#and they still retain the sense of ... manners and shit? i guess?

[formaedei]

Your remorse hasn't fallen on deaf ears. Rather ones that just don't care.

"And that helps us how?", Coyote was looking at the man speaking the words - the hero of the realm, finally in Galemald. A tad bit too late. It already lays in ruins, its foundations shaken and tried and broken. Hero swoops in to save the day, only it is already nighttime and there's no one left to save.

It was uncertain if Coyote was speaking about themselves, or the people of Garlemald in general. Lack of the gestures around suggested it is the former - however, their tone was flat and betrayed no personal emotion. Robotic, almost.

"I appreciate your words, though," they continued, showing trained manners in their words and, now, movement - if they were dressed differently, looked more human, one could mistake them for a member of a high society. "But words are not enough." With a sigh, they got up from the crate they were sitting on. "If you intend to show you're different, there's no lack of tasks that need doing. And a pair of hands is always welcome."

They turned around and tapped the crate they were sitting on. "These are supplies for Tertium." Gesturing towards a card with a few crates already on it, they said: "We're supposed to take them there. If you feel so inclined, your company would be appreciated. Not having to fight beasts by our own self would be a rather welcome change of pace."

As they lifted the crate up, with no struggle despite it it being roughly half their size, they added - as an afterthought: "Unless you have prior commitments, that is."

[levans44]

chapter 3 - triple shot cold brew, pump of caramel

The next time Steve visited her cafe, he wasn’t alone, which sort of threw a wrench in their established routine.

She watched nervously as he approached the glass door, accompanied by a man wearing dark shades and a woman with straight, shoulder-length red hair. She gulped, hastily wiping her hands on her apron. Could it really be?

The three of them walked in in a rather amusing manner; the woman seemed to be trying to persuade Steve to do something, while the other guy strolled in first, peering around the shop curiously. He spotted the register and grinned widely, starting to slide the aviators off of his face. Steve, who was busy waving the woman off, stopped his friend, muttering “keep ‘em on, Tony.”

As they walked closer, it finally sank in that the red-haired woman was indeed the Black Widow, signature leather jacket and all. Judging by the facial hair, expensive-looking shades, and just the unmistakeable swagger, Steve’s other friend was, holy shit, Tony fucking Stark. Her head span a little — now, there was no longer one, but three Avengers inside her tiny cafe.

“Hi,” Steve offered her a rather apologetic smile, noticing the surprise on her face, which she was no doubt masking poorly.

“Hi! Uhm,” Think! “How can I help you guys today?”

It felt weird to even say that out loud. Her? Helping the Avengers?

Instead of getting a response, however, she heard Ironman (Tony, whatever) repeat her name out loud to himself, eyes mulling over the nametag clipped to her apron.

She perked up, eyes widening. “I… yep! That’s me.” She didn’t know how else to respond to that, especially with Tony sporting that rather odd grin, peering at her over the top of his glasses. Black Widow (Natasha was her ‘human’ name, she remembered), stood by with her arms crossed, sneaking clandestine glances between her and Steve (who looked absolutely mortified) with that same amused smirk on her face.

“I’m… I’m sorry. Just three coffees, please.” Steve muttered, pulling out his wallet.

“Sure, would you-“

“Now, hold on, Steve.” Tony interrupted, raising a hand, and all three sets of eyes fell on him.

“I want to see if she’s got any recommendations for us.”

At that, Steve’s face turned redder than the red velvet cake she had iced that morning.

“Tony…” Steve trailed off, obviously embarrassed. She could tell that this was something of an inside joke to the three of them — both Natasha and Tony seemed to be seconds away from bursting into a fit of giggles.

“Uhm, sure!” She responded, still eyeing them cautiously. Were the Avengers always this… eccentric?

“What kind of flavors do you guys prefer in your coffee? I could recommend something more bitter, fruitier, sweeter…”

“Oh, I’m sure Steve here will take as much sugar as he can get.” Tony patted Steve on the shoulder, making the poor man blush three times harder. Natasha had to clear her throat and look away just to retain her poker face.

“Ok, great, I’ll uh, make something for all three of you to try.”

As she rang them up, she had to resist from smiling at the look Steve was giving her through all of the blushing (it read: ’I’m so sorry, please don’t hate me’).

When she placed their drinks on the counter, Tony immediately grabbed his cup, licking his lips as he brought it up to his mouth.

“I gotta warn ya, I’m a bit of an expert when it comes to coffee.” He glanced at her over those shades while he took a sip of his drink — triple shot cold brew with a pump of caramel. For a busy guy like Tony Stark, it was the only drink that made sense. She got Natasha a hot dark roast, guessing it was no nonsense and straightforward like her.

She watched, trying to stifle a smile as Tony’s face stretched wide into a grin, eyebrows raised over the aviators.

“Damn, you were right Rogers. She is good.”

It was her turn to blush at that: had Steve talked to his superhero friends about her? What could he possibly have said?

Before things could get too awkward, a very perceptive Natasha called out for Tony, steering him away from her and Steve.   

Once Tony was (mostly) out of earshot, Steve leaned across the counter, biceps bulging through his tight grey shirt, as he gave her an apologetic smile.

“Again, I’m very sorry about… them.” They both eyed his friends standing in the doorway, pretending to be partaking in a serious conversation but very obviously eavesdropping.

“It’s okay” she laughed. It was endearing, she thought, that even superheroes went out to get coffee together during lunch.

That thought had been occupying her mind, though: at this point in their relationship, did he seriously still think that she didn’t know who he was?

“I know who you are, you know.” Screw it, he had to know at this point, right? No guy is ever that humble. It felt ridiculous to not mention it.

“Oh?”

She let out a small laugh, feeling weird for even saying it out loud. Like it was some sort of a naughty secret that needed be kept under wraps.

“You’re Capt-”

“Oh, that!”

He exclaimed, glancing off to the side, hand reaching the back of his neck in that familiar manner. She pursed her lip at the way his shirt rode up over his jeans.

“Yeah, I… Guess the secret’s out.”

Much to her astonishment, he seemed disappointed that she knew, his posture somehow more guarded than before. It couldn’t be easy, she thought, trusting people when you’re Captain America. Maybe he had liked living as just Steve in her cafe for a little while, as the human behind the showy superhero alias.

Other than the disappointment, he also seemed nervous about her finding out. She almost scoffed at the thought; was he really worried that she’d no longer be interested in him because of his secret identity? She’d be damned if that wasn’t the most humble thing she’d ever heard of. Typical Steve.

Thing is, she’d only ever liked Steve for who he was with her — the version of him who’s always the most enthusiastic when it comes to her desserts; the one who keeps her company whenever business is slow; the one who asked her if she believed in soulmates; the one who never fails to send butterflies fluttering in her stomach with a single smile, a glance.

That endearingly awkward guy who shuffled into her tiny cafe on that random, opportune Monday and asked her for a recommendation. 

And with all of these fuzzy, happy memories in her mind, it was hard to find a reason to not do what she was about to do next.

“Anyway, I’m sorry again for my… friends, they can-“

“Give me your cup.”

He looked up at her in surprise, those blue eyes crinkling into a confused smile as he slid his cup across the counter.

‘Steve :)

A cheese factory erupted in France.

Da brie everywhere!’

The cup read. Turning it around in her hand she brought her pen up to the surface, scribbling down 10 digits in shaky handwriting.

“Here, um… don’t feel pressured to or anything but…” She muttered, sliding the cup back over.

Steve’s confused expression soon turning into a wide smile as he read the cup, those cheeks tinting pink again. The guarded tension in his shoulders notably dissipated, much to her relief.

“Thank you.” A pause.

“I... I will.”

She nodded and ducked her head, failing to hide a blush of her own.

“Steve, we gotta head back.” Natasha suddenly called from across the cafe. They turned to notice Tony frowning at something on his phone, expression uncharacteristically rigid.

She watched Natasha give Steve a look, one she couldn’t quite decipher but knew was about something serious, something work-related. Steve couldn’t hide the disappointment on his face, but as soon as he checked the message lighting up his phone, he immediately turning stoic, shoulders stiffening and jaw setting. He straightened up, an air of professionalism appearing around him in a matter of seconds.

“I’m sorry, we have to go.”

“Of course.” She nodded understandingly.

“…and thank you, again.” He lifted his cup in appreciation and gave her a smile, before joining the other two.

Natasha gave her a wave from the door as Tony yelled “I’ll be back next week, coffee girl!” Steve jostled them both out, giving her one last wave before all three of them rushed out of the cafe, turned the corner, and disappeared out of sight.

And that was the last time she saw Steve in a long time.

(cap)puccino, w/ milk and sugar masterlist

[semper-legens]

25. Destined, by PC and Kristin Cast

Owned: No, library Page count: 325 My summary: Neferet's plans have ramped up. Killing Zoey's mother to make her perfect vessel, Aurox, wasn't enough. She wants to destroy Zoey and her friends, and she's going to need power to do it. The Darkness is calling...meanwhile, Zoey's friends face trouble amongst themselves. Rephaim is still settling in, and Erin and Shaunee have started to separate themselves. And Zoey is grieving her mother's death. Can they get it together long enough to find out what really happened? My rating: 1/5 My commentary:

Back at it again with the House of Night and hoo boy folks, this one's a doozy. I'm so close to the endgame now - only three more to go after this! And as soon as they come into the library, I swear, I'm speedrunning this shit. But this post is going to be the opposite of speedrunning. Turns out I have a lot to say about this continued train wreck, and I'm gonna spill a lot of digital ink in so doing! So without further ado, let's get down to it.

Right off the bat, we have a healthy dose of ableism! Yep, this book introduces Shaylin, who became blind as a child and is Marked by Erik. But she's Marked as a red vampire, and immediately regains her sight - and is gifted an aura-sensing True Sight. And of course, she goes on and on and on about how great it is that she's not blind anymore, and how bad being blind was, and it's just enough to make me cringe. Because all blind people need is to magically get their sight back! Not, like, better accommodations to help them live in a world that hasn't been built for them, or to be treated like actual adults or something. Nope. Magical sight, that's the best thing. It carries forward that unhealthy idea that vampires in this world are physically 'perfect' - before, we've seen the kids whose bodies reject the Change being portrayed as fat, greasy, and unfit. Now, it seems that disabled kids aren't allowed to be vampires while retaining their disability. Gross!

Nefert has a new boytoy, and his name is Aurox. Get it, because he's a werebull. Sort of - he was gifted by the white bull of Darkness, and he can turn into a bull involuntarily. But because Neferet botched the summoning, Aurox has a soul and stuff. Specifically, Heath's. Remember Heath? Zoey's human boyfriend, got necksnapped by Kalona? Yeah, the book treats it like it's a big mystery, but it's so obvious that it's Heath. Aurox knows things about Zoey he shouldn't, calls Zoey by Heath's pet name for her, has his mannerisms…it's one thing for a book for teenagers to be simpler than I, an adult, expect, it's another for it to be so obvious that a toddler could realise what's going on. And yet again, we've got another topless teen badboy who angsts about being evil and is gonna get a redemption arc. Christ alive, how many of those are there? Stark, Kalona, Rephaim, now Aurox…we get it, Casts, you got a kink. Can you please come up with another male character?

Speaking of male characters, in order to sew some chaos, Neferet's invited humans to come work at the House of Night, which means we're introduced to Lenobia's cowboy, Travis. He's a cowboy. Who works at the stables. And Lenobia, running minor character and horsemaster at the House of Night, is falling hard for him. What does this relationship do, plotwise, other than add a sexy cowboy to the cast? Even though I've criticised things like Stevie Rae and Rephaim or Zoey and…most male characters…I can at least acknowledge that they serve a function. Introducing or adding to the theme of redemption, giving those characters conflicts and secrets, furthering the plot somehow. But this? I guess it's giving us an insight into Lenobia, but so far all I've gathered is that she has a thing for cowboys and doesn't want to be romantically involved with anyone but oh no this guy's too sexy. It drags the book down and takes up valuable page time - not to mention that Travis himself has less depth than a Mills and Boon cowboy. He's just…charming and folksy and respectful to Lenobia and loves horses. Exactly the sexy cowboy archetype. Bleh. Lenobia seems like she might have been an interesting character, but the new context we learn about her is entirely about her love life, or lack thereof, and nothing to do with who she is as a person. It's lacklustre, is what I'm getting at here.

Neferet continues to be the big bad, evilly doing evil things because she's evil. She's escalated to human sacrifice and gives blood to the Darkness to drink whenever she needs something. As if she wasn't enough of a cackling supervillain already. My biggest problem with Neferet is that there's no depth to her. Why is she doing what she's doing? Sure, she wants power, she wants to rule the world and become a goddess, but why? I don't need a Disney-live-action-movie backstory for her, just something other than her hatred for Zoey and lust for power! Has this always been a facet of her from before Zoey? Was she striving towards this goal before Zoey? And, of course, for all that the Casts seem to think they're clever for making the evil bull the white one, we have the Darkness demanding blood in order to do Neferet's bidding. Not at all an overdone trope. And the way they take it from her is uncomfortably sexual - almost like the Casts haven't gotten over their whole 'slutshame the villainous female character' thing. Above all, though, Neferet falls into the biggest trap for her character archetype - she's not camp enough. If you want to have a cackling balls-to-the-wall Evil Bitch as a main villain, she needs to own it. Think Maleficent! Think Ursula! Neferet just isn't interesting enough or ridiculous enough, that's my problem.

Meanwhile, there's trouble in Zoey's inner circle. Erin and Shaunee, the Twins, have started to un-twin themselves, separating from each other to become their own people. This would be a perfectly fine plot point, but for three things. One, Erin and Shaunee aren't well-developed in general - literally, their only character trait is that they are Twins. This would be a good time to give them more character, except that this mostly unfolds with people standing around and telling Shaunee how much nicer she is now, rather than us being shown it really. Two, it seems to come right out of nowhere? There's no particular reason it happens. And three, none of the other characters seem to care about Erin after it happens. They're obviously setting up for Erin to become more of an antagonistic character later, but as soon as the split occurs, all Zoey and her friends seem to care about and check in on is Shaunee - nobody ever checks in on Erin or seems to give much of a shit about her as a person. Which is…really fucking weird? Like, if Zoey et al had checked in on Erin and been yelled at or something, that'd make sense. But it's like this girl wasn't their friend at all, so quickly is she dumped. And that's just lazy writing. It's a clear signal to the reader that Shaunee is the 'good one' and Erin is the 'bad one', despite it being a particularly cold and uncaring thing for the characters to do in-universe. There's no reason why Zoey can't be like 'hey are you okay' to Erin at least once. It'd give a chance to show how Erin is changing! But nope. Subtext is for cowards. Let's just spell it all out to the audience. Wouldn't want them to start thinking.

And yet, for all that seems to be going on here, that's actually a negative. Because it makes the book so unfocused. You can hardly concentrate on one plot thread, so much is being brought up and juggled and dropped. And a lot of it isn't resolved - sure, this is a series and there's three more books after this, but it just feels like the Casts are throwing a lot of spaghetti at the wall to see what will stick. It strikes me as a series that hasn't been tightly planned, that was loosely improvisational, and it really shows. New conflicts come out of nowhere and aren't properly foreshadowed in anyone's behaviour. New twists are set up that are predictable from the moment they are introduced. Characters are sort of fleshed out, but only in very limited ways. Characters stick to one-dimensional archetypes. There's a lot going on, but it's all as thin as paper. And it's just as bad as all the books that came before it.

Next up, time travelling meets a pirate tale.

[edelblau]

marz said they love my durgey so im gonna use that as an excuse to infodump about them (and try to put it under a readmore but readmores always break for me now so who knows if itll post properly) (spoilers for baldurs gate 3 dark urge playthrough to follow)

my main dark urge is named naught (like zero/nothingness ^_^). he's a tiefling monk with they/him pronouns. below is a lazy reference for his more 'unique' features i spent very little time on

his backstory is largely the normal dark urge stuff; wandering and strange from the get go with unsettling mannerisms even as a child, he was adopted by a poor family. he actually bore a lot of affection for them, and tried very very hard to be 'normal'. when he realized his family was displeased with the way he sort of romanticized violence and death, he tried to tamp it down. however, given the nature of the urge, he was eventually overcome and killed them (second heal memory)

after that incident, he fled his home, and tried unsuccessfully to resist; but as his body count even unintentionally rose he fully gave in. in his time as the leader of the bhaal cult, a lot of his 'personality' outside of the urge was utterly erased and dead.

interestingly, however, he regained some sense of 'self' as the plans for the absolute took place, though perhaps in a way that was worse for everyone. the tldr of this being that because the plan required he interact with and 'bond', so to speak, with gortash, leader of the banites, he was able to have conversations with someone. the issue here being of course that gortash is a terrible person, but so was he, so it was sort of a net 0 for humanity and only really 'good' for him (and maybe gortash, i guess) since it let him retain a hint of personhood outside of bhaal; personhood that would serve him after orin's betrayal at moonrise.

(pictured: real canon shit the durge writes about gortash)

of course, dark urge and gortash's murderous funtimes had to end when orin got tired of the family drama and decided to end it the only way she knew how.

this left naught at the beginning of the game in a position where they knew intuitively that they enjoy others company, they didnt remember how resisting was 'futile', and they were surrounded by people who could definitely kill them if they acted out too harshly. not that naught didn't 'act out'-- he has a very Broken sense of morality and whats 'too far' after everything, and definitely partook of some torture and senseless violence a few times. nothing especially severe (he didn't get arabella killed or the rest of the grove, for instance), but he definitely was... bad. not normal.

these lapses would slowly die down, however, the closer naught came to the others around him. their sense of morality rubbing off on him and making him desire their approval. where he once welcomed his butler, he started fighting back; still bound to his urge, still not entirely 'there', but constantly thrashing against the current-- until the orin battle, which went Great, by the way

even after withers resurrection, though, i dont think hed ever truly be 'normal'. even if his nightmares no longer stem from bhaal, i dont think theyd ever go away fully. and i dont think hed ever fully gain a normal moral compass (hes dating astarion, by the way. so good luck faerun.) nor do i think hed ever fully come to remember his past; though i dont think hed ever fully care to, either. hed always remain this unnerving, somewhat 'immoral' person; always a bit more brutal than he should be, a bit more direct, a bit too stiff and strange. full of love and care that hes learned from his journey, but still with a hint of violence; no longer bhaal's, but wholly his own. always a step away from a 'normal' person even without bhaal's black blood in his veins.

but at least minsc is his uncle. thats nice.

[newbornnebulae]

Truth is a loaded gun

The truth of the matter is, Dorian has grown to care for his friends. It's the only reason he makes the choice that he does.

A character study of Dorian in episode 5, because Robbie made some WILD decisions. Also on AO3

Dorian’s thinking of Dariax as he speaks to the disembodied voice that had visited his dear friend the previous evening already. As he bargains with it, his mouth moves faster than he can keep up. He’s bluffing, he thinks, when he says yes, yes he would trade the crown, an undeniable danger to the world in Poska’s hands, for his friend’s safety.

Maybe he doesn’t know himself as well as he should because when he searches inside for the lie that should be there, there’s only truth. He’s always considered himself a good man, reasonable, logical, moral… but he can feel the ring of honesty in his words; he would truly rather the whole of Emon burn down (again) than allow something to happen to his friend -friends, he corrects himself. 

It’s just that he can’t get the image of Dariax’s eyes gone jet black out of his head. The colour of his eyes are too lovely to be hidden in such an unsettling manner. The handsome dwarf doesn’t have enough self-preservation, or any for that matter. It’s all too easy for Dorian to imagine him falling prey to the crown and to the Spider Queen. Every time Dariax makes to reach for the crown with his bare hands, Dorian can feel his own chest constrict.

If Dariax were to turn into a darker form of himself, Dorian doesn’t believe he’ll have the strength to deal with it in the same way they’d dispatched of Alternate-Fearne. With the crown gone, there would be nothing of that nature to worry about. Dariax could continue to be his stupidly charming and pure self.

It’s beyond frustrating to Dorian that Orym had used Gilmore’s enchanted box just to send away a damned note. More than that, he’s upset with himself for insisting they hold onto the cursed crown in the first place.

Almost from a far away perch, he could see and hear himself snap at Orym unreasonably, time and time again. What makes it doubly worse is that Orym hardly ever responds in kind, doesn’t point fingers or place blame. It never makes Dorian feel better, only guiltier.

He knows it’s his own fault they are in this mess; the only reason Dariax is forced to continue carrying the crown is because Dorian had insisted they keep it. Dorian knows and the whole group must think it too. But all Orym does is quietly observe his outbursts. It’s annoying that Orym can remain so calm even as he confronts Dorian, while Dorian keeps having these hot flashes of anger he can hardly control.

Dorian finds himself to be more irritable as they traverse through the jungle, the heat and humidity of the place getting under his skin. Aside from his frustration with Orym, he eyes Fy’ra Rai with distrust, bristles at Opal’s prodding, and can’t help but grow annoyed at Fearne’s flute playing. It’s irritating when she plays poorly, the sound grating against his patience. It’s bothersome in it’s own way when she plays well, an uncomfortable jealousy prickling his skin.

The only person who hardly gets on his nerves is Dariax. 

Partly it’s from a sense of guilt. At Gilmore’s, Dariax had looked at him so earnestly. 

“If you want to keep it, we’ll keep it,” he’d said, unquestioningly supportive even when Dorian couldn’t give the group a good reason why. He’d seen how frightened Dariax had been after his dream with the Spider Queen. The dwarf had made an admirable attempt to act as though everything were fine, but it is plain to see that everything is not fine. 

There’s something so remarkably straightforward about Dariax, some would say simple-minded. As someone who doesn’t know the first thing about being straightforward, Dorian appreciates that about him.

Where Dariax is earnest and charming, Dorian is reserved most of the time and politely posh at his best. Dariax goes along with anything, easygoing and generous with his warmth. The only thing Dorian is generous about is imagining a generous amount of terrible scenarios that could happen. He can, at any given point in time, come up with more than twenty reasons why something is a bad idea. He’s rational in the worst of ways. 

As far as adventuring goes, Dariax has significantly more experience than him. The dwarf is never afraid to wander into the unknown. Dorian prefers to know where he’s going, how long it will take to get there, what dangers there might be, so on and so forth. It’s an effort for him to relax, something he’s had to learn how to do.

It was all learned, Dorian’s charm. Growing up, he hadn’t possessed an ounce of charisma. But he’d practiced until he could murmur polite platitudes in his sleep. He studied others, trying to figure out how people worked. He stood in front of his reflection, training himself to stand confidently, move naturally. Sheltered child that he had been, it had been important to have a certain image.

Slipping into Dorian Storm, a charming bard, was all the easier for it later on.

Unfortunately for him, the awkwardness still comes out sometimes. Dorian is still kicking himself for his display at Gilmore’s. Attractive men made it difficult for him to retain his composure or think straight. He’d gotten flustered again at the pageant, seeing Dariax in the clothes he himself wore everyday. 

He should consider himself lucky that he’d managed to remain cool in front of the group for so long. Next to Orym, he’s supposed to be the other reasonable one. Well, the group still likes him just fine and Dariax still looks at him with respect and admiration at the very least. 

While Dorian does his best not to read too much into the other man’s words -Dariax is the type to say things without thinking them through- he can’t help but think he’s Dariax’s favourite out of the whole group. Dariax looks to him for leadership, wakes him up after having a nightmare, sleeps back to back with Dorian out of everybody else.

It’s flattering, it’s nice, and it could be why Dariax is Dorian’s favourite.

It’s not the whole picture though. Dorian thinks on how he’d said to Poska all those weeks ago, “If Dariax doesn’t like you then I don’t like you.” Even back then Dariax had had his trust, as much as he’s able to give at least. Perhaps it has to do with the week of memories they’d collectively lost. Dorian doesn’t know how else he could have so much respect for a dwarf that he’s seen with shit in his beard. 

As much as Dariax seems to seek him out, Dorian gravitates toward Dariax in turn. It’s impossible for Dorian to be totally truthful about himself, but with Dariax, some foolish part of him wants to be. While the circus Dariax believes in does not exist, Dorian had not been completely dishonest about his situation. It’s the most he’s ever shared with someone. 

The thing is, Dorian has never had a best friend before, but if he had to guess, Dariax is the closest thing he has to one. Emon be damned, Dorian’s not ready to give that up anytime soon. 

[onesunofagun]

Undeath in the Era of the Hero of Time : 1

aka Seeing the Hero’s Shade in this TP replay shook up all my feelings of agony again and now I’m working backwards from there because I like to hurt myself.

Part One: An Overview of How Fucked Things Are ™

aka The Blood Soaked Hyrule of OoT’s time 

Take it as you will, in the Zeldaverse, the colour green has an overwhelming association with undeath. 

Sure, sure, life too, I hear you. Farore came down and produced all the living beings that would uphold the law, apparently (specifically not claiming monsters and demons, but that’s another thing). On the surface, that make sense. Forests, lush green fields, prosperity, all of those good things. Green the colour of the most common rupee, green the colour of the Hero’s tunic. Green the colour of magic, and potions that revitalise the body and spirit.

The thing is, revitalising the body and spirit is a flexible idea. To imbue something with new life and vitality can have a lot of implications, especially when you stop talking about the strictly living. 

I feel vitality is certainly the best word, not only because of it’s association with life and potency ala the Goddess origin stories, but in the ways that the game uses green itself, such as a measure of both magic and stamina. Green is the colour chosen to represent the unlocked potential within young Heroes. 

Vitality specifically refers to a state of being strong and active, and it also refers to the continuance of something to exist. That’s a great thing for plants, or economies, or a potion taken by a young Link who’s swung their sword around or fired off a spell one too many times and feels a little low.

But the dead, though?

As it happens, Hyrule is absolutely littered with human remains, in no small part due to the very recently ended civil wars. 

The Civil War, if you need the reminder, is described as a time when the many races of Hyrule were divided and each focused on establishing dominion over the Sacred Realm (because Triforce). I touched on this in my last meta post, but basically, its no holds barred to stop that from happening because if the wrong person gets into the Sacred Realm and makes a wish, it immediately malfunctions. 

The criteria for getting into the Sacred Realm and touching the Triforce without royally fucking everything, is basically impossible for anybody not chosen by Hylia. 

If you are neither of Hylia’s Bloodline (The Hyrulean Royal Family) or one of her Chosen Avatars (The current incarnation of the Hero), you are not supposed to touch the Triforce. Ever. You WILL be found wanting, it WILL shatter, the Sacred Realm WILL be corrupted by your selfish desires, it WILL unleash and onslaught of mystical influence (reflecting your heart) onto the country.

Now, if it’s Zelda or Link who touches it, that’s fine. Good vibes will pour out. An age of prosperity will ensue. The Sacred Realm is in its default state, a blank and neutral wellspring of magical force.

The game has been rigged from the get go because Hylia still had a job to do. She had to get creative because Demise almost captured the flag, so to speak, leading to the snafu of the Cycle and all that because she cheated at the game, but ultimately Hylia’s task was to guard the Triforce. And that still remains true, for the most part. The Hyrulian Royal Family (and the Shiekah by extension) had to stop at absolutely nothing to win the wars and unify the country, and retain the stasis of the Realm and Triforce, because that’s what their divine orders are.

That’s what they’re supposed to do, ‘the very reason that they’re born’, to lend a quote from King Daphnes. With Hylia on their side by default, they’re willing to do a lot of fucked up things to make sure that happens, ‘for the greater good’.

These dark times are a result of our deeds... -- TP Zelda

In OoT The Sheikah are known as the Shadow Folk. They are heavily associated with death, whether that is caring for the dead’s rest in the graveyard, or working as spies and assassins on behalf of the Royals, or dabbling in various forms of necromancy. Red eyes are an established trait of their people. I will note that, at least from a Japanese point of view, red is often used with the intention of intimidating evil spirits. But it is also a color identified with power and vitality.

So, one could suppose, the Sheikah red eye also symbolises power/control over evil and darkness (spiritually).

That’s a little something that plays nicely with things like the OoT Manga’s explanation of the tear on the eye (and the previous betrayal of the Royal family) and the high probability of a Shiekah faction defaulting during the wars and being banished with other traitors to become the Twili. I know the manga isn’t canon and also SS Impa has a tear, but if you squint, that might be because of her own feelings of personal failure to the Goddess after Hylia’s shedding of her Divinity. You could headcanon that. The existence of the Yiga later in BoTW as a similar happening of division and betrayal lend some more weight to things.

Also, Sheikah who defaulted during the civil war might have even been the ones who actually utilised the Shadow Temple. 

Headline: Necromancer ninjas in the process of torturing enough info out of the enemies of the Royal family, who were reportedly seeking the Sacred Realm, decide ‘hey fuck it, let’s take it ourselves’. 

That certainly fits into the description of, ‘interloper skilled with dark magic started to appear, seeking dominion of the Sacred Realm’, for me.

Anyway, to the point.

In ostensibly one of the most haunted areas of the game, Kakariko village, we’re treated to the Graveyard and the Royal Family’s Tomb, the Shadow Temple, and the Bottom of the Well. All of these showcase the obvious death and torture that went on, as well as the creepy byproducts of places so saturated with blood, pain, regret, and hatred.

There are skulls in little alcoves on the walls of the catacombs, literally built of bones, who deliver messages to Link. The ones that whisper these messages are all marked by the glowing green eye sockets. Here, the green is used to make the presence of a ghostly sentience inhabiting the skull. 

Unsettling. Musty. 4/10 heebie-jeebies.

The Deadhand, giver of childhood trauma that it is, really does its job to hammer home the fact that there has been so many deaths, so much anguish and horror, that those remains can seemingly form into entirely new monstrosities. An amalgamate of undead flesh and nightmare fuel, made up of the body parts of torture victims and the grudges of lingering spirits, seeking to consume the living vitality of whatever comes near-- Link wearing green around the thing might as well be red to a bull.

When defeated in game, it typically drops a small green pot that refuels Link’s magic.

This is a common theme with undead enemies, specifically the ones that are of the zombie flavour. Redeads, Gibdos, Deadhands. All of them generally give up, effectively, distilled magic as a drop item.

Terrifying. Probably smells even worse. 11/10 heebie-jeebies.

Literal torture device. So many people died here, the room has a green tinge to it. It is soaked in the spiritual imprint of the pain and anguish that took place here. Blood sits here looking freshly spilled, despite the civil war ending many years prior and the Shiekah having ‘died out’, save Impa.

Elsewhere in the temple and under the well, blood splatters are darker red and at least have the decency to pretend to be old. This means one of two things:

Impa still has to make sacrifices to the Seal that contains Bongo Bongo, or feeds people to the undead creatures who lurk down in the dark so they don’t wander up. (Cue the gasp of ‘so that’s why she let the Hylians into Kakariko! Every so often one of them goes missing!’)

Which is a fun dark headcanon to play with, but probably not the case.

Or more likely, the residual spiritual energy that the green haze suggests manifests fresh blood in a manner typical of extreme hauntings. For the victims, their hatred and pain persists so strongly, that their blood seeps up from the cracks no matter how long it has been.

Poltergeist shit. Slip hazard. 8/10 heebie-jeebies.

Then there is this. Some people say its just another torture thing, it could have been intended to convey some sort of acid dip. If not torture, maybe bodily disposal. And sure, that’s a reasonable guess. 

But it is at the very bottom most cavern of the Well of Three Features, and if it were acid-- for how long the bodies have just been marinating in it-- you can assume nothing would be left of them to stick out. And the fact that all the bodies are neatly spaced, with the arms oddly preserved. They’re presumably like that from lowering bodies in from the wooden beams, the victims may have been tied up with their arms straight upwards. 

But, given the Redeads wandering around nearby, I’m pretty sure that’s what this thing does. Make Redeads.

The liquid itself hurts Link, but Link is also alive, and this pool seems to be lacking much of a glow. It’s green, sure, but it’s not exactly teeming with energy. And I think that might be part of its designated purpose-- extracting that green vital energy from living prisoners, draining them until they’re dead. I’m talking juicing people and scooping out the good stuff like the pulp from a really disturbing OJ. 

But still steeped in the juice as a corpse, you’re basically pickled in magic brine, so then those gross husks crawl out as Redeads. (Hey, you know what’s handy in wartime? Scaring the shit out of enemy forces by sending some zombies at them. And if they kill them, you’ve lost nothing. If the Sheikah could actually control them? Undead soldiers. Excellent stuff.)

But all the pulpy good stuff is gone, and has been for a while, so most of the bodies in there haven’t pickled in enough magic to reanimate, I suppose.

Human juicer that churns out zombies. Out of juice currently. 6/10 heebie-jeebies.

Now, THIS is active zombie juice, if I’ve ever seen it.

This is the Royal Family’s Tomb, by the way. Note the skeletons, picked clean, missing a lot of bones. And that’s a choice they made, because there are also full skeletons around to find. 

There are plenty of Redeads down there, for good measure, so I’m going to assume the skeletons are potential graverobbers who were eaten. If Sheikah can presumably command the dead, then the Redeads down there might actually be a counter measure against thieves. If a thief freaks out in the dark when he realises there’s undead down there trying to eat their face, there is also a good likelihood they’ll trip and splash into this green death. A few seconds of exposure is probably enough to kill the average person, and then if their corpse stews for a bit, you have another Redead. 

Their living energy revitalises the goop. Their body becomes bolstered security measures. It’s a self sustaining system.

Horrific but effective. 5/10 heebie-jeebies.

Also, there’s a chance that a couple of the skeletons or one or two Redeads down there are the remains of the Composer Brothers. But they will get their own special part in this series, covering Poes in particular.

But for the moment, let it be noted: their eyes are also that ghostly green.

Poes are spirits that are unable to move on and who have the unfortunate fate, if left unattended, of turning into phantom monsters who forget their human selves and prey on the living. They tend to pop up the most in two places. One, the Kakariko Graveyard, is obvious and somewhat expected. Dead people, lots of lingering spirits, most of them probably Sheikah and Knights of renown who died in the line of duty. Understandable.

So when you apply the same thought to the fact that Hyrule field is the second most common place to find them, you may as well be concluding that it’s an enormous mass grave of war casualties.

We have established that mass quantities of concentrated death, especially earth that is saturated by the spilled blood of strong soldiers and highly skilled warriors (full of life and magic, as it were), can result in creepy shit made from human remains reanimating over time. 

Poes share their haunting of the field with these bumpkins:

These hauntings are not the result of Ganondorf, or the corruption of the Sacred realm. They are not a particular curse placed by anybody.

The Poes and Stalfolk are present in the game from the very beginning, and quite normal fare for Hyrulean life. Lon Lon ranch and castle town are walled off for good reason, and the drawbridge raises at night specifically in response to the literal skeleton monsters who roam around at night. 

Stalchildren, specifically, seem akin to the Deadhand in that they are not a direct reanimation of any one particular set of remains. Rather, they seem to be mutated amalgamations of various parts. In the case of the Stalchildren, they rise up under the dark of night, a not-quite-human formation of bone and magic. They seem to possess an aimless drive to attack, perhaps possessed still by the orders of the soldiers who died there. 

Interestingly, in a somewhat similar fashion to BotW’s blood moon reanimating the fallen monsters (due to the potency of Malice in the land peaking at those times), Stalchildren only seem to be active under the moonlight. They disintegrate when the sunlight touches them, which promotes the idea that they are the bones of the fallen possessed by the ghostly memory of the war.

They also appear to wear raggy leather kilts, which is a feature they share with the related monster, the Stalfos, who are often acting out the part of a soldier as well. Even better, those bastards are actually WEARING GREEN, to boot, which given the history of Hyrulean Knights prior and their uniforms (SS and Minish cap) is pretty self evident. 

Stalfos, however, are also confirmed as humans who have died under certain unique circumstance (such as the magical influences of the Lost Woods) and reanimated as a consequence of what I assume is basically magic poisoning.

It could be a bit like an overdose, succumbing under the intense mystical forces at play within proximity to the Deku Tree (which the strong of spirit can resist). It could be a draining effect, maybe even just a gaseous version of what’s happening when people come into contact with the green goo, except extracted by the forest spirits and plants (also possible that the strong of spirit might resist). That could go either way.

The forest absolutely does eat people’s spiritual energy, though. RIP to Grog and Link’s mother. They’re Stalfos now.

"Anybody who comes into the forest will be lost. Everybody will become a Stalfos. Everybody, Stalfos."

Upon killing both kind of Stal, however, the bones rapidly deteriorate into flames.

You guessed it: green.

I’ve already pointed out a BoTW reference already, but to add more context back into this thing about the tie between green and things in Hyrule that refuse to die properly:

That last one is cheap of me I’m sorry but we’ll get to him too

So we have established that green has an overwhelming association with not only life, but states of undeath.

The overview is, things were already pretty fucked in OoT Era before Ganondorf got the Triforce.

On to part 2!

[detectivedreameater]

Headspace || Erin and Marley

TIMING: Current (Immediately after this) PARTIES: @corpse--diem and @detectivedreameater SUMMARY: Erin is Marley’s emergency contact and this is definitely an emergency. CONTENT: Head injury, head trauma, memory loss, car accident mention, medical blood mention 

It didn’t even occur to Erin that she had been the one contacted by the hospital until she was nearly there. At some point, probably after the accident at the warehouse, Marley had made her an emergency contact. Her brain rattled too fiercely in her skull to let that thought do anything but settle at the top of her consciousness. There’d been an accident. The woman on the other line had vaguely explained more but she only half heard it on her way out the door. Marley was in the hospital. She was stable, she remembered the woman saying, and while that did offer some comfort, another anxiety was dredging up her insides. Under no circumstance should Marley Stryder be in a hospital right now.

“Why is the blood blue?”

“Couldn’t say. I’ve never seen anything like it. When she wakes up, we’ll take some tests--”

Erin whizzed by the small group of doctors circling the nurse’s station, noses buried in files. Marley’s files. Her feet moved faster, so focused that she nearly missed her room entirely. Her heart dropped and her legs grew heavy after a moment. She was stable, she reminded herself. It looked worse than it was. Probably. “Marley,” she whispered, closing the door behind her. Her throat tightened as she drew closer and she had to clear it to speak again. “Marley, hey--can you hear me? It’s Erin,” she whispered louder, retaining it’s softness even as she touched a gentle hand to her hair, brushing it away from her eyes so she could get a better look at the bruise beneath it. She swallowed hard. “You’ve got to wake up. We have to go.”

The last thing Marley remembered was blue sky. It must’ve been a nice day out. A voice whispered to her through the haze of beeps and whirrs. When her eyes opened, she was staring at Erin. What was Erin doing here? Wasn’t she supposed to be at work? This wasn’t the precinct. She tried to sit up, brushing Erin’s hand away, but fell back immediately as she cringed in pain. “Oh, shit,” she hissed, grasping her ribs. “Oh, fuck...what-- where am I?” She’d lost time again. She couldn’t remember what happened. She needed to remember. Why was that thought familiar? “What-- is this the hospital?” She wheezed and her head throbbed and when she touched it, pain spiked. The world shifted once, fog filled, eerie-- then the hospital room was back. She blinked, looking at Erin. There were voices outside. “Shit…” her face paled in realization. “Help me up. Get-- get this stupid IV out of my arm.” 

Guilt washed over Erin, rushing her like this felt wrong, and there were a thousand questions she wanted to ask. How the hell did this happen? Was she okay? Where did it hurt? There wasn’t time for that. “Stay still,” she murmured, carefully slipping the needle out of her before unplugging the machines she’d been hooked up to altogether. “Can you walk?” she asked instead of the dozen other ones she wanted to, gingerly helping her as much as she could. Guess she didn’t have a choice, huh? Her eyes were glued to the bandage on her head, dreading the worst. She’d had the brief foresight to grab some clothes before she left--just a t-shirt and sweatpants--for this exact reason. Her clothes were nowhere in sight, likely damaged or cut off in the ambulance on the way over. “Do you need help?” She asked, grabbing her medical file. Some of the words she recognized, but the others she had a feeling Queenie would better understand. She unclipped the files and put the whole thing into her bag. 

“Yeah, yeah, of course I can--” but Marley was proven wrong when her feet slipped underneath her and she felt her legs wobble. “Fuck.” What had happened? She couldn’t remember. She needed to remember. A flash of something behind her eyes. A tree. Several trees. A voice from a speaker. She grabbed her head again. “Just-- lemme lean on you.” She looked around the room, too, for her belongings. Keys and wallet on the table in the corner, but no clothes. No gun. No badge. Had someone taken them? She leaned hard against Erin, squeezing her ribs painfully. “Fuck, how are we gonna get by the doctors?” She glanced at Erin with a look of worry, annoyance, then down to the clothes she was holding out to her now. “Right..” she grabbed the pants and tugged them on, before reaching down to try and pull the gown off. She groaned in pain as she pulled it from her torso, breathing heavily. At least she still had a bra on. “They better now have...cut my jacket…” she grumbled. It was also nowhere in the room. She waved Erin over. “Help me get this hoodie on.” 

Erin’s attention jumped to Marley again, her little groans of pain searing through her. “We’ll get you a new jacket,” she tried to lightly tease over the worry in her voice. Winced at the bruising along her ribcage. Matched up with the broken ribs she saw noted in her file. “Take it slow, here,” she murmured, doing as much of the work as she could in pulling the hoodie over her. Slow but not too slow. She glanced at the door, knowing they only had a few more minutes at max before someone would be checking in. Marley was moving slow though. Too slow. She took the liberty of helping her get her shoes on while she was at it. “Uh, just--wait here. One second,” she nodded at her once she was about ready to go. She slipped out of the room quickly, closing the door behind her. An alarm went off--code something or other--and the doctors’ and nurses' attentions were all scrambling down the hall to assist. Erin poked her head back in, reaching for Marley’s hand. “Time to go,” she hurried her, pulling her along gingerly out of the room and opposite of the hall.

Marley was semi-relieved when Erin took the liberty of sliding her shoes on for her. She hadn’t looked forward to bending down like that, knowing the pain in ribs. Erin really was trying her best to cover up her worry and move them along, but Marley made a mental note to point that out later. When they were far, far away from the hospital. She moved as fast as she could, leaning into Erin and clutching her ribs. As they limped down the hallway, Marley reached up and pulled the bandages from her head. She couldn’t look like a patient, they could catch on. Dumped the bloody remains in a trashcan. She hoped no one checked that trash. She didn’t need more people knowing about her blue blood. “How’d you know?” she asked once they were away from the room and nearing the front doors. “That I was here?”

Erin didn’t let go of her or even slow down until they were stepping outside of the hospital doors. She gave her a small smile. “I’m your emergency contact,” she stated matter of factly, leading her through the parking lot. There were no eyes on them, no one following them. They’d made it out and were pulling out once Erin had managed to toss her into the car. Quiet for a few moments, though her hand had found Marley’s again, her throat too tight to express herself properly but the squeeze of her hand did it for her. They weren’t out of the woods yet. “What happened?” She finally asked, glancing over quickly, turning down the road that led back to the funeral home. 

When had they gotten to the car? Marley remembered windows passing by, the bright sunlight as they slunk through the shadows. That must’ve been the parking lot. She rubbed her eyes again, wincing at the pain. Touched her brow. It must’ve been bruised. “Don’t get smug,” she grumbled, leaning back in the chair. When she opened them again, her vision flickered. There was a steering wheel in front of her. The sound of tires screeching. She’d lost control of her body, her hands. The sound of Erin’s voice brought her back and she blinked, dazed. “I--” she started, stopped. She knew but she didn’t. What had happened? “I think I...crashed my car.” That would make sense, wouldn’t it? The pain in her ribs, the bruise on her head. “I was talking to someone. I don’t remember who.”

“You think?” Blurted out of Erin’s mouth before she could stop herself. “Did you--” she started, glancing over at her, mindful enough to calm her tone. “Did you have another one? A seizure?” She asked, concern filling her voice. She should have thought about that. Should have better prepared them both. The ride back was short, the hospital only a street over, and she was pulling into the driveway before she could ask more questions. She had so many more. A heavy breath left her and she was hopping out and over to Marley’s side of the car before she could even open the door. “You’re staying here tonight. No arguments,” she told her plainly. Worry crept back up her throat. Marley’s doctor was going to love this. She’d call her as soon as she had the other woman settled and comfortable. “Come on. We’re not fleeing out of a building anymore. Easy does it. As slow as you need,” she nodded. “I’ve got you.”

“I don’t know,” Marley snapped back, putting her head in her hands. It was beginning to burn, ache, like a migraine. She shook her head. “I-- I can’t remember. I did hit my head, after all.” Again. She needed to stop doing that. They pulled up to the house and Marley pressed her palms into her eyes while she waited for Erin to open the door, letting her help her out of the car, basically falling into her grasp as she did so. “Nice bedside manner,” she teased quietly, “much more improved since the last time.” Not that she really wanted to think about that. Last time had been stitches in her face. At least this time, she didn’t have to do that. As she watched her feet, they seemed to swirl with fog. You shouldn’t be here. Her head snapped up. “Did-- did you hear that?” 

No matter how often Marley joked about it, those comments about her head never ceased to make Erin’s body tense. She’d humor her, knowing it was one of the best ways the other woman knew how to cope. Not today. “I’m aware,” she shot back with barely concern-fueled annoyance. Still, she clutched her tightly, guiding her towards the front door. Narrowed her eyes, grumbling. “My bedside manner is fine. You’re just annoying.” Suddenly though, Marley was on alert, and considering everything about this town, she stopped in her tracks. Quiet as she listened for something. Nothing but the usually small town buzzing in the background. The chirp of birds, cars driving past the house, the wind rustling through the trees. “No?” She said after a moment, raising a brow at her. “Hear what?” She narrowed her eyes. “You’re not hearing a ringing, are you? Because if you are, your doctor’s going to need to know. I’ll tell her even if you won’t.”

Marley furrowed her brow. “Not a ringing,” she mumbled, leaning back against Erin as they started back up towards the house. She really wanted to sit down. Turns out getting in a car accident made you tired. She slumped for a moment before readjusting herself. “No. It was…” But Erin was looking at her in concern again and Marley had no idea what to say to her. She couldn’t just tell her she’d heard a voice, that would make her more worried and that was the last thing she wanted. “Nothing. Must just be...my head.” She put her hand back up to the bruise that was surely sprouting-- she’d need to look at that later-- and breathed in deep. “Can we please just get inside? I really need to sit down.” Whatever was going on with her, she’d have to figure that out later. It had to do with whatever she saw in that place, whatever that place was. She had to know. She had to figure it out. She had to go back.

“Don’t like the sound of that either,” Erin mumbled, watching her warily for a few moments. She wasn’t sure exactly what to look for when it came to concussions or otherwise--she didn’t remember seeing that mentioned in her chart--but her eyes were glued on her nonetheless. “Yeah,” she answered more softly, letting go of her only to unlock the front door as quickly as she could. “Come on,” she said, ushering her inside, an arm firmly around her waist as she led her up the stairs. Like if she let go again, for even a moment, she’d break. Which was silly, and not true. Marley was one of the strongest people she knew. That gash along her forehead was glaring at her, reminding her how truly fragile she could be. When she finally settled her upstairs and helped her into her bed, her fussing continued. “What did you hear? And, uh--water? Are you hungry? What do you need?”

“And you think I do?” Marley mumbled. If her head didn’t hurt so much, she would’ve rolled her eyes. But as it turned out, it hurt just to move her head, or her eyes. She stayed standing-- barely-- as Erin opened the door and ushered her inside. She leaned gratefully back onto her as they made their way up the stairs and Marley collapsed into the bed. Her head was killing her. “I didn’t hear anything. Maybe that’s the problem,” she muttered back, rubbing her head. “Ice would be nice. My head is killing me.” She didn’t see the way Erin was looking at her, that deep concern that made her brow furrow and her eyes wrinkle. Marley had noticed it so many times before, but she didn’t notice it now, as her vision blurred and she felt a pounding behind her eyes. “Erin--” she said suddenly, sitting up enough to at least see her. Reached out for her hand to stop her before she left. “I-- thank you,” was all she managed to get out.

Fuck. The second Erin left this room, she calling Dr. Lin-King. “But you did hear something.” That’s why she stopped. That’s why she asked. But Erin didn’t push, not with the pained look on Marley’s face. They’d figure it out. They’d call the doctor and get her fixed and that dread building in her gut would go away. This could all be fixed. She would be fine. She had to be fine. “Ice, yeah,” she nodded, jumping into action. Stopped only when Marley tugged her back and her heart leapt again like something else had happened. She seemed almost surprised by her words, nodding her head, taking a second to sit on the side of the bed and squeeze her hand back. “You’re going to be just fine, okay?” She gave a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes, but she meant what she said. Felt like there was more, like the words were getting jammed in her throat and her brain. She just smiled a little wider, shaking her head. “Do you need anything else?” She said instead. 

Something felt off. Not bad, just off. Aside from her head. Marley blinked in mild confusion, but let the thought rest. Her body was growing too tired. She chuckled and gave a shrug. “Yeah, seems to be the uh...theme.” She was right, though. Probably. Maybe. Definitely. Marley would just bounce back like she always did, and then everything would be fine. Right? There was a feeling in her gut that seemed to be trying to refute that notion, but she ignored it. Like she always did. Her eyes fell to their hands when Erin squeezed hers and she wondered when she’d grabbed Erin’s hand. She barely remembered reaching out to stop her. Her head was spinning again and she covered her eyes with her free hand, scrubbing her palm across them. “Sorry. No, just-- just ice. And sleep, I guess. Think I can just go to sleep and wake up fine? That’s how it works, right?” Even though she knew it wasn’t. That wasn’t at all how it worked. A girl could hope.

Erin nodded with an air of confidence she didn’t actually have. “That’s absolutely how it works,” she insisted, funneling all of the positive thoughts, whether they were denial or otherwise. Her eyes jumped to the cut on her forehead again, raising a hand to gently brush the hair from her face. Blue blood was starting to weep from it again, likely from the exertion of leaving the hospital. From one wound to another, she briefly glanced along the long healed claw marks marring her skin, before even more briefly finding her eyes. “I’ll see if we can’t clean that up a little bit too,” she added, pulling her hand away when it lingered. That tightness in her chest hadn’t loosened even a little since she took that call but there was a small comfort having her here, safe--as safe and secure as she could be outside of a hospital. “Just don’t think too hard. I know I’m not technically a doctor but I’m pretty sure that’ll make it worse,” she teased lightly, rising up slowly from the bed so as not to jostle her further. “Maybe don’t sleep until Dr. Lin-King can look at your head though. Just to be sure?”

“Ah, I knew it,” Marley said matter of factly. She watched Erin raise her hand and brush away some hair from her face and suddenly felt like her head was on fire. No, not her head. Her whole body. Huh, strange. Must’ve been an injury thing. Yeah, that was definitely it. She turned her head away when Erin withdrew her hand. “It’s really not as bad as it looks,” she lied, knowing it was a lie and that Erin knew it was. She just...didn’t like the look on her face. Like she was reliving the moments right before Roy had crushed Marley’s skull. She cleared her throat. “I’m sure Queenie will patch it up just fine and it’ll be healed in no time. Maybe it’ll just end up matching the other scars on my face,” she tried to tease, but Erin didn’t seem amused. She was standing up from the bed now and Marley wondered if she’d said something wrong, but then she remembered she’d asked Erin to get her some ice. Right. She nodded stiffly, scooting back on the bed, suddenly remembering the sharp pain in her ribs as well. Wincing, she added, “Maybe bring a couple packs of ice, actually.”

[nocturne-inuyasha-ff]

Chapter Twelve: Take Me With You

Nocturne - Chapter Twelve: Take Me With You

Rated - M (for suggestive adult themes, references to some violence, and coarse language)

Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha.

Kagome still felt quite anxious even after Rin set on her way back to the village, and Sesshomaru had assured her that all would be well. He didn't use all that many words, but the point was he tried to put her at ease, and she appreciated that he had taken even that small effort.

He had followed her back into the small house once Rin was out of sight and watched in silence as she settled the baby. He seemed quite interested in the baby but did not voice that interest aloud. Setsuna began to fuss a little and squirm around. She pushed out with her small feet and began to nuzzle into Kagome's chest. Kagome's face flushed red when she realized that the child was hungry and that she would need to feed her. She debated asking Sesshomaru to turn around or do so herself but settled on being brave. This was her home after all, and it was only natural to breastfeed a baby.

She shushed the small child and pulled down her shirt to expose her breast. The baby, smelling her meal, instantly latched on and began to suckle. Kagome was not ashamed but still felt odd feeding her child in front of him. Taking a deep breath, she raised her head to see what emotions, if any, had graced his stoic features. 'Did yokai feed their children this way? Or did they perform mastication? Or were they born with fangs and claws ready to cut down any available meal?' she wondered.

He did watch her, and there was no trace of disgust like she had feared. He watched her with what seemed to be awe, for Kagome had never seen such an expression rest on his face. She bit her lip and turned her head down to focus on the little one. Setsuna's blue eyes looked up at her, watching her as intently as Kagome was. The baby had wrapped her tiny fingers around Kagome's hakui, gripping the fabric tightly.

Once the baby was satisfied, her eyes became heavy and began to droop. Kagome readjusted her clothing before she began to run her finger lightly down the bridge of Setsuna's nose. Kagome could still feel Sesshomaru's gaze upon her, and she flashed him a smile.

"Would you like to hold her?" Kagome asked.

His brows drew together in consternation. The look of bewilderment caused Kagome to laugh aloud, which broke the sleeping spell the baby was falling under.

"I don't think she can hurt you." At least not physically. But like with all children, once you are exposed to their light, you are forever under their spell. This was something that Sesshomaru had learned during his time as Rin's guardian. Though Rin was much older, her innocent nature was what began to thaw Sesshomaru's hardened heart.

Kagome brought Setsuna over close, making sure to take slow movements. Setsuna was able to hold her head up and sit with assistance now, a feat unheard of in human babies. Setsuna was growing much faster, which Kagome thought was attributed to her yokai bloodline. Kagome sat the baby down before Sesshomaru and held her underneath her arms. The child's silver hair had grown longer and nearly seemed darker at the ends. Kagome did not hold out hope that her daughter's hair would retain its pure silver appearance as she aged.

Sesshomaru seemed entranced by the small being before him. Once Kagome sat her down, Setsuna stared up at him with large blue eyes. They beheld each other quietly for a few moments, and Kagome thought she would try something. She steadied the child and moved away, leaving Setsuna sitting unassisted.

It was only a matter of time before she toppled over, and she would be fine if she did, but Kagome wanted to see how Sesshomaru would react.

Remarkably, the child did not so much as sway. It was as if she innately knew who the man was before her, and they were sizing each other up. The moment passed, and Setsuna began to lose her balance, falling forward. Before she could touch the ground, Sesshomaru swiped her up and cradled her in his arms. He shot Kagome a knowing glare before returning to stare into his daughter's eyes.

If his hand trembled, it must have been a trick of the light, but Kagome could have sworn it had while he reached to touch her. His fingers ran over the crescent moon on her forehead, and inevitably over the child's nose as he imitated the motion Kagome had taken to get the child to sleep. The baby gripped his mokumoku tightly with both of her tiny hands, but with a full belly shortly after eating, she began to drift off.

"She's beautiful, isn't she?" Kagome asked softly, breaking him out of his trance.

He looked over to her with soft eyes. "Indeed."

Kagome smiled but rolled her eyes. She was asking a lot from him in such a short time. But now it was time to address the elephant in the room. "So, what are we going to do?" She grabbed Setsuna from him, who relinquished the small child reluctantly, and placed her carefully down to rest.

"I must rectify the situation I have placed you in," he answered matter-of-factly. Of course, he would resort to his duty. All of that tied into his pride and sense of honor, which played into everything that made him what he was.

"Where does that leave us?" she gestured to herself and the baby. "W-Will we be coming with you?" she asked timidly, afraid of his response.

He shook his head and stood, "I should prefer you remain here. It is not safe."

Kagome stood, too, jumping up. "What makes it safe here? Hasn't our location been exposed by that...by that woman?" She had begun to shake and seethe with anger. Would he leave now? How could he?

Sesshomaru expelled a breath and turned his head. "I cannot risk bringing you along. You would only…"

"What?!" she interrupted. "Get in your way?"

He growled in annoyance, "Precisely."

Kagome took several smoldering steps up to him and put a finger in front of his chest. "Don't. Lie." She poked his cuirass with each word.

He snatched up her hand and held it. "This is beyond your comprehension, woman. Do not presume to know me."

Her jaw dropped at his words, and she snatched her hand from his grasp. "You bastard! I may be human, but I am capable of understanding a great many things! Things even you wouldn't begin to understand!" She put heavy emphasis on the word 'you.' He acted as if she were an ignorant wench whose sole role in life was to be rutted and pop out babies. "I know that you had never felt vulnerable until humans entered your life. Rin taught you compassion," she spat, "but we have shown you something else."

His fangs were visible as he snarled in anger. "You dare to speak to me so informally, wench? You are naught to me but a good time and the child, a byblow."

"A what?!" He-he called their child...a bastard...How could he turn so cold in a matter of seconds?

He turned and called over his shoulder, "I shall waste my time here no longer. I have what I'd come for now. Take care; for yourself and the child. I will keep the trouble at bay. It is the least I can do."

"You-you're leaving?" she asked miserably. His cruel words instantly quelled the fire she had felt.

"Yes."

His monosyllabic response incised her, and she spat out her retort. "Good. I'd hate you to waste any more time here. I'm surprised that you broke off your engagement. You two were probably suited to one another."

If her words phased him, he did not show it. "Hnn."

She could hear Setsuna stir from behind her, awoken by the raised voices of her parents. Kagome turned her head to check the child quickly. When she turned back, he was gone before she could even blink, and she instantly felt so empty. Kagome crumbled to her knees and put her face in her hands. How foolish of her to believe that she could mean anything more than a good time to Sesshomaru. She drew in a shaky breath and placed a steady hand on the ground. Something was not right.

o - o - o - o - o

He knew where his brother had laid up, avoiding anyone and everyone in his pathetic despondency. Sesshomaru had to be quick; otherwise, his headstrong brother would react without thinking.

He landed near the tree and approached in an obvious manner, hands by his sides in a non-threatening gesture. Inuyasha plummeted from the branches of the tree and landed before his elder brother, a grimace on his face.

"Come to rub my nose in it, you sick fuck?" Inuyasha flexed his claws and gripped the hilt of Tessaiga.

Sesshomaru had no time for his half-brother's antics. "Quite the opposite. I am leaving."

Inuyasha scoffed and visibly relaxed. "Why am I not surprised?" He folded his arms against his chest and leaned back against the tree. "So, lemme guess. You came back here for a quick lay, and now she wants more. Something you can't give? So now you're running off."

Sesshomaru answered his brother with silence. He had returned on a strong impulse. One that he barely understood and drove him with primal instinct. His sense of pride contradicted the instinct to protect his...his…m...no-the woman and child...gods he could scarcely think it within his mind..the instinct pulsed through his veins yet. The woman and child made him feel a level of weakness he had not experienced since Rin traveled at his side. He could not succumb to that weakness. His enemies would use them against him, he knew. Better to cast off his weakness and put on a facade then allow his enemy to use them against him.

"Just what I thought. You're pathetic," Inuyasha spat.

Sesshomaru glared at Inuyasha. The man was trying his patience. "Hold your tongue before it is cut out. You won't need it to do what is demanded."

Inuyasha uncrossed his arms and held them out in an engaging manner. "You won't do shit. Otherwise, you wouldn't be here asking me for help. That's why you came, ain't it, Sesshomaru?"

"The time has come to collect. Need I remind you of that night. You groveled and begged at my feet like the pathetic mongrel you are." Sesshomaru hadn't thought he would need to bring the request up. He would have brought them back anyway, but Inuyasha did not know that.

Inuyasha bared his teeth at the mention of begging anything from Sesshomaru. But he complied and grunted, turning his head with a noncommittal noise.

It grated upon Sesshomaru's nerves to ask a boon of his brother, even if it was owed. "It is only requested that you care for her."

"I was doing that before you swooped in on her like she was a bitch in heat. I thought you were in control of your more "baser" instincts, big brother?" he taunted.

"Then it should prove no challenge for you to do so again." Sesshomaru rose on his yoki, and Inuyasha watched with a scrutinizing glare. There was no time to respond to the goading. "And Inuyasha," he called.

Inuyasha looked up at him with scowling eyes, barely raising his head. Sesshomaru continued once he was sure Inuyasha was giving him his full attention, "Should anything happen to her, I will not hesitate to kill you. Brother or not."

"Feh. Fuck off. As if I'm scared of your empty-ass threats." Inuyasha rolled his eyes.

His brother was sadly mistaken to assume that the threat was empty. Sesshomaru was a man of his word. Even if he could not be near those he cared about, he would not let anything befall them, and he was not above vengeance should the occasion call for it.

o - o - o - o - o

Inuyasha watched his elder brother take off to who knew the fuck where. What that meant was that now he was saddled with all of Sesshomaru's baggage.

He growled aloud in annoyance and aggravation. Of course, his honor-bound brother would run off and leave Kagome and her whelp. It had been surprising enough that he had even bothered to come back after all the damage he did. Now, Inuyasha was left to clean up the mess.

What a fucking mess it was. None of this was even his fault! Why did he have to put back the pieces? He didn't break this. It's not as if he had pushed Kagome into his brother's arms and knocked her up.

He scoffed and rolled his eyes — fucking bullshit. Kagome didn't even want him around anyway. She'd made that abundantly clear when she left him.

And then she dared to try and apologize and pretend that this was all a long time coming. No! He'd been happy. Why was it his fault she wasn't happy?

Before he knew it, he found himself outside of his old home — the one he had built for Kagome and himself. His nose turned up in a grimace. His brother's scent still lingered here, mingled with Kagome's and her kid's scent. He blew air out of his nose to rid himself of the smell.

It was still early, and Kagome probably wasn't up yet. She claimed to be a morning person, but he begged to differ. The woman may rise before the sun reached its zenith, but she was lucky to rise as early as most of the village.

She'd probably come out soon to start on her usual routine of chores. Fetching water, making breakfast, running to the village to deal with other people's bitching.

He leaned up against the side of the house and closed his eyes.

Kagome finally appeared outside moments later, just he'd expected. She had the baby strapped to her back and carried a pole over her shoulders. It took her a minute to realize he was standing there, and she gasped with surprise, bringing her hand over her chest.

"Kami! Inuyasha, you scared me!" she hissed. Her eyes narrowed as her adrenaline lowered, "Why are you here?"

"Cuz I care," he touted.

"Or a certain elder brother asked you to keep an eye on me," she responded dryly.

He gave a noncommittal shrug. Sometimes the woman was too observant. He could smell the saltiness of dried tears on her, but she didn't look as though she'd been crying recently. Her face wasn't all red and puffy like when they'd fought in the past, and she had cried. Instead, she looked resigned, if not a little determined.

Kagome rolled her eyes and walked off without another word to him. As she walked past, he could see the baby's head swivel to watch him with her dark eyes. They were bright and lively, like her mother's, but also held an air of superiority about them. It would figure that any child of Sesshomaru's would look at him that way.

Breaking the cold gaze, the baby cracked a grin and cooed, pushing out her tiny fist in a grabbing motion. Kagome looked back, noticing the attention little Setsuna was paying to him. "For some odd reason, she seems to like you."

"Keh," he scoffed.

She softened, smiling. "Setsuna."

His first inclination was to ignore her and walk along without a word, but he was curious, and as much as he wanted to hate her and the baby...he could not bring himself to do so. "What?"

"It's her name."

"Hmph. About time."

o - o - o - o - o

Sesshomaru spent the next few days preparing. It was only a matter of time before a messenger arrived, or worse, Tsering and her brother himself.

He lingered in the estate he had procured for Tsering's arrival those months ago. It would be best that his enemies thought the palace to be the only place he could be found. Nothing good could come from his lingering near the woman and child. The timing had always been ill; now, it plagued him incessantly. Taking on a woman and pup-child was still a tenuous business at best, and a relationship best sealed with time spent in close vicinity to one another. Being together made them vulnerable when he needed to be at his peak. His inner beast would be distracted with the woman, and it's constant desire to mark her with his scent. This was not a time for distraction.

His reasoning for leaving the woman and child behind was also for those enemies to be misled. Better they thought he was done with them. They had been caught in a compromising situation, but his discontinued presence in their vicinity spoke louder than words. Now he was free to deal with whatever they thought they could dole out to him for breaking the engagement.

"Milord," a voice broke into his thoughts.

Sesshomaru glanced down to see Jaken before him.

"It would seem your plan has worked! There is a messenger in the courtyard. Shall I let him in?" The imp shuffled from foot to foot in a nervous manner.

He sat upon a chair in the great room, musing over his current circumstances. He stood and grabbed the hilt of Bakusaiga. "No."

"No?" Jaken asked. He scratched at his head. "But, my great Lord, I do not understand. Was it not your intention to receive a messenger here?"

"Sesshomaru has no master but himself and shall not answer a call from any who would assume otherwise," he admonished. "Advise the messenger that I shall receive him at my convenience."

"Lord, when shall that be?" Jaken asked, still perplexed. The imp had not been informed of the entirety of Sesshomaru's plans, but that was also for the best.

"Whensoever I feel the inclination to do so, Jaken." Sesshomaru turned his back on the retainer.

"Y-yes, of course, milord. I shall do as you request straight away. Apologies!" Jaken bowed and left the room.

A couple of days waiting would have been preferable in Sesshomaru's eyes, but he did not want to push the issue any further than necessary. Making the messenger wait would only cause to insult it's master further, and that was something he needed to avoid. Instead, he allowed the messenger to remain in the courtyard for a few hours. Sesshomaru did not bother calling for Jaken to announce him, choosing to arrive with quiet dignity.

The messenger was a bird from the mainland. Not just any bird, he determined. It had the look of a large raptor; its curved beak looked menacing and capable of tearing flesh from bones. It perched upon the stone railing preening its feathers when he approached. There was something rather innocuous about the bird, he observed. The bird's inconspicuous feather colorings likely hid something more sinister underneath.

The messenger raised its head, turning it from side to side, eyeing Sesshomaru with large yellow eyes.

"Greetings, Lord Sesshomaru," the messenger said in a trill voice. "Waited long enough, I have. How disrespectful to not offer refreshments and rest after such a long journey. Disrespect!" it repeated with shrill accusation.

Sesshomaru ran a hand through his fur, looking undisturbed at the accusation. "What is your message Zhenniao?"

"Astute, you are inuyokai," the messenger warbled with laughter. It had not slipped Sesshomaru's notice that a poisonous Yaoguai had been sent into his court. Whether they thought to intimidate him with the presence of the assassin bird or were attempting to mollify him, it did not matter.

He did not respond, and the Zhen bird clacked its beak. "The great and honorable Fan Tsenpo, Lord of Shangshung and the Western Reach, summons you, Sesshomaru, Lord of the Western Lands in the lesser kingdom of Nippon, to his court."

Sesshomaru had to consider his answer carefully. To refuse would have possibly dire consequences, and accepting could prove just as disastrous. "To what does this one owe such a gracious invitation?" he asked.

The Zhen bird clucked, "Tch, Tch. My master wishes to discuss many things. Matters involving his most honorable sister."

"It is known that I have broken any involvement with Tsering Dawa."

"Yes, that is known," the bird assented, nodding its beaked head. His head bobbed up and down, waiting for a suitable answer.

Sesshomaru nodded his head, "I shall travel to Fan Tsenpo's court within a fortnight." The Zhen bird clucked again, accepting the response. "If there is no more to your message, you are dismissed, Zhenniao." He turned and began to walk off.

The messenger bird flapped its wings, creating miniature gusts of wind and grabbing Sesshomaru's attention. "Understand this, Lord Sesshomaru. My most honorable master wishes you to know that his mercy is significant, but his patience is only tempered by obtaining what he desires."

"Hnn," he responded in near amusement. Of course, the brother would demand him to make haste. He continued to walk away.

The Zhen bird flapped its wings again and flew to another perch within Sesshomaru's line of sight. "So eager to depart, this one."

"We are done."

The Zhen bird raised its wings, exposing those vibrantly colored feathers hidden underneath. "I have been authorized to share information with you if only to embolden your efforts."

He glared at the bird in annoyance. What more could the vassal have? He was already obligated to appear before the man. "What is that?"

"Lord Fan Tsenpo has particular tastes," the bird squawked.

"It is not my concern where Fan Tsenpo's tastes run."

"One may need concern himself," the bird advised in a mocking tone. He flapped his wings, gaining height. He was well out of Sesshomaru's reach now, and there was no way to match the bird's speed. The Yaoguai had been sent specifically for this purpose. "Before I take my leave, I impart upon you a name. I do not know the significance behind the name, but I am also supposed to disclose it as well," the bird clucked in amused observance.

"Say your piece and begone." Sesshomaru snapped in annoyance.

"Ryūkotsusei."

Sesshomaru's eyes widened in surprise, and he turned quickly, drawing his sword. The Zhen bird was already a small dot in the evening sky and growing smaller by the second.

His concern grew. The claim could be a trick to force his hand or worse, and much more likely, the words were true. Sesshomaru had trusted his brother to watch over the woman, but Inuyasha would be no match for the DaiOzuko.

Jaken ran out once he determined it was safe to do so. He gripped his staff with both hands and looked to his master imploringly. "Milord, what did that miscreant have to say?"

Sesshomaru looked down on him and said aloud, "This Sesshomaru has been invited to Fan Tsenpo's court."

"F-fan…" the imp gulped, "Tsenpo? You are not really considering going, are you, lord?"

"It displeases me for you to question my decisions, Jaken," Sesshomaru retorted coldly.

"B-b-but, Master, you must know the stories?" Jaken trembled, cowering behind his staff.

Sesshomaru refrained from kicking the toad across the room, though the desire to do so was nearly overwhelming. No, now was not the time to react like a spoiled child. "I am departing on the hour. There is a task for you while I am gone."

"Anything you ask, milord, it shall be done!" Jaken assured.

"This one would expect no less," Sesshomaru replied.

[redemptionbaby]

I Won’t Hurt You (pt.2)

Pairing: RDR1!Javier/Reader

Word count: 1375

Summary: A night of drinking followed by a night of dreaming followed by a morning meal for two.

Notes: Sorry if this took a while, but I think it turned out pretty good! I really got into the zone.

He fucked it all up again. So he drank, but even the foggy reflection of his face in the dirty glass of whiskey reminded him of the monster you saw.

Things had been going well. Of course, it was nothing compared to how things used to be between the two of you. A part of him doubted that dream could even be reached, at least within his lifetime. It was lucky for him that you were a creature of adaptability and habit, he saw you resist falling into old patterns with him on the daily. Whether you wanted to admit it or not, you were starting to get comfortable, starting to passively and incrementally disregard his past transgressions. And he ruined it.

All he did was touch you. But to you, it meant more than that, and he knew it. It was a little place, where your hip met your back. A terrible place.

It was the first place he had ever touched you without caring about you. Where he put his grip the first time he fucked you without loving you, without giving a damn if he hurt you or pleasured you, that time and a shameful amount of times after. The first place that he bruised without kissing it better the next day.

One day you had even told him. With tears and a trembling voice, absolute despair at what had become of what was once love, you told him he was hurting you. He could still hear it, and he heard it often. What was louder was his deafening silence in response to your plea.

It was all too clear how well you remembered that place, from how you flinched and turned quickly. He’d left quickly after that. But the fact that he’d left wasn’t what you noticed most. What you’d noticed most was that he forced out an I’m sorry as he did.

The Javier at Beaver Hollow wouldn’t have done that. This Javier had been forced down. He’d lost a great deal of charm, pride, morality, and integrity. But he gained all the regret in the world, and maybe, just maybe, some humility. Even if only for you.

But while drowned in liquor and his own thoughts, he’d never realize this. He was running out of energy to lift his glass to meet dry, chewed up lips. So he made a good decision, for once, and shoved his ass off the barstool and went to greet the cold winds that swept the desert at night. To be awake, if only for a while longer, instead of falling asleep only to wake up again. Another day meant facing you. Such were the perks of working with your ex.

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

By some miracle, Javier was able to amble his drunk ass back to the shitty boarding house where the two of you were shacked up while tracking a target. He slept like a rock, and it was your fault. Though it wasn’t in the same bed as it once would have been, you had the kind of peaceful sleeping face that made him feel comforted and warm. Like he was at home. No matter how drunk he got. So he couldn’t help himself when he passed your room. He was selfish in that way, he thought. Once again comforted by the person he deserves nothing but hatred from. 

He had a hazy dream of a memory-- his mother showing him her old, beloved wedding dress. She had teased him, telling her she had been planning to give it to her daughter, but seeing as he was her only child, she said he’d just have to find a pretty girl who would wear it someday instead, or she’d make him put it on. In reality, she had then laughed at his wild refutations of such an idea and started tickling him.

But, ever the oracle and emissary of guilt in his dreams, her expression fell, and she asked the one question that seemed to drive every aspect of his life these days: Remember? He looked to her old, cracked vanity mirror and saw that he wasn’t a child anymore, just before he woke up.

The boarding house was some shithole of a place where you were the only two staying, your only other company being the old lady who owned the place, and she disappeared to do her own business after she served meals. She was kind, and a hell of a cook, but Javier hated that she could read him like an open book with a glass cover, and he suspected that she left the two of you alone so often for that very reason.

The old assassin quickly washed his face in the water basin, avoiding looking in the mirror as much as possible. A habit he picked up recently. Trudging down the short, empty hallway, he attempted to mentally prepare himself to face you, as he always did.

He stopped in the doorway, not being prepared to experience emotional whiplash so early in the morning.

There you sat, at your spot at the table, carefully picking the sugar snap peas from your meal and lifting them in little bunches with your fork and knife, carefully depositing them in a neat pile on the plate across the table. His plate. Many years ago, Javier had once gone on a drunken tirade while forcibly laying on you so that you couldn’t get up about all manner of stupid shit. His sober self would most definitely have thought it too embarrassing and childish to bring up, but Drunk Javier insisted upon you knowing that they were his favorite vegetable, even though vegetables as a whole are “stupid” and “a scam invented to fuck with people”. He then proceeded to make loud noises in an attempt to drown you out while you patiently explained to him the concept of scurvy.

From then on, any time snap peas were a part of any meal, which was rare, you set yours aside for him. You would make a big spectacle of not doing it when you were mad at him, but you’d go right back eventually, and that was always how he knew you’d forgiven him.

You gave him the side eye upon noticing him in the doorway. You’d already started taking apart your own meal with a quiet ferocity you’d always had when served meat you had to cut yourself. Javier proceeded to break himself out of his own thoughts and try really hard to amble casually to the table, thought he wanted to sprint. The usual palpable silence hung over the room. You often didn’t attempt conversation because you didn’t want to be disappointed, while he was trying to tread carefully around your very real and justified anger and trauma. He’d lost many things over the years, but he likes to imagine he’s retained some sense of tactfulness.

Your former lover continued to stare at his own plate like a dumbass, and you misinterpreted his look for confusion. So he was more than surprised when you started to speak, one cheek still puffed with half-chewed food.

“Remember? They’re... your favorite.” You spoke with a quiet hesitancy, like with every syllable you were locked in an internal debate on whether or not to continue. “Or, they were, I guess.” You looked down at your plate, wet regret budding in your eyes, in a way that made Javier Escuella just want to fucking die. He lunged at the chance to make conversation, to draw you away from your own spiraling thoughts.

“They still are. You never forget a damn thing, muñeca,” He remarked fondly. He’s sure sometimes you wish you could, though.

And the way his fork clinks against the plate as he shoving snap peas in his mouth makes you feel so bittersweet you want to cry. He’s overacting like a parent trying to cheer up their crying child. It feels so warm and lovely to have your feelings so delicately considered, but you also feel an aching sense of self-betrayal at the knowledge of who’s making you feel this way.

To tell the truth, Javier hadn’t thought of sugar snap peas in years. Not once. But now he thinks he wants to eat them every damn day for the rest of his life.

[arecomicsevengood]

QUARANTINE MOVIES PART FOUR

It’s wild to watch any movie knowing that none will be made for the foreseeable future, and that the whole collective experience of filmgoing might be dead. I tend to have a certain sad, scared lonely feeling when I contemplate the future at night, and while I attempt to put off by watching movies, it only partly works. Now, more than ever, movies are a larger part of my processing of the world than the ongoing conversations I have with friends.

Smithereens (1982) dir. Susan Seidelman

There is something particularly powerful about movies where people run around, socializing. These things are pretty resonant with my youth, but “youth” in this broad sense that just means “the before times,” because if there’s anything quarantine is bringing home it’s the importance of a form of adulthood based around domestic partnerships with someone you like and having “real jobs” that can translate to telecommuting. Of course, socializing of the sort no longer allowed is really useful, and shouldn’t be written off as youthful frivolity. Smithereens is not a particularly romantic movie: While it might be famous for being “punk” in a “cool” way, documenting young New York nightlife in a way where David Wojnarowicz’s band 3 Teens Kill 4 is on a club’s marquee, it’s really about young people as these sort of upwardly-mobile opportunists with no real talent trying to exploit one another for a mixture of sex and social clout, and ignoring those who are not actively useful to them. It’s a useful document of people being shitty where the appeal now is how cool they look, and it’s interesting to watch in this moment where I’m worried that the whole idea of community will be lost very soon, in a way we won’t even be able to articulate. We’ll all be scrambling for jobs and security but everything will be further hollowed out, and we’ll be left with an even more vicious and dog-eat-dog citizenry. So a movie like this has nostalgic appealing, but by depicting the seeds of what will only become more widespread problems, it avoids feeling dated or idealistic.

Gloria (1980) dir. John Cassavetes

Oh shit this movie rules! I was under the impression I disliked Cassavetes, based on the others I had seen, and watching the first twenty-odd minutes reminded me of why: Sort of circular conversations, involving a lot of people being upset with one another. But this ends up feeling more like a movie, and less like a play. Once Gena Rowlands kills a carful of people I was completely on board. She’s great in this, playing opposite a child, who is also amazing in it, tons of dialogue that should be quotable: “You’re not my mother, my mother was beautiful” being but one amazing bit of poetry. Both extremely cute and extremely badass from moment to moment, the parts of this movie are in tension with one another where it also feels like it’s going from strength to strength, and ever scene, every moment, is great. Incredible music, and also great documentation of a world that doesn’t exist anymore, of telephone booths, smoking sections, and places that’ll develop photos for you. Highest possible recommendation.

The Naked City (1948) dir. Jules Dassin

Seemingly the first movie to be shot on location throughout New York, rather than studio backlots, and it milks the city for all its worth, shifting frequently from one location to another, introducing to new characters. Initially guided by omniscient narration but quickly focusing to become a police procedural. I knew Dassin from Rififi but this feels more exciting, I would gladly watch movies bite the techniques from this every few decades, though Gloria does a good job of moving through the streets of New York in a less-contrived way. There was a Naked City TV show ten years later, shot on location and focusing on a police precinct.

Near Dark (1987) dir. Kathryn Bigelow

I consider this Kathryn Bigelow’s best movie, but circumstances have not led me to watch it as many times as I’ve seen Point Break, so the memories I’ve retained of it were kind of inaccurate: Specifically, the thing I thought of as the climax, the part at the hotel where light is getting shot through the blankets taped up to cover windows, happens like halfway through. Screenwriter Eric Red wrote this at the same time as he wrote The Hitcher, and that’s another one that just GOES, moving from one scene to another where they all have this climactic intensity constantly but the scale is shifting of what you’re invested in? The Hitcher is a nightmare and this is more of an action movie. People point out this movie has a bunch of the cast from Aliens but I didn’t realize there’s a shot where Aliens is actually on the marquee of a theater. I also wonder if this whole horror/action/western/but with vampires thing was an inspiration to Garth Ennis? I kinda feel like the pacing I find so powerful could not really be sustained over the length of an extended comic run.

Hero (1992) dir. Stephen Frears

Dustin Hoffman plays a criminal schlub, doing a weird voice. It’s almost like he was told that the role was written for Sylvester Stallone, but Stallone’s insistence on getting a writing credit on every movie he acts in complicated the premise in a weird way, so Hoffman just attempts a Stallone impression. One of his few redeeming characteristics is he’s a loving father, but that isn’t why he’ll remind you of your dad. Maybe most men are just Dustin Hoffman doing impersonations of Sylvester Stallone! From 1992, so Hoffman’s I guess in a post-Rain-Man mode, but the film also feels very early nineties in its commentary on television news turning stories into celebrities, and an analysis of the problems with professional cynicism that seem very much of their time. It’s not like a more sophisticated critique has found its way into any mainstream film I can think of, we’ve just stopped thinking about these issues, as they’ve become much worse. Joan Cusack’s good as his Hoffman’s ex-wife, and Susie Cusack’s good as his lawyer. I would like to see Susie Cusack in more things! Geena Davis plays a television reporter, Andy Garcia plays a decent guy who is a contrast to Hoffman, there’s also small roles for the likes of Stephen Tobolowsky and Tom Arnold, really placing this in a moment of time.

The Age Of Innocence (1993) dir. Martin Scorsese

I didn’t like this one, for all the obvious reasons: I don’t like costume dramas about rich people, and I don’t like Daniel Day-Lewis. It’s an Edith Wharton adaptation, all about a world of well-mannered old money with very rigidly defined rules of behavior. Michelle Pfeiffer plays the true love Day-Lewis is kept from by the mores of the day, and part of her romantic appeal is she’s able to see through the rituals and make fun of them, while Winona Ryder fully buys into them, and thus reaps the benefits. Everything is repressed, all behavior is affect, this is of course the point but very much not my thing. There’s also a lot of a narrator reading the text of the book while the camerawork fades between lavishly composed image, while the cinematography probably looked great on a big screen I would still be very anxious about getting to the storytelling.

Experiment In Terror (1962) dir. Blake Edwards

This one starts off super-intensely, with a home invasion scene, the sense of horror in this is palpable but the fear is just used as this blackmail structure for some noir stuff? It straggles the genre line pretty well, feeling weird because of this horror energy of sheer creeping malevolence defines it. This is also considerably longer than most of the other film noir I’ve watched recently, because those moments extend and take away from the sense of a building plot, to instead feel like they might derail it. Lee Remick is the lead, and she is this terrified victim, which makes the film more interesting than if it were focused on the cop played by Glenn Ford. The main character’s younger sister gets kidnapped at one point, it gets creepy. The climax occurs at a end of a crowded baseball game, and there’s shots that I assume were done via helicopter, which seems like it would’ve upped the budget considerably.

The Harder They Fall (1956) dir. Mark Robson

Humphrey Bogart stars as a former sports writer, working to drum up publicity for a fresh-off-the-boat boxer who does not know how to fight, but is naively participating in fixed matches, for the economic benefit of the mob. While the boxer is being exploited and making no money, despite his celebrity; Bogart is being well-compensated to sell out his conscience and he is very good at playing a dude in moral conflict with himself, struggling to do the decent thing. While this isn’t the best boxing movie, or the best Bogart, it’s still pretty good.

The Devil And Miss Jones (1941) dir. Sam Wood

Heard about this one in the context of it having good politics. It’s about a rich guy who goes undercover at a department store hoping to bust the union only to realize that the guy organizing the union is supremely decent and the middle manager should get fired. It has some scenes that feel like they might play for “cringe comedy” but also are just so fucked up? One where the rich dude is forcing shoes onto the feet of little girl who is crying saying “I don’t like it! I don’t like it!” feels way too much like a pervert’s fetish for me to be comfortable with. The female lead is played by Jean Arthur, who is very good at playing a genuine, kind, and idealistic person. I am very grateful she dates the union organizer and the old rich dude’s love interest is someone age-appropriate. Interesting to see a pro-union movie from a time when unions were popular, so it functions as populist entertainment while Sorry To Bother You gestures at being radical propaganda for self-congratulation’s sake.

Human Desire (1954) dir. Fritz Lang

Another noir from Lang, with the same leads as The Big Heat. This one made me worried about age-inappropriate relationships too, as it begins with a dude being back from war, moving in with his friends, and their daughter having “become a woman” while he was away. Luckily the title refers  to a desire he ends up feeling for a married woman who as an accomplice to a murder committed by her abusive husband. Glenn Ford stars in this one, and he has this very boring morally upstanding male lead quality that makes these well-made movies feel generic. This thing is happening to me watching movies where I get kind of hung up on how no one ever explains themselves or their feelings: I don’t think they should, I think the whole thing of watching a movie where you watch it thinking like “Why don’t you just tell her you love her??” is interesting because… a writer doesn’t need the characters to explain their feelings to each other if the viewers understand them, these feelings are the most obvious things and so can go unspoken, and so you would really only have them say these things if they were lying or being manipulative? But maybe in more modern movies people really do state their motivations because screenwriters are dumber now? I don’t know.

Fail Safe (1964) dir. Sidney Lumet

I have talked about this movie a lot since watching it, and in a way that doesn’t even mention that the opening is amazing, and the title and credits sequence are all-time greats. Instead I mention that Henry Fonda’s performance seems to have inspired David Lynch’s performance of Gordon Cole, and how the weird, fucked up nightmarish ending doesn’t really change the fact that watching it in 2020 it feels like a sort of pornography of competence when contrasted against our own reality. The whole movie is about an accident that leads to a U.S. military plane flying to Moscow to drop a nuke, and everyone (except for the pilots) realizing this is a mistake and trying to avert global nuclear war. The ending is pretty astounding in its darkness. Walter Matthau plays a guy whose role is to argue for the pragmatic value of mass death, but the moral calculus that ends up being embraced is far beyond the nihilistic death drive he advocates for. Mutually assured destruction is such a motherfucker of a concept. I am really hung up on the idea that unilateral nuclear disarmament never became a thing really set a precedent for how political parties in this country will never unilaterally dismantle their propaganda machines. 24-hour news is a nightmare, not really on a par with nuclear weapons, but similarly something that should be illegal, but for the calculations made. We would be a different country if we were willing to make these kinds of sacrifices but we really are not.

The Deadly Affair (1967) dir. Sidney Lumet

James Mason stars in this John Le Carre adaptation. He plays a spy whose wife is cheating on him, with another spy. None of the twists in this are unforeseen, in fact, the title alone explains a bunch, but the title is also so generic you might forget what the movie is called while you’re watching it. James Mason is good in it, although it’s weird that he’s playing a likable guy who sort of doesn’t seem to understand why everyone can’t get along or be honest adults with one another considering his work in the intelligence community. Another solid Sidney Lumet movie.

Three Days Of The Condor (1975) dir. Sydney Pollack

This movie does a very good job of not explaining things up front, and then portioning out understanding as it goes on. The movie begins with Robert Redford getting his office getting shot up, and we eventually learn he works for the CIA, but he cannot rely on them for his protection. It doesn’t introduce the female lead, played by Faye Dunaway, until like halfway through the movie, when our hero takes her hostage. Redford can’t really explain the situation to her, and just sort of acts like a psychopath, but they are able to have a quasi-romantic relationship where she trusts him because he’s played by Robert Redford, who is in some ways the seventies’ answer to Glenn Ford. The movie star aspect allows him to sell his agreeability, although he’s also supposed to be something of a nerd, a guy whose job is just to read books and analyze the information. Max Von Sydow plays the villain.

The Third Shadow Warrior (1963) dir. Umetsugu Inoue

Watched this because it’s made by the dude who made Black Lizard, it’s a samurai thing about a warrior who employs body doubles. It follows one such body double, overshadowed by the man whose existence he supports, at the expense of his own individuality or happiness. Interesting enough, feels like it occupies the solid middle of samurai movies- Something sort of common to stuff on Criterion is something that doesn’t blow you away but it is definitely a “real movie” at the very least.

La Cienaga, (2001) dir. Lucrecia Martel

That said, you kind of do need to be careful with newer Criterion channel stuff, because some things feel more like they’re just trying to engage with an art house history in order to earn their place in the canon. This movie isn’t bad, but I do feel like the reason it’s interesting stems from a context the film itself has nothing to do with: After Martel made Zama (2017), there was talk of her being asked by Marvel to do a Black Widow movie, which is insane. The studio also volunteered to handle the action for her, which she said she would actually be interested in learning how to do herself, but she had no interest in working with Marvel. Let Lucrecia Martel make a big-budget action movie without corporate properties you cowards! This movie is pretty difficult to follow, with no clear narrative thread, a lot of characters, weird pacing, etc. There’s moments of poetry or tension but this is one of those things that’s just beyond my preferences enough to remind me of a certain aesthetic conservatism I possess. I didn’t finish Zama, though I had read the book. It’s honestly tough to imagine Martel making a movie with straightforward plot that can easily be followed, it doesn’t seem to be what she’s interested in, even in terms of editing a movie so that you have a sense of where scenes stand in relation to one another in time. Many scenes still maintain a sense of beauty or mystery but at there’s no velocity. She’s closer to Apichatpong Weerasethakul or Carlos Reygadas or Bi Gan, to name three people whose names I absolutely had to Google because I couldn’t think of them off the top of my head.

All these movies are streaming on The Criterion Channel, if you want me to recommend things on other streaming services, please DM me your login information.

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #437

Top Ten Predictions for the Xbox Games Showcase

So I wasn’t going to do this. I had my “Games Month” in June; that was supposed to be me getting it out of my system whilst the various publishers and platform holders held their Not-E3 video livestreams. That was supposed to take the place of my usual semi-serious lists of E3 predictions; a variety of more generalised run-downs of Stuff To Do With Videogames rather than me saying “A New Perfect Dark” ten times.

But then Microsoft’s “Showcase” event turned out to be the back-end of July, the videos and livestreams kept on pouring in, and I found myself ever devouring more salacious rumours of what games were upcoming, especially for the Xbox Series X. I have even found myself reading – shudder – Reddit.

I know.

Anyway, from being a simple thought experiment of “I wonder what games will be out when the Series X launches?” through to me imagining a blow-by-blow runthrough of the July 23rd event, I guess you could say that I am excited despite my better judgement. I think my problem with videogaming as a hobby is that I retain my fanboy enthusiasm from when I was a ten-year-old eagerly awaiting the next issue of The One Amiga, frantically swapping all eleven disks of Monkey Island 2, but I’m a grown-ass man with a mortgage and two kids and I just don’t have the time. I love reading websites like Eurogamer, and going on forums and checking out Twitter threads and all that, devouring news and titbits about all manner of gaming ephemera, and I often think when do these people have the time?!

Now look, I know hobbies, if you commit to them, can be expensive in terms of money and time. I have friends who collect Transformers toys, and let me tell you, that shit ain’t cheap. But daisy-chaining triple-A RPGs together feels like a lifetime commitment. I’m still playing Mass Effect Andromeda and Titanfall 2. I’ve just started Breath of the Wild and I’m waiting to kick off The Witcher III once I complete something else. I operate about two to three years behind the curve, and with work and kids and other commitments I struggle to find space for the oodles of games I do have, especially because most of the time I just end up on Civilization VI again. And yet…

The lure of the new still excites me. I really want to play all those Sony games on a Sony console that I don’t even own. I’m fascinated by the divergent next-gen philosophies of the big three platform holders. I can’t wait to see what the games I already own will look like embiggened on a 4K TV thanks to a suitable next-gen console. And so I keep consuming this stuff, keep wanting to try the latest thing, keep wanting to be part of the narrative. I’m still excited.

Therefore I’ve decided, against my better judgement, to offer up a prediction list like I usually do at E3 time. This one is just focussed on the upcoming Xbox Showcase on July 23rd. I doubt I’ll do one for the two remaining big showcases in August – I believe both Sony and Microsoft are doing one apiece, where we might finally hear prices of these damn things – because I think by the end of the month all the big game news might finally be out there. Aside from guessing how far off £500 both machines land, I think we’ve probably heard all the major announcements. Maybe I’m wrong! I’m wrong quite a lot! But that’s part of the fun.

So here we go: ten things that probably aren’t going to be announced next Thursday!

Halo Infinite opens the show – and is playable: we know that Halo Infinite will debut some campaign gameplay. As more-or-less a known quantity (even if we don’t know exactly what it’ll look like or how it’ll play), kicking things off with Xbox’s biggest star makes sense and won’t deflate any surprises. What I think might happen, though, is the announcement of some kind of multiplayer demo or closed beta, maybe only for Game Pass subscribers or something. They’ve done it before with Halo, so it’d be nice to get a chance to play one of the year’s biggest games early.  

Hellblade 2 in-engine trailer: Senua’s Saga looks amazing so far, with a phenomenal launch trailer that displayed vast landscapes, intense detail, and some truly awesome facial animation. There’s a lot of speculation that, whilst the trailer was apparently in-engine and running in realtime, it was a fancy cut-scene with “hero assets”. I might have missed a memo somewhere, but I don’t think Hellblade 2 has been confirmed as a “launch window” title; as such, I think it will end up a Series X exclusive (as in, not appearing on Xbox One) and be out Christmas 2021. As such we won’t see a considerable gameplay chunk as with Halo, but we will see some proper in-engine footage – not a cutscene – running on Series X hardware.

Fable IV is out next year: is it an open secret at this point that Playground Games is making a Fable game? I guess maybe they’re not. Maybe there’s not even a new Fable at all. But I think there is, and I think Playground are making it, and I think we’ll see it next week. I guess it probably won’t be coming too soon; maybe Christmas 2021? So I think there’ll be a launch trailer of some kind – hopefully a Hellblade-style in-engine one rather than a rendered movie – but it’ll be a pretty big to-do to close out the show (unless there’s some other surprise “…and one more thing”).

Minecraft ray-tracing: we’ve seen it before, and I’m not sure how much time it’ll take up in the run of things, but I think Microsoft will confirm that there will be a ray-tracing graphics update for Minecraft on Series X. It’ll be part of some other line-wide update, of course – maybe the fabled “Super Duper Graphics” update that was cancelled once before – but Series X owners (or PC owners with the right hardware) will get lots of lovely rays to trace.

Gears Tactics on Xbox this Christmas: the Coalition said their piece about Gears 5 on Series X this week, so I don’t expect them to have a huge presence on Thursday (Gears 6 presumably being too far off), but I think we’ll get a trailer for the excellent Gears Tactics running on Xbox, and confirmation of a Christmas release for one of my favourite PC games of 2020.

Cyberpunk 2077 on Series X: all the footage we’ve seen of Cyberpunk thus far has been – I do believe – running on high-end PCs. CD Projekt Red should have a presence on Thursday, and I think they’ll debut footage – actual proper gameplay – of Cyberpunk running on a Series X. I think we’ll also see further evidence of a cosy relationship with Microsoft, as they announce something – maybe exclusive DLC – as well as just maybe some Cyberpunk-themed Series X hardware. I also think they’ll announce a Series X update for The Witcher III: Wild Hunt.

Big Double Fine blowout: Microsoft’s purchase of Double Fine really excited me, because I’ve been a big Tim Schafer fan for decades. Aside from Psychonauts 2, we don’t know a great deal about what they’re up to. So I think we’ll see a lot of Psychonauts, as well as confirmation of a Christmas release. We’ll also get confirmation of classic LucasArts remasters – Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, and Grim Fandango – as well as something else. I’m not sure what. A remaster of the first Psychonauts? Brütal Legend 2? Scurvy Scallywags Series X? what I don’t think it’ll be, however, is any kind of Banjo Kazooie game, because I don’t really think Microsoft bought them to work on existing IP. I think we’ll see something new.

Third-party shenanigans: aside from Cyberpunk, I think we’ll get at least one other extended third-party trailer. Maybe Destiny 2, given the first game’s apparent preference for PlayStation? Maybe one of those military shooters everybody likes but me? Splinter Cell, which is becoming the perennial white elephant during Ubisoft presentations (and obviously has prior as an OG Xbox exclusive)? Or maybe we’ll see something like the announcement of Red Dead Redemption 2 as a Smart Delivery title. That would be pretty cool.

Japanese presence: I’m not sure what exactly, but I think Microsoft will make moves to entice the Japanese market. Perhaps it’ll be like the early days of the Xbox 360, when they published the likes of Blue Dragon. Maybe we’ll see a Western release of some venerated Japanese franchise. Or maybe some other sequel or reboot. Maybe it’ll even be the rumoured announcement of some kind of exclusive partnership with Sega? Who knows? Regardless I think we’ll see evidence of Microsoft making more of an effort in Japan; I think this will be part of a strategy to encourage Japanese gamers to subscribe to Game Pass/xCloud rather than buy more consoles.

One last thing: there’ll be a surprise. Everyone’s predicting everything, but I still think there’ll be a surprise. After the dust settles, good old Phil Spencer (t-shirt prediction: Viva Pinata) will leave us with a little something… a tease, a subtle tease, maybe even just a logo or character reveal. It could be a returning franchise, it could be The Initiative’s debut game, but I’d wager it’s something unexpected, something we’ve never heard anything about. It’s something that’s a long way off, but it’ll have a style or a hook or a brand that instantly makes everyone excited, and will bring the curtain down. Microsoft has largely done a good job establishing itself as a solid platform the last three or four years, but it’s sorely been lacking in mic-drop moments as hardware news is teased and studio acquisitions have taken time to bed in. So whether it’s Joanna Dark, a Mech, Banjo, or something I can’t fathom, we’ll leave on a high.

There we go: ten relatively reasonable, moderately level-headed predictions. I don’t think there’s anything too crazy there. I’ve not gone all-in on a huge Perfect Dark blowout, or Viva Pinata returning, or Microsoft buying Sega or Warner Bros or whatever else could be dreamed up. I’m sure there’s other stuff too; probably some gameplay from previously-announced titles like The Medium or (hopefully) Scorn, that really show off Series X capabilities; no doubt a montage or two, probably of some ID@Xbox games; Forza Motorsport 8, I guess, and I’d wager some info on Flight Simulator on Xbox. I do hope they make the whole presentation look nice though; Sony’s one, where they finally revealed the PS5 hardware, was excellent, with just enough talking-head developer stuff and those lovely idents that served to whet the appetite and tease the eventual look of the machine. We know there’ll be no new hardware or discussion about evolving services, so really all we’ve got to look forward to are games, games, games, which makes a nice change from the reveal of the Xbox One all those moons ago.

Okay, so my absolute crazy just-for-me wish? Well, things are getting thin on the ground now, as the big things I always want from Microsoft – Fable, Crackdown, Perfect Dark – have either happened or are strongly rumoured. Viva Pinata is next on that list, but beyond that? How does Black and White Infinite sound? That’s right, baby, next on my list – Lionhead rebooted!

[bindingties]

(( Obv I’ve been thinking abt a p.ersona 5 AU bc that’s who i am so im just gonna dump all the ideas i got in here & futz and add later or something idk i make aus via the ‘throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks’ method

also just bc this has been a problem lately & i lack the energy to deal w things after the fact rn: pls personals do NOT reblog my posts ^^ ))

Manfred

Manfred absolutely has a Palace.  Look at him.

The detention center / prison, courthouse, and prosecutor’s office all appear distorted, but I’m gonna go with the courthouse being the kinda ‘center’ and being where his Treasure actually is.

The detention center / prison looks like an extensive trophy room commemorating all of his won cases.  The trophies tend to have design elements that hint at the damning evidence and crime in question while also having the name of the defendant in question somewhere.  All of them are gold, except for the one representing the IS-7 case.  That one is a bronze and notably smaller in size.

Both the courthouse and the prosecutor’s office appear as temples that worship him as a god.  The office is a bit more like a bustling hub of priests that are incredibly incompetent.  The courthouse is grand and opulent with perfectly sculpted marble statues and busts of him.

There’s a slight infestation of insects which all have a pattern similar to the defense attorney badge.  They mostly scurry and run away from just about everything.  The Shadows take the form of judges, prosecutors, bailiffs, and detectives.

Safe Rooms correspond to defense lobbies.

There is a depiction of the DL-6 Incident actively showing Manfred shooting Gregory, but the style frames it more as a heretic being righteously smote than the reality of an unconscious man being shot by a petty fossilized man child.

There are cognitive versions of both Miles and Franziska and neither of them are great.  Cognitive Franziska actually still appears as child and would fight any intruders but, due to Manfred’s low opinion of her and her capabilities, she actually cannot win.  Cognitive Miles is dressed in that horrid Manfred-style red suit but like resembles Gregory to a much higher degree than Miles actually does.

The Treasure is held in a large, central courtroom.  In the Metaverse, it is a golden, weighed scale and, once brought out, is a prosecutor’s badge.

Also you bet him as a boss utilizes a lot of Electricity skills.  Also some Gun skills.  What can I say, I’m not that subtle. 

KAY

Kay vc: i can steal shit AND have superpowers?????? hell yeah!!!!

100% agree with @flairer Kay would be Sun Arcana with Yatagarasu P.ersona absolutely no doubt let’s go

Have nothing firm on how they actually.... get there???? Maybe during the Quercus Alba nonsense.

tfw an ambassador keeps flaunting diplomatic immunity so u just gotta come into incredible power to force the bastard to admit to murder himself

also just Akechi: my codename is Crow Kay: absolutely not u Mask☆DeMasque lookin motherfucker

not that im really trying to super integrate w the existing team, but kay was extremely offended by akechi’s codename choice & i have to share that

KLAVIER

Tragically started thinking that after Turnabout Succession, Klavier would develop a Palace due to worsening paranoia and lack of healthy coping. 

The distortion does cover the entire city... kinda? The thing is that Klav is very ‘the whole world’s a stage’ in an absolutely unhealthy way.  The layout and buildings are retained but it has the vibe of a music festival or other celebration?

Everything leads toward the courthouse though, which is 100% a very large and elaborate stage.  It’s hard to notice from the ground, but a tightrope is suspended way, way above it.  There is no safety net below it.  Just the cold, hard stage.

Shadow Klavier is always in the middle of a concert on that stage and the crowd oddly alternates between vicious heckling and overwhelming praise.  It turns on a dime and seems to have nothing to do with the actual performance.

Various cognitive versions of familiar faces exist in the Palace and perfectly match the mannerisms / personalities of the real counterparts... when talking to any Thieves.  If the subject of Klavier comes up, though, they tend to grow more harsh and disparaging toward him.

Cognitive Miles has the role of a manager and at first attempts to discourage any interaction with Shadow Klav because it might distract him and ruin the show.  He immediately relents, however, with the thought that he’s always wanted to fire Klavier and so any mishaps with the show would be the perfect excuse.

Shadow Klav isn’t that overly aggressive, but there are still traps and Shadows swarming the area.  While he is certainly civil, he does not hide his mistrust at all and can be surprisingly gloomy, though is somewhat like Shadow Futaba in that he’ll drop cryptic hints or express support for the Thieves’ actions.  

I love the idea of Klavier getting pulled into his own Palace due to Shenanigans™ and Cognitive Nick sees him and tells him he’s almost late for walking the tightrope and forces him toward it

Meanwhile Klav is just ‘wow idk what the hap is fuckening but my overwhelming sense of guilt compels me to do whatever Wright(?) says so i guess im abt to do a very dangerous stunt that will most certainly end in my death’

Shadow Klav does a very aggressive intervention because he does contain Klavier’s wish to help people.  He insists that Klavier cannot survive living solely like he’s a product to be consumed and destroyed.  A ticking time bomb of contradictory desires based on unknowable perceptions.

Meanwhile, Cognitive Nick grows more twisted and manipulative and begins to viciously antagonize and guilt-trip the hesitating Klavier.  The crowd likewise grows more and more restless and demanding of a spectacle.  Still, whether the crowd wants Klavier to succeed or fail is hard to determine.

Also like Manfred having a Palace kinda implies Nick as a Thief too and the idea of Nick also being there and seeing that this is how Klavier sees him is... oof ouch.

But yeah Shadow Klav is like “Are you going to continue to let yourself be chained to expectations?  Even when it will kill you?”

Obv Klav’s like “yeah, you know what? I will live for my own damn self.”  And comes into his P.ersona which is like... halfway unnecessary.  Cognitive Nick is just an asshole... not exactly a giant fucking sphinx

Can’t decide whether Klav’s Arcana is Death or Moon, though.  I like Death’s message of metamorphosis and change for him.  But also Moon’s got fun bits about facades and fear.

Nick afterward: hey um... i just wanna say that im so- Klav: i finally have some capacity to be mad at you without feeling like the scum of the earth for doing so so im gonna be 100% unashamedly pissed for a while just... give me some time. also im abt to sleep for 1000 years because holy shit

And yeah it’s not a 100% fix and Klav still has paranoia and the unhealthy perspective of being a product for consumption but like... he’s got somewhat better footing to seek and accept help.  And, likewise, does not have the subconscious desire to be hated so that he may self-destruct without guilt.  So, like, that’s a plus.

[razanartuk]

23 with kleinsen?

from here

23. “I immediately regret this decision.”

“And no one will know what we’re doing here? Like, the Feds won’t find out and come bust us for falsifying emails?” Evan asks, nibbling on the nubby remnants of his fingernails as he hesitantly follows Jared into his bedroom. Jared’s laptop is already on, waiting for the two boys to enact their plan.

Rarely does Evan ever chew his nails down enough to make them bleed, but the temptation to do so is practically always there. The only thing stopping him from ripping up his cuticles entirely now is the fact that Jared is sitting right there in front of him and Evan doesn’t want to creep him out any more than he’s certain he already does.

This feels illegal, but maybe it’s just the way Evan talks about it. Jared doesn’t seem bothered by what they’re doing. Then again, Jared isn’t exactly known for being discreet or tactful in any sense, except maybe with things that have to do with him on a personal level.

Still, Evan is pretty sure Jared wouldn’t do anything illegal where anyone else could see him. Jared is more of an “anything is legal as long as you don’t get caught” kind of person. Evan is more the kind of person who gets caught doing something incredibly minor but winds up being questioned by the local authority because he “looks and acts suspicious” when it’s just social anxiety making it a nightmare to talk to people he doesn’t know.

“Uh, no. That’s the whole point of using a VPN.” Jared swivels around in his computer chair, which Evan notes looks brand new. It must be nice to come from a family with money like the Kleinmans or the Murphys. “Hides your IP address and makes it like, nearly impossible for anyone to trace sketchy shit back to you. It also makes targeted advertising more difficult so I get a lot less ‘hot singles in Rochester are ready for you’ ads while I’m jacking it. You weren’t even paying attention when I was explaining how that works, were you?”

“Gross,” Evan takes it back. If Jared has sat and jerked off in a chair that his parents bought for him (of course, he hasn’t, because Jared isn’t an animal and he’s actually kind of a neat freak when it comes to his room’s cleanliness), Evan would rather be destitute and retain a shred of dignity than ever come by any money and do something similar. Scrunching up his nose in disgust, he takes a couple steps away from Jared, who smiles and laughs in a way that is almost adorably innocent and completely mischievous at the same time. “I um, was focused on something else, so no, but—”

“—Listen, Evan. I said I’d do this for you on like, the world’s shittiest commission fee of 20 bucks, but I can’t have you disrespecting the Kleinman Castle like this.”

“The Kleinman Castle,” Evan repeats, monotone.

“Yeah,” Jared gives an enthusiastic chirp, “That’s what I call my room. Are you jealous?”

Evan sighs deeply, pinching the bridge of his nose, “I immediately regret this decision.”

In a way, he is jealous, but that is not something he feels like admitting to Jared. Especially when it feels like Jared is intentionally pulling out all the stops on ways he knows how to push Evan’s buttons.

Evan can count on one hand the amount of times he’s known Jared to take anything seriously. The only thing that comes to mind recently is that he had seemed pretty genuinely concerned when Evan first explained the situation with the Murphys, but maybe that was just wishful thinking on his part.

“Hey, c’mon. If you back out on me now, I’m charging you the original 2k I asked for,” Jared scolds him in a lighthearted manner. He doesn’t mean it, but Evan doesn’t have to know that.

“I should just go tell the Murphys the truth. It can’t get any worse if I do, right?”

“Oh yeah, sure. It just means that Zoe will hate you and probably never ever want to see or speak to you ever again,” if Jared sounds jealous, it’s because he’s jealous. Nothing against Zoe, of course. She’s a sweet girl, kind of standoffish at first but if she decides you’re cool she’s alright. Loves music, or at least likes that it gives her a way to escape from the reality she lives in for a short while. The way Evan idolizes her is annoying.

Evan can barely say two words to her on a good day, but Jared is convinced that Evan has this fantasy life where they go to college together, he marries Zoe and they live happily ever after in a big house making cute little baby Zoes and Evans and god it’s all just so fucking heterosexual. Made more nauseating only by the fact that Jared tries to get Evan’s attention any way he knows how to and there is no such thing as Evan over-analyzing their relationship.

“The mom will go back to blubbering about the fucked up ideal vision of her son that never actually existed and then she’ll wind up re-enacting the whole plot of Next to Normal, and who even knows what dad will do. He seems like the kind of guy who might press charges.”

“He’s a lawyer, I think.” Evan recalls Larry specifically telling him that he works at a law firm, but the ‘I think’ is thrown on anyway; in case he’s wrong.

“Then he would definitely take you to court. So no, I don’t think you should go tell them the truth. I think the best thing you can do for yourself right now is let me work.”

Evan wants to think that maybe Jared is just messing with him again, but that all sounds pretty accurate to what chain of events might conspire to become reality if he does come clean about what really happened with Connor in the computer lab. Zoe most likely would hate his guts. Cynthia was too nice to hate anyone, but she probably would be thrown into a downward depressive spiral where she would desperately try to cling to her own vision of Connor rather than accept what the truth was. And Larry… Well, there was no shortage of scenarios Evan could see involving Larry wanting to protect his family from ne’er do wells like Evan.

“I guess you’re right. Let’s just try to write one email and see how that goes.”

“Okay, cool. I have some ideas.” with that, Jared sets to work typing.

[terfslying]

All longanon answers:

also why does nobody care that gc men/radfems talk positively about intersex issues FOR THEIR OWN SAKE not just to confuse people about sex. Some of us have CAH or AIS, PAIS. 2nd, a GC opinion: men want uteri & to go by she? Go for it. I think it's reactionary, & I'll be open about that, but it's not my choice. But pushing lines like "lesbians like dick, afab-exclusive=fetish" is WRONG. My family has already brought up transdick as a gotcha. Too few of yall care about fallout for gnc/gay people.

Not sure if this is out of order however: “afab-exclusive = fetish” is wrong, it’s not a view I support, and I agree there’s fallout for gay people, so why are you telling me off for pushing it when I don’t?

where do I see lesbians like dick? everywhere. Not explicitly here, though implied with referencing that some lesbians might like no-op transwomen. You are carving out a niche balanced view, and I appreciate that. Don't pretend like it's the majority of the trans/nb community, or the liberal or leftist take on things.

Why are you talking to me as if I am speaking for the entire liberal or leftist ‘take’? You’re talking to me, you get my viewpoint.

there's a lot more going on with ‘erase women’s anatomy and oppression’ than I even have knowledge of. But for me some big ones: it's no longer women's reproductive justice. It's pregnant people, despite us all knowing damn well the intersection between our potential reproductive system and how woman has meant (still means) property too often. Femininity isn't social control, it's fun! It's expression, medically necessary, a part of womanhood. Rapes/assault being covered up.

“Pregnant people” vs “pregnant women” is important in medical contexts to prevent female people being denied medical care on account of not being ‘women’. It also makes self-help resources more inclusive for gnc female people.

“Femininity isn’t social control, it’s fun!” - femininity is social control for female people. Non-female people practicing femininity are literally breaking their prescribed gender roles and undermining the patriarchy.

“Rapes/assault being covered up” - specific examples?

And I'm sorry but I've seen some of the same trans-activist people in threads you're on, who you interact with positively, say shit like "anyway terfs die". Now, maybe someone they perceive as a terf has threatened them. Someone I know to be trans has threatened me. Is it ok for me to go online and say "TRAs, die"? Ofc not. So you tell me you call hateful TRAs out equal to calling out terfs, and I have doubts. Perhaps you could title your blog Terfs and Misogynist TRAs lying, and work on that.

I like how manipulatively you have phrased, “someone they perceive as a terf” vs. “someone I know to be trans”. I’ve also seen hundreds of TERFs online post shit like “Trannies die”, and had death threats personally from people I KNOW to be TERFs. Both sides behave like shit in that sense, and both sides feel like they are on the defensive. The only way to end that nonsense is to STOP participating in “well they do _____ so it’s okay for me to do _______”. But guess what? I’m also not the Tumblr police. Do you personally check the blog history of every person you interact with on Tumblr to ensure they’ve never said anything Problematique? Because I don’t, sorry.

re: erasing women's oppression, there's also a deliberate attempt to chuck out all the shit from the 70s you apparently hate. God forbid we misgender a rapist, or "cancel" any man for misogyny, but reading even excerpts from old radical feminists? Heresy, evil, invaders. Quite fucking honestly, I'll look into the history, but this calling some women political lesbian and thus dead to us thing has all sorts of potential as antifeminist slander. Especially if men think they can talk on it.

I’m talking about actual events in the 70’s that set up the trans-discourse-in-lesbian-spaces-non-stop situation, not whatever shit you’re talking about here.

Also, I have literally done readings and annotations of many radical feminist texts on this site. Stop using me as a puppet to argue with every person you’ve ever thought was a TRA.

I’m also curious if when you became "ex-" radfem, does this mean you also became against being critical of porn and critical of the sex industry? Note - critical of the INDUSTRY and culture, as in the corporations and bosses, pimps, traffickers, johns, and the academics, "art", and media who cover it as queer or fun or sexy or a good way to pay off student loans... not the workers or the prostituted (i'm differentiating here based on a spectrum of how much autonomy and liberty is retained)

No, it doesn’t mean that. I’ve said before - I am pro sex-worker and believe in evidence based rules for helping women in that situation, which means no Nordic system, but I don’t believe that you can ‘manage’ any sex workers in a brothel-type situation without it being dangerous.

I also am passionately opposed to all kinds of trafficking and slavery for personal reasons, and that obviously includes people trafficked for sex work.

at the end of the day I'm still just like... why can't women who love cis and trans women (or men who love cis and trans men) just say you're bi and that's your preference? Why does gay and lesbian have to always theoretically be flexible? It's obviously used against us, in a biased manner (again, does anyone really expect and go after straight people to be flexible?) ... and is it really worth it? Is temporary relief of a social construct borne pain worth it?

It’s not for ‘relief of a social construct borne pain’ - it’s just to accurately describe myself.

Because I’m not bi. I’m a lesbian. I exist in my city’s lesbian society, as a lesbian who dates lesbians. Then later, I became trans-inclusive. ‘Lesbian’ has to be flexible because human beings are flexible.

[seliipi]

Lmao I was gonna make another overly optimistic Keith-centric bingo for s8 but I can’t think of enough things to fill it that weren’t answered by the beauty of s6. Obviously I want a happy ending for Keith and Shiro, especially if they’re able to make it an open-ended sheith ending, but that’s shipper me who fell in love with devotion and support talking.

ANYWAY, S8 THEORIES/PREDICTIONS + HOPES AND DREAMS

-Honerva’s motivations, the Alteans, and Allura. It was love of a tragic kind that jump-started this whole war. Is she trying to rewrite the past so Voltron was never a thing and her husband and son would still be alive? Had the comet never struck Daibazaal, she wouldn’t have met and fallen in love with Zarkon. But it’s also the overexposure to quintessence and her desire for knowledge that led the rift creatures to invade and necessitating Voltron being built. In the trailers it doesn’t seem like she regrets what she’s done. Rather, it seems she’s still going down the same path now that she has nothing left to lose. She’s more aware of herself now as Honerva rather than Haggar, and is essentially the empress of all Alteans and Galrans, but is she still under the influence of the Rift? “You cannot stop what is coming.” What is she planning? Is she actually trying to save the universe in her own dark way by sacrificing many to stop a larger threat? I can’t see her just trying to end the universe for the heck of it. Since the Alteans see her as their empress, how will that impact Allura as the princess of Altea? They are her people, but they only know Honerva. Why trust some unknown princess who killed their ~savior~ Lotor? If Honerva dies will the Alteans look to Allura to lead them? Would Allura even want to lead them now that she has essentially ‘set aside her crown’ to save a friend? I guess they could always make a New Altea country on Earth somehow. Will there be any redemption for Honerva? Maybe by reuniting with Zarkon in the afterlife? Or is she as irredeemable as Lotor? (Maybe they’ll both be redeemed in their own way.) Honestly I have no idea how they’re gonna stop Honerva even though I know they will somehow. -Self-sacrificing natures, Keith, and Allura. Lol I have no doubt that if Keith dies they’ll be able to save him somehow thanks to protagonist armor, but I still fear for the boy. I’m worried Honerva might target him for getting in the way of her plans (saving Shiro, revealing Lotor’s secrets, stalling Naxzela) either by eliminating him outright or kidnapping him to make use of any latent abilities with quintessence he has. KEITH UNKNOWINGLY INITIATES THIRD IMPACT WHILE UNDER ONE OF HONERVA’S SPELLS As for Allura, honestly I can see her ascending to a higher existence as the Lion Goddess much as that would hurt. I’d like to see her and Lance create a new future together. [The Lion Goddess] was a mere legend to the Arusians, but there may be a grain of truth to that... The Lions created themselves after all, and not even Alfor knew what they were capable of.  In the trailer, Allura mentioned saving all of existence. She healed an entire Balmera nearly at the cost of her life, she was able to transfer a soul, and essentially built the Sincline with Lotor’s input. Allura is amazing, kind and a powerful alchemist in her own right. Maybe there’s a universal decline in quintessence that is destabilizing time and space? Zarkon’s empire did suck up a huge ton of quintessence over the years to use for their war. That’d make sense.  I’m guessing the remaining Balmeras will create a massive crystal the size of the Daibazaal comet and Allura will use that crystal to close all rifts in every reality so that something something stability will occur at the cost of her life? She’ll become one with the White Lion and ascend as the Lion Goddess to watch over the universe. Lance will be forever protected by a goddess a la Madoka. Maybe if the Alteans/Honerva come to their senses, they’ll help ease the pressure off of her so Allura will survive the process........ Idk. I’m just hoping for a bookend Allurance scene where Allura falls out of a pod and into Lance’s arms, her first word being Lance’s name. That’d be some cute shit. -Honerva and the past. Oh man I am so excited to see more of Honerva’s memories!!!!!!!!!!! It’d be cool if the younger Sendak was like Zarkon’s light-hearted loyal retainer before he became the Emperor. Maybe they grew apart once Zarkon started doing hero activities with the original paladins and after Zarkon’s zombiefication he sought him out to save him before getting corrupted by quintessence himself /fanfic I wanna see Lotor growing up! More Dayak would be cute. I wonder if we’ll see any more emotions from Honerva while she remembers... Will she send out Lost Cat flyers to find Kova lmao. Plus, more original Paladins! If they come back to help the new Paladins in spirit...? Oh man.......that’d be so cool. Zarkon shows up in Black, purified, asking Keith to save his wife... Alfor in Red, meeting Lance, his future son-in-law, and helping him rescue his daughter while she’s saving the universe with her magic? Allura seeing the two most important men in her life when she thought she’d never see them again? Fuck yeah. Mmm other three original paladins showing up won’t have as much emotional investment but still. -Lotor’s generals. Are Ezor and Zethrid dead? Likely. Their pirate crew was pretty funny though.  I’d like to think they survived and are on the down-low somewhere. I wonder when they and Acxa split up and why. I doubt we’ll learn how they all met, but I really want to know how Lotor befriended them all. Give me that backstory!!! Like, before he went all ‘destroy all Galra’ it really felt like he was fond of them........ Then of course Narti happened thanks mom . Acxa was his most loyal supporter and I want to find out more about their relationship. Was it similar to the way Shiro befriended Keith? He accepted her for who she was? Maybe. I don’t believe they’re going for a relationship between Keith and Acxa as s7 led people to think. Ngl, the graveyard scene did make me go ??? though. I low-key think they’d make very cute babies, but my heart ships sheith too much. Those two are similar in their mannerisms, loyalty, and sense of honor. A couple seasons back I even thought she was this reality’s version of Keith and Keith was someone from an alternate reality brought into this one but lmao nope. I think I’m right in saying that Lotor is what Keith could’ve become had he not met Shiro. Those two are foils. Half-Galran, isolated, a rough childhood, difficulty trusting others, strong leaders in their own right. Acxa likely admired Lotor and believed in his ideals. She wanted to see the future Lotor envisioned come to life, likely because Lotor and the Generals only had each other. But, somewhere along the way, Lotor stopped being who she thought he was. It’s now Keith who embodies her ideals for a peaceful future. Perhaps she initially wants to fight by his side as like, a bodyguard or something. I can see them having a mutual understanding of each other. Maybe she’ll try to convince him to become an emperor candidate at the next Kral Zera but Keith declines. .........ACTUALLY MAYBE HE ACCEPTS, BUT WHILE FIGHTING AT THE KRAL ZERA IT’S HONERVA WHO LIGHTS THE FIRE AND BECOMES EMPRESS INSTEAD-- Maybe. I see her as like...someone similar to Keith. Both loyal to one man until circumstances changed and they had to reevaluate themselves and what’s important to them. Keith remained steadfastly loyal to Shiro, healed his emotional wounds thanks to the two years with his mom, and emerged as a strong and effective leader. Acxa I feel, has been inspired by Keith but still needs to find her feet. She’d be a great Blade operative and may even quickly rise in the ranks. I could also see her working in the field as an intelligence agent. Whatever the case, she’s cool and I hope she finds her place in the universe. If the posters are anything to go by, I hope she finds a new friend in Veronica. -Quintessence-sensitive Keith. Yo. I am so invested in this theory. I’ll make more guesses in a later post though. -Shiro and Keith. Alright, I’m gonna tinhat. Dreamworks would never allow a straight-up kiss between two men, but an implied one would be amazing. Krolia knows, as does Allura. Hell, even Kolivan knows how close they are (‘quit fucking ruining the mission for your boyfriend Keith’ ‘Excuse me I have done no such thing’). The two of them wearing rings in the background somewhere? I would die happy. Zaggar’s parallels with Sheith... “A love that started the war and the love that ends it” would be...amazing. There’s so many things I’d like to see.......   -the two of them fighting back to back   -another hug, another shoulder touch   -Keith thrown into the past to meet a younger hospitalized Shiro and encouraging him to follow his dreams   -Shiro rushing out of the Atlas to cradle Keith’s still body   -Shiro bringing Keith back to life with his tears (lmao)   -an ending where they race in the desert at sunset like old times   -Keith and Shiro move into the shack together   -the two of them holding hands.....   -Shiro bringing Keith’s left hand to his lips and kissing him where a wedding ring would go and whispering “I love you too”    God, just. Open-ended Sheith. Lemme dream.

[persona-rrau]

Is the shuake ending really a bad ending? I guess it is in the sense that Minato dies for it to happen, but it seems to settle a lot of things in the story and everyone's relationships better than your original pegokita storyline now because a lot of things come to light in Akira's and Akechi's perspectives. I don't think I would consider it a bad ending at this point when Minato takes on a similar sacrificial role that he's known for in canon. It all just fits into place imo.

TNT: Original pegokita storyline? I don’t think I’ve outlined my original ending yet? Or even talked about it (Akechi’s end)? I’ve kept quiet because I’m in the process of outlining a huge Akechi-centric post that tells you exactly what steps he took to become retainer, and what led him to betray Minato in the end. 

Straylize’s end and mine aren’t the same (Our Akechis are completely different). I give a lot of thought to alternate routes because I find it entertaining to think of what the outcome would have been if things played out a little differently.So, when you say “it fits into place” I’m happy it does, because that was the intention. 

I wrote the shuake end wanting to explore Akechi more as a morally gray character, because in this particular AU, both Akechi and Akira have killed people. Just not for the same reasons. So, in a way, they can reach a resolution based on their similarities. Akira could argue Akechi forced himself to kill for “no reason”, but Akechi could equally argue that Akira forced himself to kill for “no reason” because it would have been easier to “imprison” the guilty. He points out that Akira just didn’t “want” to because it would leave Minato vulnerable to another attack if those prisoners ever got out. These two arguments follow my canon as well and aren’t exclusive to the shuake bad end.

Though, I love that specific shuake end a lot because of the reasons you listed, anon. I write all my endings based on BIG DICK ENERGY (just based on what is a cool concept and what would make for a good alternative to play with outside of canon established story) and I love when things come full circle. It’s a bittersweet ending, in a way, but noncanon nonetheless. It’s still an alternate universe I’ll probably draw for/play with because of the potential between Akira and Akechi, and the grief that Akira and Akechi will go through because of Minato’s sacrifice.

It’s a bad ending because Akira and Akechi still feel unhappy with the turnout (Really, all endings that aren’t pegokita are kind of bad endings bc this is a pegokita au. Even an ending where Akira gets together with Hifumi and Minato gets together with Aegis would still be considered bad end. I think it’s just a “catch all” tag at this point, even if the endings themselves aren’t necessarily “bad” in turnout). They don’t regret settling their differences but they’d have fought for/preferred a different ending if it were up to them. I love absolutely all bad endings, but this shuake one in particular is one of my favorites because of the way Akira and Akechi are forced into the roles that they thought were “easy to manage” and “if I was in their shoes, I’d do things differently” when it actually isn’t that simple.

The canon story I want to tell with Akechi is focused more on how unhinged and broken he becomes because of the shit he forces himself to do. However, in this universe, he isn’t exactly ‘forced’ to do anything like he is in canon (not that canon forced him, but he made a dumb choice, really. Here, he has time to opt out whenever by his own will because no one will step on him if he quits). It’s something he ‘wants’ to do- a choice. I want to give us what canon didn’t give us: Akechi, but a really cunning and downright terrifying antagonist. Becomes so warped and distorted you can’t help but to want him to succeed because of how motivated he is and how careful he is about achieving his goal. He works on it slowly in steps- breaks Minato down and renders Akira useless so progressively that no one suspects a thing. Also, Minato genuinely fucked up twice with Akechi in canon. Should have penalized him the first time he broke rules, but didn’t. Shouldn’t have made Akechi retainer (Minato broke tradition for selfish reasons- ie: Akira needs help, so to hell with tradition, I’m making Akechi second retainer) and Minato suffers because of his own actions, despite being manipulated into making Akechi second retainer (not that Minato was aware of it- but Akechi managed to persuade Minato to make him retainer). 

However, in this AU’s canon, if Akechi attacks Minato, it’s absolutely game over for him. 

Given how P5′s canon Akechi has nothing to lose and wants to be loved… he wouldn’t hesitate to exploit Minato if it granted him some lasting effect of love well after he’s gone. If Minato won’t give him what he wants, he’ll just have to take it by other means. Forge his own happiness. The Akechi in this au is so starved for attention that he fools himself while he’s trying to fool Minato- makes himself believe he can replace Akira completely and be Minato’s only retainer and special person. I’m trying hard not to go into detail about what it is, but I plan to make sure that people hate/love Akechi in au canon specifically because of how good he is at being an antagonist. Manages to fuck the whole system, driven by sheer pettiness, and become retainer (despite it never being possible before), covers his tracks so he can’t be framed for murders, sends Akira out on wild goose-chases by spreading rumors in town (because he knows Akira gets leads by rumors sometimes, and there’s NO WAY Akira would take the bait if it came out of his own mouth) so Akira spends more time away from Minato and leaves Akechi to work closely with Minato in his place, manipulates Minato by mimicking Akira’s mannerisms and habits to subconsciously make Minato feel safe in his presence, renders Akira useless by taking on more burdens as retainer, etc. All the while, Akira knows something is up with him, but he can’t figure out what because Akechi doesn’t give Akira room to catch him red-handed.

Akechi’s character is so versatile thanks to canon that I can practically pull him in either direction for either a bittersweet end, a good end, or a fucked up and truly bad end. Bittersweet end would be those shuakes, the good end would be the minakeshu where no one suffers and NO ONE DIES, and the truly fucked up one is where he embraces his antagonist role and becomes a menace to both Akira and Minato- so much that Minato suffers greatly in the end for making Akechi retainer, and Akechi suffers for crossing Minato greatly as well. 

Minato basically gave an unhinged person a huge deal of power. That has to come with some very dire consequences for him, given he’s a leader, and it’s his responsibility not to let his dick do the thinking.