself as either a joke or a manipulation.

But love feels different in Avgin than in Interastral Standard, doesn't sound like a thing that can be traded or bought. Kakavasha only ever said the word love to his mother, to his sister, to his father's grave. Love in his mother tongue feels priceless.

When Aventurine thinks about you saying it—I love you, Kakavasha, in clumsy, earnest Avgin—something so painful swells in his throat that he can hardly breathe.

“There is no word for love in my language,” he tells you.

You blink. “Okay, then what's an idiom for it?”

“There is none. There’s no word or phrase expressing love.”

You raise a brow. “That’s hard to believe.”

“Is it?” He smiles. “There’s no Avgin in the known universe who cares about love. Only scheming, thieving, and treachery—and you can't do those things when love is involved.”

You look at him in alarm. “Why are you saying that?” You're practically squirming in your discomfort. “I don't know why you think I'd believe such a racist stereotype.”

“It’s not a stereotype,” he says. “I'm not talking about the Avgin culture. I'm talking about myself.”

After all, he is the only Avgin left.

It is an unfair thing to say. A cruel thing to say. After all the laughing and kissing and crying and fucking, after all the tender eyes and gentle words from you—it is probably the worst pain imaginable: I don't give a shit about you. He waits for you to cry.

But you only stare at him calmly, studying him. You brush the hair out of his eyes, seeing them clearly.

“If you lie to me all the time,” you say in Avgin, “eventually I'll stop believing anything you say.”

Aventurine is speechless. His heart does that addictive, disgusting thing again. He thinks about leaving, but then you say, Let me hold you, and he can't do anything other than obey.

Avgin dialect was once included in the Synesthesia Beacon list of functions. The Intelligentsia Guild added it before the Second Katica-Avgin Extinction Event, when the IPC was trying to get a political foothold on Sigonia via the Avgin people. The language was alive then, with enough value to be included into the Synesthesia LLM by the linguists.

But since the Extinction Event—since Kakavasha ran away from home—the Synesthesia data on Avgin has been stagnant, a fossil. Aventurine knows because he's subscribed to software updates for certain languages (Avgin Sigonian, Common Sigonian, Interastral Standard, and now your mother tongue). He gets pinged every time there's a new addition for slang, for neologisms—but there hasn't been a ping for the Avgin dialect since he had the Beacon installed. The live translation function hasn't even been available since the previous Amber Era. When he checks its page on his Synesthesia app, it's very clear why—

SIGONIAN, AVGIN DIALECT SPEAKERS: 0 STATUS: Extinct END OF SERVICE: 2156 AE

The complete death of the language has led to an irritating dilemma for you and Aventurine. You keep running into words that he doesn't know—this time not because of his childlike speech, but because they never existed in his language to begin with. Ocean, tropical, rainforest. Starskiff, accelerator, space fleet. Stock market, shortselling, mutual funds. Black hole, event horizon, spaghettification. All things that never came up for Kakavasha, but now come up for Aventurine, and the language has not evolved to include it.

He always wants to switch to Standard to discuss these things, but you're insistent on speaking in Avgin as much as possible. He doesn't know why, but he doesn't mind humouring you—partly because he likes to indulge you, and partly because he’s grown used to hearing the honeyed timbre of Avgin dialect in your household. The place would feel strange without it.

So you start filling the gaps with other languages, filtering them through the lyricism of Avgin. Loanwords, he thinks they’re called. You take ocean, tropical, rainforest from Amazian; starskiff, accelerator, space fleet from Xianzhounese; stock market, shortselling, mutual funds from Interastral Standard. For the astrophysics terms, you try directly translating them—with limited success.

“Can't I literally just say ‘black hole’?” you ask in Avgin, and he nearly spits out his coffee.

“Please don't. That's a dirty word.” He can't bring himself to say what it means, but from the way you’re laughing, you can clearly guess.

“I thought you said you didn't know how to swear.”

“You've just reminded me how.”

“You're welcome.” You look on the verge of cackling. Aventurine finishes his coffee and wonders when you're going to surprise him with your newfound vulgarity.

“Let's just do the space terms based on Standard,” he says. Begs.

“No, that's so boring.”

“Then let's do your language.”

You open your mouth. Close it. Give him a blank look.

“You don't know how to say those words in your mother tongue either, do you,” he intuits.

“Well, ‘spaghettification’ doesn't really come up in everyday conversation, does it?”

“Then maybe we don't need it.” He smiles, senses an opportunity. Smells blood. “How about ‘love’? I'd much rather know how you say that. I bet it sounds beautiful.”

You give him a long look. Your eyes are vulnerable when you share it: Love. I love you. He’s fascinated by the sound of it. Your voice is never that fragile when you say it in Standard. It's never so earnest. He repeats it, staring at you, and your gaze falls to the ground. His mouth curls.

“I like it,” he says. “Let's use that. It'll sound nice in Avgin.”

You try to recover. “Sure. That works. But back to ‘black hole’—”

And the two of you continue like that for days, weeks, months. It feels like a complete bastardization of his mother tongue on some days, in some conversations. Almost unrecognisable. But it doesn't feel bad. It’s all he has, it's all you have, and when he walks into your home, he starts speaking it without thinking: your bastard, patchwork language. The Avgin dialect that exists only in your house. A tongue that can only be understood by a liar.

And then, one lazy Sunday morning, he gets a familiar ping. He expects it to be Interastral Standard, as usual. The language balloons with each planet that the IPC colonises.

But instead, he opens his screen and freezes.

SIGONIAN, AVGIN DIALECT SPEAKERS: 2 STATUS: Endangered. SERVICE RESUMED: 2157 AE NEW UPDATES: 103 loanwords and 5 neologisms added.

He can't stop looking at the status. Endangered. Endangered, which means dying, but alive. The Avgin dialect is alive again. The Intelligentsia Guild determined it, so it must be true. But Aventurine can't agree: there are no Avgin speakers in the known universe other than the two of you, and what you speak isn't real Avgin. The Avgin spoken by his mother and father and sister is dead; the Avgin spoken by Kakavasha is dead. The festivals are gone; the deserts have been terraformed. There are no wagons; there are no dances; there are no prayers. There are no blessings, and he has no home—

As long as you are alive, the blood of the Avgin will never run dry.

His throat locks up.

“Aventurine?” you ask. Your voice is drowsy, but concerned. “Is something wrong?”

He looks at you from his phone, a polished smile on his face.

“No.” His syllables are plain and efficient in the noise of Interastral Standard: “Just looking at details for a new assignment. It’ll be a long one.”

“Oh.” You frown. “Will you be away from home for a long time, then?”

He stops himself from swallowing. “Yes, I'll be away from the house. For several months, probably.”

“Okay.” Your voice is small. “Take care of yourself, okay? I'll miss you.”

Each word you speak resonates with heartbreak. It always does in these conversations, even in Standard—but the sorrow is amplified in Avgin. His mother tongue has an inherently sad quality to it, he's noticed. His people have lost so much over their history—their language is one of loss. It's his language of loss. Kakavasha did all his grieving in Avgin; Aventurine has never felt sorrow in Standard. When the language died, so did Kakavasha—and all his regrets with it.

“You'll come home to me, right?” you ask. It's a beautiful sentence in Avgin. A heartrending one. He feels something that he hasn't known since he was a child.

It's a feeling he has to kill.

“Yes,” he says in Standard. “Of course I'll come back.”

This is not the first time that Aventurine has been mistaken for dead, but this is the longest time.

The latest world to join the IPC network was a tough acquisition. It had been ruled by a despot who wreaked havoc on both the people and the planet, and who was too stupid and reckless to resolve conflicts with his trade partners. He probably would have blown up the whole star system had he been left to his own devices. Aventurine had no qualms about bringing him to ruin, nor did he have qualms about nearly dying in the process.

If things had gone his way, he'd either be dead or missing. This would have been the perfect opportunity to do the latter, actually—to be freed from the IPC. Free to drift alone, speaking with strangers in strange, unfamiliar tongues. No connection to his past, to the cruel history of his luck, to his commodity code. No tether to his inherently unjust destiny. But instead he's back in your house, pockets heavy with his borrowed wealth, speaking to you in his bastardised, childish Avgin. I'm sorry. Come here. Let me kiss you. Don't cry. Don't cry. Don't cry.

Your Avgin is—shockingly fluent. He doesn't know how. He can't think about it right now. All he can process is the wounded animal noise of your speech as you yell at him, as you cry. Like an injured songbird, or a weeping child. Why did you leave, why did you lie, why do you always lie to me, why don't you give a shit about me, you spit. Why do you want to die, why do you want to die, why do you want to die, you keep saying. Sand, sister, goddess, ghost, he keeps hearing. Sand, sister, goddess, ghost. Don't leave me, big sister. People will die. Why do you have to go?

“I’m sorry,” he tries again, this time in your language. “I'm so sorry. Come here. Let me hold you.”

You collapse into your mother tongue. Aventurine is both relieved and horrified. Relieved that he doesn't need to hear the language of his grief—horrified that he needs to hear yours. He's never heard you cry like this. He's never heard you break like this. These must have been the words you used when the soldiers found you hiding in your closet, when they dragged you out of your home. You were just a child.

Aventurine doesn't know the words you are using—you've never taught them—but he still understands them.

You're very malleable when you’re sad; even more so when you're hysterical. Aventurine understands this about you, and he understands how to calm you—this time in your native tongue—and he understands how to kiss you. He understands that you need to feel close to him. He understands that there are ways to accomplish this other than sex. A normal person would talk it out, have an honest conversation, come to a mutual understanding, and maybe even stop trying to kill himself. They wouldn't fuck you into the mattress while your face is still wet with tears.

But Aventurine is not a normal person. He doesn't know how to have an honest conversation, and he doesn't want to be understood. Lying is his greatest weapon, and sex is a close second. So he kisses you until you’re too breathless to cry, fucks you until you can't think, and makes you come so hard that you’re in too much bliss to grieve. And maybe it's horrible of him, but he enjoys it. He enjoys the way your body takes him in so easily, the way your nails dig into his back, the way you tighten around him when you climax, so wet and needy for him. The way you beg for him in your language for liars as he spends himself inside you: I love you, Aventurine, I love you, I love you, I love you—

Only because it feels good. This is all only because he enjoys fucking you. This is all only because you enjoy fucking him. This is all it'll ever be, and it'll be this way until he gets to meet his end.

(Some months ago, Aventurine started dreaming in Avgin.

It surprised him when he first noticed it. The last time he remembers having a dream in his native tongue, he was twelve years old and still in chains. And even then, it had become a sporadic, strange thing. Awful to wake up from. One minute he was with his mother and sister on a cool, rainy day, speaking fluently in Avgin as he laughed and played—and the next minute, he was being shaken awake in his cage, hearing the cruel lash of Katican.

But ever since he's started speaking Avgin with you, he's been dreaming in it. Vividly. Sometimes he's a child in these dreams, and sometimes he's grown. He's always back in the Sigonian desert, among the tents and the campfires and his family wagons. His mother and sister are alive. Sometimes his father is too. The skies roar with thunder and the stellar winds are always harsh, but they always keep him cocooned up in their arms. He's always warm.

Sometimes Aventurine dreams of nicer days. Clear skies, warm sun, cool breeze—all blessings from the Mother Goddess. On these days, he tends to be an adult, and you tend to be there with him. Your Avgin is fluent but strange, filled with funny loanwords and peculiar slang. His father likes the neologisms and starts using them—but only in wrong ways. His sister finds it embarrassing and keeps apologising to you.

His mother loves you. She loves you so much it hurts. This is how I know you're blessed, Kakavasha, she says, glowing. You’re so lucky to have found such a kind person.

Kakavasha knows this. He knows he's lucky, and in his dreams, that isn't a bad thing. In his dreams, his luck means that his home is not violently excised from his heart: his father never dies; his mother never dies; his sister never dies. The tents are not burned; the wagons are not destroyed. He is never forced to forget his people's dishes, their songs, their language, their joy. And in his dreams, his luck means that he meets you anyway, without all the loss and the chains and the lying.

In his dreams, he is able to bring you to the desert. He is able to teach you the Avgin he spoke as a child, to cook all the meals his mother used to make, to share with you their coffee and their tea. He teaches you prayers. He teaches you blessings. He tells you about Mama Fenge, about how the rain fell when he was born. He takes you to the Kakava Festival, shows you how to dance, sings to you all the Avgin songs until you're singing back. He presses his palm to yours in prayer; he kisses you in devotion, not avoidance.

Sometimes the two of you still fight, the same fights that you have in real life, but he handles them with honesty. He listens to you. He apologises to you. He tells you that he’ll change, and he means it—because this world is a kind one, and he has no need to be so cruel to you.

In this kind world, when you lay in bed with his arms tight around you, you smile at him and say, I love you, Kakavasha. You say it in Avgin���real Avgin, not the dialect born from genocide and deceit—and when he responds, there's not even a little bit of insincerity in his voice. Because Kakavasha never became Aventurine in these dreams, so he has no Interastral Standard in which he can lie to you, no silver tongue with which he can manipulate you, no commodity code that inspires his fear of being controlled by you. Kakavasha only knows Avgin, and he only has his sand, his family, his goddess, his home.

And he has you. Finally, he has you.

He kisses you, and kisses you, and kisses you—and then he tells you the truth.)

.

.

.

Aventurine cannot lie in Avgin.

You noticed this very early on: whenever he lies to you, he always switches to Interastral Standard. Probably he wouldn't be able to do it in his mother tongue. His command of it is too weak, and the words he knows are all too kind. He speaks with the innocence of a child, and children cannot deceive people in the way that adults can. Children cannot perform commerce or negotiate contracts. They cannot use a silver tongue to rob people blind. They cannot save themselves from the gallows.

So Aventurine’s Avgin is defenceless. Vulnerable. So vulnerable it hurts. You are not so vulnerable in your first language because your captors spoke it on occasion, and you learned to lie in it to gain their pity. You told Aventurine that knowing it would help him understand you, but this was a deception. Aventurine’s mother tongue was a language of trust, but yours is a dialect of abuse.

The Avgin language died before Aventurine could be gutted by it; this is why it disarms him so completely. This is why he’s so indulgent and so warm when you use it with him, why he yields to all your requests. Not requests for money or gifts—you’re certain those are meaningless to him—but for affection. Let me hold you. Let me touch you. Let me kiss you. He can never say no.

This is also why he loves hearing you speak his mother tongue, you think—it makes him feel at home, it makes him feel safe. Maybe it even makes him feel loved. He never seems so at peace speaking any other language, so you try to use Avgin as much as possible. You like seeing him happy. You like it even if it means you need to teach him your own native language in exchange, even when it means you need to hear him say all the things your captors used to say. You don't mind it if it's him. You never mind the harm he inflicts on you, especially not when it brings you closer to him.

It is convenient that he cannot lie in Avgin. You only wanted to learn it in the first place because he talks in his sleep—mostly in Standard, but sometimes in his native tongue. And now that you know he cannot lie in Avgin, you also know he's always being honest in his dreams. Honest when he throws his arms around you in his sleep. Honest when he grabs you so tightly that you bruise. Honest when he buries his face into your neck and whispers prayers into your skin.

Most of the words he says are common ones, the earliest vocabulary that he taught you. But there are some things he's withheld from you—and to learn those things, you had to track down linguists from the Intelligentsia Guild, bribe them with your dirty money, have them give you all their deprecated, extinct data. It felt two-faced, and it was violating, but it was the only way. You already know that Aventurine would rather die than translate his feelings for you, would never want this part of himself understood.

I'm sorry for always leaving you.

I'm sorry for making you cry.

I can't bear the thought of losing you.

Freedom would be too lonely without you.

I don't want to hurt you anymore.

I don't want to lie to you anymore.

I missed you.

I want you.

I need you.

I love you.

end

afterword

[madlori]

On Tommy and narrative threads

So some fans who are vehemently anti-Tommy frequently use the talking point that they need to have Buck confront Tommy about his past behavior while under Gerrard, or have him find out about it if he doesn't already know, and that he should break up with him about it. Or they need some kind of reckoning to happen with Hen and Chim in order to move forward.

I'm 95% sure neither of those things are going to happen, and here is why: the show considers that narrative thread to be closed.

It has run its course. It's done. It's been resolved. As fans and viewers - and as many of us are fic readers and writers - we always want to see things hashed out onscreen in exhaustive detail but that's not practically possible. The narrative sometimes has to signal that threads are resolved in other ways, in the way characters act towards each other and speak about each other.

Throughout the course of the three Begins episodes in which he appears, the writers clearly selected Tommy to represent the "firefighter who acted kinda jerky but got better through personal growth and friendship with new people" narrative. By the end of Bobby Begins Again, this narrative is more or less complete, as we've now seen Tommy act to support Hen and also be accepted into a friendly relationship with both her and Chim, not to mention Bobby. When he reappears in season 7, nobody acts like he's anything other than a friend, and Chim outright admires him.

This is the conclusion of this thread, as far as the show is concerned. Did he ever sit down with Hen and Chim and make some big speech or have some big discussion about how he's learned and changed? Probably not. Those kinds of direct conversations sometimes do happen in reality, but more often than not, you just spend years working with someone and your opinion of them shifts as all of you change. And remember, Hen and Chim worked with Tommy for years before Bobby even showed up.

And ask yourself this question: if Hen and Chim have both moved on, and have accepted whatever direct or implicit apology Tommy offered, how is it Buck's business to decide that no, that's not good enough, HE'S going to demand some kind of restitution on their behalf? That's patronizing as fuck. These are people with their own agency who don't need Buck to advocate for them and exact some kind of retroactive revenge for something they're not even mad about anymore. Would he be upset that Tommy ever made off-color remarks, or was less than welcoming to people who are now his friends? Maybe. Is he upset that Eddie nearly killed a man? Is he filled with moral outrage and disappointment that Hen cheated on her wife? Chim physically assaulted him, and so did Bobby. Is he still holding that against them? Is he upset NOW that nobody's speaking up on HIS behalf when Gerrard targets him? Buck's an adult. He knows that people frequently look back on their past behavior and cringe at what jerks they were, himself included.

Tommy has several times alluded to being ashamed of his past actions. He knows the score. The message we're meant to take from those comments is that he's taken steps to not be that guy anymore. Need he flagellate himself forever? Does this need to cost him and Buck a relationship they both value? It can't have been easy to come from a terrible father, go into the army, then into the LAFD with a terrible captain, and then to meet people who challenged your behavior and made you want to be a better person. The fact that he became a better person is something he should be admired for, not punished.

[copperhawks]

The funniest thing to me about Kel, and maybe one of the most interesting because of how understated it is, is that Kel becomes a good commander in the end, not by emulating Wyldon who was cold and implacable and insensitive, or by emulating Raoul who mostly only disobeys orders out of principle or because he has an issue with what the order says about his personal relationship with Jon, but by emulating JON.

Kel doesn't even LIKE Jon, she BARELY respects him as a person. He's a good enough ruler that she's willing to fight for him and swear loyalty to him and to at least mostly believe that he wouldn't work with Blayce to make his own killing monsters, but that's as far as it goes for Kel. If he's kind to her, she finds it uncomfortable and almost untrustworthy because she assumes he doesn't care about her and so his kindness and respect towards her must be fake.

But from the outside, as readers, we know just how much Jon fought for Kel. We know how much he does respect her right to be a knight. Jon is the sole reason that Kel DID get the opportunity to prove herself, if he'd capitulated to Wyldon completely, she just wouldn't have ever been allowed to join. Kel doesn't KNOW THAT, obviously, but we do. We know that Jon did everything he could to find a way to convince Wyldon to let Kel become a page. While Wyldon claims later that the reason he chose to let her stay at the end of the probation year was because his better judgment convinced him she'd earned it, I'd be willing to bet that part of that better judgment also included knowing if he couldn't prove to JON that she needed to go, then he'd be in trouble. Kel was training and working in front of plenty of other trainers and teachers who could easily contradict Wyldon's lies if he'd tried it, many of whom are closer to Jon than they are to Wyldon.

Kel's experiences and feelings about that experience are entirely valid, and she doesn't have the knowledge we do about how hard Jon fought for her, so it's not shocking that she's upset with him for a good portion of her series. She never even discovers this truth by the end of her series, even though she does get a lesson from Jon and Thayet (and Raoul to some degree) about how politics and compromises work in order to make changes happen. So her opinion of him by the end is boiled down to the quote from Squire: "good kings weren't always good men." It makes sense for her to think this, but because Kel's knowledge base is so limited (and her worldview so black and white for much of her series), it makes her an EXTREMELY unreliable narrator about this particular issue.

Kel believes that while Jon generally does his duty and keeps the peace, he doesn't actually care all that much about his people as individuals. But in their only meaningful conversation in Squire, Jon is able to point out that he (and Thayet, who is actually equal to Jon in power, something Kel either doesn't know which would be a failure in her education or just tends to ignore so she can focus her ire on Jon) has to make a LOT of compromises in order to get ANYTHING useful done at all. Sometimes, often, it means making deals with people he doesn't like or people he just fundamentally disagrees with, because it's the first step in a multi-step plan to help more people in the long run. He also points out that just throwing his weight and authority around in order to be able to change everything he wants to change immediately regardless of what anyone else thinks about it is a great way to get himself and his family killed. Because even if he had good intentions, that would be tyranny. It does make Kel think a little, but she doesn't tend to like him much still afterwards, her resentment from her page years will always color her opinion of him a little.

However, then she gets to Haven and she's suddenly tossed into a position of leadership over a lot of other people, many of whom disagree with each other or disagree with her or both. And all of the sudden, Kel has to make compromises. She doesn't LIKE the way the sergeants often treat their men, especially the sergeants whose men are convicts, but there's very very little she can do about it without really pissing off those same sergeants and that's not something she can afford to do. There's a moment when Neal starts getting frustrated about the treatment of the convicts and she takes him out to vent to her so he doesn't vent to the sergeants, something that the sergeants would then take out on their men. Kel's reasoning as she does this is that she "preferred to avoid battles with them now so she would have authority with them later if she needed to use it." Later, Kel is talking to Daine and she says "That's all this job is... Trying to please everyone and pleasing no one. And it will only get worse, not better."

Both of these moments showcase Kel choosing to make compromises. She may not like the way the sergeants treat the convicts, but she needs to stay on the sergeants' good sides because she doesn't have enough resources to butt heads with them nor enough authority to just force the issue, and even if she DID, it could cause the sergeants to become troublesome or take out their frustration with her on the men in ways she can't see as well. But staying on the sergeants' good sides might mean letting some of their maltreatment slide if it's not physically harming the convicts. And even setting that aside, she's dealing with nearly 500 refugees eventually, all of which are from different towns in the area and have different needs, not all of which she can accommodate. This requires compromise. Sometimes she can please some of them and not others, but mostly she probably just ends up not pleasing anybody because that's often how compromises WORK.

She never makes the active connection to Jon and his lesson on leadership from Squire while she's in Haven, but that quote up there about how this job (aka being a commander) is all about trying to please everyone and pleasing no one? It sounds a HECK of a lot like "good kings weren't always good men." You can try your best to help others, but often doing the right thing can involve making everyone unhappy. You can't be everybody's friend if you're going to get anything done.

Some of this she might've learned from Raoul's style of command, but Raoul commands a fairly small amount of people (at least in comparison to a King), and so we see him able to be pretty friendly to the people he commands in a way that Jon is perhaps unable to do. And she might believe that she learned some of this from Wyldon, but Wyldon had a tendency to be very unfair and biased due to his raging bigotry and conservative values, as well as the fact that he doesn't actually even LIKE being a training master and that likely impacted the way he treated the pages (he's almost never that kind to the pages, whereas we see him capable of being quite kind with the refugees later, which is where Kel comes to the conclusion that he hadn't enjoyed being a training master).

But Jon makes an entire speech about how he (and Thayet) have been working THEIR ENTIRE REIGN to change laws that help people. He explains how they have to consider the needs of merchants, nobles, farmers, street people, priests/priestesses, and mages. They have to consider not only what these people might need or want, but also what they could do when they feel sufficiently offended and how that could impact not just the royal family or the nobility but the realm as a whole. Jon points out that they HAVE made changes, for the better, and that just because they don't always succeed at everything or because they have to compromise sometimes, doesn't mean they aren't working at making changes or that they don't care about helping people. Not everyone you have power over is going to be your friend, they might not even be someone you like. But if you're going to take on the job of leadership, that's something you have to be willing to accept and work with, which often means making compromises with people whose needs and values are contradictory to your own.

Jon probably knows when he makes the compromise with Wyldon that it will likely impact a lot of people's good opinion of him. Alanna is right there and clearly angry, and we know Thayet doesn't like the decision, either. And it's entirely possible that Jon knows in the moment that Kel herself will put the blame on him because he's the King. But he also knows that if he insists on Kel being allowed to be a page without trying to compromise with Wyldon, Wyldon will quit over it and he'll end up with ten DIFFERENT problems that could cause a lot bigger issues to far more people than just one girl. So he makes the compromise. He sacrifices Alanna and Thayet and even Kel's good opinion of him in order to ensure that Kel gets the opportunity to become a Knight without turning all of his nobles against him which could ultimately lead to a civil war. Is it fair? No, and he knows it. But it's the best option he has in order to get the outcome they all actually want which is just for Kel to have the chance to prove herself.

Kel has to make similar choices once she's finally in a position of leadership of her own. And whether she realizes it or not, without ever even spending more than a few minutes with Jon, she ends up emulating his leadership style more than anybody else's because it WORKS and it works WELL. She'll probably never admit it, she might never even realize it herself, but she's so much more like Jon than any of the other men she sees as role models. And I love that. I love the dramatic irony of that, that the one person Kel only barely respects because of a compromise he made on her behalf that she'll never even know about, is the person Kel ends up most resembling. Jon is the reason she has the opportunity to become the Protector of the Small in the first place, Jon is the person who created that environment that allowed her to nurture those values, and she'll probably never even really be able to acknowledge that, because sometimes that's what being a good leader means.

[rockrosethistle]

I'm thinking about the implications again.

The numbers that the hive mind performs aren't random. Both the lyrics and the choreography will often boil down to to one purpose: to cause pain. (Pokey is ruthless.)

Sometimes it's physical, and that's easy to spot. The cops spend half of their song just kicking and pushing people to the ground. Join Us And Die literally ends with Ted getting beat up.

And when the choreography doesn't allow for it, the lyrics are specifically trying to elicit an emotional response. The hive uses Alice to torment Bill. He's watching someone he loves die in front of him. It does the same for Charlotte.

Okay, the hive gets a kick out watching people suffer. That's not new information. But the implications...

Look at Inevitable. It's a pretty significant shift from the rest of the numbers. Whereas those seem tailored for pain and fear, Inevitable seems to be comforting? Just look.

Paul walks out, and the first thing he does is hug Emma. Which doesn't seem significant at first, but think: Did Bill get that same courtesy?

Alice's first line is meant to taunt Bill. Paul's is almost consolatory; " Emma / I'm sorry / you lost." I won't dissect this completely, the theory is that this first line is genuine. Paul is actually sorry that their plan failed.

And when you take a look at the choreography, it becomes clear that it's a lot kinder than the other songs.

We see Paul waltzing with Emma and kissing her hands. And even though he's not letting her get away, he's not trying to hurt her. He's not even trying to intimidate her. He's shown more than once bending down--getting on her level, like you would to a child--as opposed to towering over her.

The lyrics aren't messing with her either. Whereas Sam is manipulative and Alice is spiteful, Paul's lyrics are reassuring.

"I'm still the man you trust," is a lot different than "Don't you twust me?" when you get right down to it. It carries with it a connotation of 'I'm okay, and you will be too.'

"What if I told you I made it?" actively contradicts the 'I killed your loved one' narrative that Alice used with Bill.

It's not like Emma is buying any of it. She's still terrified. Paul doesn't need to hurt her or taunt her in order to scare her, just singing was enough. But it's clear that he's not trying to.

The hive mind gets a kick out of watching people suffer. Emma is the leading lady. You'd think that she's the one who should have the most brutal song. But she just doesn't. It seems like her song is trying to be the kindest.

We know it's implied that once they get infected, people are still conscious inside their musical doppelgängers (source: the line "your own body is your front row seat" as well as Sam breaking through its control long enough to say "Charlotte" before falling back under).

I think Paul was conscious during Inevitable. I think he knew that they weren't escaping this. I think he knew he was eventually going to kill Emma, and there was nothing he could do about it. But I think he didn't want her to suffer.

Instead, I think he resolved to give her as kind a death as he could. He would lie. He'd tell her he was happy and that she was safe. He'd be as gentle as the hive mind allowed. She was running out of time, so he'd love her with every second they had left.

(but that's just a theory...a musical theory... and cut)

[slitheringghost]

What are your biggest pet peeves in fics

My biggest pet peeve is, hands down, fandom’s portrayal of the first war, which is almost never portrayed as violent and terrible as the details we get about it in canon. Most importantly:

The First War started in 1970.

Not 1975 or 1976. Certainly not 1978. 1970. This means the war was raging the entire time the Marauders were at Hogwarts, and that they entered Hogwarts a year into the war. It lasted 11 whole years. The whole point is that the First War was much worse than the Second War.

I’ve seen people say things like “The Marauders era is boring because nothing really happens until their later years until the war starts and/or heats up” and say it like it’s complete fact and not something fans completely made up. The idea that the war only “heats up” after Snape’s Worst Memory is so universally accepted despite all evidence to the contrary.

(I’ve also seen claims that the only murders/war crimes committed during the first war were the few explicitly named in the text, which is, again… truly embarrassing analysis.)

The reason fandom has come up with this narrative is entirely to fit the Snape vs. Marauders “bullying” angle. It usually goes like this: Sirius and James were bullies for 5 years, until - conveniently and magically - the war started to “heat up” and get more serious 6th year or sometimes 7th year and therefore they matured (especially James, though the idea of Sirius maturing after the Prank is also common in fic). It provides a neat little coming of age arc for the Marauders, one that does not actually exist in canon.

Because, believe it or not, Voldemort was not going to adjust the trajectory of his war to fit this narrative.

On the pro-Marauders side who still see them as bullies, the fandom can’t reconcile the idea of the war being serious and the Marauders not being serious about it and instead spending their time bullying others. But the war was already heated up, and the Marauders were already serious about the war by SWM - because the Marauders attacks on Snape and others was them being serious about the war, because it wasn’t bullying, it was vigilante justice.

On the Snape fan side, to portray Snape as a victim of bullying, they have to pretend that he's the only person capable of being victimized in the whole entire wizarding world, and people actually being murdered and tortured conflicts with that narrative.

I can buy that the war took a few years to heat up, I doubt it went to daily murders and tortures immediately, but I think a war would not take 6-7 years to escalate. I would guess it heated up sometime the Marauders 2nd year or 3rd year, at latest.

(I often see so many Order deaths happening in late war, per Moody, used at evidence that the war only escalated then, but the Order is tiny and doesn’t represent the casualties in the rest of the population)

Evidence towards the fact that the war was very heated up already by the time of SWM is that Lily calls Voldemort “You Know Who” in her conversation with Snape outside the Gryffindor common room - which means that by that time Voldemort has spread enough terror that people are afraid to say his name.

Also, remember this is already a very violent society. The fact that some pureblood families murder Muggles for fun (Muggle hunting) is apparently an open secret, they murder house elves, and I’ve said before that I think pureblood society practices honor killings which are at least somewhat legally sanctioned (i.e. Merope’s situation).

So a few occasional murders is not going to shake them and is not what this society is going to consider a war.

More evidence is how much the violence has escalated at Hogwarts. Death Eater students are regularly and openly torturing students with Dark Magic "for a laugh" and not being expelled, which is something that doesn't even happen in canon era - the closest we get is Draco cursing Katie Bell by accident, during a specific secret mission, and unlike with Mulciber and Mary Macdonald, no one knows who the culprit even is, so they don’t have the option to expel him. Similarly we have Snape using Sectumsempra so often at Hogwarts that it became known as his specialty and not being expelled, despite it being a near-fatal torture curse.

This fic captures what the atmosphere at Hogwarts would’ve been like really well:

"Did that kind of thing happen a lot in Hogwarts?" Hermione asked, tone oddly flat. "In the seventies?"

“Yes," Sirius said after a long moment. "It did. There were times when it was pretty much open warfare in the halls and on the grounds, between the students everyone knew were on Voldemort's side and the ones who opposed him, or whose families did... I was talking to Pomfrey about it the other day, she says you lot get yourself hexed as often in a few months as our generation used to in a week. And people attacked pets or destroyed belongings all the time. It was one reason a lot of students hid being muggleborn."

There’s the inability to extrapolate from canon details, fandom often portraying the First War like it’s just 30 Death Eaters on one side and 20 Order members on the other.

For example, if a mere ~30 Death Eaters are already committing daily murders in HBP during the Second War, how much violence do you think an army of ~500+ DEs (Sirius says the DEs that came back in GoF is literally nothing to how large Voldemort’s armies were in the First War; Remus says the Order was outnumbered 20 to 1) was committing? Similarly, based on the statistics given in HBP (by February Ron says he’s literally lost count of how many students have lost relatives), by SWM a substantial amount of the student body would’ve had families murdered by Death Eaters (and therefore the students cheering James and Sirius on in SWM is obviously because they hate Snape for being a proto-Death Eater and not for being poor 🙄). There may have even been students themselves that were killed over breaks.

This lines up with Sirius's description of the war:

“You’re scared for yourself, and your family, and your friends. Every week, news comes of more deaths, more disappearances, more torturing... the Ministry of Magic’s in disarray, they don’t know what to do, they’re trying to keep everything hidden from the Muggles, but meanwhile, Muggles are dying too. Terror everywhere... panic... confusion... that’s how it used to be."

There are lots of similar passages about the war, I’m not going to quote all of them, but I suggest people actually pay attention to those details, as well as stuff during the Second War that would apply to the first.

The same thing applies as fandom portraying teenage Death Eaters as only joining once they graduate, when canon indicates they would be Marked at 16, but that’s for another meta.

[wolfsong-the-bloody-beast]

Warden: You've never killed an innocent?

Zevran: Now there's an interesting word, "innocent." How many men do you know who can claim to be truly innocent?

Zevran: But if you're talking generalities, such as children and relatives and bystanders and such… never on purpose, but it happens.

Zevran: It's unfortunate, but death comes to us all. If not me, then some wasting disease. Or a fall down the stairs. Or at the hands of a darkspawn. It's all relative in the end.

Zevran: "Death happens," as we like to say. And when I get paid for it, death happens more often.

-

Zevran: In Antiva, being a Crow gets you respect. It gets you wealth. It gets you women… and men, or whatever it is you might fancy.

Zevran: But that does mean doing what is expected of you, always. And it means being expendable. It's a cage, if a gilded cage. Pretty. But confining.

-

Davrin: Lucanis, how do you decide when one of your targets deserves to die?

Lucanis: Usually when the client pays up front.

Davrin: I'm serious. Do you just kill anyone?

Lucanis: No. There has to be merit.

Davrin: "Merit?" Who decides that?

Lucanis: The Talon of the house.

Davrin: And then you just carry out the order?

Lucanis: It's my job.

Davrin: Must be tough to sleep at night.

-

Lucanis: You kill for a living, too, Davrin. How do you sleep at night?

Davrin: Like a baby. The things I hunt are pure evil. Monsters. There are no shades of grey with darkspawn. But you...

Lucanis: Provide a service.

Davrin: What if your target doesn't deserve to die?

Lucanis: Who does? Good, bad, everyone dies eventually. We just speed things up.

-

Emmrich: Do you have any say in your... targets?

Lucanis: You want to know if my victims deserved it.

Emmrich: Forgive me, I shouldn't have asked.

Lucanis: Everyone wonders.

Lucanis: I've never killed an innocent, by my count.

Lucanis: I cannot say if yours would agree.

-

Emmrich: Lucanis, do the implications of your work never trouble you?

Lucanis: Everyone on this team has killed before. I'm hardly unique.

Emmrich: Yes, of course. But in your case, it's a profession, rather than an act of necessity.

Lucanis: I'm not sure the Venatori or the Antaam see the distinction as you do.

-

Emmrich: I find it extremely interesting, Lucanis, that you consider the point of view of your enemies in battle.

Lucanis: I have to. It's much more difficult to find and kill them, otherwise.

Emmrich: Exactly! A utilitarian attitude towards death, and yet you extend empathy to your victims.

Lucanis: Not that much empathy.

Emmrich: Enough to wonder how the Venatori and Antaam view your actions.

Lucanis: Death comes to everyone, in time. I get paid to deliver it. Like a letter not everyone wants to read.

-

I think about this a lot. I'm always... surprised when I see the talk that they're supposedly trying to make Lucanis into the perfect "cinnamon roll" in Veilguard, because his sweet personality doesn't "match" his profession and background. Like, no? That's a very surface level of looking at it, I think.

Zevran is like this, too. He is an incredibly chill guy, and when you romance him, he is also very sweet and vulnerable, despite being an assassin. They're not that different in that department. They were both trained to be assassins since they were children. They're both traumatized in various ways. But neither of them acts like a bloodthirsty, evil freak. But they both also take pride in the job they do (or did), and how well they can do it, and have no intention of stopping. And yet they both express surprising empathy. (Zevran argues against annulling the Circle! Quite extensively!) And they make pretty much the exact same arguments about being killers for hire, as shown above.

Death is a natural part of life. Sometimes it just comes sooner, because we're there to deliver it. There's (almost) no such thing as an innocent person, so my victims aren't innocent people. Therefore, I've never killed an innocent in my entire life, as far as I know. (At least not intentionally.)

And that's interesting and fun about them! It's beautifully deranged. Lucanis completes an assassination mission, slitting somebody's throat or what have you, and then goes on his cosy coffee break, satisfied with a job well done.

The fact that they both say that they've never, in their opinion, assassinated "an innocent", so it's all good, doesn't automatically make it true and doesn't mean it's not complicated, however. Not every line of dialogue can be taken at face value. As video game players, we're rather desensitized to this, but hearing this should normally be at least a little alarming. For a regular person, at least. And it is for the people in the game! Like Emmrich and Davrin. Davrin has several banters with Lucanis about it. Like, who decides when somebody deserves to die and which contract's going to get carried out? Well, the "CEO" of "the company," of course! What could ever go wrong that way? Emmrich tries to coax Lucanis into saying that he does feel something about the whole thing, because he really wants it to be true. While Lucanis is very matter of fact about it. He knows what the Crows are, and that's it. He doesn't glamorize or demonize it.

So, it definitely isn't that "Veilguard says that Lucanis has never done anything wrong ever in his life," just like Origins doesn't do it with Zevran. Both the men's attitude towards killing is warped in an interesting way, completely in line with their background and upbringing. It shows when Lucanis argues with Davrin about them both being killers, because it completely escapes him (or maybe he ignores it for the sake of the argument) how the killing he does (contracts where the targets tend to be people) and the killing Davrin (a monster hunter, a darkspawn slayer) does is of different kind entirely. His logic is flawed at that point. But to him, it boils down to the fact that "it's just a job," and "killing is killing," and "death is death" regardless of form, and that rightfully baffles Davrin to no end. If anything, it shows how the Antivan Crows are taught to hand wave the issue, because the arguments Lucanis and Zevran both present are too similar to be anything else.

Of course, Lucanis, unlike Zevran, as the grandson of the First Talon and her favourite, might have had some extra privileges and wiggle space in comparison, which might have allowed him to bend the rules sometimes, give him space to show more compassion and act more heroically, because people are complex and there are many layers to what each person might consider right and wrong (e.g. killing is okay in various circumstances, and slavers in particular can get fucked - hell, we do it in video games all the time), but still. The fact that his grandmother wanted to tap a new market, so she made Lucanis specialize for hunting mages, which ultimately led to him killing a lot of Venatori and blood mages, makes it cleaner, which is nice, but then again, we hardly know the full extent of all his work. Moreover, when you ask Zevran to tell you stories about his jobs, you don't get much dirt out of him, either. He talks about some of the goofiest ones he's had. One of his targets that he (unsuccessfully) participated in taking out, a royal that got his position through plotting and murder, he also describes as somebody so immoral he basically deserved it. Also very clean. (Compare both these guys with somebody like Blackwall who truly committed a despicable act of murder for money that we do know of. And this single crime sounds so much more upsetting than anything either Lucanis or Zevran describe. None of the things Zevran says is as awful, besides the murder of his lover, which is framed like it wasn't really his fault, because he was misled.)

It's also worth noting that Zevran talks about how he was the best the Crows had before he left and how it brought him respect, wealth, women, men, or "whatever it is you might fancy." All in all, it comes with benefits. By his own admission, he was well off. But of course that came with a catch, as well. The "gilded cage" Zevran talks about. But that's not what made him leave. It was the plotting, backstabbing, and ever present distrust in the end, which led to the biggest mistake he'd ever made. Much like him, Lucanis also mentions that he had a comfortable life before getting captured, in the same quest where he also talks about how he didn't actually have full control of his life. ("Even before I was captured, my life was not really my own. So much had been determined for me.") The gilded cage comes up yet again. And it was plotting and backstabbing that made him lose a year of his life in the underwater prison.

My point is: Lucanis and Zevran are both assassins, because that's what they've always been, they were trained to be assassins since they were kids, they have a very pragmatic approach to death and killing, which they were most likely taught or perhaps were forced to develop, and they both take pride in how good they are at their job, and express no intention of ever stopping. And yet they both show that they have a good heart in various other ways, turn out to be friendly and incredibly loyal, and even very sweet as lovers. Because people can be complex, and so can be fictional characters. Yes, they're very different men, with different problems and personalities, yet also not that different.

You can't think that Lucanis is "too good" without also thinking that Zevran is "too good." You can't have this problem with Veilguard unless you also have it with Origins, is what I'm saying. And I think this may also apply to some of the other Crows we meet in Veilguard.

[hollowed-theory-hall]

What are your thoughts on the possibility of Petunia redeeming herself or atoning for her abuse of Harry? This is more ramblings and musing then coherent ask, sorry.

You mentioned in a previous post that while she might not love him, she is concerned for her nephew’s safety - as well as that her emotions towards Harry are quite complex (similarly to her emotions towards and relationship with Lily, post-magic revelation).

There are many fics where Petunia does eventually break the cycle of abuse she and Vernon perpetuate on Harry (but usually this is the result of either divorcing Vernon or her husband outright dying), but I’m kind of curious as to what you think in your analysis of her character.

Petunia is a tough nut to crack for me when it comes to fics where she is redeemed.

At the very least, the extreme neglect and enforced silence that Harry is raised in just…it’s terrible when you look at it more deeply than the early books intend.

Which is made worse still by later on, when she swings a frying pan at his head (Chamber of Secrets, I think?).

In the first books, I get that as the target audience was young kids, not much gravitas was placed in Harry’s treatment in the hands of the Dursley’s - they were the bad family he escaped into the magical world from, the anti-thesis to the Weasley family later, meant to seem more caricature and buffoonish.

If that frying pan had hit Harry, though? Depending on how hard Petunia swung it, no matter that she was concerned for Dudley (after Harry didn’t even use magic, just pretended to), that could have killed him.

We know Dudley beat Harry quite often with his friends, and Vernon at the very least threatened to do so (and from some of Harry’s lines, likely went through with said threats at times), but little about Petunia’s abuse of Harry is mentioned except in the very early books - her shaving his hair except for his bangs for example, leaving him to go to school mortified - so there’s no indication that she regularly threatened him physically over the emotional abuse, but still.

Not to mention the potential for neglect/abuse that Petunia herself went through, Lily being their parent’s favored child over her, how that in turn also affected her relationship with her sister, and then how that is turned on to Harry…

Petunia’s character, and redemption/atonement for Harry’s abuse is such an interesting concept.

Personally, I was never interested in a Petunia redemption arc. I think she's just as bad, if not worse than Vernon. So I'm going to have to disagree with you.

It's not that Petunia's sitting there feeling bad about how she and Vernon treat Harry and wish she could stop it — she doesn't. It's very clear throughout the books that she isn't remorseful at all.

Her feelings about Harry are complex because Harry is Lily's son. And as bitter and jealous as Petunia is, I think, she used to love her sister. Used to even be protective of her. So, deep down, I don't think she wants Harry dead or seriously hurt (to her standard), but at the same time, she feels justified in hurting him and treating him as subhuman.

See, Vernon truly does hate wizards. He fears magic, he loves normalcy, and he despises the "freaks" that essentially represent everything he hates. He's straightforward and completely honest in his approach.

The reason I sometimes consider Petunia worse, is becouse she isn't honest, she's a fucking hypocrite.

She wanted to be a witch. She wanted to be special and go to wizard school like Lily. She was jealous of Lily that she got to do magic and go to Hogwarts.

Petunia started calling wizards freaks and latched onto normalcy as a way to cope with not being special. I mean, she was told that magic exists, that there's a whole special world of magic out there, but that she isn't special enough to become part of it.

So young Petunia coped by going in the opposite direction. She became as normal as can be. Started claiming anyone special was a "freak" even when deep down she fucking knows that if she got a chance she'd leave and go to Hogwarts in a heartbeat. That deep down she wants to be special.

She transferred that jealousness and bitterness, then toward the wizarding world as a whole onto Harry personally, which is so unfair. Like, I find it disgusting, I find it disgusting how righteous she feels treating him the way they do. She is very similar to Snape in this regard (projecting her problems with Harry's parent onto Harry), just without any of the redeeming qualities since she isn't even all that smart, and she wouldn't give a shit if all her neighbors died one day (Snape would). And Snape was better to Harry than Petunia, let's be real, being an ass to a kid is not the same as starving a kid and locking him in a cupboard.

But I do want to point out, that she doesn't have the excuse of a cycle of abuse (I'm saying excuse because that's what it is. Tragic backstory can be used to explain characters' actions but it doesn't absolve them) becouse Petunia wasn't abused or particularly neglected. We have no indication she was, and I think it's more likey she was treated well.

We're told their parents loved having a witch in the house by Petunia in PS, but when we see Snape's memories, apparently their parents urged a pre-Hogwarts Lily not to do magic. They feared it until it was explained to them. Petunia is biased in what she says. Because while they were supportive of Lily once they understood, I don't believe they ever mistreated Petunia, and I don't think she is meant to be read as neglected.

I mean, Lily wasn't even home most of the year, Petunia was getting all of their parents' attention year-round, and during the breaks, they probably dotted on Lily because they hadn't seen her in months. This isn't neglect or abuse. This is Petunia being a petulant child who didn't get to be showered in attention all the time because her parents wanted to hear from the daughter they only got to see, like, 3 months a year.

I don't think either Lily or Petunia were abused or neglected, and I find it somewhat silly to try and justify Petunia by giving her a tragic backstory when the books make her reasons to hate Harry very clear. These being jealousy and pettiness.

So, I'm not interested in a redemption arc or atonement arc for Petunia or Vernon for that matter. I think neither of them deserves it and the only atonement I'd be interested in for them is a prison sentence for child abuse and neglect.

Yes, Petunia may not beat Harry physically as often as Vernon or Dudley, but she lets them. She watched him be chased by Marge's dog and laughed. She approved of Vernon's and Dudley's treatment of Harry because if she didn't, she wouldn't have let it happen. She stopped Vernon from throwing Harry out of the house when Dumbledore sent a threatening letter to her in OotP; if she cared to stop the abuse she didn't actively participate in herself, she had the power to do so, but didn't. Becouse she thought Harry deserved it. She mistreated him just as much. Looking at him with disgust and scorn and calling him a freak is abuse. Starving and locking him up is abuse. She isn't any better than Vernon.

The only Dursley I can see redeemed is Dudley. He started his journey in the books (btw, in that scene, Petunia thinks Dudley is "too sweet" for telling Harry he isn't a waste of space) and he actually was a child, like Harry. He did what his parents did like every child does. But he shows signs of improvement after Harry saves him from the dementors. He realizes his parents are full of shit.

So, yeah, Dudley is the only Dursley I'm interested in a redemption for. Petunia and Vernon deserve a prison sentence.

[erinwantstowrite]

what would be the reaction of each one of the bats to peter hugging them out of the blue ?

i actually have an entire page in my notebook dedicated to keeping track of this (mostly it was a prompt to get in the writing mood but now it's a reference)

Dick: obviously met with joy and an immediate hug back, they will not be letting go until 30 minutes later. he is crying but trying not to let Peter tell that he is. yes he does this nearly every time

Bruce: i think he would cry. Bruce doesn't cry often (in front of people at least) but if this happened he would get all teary eyed. mostly because he's thinking back to when Dick was that age and he would hug Bruce + he knows it's a big sign of trust if Peter is hugging you. he'd also hug Peter back but it'd take him a second to figure out what's going on

Jason: freezes for long enough that Peter pulls away and says 'sorry.' this happens a few times before Jason is used to it and he hugs Peter back. he also now has to make up for how he reacted before so Peter's the only one allowed to hug him for more than five seconds (I hc that Jay isn't great with physical affection like he was Before but he does like physical affection.)

Tim: he's used to Dick's random hugs so while he wasn't expecting it the first time and he took a second, he gets the hang of this very fast and he hugs Peter back every time

Steph: absolutely overjoyed. she'll be confused but she's the one who hugs him back and swings him around. she will continue to be happy for the rest of the day. she's more used to Peter hugs (1. because of Dick, just like Tim but also 2. because Peter isn't as hesitant around her).

Duke: confusion, awkward hug with a pat on the back the first few times. the more hugs he gets, the more comfortable he is with it. the first hug = "If anything happens to this kid I will end the world as we know it." and by the fourth surprise hug Duke has learned to hug Peter first

Cass: she's not surprised at all. she knew it would be coming and by the time Peter figures out he wants to hug her, she's opened her arms. i think Cass would love gentle hugs for herself, but often knows what type of hugs other people need/like best. like sometimes you just need a hug that crushes you a little bit and other times you just want someone there. Cass has it figured out

Dami: SWEARS that Peter is being so weird and so awful but the longer he's away from the League and the more he hangs out with his family the more he understands that he likes physical affection. He hugs Peter back but it's hesitant the first few times. Later on, though, Dami accepts and gives hugs. and if Dami is sitting on the couch Peter will flop onto the couch with his entire body weight. Dami promises to kill him every time but never goes through with it. they'll chill there for a little bit. classic sibling bothering.

Babs: has been used to hugs from Dick for a while, but she's surprised to realize that Peter trusts her that much. that's also when she realizes how much she cares about him and, like Duke, decides that if anything happened to Peter, she'd make someone rue the day

Alfred: just like with all of his grandchildren, Alfie doesn't initiate the hug first. but they know that if they want a hug, Alfie's there for them.

[trappedinafantasy37]

Since Minthara presents an exterior shell made of steel, and she's sometimes mean, and is an absolute badass in battle, she is often treated and perceived as someone who feels no emotions. And this often occurs to individuals who do put on such a tough exterior. It also does not help that many people perceive evil characters as incapable of doing or feeling anything other than evil. That love and evil are innately incompatible.

But Minthara is not emotionless, she does feel things. Sadness, grief, fear, loneliness, anger, anxiety, paranoia, vengeance, love. She can laugh, she can tell jokes, she can cry, she can smile, and she does get upset at things. If anything, she is emotionally repressed and emotionally guarded and the times where she does really express her more negative and vulnerable emotions is when it becomes too much to hold back and it comes out a little over the top. We have to remember she comes from a society in which such outward emotional expression would be rewarded with social punishment, religious scorn, or even death. So she really doesn't have the healthiest mechanisms to express her emotions.

She hides what she feels all the time as a means of keeping herself safe from punishment. She keeps it to herself cause she does not want you to see her as weak, as she would have been in the past. And she certainly does not want you or anyone else to punish her for it either. She hides behind little pet names and even using words from languages she knows you don't understand as that is the only way she feels safe being vulnerable with you. In her past, her love was rewarded with new wounds and new scars. She is terrified to open up to you, fearing that you will hurt her because she loves you. That her love for you won't actually be enough to stop you from hurting her. And she will only ever admit she loves you in contexts that have a high risk of death because there's really not much for her to lose at that point so she may as well tell you.

She also has a habit of intellectualizing what she feels and experiences so that they appear as "rational" and "logical" rather than emotional and to distance herself from her emotions. She says it takes a sharp mind to have sympathy for someone who suffers unnecessarily. She is trying to make it appear that emotions like sympathy is a matter of the mind, not the heart. That it is a mark of intelligence, because otherwise it would be the mark of weakness.

She blames herself for her own torments, like she deserved the awful things that happened to her. She frames the situation like she is more at fault and more deserving of blame, than the people who hurt her. It is the only way she can find any reason in what happened to her and any reason in her tormentors actions. That she did something wrong and induced someone's wrath upon her, rather than acknowledging that the person who hurt her is just a bad person.

She deserved what Ketheric and Orin did to her because she was "weak, passive, proud". That her emotional state had blinded her from the trap that was set, giving Ketheric and Orin ample opportunity to attack her. That if she hadn't felt those exact emotions, then it wouldn't have happened. She could have seen the trap coming, or she could have fought back.

Or if you attempt to tell her that her childhood was rough and her mother abused her, she immediately deflects by saying, "it could have been worse" and therefore, what she did actually experience wasn't really that bad. And yeah, sure, maybe she needed certain lessons given that she lived in a cruel and dangerous society like Menzoberranzan where she had to be prepared for violence at all times. But trauma is not born of love, it is born of fear, of pain, of agony, and her mother still tried to kill her. Regardless of her mother's intent, it was the first broken bond of trust and it left a mark on Minthara. Where she began to believe that her mother would torment her for torments sake, and she had doubts on whether or not her mother actually loved her.

When you encounter the first Orin imposter, it's pretty damn obvious she is terrified. And you kinda gotta squeeze it out of her to admit that she's afraid. Where it's "I'm afraid of Orin because she is capable of this, this, and this, and you should be too" rather than "I am afraid of Orin because she hurt me." And she begs you, BEGS, to keep her safe because she knows her fear makes her vulnerable to Orin.

She doesn't even truly acknowledge that she wasn't at fault for what Orin did to her until Orin is dead. She doesn't start putting the blame on Orin until Orin is dead. She doesn't go through the emotional process of sympathizing with herself until Orin is dead. And she doesn't admit that she undoubtedly has trauma, until Orin is dead. She gets so wrapped up, and so lost in her own fear and paranoia that she never has the room to properly process the things that happen to her. That her primary concern right now is keeping you, the others, and herself safe and her emotions can wait because wallowing in them will only make her weak. Only does the distance of death give her the room to start healing. Only problem is that there have always been threats and they never end, they never stop. So it is rare for Minthara to ever have a moment of peace and safety to work through what she feels and they just get backed up. Ignoring your problems does not make them go away.

So you wanna know what will happen when an embrace Durge betrays her? She will fall to her death, a knife in her belly, blaming herself for your betrayal. All her worst fears have come to pass and you were indeed a lover who hurt her because she loved you, and that she was a fool to ever trust you at all. That if she didn't love you, maybe you wouldn't have hurt her. She doesn't understand your reasoning, she can't make sense of it, she doesn't know why you'd betray her, so it must have been her fault for thinking you'd be different. That if she hadn't been so loyal, so devoted, that she could have been spared. That her belief that you would rule together is what damned her. She will die blaming herself for her own murder before she ever gets a chance to start blaming you.

[phoenixblaze1412]

hawoo i like your writings soooooo much!!! can i request something like dottore as our father? like we're his child, literally. can be biological or adopted, up to u!!

His Legacy

Dottore doesn't have the time nor energy to find a lover and create a child with them. He doesn't even want to adopt one, there's a lot of processes that needs to be done before he can officially adopt said child.

If he wants a child, he prefers them to have his genes, a child that can follow in his footsteps and have the same knowledge as he does but from a different perspective of theirs.

What better way to make a child than in the laboratory.

After a month of finding the perfect resources and killing countless women to obtain the proper egg cells, he was able to create an infant, you.

He welcomed you into the world with a grin, his eyes staring back at yours, just the same color as his. He noticed your hair was blue as well, with the tips being a different color, possibly from the unknown mother's genes but he doesn't mind.

The segments all stood on one side of the room while staring at you, currently being held by Dottore himself as he held you out to the segments.

"What is that tiny thing?" "It looks like us but the tips of their hair is a different color." "Are they a failed segment?"

"This child you see before you is mine. I created them in the laboratory using a random woman's egg cell and adding my sperm cell to it. I expect the rest of you to take care of them as well. As for the name... let's call it (Y/n)."

You weren't much of a talker through the years of growing up but Dottore did found out your teeth were sharp like his, he was proud of himself to be able to create you that got most of his characteristics.

He personally taught you everything he knows, from the concept of science itself all the way to the medical field. You're already an expert at opening up a corpse at the fine age of nine without even vomiting or even disgusted at the sight and scent of blood.

Sometimes, the other harbingers would forcefully carry you out of the laboratory just to be able to enjoy the outside world and explore more, much to Dottore's annoyance.

Without the others knowing, Dottore would call a segment and order them to follow you and make sure that you're okay without being caught by his fellow harbingers.

You were given the nickname 'Mini Dottore' by Childe.

Whenever the eleventh harbinger called you that nickname, he would end up in your father's laboratory with a large bloody bite wound on either his arms or legs, courtesy of you.

On special experiments that requires a living test subject, Dottore wouldn't allow you to join in on the experiment, you would be taking the job of an assistant if an occasion arises.

Yes he taught you how to hold a scalpel and how to open up a body but he did it with a dead one. He didn't want you to kill a living organism yet, he may be crazy but he's not crazy enough to let his child watch a person screaming to death.

The segments would use you as a secret weapon if they were told to ask Pantalone for more fundings for their projects. They knew how the regrator couldn't say no to you. You may be a mini version of your father but you're way more adorable than him is what Pantalone stated.

We know Dottore's hair is usually around shoulder length but he doesn't know how to style it. With you in the picture, he had to deal with your hair because it would be everywhere and it is a big problem. It's either he cuts it short with scissors or style it.

He doesn't style it. He just grabs the nearest sharp object he could use and cut it short. He did thought of styling your hair like his but the idea was quickly thrown to the trash when you pouted at him. Luckily he knows how to do a ponytail, although quite messy but he makes sure it doesn't get in the way of your tasks.

Dottore would often be puzzled whenever he would see you caring for animals that were supposed to be used for his experiments. He concluded that this kind personality of yours could have belonged to the woman he killed back then, whoever she was. At least he didn't have to tell you who your mother was if you ever asked him, you were made in a pod chamber in his laboratory after all.

It may not seem like it but Dottore is proud to have you as his child. Aside from the new opinion and perspective he benefited from you, you grew on him and made him care for you.

'Father's little helper' is the nickname Dottore would coo at you whenever you assisted him with his experiments.

The segments treated you as their little sibling, making sure you're safe from harm. Doesn't matter if they get injured themselves because they can handle it but you on the other hand, are more fragile than them.

Dottore promised himself that he would never make you experience the things he went through in his past. He would never make you feel like a monster like he had endured back then.

Some would call you the second harbinger's apprentice, others would call you his pet.

The harbingers however, calls you Dottore's legacy.

[pollux-starsz]

As always, dca slasher au belongs to @wyervan ! Check them out!💖💕

BRIGHT COLORS, EYESTRAIN under the cut.

do you see the vision of them all on the phone together

i was maaayyyybbeee listening to jack stauber's "baby hotline" while making this

Part of me wishes Moon's hair turned out a bit better but I didn't feel like fixing it last minute💔

Rambles!!

- Hear me out but I have this vision of them in a dress while she's in a suit and then she's just checking them out the entire time. Can you blame her, have you SEEN Moon in a dress. And the chest hair? Yeah, she's definitely checking them out.

- Sun intentionally doesn't have the entire phone showing because he's unaware that Moon and Kalamela have spoken about her knowledge on the killings. (In a sense, he never calls at the wrong time. Always after they've finished talking about it!)

Adding onto that, I oh-so excitedly want to talk more about that so hear we go! Moon found out that she knew about 4ish months into knowing her, it was after he'd found her in the back of the restaurant, drunk out her mind after 7 overtime shifts in a row. She just ended up saying how she knew everything but didn't want them to get into more trouble since they were nice to her. And not a lot of people were nice and stayed for so long! To her, 4 months felt like 4 years. They would talk over the phone afterwards and he'd always check in to "make sure she's okay", which he was! But it was also to make sure she didn't tell anyone or did anything to rat them out. Sun isn't aware because Moon doesn't think it's any of his business what the two of them talk about together. Not that she'd ever rat them out, she isn't getting herself killed over that!

- TW: Mentions of substance abuse for this one.

Kalamela has a history of drug abuse, and she does still use sometimes. But she's been trying to go clean ever since Ethan's dad didn't feel like being a huge part of the picture. Even better that the biological mother couldn't care for him either. She'd often use until she could barely think straight. The first 3 months in knowing the boys she'd still been using, but after Sun caught her, the two of them forced her into rehab and since then she's been clean. Ever since the two found out about Ethan, they'd been more strict about checking in on her, whether she likes it or not. Sun's more worried that Ethan might be affected if she ends up using again, and yes, so Moon! She's just scared that they'd abandon her, Ethan would be taken away and she'd most likely be killed off because of it. Whether she's hurt the kid or not. For the most part, her and Moon made a deal to go on a walk any time she felt the urge to use again. And if they couldn't go for a walk, like if it was raining or if he was closing for the night instead, she'd paint or sculpt. The original concept for this drabble of lore was way darker and I did NOT need or want my colorful girl to just be killed off so I had to make it better and have them try to offer help so she'd stay clean =')

- She took them to an expensive, and I mean EXPENSIVE, restaurant that was a few ways away from the Arcade (opposite way to Crystal Cove, where she works), and she spoiled them shitless. And out of the blue, so Moon asked what was up and she said she wanted to do something special for them because they've done so much for her. And she didn't have enough time off of work to do something more proper so she thought food would be the best option because they like going out to eat. Her love language is physical affection but when she feels like that isn't enough, she resorts to gifts and outings and anything else that may be entertaining to them!

- I like to think that the way she confessed was just Sun and Moon staring at her quietly as she stutters and tries to word it as best as possible while also trying to explain that she likes both of them and would love if it worked out between all three of them but it's just the boys trying to decipher a bunch of "Uh, um, uhm, uhn, mm, hmm" and random words because she's freaking out. They did, in the end, figure out what she was saying! Now did they accept her confession and say they like her back?! I don't know, I didn't get that far in my head yet. You share your thoughts on that💔

- I always imagined her being badass and driving up on her motorcycle to pick the boys up and they just stare in awe because she's so fucking cool. Like yes that's their cool motorcycle chick colorful sweet as candy girlfriend let them admire her!!!!

- For the two of them, they all have their own ways of having a moment. For Moon, she knows he likes to be held since she likes it too. They both have some kind of urge to be held and cradled due to some sort of either a past experience or its just a feeling. Moon likes to be held more than when he holds her but it's also a nice feeling to know someone feels safe in your arms, right? For Sun, she likes to just let him go on and on about his day, something he likes and he does the same for her! Just two pretty ladies chilling and rambling each others ears off while holding hands and sharing a drink!

end of rambles for 2nite🎉🎉

[fivelila]

The other side of everything

I think all of you have read the repeated sentences about what's wrong with Fivelila. So I thought I'd write my thoughts on it and maybe some of my headcanon.

1) Age gap

Problem: Ritu is 15 years older than Aidan. Five and Lila have an age difference in both directions, mentally he is much older and physically she is older.

My take: About the age of the actors, I'll say this much - the opposite is so common and many people don't find it strange. For example, did you know that Julia Roberts was 23 when her film Pretty Woman came out and that Richard Gere is 19 years older than her? And I haven't noticed anyone being disgusted by how that's possible. I could find some more extreme differences, but I don't think I want to.

Aidan is 21 and yes, he did TUA when he was younger, but a lot of people still think he's a kid. But no, he's not. Deal with it.

My headcanon: Lila is older than she looks. And that's thanks to the Handler and the work she does for the Commissions. Does any of us know how long has she lived somewhere outside of time? Sounds like another possible parallel to me.

2) Lila was cheating on Diego

Problem: Lila was unfaithful to her husband.

My take: Lila made it clear that she wanted a break with Diego and wanted to reconsider their marriage. Yes, the circumstances ended up being pretty wild, but it was more than obvious that she wasn't happy in the marriage. Among other things, it was over six and a half years for her before anything happened with Five. There are countries where such a long separation between spouses could also help to bring about an immediate divorce if necessary.

I also think that the only thing that connected them the most was their children and not that they were compatible as partners. A completely natural thing that happens really often in real life when someone builds a relationship on desire, which they mistake with love.

3) Five is homewrecker

Problem: Five is the reasons why his brother's family fell apart.

My take: It's not true. Five was not the reason that Lila and Diego had problems in their marriage. Yes, she was still his brother's wife and that's a bit morally grey, but their situation was complicated enough (as I wrote in the previous point) and it's completely understandable. By the way, don't people like this family precisely because their morals are often a bit grey? I guess that's probably only true sometimes, huh?

4) Five cheated on Dolores

Problem: Five was unfaithful to Dolores

My take: Sorry, but this is the biggest piece of shit ever. If someone prefers a relationship that Five made up in his mind just to keep himself from going crazy and heal his trauma, then our fandom isn't the one that's wrong. By the way, if Dolores was real and played by Rachel Delduca, she's definitely older too! I couldn't find the exact age, but it's pretty obvious that she's older than Aidan.

5) Five killed Lila's parents

Problem: Five was the killer of Lila's family and Handler could have kidnapped her. Her family may be alive, but it won't change the past.

My take: Yes, this is about the only thing that could never work in another story. Lila gets her family back, but it doesn't change what happened to her. Still, I think even she knows very well what it's like to work for the Commission and what it was like when an order came down. Handler bears most of the blame, even though she wasn't the one who killed them.

My headcanon: I don't think Lila had clean hands either, though we never really saw that much in the story. Still, even she could have been the murderer of some random parents of some random kids because that was her job. For example, she killed several people on the Commission to get access to past records in the barn, so it would be a bit hypocritical for her to blame others for actions that she herself had done before.

If you have any other thing I should discuss, please post it in the comments, I'll do another post about it.

[piratecaptainscaptainpirates]

The thing that really annoys me about the conspiracy theories going around (especially the Izzy-centric ones and especially That One Meta, iykyk) is the complete and utter lack not only of genre awareness but any realistic understanding of how OFMD operates.

If you actually watch the show, you should understand two things.

This is a rom-com. The central romance between Ed and Stede and comedy are therefore the two most core parts of the show, with Ed and Stede's romance taking priority over everything else. That's not to say OFMD doesn't have dark themes, it absolutely does; it's to say that comedy is always important to how the show is written, acted, and filmed. If the most obvious explanation for "what is this line/scenario trying to tell us?" is "it's funny," then that's clearly why the scenario is in the show.

This is not a subtle show. That's not to say it's a simple one; one thing I love about OFMD is all the background details and gags you only pick up on a rewatch. It's amazingly layered and emotional responses by characters are often extremely complex. However, when the show is trying to tell you something, it's not subtle and it never tries to hide it. The closest it ever gets is Ed in the gravy basket, and even then it's written so we find out the instant Ed does and we've already had clues to suspect something from how the mutineers are acting. If you're watching OFMD and thinking "hmm I wonder what they're trying to tell me here," you're probably doing something wrong.

That's why I'm so completely baffled by conspiracies such as

"How much was Ed hallucinating/dreaming??" After he gets out of the gravy basket, none of it. Very obviously none of it. Why would you assume they had time to waste this season on trying to confuse us about what's actually happening?

"What if Ed actually killed Buttons?" Okay, putting aside that just not happening on screen and therefore the most reasonable assumption being that he didn't, what would that actually do for the story? Buttons turning into a seagull underscored season themes of change. Ed killing him would be confusing, weird, and extremely out of character.

"What if Ed was the one who killed Felix the cabin boy?" This one absolutely baffles me. That story is transparently there to show us what Hornigold was like as a captain and illustrate why Ed hates him. Ed doing that instead of Hornigold would be wildly out of character and inconsistent with everything Ed does.

And my favorite, the one that made the author of That One Meta instantly lose all credibility for me when I skimmed and saw it:

"What if Ed and Stede's new shack is stinky because they actually have Izzy's body in there and Ed's in denial of his death, etc. etc."

Well. Given my awareness of the show I'm watching. I feel pretty safe in saying that it's stinky in there because, and I can't stress this enough, this is a comedy and sometimes it is funny for things to be stinky.