#and of having to wrangle the character reactions | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

darkficsyouneveraskedfor · 6 months ago

Text

Dirty Work 53

Warnings: this fic will include dark content such as bullying, familial discord/abuse, and possible untagged elements. My warnings are not exhaustive, enter at your own risk.

This is a dark!fic and explicit. 18+ only. Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.

Summary: You start a new gig and find one of your clients to be hard to please.

Characters: Loki

Note: I always come back to Loki.

As per usual, I humbly request your thoughts! Reblogs are always appreciated and welcomed, not only do I see them easier but it lets other people see my work. I will do my best to answer all I can. I’m trying to get better at keeping up so thanks everyone for staying with me.

Your feedback will help in this and future works (and WiPs, I haven’t forgotten those!) Please do not just put ‘more’. I will block you.

I love you all immensely. Take care. 💖

You walk in circles. The day is long but it’s not over. You can’t let it end. Not without having your peace. You won’t make it through another night like the ones before.

The house is eerily calm, even with your house guests. Frigga and Odin are a useful buffer for their son but you can’t run away forever. Or at all.

You refuse to enter the bedroom, paranoid at being locked in again. So you pace the library, trying to dictate a script in your head. You haven’t found the words, you can barely wrangle in your thoughts. All you know is it has to be said. Especially after today.

You hear footsteps in the hall and stop. You listen as Loki goes into the bedroom then comes back out. You go to the door and open it, peering over as he strides out in a panic. You poke your head around and he sees you, giving a start then a sigh.

“There you are, pet,” he touches his chest, “are you coming to bed? It is late. I’m sure my mother has tired you out.”

You shake your head. He tilts his head and furrows his brow. You back up, leaving the door open, and wait. He hesitates but approaches soon after. He stands in the doorway and stares at you. You curl your fingers then stretch them out, shaking your hands as the tension aches in your knuckles.

“What is it?” He sounds just as afraid as before.

You beckon him inside with a small wave. He frowns but obeys, pulling the door shut behind him. You bring your fingers up and twiddle them against your cheeks. It reminds you of another time, when you would stand at the end of the couch, just out of your father’s grasp, and ask him to take his medicine. You were just as frightened then though for a much different consequence.

“You’ve something to say to me,” he states and his shoulders rise, “well, yes, I’m aware a proposal without a ring is hardly proper, but I thought perhaps, pet, we might choose it together. Hm?”

You shake your head and blink, “no.”

“No?” He says, “you don’t want a ring? Or you’d rather shop alone? I suppose I could--”

“No. That’s what I have to say; no.”

You stare at him, locked in anxiety, waiting for his reaction.

“No... what?” He puts his palms out.

“No.”

“No... no.... No?” He echoes over and over, the word starting to sound nonsensical.

“We can’t be married.”

“What?” His voice spikes, “but darling, you said... yes.”

You didn’t.

“No.”

“Yes,” he counters quickly. “Yes, I’ve already told mother we are to marry and you can’t just say... no?”

“No. Not until we talk.”

“We are talking, pet--”

“About Thor--”

“Darling,” he blusters, “we do not need to—we both know what happened. I put a stop to it and it’s all just fine now, isn’t it?”

“No.”

“Stop saying that.”

“No.”

“Stop-- okay, darling, what can I do? To make this all better?”

“I want to talk about it,” you insist, your heart flipping.

“About what? What is there to say?”

You lower your head and shrug, then look at him again.

“I don’t know... but... you... brought me there. You knew about him, didn’t you? You had to--”

“I know he and Sif...” he stops, nearly choking as his throat bobs. “That he had some liaison with my ex-wife, yes. I knew that.” He grits his teeth and turns to pace himself, “and she was there so why wasn’t he distracted by her? What must he try to take what is mine?”

“Yours?” You wonder.

He puffs through his nose and stops, twisting on his heel to face you, “my guest. My...plus one.” He lies poorly and his eyes list to one side, “pet, he did not hurt you, I made sure of it--”

“He did,” you insist. “He did hurt me. He held me down and... maybe he didn’t do all he could but it still hurt. It still scared me and then you locked me up. You won’t talk to me and you keep me in a closet. Well, Loki, Mr. Laufeyson, whatever I should call you, I’d rather go back to my father then stay any longer if you won’t.”

You're breathless after the deluge flows from you, feeling a little beter for letting it all out. A little braver.

“Don’t,” he points at you, “do not threaten me. Why would you ever go back to that monster? After all I’ve done--”

“I know all you’ve done. Trust me,” you swallow, “and I know what I’ve done and not done. All I have and don’t have. If I am just a burden for you to pick up, I would rather you toss me away now.”

“Toss you—darling, I’ve only just said I would marry you. I think you are confused.”

“I am,” you say, more terse than you mean to, “because you don’t talk to me.”

He takes a breath and lets it out, his lips thinning. He looks at his feet and his shoulders slump. He crosses his arms and raises his head, “I’m talking right now.”

You poke your tongue into your cheek and consider him, “he hurt you too.”

His eyes flick up to the ceiling and he shrugs.

“I saw it.”

“Yes, he is an animal. But I gave him back all the same,” he says defiantly.

You calmly come forward, jittery as you recall that night. The darkness, the scent of dirt, the twigs poking through your dress, and your whimpers. You stop right before him and bring your hands together in front of you.

“Loki,” you say, “thank you.”

He winces, almost as if he’s been struck again, just like that night he fended off his brother.

“You did save me and I know you didn’t have to. But you also don’t need to lock me up.”

He has the guile to look shameful. He moves his head one way then the other, the lines around his mouth deepening, “yes, I suppose...”

“I’ll stay, okay? But... not like that.”

“Alright,” he agrees rigidly, “I won’t keep you in the bedroom.”

“Or this house--”

“What-- where are you going to go?” He sputters as his green eyes gleam at you.

You inhale carefully and put your hands to his chest. He looks down at them and back to your face, “nowhere unless you mean to keep me a prisoner.”

“You said it yourself though, I protected you--”

“Thor is gone.”

“For now,” he glowers.

You huff and close your eyes. Your drag your hands from his chest and he catches them. Before you can draw away, he pulls you back to him.

“Darling, yes, alright. I hear you. I’ve heard all you have to say. Let us put that night behind us. Please.”

You consider him. It’s a tenuous truce, one you don’t entirely trust, but it’s better than before. It’s as much as you can hope for. He is right after all. You have nothing without him. Even the threat of going back to your father is empty.

“Just... say yes for me. Once,” he pleads. You stare up at him blankly. He fidgets and his cheek dimples, “just once. I need to hear yes. So...”

You watch him as his nostrils flare and his hands tighten around yours.

“Yes, let’s put it away,” you agree, “but I won’t forget.”

He nods and his mouth slants, “mm, when did you get so demanding?”

“I’m... not?” You’re stunned by the accusation. “I wouldn’t--”

“For you, yes, you are. Look at you, yanking me on a chain like a dog,” he winks and smirks, slipping his hands down your arms and embracing you, his grip settling on your hips, “I sort of like it.”

“Um, oh,” you bobble with his change in tone, the wrenching in your chest slowly subsiding.

You expected more than that. Maybe yelling, maybe broken things, and all that. There was a time this man brought you into this very room with a leather strap and made his will known. The memory seems far away now.

“Isn’t it nice to say yes?” He coos.

“I... don’t know.”

“Ask me anything and I will say yes,” his focus centers on your lips.

“I... I’m alright,” you smile tremulously. “I’m tired.”

“Yes, darling, I would be ever so happy to carry you to bed,” he is quick as he has you off your feet before you can unravel his words. “As any good fiance might.”

You brace yourself with a palm on his chest as he cradles you in his arms. His strength always surprises you. He carries you effortlessly and turns to the door, crossing briskly and dipping as he angles you toward it.

“If you would, pet, I seem to have my hands full,” he purrs.

You reach and open the door, upended by how it’s all unfolded. What you dreaded didn’t come. There was no explosion, no shrapnel to pick out, no debris. It’s not over but it’s better than it was. No tears, no shouting, no bruises.

He carries you into the hall and through the bedroom door. He kicks the door shut and marches to the bed. He tosses you onto the mattress and you land with a yelp. You have not time to gain your bearings before he’s on you.

“Darling, you had your moment,�� he straddles you and grabs onto your wrists, pinning them beside your head, “I will not hear another no from those lips. Not this night.”

You writhe under him, your insides fluttering as he bends over you, his hot breath cascading over you. As tired as you are, a thrill courses through you. The promise of a release is tempting. All that tension coiled inside you has you bound up in knots.

He leans in and presses his lips to yours. He crushes you under his weight, the mattress compressing beneath you. He is suffocating as he pokes his tongue inside your mouth, humming in delight as he invades. He wiggles his hips against your pelvis and your ribs ache as your breath catches inside.

It isn’t him, it’s someone else, someone bigger. Thor. He’s groping and grabbing at you, laughing at your helpless struggle. You flail beneath him and tears prick.

Your eyes snap open and you nearly bite him. You turn your head away, gasping as you’re caught in a memory. You let out a desperate cry.

“Please, please,” you beg, “I can’t. I can’t...” you gulp and shake your head fervently. “I can’t breathe...”

He relents and sits up, his hair askew as he puffs out. His forehead is lined with worry and his eyes glimmering with shock. He lets go of your wrists and grasps his thighs instead. He stares down at you grimly and carefully climbs off.

“It’s him...” he sits at the foot of the bed with his back to you.

“I’m sorry,” you murmur, “I didn’t... I don’t want to think of him but...”

��Sleep, pet, you’ve earned it,” he slouches forward and drops his head into his hands. “And I’ve earned all I get in turn.”

You stare at his back. You’re relieved and yet you feel horrible. As much as you want to move on, it’s latched onto you; that fear and that futility. You don’t know that this man or the life ahead of you will ever free you from it.

Loki may have saved you from his brother, but you don’t think he can save you from yourself. You have always, always will be, another burden to bear.

✨

After some time, Loki lays down beside you. Your night is no less restless than the ones before. While you may have said more than you ever thought you could, there’s still so much trapped inside of you. Feelings you don’t really understand.

His snoring calms you enough for your eyes to glaze over in bouts. Between, his warmth enshrines you like the blaze of a furnace and finally grows stolid. You get up, surrendering to your consciousness, and go into the bathroom.

You leave the door open as you fill the tub. You step into the placid water and sink to your shoulders. You lean back, muscles easing as you try to wash away the stain you can’t see. You languish there, letting your eyes roll back as the early din settles over you.

You jerk as suddenly you feel a brush along your hair. You look up as Loki stands above you. You cross your arms over yourself out of instinct and his lips twitch. He doesn’t say a word as he undresses.

You’re silent as he urges you forward and slides in behind you, pulling you over him. He reclines with you in his arms and you feel his heart against your back. You stare at the ceiling as your head rests on his shoulder.

“Mrs. Laufeyson,” he muses, “I like the sound of that better this time.”

You bat your lashes and crane your head awkwardly, trying to see him, “is that... what I’ll be called?”

“Darling, of course,” he chuckles, “what else?”

“Hm,” you chew on the words then mouth them silently; ‘Mrs. Laufeyson’. It sounds... strange.”

“Well I’m afraid it’s the only name I have, pet.”

“It sounds... old.”

“Old?” He utters, “you are an adult, are you not? Thirty-one years on this planet isn’t very much yet enough.”

“Sure, I guess,” you mull, soothed as he brushes his fingertips up and down your stomach.

“Wait...” he drawls thoughtfully, “does Mr. Laufeyson sound old?”

“Well... it suits you better than me.”

“Are you saying I’m old?”

“No, I--” you bite down and your brows nearly meet your hairline, “how old are you?”

“Mmph,” he scoffs, “hardly matters.”

“Shouldn't I know? If we’re too get married.”

“Not much older than you,” he sighs.

“But you are older.”

“Is this important?” He intones.

“I just never thought of it.”

“So don’t,” he says.

“Why not?”

“My, my, aren’t you petulant?” He pinches your side and you yipe, “pet, I almost miss the quiet little thing flitting through my halls...” he flutters his fingers, tickling you until you bubble out a giggle and catch in your hand. “Almost.”

#loki #dark loki #simp loki #that last tag can't be avoided #dark!loki #loki x reader #fic #dark fic #dark!fic #dirty work #series #maid au #au #mcu #marvel #thor #avengers

178 notes · View notes

robogalaxies · 2 months ago

Text

☎️ - The Unneeded But Happily Researched Crumbs Of Everything We Know About The Commissioner

“If anything happens… I’ll deny I ever knew you.”

The Commissioner is, as we all know, a mystery, and I hope it stays that way, but I put it upon myself to wrangle every little tidbit of information we have on him outside of giving cases! I do this solely because of three things:

I have nothing better to do

I find myself strangely endeared to his character (i.e. I do a gay little "favorite character" clap every time I hear him mentioned)

I want to share all my random knowledge with you all because I go digging for it in every S&M media there is

I'll be dividing this up into 4 sections for ease of access: comics lore, games lore (HtR, Telltale, TTIV), cartoon lore, and misc. lore. Some things MAY be assumptions based on other characters' reactions to what he MIGHT be saying or say about him, sure, but I will source all information on where to find it & provide images when they can be easily provided!~ If anything new comes up or I have forgotten something, I'll update. Until then... hope you love both hyperlinks and "at least I laughed at it" style commentary! ☎️

Comics Lore

The introduction of The Commissioner, as with everyone else! Small tidbits of his quite understated character outside of being The Phone are here, obviously, including:

the Commissioner's one and only speech bubble! (Bad Day on The Moon)

the beginnings of the implied "I love you" statements towards Sam & Max with an "XOXO" on a postcard (Bad Day on The Moon)

he shows SOME disdain towards Sam & Max's attitudes towards achieving their goals, being the one specifically to tell them to go on a road trip (On the Road #1, "Prisoners of The Casbah")

Games Lore

Hit the Road

The Commissioner is barely a character in this game (big surprise, right?) and you do not get much information on him minus the bare minimum of "he is Sam & Max's boss," so there's not much to be said here. In fact, I don't know why I mentioned it. Great game, though, go play it! Now! I'll wait until you get back :)

Save The World

Welcome back! There're only minor silly tidbits here, but they're needed for this comprehensive list. Everything is worth mentioning about a character with nothing to his name but "The Commissioner." I mean, you're reading this post, right?

wears bifocals! 👓 ("The Mole, The Mob, and The Meatball")

was once in contact with & worked with Harry Moleman, as he sent him to be the mole for the Toy Mafia. Crossover of the century... I wonder if he knows how far poor Harry has fallen ("The Mole, The Mob, and The Meatball")

Takes Sam & Max out for dinner sometimes, apparently, if they do well enough on their cases! Squirrel Garden sounds disgusting, but I'd be jazzed too if they also had the free breadsticks ("The Mole, The Mob, and The Meatball")

likely just a quick jab, so I don't really know why I'm putting it here other than humor, but Max apparently doesn't trust him! I hope that gets solved; Commissioner is sorta signing his meager paychecks ("Bright Side of The Moon")

Beyond Time and Space

The middle child of the Telltale trilogy, this game has barely anything in terms of tidbits given that he really only assigns the beginning cases in 1 out of 5 episodes, and even then, that doesn't give a single thing away. Despite this, there's gotta be one or two tidbits we should learn, right? Sure!

is aware of Sam's insistence on answering the phone & seemingly asks straight up why he didn't answer (What's Up, Beelzebub?)

Can confirm an "I love you" towards Max... d'aww! (What's Up, Beelzebub?)

The Devil's Playhouse

The Commissioner barely shows up or is referenced in this game, mainly due to the story existing outside of the common framing of "assigning cases," but we learn two small yet revealing tidbits:

British Columbian! 🇨🇦 (The City That Dares Not Sleep)

Has provided books on cultural and racial sensitivity for Sam & Max because they kept "reducing people to obvious stereotypes." (The City That Dares Not Sleep)

This Time, It's Virtual!

The phone exists yet again... but in your VR HEADSET! Some fairly funny Commissioner lore in this one even if you, like almost everyone I've seen in this fandom, dislike or even hate this game:

His family is in hiding, and I'm assuming Witness Protection?! Must come with the territory (phone call after completing first three Freelance Training segments in-game)

Can confirm an "I love you" of some sort said to Sam ... d'aww! (phone call after completing first three Freelance Training segments in-game)

Signs off even official, legal wanted posters with "The Commissioner," asking people to seek the help of Freelance Police & associates himself as PART of the Freelance Police!

signs your certificate at the end of the game, which mentions the Illuminati in conjunction with his name for some reason! What kind of policing are we running here....??

Cartoon Lore

Truly, the 90s cartoon is where most Commissioner lore lies if we take into consideration all of these happen within the same universe, which we likely shouldn't. This being said, the cartoon provides us with the only picture we have of the guy (see post photo above the cut). Alongside this, we also get a LOT more information than any other media:

before we even start the information in the ACTUAL cartoon, Sam & Max say within the show's initial Bible believe he's out to kill them, in some way, saying they're the "troubled, ungrateful sons he never had." That's so sweet ... in a way. As well, there's a very small section dedicated to the Commissioner as a character, though not much is said that we don't already know (Sam & Max Cartoon Series Bible)

has Geek's number, or at least a number to the Sub-Basment of Solitude, as he calls it more than once over the course of the series, which makes me wonder how well he may or may not know Geek! Like a grandniece or something (episodes 1, "The Thing That Wouldn't Stop It" & 3b, "They Came from Down There")

cried over the story of Sam & Max having to get rid of John, their beloved alligator son... must be a shared parental instinct (episode 6a, "That Darn Gator")

apparently sends sticker books in case briefings on a semi-regular basis, as Sam comments that he "loves when the Commissioner does that" as if it has happened before - how whimsical! (episode 6b, "We Drop at Dawn")

confirms the Commissioner as a legitimate police commissioner alongside being Sam & Max's boss (episode 6b, "We Drop at Dawn")

seemingly very fussy if not given his private bathroom and honor bar. Fancy stuff, Commissioner, & he apparently allows Sam and Max up there! Or not, they just sorta bust in. Whatever! Sharing is caring (episode 6b, "We Drop at Dawn")

the Commissioner has a DAUGHTER! and somehow, Sam & Max got invited to her WEDDING! I think she's beautiful and I hope she doesn't resent her special day getting ruined (episode 11a, "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang")

that iconic, signed, chest only photo given with the solemn, loving, promise of "If anything ever happens, I'll deny I ever knew you," followed by Max crying that it's "It's just... so him." - what a loving, tender and slightly bordering on oddly familial relationship he has with Sam and Max... stop, I'll start crying! (episode 13, "The Final Episode")

Misc. Lore

These are lore tidbits that are present in mediums either outside of the media itself, belong in a game that is not technically part of the larger S&M canon, or has to do with out of media context, but should be included anyway because why not!

gifts Sam & Max a new floaty pen from a different United State every Christmas ... but not really anything else! (Poker Night 2)

Sam & Max discuss the Commissioner's power in response to doubt about his existence, claiming "Don’t you know he’s everywhere? He knows we’re talking about him right now!" - which is sort of scary, but I'll let it slide because it implies that the Commissioner's surveillance is of a much higher caliber than we initially thought and that is BANGER (in-character interview for Telltale, found here on Steve Purcell's Sam & Max FB page)

He's affectionate yet surly & I'm sure all those "I love you" statements contribute to that! D'aww... (Skunkape Origin Video)

Voiced by a member of Bay Area Sound, Julian Kwasneski, in the Telltale trilogy! Talked about and even has a LINE recited in this specific developer commentary! We love a mysterious boss who sounds like an adult in Peanuts.

God bless the guy, he had a rash! Does this matter? No. Will it ever matter? Likely not, as it was from the sadly cancelled Sam & Max: Freelance Police trailer. Sighs. At this point, you can tell I'm just adding whatever mentions we get of the guy. Makes me giggle, though.

Conclusion...?

In the end, the Commissioner is a mystery, and always WILL be a mystery. Hell, I sort of never want to know as it will ruin every single thing I have worked so hard to archive, but it is fun to comb through the different canons! Of course, it is likely any of this can be tossed out or considered non-canon in the blink of an eye because Sam & Max always loves to give a middle finger to character details if they don't affect the main plot & likely a lot of these are mere gags. The Commissioner is phone, and always will be only phone. However, it's always in my best interest to try to find ANYTHING to push back the curtain even the tiniest inch, and I hope my efforts were worth it. Now, to sign off, just press that phone! You got it, you got it! ☎️

#sam and max #sam & max #freelance police #the commissioner (sam & max)#if you sincerely read all of this... thank you. my god. thank you

82 notes · View notes

aestheticpearl · 8 months ago

Text

— ‘girl, you really got a hold on me.’

✧·˚ you ask for some soft sex with the ghouls and they try their best to give you that, some are better than others at following the rules

characters. dewdrop, rain, swiss, mountain, phantom

themes. smut

[gender neutral reader]

➳ dewdrop

definitely confused at first

needs you to guide him through it

(not that that’s anything new)

actually really enjoys going slow

he gets to see your reactions more clearly

relishes in how warm you feel around him

you’re almost always on top so you control the pace you go at

he likes to hold your hips just to make you move a bit faster or hit a better angle

he’ll rub circles on your hips with his thumbs while holding you

➳ rain

the king of soft sex

he prefers it over rough and fast

holds your hand no matter the position

always makes sure you’re comfortable in said position and that it feels good

your pleasure >>> his

love to lean in and kiss you when you’re both close

rests his head on your shoulder and gives your neck gentle kisses

says ‘i love you’ when he cums

rubs your sides as you come down from your high

➳ swiss

says he’s not good at ‘soft’ sex but is literally the gentlest

he knows how to praise

will always notice if you get too tense during a session

‘easy baby, easy you’re going to hurt yourself.’

unfortunately he can’t stop his teasing nature from leaking through

will stop moving until you relax

likes to hold you very close while thrusting into you

loves to reassure how good you’re doing

grunts and groans from how hard it is to hold back because how good it feels

➳ mountain

the prince of soft sex

only because he forgets his size sometimes and will accidentally slip up

like to keep it basic and put you in missionary

will hold your hand the whole time

he’ll lose himself in you and sometimes do faster by accident

just snap him out of it and he’ll instantly lock his focus on you again

loves kissing every part of you

loves kissing you honestly

will french kiss you for half the time he’s inside you if you let him

➳ phantom

he’s awful at remembering that this is supposed to be a soft sex session

you’ll have to guide his hips if you still want to bottom

if you manage to wrangle him and get on top he’ll whine the whole time with how slow you’re going

give him other forms of stimulation and he’ll get all sensitive and ask you to slow down

loves to top but when it comes to soft sex he loves when you take control

whiny mess when you stop because you say your legs hurt from the position

will try again to top and actually goes slow

ends up overstimulating himself

you pretty people miss me? ;)

.love always <3 pearl

.masterlist

298 notes · View notes

quillyfied · 25 days ago

Text

Happy Halloween and Happy Ghostfuckers, time to dig into the chest cavity of this episode and not come back out until the next! Another banger of an episode; someone in the Helluva Boss tag called it the Truth Seekers of season 2, and I am so inclined to agree, actually. Equal parts reaction and analysis, and 100% spoilers, like, did that even need to be said?

First: MILLIE MY BELOVED. After a season and a half (over five whole years) of some pretty lukewarm development and attention, having this episode start off with Millie being her happy cheerful self is already such a breath of fresh air, especially given the relentless nonstop personal drama Blitzo and Stolas have been part of for the last couple of episodes. It’s great that this episode is starting after a brief time skip, too; feels more natural for an audience that has had three months to process it all. Watching Millie step right into emotional support is amazing, too, for reasons that have been hinted at before; Happy Campers was so good for her and Moxxie’s characters and I’m prepared to fight about it. Having one of the few women in the cast be relegated to “emotional backbone” doesn’t feel as bad when she’s already expressed insecurity about her importance in life, shown that being an unbelievable badass doesn’t always give her the kind of attention she wants, and isn’t afraid to knock the people in her life down a peg when they aren’t supporting her back. Yes that was just from Happy Campers, and this episode reinforces that with further excellent context. But sshh. We’ll get to that later. Time to watch Loona and Moxxie breaking down because they’re sick of Blitzo’s shit but not to the point of leaving him yet (because they love him too shsshhhshshsh).

Interesting that after a few weeks of moping, NOW is when Blitzo is starting to ramp up his destructive behaviors; what tiny glimpses we were allowed to get in the mission shorts showed a Blitzo that was coping but seemed to be holding it together (you’ll pry the idea that Blitzo’s inability to work the crystal in Mission: Antarctica is directly related to his confidence, not his skill, out of my cold dead rotten hands). This sudden left turn into emptying IMP’s bank accounts and forcing Moxxie and Loona to act out his grief with him appears…new. Maybe lying around eating ice cream and cheese (bro) like a sad sack while watching human television isn’t a new behavior, but the Blitzo-level catastrophic destruction masquerading as retail therapy reads to me as a sudden snap, maybe due to the proximity of a certain lunar cycle. It’s certainly looking on par with running three rings to Wrath and maxing out someone else’s credit cards on shitty horse riding lessons (something that, based on the vague timeline I’ve been able to wrangle out of this godforsaken show, Millie wouldn’t have been present for, though to be fair it’s not like Blitzo ever really has a measured emotional response to anything).

(Viv, if you’re listening, consider this a brief cosmic request for Secretary Stolas to help poor Moxxie with this paperwork. Please. PLEASE. PLEEEEASE.)

I love too that Millie’s approach as default team Emotional Intelligence isn’t to meddle, either, because that also shows maturity on her part; letting the grown ass adults around her handle their shit while still being sweet to them is such a good and necessary component of the IMP team. Hang on having another Millie Feelings Moment while trying to have some sort of chronology here.

…it’s entirely purposeful that Bethany Ghostfucker has Charlie’s hair, right? Because they share a voice actress? Which means…Blitzo has now cosplayed some reference of Charlie…THE STREAMS THEY ARE CROSSING.

I also love how nOTHING could have prepared me for realizing that Blitzo’s outfit in this episode is a cosplay. Of a HUMAN. WHO FUCKS GHOSTS. I don’t know why I am so surprised at how literal the title is; this show continues to both sicken and delight me XD (raunchy humor isn’t my thing and Blitzo was definitely pushing it for me this episode, but also…it’s so nicely balanced with the real emotional breakdowns that I can’t even be mad about it)

Anyway, back to Millie and her Emotional Genius: very glad that she realizes what Blitzo is going through requires a little more babying than usual, and VERY glad that she and Blitzo already have an established system for when he needs to be babied and she doesn’t initially cave to it (I will be buying that magnet, thanks Spindlehorse). I also love how Millie encourages Loona to step up and help Moxxie (who also desperately needs some help, but Millie really can’t focus on him right now because she needs to focus on the root of the problem, which is Blitzo), essentially through begging but also just by being her usual kind self. And that quiet little moment of Millie using Loona’s name for maybe the first time ever is just…mwah. Chef’s kiss. No notes.

Sidetracking again to wonder why the subject of ghosts is just now coming up when Blitzo literally has an alert light labeled “Ghost.” Like. I feel like Blitzo believing in ghosts while Millie staunchly does not is such a good dynamic to play with, but also why is this the first that it’s being addressed. XD Okay, I get it, throwaway gag from the first episode that is becoming relevant now and maybe didn’t have that much thought put into it when it was first made, but I can dream. Or pick relentlessly at tiny details while completely missing the bigger picture. It’s fine. I’m fine.

What I’m not fine with is how Blitzo can completely trash the van in nearly the same way two episodes in a row (assuming that IMP going on the run is happening in Mastermind, which is far from a given, but phwoar would it be maximum emotional impact, to have an episode showing IMP finally moving into their shitty office and how much it means to them, only to have it ripped out from under them the next episode LOLOLOLOL). I’m mostly irritable that my prediction was untrue :P Although I am glad that the prediction that this hotel guy was Leviathan was disproven, because let’s be honest, that would make no sense. Some rando infestor demon, though? Totally on point. Also makes sense why he “falls” for Blitzo’s bullshit disguise; he knows they’re imps because he’s also a demon. Something new to play with. Though it’s interesting that even when Rolando goes rooting through Blitzo’s head, he still doesn’t seem to know either of their real names. Informational blind spot? Would make sense, with how the fight goes down, but later. Later.

Side note to wheeze with relief because when I first watched this episode, it was without subtitles, and I thought Igor was wheezing Blitzo’s name. Him saying “bitch” makes more sense actually. That’s fine. It was much creepier thinking he was saying Blitzo’s name actually XD

Listen. Listen. We know that Blitzo sort of self-medicates with sex and sexual humor. We know that he’s loaded his confidence eggs into the competent at sex basket, because his competence at emotions has a body count (literal). Much like how it was painful to watch Blitzo operating at maximum asshole behavior at the beginning of Apology Tour what with his relentless insistence at returning his relationship with Stolas to safter, sexier ground…watching Blitzo try to distract himself with a sexually charged silly new hobby is equally painful. Because for him, sex is surface level, because anything deeper is dangerous (lord above please ignore the innuendo IGNORE IT). If sex happens to come with emotional attachment, he ruthlessly severs it. But Blitzo being horny isn’t the problem, it’s his disregard for the people that get caught up in his horniness (and he certainly knows how to weaponize his raunchy humor and sexual charisma when it suits him). The Scooby Doo antics are hysterical, but watching Millie start to buckle under the strain of indulging Blitzo is as fascinating as it is inevitable. We already know Millie doesn’t have infinite patience even for Moxxie. So to watch her reach her limit with Blitzo when she might be the only person in IMP whom we have never seen snap at him…delicious. Absolutely the best. And GOOD ON HER for snapping at him for cutting her off, which is a thing he does all the time with everyone ever but rarely gets called on (because he’s waltzed off at that point usually).

And, as I dearly hoped, it’s Millie that starts to really get through to Blitzo, not by being gentle, exactly, but by being her refreshing blunt-not-bludgeoning self. She gives Blitzo the reaming he deserves, but doesn’t belittle him about it; she just points out that his behavior is harmful, draws a boundary, and leaves. Exactly what Blitzo needs…though his brain is certainly going to fuck with him about it first, because lol rejection-sensitive dysphoria being exacerbated by fucked up haunted trauma illusions is a BITCH.

When the gif for this episode dropped and it was Blitzo sliding down a ventilation shaft, I never saw a single other person remark on the dark liquid in the corner of the gif sliding down the shaft after him. I didn’t say anything about it either, just noted it and freaked out quietly every time the gif passed me by. NOW KNOWING THE CONTEXT OF THE DARK SLIDING LIQUID MAKES IT WORSE. I already suspected it was blood (Hellborn blood to be exact). I did not suspect that it would be THAT MUCH BLOOD. Though it’s interesting that Blitzo doesn’t recognize it as such, never calls it that, never seems to realize it. So. Maybe it isn’t blood (spoiler: it’s not blood, I am just dumb and didn’t realize what it is until a third viewing, good job me), but it sure as hell resembles Hellborn blood enough that I have the heebie jeebs. And the visuals are just SO CREEPY—Blitzo is practically drowning in it as he’s dumped into a waking nightmare, and like. Blitzo is an assassin by trade now, and we know IMP did a lot of in-Hell contracts before switching to corner the Sinner market, so there would ostensibly be a lot of Hellborn blood on his hands, but he doesn’t care about that. A job’s a job. The blood he feels guilty about…well…we know, okay, I won’t insult y’all’s intelligence by rehashing it, because it’s about to be made real damn obvious anyway.

THE HAUNTED MILLIES BEING ALL THE TIMES SHE COULD HAVE DIED IN PREVIOUS JOBS THOUGH. Bless the people smart enough to pick that up and throw that spaghetti at the wall because folks it STICKS, it’s so obvious and SO GOOD. And SUCH a neat little insight into Blitzo’s head, too: he cares SO MUCH about his employees, his family, and it does actually haunt him, how many close calls they’ve had. It does occur to him that his actions affect others. It’s just never bothered him, certainly not to this degree. I fully blame Apology Tour and Verosika for getting him started on considering how his actions have consequences for other people, how he “hurts other people’s fee-fees” but also routinely leads his team into dangerous situations where his mistakes could cost them all. And these phantom (lol f-word) versions of Millie not only driving this home through the visuals, but saying the quiet part out loud, asking Blitzo if he realizes this about himself? If he’s ever loved someone without hurting them? FUCK.

I said so many times I wanted Blitzo broken in half; I have FEASTED, friends, because Blitzo’s issues are bigger than Stolas and if he doesn’t address them, he won’t ever be happy with himself, let alone with anyone else, romantic or platonic. ALSO, feast upon the intersecting themes between Helluva Boss and Hazbin Hotel, because “you think you can change?” immediately put me in mind of “addict trash like you doesn’t change,” which…I believe whole-heartedly is something that Val said to Angel, maybe even said in that moment, but the framing of it and Angel’s character arc made it so clear to me that Val’s words had become Angel’s own. Except Angel started proving him wrong. He started struggling, however small and desperately and weakly, to change who he was, to become someone he actually liked instead of what everyone else wanted and liked. Blitzo is in the same boat. Because both of these shows are so much about how hard it can be to become a better version of yourself, especially in a world that’s set against you being that person, that will hurt you for daring to be better, to be different, to be YOURSELF. What Blitzo is going through right now is the emotional beat-down that every person who has ever wanted to self-improve despite (or maybe even because of) trauma or mental illness puts themself through. If you’ve ever been this mean to yourself and driven yourself to a sobbing panic attack, clap your hands (clap clap).

And then the low blow. The tearjerker. The cry-maker.

Teenage Blitzo running to his mother. Calling out for Mama. Telling her about the scary dream he was having. AND SHE COMFORTS HIM. She never turns on him, she’s never angry, she never even flinches as she’s burning alive in front of him. Ghosts aren’t real (sad) and we aren’t ever going to meet Tilla except through other people’s eyes, most likely Blitzo’s, but that double-edged knife of knowing that Blitzo both was so loved and loved so hard back, only to be the one who got her killed…we’ve known as an audience for a while now that this is the biggest burden on Blitzo’s soul, the one thing he may never forgive himself for and can’t conceive of anyone else forgiving, because it’s what’s Fundamentally Wrong with him: he makes everyone’s lives worse. How can he love when he is so completely destruction incarnate? How can he reach out to Moxxie, to Millie, to Loona, to Stolas, to Fizz, when the person dearest to him crumbled to ash in his hands and it’s his own fault?

How can Millie look at him and tell him he’s wrong, that he made her life better?

Fuck hang on cry break FUCK I forgot to remove my eye makeup before doing this lolololol

Okay. Pivoting to scrutinizing this flashback, because the first thing that is immediately apparent to me (besides how hot Millie and Blitzo are DAMN) is how much older and more tired Millie looks. Millie in particular. We’ve become accustomed to Millie looking a certain way, so the new look is certainly exciting, but it’s the expression that’s really the kicker here. She looks hardened and badass, but so, so tired. She’s tired of just being the muscle. She’s tired of scraping by for a buck, and fewer of them than she deserves. My theory that Wrath is saturated with imps of a similar skill set is correct; my theory that Helluva Boss isn’t going to address the class/race issues they’re drawing on in any meaningful way might yet be disproven. Because Millie doesn’t have horrific family trauma. What she has is what every imp has: systemic oppression and its accompanying insecurities. We got hints of this back in Happy Campers, when she was so thrilled to be the center of attention and important and liked, and NOT for how well she kills people. Now it has further context, and is why Millie being the Emotional Support of the team is so important to her as a character: she never thought she could be anything else. She never let herself believe she could be anything but someone’s underpaid goon that was going to die an early death and be as meaningless as everyone told her she was. Until Blitzo and IMP carved out a space for themselves and moved to THE TOP RING IN HELL. The one where Lucifer lives, the one where the Goetia seem to congregate, the one ring that, despite being a flaming hellhole (lol) that is full of weird dead humans and is constantly being beset by angels at least once a year, is considered the one place imps can’t make their mark. Gosh this episode is so important for making so much of that thinly-veiled subtext all throughout Helluva Boss into text, for underlining Striker’s compliment to Blitzo for making a name for himself by owning his own business, for saying EXPLICTLY AND OUT LOUD that imps aren’t even good enough for the shittiest, most moth-eaten office in Pride.

I’m still not holding my breath on Helluva Boss actually solving anything socially within itself, because that seems like a tall order. But it is no longer too much to ask for Stolas to grapple with some pretty heavy questions about his behavior and his preconceived notions, his internal biases and the ways he has hurt Blitzo in return. SECRETARY STOLAS PLEEEEEASE, I AM BEGGING.

Anyway. Time to drool over the fight choreography, first of this fight between Millie and Blitzo, because it’s GORGEOUS. They have what I was hoping so hard for them to have: fighting as a love language XD Blitzo and Millie understand each other on a pretty instinctual, almost primal level; their fight is a dance, not just because they’re both good at it. It’s an extension of their friendship, or what will become their friendship. Their bodies are their most basic communication tool, Millie often through touch and snuggles, and Blitzo through either fighting or fucking, depending on what’s needed. They both have killer instinct, which Moxxie’s anxiety often chokes out within himself and which Loona hasn’t really had the chance to hone.

I also love that moment before Blitzo tips the pool table, the whole “reputation is everything” “Oh yeah? So what’s your reputation?” Because. BECAUSE!! Millie is an exceptional assassin, but in this fight in particular, she is so different from how she is in the rest of the show. She’s a proper Wrathian imp assassin, angry and hard and relentless. Compare that to the beginning of Ozzie’s, when she scuttles into frame holding an axe in her teeth and screeches about how she’s still so jazzed up, clearly amped and so much more joyful than she is during this flashback. Again, said it at least twice, will say it once more: she looks so exhausted, like she’s burning herself out just to make it. And she isn’t a unique case in that regard by any means. It’s working for Blitzo that makes her unique, that gives her joy in her work instead of making her rely on how other people see her. Sinners already don’t care about her or her feelings; her next meal isn’t contingent on appearing as hardened and badass as possible, it’s on a Sinner having a grudge, which is an exclusive meal ticket that only Blitzo could have weaseled them into.

I also want to point out that this fight between Blitzo and Millie? Pretty well mirrored by the fight between Millie and Rolando!Blitzo. The way Millie blocks him with her forearm, the way she slams him into the wall—those are things Blitzo did to her, back during their first fight. Granted, Millie getting the coolest anime punch-stop of all time is something that’s all hers, because Millie is so special and had no idea until she found a new life. She is the happiest imp there ever was and she kicks no less ass for it.

(WHERE IS MY TIMELINE, IMP WAS AROUND FOR A YEAR BEFORE THEY GOT THE BOOK AND THE OFFICE. Unsure of how long after meeting Loona and Moxxie this meeting with Millie takes place, and this does scramble around the timeline of how long Blitzo had the book before Stolas calls to make the arrangement, and where does Moxxie and Millie’s marriage fit into this? They’ve only been married a year, so probably started dating pretty soon after meeting…still have no idea on when Stolas and Blitzo’s first time happened and how long after that was Loo Loo Land. I will tie myself into knots over this, must stop now.)

Anyway. Putting the fights to bed for the moment, gotta get in on those good good BFF snuggles, which will go immediately into Blitzo’s Trauma: The Movie. After Rolando does the honor of driving home the point that yeah, imps have it real fuckin’ bad in Hell canonically and textually and said out loud and everything, thanks for asking.

…oh. Right. Rolando dissolves into black goo. Blitzo wasn’t crawling through a tunnel of blood. It was a tunnel of Rolando. That’s somehow worse. Ah well. My point about Blitzo’s regrets and visually looking like he’s wading through Hellborn blood stands.

Small detail that’s standing out to me in this episode: how much Blitzo is holding his chest during the Rolando fight. Wondering if he’s cupping the pendant he almost lost, or if he’s injured in the chest pretty badly. Which is SO IRONIC if true, because. Y’know. Feelings. His are hurting.

Gosh this fight with Rolando is so scary, though. We’ve never seen infestor demons before (unless you count the Glam sisters, but they weren’t in their element, so to speak), and the power differential between Rolando and Blitzo and Millie is pretty stark. Different from the fight between Striker and Millie and Moxxie, Striker overwhelms with skill. Rolando is overwhelming with power. Don’t you just hate it when higher-class demons have special powers that reinforce the hierarchy? Bullshit. Anyway. THE FIGHT TAKING PLACE NEAR THE POOL IS SO GOOD. Because why wouldn’t an Envy demon have the water advantage? They’re literally fish people. And it’s TENSE OKAY.

BUT NOT AS TENSE AS BLITZO’S TRAUMA: THE MOVIE IS ABOUT TO BE.

I find it particularly significant that Rolando licks up the scarred side of Blitzo’s neck and then says a few minutes later that Blitzo’s level of insecurity is “intoxicating.” Yeah I imagine he’s super tasty to demons who feed on that kind of thing. See previous horrific trauma hallucination. Which I now have reason to believe wasn’t based entirely in reality; we already know all the Millies didn’t die that way, and now a snapshot of Blitzo finding the pendant in the wreckage. He didn’t watch his mom burn to death, not the way he was forced to watch in this episode. Goddamn. Rolando is an asshole, huh?

The Cash backslap really took me aback, actually, not just because Blitzo flinches away from it. The stills show that Cash does it while holding Blitzo’s still-burned wrist in his other hand, so this is really soon after the fire; one has to wonder if Cash did it because Blitzo caused his mother’s death, or if it’s just for the circus. Hard to get a read on Cash, no idea what his attitude towards Tilla is besides a gleeful willingness to use her to manipulate his son. I suppose I’m also shocked because I never really doubted that Cash probably hit Blitzo at least a little, but…a backhand, to me, reads of casual violence, something that’s done without much thinking about it. The way Stella reared back to backhand Stolas and we know by her shocked expression that he’s never caught her wrist to avoid the impact before. Terrible comparison, by the way, and by terrible I mean great but causing me emotional distress. I hadn’t suspected that Cash was likely just as physically abusive as he was emotionally abusive towards Blitzo. Nice to have the confirmation. I hate it here.

Okay, because I haven’t seen the screenshots anywhere yet: first scene of Millie and Moxxie is from Murder Family when Moxxie unties them. Second…I don’t know, actually, and I’m embarrassed to admit that. Maybe Truth Seekers? I could make the argument for Exes and Oohs if Moxxie was in a wedding dress, but I’m not sure. Any of the many times Blitzo has intruded on their time together, I suppose. And, fun fact: the shots that are playing in Blitzo’s eyes when Rolando forces Blitzo’s eyes open are the ones of Fizz and Verosika in Ozzie’s again. In case that was information you wanted. It’s also upsetting that Loona in LA is part of the reel of Blitzo Thinking Everyone Hates Him, because the fight in Spring Broken at least makes sense to flashback to. Though I do keep forgetting, constantly and with an insistence that infuriates me, that Loona and Blitzo were also having a fight during Seeing Stars and when she kicks him off of her at the end, it’s while Blitzo is apologizing for threatening to replace her.

I find it very interesting that there’s a split-second of Barb that cuts in when the Stolas part of the reel plays; it’s so fast, but right after Blitzo pulls away from Stolas’ hand in Ozzie’s, there’s a second shot of Barb as she’s yelling at him in Happy Campers. Significance? Probably that their separation hurts him just as much as his current one with Stolas, he’s just had more time to try and get used to it. Or represses it more.

Oh hey. Blitzo in his head is back in uniform, crystal and all. Nice. I didn’t even realize it. (…Crystal and all. Like it’s become part of his self-image already. HMMM.)

So interesting that Rolando chooses the most obvious pressure points to try and get to Millie…without realizing that coming out of Blitzo’s mouth, it completely robs them of power BECAUSE of their heart to heart. Millie already knows in her core that Blitzo rejects that image of her, because it’s an image of himself that he also rejects and he refuses to let her wallow in it. Their friendship is built on, well, building each other up in that way. Why in fuck would Millie listen to this asshole wax on and on about how she’s a lowborn inbred hick (what the fuck dude) when he’s currently possessing the guy who helped her break that image of herself? Like. Come on, asshole, use your brain, not your bigotry. But I guess that’s also the point of this episode, showing with explicit clarity that IMP is special because of all the anti-imp sentiment they’ve had to wade through and dismantle within themselves, so why would a supposedly “superior” demon think he had to hit any harder or more precise than that? Also. Though. The careless way Rolando is just throwing around Blitzo’s body is pretty sickening.

Special moment of silence for how Millie knows that Blitzo can take a beating that few others can and uses that to expel Rolando. I’m not crying. It’s fine.

“You’re dead, Bethany!” This is. Such a weird thing to say. Especially when you just went on a pleasure cruise through this guy’s deepest darkest fears. You can pull out what haunts him in the night, but not his name?? Counterpoint: he didn’t CARE to pull out Blitzo’s name. Because he’s an imp.

The knocking Rolando into the pool thing was hysterical, though. Such an anticlimax. Right before the electrocution and the eye-popping and all. Lol.

“FUCK hotels!” Says the man who was casually cosplaying an aspect of the princess of Hell who runs a hotel. I love these shows. I love the casual interplay between them. A crossover one day would be the best thing ever.

“I’ve never had a real friend that I didn’t want to fuck.” That is such a blisteringly honest thing for Blitzo to say that I don’t think he expected it to come out of his own mouth. And I love that Millie knows it has nothing to do with her and everything to do with Blitzo, and how Blitzo feels about Stolas. I just don’t think Blitzo realized he felt that way until he said it out loud.

And wrapping this all up with a nice bow with some Loona and Moxxie character growth, where she ACTUALLY takes care of him instead of leaving him to his own devices! Giving half a shit prevents arson, folks, love to see it.

This had the exact structure of Truth Seekers that got me hooked on this show in the first place: cutting the raunchy humor (which is hit or miss with me, usually don’t like it overmuch) with really deep, complex, and honest character moments. The way Blitzo mentors both Moxxie and Millie in different ways while still relying on them is just so satisfying. Even more satisfying is seeing Blitzo change from a one-note loud pervert into a complicated guy who has real feelings about other people and doesn’t actively want to hurt the people he cares about because he DOES CARE. He’s a fuckup, and he’s trying, and it’s so, so, SO good.

I’m sure I have forgotten to wax eloquent about something or other, but it’s almost four hours later and definitely almost five thousand words into this thing, so I’m gonna cut myself off here. Toodles! See you all in November for Mastermind, which is gonna be FINE I’m sure!!

#helluva boss #helluva boss spoilers #quilly's hellaverse theories #GHOSTFUCKERS IS REAL GOOD Y'ALL CAN'T STRESS THAT ENOUGH

58 notes · View notes

devilfic · 5 months ago

Text

❝right place, right time❞

IX. I'm the well they're gonna drag you down.

parts: previously / next plot: and they were rooommates. pairing: battinson!bruce wayne x gn!reader. cw: surgeon!reader, secret identities, slow burn, mentions of blood and stitches and drugs and alcohol, this chapter is fluffier because reader deserves a break, reader and bruce discussing their one-night stands, bruce thinks he's funny but he just can't hide how much he likes you okay, jealousy thy name is "disturbed". words: 6.9k. a/n: shoutout to allnurses.com contributing to at least 8 hours of research on how medications are stored in hospitals for one scene. any nurses in chat please do not stone me, I took creative liberties. also, in case there is any confusion, this chapter and the vignette take place all in (mostly) the same day.

The car gets about halfway down the street before Bruce observes out loud, "Something's bothering you."

You're clean and changed, but your hands are shoved between your thighs as you try to control their shake. Knowing what you know now, you have no reason to keep this from him. He is, by all means, the one person you should tell.

But you struggle to work up the courage without a mask looking back at you. The character of Batman you'd created in your head clashes violently with the character of Bruce. You'd written your own Jekyll and Hyde and tripped yourself up in the final act when it turned out they were one and the same, "You have a lot on your plate right now."

"So do you."

You resist the urge to grit your teeth, "It's about Judith."

Bruce thinks for a moment, "The old lady who doesn't like me."

"The very same. I... wasn't there for her last night, when I should have been. She was mugged on her way home."

Bruce doesn't make a big show of a reaction, though you notice he sits straighter, taking a break from gazing out of the window to glance at you every once in a while, "Is she badly hurt?"

"It could've been worse but... she's more shaken up than she wants me to believe."

"And her family?"

"Murdered." Bruce's car rolls by a street corner where a young mother wrangles her child back from the crosswalk, "I tried to convince her to have one of the deacons from church ride home with her from now on but she wouldn't listen. She doesn't want to be babied." Her stubbornness isn't at all unfamiliar.

"Did she see who did it?"

"She said some guys at the liquor store down the way. They hang out there every night," your eyes trail from the window down to the floor before finding Bruce's face. His profile is sharp and clean, the dark neck of his sweater stops just before the hair at his nape begins to cluster. Your eyes follow the bridge of his nose and it mirrors Batman's profile, a mix of pointed and blunt edges, "There's a... an heirloom in her purse. A lighter. She keeps it with her all the time. Her husband had it on him when he... well, he had an awful habit. She'd really like it back."

Bruce turns his head to you and you steel yourself. In the bright early morning, he is annoyingly resplendent. In the unfair way that all pretty people tended to be. It feels wrong to be asking him this. This is a stranger. You're begging for help from a stranger. You force down the sickness rising in your belly, "Please, will you-"

"I'll take care of it." He answers and it is final. He seemed to have made up his mind before you'd even asked.

The resolve in him is enough to slow your shake to nothing. There's a part of you that still doesn't quite believe what you'd seen last night, and so the certainty of Judith's well-being does not deluge you. It trickles down, dripping over your eyelashes, sprinkling off your fingertips.

You let yourself get caught up in his eyes the way you used to. You let the familiarity of them ground you and, though not with a sweeping acceptance, sigh in relief.

It's a small win in the grand scheme of steaming hot bullshit going on in your life.

You’ve taken things from General for Bruce’s sake before. Bandages and needles and disinfectants. This, however… this was a schedule II drug that could land you in prison if you got caught with it. And you were going to walk out of here with it like you were none the wiser.

A hand on your elbow forces you to slow down, drawing you back to your companion’s side. You don’t need to hear it so he doesn’t say it, but you’re embarrassed anyway. How Bruce maintains himself is enviable. “You’re a good actor.” Bruce peeks at you as you guide him through the first floor, “The thing with Gordon. You took it on the chin like a champ. You turned into a whole new person.”

“I avoid implicating myself when I can.”

“The party too. You diffused the tension, like, perfectly.”

Bruce hovers beside you as you call the elevator, a few patients and nurses lingering further behind. You can feel him probing your words for your natural line of thinking, “Couldn’t pull one over on you, though.”

No, you think, you just creeped me out while every bat-shaped clue flew right under my nose.

The elevator door slides open and the two of you squeeze into the back as the rest file in. You find yourself in a corner, braced against Bruce’s side as his hand reaches around your back to hold the railing. One of the nurses catches sight of him and swoons, the other trying (and failing) to look uninterested.

“Coming to see the new wing?” The swooning nurse asks, turning around to grin at Bruce. “Sounds like it’s coming along great. They make lots of helpful noise all day long.”

Bruce laughs good-naturedly, “Hopefully it’ll make up for all the trouble once it’s finished.”

The “uninterested” nurse nods, eyes frantically flashing from Bruce’s eyes to the floor and back over and over, “For sure! It’s really great you give back to General like this. Your dad would be proud.”

His face has no distinct reaction to it, nothing immediately telling that that comment hit too close to home. He smiles as he always does and thanks them as he always should do, and as they get off on the second floor, it’s just you two and an old man waiting for the next stop.

Bruce, to you, had long lived in his father’s shadow. The great Thomas Wayne who, despite his briefly smeared reputation, had been the face of the Wayne family for you. Even the some-twenty years after his passing had yet to shake that image from your brain.

It was his father’s legacy he was tending to here. All of the good and ugly that came with it. You couldn’t imagine how many times he’d heard his father would be proud. Did it comfort him? Frustrate him? Did he do this to make his father proud, or because it was expected of him?

Before the flood, you’d heard gossip about Wayne Enterprises going under, the reclusive in the tower giving no sign if he was alive or dead. Knowing what you know now, you wonder how much he truly wants to be a Wayne… with all the baggage that comes with it.

He’s wound tight. You can feel him against you.

Before you can talk yourself out of it, you find his hand on the railing beside you and cover It with your own. He’s shocked, judging by the way he jolts under your touch for a second. You think you’ve overstepped but when you go to apologize, he is already staring wide-eyed at you. Like when you’d caught him on the stairs.

The tension is still there, and his face has fallen in its warmth and friendliness. His hand had only partially slipped out from underneath yours, but as the seconds pass you feel it rest once more, not bothering to shake you away any further.

You both force yourselves to stare ahead until the elevator dings to let you out, but through the reflection on the door, Bruce is still looking at you.

You break first, distracting you both this time as you walk out, “You kept hitting me with your knee.”

Bruce, in a daze, asks, “What?”

“At the party. While me and Roberts were arguing, you’d nudge me with your knee like it was an accident.”

Bruce seems to remember who he is and where you are, because he quickly gets back to himself, “Guess I’m not that good of an actor.”

“Why’d you do it?”

“I knew where the conversation was going. I could feel you thinking.”

You remembered holding your breath as the mayor prepared herself for confrontation back then, “And the second time?”

“I was trying not to laugh.”

You flush. You’d been so impassioned that night, defending your hero who, unbeknownst to you at the time, was hiding a snicker behind his glass. You feared you’d be remembering a lot of moments like that over the next few days.

As soon as you both get into your office, you shut the door behind you, “I need you to wait here for me.” Bruce’s face tightens, “Don’t… argue. They keep extra vials of the antivenom down in the ER. I can grab one from the med room, but I can’t have you following me down there. It’s off limits for anyone without ID, let alone a patient and a donor.”

Bruce doesn’t look comfortable. Since last night, you hadn’t been anywhere Bruce or your police detail couldn’t follow. You hadn’t even been allowed to enter your apartment until the latter had deemed the place safe. A med room not much bigger than your office—locked behind an ID scanner—posed less of a threat than your two-bedroom ten minutes away.

But it was two stories down, and anything could happen in the time you were away from Bruce.

You can see the wheels turning in his head, trying to think up some plan that allowed him to remain by your side. You have to restrain yourself from feeling… flattered.

Flattery turns to bewilderment as Bruce reaches into his pocket and drops something into your hand. It’s a gadget the size of an AirPods case, shining in the light of the fluorescents. It looked perfectly unassuming and hid—lightweight as it was—a marvel of expensive technology. You could tell just by looking at it. “The hell is this?”

“It’s an EMP generator. Put it in your pocket and I can disable any communications within your vicinity, including cameras.”

“Okay, no. This is a hospital, and I’d be going into the ER with this thing. That’s too dangerous.”

Bruce looks offended. You can practically hear him say “You don’t think I’ve thought of that?” with his eyes. He silently holds his phone up to your face and you shouldn’t be as shocked as you are that it’s got live camera feed of the entire hospital. “I can control the radius. You said you trust me. So trust me.”

You swallow back your retort. You did say you were going to trust him on this. Whether or not it would be your doom had yet to be seen. You nod once, dropping the device in your pocket. “I’ll meet you back here in ten minutes. Fifteen at the most.”

Bruce’s lips purse together. He still doesn’t look settled with letting you go alone, but he has very little room to argue, “Ten minutes.”

You don’t waste time. You skip the elevator for the emergency stairwell, taking two steps at a time until you’re back on the first floor and walking to the ER. The med room at the very end of the hall would—if you were lucky—be as empty as the waiting room. All you needed to do was get in, grab what you needed and very quickly get the hell out of there. Without raising suspicion. You can feel the phantom pull of Bruce’s hand on your arm, begging you to slow down before you draw unwanted attention.

You round the corner to the med room, scan your ID, and head in.

The two nurses waiting inside greet you, analyzing you curiously, “Hey doc, need something?”

Words rattle in your brain like a d20 on a deception roll. You pray for something good, “I just wanted to grab some meds for my patient.”

One nurse sits at a computer, head titled in confusion, “Did you put in a prescription? You could’ve sent a nurse to grab it for you.”

Your eye catches the camera on the ceiling, its dark glass glinting at you, mocking you. A scrying glass recording your every move. And Bruce on the other side of it, hopefully buying you an alibi. “It’s a… special case. My patient needs it soon, so I thought I’d speed up the process and grab it myself.” You force a lightness into your tone, trying your best to appear apologetic and not at all suspicious.

The nurse hums. Then, she jabs the pen she’d holding over her shoulder, “Cart’s over there. Help yourself.”

You maneuver through the shelves separating either half of the room, keeping your head straight and eyes from wandering.

Your biggest hurdle was at the back of the room.

It’s a clunky cabinet on wheels with a monitor on top and an ID scanner on the side. In one of its many drawers, your golden ticket awaited, but these things kept logs of who checked out what, and if someone were to go through them later and find out you’d stolen a highly addictive drug without prescription…

You swallow. The generator in your pocket suddenly hangs heavy against your thigh. You glance at your phone for the time and note that four minutes have passed. You need to move quickly.

You approach the cart, fingers twitching at your sides, and right as you step up to the monitor, it flickers and goes dark. You give the power button a push for good measure but nothing happens.

Well, not nothing. You hear the cart drawers all click at once, like they’d unlocked by themselves. Tentatively, you try the top drawer and it slides out without issue. Glancing behind you, you check to make sure no nurses have wandered over, but you are the only one on this side of the room.

Your fingers drift down to the right drawer next and that one slips open too—by the grace of some god—and there you see it. It has an alien glow to it, a more subdued blue to its adversary’s green. The top of the tray holding the vials pops open with just as much ease as the drawer, allowing you to sneak one into your pocket. You shut the drawers, slowly backing away from the cart, but the monitor does not turn back on.

“What? This thing too?” You’re startled when the nurse from before suddenly jogs up from behind you, grumbling under her breath as she smacks the monitor.

You rush to cover, “It just went kaput on me.”

“Yeah, so did mine.” She maneuvers around the shelves and back to her desk where you see the other nurse at the desk scratching his head. Their monitor is glitching, having some gory digital stroke, “Here. You can sign out what you take for now and I’ll bother IT about this.”

You write down “Ibuprofen” and your name next to it, “Never seen that happen before.”

“Yeah. Thing froze up on me a minute ago. Guessing around the same time this thing died on you.”

Your stomach is still nervously fluttering, but you do feel a little smug. “Weird.” You hand her back the clipboard and go to grab a bottle out of a different drawer. “Good luck.”

You try not to sprint past the nurses as they fuss with the computer. You’re out and back upstairs before your ten minutes are up.

Bruce is sat leisurely on your couch, no doubt watching you scurry into the office on his phone. He looks from the pill bottle in your hand and back to you.

You toss the bottle into his lap, plopping down on the couch beside him. He frowns at the label. “For you,” you poke his injured leg and his eyes follow your every movement, “you’re favoring the other leg today.”

He can’t bring himself to deny that, even if the look he gives you from beneath his eyelashes says otherwise. You flash the antivenom at him as a peace offering. “How’d I look?”

His gaze flutters slowly from the vial to you before he shows you his phone. The screen is a recording of the medication room. It shows you greeting the nurses, walking up to the med cart, and then… nothing. Black screen for forty-five seconds. When it flickers back on, you're signing the clipboard and walking away. Your body sags into the couch with relief.

“You did good.” Bruce praises you.

“I thought I was going to go into cardiac arrest.”

“There are worse places to do it.” You look at him and he’s smiling just a little. You’re aware, though, that he’s aware of the toll this has taken on you. He takes the vial out of your hands and puts it in his own pocket, holding his hand out to you. “We should get going.”

Bruce follows dutifully behind you as you lead him back down to the first floor. You feel much better than when you'd arrived, but your heart stutters each time a security guard passes you by. Years ago, stealing and getting away with it was second nature to you. You were also arrogant back then, uncaring of what happened to you. How quickly the tides had changed.

You feel Bruce nudge you with his arm. He isn't looking at you, but you know what he's trying to tell you: you've got a few more hallways to turn down before the exit. You just have to-

Someone calls your name.

You spin around, nerves electrified, only to find Em running to catch up with you, "What are you doing back at work already? Is your arm okay?"

The adrenaline rush had done wonders for your pain tolerance. You didn't even think about it until she brought it up, "I'm fine, it's fine. It's-" You go to rush out some sort of explanation but at that moment, Bruce turns around.

You can see the moment of impact across Em's face as soon as she realizes who you're with, her back straightening and hand pressing down flyaways. In an instant, she has forgotten all about you. For better or for worse. She rubs her palm on her leg before holding it out to shake his hand, "Mr. Wayne! Hi! I'm surprised to see you here." Her eyes are twinkling, "Everything alright?"

"Just some leg pain, nothing painkiller can't fix." He flashes the pill bottle for good measure. You're honestly impressed he admitted to being in pain at all, "It's good to see you again, Dr. Madison."

Em's face droops into a frown, "Well, you look fantastic, but you've got a mirror," she pats your arm, "and I'm sure you're being well taken care of."

"Only by the best."

You smile (borderline pleadingly), preparing to dismiss yourselves while you still have your wits about you, but then Em asks Bruce a question and, to your surprise, Bruce is happy to entertain her.

It strikes you that you had landed in your situation with no prior interest in who Bruce was, and it shows in how you barely keep up with the topic of conversation.

It's like watching a tennis match between the two. The topic in Em's court, then Bruce's, then Em's, back and forth without issue. No awkward pauses or uncomfortable looks. She recalls details about him out of thin air, your knowledge in comparison merely fringes of what Em knew.

The longer it goes on, the more it weighs on you that aside from the strange man who'd circled around you like a frightened kitten, you really didn't know anything about Bruce.

You knew Batman. You felt you knew him. Even when his identity was still a secret, you had felt comfortable with him. Vulnerable, even. He'd let you touch him in your home, fixing him up and helping you with this mess and... outside of that, what did you really know?

You feel an odd twist in your chest.

Em's voice floats back in, disrupting your retrospection, "I've always wanted to go to Italy. You must get so sick of these places after having been so many times."

"They still have their magic," Bruce grins, "but I don't like being far from home."

"Really? You could go anywhere in the world and you'd still miss Gotham?" Em's tone is teasing, but curious. Something flickers in her eyes as if she'd just remembered something.

Bruce takes in the hallway, chest swelling with pride, "Lots of things to miss about it."

"Name one."

Bruce's eyes cut to the side as he thinks, "The noise."

"You can get noise anywhere. LA, Chicago-"

"It's special here."

"No, try again."

His smile turns sheepish, "The rain."

"Now you're lying. Come on, pretty boy. I know you've got something. Penthouse, nightlife- heck, I'd even understand the freaks and clowns giving everyone PTSD."

Bruce exhales, purses his lips. His eyes flit around the white walls, "Okay. I'd miss you."

What the hell?

You straighten up. The absurdity (blatant sweet-talk) of the line shouldn't work—seriously, it wouldn't work on you—but Em goes pink in the cheeks. A strand of dark hair falls from her bun and frames her smile just so, "Well," she snorts, "aren't you just a flirt?"

To your utter dismay, they are both eating this up. "You light up the room, Dr. Madison. Your patients are very lucky."

"My patients are usually seven and way more interested in the candy I bring them."

"Candy?" Bruce finally looks at you, all humor and charm, "I never get candy. I just get yelled at."

Something in you is disturbed when Em grabs onto Bruce's arm, hanging off him as she pouts at you, "Oh! You're heartless!"

"Very much so." Bruce is somber.

"I don't-" Your voice comes out strained, a little too defensive right off the bat, "I don't yell." But you'd gotten close, and you got closer everyday, "But if I did, you'd deserve it."

Bruce is amused. You watch as he pretends to cower into Em, even as he dwarfs her in size. They start joking back and forth, more teases at your expense, and you notice that the persona he puts on around others is practically nonexistent here. You'd watched it dissolve within minutes. It's refreshing, you realize, that he seems to really be enjoying himself right now.

You catch Bruce insisting that he ought to get going, sharing pleasantries and desires to visit once more. Em looks genuinely saddened to let him go. The second Bruce's back turns, Em reaches out and squeezes your hand, whispering, "Please tell me he's single."

You fluster. You imagine yourself in the car ride back to the tower asking Bruce what he thinks about Em, offering to exchange numbers between them, and you're disturbed again.

Twenty-four hours ago, you would've been warning her to run for the hills. Twenty-four hours ago, he was only Bruce Wayne. Now he was Batman and all that came with it and, well... once upon a time, you would've wanted nothing more than for Bruce Wayne to sweep Em off her feet. Batman had always been more your style.

Then, you realize, you don't actually know the answer to her question.

Em looks expectant. You shrug. She exaggerates her disappointment but releases you all the same, "Keep me posted."

"I'm comparing the samples from the crime scene to the antivenom. I should have something in a few hours." Bruce taps the antivenom vial, watching the remaining blue liquid slosh against the glass, before handing it off to Alfred.

You're mesmerized by this backyard (or, more aptly put, garage) chemistry lab. Beakers and flasks spread out on the long table as you watch from a stool a few feet away, "How'd you get so good at this?"

"College," after a few seconds of silence from you, he adds on begrudgingly, "I started messing around with stuff down here when I was 13."

"You had all this when you were 13?"

"Some of it, whatever I could get my hands on. I liked to see how things worked."

You have a unique opportunity to learn about Bruce here, so you take it with both hands, "You majored in chem, then."

"And biology, and physics."

Your eyes blow wide. "You had three majors?"

"I bounced from one to another, sometimes double majored if I liked the professors. I followed my interests and they took me everywhere," Bruce picks up the venom test tube, little drops of green pooling at the bottom of the glass, "I've enrolled in more universities than I have degrees."

Your eye twitches, just a little annoyed, "Must've been nice going wherever you wanted, whenever you wanted."

Bruce senses your tone of voice. He peers at you from the side, elbows resting on the table, "I spent a lot of time away from home. It must've been enough because I don't miss it."

"You said the same thing to Em earlier." You recall.

"I didn't think about it as much while I was gone, but when I came home for good... I just couldn't imagine myself leaving like that again."

"He barely liked boarding school," Alfred chimes in from the other side of the room, lazily reading a book at Bruce's desk. Boarding school was posh. You imagined little Bruce in a school uniform like the British boys in movies, "I should bring out the scrapbooks once we have a moment."

Bruce sets the test tube back on its rack with a bit of aggression, "Thank you, Alfred. You can go now."

Alfred chortles. He skims one more page of his book and then shoves it under his arm on the way back up. The elevator clinks and rattles up the tower until it stops some sixty stories up.

It's quiet now. You sort of appreciate the silence- the relative silence. There is the steady drip, drip, drip coming from here and there in the cave. The whirring of the machines, the humming of the lights, the very faint sound of a news anchor forecasting snowy skies this weekend. Bruce's breathing.

It's harder to hear unless you focus on it. His mountainous build hunched over the table—staring into the venom as it stares back—rises and falls in slow rhythm. You watch him being and it captivates you. For the umpteenth time since last night, you are struck with the reminder that this was Batman. In all his broody glory, an arm's length away from you, about a hundred feet under the city.

It's funny; you paid so little attention to the man before, and now you wanted to take him apart and examine his terrible insides. You have accidentally become obsessed with the man.

"I want to take you to Blackgate."

"Sorry?"

"Lucien is there," the name makes your blood run cold, "he was with the Vipers the longest. He could answer a few things for us."

You do your best not to immediately say no. Not because you think he'll force you, but because you know—somehow—that he won't, "What about Detective Gordon? Shouldn't that be his job?"

"I think he'll talk to you." Bruce turns slowly until his back is pressed against the desk, arms crossed over his chest and pulling his shirt completely taut. "He knows you."

You hadn't seen Lucien since the night Alex died. For once, you're kind of grateful Bruce can read you. He turns fully toward you, "I can go alone."

"You just said you think he'll talk to me."

"I can make him talk." His head droops a little to meet your eyes, expression impossibly understanding. You have no doubt he can. Your throat feels like it's on the verge of closing up. Somehow, sending Bruce alone to handle him felt worse.

"But you think I can..." You have to pause to force in a breath, feeling yourself go lightheaded, "You think I can get more out of him." Bruce doesn't respond to that. He's still watching you like you might start stress-sobbing. "Okay."

"You sure?"

"Mm."

Bruce calls your name. You'd been tracing the lines of his arms with your eyes to distract yourself, not processing how much closer he'd gotten until you feel his breath against your eyelashes.

His arms are uncrossed now, one hand pressing into the table beside you, the other hovering by his hip. His fingers twitch. Does he want to touch you? You were about to go three for three with the crying in his arms thing.

You force yourself off the stool and the speed at which you stand gives Bruce very little time to react. Your chest bumps against him, but you're already slipping behind him, "Lemme see your stitches," you rasp, hand ghosting over his shoulder, "need to... redress them, probably."

Bruce tries looking over his shoulder at you but you hide behind him and after a moment, he relents. His shoulders drop in defeat. You watch him drag your stool into the light and sit.

The dismal mood did you a favor. He looked like he'd be submissive today.

You're halfway through clearing away his dried blood when you ask, "Are you single?"

Bruce's shoulder jolts just the tiniest bit, almost driving your finger into the stitch. "What?"

"Em asked," you quickly explain, "and I realized I didn't know."

You don't know exactly what he's thinking, but his answer is as straightforward as you could hope for, "Yes."

"Oh."

"You sound surprised."

"I mean... I sort of assumed..." What did you assume, exactly? You couldn't see him with a long term partner, definitely not like this, but the idea that there wasn't anybody didn't sit right with you, "no flings? Situationships, even?"

"Why? Is Dr. Madison interested?"

Your jaw clenches. You force the muscles in your face to relax, "I just don't want any secret lovers of yours adding me to their shitlist if I go through with your plan. I can't stress how little I want to fake-fight over you right now."

Bruce huffs. You finish cleaning around his wound when he pipes up again, "I had something... someone. It didn't last."

"Oh. Are you... tender about it?"

"Not anymore. I don't have time for that kind of thing anyway."

He says it like it doesn't bother him, but in the way someone might brush off a scrape on the knee or a paper cut. Like it stung, but you had to be a big boy about it. The pain would go away eventually.

You press new gauze over the stitches, taping it down as gently as you could, "I assumed someone like you would have a whole lot of someones, a revolving door even," your eyes flit over his other bruises and healed cuts, "I never made time for relationships either. I was kind of just going through the motions."

"No one interested you?" Bruce rolls his shoulders once you peel away from him. He doesn't look at you when he asks that.

"Just... childish crushes here and there. Sometimes I'd let someone take me home..." Your voice catches in your throat for a moment. You recall a stamped down memory, one of you standing blindfolded in your apartment imagining the Batman with his mouth on your throat. That wasn't very long ago. Your breath shudders as you fit Bruce into the memory instead. You don't... know how to feel about it.

"Never back to yours? And here I thought Judith was just hard on me." You belatedly register Bruce standing, rolling his shirt up his arms before pulling the neck over his hair. His question hangs lightheartedly.

Your shoulders sag, "You're not gonna believe me if I tell you I was paranoid about letting one-night stands into my home."

"Why? 'Cause you let me in?"

The back of your neck grows hot. "What about you? You ever bring yours back to the cave?"

After he's done tucking his shirt into his pants, Bruce shakes his head at you, "No. Just you."

That was the second time he'd said that to you. You were starting to feel special.

You step out of the shower and you think, almost as soon as your foot touches heated floors, that you really despise Bruce Wayne.

The towels are warm too, waiting for you as you preen yourself in the mirror, a clean you staring back. You kept your toiletries bag on the bathroom counter, afraid to unpack anything as you rustled around for deodorant. It was massive and quiet. The water pressure alone had you swearing at the marble lining of the shower.

Bruce eventually lured you downstairs with the promise of making dinner. Alfred was skeptical, but had backed off and allowed Bruce full range of the kitchen, still possessed by his book next to the fire.

He'd asked you what you had the stomach for. Eventually he was copying something out of a celebrity recipe book with you beside him.

You argued that he hadn't really made you dinner given that you had helped him do half of everything, but it was his ingredients and it was his kitchen and the food tasted good so you didn't argue long.

After Alfred offered his stamp of approval, he'd retired for the night and left you and Bruce in the kitchen to clean up. Bruce had left the pots and pans to you when you proved too nervous to handle the porcelain, "Alfred won't kill you if it breaks."

"Alfred would kill me for less, I think."

Bruce gives a short laugh, drying off the last pot. He's pouring you a glass of the wine you'd opened last night when you slide his little gadget across the counter, "I forgot to give that back to you." You swirl your glass, admiring the color as Bruce packs away the leftovers. "You looked like you were enjoying yourself with Em earlier."

"I was. Your friend is funny."

"I... also noticed something you said. When she asked you what you would miss about Gotham, you mentioned the noise and the rain. Would you really miss all that?"

Bruce glances at you, popping a top onto a glass bowl, "Of course. It's part of what makes the city."

Your eyes narrow, searching for the lie, but there isn't one. He's being sincere. "Is that why you became Batman? Because you love this city that much?"

You can feel the mood getting doused with ice water. It forces you upright in your chair, makes your hand clench around the stem of your glass. Anyone with eyes could tell you'd just touched a nerve.

But he answers you, intense as it comes out, "I hated it." The loathing is a mere shell of what it used to be, you can tell, "I hated what it took from me." His eyes cast down to the countertop. "At first, I was aimless. Everyone was worried about the future of the company but Alfred and I were just trying to make it through the day. Over the years, I boiled up with this... restlessness. I still didn’t know where I was going but I was full of something for once. I studied, I traveled, I learned from all manner of teacher. And when I came home, I was... determined."

His words sit heavily on you. You can see flecks of that restlessness in his eyes, the slight tremble of his hands as he rests them against the countertop. "Why a bat?" You whisper.

"They're what I feared the most."

Past tense. "Feared?"

"I got over it. I won't let them close enough to bite, but..." The humor in his voice breaks the intensity of his expression.

You mull that over, "You became what you feared to strike fear."

"Not anymore," his head shakes, "fear is a tool, but... there's enough fear in this city. I wasn't making a change, I was making it worse."

You remembered the first time you'd ever heard of the Batman. Back then, he was just "Vengeance". In the grand scheme of fucked up things this city had to offer, someone running around dressed as a bat didn't register as abnormal. Another Tuesday, maybe. You awaited what they'd say about his crimes: a mugger beaten and strung up on the street, a gang felled and dropped at the GCPD's door. You remembered something stirring in you when he put away the Joker.

"I remember when you became a hero. Like really, to everyone. When you took shape… they were flying in people. I was rushing in patients while you stood on top of the Garden and pulled people out of the flood. I hadn’t felt hope like that since… yeah."

Your admission moves something in Bruce. His eyes find yours, "I was just doing what you'd been doing for years."

"But I never left that hospital. You transcend boroughs, the gangs, everything. I used to think you couldn’t possibly be one guy. I still can’t believe it. How are you not dead on your feet by now?" Bruce smiles knowingly at you and you feel yourself flush, "Besides that. You’ve been doing this for longer than I've been around to patch you up."

"That would be Alfred."

"You should tell him, you know. That you appreciate him. I think he'd like to hear how much he means to you more often." Bruce's eyes soften. He doesn't debate you. "Anyway. How's that sedative going?"

"I'll take another look before I leave tonight."

Oh, yeah. This guy is Batman.

You don't know when next you'll get this chance, "Can I ask a favor? Can I... watch you put it on?" Bruce wobbles to the side, genuinely confused. "The suit?"

He examines you, mouth almost curling up into a shocked smile. He hadn't expected you to ask that, that's for sure. "All of it?"

You grip your glass so hard you think it might shatter, "No." And then, when he has the audacity to snicker, "Asshole."

He stays true to your request.

You watch with your back pressed up against the wall. His under suit hangs undone at his hips while he leans over his desk, digging his fingers into a can of black paint. He uses the reflection of his computer screen to smear it over his eyelids and under his eyelashes until the white skin beneath disappears.

Next is zipping up the under suit. You barely resist rushing over to hold his bandage steady as the suit catches on it, but he manages to get it up and over without pulling it off. Then come the plates of armor. Each piece clips into place, clinging to his waist and chest and arms. You've seen it up close enough times to know the quality of it, a wonder how he'd gotten his hands on that kind of stuff until now.

You don't ask him to, but when it's time to put his cowl on, he turns sideways so you can see.

His gloved hand combs through his hair, pushing back the longer strands so he could fit the cowl over it.

It's kind of embarrassing how it takes your breath away. Bruce had quite literally transformed before your eyes, and now there was no denying it.

Bruce stands still as your eyes bore into him.

After a few seconds of admiring every piece of the suit, your eyes flit up to his face. He's not looking at you, almost shy. Apart from Alfred and, perhaps, his someone, Bruce has probably never put on the suit in front of anyone else. Is it weird you missed seeing him shy? "It fits perfectly." Your voice is barely above a whisper.

Of course it does. You know it's dumb to say. Bruce doesn't say that, though.

He waits a beat before turning away from you, his cape sending a breeze of cool air up against your legs. His car awaits on the train tracks, headlights beaming into the near endless darkness as he approaches and you follow.

The car thrums eagerly with life at the push of a button, sending vibrations through the ground, all the way up to the ceiling where you hear a sudden flurry of wings and chirping. Bowing your head close to Bruce, you watch about a hundred bats scurry about above you, disturbed by the sudden rumble of the engine. Bruce holds his cape over your shoulder, though none of the bats fly low enough to concern him. "They don't freak you out a little bit?"

"They haven't bothered me."

"Well, when you dress like them I guess they get confused."

"I'll be back before sunrise," Bruce promises, "and I'll look into Judith for you. Maybe you should... call first."

You're tickled by the discomfort he's so desperately trying to hide, "Scared of a little old lady?"

He pointedly ignores you. You step back as he throws open the door and settles into his car, but before he can pull off into the darkness, you shout his name to get his attention over the roaring engine, "Hey! Be safe."

Bruce looks at you and... you don't know what he's thinking, only that the muscles in his jaw relax a bit. Was he used to that? Did Alfred often stand on the cold, empty train tracks before every patrol and wish him luck on another night of beating criminals to a pulp? Was he used to the worrying? Annoyed by it, even?

He doesn't say anything. The car leaves in a spray of dust and you hide your face in your shirt to shield yourself from it. By the time the dust settles, you can only see two red lights blurring into the distance.

#bruce wayne x reader #bruce wayne scenarios #bruce wayne fic #bruce wayne #batman x reader #batman scenarios #batman fic #the batman #battinson x reader #batman fluff #batman angst #battinson #dc #mjwrites #bw; rprt

138 notes · View notes

dr-reids-fidget-toy · 3 months ago

Text

Idea for a House MD reboot:

Normal House MD shenanigans. Wild cases, House being an ass, Cuddy trying to wrangle House, House and Wilson being homo besties, etc etc. I don’t have any specific plot or episode ideas but at the end of the 1st new season they have one of those fever dream episodes where House is hallucinating, but it’s unclear to him that that is what is happening (like when he got shot). It’s mostly clear to the audience now that the entire season has just been inside House’s head. He has a moment of almost-clarity when he starts to question if what he’s experiencing is real, and at some point after that we see a short glimpse of reality. It is implied that Wilson is dead (cancer). At the end of the episode, House makes the decision to stop questioning his reality. Viewer’s choice on whether to believe he believes the hallucinations are real or if he just wants them to be. 2nd season and onwards, the show continues as normal.

I don’t have specific ideas for who the team would be. Maybe the team changes slightly every few episodes, then more often until it changes every scene, possibly in the same scene, in the last episode of season 1. Then in season 2 it goes back to switching team members every few episodes? I’m unsure about what to do with this part after season 1.

Edit: I’ve thought some more about this and I think there are many possibilities for Reality, for instance:

House is in a group home/psych ward/rehab center, most likely against his will but he’s quite out of it soo

After season 1, there will occasionally be a nurse/carer who walks into the room to give house meds/food/whatever, then leaves. Sometimes the team stands around quietly during this, sometimes they make comments. If there is a patient/other non-recurring character in this scene, they are confused by this (contrary to the team and other recurring characters). House’s reactions vary with his moods, like always

House is on a shit ton of drugs, often overdosing

The glimpse of reality we get in the season 1 finale is of House laying on the floor, barely clinging to life. He looks miserable and happy. This happiness is artificial, a combination of drugs and false reality

House is so overcome with grief and loneliness that his mind breaks

House is in terrible pain (his emotions canonically affect his pain levels) and hallucinating because of this

Possible extra angst if he ran out of vicodin

These ideas are not mutually exclusive.

#I hope this makes sense I’m a little sick #house and wilson #gregory house #dr house #house md #doctor house #greg house #house reboot #james wilson #dr james wilson #cuddy #lisa cuddy #dr cuddy #dr lisa cuddy #hilson #house md reboot

50 notes · View notes

oathkeeper-of-tarth · 8 months ago

Text

Here's another long-winded post about me combing through BG3 early access files in search of Aylin and Isobel tidbits - rummaging that already resulted in this post right here. Let me just say I'm pleased to have brought Aylin Silverblood some attention because, again, I think it's a dope name.

Now, obviously, Isobel and Aylin are both Act 2 characters, and early access only covered Act 1. So anything related to them is partial stuff that wasn't scrubbed from the game files for whatever reason, and a lot of placeholders (these are usually indicated by |the text being in vertical lines|). This all means that sometimes (usually!) there are no nice voice lines indexed by UUID and parseable dialogue trees, and you have to trawl through a giant localisation XML of every bit of text in the game instead. An additional complication is all these stories were in flux, but older bits of writing from deprecated iterations didn't get immediately removed from the files, so it's sometimes hard to tell what belongs to which version.

The biggest luck I've had with regards to these two is the 24/11/2021 version of the game - EA Patch #6 Hotfix #19, aka game version v. 4.1.1.1356845, aka the source of Aylin Silverblood (my beloved). Here's a handy list of the patch and hotfix history, if you're like me and interested in this stuff. I'm actually wrangling files from 5 versions of the game right now, ranging from March 2021 to July 2022 - it's been a fun time. This old datamining post on reddit really helped narrow down the timeframe for me to look into.

Why am I doing this? I genuinely find it fun and interesting! There's some neat writing to be found! I crave more Isobel at all times! And I'm always into WIP and "how the sausage is made" type stuff. Also, tons of cool inspo for fics and headcanons.

Note, because I know that's a popular EA tidbit: this is all from after the Halsin killing Isobel variant was scrapped. This is, in fact, the version where she gets killed and soul trapped by Balthazar, and Aylin gets framed for it.

I'm going to start this off with my favourite part, and that is snippets of an early version of the Aylin/Isobel reunion from 2021. I've done my best to put them in order, but be aware a lot of this is still me speculating.

|[CINE: Nightsong teleports the party to the plaza in front of Last Light. As she looks around trying to familiarize herself, Isobel notices your arrival from the balcony. Her reaction is pure shock, followed by an immediate rush down the stairs.]|

|[CINE: Isobel dashes out of the front of the inn, wide-eyed and out of breath. Nightsong stares at her, stunned.]|

Aylin: |(distant, shocked) Isobel.|

Isobel: |Aylin...|

|[CINE: Nightsong takes an instinctive step towards her but stumbles, collapsing to her knees, eyes blown with pain and disbelief. Isobel closes the distance between them in hasty steps, trying to help Nightsong up, but Nightsong tightly grips at her arms - as if the contact makes everything real.]|

|[CINE: Isobel's eyes fill with tears as she drops down to the ground, throwing her arms around Nightsong's shoulders in a tight embrace. Shaking, almost fearful, Nightsong returns the embrace - the first kind touch she's had in a hundred years.]|

|[CINE: Nightsong draws back from the hug, looking Isobel in the eyes. Isobel helps Nightsong to her feet. As the two of them stand, they keep their hands linked.]|

Aylin: |A hundred years. Isobel, light of my heart, where were you? (choking up) I found your body, I....|

Isobel: |I was dead, Aylin. For so long. It was Balthazar - he trapped my soul, he-|

Player: |[Doesn'tKnowRelationship] You were lovers? Did Ketheric know?|

Aylin: |(jaw tightens) We were lovers. Her father was against it. He saw nothing but future misery. I'm immortal. I would never age, but she would.|

Isobel: |He didn't understand. It doesn't matter when... (fearful, as if worried Aylin's feelings might have changed) ... I still love you so much.|

Aylin: |(her first genuine smile) And I, you. No trial or pain could ever change that. (relaxes a touch) It is why I couldn't leave your body, even when they came. Balthazar and that Sharran witch told your father that I was to blame.|

|And he believed them over you?|

Aylin: |(frowns) He believed what he wanted to believe. Ketheric saw his daughter dead, and he saw someone he wanted to hurt. Shar took that cruel thread, that moment of mortal pain, and used it to corrupt him to the core.|

Aylin: |I was put on trial, and I had no defence. The moment it was over, I was taken down to the temple and... well, you saw what they had done.|

|Isobel presses against Nightsong's side, face tight with worry, running her fingers in slow strokes up and down Nightsong's arm.|

|[CINE: Nightsong tilts her head back towards the player.]|

Aylin: |These heroes saved me. Without them, I'd still be trapped in Balthazar's soul cage, with Ketheric gripping my heart like a leech.|

|[CINE: Isobel's face falls at the mention of her father's name.]|

Isobel: |A *soul cage*? Gods.|

Isobel: |I didn't know. Gods, he didn't say a word to me. I ran away because it was Balthazar that brought me back. As I ran, I heard my father shouting... but I'd seen enough. There was no saving him.|

Aylin: |You are not your father, Isobel. (sad, wry smile) You were the only thing that kept me alive in the dark. When hope began to fade, I simply thought of you.|

Isobel: |[To player] Thank you. (smiles wide) I... I can't possibly thank you enough, for bringing Aylin back to me.|

|Nightsong smiles too, but she's lost looking at Isobel, completely tuning out everyone else around them. Isobel leans in, resting her brow against Nightsong's and closing her eyes, Nightsong's hand clutched to her chest.|

Then, there is an option to press Isobel for details:

|You said the necromancer trapped your soul. Why?| |Was Balthazar the one who killed you, Isobel?|

Isobel: |(hesitant, visibly guilty) I think Aylin would know better than I do. The last thing I remember is a blade in the dark. Too fast to feel pain. Then silence.|

Asking Isobel to go with you to Moonrise was possible at various points, leading to different responses:

Will you come with me to Moonrise? I could use your help. If we're going to stop Ketheric, you have to come with me.

Until there is a way to keep Last Light safe, I cannot leave. All I can do is pray. |Not if everyone is killed at Last Light in my absence. I'll do everything I can to help you from here, but I won't go with you.| |Not if everyone is killed at Last Light in my absence. If someone else could take my place, I would go with you. I swear it.|

|Nightsong is here, she will protect Last Light - let's go to Moonrise, like you promised.| |I want to spend the night with Aylin. Meet me at Moonrise tomorrow.| |Nightsong will protect the people while together we can stop Ketheric.|

Isobel: I... we need to get close to him, don't we? And Aylin can protect Last Light in my absence. Aylin: Isobel, I have just gotten you back. To put yourself in his hands again-

Looks like we would've had a flip of the current Act 2 boss fight, and Isobel would be the ally for the confrontation with Ketheric, not Aylin. Also, that one line right there that is our first indication of Succor™, gotta love it. Sadly, post-reunion I only have:

|TBD: Post Nightsong Reunion.| |How are you and Aylin doing?|

To borrow release version Isobel's stock line: KEEPING VERY WELL, I HOPE? In any case, I'm putting the rest under a cut, featuring options for calling Isobel out on her parentage, Aylin being from Mt. Celestia, and Balthazar being gross - among many other things.

At one point quite early on, Isobel's protection from the shadow curse wasn't a spell, but an ointment:

|Ointment of Selûne| |Ointment Container PLACEHOLDER| |Isobel filled this with precious doses of her sacred Ointment of Selûne.| |First get the ointment from Isobel.| Have you received Isobel's ointment yet? What protection can her ointment offer, exactly? You should see Isobel. If Marcus does crop up, I'd sooner you had her ointment to protect you. Can use that cleric's ointment to get you on your way. But I have to move out - now. Can I get some of your ointment? No more theories! It's time for action. Our secret weapon needs to travel to Moonrise Towers, which means they'll need your ointment. You have the ointment. You have the Gate Stone. Moonrise Towers awaits. Are you sure the ointment will last long enough?

What is now Isobel's Ominous Cough was a gradual weakening that was remarked upon and seemed to be there to create more of a sense of urgency:

I won't claim to know Isobel's craft, but Selûne's light is bright in her. Isobel's tough - though she was tougher at the start. I've rarely seen a cleric so in tune with her goddess, but the curse is taking its toll. The light used to be stronger, Isobel. How much more of this curse can you take? You look paler than death, Isobel. How much more of this curse can you take?

We have some nice concise infodumps on Ketheric:

After Ketheric turned to darkness, the Enclave joined with the Harpers to unseat him and his Sharran cohorts. We marched together, fought together, bled together... and in the end we prevailed.

Only it wasn't the end. Nothing seemed to kill Ketheric himself, so the Harpers decided to seal him in his own tomb, alive. They thought that would be enough. But they hadn't counted on Ketheric unleashing the shadow curse. We watched it drain all light and life away from this place, saw it twist people into abominations. The Harpers lost hope.

Ketheric wove the curse on this land. The moment he was sealed in that tomb, Shar's poison devoured everything in its path.

Fallen paladin. Champion of Shar. He was building an army bent on unholy conquest, but we stopped him. Killed him. Buried him.

It was not enough. General Thorm lives again. He's built a new army, and this time he marches under the banner of the Absolute.

November 2021 is the earliest mention of Aylin I found, mostly marked as not finalised and placeholder dialogue (and that reunion up there). The Nightsong as present in that patch is still very different from what we ended up getting - nobody was killing her, in fact people were coming to get her "kiss", and there was a whole thing where it seems like Shar would directly take control of her and you could help her overcome the curse, or abandon her to it - or kill her.

Embrace the Nightsong and be sworn to Eternal Shadow.

Anyway, here are her lines (all of these exist as voice files, which is rare for stuff I put in this post - but they're done by a voice actress who doesn't sound like Helen Keeley, our final Aylin VA, so I don't know what to make of it all tbh):

Shar is the Nightsinger, and I am her Nightsong. I am her instrument, transforming the faithful into shadows. I've been here for centuries. Do you know how many priests of Shar came here, full of faith, seeking my kiss? I've been here for centuries. Thousands of Sharrans came here seeking my kiss. I drink their sorrow, their loss, their grief. Then I vomit it back into the world. All of them are shadows now. That is Shar's only reward. But Ketheric returned for my kiss, over and over. You're the first to survive my kiss intact. You're the only one who can help me. Please, you have to help. No one's ever resisted the kiss before. No one has ever resisted my kiss. But you are not merely *one*, are you? That thing in your head must be incredibly powerful to resist a goddess. Perhaps it's also divine in nature. Because a mind can't survive two masters. It breaks us. Shar's attention must be elsewhere. Speak quickly. She's watching now. She's waiting to steal my voice. But it won't last. Please - listen! I was captured by Ketheric Thorm, Shar's chosen. He turned me into this creature. I'm a slave of Shar. She owns me, just like that thing in your head owns you. I want to sing my own song. Not Shar's. Not *Ketheric's*. Find Ketheric. Kill him so I can be free! Slay Ketheric. His wretched existence binds me to this temple. Oh. That made her angry. The Lady returns! She has me again! *Again!* Stop! You've driven her away!

I am not your *spectacle*. Turn away before I strike you blind. Tell them to come and receive my kiss.

Some possible relevant tags, interactions, and outcomes include:

|The soul cage has greatly weakened Nightsong| |Debug: click to save Nightsong (sets the flag to talk to Isobel)| |We sided with Ketheric and doomed Nightsong.| |Companion comment!||But if his power is linked to this Nightsong, there must be a way to unlink it.| |You have taken control of Ketheric's Soul Cage| |You are bound to Ketheric's soul cage, taking his regenerative powers for yourself| |Bound to Soul Cage| |Soul Cage Key| |Soul Cage Research| |The book details the necromancer's research on the soul cage| |There is a glimpse of Isobel's ghost, as she takes her Father with her to the afterlife.| |There is a glimpse of Isobel's ghost terrified and in agony. Both Isobel and Ketheric will disappear.|

At one point Isobel delivers her own, Ketheric's, and Aylin's backstory as "a story", but sadly I can find very little of it, just disjointed fragments:

You seem to know a lot about Ketheric. He was a devout Selûnite who converted to Shar. They say it was Ketheric's purity that drew an angel down from Celestia. You're Isobel Thorm. The daughter who died in that story.

And there seem to be many options to question Isobel about her hiding the truth about her father:

Why are you lying to me, Isobel? Everyone thinks you're dead, Isobel. Tell me the truth, Isobel. Everything. Still, Isobel might have saved us some time had she been honest from the beginning. |Why didn't you tell me what happened from the start, Isobel?|

Ketheric. Don't you mean your father? Ketheric is your father. I know the truth. Ketheric told me at Moonrise. He wants me to bring you home. I need your father to trust me. He wants you back. You sent me after your father - Ketheric. I think we should discuss Ketheric - your father - first. For all you've said about Ketheric, you left out the part where he's your father.

To which I've found some responses:

And would you have trusted her? Ketheric's daughter? Why didn't I tell you that I was murdered, that my soul was locked away for a hundred years? What would I have told her? That my father murdered her fellow Harpers, but that I can surely be trusted?

[Attempt to read Isobel's thoughts.] *You see Ketheric standing before Isobel, although the memory is hazy. His words are unclear, but his tone is not - he is pleading with her.*

Brought back by the same man that killed me. Balthazar. Standing next to my father with a smile on his face.

But I'm not sure it would have mattered. To stand with that man, my father has surrendered to deepest evil.

I would love to know what the whole pleading thing is about, and what Isobel "didn't know" that she claims didn't matter anyway.

My father. After a century, he somehow brought me back. But I saw the monster he had become. I couldn't bear it... I ran. I ran until I found Last Light. It was like a second home to me, once. I've been studying the curse ever since, searching for answers. Trying to restore the damage my father has wrought upon this land. It's possible I may have to sacrifice myself. But this is my father's crime.

And then, there is this nugget I cannot place but that I like:

|Your father's due will come.|

There is also an option to tell her Nightsong is Aylin (who was, at this point, a full celestial - no mention of being connected to Selûne, though, and in fact, if she was indeed from Mount Celestia as mentioned in the "story", she would not have been):

Isobel: My father's curse still blackens this earth. Have you found anything? Player: A celestial, chained to Ketheric's soul. Player: They called her Nightsong, but she told me her name was Aylin. Isobel: Aylin. She... she's alive. I knew she had to be, I… Player: Ketheric's necromancer took her to Moonrise. Isobel: His necromancer? Gods, you have to free her. Isobel: You have to go to Moonrise and free Aylin. When Ketheric is weak, this can all be over. Isobel: The truth is that I would give anything to see her again, and anything to stop my father. Free her, and you do both. Isobel: At least, the shell of my father. There's nothing left of the man that championed Selûne. Isobel: Find her. Free her. If Ketheric isn't stopped, all of us are doomed.

Player: |[Doesn'tKnowName] Aylin? Care to explain?| Isobel: The angel in my story about Ketheric. That was Aylin.

Speaking of Balthazar. Some lines from him:

[Introductory note: please imagine everything Balthazar says spoken with a wheezy voice, as if he's permanently out of breath.]

[I need to retrieve the Nightsong, but the temple is haunted and my minions cannot make it past the trial grounds. I cannot go there until the ghosts have been dealt with. Now that you are here on behalf of Ketheric, you will do all this for me.]

I, Fodder, am here on behalf of General Ketheric Thorm. Down in the depths of this temple writhes his desire. I am to bring it to him.

I created the Nightsong for General Ketheric, many moons... HEAR THAT SHAR? Many moons ago.

*As you hold the necromancer's mocking gaze, you can tell how it starts to dawn on him you are not the mere minion he thought you were.*

Along the way I found some more recent Patch 8 (2022-ish) gross Balthazar lines, some bits of which have actually survived to release:

She was a unique specimen even before I began my work. Aasimar. A god's blood united with mortal flesh.

Such fine clay she was. We grew quite close as I… remoulded her. Now she is General Thorm's shield. Her strength is his to drink upon. His pains are hers to bear.

If I never exceed her, I will still die happy. If I ever do something as gauche as truly dying, that is.

Utterly revolting! Makes my skin crawl! Man deserves a yeeting into the Shadowfell a hundred times over! But in order to not end on a gross note, I leave you with:

Ketheric Thorm. Murderer. Oathbreaker.

Aylin Silverblood. My true name. Nightsong was only ever a curse.

#isobel thorm #dame aylin #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #aylin x isobel #balthazar #datamine #early access #long post #i have more of this stuff actually but this post is already way too long #so stay tuned i guess

77 notes · View notes

watatsumiis · 2 years ago

Text

Reactions to Being Ignored for Video Games (part 2)

Modern AU Genshin characters react to the reader not paying attention to them in favour of a video game! No content warnings apply. Enjoy!

Characters: Dainsleif, Diluc, Dottore, Foul Legacy, Gorou, Itto

Part 1 (Ayato, Arlecchino, Baizhu, Capitano, Childe, Cyno)

Part 3 (Heizou, Kaveh, Kazuha, Lisa, Pantalone, Pierro)

Dainsleif acts like a sad little puppy at the first hint of you not paying attention to him. He won't admit it but he can be pretty insecure and he doesn't like to have to compete for the attention of the ones he cares about. He'll only repeat himself once or twice before he just turns and leaves the room. He doesn't mind playing along if you invite him though, but he isn't very good at most games since it's just not something he does very often. You have to walk him through the controls every time and explain how to do certain things over and over, but once he's got the hang of it he's not entirely terrible.

Diluc doesn't mind - he understands more than anyone that sometimes people need something to help them pull away from reality, something to keep their minds and hands occupied for a little while. He's perfectly content to wait until there's a lull in the gameplay to ask for your full attention. He's not afraid to stand in front of the TV or wave a hand in front of the screen if you continue to neglect him, though, and he can get kind of stern and pouty about it if he thinks you're being rude on purpose. He may occasionally ask to play games with you, but less because he actually enjoys them and more because he sees it as another way to connect with the ones he cares about.

Dottore will not hear a word of it. If he has sought you out, he expects your full and undivided attention until he tires of it, regardless of what you were doing beforehand. If ignoring him for video games becomes a common occurrence, he just turns them off the moment he walks into the room, pulling out the power cords or pressing buttons until the screen goes black. He has very little interest in video games himself (except for the odd management simulator), but on occasion he may just sit down and observe, ask you questions about the games you're playing and document your responses carefully. He doesn't seem to realise the reason you get so flighty and pause the game when he walks in is because of his well documented history of unplugging things mid-game.

Foul Legacy can be a little unpredictable. For the most part, he's more than content to curl up next to you and simply bask in your presence as you do whatever you feel like doing (provided it doesn't disturb him too much), but if he feels like you've forgotten he's there, he may worry at your clothing or skin with clawed fingers and let out these barely audible peeeeeps as he frets for you. Usually just giving him a pat on the head or wrapping an arm around him will be enough to calm him down. Though, if he's trying to speak to you and you miss what he's saying because you're busy, he'll get all downtrodden and upset and go pout in a corner somewhere until you go over and give him your complete attention until he's wrangled the words out.

Gorou tries to be nice about it, he really does. He tries to be patient and understanding, but he can't help the puppy-like whimpers that escape from the back of his throat in time with his breathing if you've been ignoring him for too long. His tail will hang between his legs and his ears will go flat against his head as he stands off to the side, shifting his weight between his feet as he wrings his hands. Though on a surface level he seems to be polite and nice, he can't help but fret and wonder if he's done something wrong. He'll keep an eye on your game and wait for quiet moments before he tries to speak up again, often stumbling over his words as he tries to grab your attention. He loves video games, and if you're playing one he particularly likes or wants to play with you, he makes it painfully obvious, looking over at the extra controller or between you and the television as his tail twitches. Try as he might, Gorou simply can't control his body language, so it's always easy to tell what he's pining for.

Itto barely gives you a chance to ignore him - he's big and bold and loud, it's hard not to pay at least some semblance of attention to him when he's in the room. If you somehow manage to ignore him though, he turns into a whiny little kid, wandering in front of the TV and demanding to be allowed to play. If you ignore him for long enough, he just goes and sits in a corner with his arms crossed and that adorable pouty look on his face, glancing over at you all the time to see whether you’re paying any attention to him. If you leave him hanging for long enough, he gets frustrated and just strongarms his way into playing, whether that be by jumping in with an extra controller unannounced or just snatching yours away so that he can have a turn. He’s super competitive with multiplayer games, even if they’re supposed to be cooperative. He’ll turn every single game into a competition of some sort, then brag about ‘winning’ a challenge you weren’t even aware existed.

Please don't repost, steal, copy or otherwise plagarise my writing! This includes posting translations to other sites (without credit + permission).

1K notes · View notes

secriden · 2 months ago

Text

ok but having god become utterly flustered, dropping stuff, and then running away before diew could react was the BEST way to have them finally meet face to face!

i was worried it'd be 2 steps back with diew having to go through the motions of 'freaking out' about it, but because they let god carry the embarrassment of reacting and getting flustered, i totally buy that diew still felt safe to continue his slow exploration of their relationship.

also lovelovelove that god is STILL respecting that boundary and not demanding that they talk face to face even though they met. he's being so gentle and so clearly wanting diew to be comfortable around him. you can tell that this isn't how he'd normally try to get to know someone but he's willing to try it this way to ensure that diew feels safe. its SO sweet!!

i love his reaction when he thinks khun shy is another man who diew is talking to on the phone. he asks about it, but he doesn't demand to know who it is. and he takes a moment to process that this turtle must be important to diew and then then treats this new information with earnest acceptance and interest.

this is a character who we see at the start being very impulsive, brash, and careless. he doesn't think things through deeply and will react in the moment often without care of the consequences. he's used to teasing and using words much more carelessly too; with his friends, aunties, etc. and all these aspects of the character are still there - eg. the carelessness with his studies, his time with friends, the whole hot pot fire incident - but with diew at least he's being so careful and conscientious and its like something fundamental has shifted in him specifically in connection to diew. like diew has awakened an aspect of care in god that just wasn't there before.

i love how seen diew is by god. how god notices and cares about what makes him comfortable or uncomfortable. when they're talking to jane, god clocks diew's expression so quickly and immediately changes their plans in a very natural way that doesn't draw any extra attention to diew's discomfort. he offers the opportunity to try the 'turtle eggs' but also makes it clear that diew can choose something familiar if he isn't feeling adventurous. when god brings him to the basketball court, he is clearly prepared to wrangle his friends into behaving properly (he asks diew to wait and then goes and addresses the teasing in a way that doesn't escalate the embarrassment for diew). and while he makes them apologise for the teasing, he also quickly moves on from it and ignores the teasing until it stops normally. he asks for permission before touching diew in new ways, even if it wouldn't be untoward if he assumed it's fine to touch diew's hand. god's showing a lot of sensitivity that speaks to just how much he's noticing about diew and how seriously he's taking this courtship.

and yes this really is a courtship - its very intentional, systematic, and focused.

this is such a self-indulgent comfort watch of a show, ahh i'm loving it <3

#monster next door #monster next door the series #rambles about shows i'm watching #goddiew #god x diew #got x diew #<my posts>

22 notes · View notes

surgepricing · 7 months ago

Text

RWBY Final Thoughts: Legacy

Very rarely would I ever consider a fandom on its own worth its own section of a Final Thoughts. ... [Basically,] they behave like a cult.

This is a repost of a post I made February 1st, 2024 on another site. At the time, it was the final post of a deep-dive recap of RWBY and the history of the show, its fandom, and its direction under Rooster Teeth.

I felt this out with some of my peers and the feedback I got in relation to posting in on Tumblr was that, well, why not? It was my main haunt to begin with, and I may as well, since Rooster Teeth is closing its doors. I'm posting this mainly as a shot in the dark just to see how it gets received. Only minor edits have been made; I'm sure there's some stuff in here that would make people mad, but that applies to pretty much anything someone could say about RWBY. Click the read more to get a glance at how my time with RWBY ultimately wrapped up.

Nine years ago today, Monty Oum died of an allergic reaction. Today is a day of mourning for fans of his work, including RWBY. There’s no sense in waiting. Let’s finish this and heal.

The Showrunners

Miles and Kerry often received the brunt of the attention when it came to RWBY. As the writers of the show, they bore responsibility for the largest chunk of why it eventually went into the shitter, and fan anger against them was almost certainly not helped by the damn near idolization heaped on them by fervent stans. They are, undoubtedly, the focal point of RWBY fans’ parasocial relationship with the show.

Of course, despite sharing about the same credits space as his partner in crime, Kerry tended to fly under the radar a lot, with it being Miles who received the brunt of the fandom’s fury with each successive volume. It’s not hard to see why; the character Miles voices has been consistently over-exposed and is in many ways an obvious creator’s pet, with denials as to this fact falling on deaf ears as Jaune’s screentime continued to balloon past its merits, whereas the character Kerry voices could just about wrangle an average of ten seconds of screentime every three years. Certainly Miles has been in trouble with fans more often than Kerry for the shit he’s said and done. The Ruby body pillow and the Tifa Lockhart ‘prostitute’ comments come to mind. Oh, and the slurs, that one too.

But perhaps the reason Miles gets so much more flak than Kerry is that Miles just...acts like an asshole a lot of the time. Even aside from above examples, Miles’ flaws come out in his writing: he’s petty, holds grudges, can’t take criticism, and just overall has way more power over the story than someone of his caliber should. He’s very poor at disguising his real feelings and often lets them bleed through, and when he actually decides to voice them on purpose, things get ugly—refer to that Cameo about Ironwood.

But as tempting as it is to treat Miles as an out-of-control cockwaffle on the rampage and Kerry as his sympathetic ineffectual shadow, the reality is that they’re co-writers, have been for ten years, and anything Miles gets away with doing is as much Kerry’s fault as his. If the Gray Haddock situation has taught us anything, it’s that more people tend to harbor blame than the one individual that makes an easy scapegoat.

Since aside from aforementioned n-word business, Miles and Kerry are almost never connected to moral outrage, this makes it easy for the stans to uphold them, since all they really have to defend them from is accusations that they didn’t honor Monty’s “vision” for the series. This is only easy because the stans are fucking insane, but that’s for later on down the page.

“Vision” is in quotes because that’s how fans treat it, we all know they don’t really care. Miles and Kerry’s vision matters, and we know that much because of Calixyn’s interview where she all but begged to be told that RWBY Volume 5 was as bad as it was because the “good bois” had control of the show ripped from them. Nope, turns out all that racism, homophobia, and plain shitty writing is all on them. But at least they’re nice!

(Miles was 26 when he said the n-word. I’m 26 now when writing this. I think it’s pretty fair to call him an asshole.)

But the truth is that it’s objectively stupid to think that the direction of RWBY hasn’t changed since Monty’s passing, it’s impossible for it not to have. There are more writers on board than before, and it’s been a long time since he was alive to contribute his thoughts. The real question is whether they at least tried, and I don’t think they did.

I mean, Shane Newville never names Miles and Kerry in his letter, but he does state several times that the choices made for the show were not only not what Monty wanted, but “straight up just shitting all over what Monty made”. I find it very difficult to believe that that insinuation, and all of the people caught up in the net it casts, wouldn’t include those two. And like it or not, but the person who is able to compile tons of clips and interviews over the years as some sort of seeming immutable proof that “CRWBY” are good-hearted people determined to preserve Monty’s vision, isn’t really looking at any more evidence than the person who’s come to the conclusion, based on what they’ve seen, that that the opposite is true. And they’re certainly looking at less evidence than the people who actually did work there around Monty, Miles, and Kerry. The facts sometimes boil down to ‘if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and is implicated in the walls of text like a duck, it’s probably a duck’, guys.

Even in the best case scenario in which the work of Monty Oum turns out to have been treated with dignity and respect (and was just really shittily written from the beginning), the fact remains that Miles and Kerry did not put a quality product into the world. I will be very surprised if either of them manages to get a lead writing position ever again, because once the popularity of RWBY fades, so too will the goodwill they’ve somehow amassed among its fans. RWBY, much like Twilight, is inevitably going to taint the people who were in charge of writing it.

But Miles and Kerry are just two dudes. What exactly is going to happen to those fervent fans who hung on their every word and insisted they were the embodiment of everything pure and innocent? What, exactly, is going to happen to the RWBY fandom that once seemed to be unavoidably populous on the internet?

F, N, D, M

We already went over “constructive criticism” and “worldbuilding”, so let’s add another eternally-misused word to our roster. You know, something I’ve occasionally thought about in terms of online spaces is that no one knows what a “comfort show” is. It’s one of those terms that became too popular almost as soon as it was introduced, to the point that it became meaningless, much like “hyperfixation” and “anxiety”. I see people refer to RWBY as their comfort show and I’m just like...how? A comfort show is supposed to be the show that always puts you in a good headspace, a show you rest easy with because you’ve always connected with it because the love was always there. A comfort show is a show that you watch in your down moments to feel better, not a show you think is just the greatest thing ever, the bees’ knees if you will.

A comfort show is not a show you force yourself to like, it is not a show you defend at all costs, and it is not a show you only still cling to because enjoying it once coincided with a time when you felt popular and among friends. Which, increasingly, seems to have been the case for RWBY fans.

RWBY’s Fandom

Very rarely would I ever consider a fandom on its own worth its own section of a Final Thoughts. But I’m doing it now because the RWBY fandom, though now it’s a shadow of its former self, is still a sizable chunk of people and took a lot longer to die than most other fandoms.

The RWBY fandom itself was an especially big and very online fandom, and the show produced an abnormally large amount of big name fans who continued to use their own influence to push its success and keep its momentum going. As I’ve said before, the RWBY fandom is something that Rooster Teeth were able to extract an excessive amount of praise out of for minimal effort; it simply seems to be in RWBY fans’ nature to speculate and theorize and over-analyze and fill in blanks, and to perceive good writing and animation where there is none. But you know how fandom operates—the bigger its size, the more infamous it becomes.

Long since famed for being especially toxic, those who are in the know consider RWBY fans a different breed, really. They create and move narratives at high speed and act quickly to correct any perceived dissent in the ranks, casting out anyone that feels disillusionment with the product and insisting everything is peachy even as their world crumbles around them. To RWBY fans, the “CRWBY” are always separate from the “problematic” aspects of Rooster Teeth (which is basically the whole company) and it doesn’t matter how many of its flaws get highlighted; RWBY and the people that make it are always great, innocent of any harm done and fantastic, and anyone that dislikes them is a villain—even if those people were at one point part of the “CRWBY” themselves. Loyalty is everything. In other words, they behave like a cult.Those acronyms themselves have always bothered me, and I’ve grown a strong distaste for them. Originally they were just a quirk of the show; a format for team names that spawned the name of the show and eventually stopped being relevant altogether. But RWBY fans are simply unable to not use them. It’s not “the fandom” it’s “the FNDM”. They’re not “the RWBY team” or “the RWBY crew”, they’re “CRWBY”. Even people that the fans are actively trying to shame, shun, and harass don’t get to simply be people—they’re “RWDE” and, when that became an actual community of sorts unto itself, was switched to “HTDM”, short for “hatedom”. They remind me distinctly of code words that get formed and passed around in cult movements, identifying terms that quickly provide boxes to put people in and make it easier to sort loyals from disloyals. “Hatedom” itself is another one of those terms that spread and got so prolific it really doesn’t carry any meaning anymore. Real hatedoms are surprisingly rare, guys. Every fandom that becomes big enough for its respective product to become criticized eventually comes to believe it has a ‘hatedom’ because how could someone dislike something I like so much? But a hatedom on its own arises out of very specific circumstances and environments, and causes the spread of hate for a product based on broad foundations that are often unfair to the product and which creates perceptions that spread faster than the work, so that the work is often talked about in mocking reference rather than true dissatisfaction.

RWBY doesn’t have a hatedom guys, it never did. The Last of Us doesn’t have a hatedom. Fairy Tail didn’t have a hatedom. Blackpink doesn’t have a hatedom. Even Marvel doesn’t have a hatedom.

Paris Hilton had a hatedom. Nickelback had a hatedom. Hell, the website Tumblr itself had a hatedom. These were examples of people or products whose reputations spread too quickly and eventually swallowed rational perception of them, with people who have never experienced them or their work dismissing them and the fans who enjoy it wholesale.

Using the term “hatedom” is understandably common because (and in spite of the fact that) it allows for easy miscategorization. A hatedom is not composed of people that were actually exposed to the work, found it lacking, and expressed that. A hatedom does not occur in the wake of a product that was so bad it pissed off its fans and caused them to walk. People don’t hate Metroid: Other M because they can’t stand the sight of a woman being vulnerable and don’t understand challenging drama, they hate it because it was poorly written, badly designed, and tarnished a long-running and highly cherished gaming heroine’s reputation. People didn’t hate Fifty Shades of Grey because of some bias against women expressing their sexual freedom, they hated it because it was a wildly misogynistic and badly-written piece of dreck. People didn’t hate The Last of Us Part II because of homophobia and transphobia, they hated it because it was a misery fest with a tired moral theme that posited itself far more deep and compelling than it really was. And just because people with the above disingenuous views also hated these things does not discount the fact that the works got the reputations they did because they were getting back the exact amount of love and respect that was put into them.

Similarly, RWBY doesn’t have a hatedom. It does, in fact, have an ex-fandom. Those are also things you don’t see very often, but when you do, they almost always follow the same pattern, don’t they? A work which got wildly popular very quickly, took really deep nosedives afterward, and became disowned by the people that had formerly propped it up.

But that’s a discussion for later. What exactly makes RWBY’s fandom so toxic and cult-like, and why and how did it get that way? I think it’s a combination of several key factors that were baked in and collided badly.

The first was ease of access. RWBY was sold extremely well early on, and shared enough similarities with both anime and video games that it attracted many curious people from those communities. Combine that with vibrant colors, an attractive visual aesthetic, an air of badassery, and good music, and it gained a lot of loyal fans quickly—fans of anime and video games, specifically, being fans that tend to get more attached than to other mediums and are known for spending a lot on merchandise. These, in turn, morphed into nostalgic elements ripe for misremembering—people often have difficulty acknowledging that something they once liked isn’t good anymore even on its own, and I think RWBY fans in particular put way too much energy into the show to be able to admit that all the time they spent defending it (and harassing people who criticized it) was for nothing.

That skyhigh rocket to fame early on, of course, was attached to the reputation of Monty Oum, and once he died, he quickly became a martyr, which galvanized the loyalty of the show’s most toxic fans even further. To this day, talking about Monty at all, even for the right reasons, is seen as disrespectful or distasteful unless you’re trying to use him to prop up Rooster Teeth, a double standard I’ve unfortunately run into even in seeming safe spaces. I think if we’re comparing RWBY fandom to a cult, then Monty Oum and his memory can be compared to a central mythologized figure, the center around which are formed all of the pretty lies the members of the cult will tell you. Monty’s name is irreplaceably tied to RWBY, and as such, in order to defend Monty, its fans have to defend RWBY...and you can see where this leads. Attempting to talk about the mistreatment Monty and his family went through at Rooster Teeth is seen as using his name as a weapon—nevermind the fact that Rooster Teeth and their fans regularly use his name as a shield.

Of course, what this really reveals is that many such people don’t care about Monty, who he was, or who he went through, but rather his name alone. In fact, I’ve straight up seen RWBY stans say that people shouldn’t “take Monty’s name in vain”, as if Monty were in fact some sacred religious figure. It’s both bizarre and harmful.

A third factor was popularity. For a lot of the same reasons as, say, Supernatural, the perception of RWBY skews much more broadly between fan and ex-fan than that of the typical over-hyped show. The truth of the matter is that when a show gets popular, or really any work gets popular, enjoying it becomes a cliquey sort of thing. People that enjoyed being into something well-respected and widely known and basically the hottest trend are far more prone to become overly attached, put too much of themselves into it, and remain unequipped to deal with the fact of that trend’s eventual passing, especially if it’s a fall into disgrace rather than a quiet entrance into history. You can still find certain especially toxic big names from the RWBY fandom active and posting, pretending not to notice that their audience has become smaller and smaller over the years. Let’s face facts here, a lot of people that enjoy being part of the “in” crowd never manage to figure out how to accept losses and will do anything to try and regain lost popularity, or fool themselves into thinking they’re still on top of the world.

But we can reason and explain all day. Another truth of the matter is that it shouldn’t be other people’s problem that fans can’t accept reality and adjust, and that the RWBY fandom quite honestly deserves its reputation as abysmally toxic. The way terminal fans of the show have treated anyone who dissents, most prominently Shane Newville and other ex-employees, let alone other ex-fans of the show, is quite frankly disgusting. RWBY stans are difficult to look at in all of their bewildering, teeth-gnashing toxicity and forgive...so I’m not going to. People that still insist there’s nothing wrong with this show or the company making it are, as far as I’m concerned, beyond help, and are part of the problem. Many an ex-employee certainly thinks so.

In a lot of ways, you could call the fandom one of the driving forces of the show’s failure, mostly because they had an abnormally large amount of influence over the show. Pleasing the fans has always been a major goal of the RWBY team (unless you like characters Miles Luna doesn’t, I guess), but it’s almost disturbing how the Rooster Teeth strategy has been to lead them along and bat their eyelashes at every turn and how the fandom laps it up.

Of course, Rooster Teeth feeds the parasocial engine by engaging with the fans as equals, and I was given a disturbing reminder of how many of the people who worked on the show—the ones who aren’t pissed and digging themselves out of trauma ditches—behave exactly as the fans do, tweeting twenty times a day about their favorite ships and memes. By creating the perception that RWBY’s team is just like the RWBY fanbase and wants the same things they want, they tap that line of excess energy that’s kept this fandom going so long despite how far it’s fallen. It’s that “hey! my friend said my ship is going to be canon and he works on the show” feeling.

Of course, a probable reason as to why so many employees who worked on RWBY behave the way RWBY fans do is because a lot of them started out that way. As in, student hires. This has long been an open secret of Rooster Teeth’s M.O. for a while now, hiring people who look up to them and engage heavily with their content. Many an ex-animator has lambasted this tactic because it’s insidious, and purposely designed to make the incoming staff feel honored and indebted and excited so they won’t notice how they’re being fucked over. Arryn Troche, who made the ‘gays greenlighting volume 10’ tweet, rings up as a particularly eerie example considering they have the same rather-uncommon and unconventionally-spelled name as the voice actor for a ship they’re obviously very attached to. A quick search reveals them to have been a longtime fan and cosplayer for the show before being signed on as a junior animator.

And it is the fandom who ultimately makes the legacy for any given work or body of work. So what is RWBY ultimately going to be remembered for?

Legacy

I thought about it for a little while and found five things that are most likely to be associated with RWBY in the public’s memory after its death. The first should come as no surprise to anyone.

Bumbleby

The only part of RWBY that will likely be carried on by fans who stuck with it until the end is, of course, the only part of it that mattered, to many of them. You’ll know from my earlier recaps that shipping was always a big deal in fandom, but due to key choices (or if you prefer, mistakes) made during Volumes 2 and 3, one ship grew larger and more promoted in fandom circles than any others.

This is a combination of the unique features of the RWBY fandom and their one-track mind. The fans are well-known, as I said, to fill in the blanks in a pattern that best suits their narratives, and this works out with Rooster Teeth because it means that any sudden changes in direction they make will always be excused and praised rather than critically examined. Unsurprisingly, Bumbleby’s fandom, now that their victory has been cemented, have doubled down on their narrative that this was the intended goal from the beginning, despite it being plainly obvious that early RWBY was angling for Sun Wukong as the love interest and threw the occasional bones to Blake/Yang shippers to try and play nice.

This used to be one part of the fandom, of course, but as the show continually bombed with viewers and made more and more decisions that pushed them away, all competitors were slowly filtered out as their fans left, until Bumbleby shippers were the fandom. It’s no coincidence that Blake and Yang suddenly started acting unusually touchy and sentimental in Volume Six, following on the heels of a volume of RWBY so wildly unpopular that it woke up the company execs and forced them to acknowledge that the biggest part of their fanbase was only going to remain loyal in exchange for one thing: their ship.

The sad thing is that you can tell Rooster Teeth wanted to explore other options. Volume Five features a rather sudden shift into Yang and Weiss interactions in what I remain positive to this day was an attempt to sway shippers into a potential second choice while Black Sun was still in the oven, and this really represented one of the major errors of Rooster Teeth, in that they failed to understand the audience they were trying so hard to please.

Bumbleby became what I call a “Big Red Button” ship, and it is only the second of its kind that I’ve seen. The first? Destiel.

Yes, there’s a reason I kept comparing RWBY to Supernatural whenever Blake and Yang’s relationship came up. I admit I wasn’t a part of the Supernatural craze in its heyday and have never really enjoyed the show, but I’ve watched enough of it to connect the dots from what cultural osmosis I had to the eventual downfall we saw in November of 2020.

Both Bumbleby and Destiel were held up as the gay ship that would change everything, the biggest ship in the fandom and the one that would’ve been a major push for LGBT visibility, at least during their heydays. The problem was that its fans were not really that interested in LGBT visibility and were simply obsessed with the ship itself, applying it value as a win for LGBT audiences purely to bolster its perceived importance. Fans like this were not ever going to accept any alternatives regardless of the sexual orientations or gender conventions involved. Hence, the metaphor that is “the big red button”. You have a big red button that says “canon gay ship but not the ship you want” and ask the fans you’re trying to court whether they’d press it or not. Whatever they might say out loud, you know none of them is pressing that fucking button, ever.

Both of these Big Red Button ships became what they were due to showrunners being forced into courting an audience they really didn’t care for, and how could you blame them when both were infamously very, very over-active and annoying in general. Just like with RWBY’s well-intentioned but misguided Freezerburn phase in Volume 5, Supernatural also tried to gently shut down fans who then managed to obliviously ignore any and all hints that their ship was not meant to be endgame, and I can say that because “he’s like a brother to me” in any fandom but Supernatural would’ve been a tactical nuclear strike that sent the shippers packing. Once it failed, the gay bait came out in full force. It’s well known by now that, contrary to what one would imagine, the CW was not pulling a profit off of Supernatural’s minor mainstream success pushed by a cult following, so it’s no wonder they eventually resorted to desperately baiting the one audience that was going to stick it out no matter what, provided they had the right relationship dangled in front of them. RWBY went through the same thing.

The main problem with these two ships is that for all its diehards insisted that it was all about the gay representation, their respective shows teased and baited for so long that the world outside the little bubble these shippers lived in had moved on by the time they came to fruition. Gay visibility in media these days, at least western media, is easily available, to the extent that sometimes people believe homophobia is totally over when it really, really isn’t. If you’re looking for gay representation, you can find it plenty of places, and the first place you look probably isn’t going to be Supernatural or RWBY. So the huge wave of viewers that these shippers expected upon their victories was never going to occur, which might could’ve been avoided if the writers had simply grown a pair and made moves towards canon much sooner than before the shows were on their last legs and due to be scrapped.

Or, you know, just been honest. Diversions and alternatives were never going to work. The only thing that these shippers were ever going to understand was a hard no, a “sorry, this ship isn’t going to happen”. But the execs in charge of these shows were never willing to take a hit like that, so instead they dug their own grave.

And where does that leave the shippers, those people who devoted their whole lives to these fictional characters, only to find the show that bore them into the universe dead in a ditch? Well, nowhere good. Much like Supernatural, RWBY is heavily associated with its booming period, the heavily online portion of these shippers’ lives in the early and mid-2010s when it was all the rage, and yet in modern day, it’s seen as a bad neighborhood to hang in, an abandoned mansion at the corner of the street where awful things happened. These shippers don’t have many friends except each other.

Just like RWBY, Supernatural also exists primarily as an ex-fandom now. Much of its former fanbase remember the good days fondly but make no secret that they stopped following it once the writing tanked, and this left the shippers without many allies to associate with since so many of them had been pissed off with the way their shows ultimately became the Destiel Show and the Bumbleby Show, respectively. Contrary to an unfortunately popular idea, these shows did have actual LGBT fanbases, only a lot of their LGBT fans were not on kool-aid and avoided being sucked into a trap called “if you don’t ship this, you’re homophobic”.

You will find that the Bumbleby fandom are often looked on with disdain by quite a number of viewers of RWBY who have accused them of speaking over minorities, sexual and otherwise. Many fans have noted that, aside from Blake’s bisexuality being a seemingly late addition (Arryn Zech is noted to have cast her as straight when discussing Ilia Amitola’s ill-fated crush on her as late as 2019), Blake was very swiftly removed from all faunus characters who held romantic connotations in favor of Yang, implicitly saying that Blake was better committing to a white human woman than to an ethnic faunus male. There are obvious reasons why this left a bad taste in peoples’ mouths. Not to mention, other LGBT fans that invested in the show were not exactly welcomed with open arms.

Fair Game, or as I tend to call it, Qrowver? Qrow x Clover? Yeah, that was huge in Volume 7’s airing days. It very much experienced a rapid ballooning in fans and fandom love...but we all know how that ended. Many a fan who felt heartbroken and, importantly, betrayed by Clover’s sudden and rather pointless death turned on RWBY and Rooster Teeth and accused them of gaybaiting, which is of course exactly what happened. They received no sympathy from Bumbleby shippers—because of course they wouldn’t. If Rooster Teeth would gaybait with Qrow, a popular male character, that would mean they could potentially be gaybaiting with Blake and Yang, too. That was unacceptable, and so ironically the part of the fandom that had always crowed about the importance of extending a hand to LGBT viewers turned on LGBT viewers, valiantly defending Rooster Teeth as they always had.

And because Bumbleby fans had no room in their hearts for anything about RWBY except Bumbleby, and were hostile to anyone who didn’t ship it, they ended up being their own best friends and everyone else’s bad memories. When RWBY has faded from the public’s memory and is no longer a source of active income at all (so, basically right now), one of the only relics you’ll find of this show will be the two women making out in all the fanart you’ll find on the occasional Tumblr blog.

The Bigotry

You could call this section “the Racism” since that’s the biggest part of it, but we’d be remiss in neglecting the harm done to other minorities as well. We’ll get to them in a minute, but race is the thing that’s going to pop to mind when we talk about one of the other things RWBY left behind in the common memory.

One of the longest-running subplots that RWBY ever went through with was the racism subplot. Its basis is one of the things that so severely dates RWBY: creating an in-universe stand-in for people of color through the existence of people with animal traits was something you would absolutely not get away with after 2020, and even by 2016 was something liable to be seen as tacky. Nonetheless, RWBY openly used the faunus as stand-ins for black Americans and the struggles they faced in a white world.

Except that the company, based in Texas and headed largely by white staff, did not feel the importance of that. What slowly started out as a main character’s attempt to redeem an organization she felt had been driven too far and was no longer her home was slowly transformed into a means by which some incredibly racist people could spout off about what they felt were the real issues to be talked about, which were the condemnation they felt was deserved by activists that turned to violence, labeled, a little too quickly, as terrorists.

The 2010s saw a shift in social values, and much as with gay audiences and gay characters, black audiences and black characters—as well as other racial minorities—were experiencing something of a renaissance, with efforts to put the voices of these people into the public’s feeds. It wasn’t just George Floyd in 2020—the unexpected and frankly traumatic reign of Donald Trump as president of the United States galvanized the divide in America and social awareness became a bigger thing than ever, and since Trump was a flagrantly racist person with racist beliefs who enacted racist policies and was uplifted by racist Americans, people pushed back as they felt their lives and existences being threatened by a racist establishment...an establishment which Rooster Teeth came down on the side of very firmly.

No quarter is given to the fictional stand-ins. Sienna Khan’s policies are never examined in-depth, and the only close looks we get at the sorts of activism the White Fang does are at Adam, who is obviously condemned by the narrative and made into everything but a mustache-twirler, with delusional and frankly baffling beliefs of faunus superiority spelled out at length. No matter what concessions Rooster Teeth might’ve tried to make with Sienna’s beliefs before they stuck a sword in her, the fact of the matter is that their beliefs came through in the voices of Ghira and Blake, who made it very clear that the individual motives and experiences of people like Ilia, Corsac, Fennec, Yuma, and the rest simply don’t matter in the face of what they’d been driven to do by them. The whole ‘blacks can be racist’ tone of the final scenes involved in this subplot are both miles removed from the more cautious and neutral tone of early RWBY, and also just a very alarming red flag overall.

I went over this in my Volume 5 Final Thoughts: the shoddiness of the volume does not lie solely with the animation department. Miles and Kerry are known to have had generally sole control of the show up until Volume 7—but we also know that they didn’t have to, if they were writing anything company execs felt wasn’t to their tastes. The sudden twisting of Adam into a homicidal incel ex-boyfriend, along with his mutation into a faunus supremacist, when he was the face of the faunus movement as a whole, along with Sun’s blatant ill will towards the White Fang when he’d previously been willing to give them a chance on Blake’s word, all imply that Miles and Kerry endorsed the worst possible interpretations of racial activists and felt free to condemn them and place responsibility onto the faunus—and by extension, the real-life minorities they represented—to take a stand against the bad seeds within their causes, and the fact no one stopped them from airing this implies the higher-ups felt the same way.

People didn’t just leave RWBY after Volume 5 because of some really badly animated fights—they left because they’d felt too much of the authors’ racism coming through in the narrative and couldn’t comfortably continue watching. Every member of the faunus that had “bad” views was either killed (Adam, Sienna, Fennec), arrested (Corsac, Yuma), or “redeemed” by choosing to fight the first two (Ilia). All of these combined factors, with no room for charitable interpretations…not a good look.

And once Adam was defeated in Volume 5, and the White Fang reformed, that was the last anyone saw of that subplot, which had taken five years to wrap up and somehow still ended too early. Miles and Kerry had washed their hands of it, and references to Blake’s place in society were sparing from then on. This subplot’s inescapable presence throughout the show, combined with how it was dropped out of existence, left no room for redemption, either. No one was going back and saying “maybe this looks really, really bad”.

And so, that’s what a lot of people carried with them as their final and most relevant memories of RWBY: it’s astounding levels of racism. This is a bitter subject for many an ex-RWBY fan, many of whom aren’t white and, even among those that are, it’s simply inexcusable. Meet someone on social media who talks about RWBY at all, and isn’t one of the Bumbleby stans we’ve already discussed? You will find some mention or other of RWBY’s racist elements somewhere within their sphere. And so, that becomes a part of RWBY’s legacy, as a feature of the show that was simply too big to ignore and too poorly-handled to forgive. People don’t get over this shit, man.

This is of course not to mention the well deserved shitty reputation RWBY has for its other bigoted elements, as well. Bumbleby, as we’ve discussed, encompassed pretty much every RWBY stan left standing by 2020, but that left quite a few ex-fans that were fed up with the company’s obvious ploys when it came to sexuality and gender. Remember when I talked about Qrowver up above? Its ballooning and immediate fall from grace was a much-condensed version of RWBY as a whole, and pretty much featured as Rooster Teeth blowing their last remaining patience from LGBT fans to smithereens. The fact of the matter is that when you get down to it, every RWBY volume after Volume 4 was not a good time to be a minority. If you were gay, the show seemed to either ignore or despise you—between the background gays that warranted mockery, the mixed reception Ilia generated, and the outrage that finally boiled over when Clover bit it, part of RWBY’s legacy is how utterly unpleasant it has been for LGBT fans who expected and deserved better.

And so despite entering the scene in 2013 as a supposedly progressive show all for being led by four women, the show died known as a low-effort half-baked cringefest whose politics were always on display and always several years behind the trend.

The Good Days

Of course, another major part of RWBY’s legacy is the early days when everyone actually liked it. This is, again, something the show creators brought on themselves and something fans assisted with. I did mention the nostalgia for the Good Ol’ Days as a significant part of the RWBY fandom’s more cult-like elements, after all. The fact of the matter is, on some level, everyone knows that RWBY has spent several years going downhill. The ex-fans lament this fact, and the diehard stans insist that it’s all just as good as it used to be, primarily by doing what they do quite a lot, and linking completely coincidental elements back to things characters said or did in previous volumes as some sort of evidence that this has been the plan all along.

I’ve run polls on this matter before; even though I’ve recapped Volumes 1-3 thoroughly and shone lights on some pretty significant flaws, you ask anyone what they think the best volume of RWBY was and they’re gonna tell you Volume 3. Yes, even with all of the stalking incel Adam and the deaths of Penny and Pyrrha. It’s the last time RWBY felt cohesive and even though some obvious derailing was in effect, and Shane Newville has openly said that the behind-the-scenes matters were pretty ugly, it’s still the golden child. Shane’s only one person, and it’d be a while before RWBY scandals would become consistent and begin to overshadow the show as a whole.

The RWBY team themselves have certainly nurtured that very much on purpose. That tactic started with them, of course. Many elements that were either unpopular or predicted to ruffle feathers were stated to have originated in earlier volumes, even in situations where this wouldn’t have made sense or where it’s an obvious lie—such as Maria Calavera. They know full well their seasons post-Volume 3 were unpopular and receiving blowback, and tried to minimize it by linking them to more well-respected seasons. Suffice to say that this simply didn’t work. But it does make people remember those earlier volumes. Because so many ex-fans lost their energy for RWBY after its most active period, much of the hype from the hype era is all that you’ll see when you encounter one. Nostalgia wins out in the end, and at least RWBY can say that, as a show, it had enough of a headstart to leave an impression that lasted in a positive way. Although that’s only one side of the coin...

The Scandals

Let’s face facts here, the biggest part of RWBY’s legacy, period, is that it fucking died. It didn’t die instantly, but rather took hit after hit, blow after blow, and slowly had its image tarnished alongside that of the company, which failed to contain repeated scandals as ex-employee after ex-employee after ex-employee spoke out about the abysmal ways they’d been treated.

RWBY is Rooster Teeth’s biggest IP by far and, really, their only one worth talking about. Every other show was either eclipsed by it or unofficially canceled after bad reception. So when Rooster Teeth suffered the consequences of their actions, so did RWBY. It really can’t be overstated how the last few years of RWBY’s existence have been absolutely bombarded by a barrage of terrible Glassdoor reviews and bombshell exposure letters. Fans managed to stay strong through the first few rumblings of ill will, but after Volume 5 shook the fandom loose, discontent entered enough of the fandom sphere to be normalized, and once that happened, it was all downhill. Once people were actually allowed to talk about not liking Rooster Teeth’s content, they sure as hell weren’t going to be dissuaded from talking about not liking Rooster Teeth as a company or its practices.

Separating the art from the artist is a very difficult thing to do and only really appropriate in certain situations. Don’t fall for any kool-aid, guys, it doesn’t make you more mature or ‘above all the drama’ to actively ignore the damage done to real people in the process of getting fictional content out into the world.

If you’re still able to enjoy the Harry Potter books and look back on the good times they gave you in fondness, then fine. If you actually purchased and played the Hogwarts Legacy game programmed by antisemites and which puts money in the pocket of the transphobic owner of the franchise, then yeah, people will be right to give you shit for it. There’s a difference between quietly enjoying a product in a manner that doesn’t hurt anybody, and actively ignoring the people hurt to make that product while feigning concern. The gap in the fandom widened as the repeated leaks and scandals continuously ate away at the protective bubble around Rooster Teeth and it became clear that whatever fans might bleat, Rooster Teeth wasn’t going to ‘learn their lesson and do better’. The habitual cycle of using whatever recent scandal had occurred to cast disappointment and anger on a particular figure and uplift the rest of “CRWBY” (see also: the Gray Haddock issue) gave diminishing returns as the bombs kept dropping. This is part of why RWBY has such an ex-fandom, because if they aren’t enjoying the product and people were hurt to make it, why stay?

Crunching employees so hard they struggle to sleep and suffer debilitating health issues? Writing the n-word on a white board knowing a black employee will see it? Goading someone into trying to kill themselves? Calling an LGBT employee a slur and then making up a public-friendly nickname in place of that slur just to get away with continuing to call her that? Laying off people without warning or a means of letting them stay afloat until another job is found? Not paying or crediting employees and cultivating an environment where those in charge do what they want and those in the public eye reap all the benefit while those without a consistent spotlight get treated like dirt?

Just some of the things I thought up off the top of my head. There’s plenty more in the details. And you can’t blame Fullscreen, you can’t blame Warner, you can’t just write it off as something that happens at animation studios, because it isn’t. Yeah, the work environment in general for animation studios in America is lacking because, ya know, late-stage capitalism hellscape, but that’s dismissive of the point. Rooster Teeth are a bad company and hurt their employees and lie when called on it. It’s impossible to separate RWBY from Rooster Teeth (despite stubborn stans’ best attempts, which themselves have been called out by these same ex-employees) and because of that, RWBY’s legacy is one of corporate abuse and utterly vile behavior towards people that just wanted to make something cool.

People have refused to associate with the show over these things and honestly, they’re right to. RWBY’s ultimate legacy, if we’re honest, is the show that became a shadow of its former self, still trying to dazzle with reminders of its former glory and promises of gay relationships, all while trying to squeeze money out of both the employees who made it and the fans who upheld it. It’s the show that cost hundreds of people their physical and mental health and didn’t even have anything to show for it at the end of the day. It will live on in history as the most bitter of pills to swallow, that something you once liked and wanted to succeed can and will be ruthlessly twisted for profit margins and might actively hate you on the side. And speaking of…

Monty Oum

The biggest travesty of RWBY’s legacy is that Monty Oum is ultimately only the smallest part of it. He’s there, but barely—he’s a name in the credits that quite frankly is only there to keep up the facade of loyalty, when the show had stopped being Monty’s show before he even died and by now can be safely said to resemble nothing he would’ve made.

It’s a shame that for all that Monty was held up as a genius of his craft and a genuinely good man who inspired so many people, all he’s going to be remembered for is...this. A show people only attach his name to in an effort to insist it’s actually worth sticking by. Yes, Monty did other things, had other works, but none of them ever achieved even a fraction of the fame and respect that RWBY had from its first baby steps in 2013.

Maybe this could’ve been avoided if the real carriers of Monty’s legacy—Sheena, his wife, and Shane, his pupil—hadn’t been cast off as they had.

Shane seems to have found a new life and is working with Dillon Gu on animation, but I think we’ve all noticed his name hasn’t gone mainstream yet. I’ve tried to get in touch with him; from what I’ve gleaned, I frankly just advise leaving him alone. He wants to move on and I don’t think the RWBY fandom, which was so awful to him for telling the truth, is ever going to be a place he can feel welcome.

Sheena has mostly been quiet and done her own thing, cosplaying and watching anime and hopefully enjoying herself, although I notice posts on her Twitter feed from last year calling for a New Deal in the animation sector and castigating corporate abuses.

She also plays Hades, a much better product than RWBY with more love put into it and much better LGBT representation, which means her taste is excellent. She has a site now that you can go to, and the about section doesn’t mention Monty, her late husband, at all, for obvious reasons: Sheena doesn’t want to be connected to RWBY. Though, there is something there that’s noteworthy, in the last paragraph:

Still desiring a social element to her career, the animator turned professional cosplayer also has a history in the live stream world. Past broadcasts have included creating costume pieces, playing games with community members and subscribers, RPGs and more. No matter the project, peers or problem, Sheena strives to keep moving forward.

That powerful phrase we all associate with Monty.

It’s a shame that this show had to be Monty’s legacy, and that years off from now, his name isn’t going to mean anything to the public because the project he was passionate about and died making outlived him and his passion. It feels like his legacy was stolen, and his own part in the show’s legacy is held up purely as a pedestal on which the show should rightfully shine.

Every time I think about Monty, I think about how much I don’t want that to be me. For all the years I’ve spent here, with my graphics certifications being wasted since I earned them while I slave away in retail, I wonder if I’m the lucky one. If I were to enter the workforce and do what I loved, would it be worth it in the end? Would what happened to Monty and Sheena and Shane happen to me? Not sure I wanna know.

Snipped here.

#rwde #rwby

43 notes · View notes