#because the most immediate harm he caused is in the present

[evilmskitty]

Jurassic World Chaos Theory and communication

Season 2 spoilers, be warned: long post ahead~

(Now that I’ve simmered down from my high horse, and can look back at the opinions from fresh out of the oven)

Communication is a big theme throughout season 2 (and 1 really), often highlighting major points in certain episodes.

Miscommunication and lack of communication, were often intertwined with different characters. Just to be clear, I am not a big fan of the miscommunication trope because it gets me pissed off. Mostly because it can be very realistic, which hits close to home sometimes. Brooklyn’s character and story line are majorly in this trope.

Brooklyn spends time working on shady shit to get a story and put an end to the shady shit. In doing so, we see her neglect maintaining her friendships/relationship because she’s using it to cope. Then said shady shit comes back to wreck her life up, which she knows can harm her friends. Brooklyn does try to include Darius in last minute but then it gets skewed after the awkward confession. She gets attacked, not expecting to be alone, in a trap set for her. She entertains the idea of staying dead when it’s presented to her. Vetoes it. Andddd then is shown that it’s still very dangerous for her to return and tell her friends. So back to staying dead, because it’s safer for everyone.

Brooklyn continues to be radio silent and in doing so misses a lot of what happens in season 1. I don’t think she knows the group was hunted down or why they were all in Africa other than tracking the Broker there. What she knows is glimpsed from the news, the Broker, and Ben. Her conversation with Ben does irritate me, however it shows how difficult both their situations are. Brooklyn is trying to keep them safe and Ben is trying to find proof she is alive/what happened/what they’re dealing with, neither are in a good spot to really reach out and actually break down what’s happening.

Ben is left to either keep his promise not to say anything or tell the group. We watch it cause him such a visceral reaction he has a panic attack. Once he calms down, he thinks it over. Ben makes the decision to tell the group, and is immediately thwarted for plot reasons the rest of the episode and those following. Which causes more doubt and the desperate scramble for more proof. It builds up and he reaches out to the most levelheaded person he trusts to talk him through it. Yaz. Once again is thwarted by plot and because the doubt is eating at him but so is the guilt. Yet that scene also shows the build of up different communication issues.

We’re seeing Kenji having self sacrificing tendencies (borderline suicidal which is another topic altogether) to avoid feeling the heavy burden of emotions, worrying the group. Darius is wandering off to hyperfixate on dinosaurs to avoid having to discuss his feelings (as one does) or make sure Zayna is okay (if I see anyone shipping them I will cringe into dust). Sammy is also mostly making sure Zayna’s okay but is actually dealing with her emotions (improving from season 1) along with Yaz.

Darius is tasked with talking to Kenji, who Yaz has tried to get through to, both of them getting nothing but the mask he puts up. It isn’t until Ben is stuck in the position of telling them about Brooklyn or keeping quiet does anyone get through to Kenji. Also due to Darius wanting to avoid talking about his emotions again. Ben gets through to Kenji, but Kenji doesn’t get to what’s eating at Ben.

All of these come together during the last 3 episodes. Brooklyn who is unaware that the phone was eaten by a hippo, thinks Ben went out of his way to find her there. Ben who is overly baffled that his friend is here in person and not dead doesn’t really know what to say, much less willing to argue anything. Kenji who is an outsider watching the exchange, festering emotions explode. The rest of the group watch in horror as their supposedly dead friend works with the Broker. When they all meet back up, Ben is confronted with trying to explain his side and there’s a lot being thrown at him. Darius takes lead because he knows this won’t help anyone (in the moment) and they need to get out of the facility. But also because he’s still reeling from everything as well. (Someone pointed out he’s due for his breakdown next season which is very likely that boy is going through it).

In the end, the very thing Brooklyn had gone quiet for, didn’t really matter. The group was still targeted even after her death. They still ended up in Africa at the research facility. Still experienced danger and possible death many times. But she doesn’t know the whole scale and is desperate to keep them safe. So she continues to shut them out, continuing to get as much evidence as she can without involving them just she doesn’t know which is less she’ll have to lie and so they don’t know so they won’t be in harm’s way.

(There’s also my whole thoughts on the confession scene which is another unreliable narrator/miscommunication trope. Darius acts as if he made a huge confession to Brooklyn, likely due to the guilt of not being there during the attack, when in reality it wasn’t. Brooklyn fresh off a break up with their mutual friend catches the slip of tongue to mean exactly what it actually means for Darius. Love, in love, and she reacts to it. Which fair, but it shows how both sides dealt with it. Brooklyn brushes it off, Darius can’t stop feeling ashamed for it.)

(The recent posts I made were hot flash opinionated and fresh from watching the show in full bc I’m a certified slacker and knew I would hyper-fixate if I watched it when I had shit to do)

[lord-squiggletits]

And on the topic of Astarion making reparations to the Gur people, I think the choices he makes in the present day are far more impactful (and, if he chooses well, healing) than any sort of torture for something he did 200 years ago.

The thing about Astarion kidnapping the Gur children (which I think was like a year prior to the start of BG3) is that, because of vampire spawn/master compulsion, he literally, bodily, had no choice but to do it, right? So in this case, the obvious evil of kidnapping children clashes with the tragedy of Astarion literally/magically being compelled to do this.

BUT

In the present day of BG3, Astarion has managed to find his freedom so that he's no longer compelled to do what Cazador orders. And it's in this freedom, where Astarion's actions are his own and no one else can take responsibility, that allows Astarion to demonstrate that he's more than just his prejudices/trauma and knows how to do the right thing.

The entire point of Astarion's storyline is basically to go, yes he was a victim in the past, but now he's free! And now that he's free, he has to make decisions for himself, decide what he wants, and decide what he values. To this end, when the party encounters the Gur children in Cazador's dungeon, Astarion is confronted with one such decision. In the past, he kidnapped the Gur children, leading directly to their harm/torture, because he had no choice. However, now he DOES have a choice. And by choosing not to sacrifice the children in the ascension ritual, Astarion demonstrates that he has chosen reparations over personal gain. When finally given the freedom to follow his own path, he does the right thing. Regardless of whether you think it's more moral to kill or free all of the spawn in the ritual*, Astarion's decision is to not sacrifice the children he put in harm's way. Even though said children are members of an ethnic group he has a reason (not a good reason, but a reason) to despise.

*For their part, the Gur seem to have mixed feelings either way. If you kill the spawn, they're happy that the spawns were cleansed before they could get out and cause trouble. But if you let them go, Ulma and the others are conflicted on what to do with their now-vampiric children.

So like, I dunno. To me, if the goal is for the Gur to receive justice, it's way more impactful for justice to take the form of "Astarion uses his free will to surrender power and spare the lives of the children he kidnapped" than it would be if justice was "Oh Astarion was an asshole racist as a magistrate so him becoming a spawn is kind of karmic justice for that."

It's the difference between holding Astarion accountable for something he did 200 years ago (in a life he can't even remember, that was so long ago basically no one he might've wronged is still alive to testify) versus holding him accountable for something he's doing right now. And it means that you can engage in the issue of Astarion's racism (which is important) and how he should face consequences for that, without falling into the trap of implying that Astarion's abuse is something he deserved or that is somehow "justice" for something he did long in the past.

Actually another Astarion hot take that I have is that idc what was in early access or the supplementary material, I take what's in the game at current release and the current lore is that Astarion barely remembers anything from his past life, so there's no way of knowing if he was a corrupt magistrate or not.

But even if we did know, I think that that's irrelevant to Astarion's storyline and if anything obfuscates what the themes of his story are supposed to be. It's very clear that his entire character is an allegory for/literally an example of someone who's a survivor of abuse and sex trafficking, and what's one of the most basic tenets of dealing humanely with abuse survivors? Understanding that no one deserves to be abused. So to me, even bringing up the question of "So was Astarion a good magistrate or a corrupt one?" is bringing in a moral judgement, and with that moral judgement brings a silent question of "So, did Astarion deserve what happened to him as karmic justice, or is he just an innocent victim who was in the wrong place at the wrong time?"

And when you consider the timeline of Astarion's pre-vampiric life (39 years) versus his vampiric life (200 years), it's very clear that even if you go purely by numerical terms, all of the suffering Astarion has gone through is way out of proportion to any wrongdoing he did. And again, I have to emphasize that for a character whose entire story is an allegory for abuse and whose themes revolve around the cyclical nature of abuse, bringing in ideas of good/bad and whether Astarion did something to deserve it or not is counterproductive to the narrative the writers chose, which was to focus on how trauma warps people into the worst versions of themselves. In order to remain thematically and (dare I say) morally correct, a story about an abuse victim shouldn't involve their backstory being "well, he kind of had it coming."

Though again, even if Astarion was canonically (not in EA, not in supplementary materials, in game during content that players can access) a shitty magistrate/person in his past life, literally no one deserves to be kept as a slave, emotionally abused, tortured, isolated, sexually exploited, and dehumanized. That's an incredibly punitive way of thinking that, again, is at odds with the primary theme of Astarion's story, which is about how an individual copes with trauma and deals with the cycle of abuse.

Plus, if you really want Astarion to be a problematic fave... he literally is problematic, right now, during the course of the game's story. I don't see how Astarion's actions as a magistrate 200 years ago are even relevant compared to all the bullshit he's doing right now that he's actually directly responsible for 😂😂😂

Though if you want my thoughts on Astarion's backstory re: the Gur (which idk if anyone else has talked about but I feel like they deserve a stronger presence in discussions of him), see the cut (and also my next reblog bc I want to give them their own section)

First of all, I'd like to point out that Astarion was turned into a vampire 200 years ago, and every single member of the Gur tribe that we see is human. Assuming that every Gur is human, that means that every single person who could've possibly been involved in Astarion's rulings as a magistrate (good or bad) is long dead, and so are their children, and their children's children.

And since the Gur hate vampires and see them as undead abominations, would they even see Astarion becoming a vampire spawn as justice?? If anything, they would be angry about the creation of another vampire and the fact that a vampire lord is free to create more victims to torture whenever he wants. So even if you want to go at it from a punitive justice perspective on behalf of the Gur, I'm not sure Astarion's enslavement would even be a satisfying punishment from their eyes. You know, assuming Astarion even did anything wrong to begin with, which in my opinion is purely up to headcanon anyways.

Secondly, a lot of people bring up EA Astarion having done deals with Cazador and sending him children before becoming a vampire. And they usually do this with a silent implication of, "Of course Astarion is racist towards the Gur, he was already racist towards them before." But I don't think that necessarily has to be the case. There's obviously no good reason to be racist towards anyone, but given that this is a story where characters are supposed to be realistic and flawed, I think that Astarion hating Gur because he was murdered by a gang of Gur is sufficient explanation. And rather than EA Astarion's raw, pure asshole bigotry, current!Astarion's bigotry is way more sympathetic in a "tragedy for everyone involved" sort of way. What I mean is:

Whatever ruling Astarion made, whether it was good or bad or neither, he was beaten to death by a gang of vigilantes. Even if the vigilantes just intended to seek justice for their side (assuming that Astarion's ruling was even against the Gur to begin with, the thugs could've just as easily been hired by some noble), their actions led to Astarion being enslaved by an evil vampire and tortured for centuries. It's a "nobody wins" scenario where an act of hatred (on Astarion's part, the Gur's part, or some random person who wanted Astarion killed) led to immeasurable suffering even though most of the people who instigated the fight to begin with are already long dead. Not just Astarion's suffering, but also his siblings, as well as all the victims they took on Cazador's behalf.

And while there's nothing in current BG3 precluding Astarion from having been racist to Gur while he was alive, I really prefer the idea of him only becoming bigoted due to trauma. Because again, to reiterate the point I made above, quibbling about whether Astarion was a racist or corrupt or evil when he was alive dilutes the themes of his story from "abuse victim empowered to choose between freedom or perpetuating the cycle" to "yeah, he was a victim, but he was kind of an racist asshole so he did deserve it a little."

I'm not saying this because I think Astarion needs to be a blameless victim, or because I think abuse survivors IRL can't be problematic/should have any problematic behavior be excused because they're traumatized. I'm speaking of it purely from a narrative perspective, especially from the angle of representation. The way stories portray abuse, if done poorly, can perpetuate stereotypes about abuse victims, such as saying that they must've done something to warrant being treated badly, or that certain types of people deserve to be abused because they're evil.

And even though it's perfectly okay to write characters who are shitty and problematic, I think writing stories in a way that perpetuate harmful views towards real life people and social issues is something that definitely SHOULD be avoided.

I'm also going at it from a restorative justice perspective. As someone who prefers to write stories with a more humanistic perspective, I've never liked the "Astarion kinda deserved it if he was evil beforehand" take because... Cazador?? Is not an agent of justice whatsoever? He's a shitty, controlling, abusive vampire who takes pleasure in controlling and torturing others. He treated his vampire spawn as slaves to bring him victims and even planned to sacrifice their lives for his own benefit. Even if you think it's possible for the spawn to deserve what Cazador did to them, how is it morally right to condone/water down Cazador's actions by implying that one (or more) of his victims was a shitty person, so technically it's just karma in a way? Cazador isn't some karmic force delivering justice to people who tried to escape it-- he's literally just an asshole abusing other people for fun.

[lycheeloving]

I KNOW MY THING IS "every member of the Justice League has their own darling". BUT. all of them having the same darling is so fun too... Some slight nsfw at the end so minors dni please. (Inspired by the A Day In Life series by @couldeatthatgirlforlunch, bc it's what made me think of the yandere JL so much that I had to write something. Hope it's ok to tag you!)

I feel like they'd have a schedule. Who's allowed to hang out with you at what time? Just a meticulous schedule that accounts for every second of every day, so that nobody gets to spend more time with you than somebody else.

They try to have one group meal every day, where everyone is present. So even if it's not somebody's turn to spend one-on-one time with you, they still see you and have the opportunity to talk to you that day. They rotate through who gets to sit next to you and right across from you. Those aren't hard rules though, if you want to sit next to somebody else, they begrudgingly (or happily, depending on if you're choosing to sit next to them) follow your wishes. A good way to get back at someone who annoyed you. Green Lantern won't stop bragging about how cool he was yesterday when he took down a bad guy? Get up and tell Superman to scooch over so you can sit next to Batman. Immediately shuts Hal up. And teaches them all not to annoy you during meals if they want to sit next to you.

You sleep in someone else's room every night. That's non-negotiable unfortunately, because some of them are better to sleep next to than others. I think the Flash would move around in his sleep a lot, maybe even snore? Superman treats you like a teddy bear and you can't wriggle out of his grasp when he's sleeping. Wonder Woman probably sprawls out all over the bed so you don't have a lot of space left. Green Lantern steals the blanket. Batman would be one of the better ones, if he wasn't such a light sleeper. Every time you move the slightest bit, he wakes up. Which you wouldn't mind, if he'd only stop his creepy staring... That being said, J'onn is probably the best, quiet and unmoving like Batman, but without the staring. He could be reading your mind and watching your dreams, but that's easier to ignore.

I also think they'd get used to the situation after a while and get more lax about the schedule, get less jealous, learn how to live together! Which is a huge advantage to you as you don't have to hurry from one place to the next to "make the most of your time together" or get back to the Watchtower quickly so you don't cut into the next persons time. That would cause lots of fights in the beginning. None of them blame you, of course, but living with them is still easier when everyone is getting along.

That still leaves the question of how they go about your firsts. Your first kiss with one of them, for example. Pulling names out of a hat? Fight over it? The strongest one gets to go first, the second strongest after that, etc? Letting you decide?

Same thing with having sex. These things are very serious to them so it'd take a while until they decide how to go about it. You'll probably have accepted your place among them at that point, maybe even come to like them?

I could really see them battling it out, even if their jealousy gets better after a while, they would all still want to be the first. Nothing where they'd seriously harm each other, but are still able to determine a winner. Whoever hits the ground first loses?

But whatever it is and whoever wins, I think your first time having sex with them would be a group activity. First place gets to actually have sex with you, second place gets to hold your head in their lap and gently stroke your face, third and fourth place get to sit next to you and each hold one of your hands, everyone else has to watch from the sidelines. (alternate option for that here)

The first kiss would also be in front of everyone else, so the others can stop it from "going too far", and wait for it to be their turn. You'll be kissing non-stop until they've all had their turn (in the order they previously fought over, of course.)

I have no clue who would win though! Superman would be the obvious answer, but if they're allowed to use (tiny, non-lethal amounts of) kryptonite? It could be anyone... Who do you think would win? Or who would you want to win?

[trippinsorrows]

looking through your eyes + sixteen

authors note: healing is not linear. regression, sadly, is a part of the process. and ultimately, if someone wants to hurt themselves, they will find a way to do so.

*this chapter contains extremely triggering content. please ensure to read all content/trigger warnings to make an informed decision regarding your mental state and ability to consume the following work of fiction. your mental wellbeing is forever and always more important than any story.*

cw/tw: heavy angst, violence, torture, ptsd episode, victim blaming, reference to childhood sexual assault, thoughts and urges of self-harm, suicide attempt

gentle reminder that you can call or text the free, confidential 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 anytime, 24/7.

song inspo: ‘looking through your eyes’ by leann rimes

masterlist

words: 8k

“I–I just want to see him. Please—”

It’s got to be the third or even fourth time she’s tried to ask, pleading with her husband’s Wise Man to let her see her husband.

It was hard enough to get Solo to agree to take her to where Roman is, a medical clinic that’s clearly only open to tend to him and any other Bloodline member injured in the shootout. That’s evident by the lack of anyone present outside of an impressive number of Bloodline security. 

An uninjured Bayley and Naomi met her at the house shortly after she arrived with Solo, and while she was pleased to see they were okay, to hear that Jimmy and Jey also made it out uninjured, the man she cares about the most is ironically the man she seems incapable of checking on.

She can’t find a way to settle her anxiety, continuing to play the scene of him shot, outside of her head. 

That’s why she needs to see him. 

She has to see him.

Paul sighs, and there’s irritation evident both in his tone and facial expression. “Solana, I don’t think—hey!”

Fuck it.

He’s silenced by Solana rushing past him, nearly knocking him over in the process. Eyes wide with shock, he stammers, looking just as bewildered as the security guards around him. “Well, don’t just stand there, stop her!”

The men rush to run after her, Solana well aware of the fact that the likelihood of her outrunning them is slim to none. 

Doesn't mean she can’t try. 

It’s a silly thought though because of course security would be up and down every hall of the clinic, sets of hardened eyes falling on her, ready to attack when they realize who she is. It changes the dynamic a bit. Expressions still stoic and lethal but also confused.

Solana freezes only for a bit as she forces out her request, a poorly delivered demand, really to the guards that line the hall that she suspects house the room Roman is being treated in. 

“I need to see my husband.” No one says anything, two of them sharing an expression as Solana decides to try her luck again, knowing that they wouldn’t actually shoot her, trying to sprint past them.

She’s unlucky this time though because one of the guards catches her, restraining her. This makes her tense up almost immediately, fear rising up yet again for the thousandth time tonight. 

“Let go of me!” Solana tries to wiggle her way out of the iron grasp, eager and almost needing to get these strange male hands off of her, such a stark contrast to the comfort and safety she feels when it’s Roman who has his hands on her. “I need to see Roman! Please!” 

The man holding her and probably pulling her away from the direction of Roman’s room says nothing, just continues to ignore her demands to be released.

“Man, what the hell you doing!”

Solana’s head snaps to the side as she lays eyes on an enraged Jimmy who stalks over, his mere presence and tone causing the man to release her. Solana gasps a bit as Jimmy grabs the man by his collar and slams him against the wall. “Don’t you ever put your fucking hands on her again! You lucky it’s me here and not Roman cause he’d already have a bullet in your head for touching his wife!”

Jimmy looks around, shouting, “that goes to all of ya’ll asses!” He points to Solana. “She asks for Roman, you take her to fucking Roman, alright?”

Bowed heads of shame and a sudden focus on the laminate flooring of the clinic, Solana is relieved when Jimmy walks over, voice calmer, motioning her to follow him. “Come on, Soso.”

Solana wants to ask Jimmy if he’s okay, inquire about Jey, make sure that they’re okay. Bayley and Naomi already told her as such, but they don’t know that. It’s just what’s most polite and appropriate, but all she can think about is Roman and laying eyes on him.

She needs to see him.

And as awful as it may sound, she cares more about making sure her husband is okay before anyone else.

Caught up in her thoughts, she misses when Jimmy knocks on a door in a rhythmic pattern, followed by Jey cracking the door open.

Jimmy sucks his teeth. “Man, open the door. It’s Soso.”

Solana, however, has no desire to wait any longer and finds herself, pushing on the door, forcing Jey to stumble back. “Damn, girl!”

She’s not listening though, uninterested in apologizing because she’s focused on something else. 

Focused on someone else. 

An older man with blonde hair pulled back, dressed way too casually to be a medical professional seems to be finishing up bandaging her husband who stands only feet away, shirtless, revealing the shoulder tourniquet that conceals the wound. The place where he was hurt.

Where he was shot.

Emotion renews, and a new set of tears reload as she finds herself moving over to him, pressing her body into his, doing her best to avoid touching his left shoulder. Her eyes shut, tears spilling over when she feels Roman’s hand on the small of her back.

“Get out.” It’s directed to the twins and who Solana would guess is the doctor who treated his wound, that last thing being what causes her to pull away, to look over at the stranger.

“No. You—you have to help him—”

The man chuckles and removes the blue latex gloves from his hands. “Lil lady, that’s a job only the big Man Himself can handle.” She frowns a bit as the man with striking blue eyes and an almost country accent explains, “He’ll be fine. Bullet went straight through. Didn't hit any bones, artery, or organs. If he takes it easy for a couple weeks, he'll be good as new. That’s assuming, however, he actually follows the doctor’s orders for once.”

It’s that last sentence that makes Solana wonder if this is the same doctor who diagnosed Roman with high blood pressure and medicated him for it. It makes sense. 

But, it’s when they’re alone that the waterworks seem to really come out, Solana unable to hold it in any longer. “I’m sorry—this—this is all my fault.” She cries, Roman gently cradling her face as she shakes her head. “You–you got hurt because of m-me-.”

Roman looks thoroughly confused, asking, “what are you talking about?”

There’s such a heaviness in her stomach and on her chest. She doesn’t want to do this. God, she really doesn’t want to. But, it’s her not doing this in the first place that landed them where they are. 

“Roman…..” She closes her eyes. This is so much harder than she thought it would be, and she never thought it would be easy per se, but she also didn’t think it would be this damn painful. “My—my father. He…he wanted our marriage to happen so—so that I—” It’s like knives splitting and slicing the back of her throat as she forces out, “he wanted me to kill you.”

If Roman has a strong or visceral reaction to her dark confession, he doesn’t show it. His expression remains unreadable, maybe a bit of concern, but that was present the minute he laid eyes on her. 

“And he said that if I didn’t do it, then he–he would kill me, and that’s w–why you got hurt tonight, because—because of me, because I didn’t say anything.” A fresh set of tears generate as she desperately tries to help him and make him believe her as she explains, “but, I—I was never going to—I could never—I’d rather die than do anything to h–hurt you.”

And it’s the truth. 

She would have rather him let the bullet hit her than him. 

It’s not fair he had to pay for her actions. Or lack, in this case. 

“Solana.” He cuts her off, gentle, voice much calmer than she anticipated in response to such a confession. “I already knew.”

And just like that, she’s back to not breathing again, rendered nearly incapable of speech as she stammers out a response, “w–what?”

Roman sighs deeply, thumb caressing the apple of her cheek. “I always knew your father was up to something. I’m far from stupid. He was too eager and pushy to make the marriage happen. It was obvious he had ulterior motives.” His eyes squint a bit, as he asks her, “why you think one of the first things I did when we got married was cut off contact between the two of you, huh? Whatever he was planning, I wasn’t gonna let him use you to do it.”

Roman’s words together make a logical, sensical sentence, but it’s the processing of it that she struggles with. Roman knew. He knew all along that her father was planning something. 

And yet he said nothing.

He has no reaction. 

He continues, admitting, “I didn’t know specifically what he had planned, but it doesn’t really make a difference. Murder. Coup d'etat. He wasn't the first, and he won’t be the last.” It’s the casual way he says it that Solana feels so conflicted about, so stunned how he can be so calm about constant threats against his life, against his empire. “This isn’t the first time I’ve been shot, and it probably won’t be the last time.”

“Don’t say that.” She whispers. The trauma and shock of seeing him shot was bad enough, and seeing he appears okay is relieving, but the thought of it happening again feels almost unbearable.

“Solana, you know what I am and what I do. But, it’s like I told you before, I have a tendency to not die, which pisses people off.” His delivery towards the end manages to make her smile. It’s small and sad, but a smile nonetheless. “There it is….” His thumb brushes away some of her tears. “Don’t cry, baby. You know I don’t like seeing you upset.”

She noticed. The same way she doesn’t like to see him hurt. For him to be anything other than okay. 

Roman’s eyes shift into something softer as he asks, “why didn’t you tell me?” It’s a question born from curiosity versus the accusatory nature she would expect from someone who was just told their wife was sent to kill them. 

It’s a bit of a difficult one to answer too. “I was—I was scared. At the beginning of our marriage, I—I was scared what you would do to me if—if I told you.” 

There’s an almost pained look that flashes across his face as he vows, “Solana, you know I would never—”

“I know. I know that now.” She stresses, gently cutting him off. There’s not a doubt in her mind that Roman would never do anything to intentionally hurt her. “But, I—I didn’t then. And….I think I just—I didn’t want to think about it, because things were going good and—and I hadn’t seen him in so long, but I was wrong—and I should have said something sooner—”

“It doesn’t matter.” He’s the one to cut her off this time, shaking his head. “But Solana, your father has crossed a line this time. He tried to kill you.” Roman’s eyes are blazing with with the flame of anger and fury, a desire for vengeance clearly dancing at the forefront of his mind. “I know I told you I wouldn’t kill him until you told me—”

“I don’t care,” she affirms, voice darkening into something also angry. “He—he tried to take you from me. I don’t—I don’t care what happens to him anymore. Him or Wes.” 

Because while she doesn’t know the status of her brother and his recovery, Wes was just as involved with the evil plan, so what went down tonight had to have some influence from him in one way or another. It makes him just as guilty. 

Roman nods and kisses her temple. He then calls out, “Jey.” It’s loud enough for his cousin to hear, opening the door and asking, “what’s up?”

Roman doesn’t hesitate. “Get me Miller. Just Xavier.” Solana must look curious as he explains, “your brother isn’t well enough yet. I want him back to health, so I can prolong his torture.” It paints a picture of a brutal, gruesome ending, but she can’t find it in her to be repulsed. Whatever hope she had for her brother is clearly long gone, if it was ever there.

“You got it.” Jey nods and closes the door as Solana places her hand on Roman’s forearm, drawing his attention down to her. 

“I—I want to talk to him before—-” She swallows, asking, “please?”

Roman nods. “Of course.” She’s thankful for his agreement but not entirely surprised. He breaks away from her, countenance shifts into something stoic and determined. 

“This ends tonight.” 

________

Solana’s introduction to the place where her husband has probably taken and ended more lives than she’d like to admit is definitely a one and done thing. The atmosphere alone is so dark and depressing that if not for her hand in his and him walking closely alongside her, she might even find herself a bit scared.

But his presence along with her determination to get in her final words to her father manage to carry her over. 

She’s also both surprised and relieved when she sees Bayley and Naomi also present. She’s unable to ask them about their presence because Roman is already explaining, “I know you don’t want to be home alone tonight, and I’m not making it back anytime soon.”

She nods, not needing to know why. The edge in his voice is all the telling she needs.

Solana’s stomach drops a bit when she’s taken to her father, strapped to a chair, hands and wrists tied. His face is bruised up, cut, and bleeding. Her eyes must give away her curiosity, Jimmy answering, “he fell.” 

Jey suddenly punches him in the side of his head. “Ain’t that what you said when you and your boy was beating on your own fucking daughter?”

Solana swallows. Yes. That’s often what he said to cover up the result of their abuse.

Solana drops her hand and steps a bit closer to him, Roman not once moving or ripping his eyes away from them. It’s virtually impossible for Xavier to do anything to her, but she understands her husband is not willing to take any risks, regardless. 

She ignores the weapons and items around her, no doubt intended for unspeakable acts of violence and torture. She just focuses on the man before her, taking in the fact that this is the last time she’ll ever stare into his dark eyes and have to look at his evil face. 

“All—all I ever wanted….was for you to love me.” She hates the emotion that chunks up the back of her throat, making it a bit harder for her to speak. “But you never did, and you never will, and—and that’s okay.” She recalls one of the many powerful, profound quotes from her book, reciting it boldly and confidently. “Your inability to love me is not a reflection on my ability to be loved.” She’d like to say she witnesses some type of emotional reaction in her father at her powerful statement, but there’s nothing there.

There never was. 

Stepping back, she takes one final look at him, accepting this is the end of this road. The end of all the hurt and pain he’s ever caused her. After tonight, it’s all over. “Goodbye, Dad.” 

Solana is back by Roman, taking her hand in his as Xavier’s small, dark laughter draws her attention back to him. 

“Didn’t you ever wonder how they bypassed the security system? Both times?”

Solana’s brows are furrowed, confusion dancing in her eyes. Before she can say anything, Roman barks a rough order to the twins, “gag him!” 

One glance at him, and she sees something unfamiliar, something that looks strangely close to nervousness. 

To fear. 

“No,” she finds herself calling out, stopping Jey who was halfway close to doing just that, bandana in his right hand. “What—what are you talking about?”

“Solana, he’s just trying to fuck with your head.” She hears Roman, feels his slight tug on her sleeve as he tries to pull her away, but she also detects something else.

Avoidance. 

Roman is intentionally trying to divert her away from this conversation, topic, whatever it is.

Xavier chuckles cruelly, coughing up a bit of blood. “I warned that bitch. I told her what would happen if she tried to take Wesley away from me.” 

Now…now he has Solana’s full attention. 

She steps toward him, asking again, “what are you t–talking about?”

“Solana, please—”

But, she continues to ignore Roman and instead focuses on whatever it is her father is about to drop on her, something she feels is about to change everything. 

Xavier’s bloody smile is cruel and taunting as he reveals, “I was the one who ordered the hit on your mother.” And before she can even sit on that, another bomb is dropped. “And you.”

Solana staggers back, jerking away from Roman as he reaches to touch her. Her mouth is dropped, her heartbeat erratic. She all of a sudden feels dizzy, but it doesn’t stop her from asking again, “what—what did you just say?”

“Shut him up, Jey!”

“No!” Solana shouts both at her husband and his cousin. “I want to know!”

“Your mother was planning to take you and Wesley away from me, and truth be told, if she left Wesley and just took you, I probably wouldn’t have given a fuck. But no, she wanted both of her children. She was a problem, so I got rid of her.” Each word that leaves his mouth has Solana wanting to sink further and further into the ground. “The hit was for both of you, but of course, you fucking survived.” The venom in his voice and hatred in his eyes is almost palpable, further deepening the pain of this betrayal. “I refused to pay them the full amount since they botched the job and didn’t kill you, but that still left the balance for your mother….the balance you paid for me.” And with the most vile smile of all, he adds on coarsely, “who’d have thought a kid’s virginity would sell so high?”

And it’s that statement. That cruel, vindictive statement that breaks her.

Hand to her stomach, Solana almost collapses to the floor but Roman is behind her, catching her fall. 

Now that she can focus on him, on anything other than the millions thoughts racing through her mind. Random facts and statements finally coming together, painting a horrific, grim picture.

The failure of the security system both times.

The failed pin entry of her mom’s shaking hands and two years later, Solana’s shaking hand, as they desperately tried to enter the panic room, only for it to flash a red rejection notice.

It was him the whole time.

He killed her mother. He was the one responsible for her rape.

All of it. 

Emotions erupt to the surface as Solana tries to break from Roman’s embrace and lunge for her father.

“I hate you!” She screams, unable to think and see beyond her pain. “I fucking hate you!” She can’t stop trying to break Roman’s solid grip on her. She wants to hit him. Wants to stab him. Burn him. Anything and everything that can make him feel just a fraction of her agony. “How could you do that to me!” She cries, wanting, needing an answer. Needing to know why. “I was a child!” She’s never felt something so heavy, so painful. “I was your child!” 

As her physical resolve breaks, more diminishes than anything, Solana feels Roman trying to guide her away.

But it’s a mistake, it’s a mistake because she uses that slice of an opening to break away from him and snatch one of the guns on a table, pointing it at her father’s head. But then, she’s not. She’s not because Roman is suddenly standing between her and her target.

Her resolve falters for a bit, as she shouts at him, “move!”

Jimmy’s furious voice calls out. “Man, let her do it, Roman!”

Roman’s gaze is fiery as he silences his cousin with a shout. “Shut up!” But just as quickly as he was enraged, his expression softens almost inhumanly quickly as he pleads, “Solana, listen to me—”

She’s not trying to hear it though. She can’t hear it. “He killed my mother! My mother!”

“I know,” his expression softens into something solemn and sympathetic. “But you don’t want to do this—“

She snaps, her fingers on the gun tightening, her grip firm and focused. “He needs to die!”

“And he will, I promise you that. Slowly. Gradually. In the agonizing way that he deserves, but that can only happen if you let me do this for you—”

Solana cries, shoulders dropping but her aim still intact. “He let them rape me.” Her body trembles, a combination of her heartache and inconsolable rage. “He took her from me! She was my mother!”

If not for the severity and all around heightened tensions, Solana would notice the heartbreaking and furious expressions of the twins, Bayely, and Naomi who now know the exact horror she has experienced. The reason for her disposition. The source of her trauma.

Roman, however, remains focused on de-escalating the situation. “I know, baby, but you’re not a killer, Solana, and I’m not about to let you become one.” If she was thinking straight, capable of thinking clearly in this moment, she’d know he’s only protecting her. Only trying to save her from the thing she told him not even a week ago she could never forgive herself for. Taking someone’s life. “Once you do this, there’s no turning back.”

Solana’s eyes shut as another round of tears makes its way to the surface, heavier and harder to manage with the gun in her hand.

Roman notices this and takes a tentative step forward. “Please, Solana.” His tone is almost desperate, borderline begging. “Give me the gun.”

Eyes still closed and with a weakness she hasn’t felt in years, Solana relents, loosening her grip, allowing Roman to take the gun that he quickly hands to Jey. He moves to catch her as she falls into his chest, sobbing again. Roman cradles her head and kisses the top of her hair while Jimmy and Jey move to jump Xavier, taking that opportunity to get blows in on the old man, both careful to avoid any that could be lethal.

It’s obvious this son of a bitch is in line for a world of suffering that will extend far past tonight.

“Oh, we finna take our time killing you, motherfucker.” 

Everything sounds a bit distant. The sound of the twins yelling obscenities at the demon she called a father. Roman trying to comfort her, to settle her. It’s all too much. Too overwhelming. The crying settles into something sullen and solemn, silent tears streaming down her face as she murmurs against him, “I want to go home.”

The emotion is there, but her presence and awareness of everything is diminishing. Solana knows what’s coming, has experienced this state of separation, of dissociating. 

She needs to get away.

Roman says something she can’t make out, and before she realizes it, there’s another set of arms around her. Bayley. Naomi is chatting with Roman, the only thing she’s able to make out, 

‘Don’t leave her alone.’

Alone.

She’s not sure she’s ever felt that as strongly as she does at this moment.

________

It’s all such a blur.

Such a separate thing. Emotions separate from her. Emotions that are dark, heavy, confusing, overwhelming. Fleeting. There’s an oscillation of all the feelings. Tears that accompany heartache. Sobbing that accompanies grief. Nothing that arrives with nothing. 

It’s a brutal, miserable experience of feeling the weight of the world but also the emptiness of the void.

It’s obvious that Naomi and Bayley don’t know how to help her, don’t know how to comfort her, just continue to sit with her, letting her cry when she needs to and scream when she has to. Even Dulce sits by her side, whimpering every so often and licking her.

It’s appreciated. So appreciated. 

But….it’s not enough.

Losing her mother was heartbreaking. Losing her in the way she did, so violently and graphically was torture.

Being held down and gang raped by two grown men at twelve years old nearly killed her. They nearly killed her.

But, there’s something about finding out that her father, her biological father, was responsible for those two things that’s almost impossible to believe.

She knew her father was cruel.

She just didn’t know just how cruel until this very evening. 

Escape.

Her mother was trying to escape, trying to make a better life for herself and her children. And he killed her for it.

Tried to kill Solana too, and when that didn’t work, he traded her virginity in exchange for payment. 

Flashes. Glimpses. Images. 

They’ve been hitting her nonstop since the truth came out. Playing in her mind like some kind of sick horror film. It’s torture. It’s painful. It’s unbearable.

It’s too much. 

She places her hands on the bathroom counter, having finished using the bathroom after waking up yet again from night terrors.

Her eyes shut.

Solana is tired.

So so tired. Tired of the pain. Of the lies. Of the betrayal. Everything hurts. Everything feels so heavy. She tries to escape in sleep, but the memories haunt her and suddenly, she’s reliving it all, but now with the horrific knowledge that the first man who should have ever loved and protected her was responsible for her biggest traumas.

And it’s impossible to escape those flashes, those thoughts and flashbacks becoming more frequent and intrusive by the minute. She’s suffocating.

Drowning in her own head.

Drowning in her own body. 

Solana’s eyes open and fall over to the shower where her razor would have been available if not for her earlier strength and ability to hand it and the brand new box of them over to Bayley and Naomi.

Just an hour or two ago, she was able to do that much. Able to resist that temptation and not break years of sobriety.

But, now…. now she can’t. 

She doesn’t even want to.

That would only provide a temporary escape.

She’s just….just so tired.

She wants….needs something longer.

Something more permanent. 

Unable to escape the mental anguish, Solana leans down and digs through a toiletries bag from the trip she hasn’t unpacked. 

And she pulls out the bottle of sleeping pills. 

Roman’s request from months ago returns, smacking into her. 

“Any of those thoughts come back, you tell me. I don’t care if you have to paint it on the fucking wall. I want to know.” His intense expression is set right on her, needing to make sure she understands what he’s asking of her. “Understand?”

Her eyes water.

Roman….

Even with his lack of being honest with her, of somehow knowing but not telling her the truth, there’s never been a person that she’s loved more than him. Not since her mom.

It’s why she can’t call him. Can’t continue to burden him with having to deal with all her shit.

All she’s done since entering his life is make shit difficult. She’s done it with him. Bayley. Naomi. Jimmy. Jey. 

All of them.

They’ve had to adjust so much just for her, and for what? For her to end up right back where she started?

She can’t….she can’t do that to them again.

She can’t do that to Roman again.

She loves him too much for that, loves him too much to continue to hurt him.

She just….she just needs to remove herself from the equation.

Needs to remove herself from all of their lives. 

Forever. 

Shaking hands twist off the cap as she dumps a handful of pills into her trembling palm.

There’s the briefest second of a delay, a moment where she reconsiders, where she wonders if she’s making the right decision. But another flashback hits her, the feeling of the knife slicing through her mother’s lifeless body and entering Solana ripping her away from that reconsideration.

Another thought of Roman and her friends having to help her yet again.

Save her again.

She can’t do it anymore. She doesn’t want to do it anymore.

There is no saving her anymore.

This is the only way. 

And she swallows, using the water bottle on the counter to force the excessive amount of pills down her throat. A brief glance at her reflection brings on another set of silent tears. Broken. Empty. There’s nothing left for her to do, no reason for her to exist anymore.

Not even bothering to put the pills away, Solana walks out of the bathroom and into the dark bedroom where Bayley is the first to ask, still sitting in the chair in the corner of the room, dedicated to staying awake for her ‘shift’, completely unaware of this being the last time they’ll interact. “Do you need something?”

Solana shakes her head and climbs back onto the bed. Grabbing her phone, ignoring the tears that blur her vision, she types out a simple text to the one person she’ll miss the most. 

She’ll miss them all, but none more than him.

Solana: I’m sorry. 

Sent and delivered, she locks her phone, placing it on the nightstand, closing her eyes. 

Solana just wants to go to sleep.

And this time…..not wake up.

________

Rage. 

Fury.

Wrath.

And any word synonymous to anger, yet none of them adequately describe what’s coursing all throughout Roman’s body. Years. It’s been years since he’s felt this much anger, held so much of it that he has a hard time thinking and feeling.

He’s incapable of escaping the sound of Solana’s sobbing, the way she literally fell apart in front of him, breaking before him.

And it’s all because of the son of a bitch currently underneath him on the receiving end of  devastating blow after blow of Roman’s brass knuckled fists. How long he’s been hitting the old man is beyond him. Not long enough.

It’ll never be long enough.

Never painful enough. 

Not for what he’s done.

A hand on his uninjured shoulder temporarily pulls him away from his newfound life mission to make this piece of shit feel every type of pain imaginable before he takes his last breath. 

Roman’s roar bounces off the walls. “What!”

Jey looks unfazed by Roman’s irate tone and instead advises, “he’s unconscious, Uce. Let up or you gon kill him.”

That’s the fucking goal.

But not yet. Death is too sweet for Xavier to receive at this point.

Huffing and suddenly aware of all the energy expended as well as the blood splattered all over his clothes and face, Roman tosses the knuckles to the side and issues an order to Jey even while walking, refusing to acknowledge any appreciation for his warning, “let me know when Jimmy has them.”

Them.

Them being the two men who have no idea what kind of horror awaits them. Men whose names were tortured out of Xavier pretty easily by Roman.

Rapists.

Solana’s rapists. 

Reaching the locker room  in the back, Roman easily strips himself naked and steps in the shower, allowing the water to rain down his body, red mixing with clear and disappearing down the drain. Hands against the shower wall, he shuts his eyes.

He can’t escape the sound of Solana’s wails. He’s never heard or seen her so upset. Never wanted to. It’s the exact reason he settled on not telling her the truth, because he knew this would happen.

Knew this would destroy her.

It’s just the extent of the destruction that worries him.

Just how far back this has set her that has him feeling something he hasn’t felt in years but has now experienced twice tonight. Once when he saw the hand raised and gun lifted in Solana’s direction and now her breakdown.

Fear.

It has him scared.

And Roman doesn't know what to do with that emotion, doesn’t know how to handle it outside of beating the shit out of and torturing her father and rapists. But even that only does so much.

It doesn’t do enough, because she’s hurting, more than she probably ever has, and he can’t do shit about it.

Because making the fuckers who hurt her suffer doesn’t do shit for the pain she’s experiencing now.

And he hates that shit. Hates that she’s hurting and he can’t help her, take away that pain from her.

With all the frustration in his body, Roman slams his fist into the shower wall, forcing himself to calm down just enough to get cleaned up.

He uses a fresh set of clothes in the lockers to redress himself, redoing his bandages and using a towel to dry off his hair as best as possible. 

But, it’s when Jey comes and seems to interfere with Roman starting his next round of torture, a thought of starting to skin the old man sounding more than desirable, that his frustration multiplies.

“Not now.”

Roman continues to walk when he feels Jey forcefully grab his arm, forcing him to turn around. Roman looks at his hand and then back at Jey. “Have you lost—”

“Roman.” 

But, it’s the tone that stops the Head of the Table from issuing out his threat. In all the years he’s known Jey, he’s never heard his cousin use such a heavy, spooked tone.

“What?” There’s hesitation, and that only pisses Roman off. “What!”

Jey swallows, answering with an almost pained countenance. “Solana’s at the hospital.” Jey’s frown, sadness seeped and imbued into his usual gregarious voice. “She tried to kill herself, Roman.”

________

Three.

There’s now been three separate occurrences in a single day that have caused Roman to experience the emotion most unfamiliar to him.

Fear.

And this third time, it’s the strongest it’s ever been as he marches into the hospital floor where he was informed she was.

“Where is she!”

And when his gaze lands on a clearly disturbed and crying Naomi and Bayley, the anger only grows as he moves over to them. “What the fuck happened!” Roman doesn’t give them time to respond, too consumed with his anger that’s truly a mask hiding his fear. “Why weren’t you watching her! I fucking told you to watch her!”

Bayley is the first to shoot up from her chair, eyes watery but scowl intact. “We were! She—”

But, he’s not trying to hear shit what she has to say. Not when they’ve failed him in the worst way possible. “Obviously you fucking weren’t because we’re standing in a goddamn hosptal–”

Jimmy, who Roman had completely forgotten came along with him, Jey as well, does his best to diffuse the situation, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Roman, you need to calm—”

But the Head of the Table is too far gone, harshly shrugging off his cousin’s innocent attempt at calming him down. “Don’t fucking touch me!” Roman removes himself from their presence, not even wanting to see these useless bitches as he calls out once again. “Where is she!”

It’s only then he sees a blonde woman walk out from the back, dressed in a white coat, clipboard in hand. She looks irritated which only pisses him off because how the fuck do you work at a fucking hospital and look annoyed. But, when she sees him, or maybe sees how irate he is, her gaze softens. 

She steps in his direction as Roman also steps toward her, putting some distance between himself and the group. “Mr. Reigns, can—”

“Where is my wife?” It’s the same question he will keep asking until it no longer needs to be asked because he’s taken to her.

The woman, doctor, probably, frowns, motioning to the back. “Can we talk in private?”

Roman pinches the bridge of his nose, doing his best not to violate his code of never putting his hands on a woman. But, this bitch is really fucking pushing it. 

He just wants to see Solana.

He needs to see her. 

“You’ve got three fucking seconds to take me—”

She scoffs, relenting and “Fine, we’ll do it here. Your wife is in recovery. We were able to successfully pump her stomach, but we had to sedate her because she was inconsolable upon waking up. I suspect she’s in the midst of some sort of psychotic episode.”

There’s so much in that sentence to process. Roman doesn’t even know where to begin to dissect it, so he starts with the part that pisses him off the most. “She tried to overdose on pills and your solution was to put more fucking medicine in her?”

The doctor, however, seems to show no sign of backing down. “My patient needed to be stabilized, so I stabilized her.” Her voice softens a bit as she adds, not necessarily as something to throw in his face but rather an important note he shouldn’t ignore. “If you had seen how upset she was, you would have understood.”

Roman, however, can’t think about that. Can’t think about how upset and terrified Solana must have been. Somehow a level calmer, he expresses once again, “I want to see her.”

“I understand, but—”

Right away, Roman knows his brief respite from level 10 rage is about to be broken by whatever she’s about to say. “What?”

She takes a deep breath, informing, “I’m putting her on a 5250 hold.”

Roman looks from side to side. “What the fuck does that mean?”

There’s no sign of hesitation as she explains, “it means I’m keeping her here in the hospital for two weeks on a legally mandated psychiatric hold.”

Yeah….he was absolutely right. 

Level fucking 10. 

“Like hell you are!” Roman is seeing red. Who in the flying fuck does this bitch think she is to say Solana is staying in the hospital? “She’s coming home with me. Tonight. The minute she fucking wakes up.”

And that’s a fact.

“How much do you know about Solana’s psychiatric history?” A lot, and that’s why he knows she doesn’t need to stay here in this forbidding, sterile place. She needs to be home with him so he can take care of her. “This is her second suicide attempt. Now, I don’t know what the hell happened to trigger this psychotic break, but your wife is severely and actively suicidal.” She lowers her voice, softly and almost sympathetically sharing with him so only he can hear. “She was inconsolable because she was upset we saved her life. She was upset she was still alive.”

That’s it.

The thing that makes Roman’s anger crumble almost entirely. 

He wanted to believe it was a mistake, an accident of some sort. Didn’t want to believe that she truly intended to take her life tonight.

But this woman has no reason to lie, and beyond that, he’s innately adept at deciphering when someone is lying and when they’re being truthful. 

She’s not lying. 

Solana wanted to die.

Solana wanted to actually die.

And he doesn’t know what to do with that information. 

At all. 

The crack in his harsh exterior must be evident, because the doctor continues to try to convince him what he now knows probably is the right thing to do. “You can get her to sign an AMA and take her home, but I guarantee you that she’ll end up right back in this hospital for another attempt…..and the next time might be too late.”

He can’t.

Roman can’t lose her. He can’t even let himself think about what he would do if he lost her.

Especially if it was because of her own actions. 

She continues, desperate, “let us get her stabilized. On a medication regimen. As I said, this presents as a brief psychotic episode, which we can help her manage and treat but only if you let us keep her here to monitor her.” 

Roman tilts his head back, eyes closed as he scratches his beard. There’s an unfamiliar weight in his chest and stomach at the thought of having to leave this hospital tonight without Solana. But this isn’t about what he wants, it’s about what’s best for Solana. 

It’s about what she needs, and he’ll do whatever he has to do to make sure she gets the help she needs. 

“Jey.” His cousin steps up, previously keeping a respectful distance. “Get with security. I don’t want a son of a bitch that’s not Bloodline or Bloodline vetted to step foot on this floor while she’s here.”

Jey nods. “You got it.” 

Roman overhears footsteps followed by the woman speaking again, “Thank you.” She takes another deep breath and informs, “Now, it’s standard practice that we not allow visitors the first couple days—“

And just like that, the anger has returned, even more intense now that he knows Solana isn’t getting released tonight. Or anytime soon. “I don’t give a fuck about your standard practice—”

Bayley’s voice suddenly enters the conversation, Roman aware that the remaining group has stepped forward, obviously wanting to be aware of the plan and what happens now. “Roman, can you please just let Dr. Stratus do her fucking job? This isn’t about—”

Bayley, however, chose the wrong time to fuck with him. Because any filter he ever acquired because of Solana certainly won’t be used until she’s back home, with him, where she belongs.  “Like you were supposed to? Solana wouldn’t be here if you were watching her like I fucking told you to! This is your fault!”

There’s a small, minute part of him that feels bad when he sees the devastation on Bayley’s face, but it’s short lived, vastly overpowered by his tremendous anger. 

And fear.

Bayley is quick with the response though, ready and willing to aim just as low as he is. “Fuck you, Roman! You don’t get to blame this on us! You should have fucking told her! You had no right to keep the truth from her! She’s here because of you!”

The dark irony in her accusation is that It’s nothing he doesn’t already know.

Nothing he doesn’t already hate himself for.

Bayley is absolutely right.

This absolutely is on him. 

His attempts to save her only damned her. 

“Stop it! Both of ya’ll! This don’t do shit to help, and Solana wouldn’t want ya’ll fighting!” Jimmy suddenly jumps in, moving between the two highly emotional people, even if both are only expressing it as anger. He turns to his cousin first, as Naomi tries to pull Bayley away, also working to de-escalate an already tense situation. “Look, Uce, I know you want to see her, but—”

“I’m not leaving without seeing her.” Roman’s gaze is on his cousin but it’s directed toward the doctor who either takes some type of mercy on him or recognizes that Roman will literally kill everyone who gets in his way if she doesn’t give in to his demand, because she’s switching her tune.

“A couple of minutes,” she relents. “But only you.” 

Roman doesn’t care about the rest of them anyway. They can see her whenever they fucking see her. 

He’s the one who needs to see her. 

But, it’s in seeing her that a part of him wishes he didn’t. Because this isn’t right. She shouldn’t be laid up like this, unconscious, pale, such a sad expression on her sleeping face.

He hasn’t seen her like this since that first night he overheard and woke her up from her nightmare.

A nightmare. 

He’d give anything for that to be the case again. 

“I can’t lose you, Solana.” It's the first thing to leave his mouth, a plea and prayer. There’s nothing but vulnerability in his voice, and he doesn’t give a fuck. He’ll be as vulnerable as he needs to be for her. He’ll do anything for her. “I need you. I told you that, but I don’t think you understand how badly I need you.”

If there was any doubt before, it’s completely destroyed now. He doesn’t know how honest or comfortable he could be outside of these four walls, if it wasn’t just the two of them, but right now, with nothing but her steady breathing and rhythmic beating of the machines she’s plugged up to, he’ll pour his heart out.

“You can’t leave me, alright?” Roman’s hand moves to her forehead, thumb caressing her skin that feels too cold, doesn’t feel like her. “I don’t care what it takes, what you need, what I have to fucking do, but I need you to get better, and I’ll do anything to help you.” 

And he will. It’s why despite how much he hates this notion of having to leave her, the almost anxiety he has at having to leave tonight without her in his arms, he’ll do it. He’ll do it because he just wants her to be happy.

She deserves that, and he’ll do whatever it takes to get it to her. 

His voice is thick with emotion. “I just need you to stay with me, baby, okay?” Not being able to see her pretty brown eyes, the curl of her full lips as she smiles, his favorite fucking thing in the world, it’s torture.

He never wants to see her like this again. 

He can’t. 

He won’t.

Roman kisses her forehead and forces himself to walk out of the hospital room, one of the hardest departures he’s ever had to do. Dr. Stratus is waiting outside the door, and just like that, the infamous stoic, unreadable expression is back.

With Solana, he’s just Roman.

But for everyone else, he’s the Tribal Chief. 

There is no other option. 

“No men on her care team. Women only.” If she’s going to be here, he’s going to make sure she

has everything she needs. “I want daily updates. Anything happens or changes with her status at all, I want to know. You understand me?”

Dr. Stratus must have also read the section in Solana’s medical records that alludes to her sexual trauma, because she doesn’t object. “Understood.” She swallows, bringing the medical chart to her chest. “You know…I head an inpatient women’s psychiatric clinic about an hour out. It’s not uncommon for patients like your wife to transition there following dis—”

“You can keep her on your two week hold, but she’s coming home with me as soon as that’s up. Try and get in my way, and I’ll fucking kill you.”

She’s wise to not push, smart to not try to stop him from leaving, because as far as Roman is concerned, there’s nothing and no one he’ll stop short from torturing, killing, and maiming if they try to get in his way of being with Solana.

He can’t live without her.

He loves her too much to live without her.

[neetily]

Kinktober 2024 — Ghost Kylar

— ✧ pairing: M!Kylar / F!Reader — ✧ genre: smut 18+ — ✧ word count: 6,988 — ✧ warnings: ghost, ghost sex, yandere, brief depiction of self harm, major character death (duh, he’s a ghost), masochism, blood, dub con, kylar is cringe as fuck, public sex, biting, creampie, knifeplay — ✧ synopsis: it's ironic, isn't it? how the one thing he wants most in this world is the one thing he can't have... his existence does have its advantages though, some that you'll experience intimately!

— ✧ A/N: sorry this took me so long to finish! thank you for your patience. enjoy some kylar fun :D...

— ✧ kinktober masterlist

You’d think that dying and being turned into an ignored ghost would be an absolute hindrance, right? The whole… being incorporeal ordeal might present some issues sometimes, for some people, he imagines. Unable to fulfil that terrible itch to touch, to be touched, floating in a relative void of nothingness for all eternity just because of one stupid, rash decision. It’d be a pain for sure, he thinks, if he was completely disallowed to touch at all. But perhaps his excessive yearning for you is like magic, in the sense of being strong enough to bend the rules of existence itself to allow him a little, just enough feeling for him to be satisfied.

For now, at least.

And isn’t that proof enough of his love for you? That he was made to be with you, just as you were for him? Surely, given that every other ghost he’s met thus far has complained about the lack of literally anything, and how he must be so lucky to be allowed the privileged of reaching out to you on any God given occasion, that is proof. It’s certainly not luck that had him end up here, is it? No, it could never be…

Instead, he puts it down to love, plain and simple.

Though he did very little of loving you in his life prior, publicly regarding. Far too afraid of approaching you in fear of scaring you away with his… well, people call him weird for a reason, right? Now at least, he figures it might a good time to catch up on all those missed opportunities he was silly not to take before. It’s what he’s due for his patience, right? For committing the ultimate proclamation of love, undying in his quest to make you his.

He hadn’t intended on dying, to be honest with you. Carving your name into his arm one lonely night to comfort himself— he was just too sloppy with it. But what else could you ever hope to expect from a man who was rock hard at the mere thought of having you brand him forever, self inflicted or not. All the blood rushing to his cock before even grabbing the knife; it’s a wonder he even managed to pass from blood loss due to how hard his cock throbbed for you, blade in his shaky hand and oh so sharp. Sharpened just for this occasion, y’know? Especially for you, nothing but the best would ever do for his girl! And oh, how the slow drag of the pointed tip across his goose-bumped skin felt so good, had his cock all leaky and trembling in excitement just hovering the point above his arm. He hadn’t had much luck catching your attention thus far, regrettably sticking to the shadows in the meantime while you flirt and skirt around the whole school. But surely, with his new permanent tattoo, he’d be able to catch your eye—and hopefully a little more, yeah?

Trouble is, he’s a filthy masochist. A downright depraved mess of a man, erection upright and throbbing in anticipation as he cautiously tilts the tip of the knife against his soft skin. The expectation of it all, giddy with hope that this will once and for all secure his rightful place by your side, proving how only he can be your one and only true love, causes him to miscalculate just how deep he needs to carve his love for you. The strong bite of the knife, hot against his searing flesh, feels so fucking good— enough to have his hips jutting forward in an attempt to fuck the air as well as he’d like to fuck into your pretty princess pussy. It’s immediately dizzying, a horrible misuse of his love for you, but nonetheless a declaration that gets him off like nothing before. Instantly addicting in just how much it hurts, a choked hiss escaping his pouty lips as he digs in, digging as deep as he can with the knife to showcase just how far he’s willing to go for you, even if you aren’t actually present.

And the blood that drips from the first letter of your name should have been the first worrying sign, he knows. But isn’t that what made it all the more exciting in the end? The lack of thought, impulsively seeking more of that red hot high. Gushing from his open wound in waves, turning his arm a sticky red as a permanent stain of just how much he adores you. It’s sickening, really, how the black spots in his vision and the fluttering lashes only coaxed him into continuing, messily dragging the knife across his arm to start the next letter of your name— but alas. He’s always been weaker and smaller than most, and there’s only so much blood one man can lose before death comes for him. It’s not that he was surprised about the outcome given the circumstances, honestly! It’s just… Different. Yeah. Not as bad as the other ghosts he’s came across have claimed— but then again, none can match just how much love he holds for you, he’s certain.

Loves you enough to pester you any and every chance he gets, the one living soul he’s still yet tethered too. He imagines it’s got something to do with the fact that you aren’t fully his yet, and when you are and he inevitably has to leave, he’ll be waiting patiently for your arrival on the other side. But for now, it’s fun to simply exist by your side, to have you be the only one left to notice him; as he’s always ever wanted, really. And, to run his ghostly fingertips up and down your exposed arms, tickling you for attention while you enter the classroom is pleasure enough.

“Kylar—” you whisper shout at him in return, intending to scold, no doubt. But all it does is excited him some more, like the fucking ghoul he truly is, and always has been. A wretched excuse of a man, little fucking pervert, only you get to see his true side now. “Not. Here.”

Though he loathes to be back in this prison, he’s aware that you’ve got grades to keep up on where he doesn’t. And if he’s honest, it’s not so bad being back only because now he can sit besides you every class, every day. Back when he was alive, this was one of his ultimate dreams. And if all it takes is to pass away and to float by your side for eternity to do just that, then he thinks he’d kill himself a million times over just to prolong this dream. Standing by your side through it all, even if all merely consists of keeping you company through your morning math class like the dutiful boyfriend he is.

He always wondered how you did in maths. The school schedule disallowed him from visiting you during such early morning hours, and he always hated sitting anxiously in his own class all alone, eager to get out of it as soon as possible . Not solely because he was regularly bullied in class by his peers, ridiculed to no end for his antsy attitude and twiddling thumbs— stupid, the lot of them. His one regret is not having the time to get back at them some way, somehow. But he was also eager to leave class because that meant he was one step closer to you. Always you, thinking, watching, dreaming, you, you, you. He’d endure the torment of fellow students so long as he survived long enough to simply sit beside you for that one hour during English class together. That, truly, was the highlight of his day. Every fucking day. So much so that he found himself missing the bullying and the shoving and the name calling at the weekends only because he wasn’t in school to see you.

There was always solace in your scent, safety in your stares.

It didn’t so much matter to him that you never really paid him the time of day, always avoiding his wistful looks and deflecting his trembling touch. It didn’t bother him that you’d sneer down at him, spitting those same hurtful words that his bullies so often did, too. It’s okay, he gets it. You were just trying to survive, right? He’d never fault or blame you for that, not when he does the exact same thing. But deep down, you like him, don’t you? You just had to protect yourself, make sure that you didn’t also become a lonely little target like him.

He’d have killed them for you if you asked though, y’know?

Lest his blade get dirtied though, he’s glad that you never. Only so that he could kill himself in such a pure way, untainted by others gross stink and sweat upon his blade. Now, as he watches you sit in math class with hawk eyes, one hand precariously placed upon your shoulder to remind you of his presence, you can rest assured that he’s doing so only with the best, most clean intentions. His tummy filling with butterflies at the way you shiver under his touch, the pencil in your hand wobbling in your unsure grip as his cold courses through your system.

“Sorry,” he whispers to you, though there’s really no need to. Nobody else can see him, he’s almost certain… at least no one else seems to react to him. But old habits die hard or something, and he doesn’t want to get you in trouble for chatting to him during class. “Am I still too cold? I don’t mean to be, I don’t think I can help it, I--”

A shoulder shrug has his hand falling from your body, and he can’t help but to smile wide at the way you continue trying to communicate with him in spite of the orders by River to stay quiet. You’re trying for him, that’s all that matters to his unbeating heart.

“Got it. Too cold, sorry.” He quips, making sure to keep his voice low enough so as to not annoy you, but also so that he has a better chance of hearing your bored little sighs. The huffs of concentration as you do your best to work through the questions presented before you. He always did admire your work ethic, and it’s a genuine joy to be offered the privilege of watching you hard at work this morning. The little tips and taps of your pencil against the old wooden desk, scribbles on your work book, even the slight creaks and squeaks of your school chair from under your bored wiggles. More than anything, he simply adores just watching you. From every angle, behind any shadow. You’re just so perfect to him, even when you ignore his circling attempts, stalking around you like some sort of overbearing teacher— or shark.

He doesn’t mean to be weird, it’s just… Despite not being with you for very long in his more ghostly appearance, he can’t stop wanting to watch you. Creeping around you at every opportunity— you were the first person he thought to haunt when he realised his predicament fully. And now, knowing that not only is his temptation going unnoticed by those around him, but that you specifically are allowed to bear witness to his wanting, is everything he could have ever asked for and more.

Well, besides asking for his touch to return to its normal heated self, for your benefit solely. But coldness has its play reasons too, right? And he’s so sure you’d get used to it eventually, and he doesn’t mind waiting for as long as you take. Because he loves you. And because he doesn’t have anything else worth doing with his boring existence now, too.

Besides continuing to dote upon you.

Which is what he plans on doing, leaning closer in from behind you, intending on playfully distracting you from your work with a quick peck on your cheek; if not for the fact that something, or someone else, steals your attention away from him before his rightful opportunity.

Lamentably, he turns his head with your own snap turn, a scowl present on his face before he even considers the possibility of who might have called your attention before him. Instead, he’s upset merely that he doesn’t get to see your reaction. Surely it’s one of annoyance that you wear, right? How dare you interrupt my studies, leave me and my ghostly boyfriend alone before I report you!

In an ideal world, that’s how he’d like you to react. And, perhaps a little selfishly, that’s how he expects you to react. A quick dismissal, a rude awakening to whatever sap decides to distract you from your hard work, studying so prettily for him...

But he’s dead. And that certainly isn’t ideal, so he doesn’t fully expect your reaction to be perfect either. It’s okay, there’s time to work on it… in this life and in your own after life. But alas, the rude awakening that greets him upon coming face to face with Whitney’s horrible leer rocks him to his core. His fists automatically balling up at his sides in an attempt to protect himself from one of his biggest bullies, ready to fight back if need be— he’s already went ahead and killed himself anyway. But of all people, it just had to be his arch nemesis that threatens to dirty you with that eye fucking, huh? Fucking typical, though he obviously could tell that Whitney sat behind you in math class— not in the least because you’ve complained time and time again about just how much that man bothers you, he had been silently hoping, fucking wishing to be left alone with you. Just this once. Is that too much to ask?

Hasn’t his death been payment enough?

Or better yet, his genuine lifetime of pain and suffering, standing between you and the bullies as much and as often as he could, should be worth at least a look in his direction, right? Not that he’s mad at you, God, never… rather, he’s angered by Whitney’s continued dislike of him, going so far as to bully him in death, too. How Whitney is so wanting, always, of what does not belong to him. The sultry “Got the answers, slut?” That falls from his lips is disgusting, an immediate wave of nausea crawling up Kylar’s throat in response; if only his voice could be heard. Whitney never fails to irk him, and it saddens him to learn that there’s very little escape even after his passing.

Thankfully, though, you tell him to piss off.

“Atta girl!” Kylar commends you, beaming down at you from behind as the words he’s always wanted to say roll off his tongue so easily, now that he’s in constant privacy with just you. And, dare he admit, your refusal to submit to the bully has his cock twitching in his pants. Just a little, like a small warning. It’s hot seeing you fight back, even more so when he’s convinced that you’re doing it in an attempt to be left alone with him some more.

But still, no reaction from you upon his praise. And still, Whitney tries to steal your attention off of his kind words, a sulking huff escaping him at the way you instantly allow the bully the privileged of looking at you, let alone talking to you.

Despair grips his dead heart, dead to all but you, phantom pangs of pain begging to console you when Whitney tugs on your hair so unfairly—he’d never do the same to you, y’know? He’d brush it if you’d let him, wash and dry it all for you in a heartbeat. He’d look after you so well, if only you’d look at him and not—

“What was that, slut?” Whitney glares at you in the same way Kylar has been unfortunate enough to stare back at the barrel of a gun, too. And it upsets him, terribly so. So much so that he finds himself standing between you and Whitney on instinct; though this is immediately ineffective given how translucent and invisible he is to all but you. Quick, he thinks to himself. Something else, something that’ll immediately have you exiting the unfair situation…

He doesn't have much time to think, so he hopes you’ll forgive him for his rash actions of spinning around and pecking your cheek just like he’d originally wanted to do all along… but you should forgive him, because you’re his, after all. And he’s only trying to help you at the end of the day.

“The fuck are you blushing for, freak?” Whitney’s voice continues to ring in his ears, and he can’t stop the creepy smile from tugging on his lips when witnessing the pretty pink that dusts your cheeks in response to his help. See, he knew you’d appreciate it!

“I can, um… Kiss you some more, if you’d like?” Kylar fights for your attention, though meek as he might be. He knows what’s best for you, obviously, but it’s easier for everyone involved if he makes you feel like it’s your decision, right? That’s what he read online, anyway, when researching about how to find a girlfriend…

But perhaps the double attention is a little too much for you to handle, the frown you wear in response is surely distaste borne out of Whitney’s incessant yapping, right?

It couldn’t be anything else. Certainly not because of him, he’s sure. Because he’s helping, isn’t he?

Seconds feel like minutes as you stare at—or is it through?—him. But before he has a chance to double check with you that he made the right decision—which he did, but sometimes you need a little reminding, of course—you steal the opportunity of speech away from him. A quick nod in his general direction, he can’t tell if it’s aimed more at him or Whitney, but what matters is that the glare that soon follows cannot be mistaken for anyone other than him.

So hot… has him tensing up in excitement.

“Excuse me.” You say, voice tense as your lips press into a thin line. “Sir,” You promptly raise your hand, and Kylar is so pleased that you’re standing up for yourself that he claps for you, cringe as it may be. Theres no one but you to witness it anyway. “Can I use the restroom?”

Oh, “Good idea,” Kylar commends you, racing around to the front of your desk in a genuine effort to help you pack up your things, forgetting that he’s a fucking ghost. It’s the one negative that he’s came to experience with his new existence— he wishes he could physically help you out some more. “Escape into the bathroom, a classic—”

River cuts him off with an exhausted: “If you must.” but Kylar can hardly complain. The sight of you collecting your items pairs nicely with the scoff Whitney lets out following your dismissal, and like the lost little puppy he is, Kylar eagerly follows you out of the classroom and into the school hallways with his metaphorical tail wagging happily behind him. Not a single fucking a care in the world, which makes a change in such a setting.

Because he helped. Because that’s the only thing he ever wants to do for the rest of his afterlife; help you. Be with you, be around you, slipping around hallway corners and into the girls bathroom with you— which he’s been inside of on occasions, in particular when stalking you during lunch break. He wonders if you ever noticed? Still, you enter into the same cubicle you always do— second from the left, closest to the wall. And he figures the fact that you slam the door on his face isn’t because you want him to leave you alone, but out of sheer frustration over the situation, over Whitney and his bullying tendencies. He forgives you for the rude action anyway, so it doesn’t really matter the reasons why.

He’s a ghost.

And he’s not so sure why you adopt such a look of surprise upon his passing through the door to be beside you, offering you a lovesick little grin in response.

“What are you— why did you follow me, Kylar?”

The amount of pain in your voice aches him, has him reaching out to tenderly stroke your cheek with a soft coo falling from his pouty lips.

“Wanted to make sure you were okay, mostly…” which is the Gods honest truth! More than anything, he wanted to check that you were doing okay in private, where he could look upon you with stars in his eyes and dote on you to his hearts content. Congratulations resting at the tip of his tongue over just how well you handled that situation, and reassurances caught in his throat over the fact that he’s always more than willing to help you in any situation, utilising his ghostly energy solely in an effort to make your life all the more comfortable. But your scathing tone is quicker than his love, and instead of all those well intentioned thoughts spilling from his anxiously bitten lips, a tut now resides behind his teeth.

You avoid his gaze with another reprimand. “Okay?” is all you initially say, and he wants so badly to beg at your feet, yes, yes, I helped, didn’t I? Didn’t I do so good? But you once again cut him off before he even has a chance of pleading his case. “I was doing fine until, until you—”

Ah. He understands better now, he thinks. It’s true, you were handling yourself so well, better than he ever did when face to face with some scumbag like Whitney. He had to commend you there! But, with his helpful kiss, you had enjoyed it so much so that it ended up distracting you into a flustered state, right? Poor baby… you just need taken care of, right? He can understand why that’d be frustrating, having to escape the classroom and into the bathroom to try and deal with all of those assumed butterflies in your tummy— one cannot easily explain the intricacies of harbouring a ghost boyfriend, right? You— you must have wanted to get him alone in private to playfully scold him or something, a knowing giggle crawling up his throat at how red and cute your little cheeks are when staring back at him.

This is the perfect place to reward you, no doubt. Somewhere hidden, though still in public. He’d have liked to have played with you in proper public, watch you struggle to contain your enjoyment in front of so many others— because what would you even say to them? Oh, don’t worry, my ghost boyfriend is just balls deep in me right now, that’s why I’m moaning so loudly! No, of course not! It’s something to work up to, he concedes to himself. And for now, he doesn’t mind playing with you in secret public… since it’s what you're obviously wanting, after all.

It’s his turn to interrupt you for once, though it pains him to even think about being so rude to you, he thinks you might appreciate his efforts in the end. So long as he’s reading your signals right; there’s no way that he isn’t, his death and subsequent haunting of you has already proven just how strong his connection to you is… he could never be wrong when it comes to you.

“It’s okay, look,” he grabs your attention, one cold hand atop your head to gently push your vision down, until your eyes are in line with his crotch. He wants to show you just how much he appreciates you, how much he loves you and adores when you fight back, standing up for yourself is so attractive to him. And, more selfishly, “Look at what you do to me—” he huffs, wanting to help you understand exactly what your actions have stirred up within him today, so early on, too. You’re just so perfect, such a pretty girl to haunt, he can’t help but to want to express his feelings for you in the most plain way possible, y’know?

Front and centre, under your watchful eye, his cock throbs for you. Hard and heavy even if a little translucent; it still yet pulses with life, hidden under the loose pants he managed to die in. Not his first choice of clothing to be stuck in for eternity, but it gets the job done he supposes. And by that, he means that you can clearly see how it tents in your direction, dribbling precum all over himself simply from looking at that pretty expression you now wear. Brows furrowed and mouth agape, a gasp tumbling from your pretty pouty lips no doubt from his appreciation of you.

In awe, aren’t you? Of his utter dedication, how loyal he is to you, much like a dog. Tugging his bottoms off to wag his cock at you like a treat— “Got me all riled up.” he smiles genuinely, a soft sigh escaping him at the way you run your fingers through your hair, bashfully avoiding the rock hard cock right in front of you. He oh so loves how cute you are when you get all shy, light loving laughter spilling from his lips as he places a cool hand on your shoulder.

“There isn’t much room in here…” he thinks out loud, humming in faux thought for just a moment before surprise swivelling you around so that your back is now facing him. And the elbow you send into his side only turns him on some more, silly. He enjoys it when you fight back, because every punch and kick from you feels so much like a kiss, a reminder of the life he once had as pain courses through him and pools in his cock. “But there’s enough, I think.”

And if there isn’t, well… Perks of having a ghost for a boyfriend— he can just phase through the stall and still fuck into you. Half in and out, it doesn’t matter. You’re the only person, and thing in general, that he can meaningfully interact with.

His cock automatically taps against your ass when you teasingly squirm around with want, hypnotising him with your movements from side to side. Like you’re encouraging him, right? The way your knees buckle from under you as he towers behind you is so cute too, coaxing some more pre to leak from his tip just for him to smear it against your school skirt, a soft cooing tut escaping him as he tugs on the end of it, your panties soon following, and letting them drop just enough to have his cock pressing against your bare ass cheeks. And oh, how warm you are against his cold tip, prompting him to shiver against you when you refuse to let up tempting him with those pretty wiggles.

It only turns him on more seeing how excited you are for him to show his appreciation, those cute little muffles and whimpers you sound as he angles his hips down so that his spectral cock can rub between your soft and squishy thighs is soooo nice, something worth dying for, he thinks to himself.

And there’s so much satisfaction to be had in grabbing your wrists before you know what’s happening to you, pinning them above your head as you’re forced to submit over the toilet below you. There’s nowhere for you to run, nowhere that you can hide from him now that he’s dead— and isn’t that just so fucking exciting? So hot to him, his cock twitching incessantly against your flushed skin with a sweet sigh escaping him. You always have him feeling like a dirty little virgin again every time he dotes on you like this, his hips stuttering against you on instinct; it’s fucking silly how you have him feeling so good from relatively very little already.

Which just proves to him further that not only do you belong to him, but that you want this sort of treatment too. You could never convince him otherwise.

And how could you not want him anyway? With the way your body tenses up for his enjoyment, hands balled into tiny little fists for stability against the wall while he pins you in place. Your pretty pussy—God he’s so in love with her, wants to eat her out forever and ever, mark her all up with his seed, worship and lick and fuck her always, you’ve got no fucking idea the things he’d do for just a smidge of your cunt—leaking all over him, drooling slick up and down his cock for him to gag at; he’d die over and over again for this cunt.

He’s only so riled up because he witnessed your bravery too, but honestly, just being near you is enough to set him off. His grip on your wrists tightening while his other hand passes through the stall wall; sometimes he forgets that he can’t lean on anything but you for support. Which you happily accept, right? His free hand coming down to lock onto your waist, grabbing and pinching as a means to stay somewhat present in the moment, but he always inevitably loses his mind a little when it comes to you. Squeezing at your side from the delight of physical touch, finally. Balls just aching and heavy with seed for you as he rubs one out between your thighs idly, lazy with his strokes in the hopes of warming you up to how cold his spectral body is.

The things he wants to do to you. The things he will do to you.

“Wanna keep you like this forever—” he huffs, wondering if the breath that fans across the back of your neck is hot or cold, though it doesn’t truly matter. You shiver into it regardless, in turn choking his cock a little tighter against the fat of your thighs to have him choking on thin air above you. “So pretty, so proud of you today, God… Wanna praise you forever ‘n ever ‘n—”

He cuts himself off with a moan, his cock tip severely sensitive due to being unable to so much as rut against anything other than you. It’s only natural that he then relies on you a little more, right? He doesn’t mean to, but he simply has to; lest go goes insane and dead. But he hopes that in return for relying on you more than he should, he can make it up to you with how his cock slips and slides between your folds, rock hard and pulsing pleasantly with each knock against your clit. All sloppy with your slick— because duh, you want this reward, right?

Evident from how pitchy and strained your voice is when you regard him with: “Kylar, will you— quit it—!”

A sly smirk tugs on his lips in response. Sneaky and mean, a low sigh crawling up his throat before he gives you exactly what you want. Impatient little girl, it’s like you know that he’d do literally anything for you, whenever for you. Whatever princess wants, princess gets…

Which is exactly why he stops humping, as per your request. Drawing his hips back so that his tip catches perfectly on your cute little hole, the hand on your waist dipping a little further down to spread your ass cheek to the side for his viewing pleasure, before he rather unfairly thrusts his hips forward in one fell swoop and fucks you so full of his ghost cock that you’re left gasping for air. Nice and cooling, right? Especially against such soft and warm squishy insides— yin and yang. You expertly match him, his better half.

All wind is knocked out of him upon entering your sweet heat too, don’t worry. You’re not the only one struggling to take the stretch, carving his size out of your hole as a means of ownership. As if to say: this is my cunt. And he wont lie, part of why he immediately settles into a quick pace of in and out is to prove as much to you too. To prove to Whitney, look, see how much she’s gasping for me? How she tightens up with every pass of his throbbing cock in and out, only pulsing for you, because of you. Nothing else quite literally does it for him, his head thrown back in immediate sheer bliss, his own little personal heaven bent over before him in such a dirty cramped little space…

You deserve better, absolutely. And he’d love to give you just that later tonight when he follows you home, too. But a good boyfriend listens to his girlfriend, even if she doesn’t speak. You may not have voiced your want for him to fuck you raw in the school bathroom today, but he knew. Could pick up on all your little tells and non verbal communication so easily— and he’s pleased to know that he listened well given how your tight cunt just leaks over him. A loud slap surely to be heard from his fucks in and out— if he wasn’t a ghost, that is.

Another point as to why he must be fated to be with you, right? His groans and moans, the way his heavy with seed balls slap against your puffy little slit as you whine and wriggle all pretty for him; it’s all only for you. The sole listener, the only one able to hear and see him. In return, he muses to himself that if anyone were to walk in on this scene, him balls deep in your pretty pussy, hunched over you like a fucking dog in heat… they’d see nothing but your gaping hole struggling to take him. And isn’t that just so fucking hot? How you must stay quiet, lest anyone sees you in such a compromising situation? Nobody would fucking believe you, and he can feel the power he holds over you course through him with every greedy hump forward, and every quick draw back. Slamming his cock into you, fucking the breath right out of you with the weight he throws behind his possessive thrusts.

“Perfect—” spills from his smiling lips, tugged into a cheek aching grin the moment you begged him for more, like a good girl. “You’re so, so perfect, ah—“ his voice is high pitched, cunt rendering him useless, just a moaning mess of a dead man as he loses himself inside of you. Eyes rolled back and jaw slack with open mouthed sighs— he even drools on you. Just a little, in sheer pleasure. All he wants is to make you feel good, praise dripping from the end of his cock to leave your insides all sticky and goopy with precum, but you make it difficult for him to focus on the task at hand when you’re breathing so heavily like that, and tensing up to make it easier for him to thrust into you.

“Never gonna leave you.”

And he’s so happy to hear your muffled whimpers in response to his reassurances, coaxing him into stuttering his hips into you, unable to keep up with the amount of love and devotion pouring from his every greedy grab of your heated skin and wet smack of his cock into your gushing cunt. Like she can tell just how serious he is, loyal to you in life and in death, refusing to let up on showing you his affection with fast enough fucks to have him on his tippy toes for you. It’s silly, how he’s just so easy for you. A simp through and through, strengthening the grip he has on your wrists only to pin them behind your back, using your own body against you as leverage to better fuck into you. And he doesn’t hear you complaining— quite the contrary, actually.

Gently, he hushes you. A soft sound pressed right against the shell of your ear, followed by a greedy groan of his own at the deeper angle he now fucks you in. “Wouldn’t want anyone to hear you, right?” his whispers against your soft skin, humming in faux thought over the imagined scene of you getting caught. It’s hot, of course, imagining the shocked look on your face upon the stall door swinging opening, his cock throbbing harder when he thinks about how he wouldn’t stop, not even for a single fucking second in the hopes of publicly claiming you as his own. God— he’s so close just from thinking about it.

It’d be the perfect display, he thinks. Pure ownership, indulgence at its finest. He only wishes he had the guts to do so when he was alive, cock balls deep in your tight little angel cunt for all to see just how well you squirm on it, like you were fucking made to take his cock. For him and him only, a ring of cream forming at the base of his cock to prove that he still has life left in him yet.

Even if it feels like he’s fighting for his life, fucking so deep into your cunt that he’s sure his cold tip is rocking against your cervix, kissing her so full of precum that you’re fucked into squelching around him. He’s just so sick for you, completely and utterly down bad in every sense, that he can’t help but to keep going. Ignoring your cries and pleads for something— he’s too busy getting his cock wet to fully listen to your words. Only that you sound good, making his cock tremble with impatience as his balls grow taut and his hips fight to keep up with the speed he wants to fuck you at.

It’s a wonder you haven’t fallen over by now, getting fucked by the ghost of a rabbit behind you.

“Close—” he chokes out for you, inhaling as much air as he possibly can in an attempt to keep up with himself, but his thrusts falter regardless. Failing to fucking you at a consistent speed and rhythm, caring selfishly only for his own enjoyment as he pounds you uncomfortable against the toilet wall. “So close,” he gasps, genuine and fraught with so much need, the tight suck of your cunt coaxing him closer, as if instinctively trying to help get him off faster, proves to be all he needs in the end.

Because it’s you. Because he’s downright obsessed with you, he doesn’t need much else to get off like a filthy pervert but you, to be honest.

And like the slut he is for you, he bends you over some more, chomping down on your clothed shoulder in a feeble attempt to leave more of his mark. The resulting sob you let out at the painful reminder of his existence forever by your side is what really does him in, fat ropes of cum shooting from his tip to surprise him into pained whimpers of enjoyment. Still, his hips don’t stop, fully milking himself to completion inside of your warm and wet cunt, filling her up enough to have some of his seed drip out and down to the bathroom tiles with muted thuds!

You’re so perfect, so fucking pretty and pliant, unable to escape him forever and ever. He wants to fuck you to death, wants to lock you up and keep you in his pocket so that he can praise your cunt whenever he wants— which is always. Let no one else even think about looking at you, breed you forever and always as thanks simply for existing. Making him feel so good, taking his cock so well—

Heavy breaths escape him as he soon slows down, still yet fucking into you at a lazy pace to make sure you get every single drop of seed he has to offer you. It’s what you deserve, after all, for being such a good girl for him. For being his good girl, more specifically. A sadistic smile making its way to his lips when he wonders if his cum will be seen dripping out of you by others, or if that too will be hidden from everyones view but your own. Your own dirty little secret to share with him; how romantic, huh?

“Love you,” he rushes to sputter as soon as he can catch his breath again, idly stroking himself off still while buried deep in your cunt, nuzzling against your neck while you shiver from under him. “Love you so much, ‘m so happy to be with you, you’re so pretty and perfect and— oh—” your cunt distracts him, as always. Squeezing and suckling his tip in his idle state, a breathy laugh escaping him at your lewd display of continued want.

“S’okay,” he reassures you, humming sweetly down your ear when you sniffle back at his lack of thought. Poor thing, it’s a shame you sound so nice when you cry. “Haven’t forgot about you, promise, just— lemme pull out, okay? Will look after you, make you feel good too.”

Anything to keep you by his side, really. It’s only a bonus that break time is soon approaching, and you’re gonna struggle to keep your mouth shut once he has a chance to get his lips on you. Determined to prove his existence through you by way of getting on his knees on the dirty bathroom stall, tongue already poking out in unadulterated excitement to make you feel good. Better than ever before, so that you’ve got no choice but to accept that he’s your fated mate.

So that you’re forced to accept him by your side, forever and ever. Even after death, you can’t and won’t escape him.

[vidavalor]

This is why The Book of Life is both the most grave threat in GO... and also complete bullshit

I win at attention-grabbing titles today, I think? 😊I don't think that Is The Book of Life real? is the question. I'm more interested in:

Who *believes* that The Book of Life is real and how does that impact their decisions?

Early in S2, there's the scene between Beez and Crowley in Hell, wherein they tell him that Heaven is threatening anyone involved with helping Gabriel with "Extreme Sanctions," which they define as being written out of a thing called 'The Book of Life'. They say that this doesn't just erase someone from existence-- it makes it so that they never existed at all in the first place.

While 'The Book of Life' (and a thing called 'The Book of The Damned') have a place in religions in our real life and are likely being alluded to a bit here, we know that GO puts its own, wonderfully subversive spin on things. More importantly, the scene between Crowley and Beez where Beez defines The Book of Life for us actually might tell us what the deal is with it already.

Crowley, upon hearing about The Book of Life as a threat, immediately tells Beez that there is actually no such thing. He says that they-- meaning the two of them-- made it up back in the day to tease more innocent angels. Crowley is confident of this fact when he's not always confident about his pre-fall recollections and, as a result, we're inclined to trust his opinion here, right? It's Crowley's doubt in himself that has caused us to start to complicate a thing that might actually be deceptively simple: it's not a thing.

We see the realization that Crowley is likely correct flicker on Beez's face when Crowley tells them that The Book of Life is not real... and then quickly disappear and be replaced by an attempt to gather their pride.

Both Beez and Crowley have faulty memories and many scenes in S2 show Crowley's struggle to recall some people and events from when he was an angel. Even if you think that Crowley plays with knowledge of this with other angels and demons (like with Furfur and/or Saraqael) and purposefully pretends to forget them, he admits to Gabriel near the end of S2 that he knows what Gabriel is going through from personal experience.

What Crowley is sure about, though, is a memory that he has of him and Beez teasing some angels and making up The Book of Life. Lord Beezlebub, though, doesn't have this memory. It's perhaps trauma-blocked for them, the way that many of Crowley's own have been and many still are.

When Crowley tells them that he's sure that The Book of Life is bullshit, we see a flicker of vulnerable horror pass over Beez's face for the briefest of moments before they double down and insist that, no, he has to be wrong, The Book of Life is real.

Why do they do this? Because they know that Crowley is likely correct and they're embarrassed.

Imagine being Beez, running Hell for all those years, and jumping to do whatever Heaven tells them to do to try to maintain order and stay alive, only to find out that the thing Heaven's threatening them with? It not only doesn't even exist but Beez themselves is one of the people who made it up. Heaven took Beez's memories and, with them, some of their sense of self, and then turned around and weaponized those memories against them. They've been frightening Beez half to death and making them do their bidding by threatening them with something they and Crowley once jokingly made up once while being silly and stupid.

That's... pretty dark, no?

Making matters worse? They once ordered Beez to try to kill their old friend, Crowley, and here he is in the present, the only person they can go to for help with finding the person they love before he's harmed even more by these same people who have hurt all of them... and Crowley remembers the friendship they once had more than Beez does. He has a kind of sweet memory of the two of them being friends and he's acting like one in the present by trying to look out for Beez through telling them the truth as much as he knows it. He's being kind to them...

Beez can't stand it. They don't think they deserve it and they feel like such a fool. If they admit the truth-- that they think Crowley's memory is correct and that they were wrong about The Book of Life-- then they're admitting that they were duped by Heaven for longer than anyone can count.

Would Crowley care about this or think lesser of them? No. He would empathize. It's not like he's not in the same boat as Beez, having also been harmed by Heaven and facing difficulties with his memories. He would understand and he'd continue to be kind about it... but Beez has their pride. Beez is embarrassed-- so, they double down. They change the course of the season as a result.

They tell Crowley that The Book of Life is a real thing and emphasize the threat. This causes Crowley to begin to doubt the validity of his own memory. It triggers his lack of trust in himself. He's already vulnerable about his memory but he was sure about this particular memory-- until Beez starts insisting that he's wrong. (To be fair to Beez, they both have such shit memories that it's easy to see how they'd both wind up operating under the assumptions that there's a real threat, even if talking more to one another and trying to figure it out together would have been the healthier way to handle it.)

Crowley thinks, well, Beez has run Hell for ages and surely they'd know more than him if Extreme Sanctions are a thing or not? He presumes that Beez has seen it done before, since they're insisting that it's real. He presumes that he's the one who is incorrect and, as a result, becomes convinced that Aziraphale is now risking his very existence to help Gabriel.

This then becomes Crowley's primary motivation for the whole season.

It's even eclipsed the terror he has over the idea of Aziraphale falling because, at least, if the worst happened and Aziraphale fell, he'd still be there. If Heaven erases Aziraphale from The Book of Life, though, according to Beez, Aziraphale will have never existed at all.

At thinking this a possibility, Crowley races back to the bookshop to help protect Gabriel as a way of trying to help protect Aziraphale. All season long, the threat of Aziraphale being The Book of Life'd looms large for Crowley. He even growls at Gabriel at one point that Aziraphale is risking "his existence" to help him. Gabriel also can't help Crowley determine if Extreme Sanctions are really a thing or not-- even if he likely would have been in a position to know previously-- because Gabriel's brain is experiencing technical difficulties and playing nothing but a Buddy Holly song for all of S2.

Crowley is also hesitant to tell Aziraphale about his fear of The Book of Life threat because he knows that Aziraphale is skating on the edge of a breakdown and that, while Aziraphale is strong overall, he is very, very fragile about the fact that Heaven abandoned him and no one has talked to him over the last four years until Gabriel showed up at the door.

Crowley also knows that Aziraphale is sensitive about the fact that all of what little information they can gather about what's doing in Heaven & Hell is coming from a demon Crowley knows because it highlights that, after all the years he gave Heaven, Aziraphale was left without anything remotely close to a friend up there, while Crowley still at least has a contact in a demon who needs him and his experience. That said demon also has a thing for Crowley adds further complications.

So, in an effort to not worsen things and to try to protect Aziraphale, Crowley doesn't tell him that Beez reached out to him for help because he doesn't want to tell Aziraphale that Beez needed him and that they had what is, for them, a fairly friendly chat. As a result of trying to keep that to himself, Crowley can't mention his terror over The Book of Life to Aziraphale.

This means he's alone with the thoughts of it for the season and his already high anxiety is worsened by the fact that seeing Gabriel's memory loss reminds him of his own frail memory, causing him to doubt himself more, and helping convince him that Beez was correct and they're all in massive trouble. He's not the only one trying to protect someone by not mentioning a threat to their existence, though...

The season goes on and Aziraphale goes to Edinburgh. On the way back, he lets Shax into The Bentley and Shax comments that she is "bemused that Crowley should risk his existence" to help Aziraphale. Aziraphale doesn't immediately question this as related to The Book of Life because he assumes that Shax means that Hell would destroy Crowley if they determined that he was involved-- that it's the same threat to Crowley's existence that has always existed. Still, it amps up his worry for Crowley's safety and when he gets back to London, he doesn't tell Crowley about his having met Shax.

Because Aziraphale doesn't bring this up, there is not an opportunity to for either of them to mention exactly how worried they are that the other might die over all of this. The subject of existence-- and how Crowley is worried that it ties to The Book of Life-- continues to not come up.

Fast forward to The Final Fifteen and now we have Michael in the bookshop living room, yelling that they're going to erase Aziraphale from The Book of Life. This is the first time in the season that Aziraphale has directly been confronted with the concept of Extreme Sanctions.

Michael, for their part, seems to genuinely believe in The Book of Life. We have several scenes earlier in the season showing Michael making a power grab in Gabriel's absence and tussling with Uriel over what little power either of them really do have. It's likely that, even if The Book of Life is a thing that does exist, Michael doesn't actually have the ability to erase anyone from existence. (Not even a fascist regime would be dumb enough to give that power to Michael lol.)

What could be the case, though, is that the angels are also told this is real from being the frightened cherubs back in the day lol and all presume that The Supreme Archangel must have the power to do this because, well, they're The Supreme Archangel. (Even if it's really The Metatron who runs the show.) Michael thinks that if they sound like they have the power, it's as good as actually having the power, and it will result in them being seen as Gabriel's replacement. You know the idea of acting as if you already have the job you want to get the job you want? Michael seems to be doing that in 2.06.

What's true, though, is that there is no evidence that Michael has ever seen a case of Extreme Sanctions in action, either... and there's also zero indication that The Metatron actually told Michael that they were authorized to do such a thing, if it does exist. The opposite, actually, seems to be true...

What we did see is The Metatron order Saraqael and Michael to find Gabriel without specifying how and that Michael then took it upon themselves to enlist Beez for assistance. At no point does using Extreme Sanctions seem to be anything but Michael's idea of a motivational tool to get Beez to help them find Gabriel (as Michael didn't know that Beez was already personally motivated to locate Gabriel... and then help keep him away from the angels).

So, we're saying that Michael doesn't actually know fuck all about fuck all where this topic is concerned and them threatening to use Extreme Sanctions doesn't actually mean that they exist. This is pretty heavily suggested by this scene here...

Whoever the being being played by Derek Jacobi who shows up at the bookshop in the middle of Michael's 2.06 tirade actually is-- Satan, The Metatron, Satan-in-The-Metatron, All of The Them standing on each other's shoulders in a Metatron suit, whoever-- Michael comes to believe that this is The Metatron... and this being whom Michael believes is The Metatron shuts down the idea that Michael could write someone out of The Book of Life hard.

While this can be seen as another type of power play-- shutting down Michael to establish that he's actually the most powerful person in the room and that being a low key threat to all of them, including both Michael and Aziraphale... it doesn't necessarily mean that this being is lying about The Book of Life.

For one thing? Michael, once told that the being in front of them is The Metatron, believes it, so, when whom they think is The Metatron tells them that what they're saying about The Book of Life is "utter balderdash-- I mean, complete piffle", Michael doesn't say anything that suggests confusion over that.

If The Metatron was the one out here authorizing Extreme Sanctions and telling Michael to threaten anyone helping Gabriel with erasure from The Book of Life, Michael would have started to splutter here and said something along the lines of 'but, but, Daaaad, you said I could?!' lol. Instead, they appear to just be embarrassed to have been caught out threatening something they can't actually do. This furthers the suggestion that, not only can Michael not actually do it, they've probably never seen it done-- adding to the suggestion that The Book of Life is not actually a thing.

Complicating matters is that, for their own safety, Beez and Gabriel are gone by this point in the story-- and Gabriel has his memories back. If Gabriel had still been in the bookshop at this point, he could have made it clear that Michael didn't have the power to do that and he might have also been able to tell Crowley and Aziraphale that The Book of Life isn't real, provided he knew the truth about it. One of the reasons to pull Gabriel from the story prior to this, from a writing standpoint, would be to take away a character who could provide Crowley with that knowledge because the point of Crowley having been panicked about it all season is to lead to it affecting how he views the events in this episode and the plan he makes and tries to convey to Aziraphale in the pivotal "no nightingales" scene. You could argue one of the reasons to wait so long for Gabriel to get his memories back in the story is for this purpose-- any sooner and there would have been time to tell Crowley the truth and then you wouldn't have Crowley trying to save Aziraphale from non-existence in 2.06 by suggesting the only thing he can think of that might keep that from happening (which we'll look at in another meta about that scene.)

Because "The Metatron" shuts Michael up about The Book of Life, Aziraphale puts it on simmer in the back of his mind because, as he goes with "The Metatron", he has other, more devilish, concerns on his mind. There is evidence in 2.06 to suggest that, by the time he's come back to the shop after talking with "The Metatron", that he's pretty convinced that there is a strong possbility that this is really Satan and that he could be falling/about to fall.

He tries to convey this to Crowley but Crowley is not only blocked from seeing it because Satan can influence him-- like he did to prompt Crowley into identifying him as The Metatron-- but because Crowley still thinks the bigger threat is The Book of Life. He's still worried that he can't trust his own mind and that Beez was correct. In reality, though, all of the bells and whistles and noise about The Book of Life serves as a distraction from the real threat, which is Aziraphale falling. This influences what plan Crowley comes up with a bit while Aziraphale is with "The Metatron" because his motivation is to keep Aziraphale from being written out of existence.

Now, sure, it's possible that Heaven went and invented The Book of Life and made it a real weapon after it had just originally been a thing Beez and Crowley made up but if you look at what it's supposed to do, it's easy to see how unlikely that actually is. Why?

Because Heaven is a fascist regime run by The Metatron so the goal is always for him to maintain control over his little empire thing here and Extreme Sanctions? It's actually the exact opposite of that. We all know about the butterfly effect-- the idea that a single butterfly flapping its wings in one moment of time, if altered, would cause a ripple effect of other things to be altered that basically changes the course of the known universe, right? If Heaven really were to make it so that even just one of their angels were made to have never existed at all, they've essentially created a parallel universe. While those might likely exist, actively making them is not at all the goal of a character like The Metatron, who has a hard enough time keeping his own regime in line in this present universe.

There's also the question of the fact that this would be erasing one of God's creations in a way that reverses Her decision to have ever created them in the first place and I highly, highly doubt that The Metatron actually has the power to do that, let alone any of the other angels. That feels very "only God could ever do this and She has no desire to" to me.

Beyond that, there's how Crowley phrased it to Beez: "It's just something we used to joke about to frighten the cherubs."

On a show with language this deliberate and that uses the etymological histories of words as part of telling its story, it seems worth pointing out that the origin of the word 'joke' is basically wordplay itself. This would seem like a suggestion to look at the wordplay that sits there in the phrase "Extreme Sanctions" because this very dark-sounding thing can also have a more positive connotation.

While sanctions are a penalty imposed for breaking a rule or an agreement or a law, to sanction something can have one of two extremely different meanings. One is to enforce the penalties we're talking about but the other is the exact opposite of that-- it's to give an official stamp of approval for an action.

Those who are helping keep Gabriel safe from The Metatron in S2 are threatened with "Extreme Sanctions" by Heaven... as in extreme punishment... but they'll likely be met with extreme sanctions by God... as in, God approves of them working together to protect Gabriel and of the actions they'll take as a result of what they learn by doing so.

God's like great job, you guys, extreme sanctions for real, keep it up, now go free the others 👍👍👍make it happen, make it real, kids, let's fucking go... it's not coincidental that I sent you the angel whose name means "messenger" to tell you that I'm giving this whole plot some extreme sanctions here...

You want to erase someone from The Book of Life? Ironically, from what we've seen, besides God, only Crowley himself could probably do that because doing so would alter the makeup of the universe he created and completed with Aziraphale's help.

This is the literal Book of Life:

[actuallymoon]

Hufflepuff! Draco

When it comes to 8th year resorting, people think that Draco would end up in Gryffindor or Ravenclaw, but I really think he'd become a Hufflepuff.

He definitely can't be in Gryffindor because he doesn't have the impulsivity or courage required. If we compare him to Lucius, Draco doesn't have the same boldness he does. Lucius takes risks to get what he wants, he dares to wear a mask and go torture muggles at an event where Aurors are surely present, he isn't scared of the consequences and isn't afraid to stick with the dark lord up until he knew that he will certainly lose. Lucius is also not the best 'cunning and charming diplomat'. He uses force or threats while a more Slytherin approach would be to manipulate the other person into thinking that they want what you want. Draco, on the other hand, doesn't particularly enjoy doing these things and seems too soft to actually want to cause harm (which is the way Gryffindor-ish Slytherins act, like Tom and Lucius).

I can see why some people might regard him as a Ravenclaw because of his creativity and wit, but is it truly what he needs? Draco is the embodiment of creativity meeting intelligence. I can't stop thinking about his 'Potter stinks' badges and how they stayed functional years after he charmed them, especially since most charms tend to last a few hours at most. BUT!!! I have a feeling that he wouldn't be improving/changing if he is placed in Ravenclaw. Most Ravenclaws would leave him alone, nobody would try to be his friend because they're all doing their thing. They'll just be civil with him. That is NOT what he needs. He needs to learn how to be compassionate and kind and that could only be provided by Hufflepuff.

We already know that wands reveal aspects about their owners and that Draco's wand core is unicorn hair. That MUST mean something??! When I knew that, I assumed that Draco had a secret nurturing side that yearned to help others. Unicorn hair also is the core with the lowest propensity to dark magic, so I think that it only performed dark spells, because Draco believed that it was for the greater good (aka cleansing the wizarding world and making it a better place for purebloods). In Huffelpuff, other students would immediately be drawn to help Draco adjust, and in the process, Draco might learn how to extend his desire to help to other people, not just purebloods.

There's a lot more I want to say but it's 2am, and I'm certain that the paragraphs I just wrote make no sense, but wtv. This is just one of my tricks into convincing someone here to write an 8th year Slytherin Harry x Hufflepuff Draco fic. Slytherpuff is the cutest ship dynamic I am afraid.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk 🩷🌙

[gatorbites-imagines]

Paz vizsla x FTM reader please? :3

Paz Vizsla x ftm reader

Headcanons

A shorty but a goody, some Mandalorian culture headcanons mixed in here.

I always had a headcanon that the true mandalorians didn’t have much issue with gender, you just presented however you wanted, and it was no one’s business but your own.

Now, deathwatch and the new mandalorians I think are different, deathwatch were just extremists in most ways, and the new mandalorians were trying too hard to be like the core worlds, so they might have looked at gender more judgingly.

But after the purges and mandalorians having to go underground, they didn’t have time to judge others self-expression, since everyone worried too much about surviving.

That means that Paz doesn’t treat you any differently because of your gender, not at all. In the beginning it probably causes some doubt inside you with how little he seems to care about it, since he doesn’t ask questions or act confused.

Hes just immediately accepting, doesn’t ask why you feel a certain way, or makes you explain your discomfort or experiences to him. If you say you are a certain gender, who is he to judge or decide.

The amount of treatment you get done doesn’t matter either, whether you get hormone treatments and surgeries, or get nothing done at all and don’t wear binders. You’ll still be his boyfriend, how you look doesn’t matter, all that matters to him is that you are comfortable with who you are.

Because of the whole thing that mandalorians don’t have time to worry about anyone elses gender, it also means every other part of the covert just treats you how you present yourself, no questions asked.

The only one who seems to give a shit, is the medic or doctor, as its their duty to know these things and make sure you are healthy, or gives you your hormone treatment if you need it. If you need surgeries, you probably need to get it done somewhere else, as they don’t have the resources for that stuff.

This causes some stress in Paz, and he would want to go with you, but he also knows its dangerous if he does. If Din is still around at this point, he goes with you and brings you back to the covert as quickly and safely as possible.

Paz is the best caretaker in the recovering period if you need it, as he treats it like any type of battle scar, since that’s what it is to him. He just sees it as a symbol that you are becoming who you want to be, plus, scars are very attractive to him.

You can expect him to be able to switch pronouns immediately if you tell him, as pronouns don’t carry much meaning or importance to him since mando’a is pretty gender-neutral language-wise.

He will find a way to get you a binder if you need one, but you must also accept that he is gonna nag you about it and make sure you never wear it longer than necessary. If you as much as dare to sleep in it, he’s cutting it right off you and taking away binder privileges because you are harming yourself.

Paz is also great when you have dysphoric days, as there is no chance of him misgendering you or treating you in ways that make you dysphoric. He goes out of his way to help you out in whatever ways you need, wanting to make you happy and safe.

All in all, he’s a great partner to have as a trans person. Paz can be quite stoic at times, and doesn’t speak a whole lot, but he cares deeply, and finds ways to show it.

[pacing-er]

The Krakoa Era Reading List Cherik Version (PART 2):

4. Reign of X

Another very long series, 14 volumes of content! Similar to Dawn of X Cherik is not the focus of this series plot. However I did like this one a lot more and it introduced some elements that I really loved. For a brief summary this series covers the events leading up to the Hellfire Gala and all factors that went into preparing for it (ft. a LOT of flexing from Magneto XD). It does also cover the Hellfire Gala itself, which was super fun.

To start with the things I loved about it, there were a lot of queer characters and couples in both major plotlines and casual representation. The Make More Mutants™ law of Krakoa always made me feel a little icked out, because of its heteronormative implications. I was surprised to see this sentiment confronted by some of the queer characters themselves:

Pretty soon after this sentiment is expressed, we are presented with several solutions to the issue of same-sex reproduction. One of which is that science is advanced enough on Krakoa to produce a child using both parents DNA regardless of their gender or genitals (or lack thereof):

Another solution presented was that there is a LOT of coupling happening on Krakoa producing babies whose parents aren't ready or willing to raise them. Like. Excessive amounts of babymaking. To the point where people have actually had to start giving out contraceptives to slow it down. These unwanted babies are left waiting to be adopted by mutants or mutant couples who want them:

MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW!!!!!

Speaking of baby-making. Reign of X reintroduces several of Charles and Magnetos children who as of yet had not been mentioned in the Krakoa era. Including Legion, Onslaught, and Wanda (who shows up and dies immediately under mysterious circumstances RIP). Legion's storyline is intertwined with Nightcrawler's while they explore the darker sides of Krakoan society. Nightcrawler is hilarious and adorable in this series btw. Initially Legion is suspected by Charles to be behind the alias of the "Patchwork Man" who has been terrorizing young mutants on Krakoa.

(a moment of appreciation for how scared Charles is of Legion XD)

However after Nightcrawler is sent by Charles to confront Legion we find that this is not the case, and that it is actually Onslaught who is terrorizing Krakoa and feeding off of conflict and negative emotions. For some reason Legion decides to keep this a secret from Magneto and Charles as he and Nightcrawler work to hunt Onslaught down and stop him.

Onslaught must also be kept a secret from the rest of Krakoa, since the psychically-produced hate baby of the nations founding fathers might cause some discourse XD

Also Legion introduces us to the concept of non-physical psychic intimacy (kinda like the psychic intimacy that produced onslaught 🤔🏳️‍🌈?) which can be used by mutants who are unable to touch their partners without harming them. This psychic bond is demonstrated between a lesbian couple.

There's just. So many fun concepts introduced in this series. Most of the stuff above was in the last 2-3 volumes so it wasn't a HUGE part of the story, but a part I very much enjoyed none the less. The confrontation between onslaught and his biological parents hasn't happened yet but I desperately hope that there is a decent payoff. If not I can write one ☺️

As for how much I can recommend this comic based on Cherik-ness, I'd say it's worth a read if not just for the fact that Erik and Charles children are important parts of the story. Charles and Erik themselves don't get much character or relationship development and are just kind of managing the goings of the island like normal.

You can see my part 1 to this series under the tag #krakoa era reading list

[molinaskies]

The thing that bugs me about the many conflicts of interest that happen between sonic and shadow is that no one in the fandom seems to consider that the fact sonic was wrong doesn't mean shadow was right

This is such a good point. Say it louder for the people in the back!

Sonic and Shadow fundamentally butt heads because of how they both view their responsibilities to protect the world.

The most pointed example of this for me is the inciting incident in Sonic Prime. I’ve already said a while back that I think Shadow is equally to blame for shattering the crystal because he was the one who prevented Sonic from doing what he had to do. I got some pushback saying that Sonic was the instigator of Shadow’s aggression, but I have a hard time believing that when Shadow literally greeted Sonic with a punch. Yes, Sonic still made a lot of mistakes that I acknowledged in my original post, but Shadow immediately set the tone for that encounter and it was NOT positive. My point in bringing this up again is to say that they both fucked up, but Shadow, the show itself, and much of the viewers blame exclusively Sonic because Shadow somehow stole the moral highground.

More nuanced, however, is the discussion around Sonic’s moral code as presented in the IDW comics (which are canon to the mainline series, btw, if anyone didn’t know. They are the same picture).

In issue 7, Sonic and Shadow argue over whether Eggman should live freely as Mr. Tinker. Shadow states that Eggman deserves to pay for all the pain he’s put Sonic through (among the other harm he’s caused). While Sonic agrees, he hinges on the fact that Eggman isn’t around anymore. Sonic doesn’t want to punish Mr. Tinker because he doesn’t want to be an arbiter of justice.

Yes, Sonic was “wrong,” but was Shadow really right in this case? Everyone in-universe gets upset with Sonic for not knowing something he reasonably had no way of knowing (literally who tf would have predicted Starline? lol) but what they’re really upset with is the fact that Sonic didn’t mitigate the risk.

I really feel like you can’t ascribe moral boundaries to these things. One isn’t good while the other is bad and vice versa. It’s all shades of gray.

[michirukaioureincarnate]

You know, with discussions of Neil Gaiman and all the disappoinment that's followed, especially of his admirers that are struggling with him not being the basic decent human being we expected and believed him to be, there's a lot of inner reflection that needs to be done to prevent more heart ache.

Not only that, but this is a wake up call to stop putting human beings on a pedestal. No one is above causing harm. Not you, not your mom, not anyone. Especially men. I don't know if this is just my way of thinking, but every single man is a potential s*x *ff*nd*r.

It's not a generaliziation, but an indisputable pattern after years of social, biological, political, and systemic conditioning. It's not a matter of if, but when, and sometimes the when never comes because the man luckily dies without tainting his slate. And if he does commit the crime, he's more likely to get away with it than his victim ever is of healing from it. The richer he is, the easier it is, but even men without power and resources get off with a slap on the wrist.

But that isn't really the point, and bear with me as I try to articulate myself through the nausea I'm feeling since stumbling upon the recent news. If you're hurt, disappointed, confused, and struggling with it because you have so much love for this man and his works: good.

You're not brushing it off. You're not acting like it's okay. If you're finding ways to justify your love for his art amidst the small voice of guilt in your chest, it's because you're a human being who, at your core, acknowledges that you don't agree with what he did. If there's an iota of fear that you may harbor the same negative qualities he does that compelled him to act so heinously, no you don't.

Before Gaiman was ousted as a predator, you knew him as a creative, a visionary, whatever positive perspective you had of him, and you wanted to admire that. Undeniably, Gaiman's a wonderful storyteller AND a s*x *ff*nd*r. The latter doesn't negate the former. But it's possible that it may have dictated some of his creative choices.

But how would you know which ones? You're not him, and you're someone who is self-aware and accountable enough to not do what he did when he hurt someone.

On that note: you are not him. You don't know him personally, neither does he know you personally. There's nothing to defend about him, because he's not yours to defend. His works aren't yours to defend.

That's his job.

Have some emotional boundaries and decenter yourselves from his life so that you're able to swallow the truth of the matter: that Gaiman's hurt real people who have to live with lifelong emotional and even physcial scars.

His actions have nothing to do with you as a fan or admirer, and the least you can do is withdraw your support until he, by some miracle, proves himself innocent and regains your trust.

YOU, as the consumer, are the prize here, not him. Have some standards for yourselves, my goodness. YOU, as a human being, are a completely separate entity from him and his actions. Gaiman would be nothing without those who actively decided on giving his works a shot.

And his ideas, whether you decide to continue consuming them or not, do not completely belong to him. Artists channel inspirations of life as they go through it, inspired by people they meet and events that happen to them, most of these things being external factors that are open to interpretation regardless of the artist's internal perspective that they present it with.

What you should worry about is if your money is going directly to him and his team, which may be used to suppress the victim's voices and provide him an unfair advantage in the matter. This is something that's still in your control more than anything else. Hell, pirate his stuff and consume it in secret if you really can't let go of it.

The conversations around "separating the art and artist" are important, and I personally don't believe in separating them at all, but a more immediate concern is to stop contributing to the artist through their art as soon as something concerning crops up. He's a business man, and you're his investors. Take your space. Breathe. Rationalize. And let his social stock value plummet, jfc, he'll still survive without your money and adoration. As long as you're not directly contributing to his ability to inflict more harm, allow yourself the space to grieve.

And, please, you're your own person. If anything, you're probably going to be the next writer, director, artist, etc who creates stuff that's on par with his or even better. Only difference will be that you won't be someone who actively hurts people.

[herefortheships]

You want to know something that has me thinking about Lydia's characterization in BJBJ? She clearly has bad anxiety and seems pretty traumatized by her ability to see ghosts to some extent, but it's unclear what exactly drove her to feel this way about being able to see ghosts, when in her past, it didn't seem to bother her.

Lowkey they seemed to hint at her experience with Betelgeuse being the cause of her trauma (which makes it look like at the end when she banishes him at the wedding that's her overcoming her trauma and fears), but that seems extremely strange a choice, if that's the case, considering that at the end of the previous film some time seemed to have passed from the events at the end (Otho's ritual with the Maitlands, the wedding, etc), and Lydia seemed really happy at the end of the movie. In fact she seemed to be styling herself less goth-like (although arguably that could be because she's back in school and they may not allow her to style herself that way at school lol), which visually I think it's done to show how she's not depressed and thinking about death anymore.

She seemed to be happy coexisting with not just the Maitlands but with the occasional ghosts that she'd see around. That last part is my speculation, though, based on ghosts of the football team dancing behind her on the stairs, which she didn't seem to mind at all.

My point is: Lydia seemed perfectly happy at the end of the first movie, which disqualifies the events of that movie as the cause of her present anxiety.

It had to have been something else. I wonder if I just need a rewatch of BJBJ; was it made clear why Lydia is struggling with anxiety and needing medications? What exactly happened in Lydia's life that drove her to that? Was it losing Richard? She explained in the movie that that relationship was over long before whatever happened to Richard, though of course not knowing what exactly happened to him MUST have affected her, despite the status of that relationship. So one could think losing him is part of that anxiety. But the thing is, though, she seemed to be most anxious when seeing flashes of Betelgeuse... So that's why it seems to me that her anxiety is more related to her ability to see ghosts (and more specifically with seeing Betelgeuse) over anything else.

So I have to wonder, has he done something to scare her at some point over the years since their last encounter? Or did she have another terrible experience with another ghost/entity that really scared her and reminded her that ghosts/demons like Betelgeuse exist, and now that she's seeing him she's scared he will harm her? The movie really didn't make it clear what happened in Lydia's life to bring her to this point and especially to make her so scared of potentially encountering Betelgeuse again.

Mind you, the first thing she thought about when Astrid was taken was to find Betelgeuse and ask for his help, when we know she can 1) Talk to ghosts, so if she needed to find one to draw a door to the other side so she could find Astrid, she could have found some other ghost? Since she's supposed to be so "scared" of Betelgeuse. And 2) She already knows how to get to the other side, so back to point one, she didn't exactly need to use Betelgeuse to get there. Anyway, she was in a hurry/desperate, so maybe instead of looking for a random ghost she decided to look for the one she knew she could find and who'd help her immediately (the same one the movie has for some reason decided that she is most afraid of. lol).

I think there's potential to explore Lydia more deeply in the next movie. I just don't believe that her experience with Betelgeuse in the previous film is responsible for her current emotional state. I am positive she knows that Betelgeuse, as creepy as he can get, would never do anything to truly harm her; his motivations were never to harm her, but to leave the afterlife. The most he can do is try to marry her. And as far as Lydia knows, what could that do to them? All we really know is that he'll materialize in this world in some form. In that case, if he leaves the afterlife and incarnates here, wouldn't that make him human (or just, alive), and remove his powers? So, again, he wouldn't have a means to harm Lydia (and would he want to harm the person who helped him escape the afterlife like he so wanted?). Many questions. lol But I'm sure the marriage contract wouldn't bind Lydia to anything else that is nefarious, as far as she's concerned, since the marriage is a condition Betelgeuse needs to fulfill so he can leave the afterlife. Again, many questions, and Lydia's story is pretty open to interpretation, I guess, as far as her past goes. I just wish we could know what exactly happened, because the first movie is no indication or justification for her current state; there's nothing in that ending that shows Lydia will be traumatized 30+ years after what happeend.

[honestlyboringperson]

Team BEST in the Persona 5 AU! Skizz looks like utter dogshit because I can’t draw muscles! Sorry Skizz!

Also yes, Etho’s outfit is partially based on @/spell-struck’s Arcana Swap AU design for Yusuke. Go check it out! Their designs are amazing.

Again, More Information is under the cut.

Southlanders

The Scottage + Gem

Fairy Fort

Magical Mountain + Cub

Bdubs - “Scout” - The Lovers Arcana - Peter Pan/Orobas

A man of short stature and an even shorter fuse, Bdubs is a college student pursuing a degree in architecture and is known for his dubious ability to immediately know what field someone should go into. Be it art, film, or even just mathematics, his judgement is never wrong which led him to be recruited into a local theatre troupe to help with casting members to roles. This causes him to befriend a certain young prodigy actor who specializes in theatrically heroic protagonists and bombastically charismatic villains.

His persona is Peter Pan who is a famous pop culture character. Peter Pan is known for his devil may care attitude and his claims of greatness. His abilities allow himself and others to fly, and in this AU, Bdubs is known for uplifting others with both his scouting abilities and work as a phantom thief. Bdubs is also quite boastful, also fitting with Peter Pan’s character.

His Ultimate Persona is Orobas, a Great Prince of Hell and a Goetic Demon. He is the patron of horses, and gives power and control over others. He also can protect people from evil spirits and is clairvoyant. No wonder Bdubs “Horsegirl Supreme” got this guy as his ultimate persona.

Etho - “Shade” - The Hanged Man Arcana - Arahabaki/Inari-Okami

Etho is a mysterious college student known throughout the campus as being aloof, quiet, and even possibly dangerous. Those close to him know he’s just socially awkward. At a young age, he is known for his inventions in engineering and was presented with several scholarships to several prestigious institutions across the city. Unfortunately, he is horrendously bad at anything that isn’t engineering, with his apartment in shambles and his diet mostly consisting of energy drinks and a wide variety of instant ramen.

Arahabaki is a Japanese god of uncertain origin, with this particular portrayal & the one in the Shin Megami Tensei franchise being mainly inspired by the forgery by Tsugaru Soto-Sangunshi. They are a symbol of treachery, rebellion, and heresy after Emperor Jimmu found his enemy Nagasunehiko worshipped him.

Inari Okami is the kami of foxes, fertility, rice, tea, and general worldly success. They are the reason several shrines in Japan have fox statues and they are known for their ability to shapeshift. Their entourage was made up of pure white kitsune, categorized as “zenko” as opposed to the malicious “yako” kitsune.

Skizz - “Knight” - The Justice Arcana - Templar/Heracles

Skizz is Impulse’s best friend and former police officer. He currently works as a construction worker, but helps Impulse with his smithing business. He was fired after directly opposing the corruption that began to spread throughout the city’s police force, and his name was slandered. Despite these tragedies, he keeps a goofy and cheerful demeanour throughout his days. Despite no longer being in the police force, he will not overlook anything he sees as harmful.

Templar, full name Simon Templar is a Robin Hood figure coined “The Saint”. His calling card consists of a stick figure with a halo, and said calling cards were often given to corrupt politicians, warmongers, and other similar low-lives. He was described as “a buccaneer in the suits of Savile Row, amused, cool, debonair, with hell for leather blue eyes, and a saintly smile.”

Heracles is a famed Roman hero, and is considered the god of strength and heroes. He is most known for his tale of the twelve labours, wherein he completes twelve labours set by King Eurystheus to atone for killing his family after Hera makes him temporarily lose his mind. These tasks were aided by his allies and finished with a combination of strength, trickery, and camaraderie.

Tango - “Blaze” - The Magician Arcana - Guy Fawkes/Nimrod

Tango is a popular novelist and D&D master, known for his works in the fantasy horror novel franchise “Decked Out”. Although the original novels were made to satisfy his own desire to tell a compelling story, he becomes severely creatively blocked and is unable to keep up with the demands of his fans. After joining, he’s trying to start fresh with a new franchise, and is currently looking for inspiration for a new novel with the help of Jimmy.

Guy Fawkes is a key figure behind the infamous & controversial Gunpowder Plot. The Gunpowder Plot was a planned regicide, with several barrels of gunpowder being hidden within or near the House of Parliament, with Guy Fawkes being in charge of the explosives. The plan was to blow up the Parliament with the King James I inside and instate a Catholic monarch to the throne. Despite the motives being questionable, the plan failed and all the offenders, Guy Fawkes include were executed for treason. Today, in celebration of the king’s survival and the failure of the plan or simply enjoying the festivities, Bonfire Night was created, with several bonfires, fireworks, and other similar events taking place.

Nimrod is the architect of the Tower of Babel and is known as a king who rebelled against god themselves. The Tower of Babel was intended to reach towards the heavens, but God struck it down and changed the language of the people so they could no longer understand each other and scatters them across the earth.

[mdhwrites]

How do you feel about Alador (if you haven't already talked about him before)?

Opens mouth

Closes mouth

You know what? I don't think I really have. Not on his own at least. Admittedly, like many parent characters, it's hard to talk about him as just his own character. The other side of that coin though is that unlike other parental characters, it's much less about his kids than it is about his wife. You know, someone else who really isn't much of a character and doesn't work.

Add to this the flip flopping, wishy washy nature of his character and you have someone who is hard to judge as anything but a waste of time. He spends 80% of the series quite literally only backing everything Odalia says. The one time he disagrees is to point out that his wife's goals are being met despite them not being through her own agenda so maybe it's okay to let Amity have this win? That is still serving her interests though and instead just presenting a second view point.

As a character, he is just a feckless father. The most basic stereotype of a dad who works too much, mixed with VERY forced moments of being easily distractable which don't even feel accurate to the one episode they're a part of his character, Escaping Expulsion. Just as Odalia is boring in that she is what you think of for an evil capitalist, Alador is just as basic.

This is also why the only thing people bring up about him is his inconsistency. How the show never shows him as anything other than entirely loyal to Odalia before turning him around 180 degrees and expecting the audience to believe it. There just is little else to talk about. Any wasted potential you want to even claim is mostly within Odalia already, making it feel like Amity could have honestly had just one parent and nothing would have changed besides Amity's motivation for wanting to enter the Bonesborough Brawl. Yes, you could claim the Abomatons too but if you make Odalia the abominations user, that is immediately fixed. Because that is all, story wise, Alador actually contributes.

If there is a writing lesson to be taken from Alador, it's actually WHY parents seem to never be around in shows. It is the importance of understanding what elements are important to your show and necessary. The best example of this is Clouds on the Horizon. Let me explain in the best way I can:

The love interest for the story has just been told they must be without their love. Not only that but that to continue being a part of their family and society, she must stand by cruelty and evil. The one forcing this upon her is her own mother. Everything that has been the push and pull of the character comes down to this. To reject the past, the traditions that cause harm, and embrace an uncertain, beautiful, warm future.

"No but you were very close!"

And in one line, all that weight is lost. It is not Amity overcoming all of this. It is not Amity's morals winning out versus her mother's. It's not even love winning out over hate. No, now it's some asshole who hates his wife enough that he's decided to betray her and fight her. The narrative climax of one of your main characters, one of the ones with the most plot lines related to her and what could have been a powerful climax is instead given to a minor character who has barely had twenty minutes combined in the entire series up until now.

That to me is his greatest sin. How him never existing would have strictly made the show better. Because eventually you need to figure out what your story is about and what is actually needed to tell it instead of providing endless repetitions that only get weaker with each retelling.

And boy, by the time Alador is telling the tale of his redemption. that tape is well worn and never belonged to him in the first place.

======+++++======

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: PITT

Published: Sep 30, 2023

Our son recently started graduate school. He began hormone therapy during his final year of undergraduate education. Because he began to identify as a lesbian, transgender woman at 20 and showed no sign of gender dysphoria before that, we never had a chance to reflect – or advise him – on his choices. Going through the published medical research on the effects of estrogen made me aware that psychologically, excess estradiol in the serum causes depression among males, and physiologically, there are potentially much more severe side effects, including some impacting the brain and the immunological system. More of that in a minute.

Fast forwarding to the present day, before our son left for graduate school at a University with one of the country's most renowned medical schools. I decided to write to their student health center and share the studies I had found and, more relevantly, the psychological history of our child. What follows is the text of the letter and, after deleting potentially identifying information, the response from a high-ranking official within the health center. They are, for the lack of a better phrase, quite revealing.

First, my letter (I have not disclosed the name of the university and have changed the name of our child here, with apologies to the real Jonathans of the world; furthermore, apologies for the triggering usage of pronouns – I did not want to be dismissed as the “usual, hateful, bigoted transphobe”; rather, I wanted to be considered as the deadly serious parent who would do anything in their power to prevent their child from coming to harm):

-

Dear Apex University Health Center,

Our child, Jonathan, who is joining the graduate program at Apex University this Fall, identified themself as transgender during their sophomore year in college (2021) and started estrogen therapy in early 2023. Since every one of these interventions is off-label, I have been looking up the peer-reviewed literature on the effect of estrogen and whether there are any risks that our child needs to be aware of as they continue on this path. My findings, which I summarize below (and link to the sources), have been alarming. Several endocrinologists – some who publish extensively – have told me they were unaware of the new literature. I have also been in touch with the Endocrine Society, and their response heightened my alarm.

While we respect our child's identification with their gender identity, we felt that they exhibited several psychological symptoms right before identifying as a lesbian, transgender woman (Jonathan was assigned male at birth and did not show any inclinations to identify as female before April 2021), and these co-occurring symptoms were not considered at all before he started on the prescribed medicines. Most tellingly, just before identifying as transgender, Jonathan's romantic advances were rebuffed by the woman of their affection. Subsequently, Jonathan also lost every friend they had, thereby remaining completely alone in their dorm room for the greater part of their last two years of undergraduate education. However, these psychological symptoms were never explored. Jonathan was recommended to start on estradiol and spironolactone immediately, which they did – and their physical and mental health symptoms have deteriorated since. Jonathan is also quite depressed, spending all their time without emerging from their room.

That is not surprising since, when it comes to the recent research on estrogen in natal males, excess estrogen in the serum in natal males has been associated with depression – studies among adult men and adolescent boys show that. Clinical studies (i.e., studies that recruit actual subjects and follow them clinically rather than rely on anonymous, online, non-probability surveys) that promote gender medicine fail to show any improvement in psychosocial outcomes among natal males. For example, the New England Journal of Medicine study from early 2023 concluded that hormone therapy is psychologically beneficial for transgender youth. However, in the main text, the study finds no improvement in depression, anxiety symptoms, or life satisfaction among natal male youth (the relevant paragraph is at the bottom of page 244 of the journal issue).

Thus, psychologically, there is ample evidence that excess estrogen is associated with depression among natal males. Physiologically, recent research shows that estrogen might have far more deleterious effects. A study showed that 12 months of estrogen treatment among transgender women leads to a decrease in serum BDNF levels. That is significant because a separate study shows that this decrease in serum BDNF level is associated with increased risks of developing MDD (or major depressive disorder).  Lower levels of brain BDNF levels have also been associated with neurodegenerative disorders and found in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's, Parkinson’s, MS, and Huntington’s disease.

A high-quality rodent study shows that estrogen therapy among adult male rats leads to changes in their brains that resemble the changes in the brains of trans women. (There have been several other studies (2 links) among trans women that have shown these changes, but the rodent study indicated the mechanism by which these changes occurred in the brain.) Specifically, estrogen seemingly reduced the water content in the astrocytes and thereby disturbed the delicate homeostasis in the brain by increasing the relative concentration of glutamate (the brain's most abundant excitatory neurotransmitter), leading to glutamate excitotoxicity. As the Cleveland Clinic informs us, an increase in glutamate in the brain is associated with higher risks of neurological disorders like Alzheimer's disease, ALS, and many other diseases like multiple sclerosis. The research also showed that estrogen decreased brain cortical thickness and volume (which other studies have linked to patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and lower levels of general intelligence). Furthermore, it was found to reduce cortical white matter integrity (which is related to cognitive instability). There is also empirical evidence of the lowering of cognitive abilities among transgender women that was presented at the EPATH conference in April 2023 (in Killarney, Ireland) - the researchers noted this decline among long-term patients at Amsterdam's famed gender clinic.

Research in the last few years shows that estrogen therapy among trans women has been associated with higher risks of various autoimmune diseases, from multiple sclerosis (recall, too, the association of MS with an increase in glutamate) to rheumatoid arthritis and many others in between. It has been associated with increases in the risks of prostate cancer and breast cancer. It increases risks of cardiovascular diseases (2 links), often by as much as tenfold compared to their cisgender counterparts.

Empirically, we see a much higher incidence of many of these physical and neurological diseases in the transgender population. It is perhaps not a coincidence, therefore, that population cohort studies (2 links) show that trans women, on average, die decades earlier than either cisgender men or women.

When I approached the Endocrine Society with what I had found and pointed out that many of these findings came out after the publication of their guidelines in 2017, I received an email from their Director of Clinical Practice Guidelines that they are currently fast-tracking a revision of those guidelines. She also mentioned that their evidence evaluation criteria have changed since the guidelines were published and that they now use the GRADE criteria for evaluating evidence. This is encouraging, but I have no idea how long it will take for the new guidelines to appear.

I point all of this out because Jonathan has the chance to start afresh and be reevaluated at Apex University's healthcare system. We increasingly see them stumbling with their memory, something that we could not even think of a year earlier – Jonathan used to have a photographic memory ever since they were a child. Having heard so much about Apex's medical school, we have high hopes that Jonathan's evaluation at Apex University's medical system will be more thorough than it has been so far. Let me be clear: We have no doubt about their gender dysphoria or their intense discomfort in their traditional gender role – we worry about that all the time. It is just that we have observed that medicalization has not brought them any balm so far – in fact, just the opposite. While the absence of any upsides (and the possible significant downsides) in the literature – psychological or otherwise – heightens our alarm.

After all, it is not only a lone voice like ours, but even mainstream media like the Economist (their April 5 issue with the cover story “The evidence to support medicalized gender transitions in adolescents is worryingly weak” comes to mind) and storied institutions like the British Medical Association and the systematic reviews of the literature from national medical associations of very transgender-friendly countries like Sweden, Finland, Norway, the UK, and (most recently) Denmark that are raising the alarm on the lack of high-quality evidence of any benefits from hormone therapy. (And these reviews I mention above cover only the evidence of the psychological effects of the hormones – they do not even consider the long-term physiological consequences.)

If all the evidence from the past few years is to be believed, there is now quite a body of evidence of genuine harm from administering estrogen to the natal male body (I have not researched the effects of excess testosterone on the natal female body, and so I cannot comment on that.)

As one of the world's leading lights in healthcare to nudge society toward better outcomes through research, Apex University will be well placed to lead the march for evidence-based care in gender-affirming care.

Thank you very much for reviewing the evidence that I have found and considering our child's health as they start their journey at Apex University. Please let me know if you have any questions. I look forward to hearing back from you.

With warmest regards,

XXX

-

A few days later, I got their response. I have highlighted the relevant portions of their email and annotated them within brackets [all formatting mine]. As I said, it’s quite revealing.

-

Dear XXX:

Thank you very much for sharing your concerns about your child with us.

…Apex U's Student Health Center (Apex SHC) is not directly affiliated with Apex Medical School and we do not provide care under the umbrella of the hospital. [Is the respondent making sure that the medical school is not implicated if something goes wrong with our son?] However, we do collaborate closely with our colleagues at the hospital and medical school, including in the management of our student receiving gender affirming care.

…

Gender affirming care is a unique process in medicine in that we are not aiming to treat and eliminate a disease process. [Ah, an admission that there is no real goal of treatment through this care. Finally! But read on…it gets better.] Instead, we are using the tools of medicine to help individuals achieve very personal and sometimes nebulous [nebulous? WTF? After all these years of "settled science," all we have is “nebulous?”] physical and emotional goals. Success is not based on a clinical metric but usually involves a better quality of life balanced with potential risks including morbidity and mortality. [So, finally, an explicit admission – success is not based on any clinical metric. That makes complete sense to us inconvenient parents. After all, how can there be? There never have been any metrics, ever. At. All. All we have are some "nebulous" ideas of "better quality of life" – as decided by the patient right now, with no consideration of what might happen in the future as a result of the free dispensation of off-label medication. And oh, by the way, that "better quality of life" includes morbidity factors and dying much faster.] We at the Apex SHC make every effort to ensure that our patients are well-informed [in other words, make sure that they have signed the informed consent forms!] about each decision that they make and have time to consider these impacts without pressure [The irony of the sentence – “have time to consider these impacts without pressure.” Wow! really?]

Should your child decide to engage with us in care, our commitment to them is to prioritize their safety [oh, the irony, once more!], the elements of their well-being that we can support [the rest – whether caring for them for the rest of their lives or paying for their illnesses and hospitalizations, with a big fuck you to your dwindling retirement funds – is up to you, you bigoted parents!], and to help them make a bright future for themselves.

Very best,

AAA

-

As I read and re-read the email, all I could think was – Wow! What an amazing letter! AAA has no qualms admitting that there are no clinical goals of treatment when it comes to gender-affirming care. This is really quite convenient if you think about it—if there are no aims, any outcome is fine! No wonder these physicians get all flustered when we inconvenient parents ask them about clinical goals and outcomes.

All that these caring physicians want to achieve are some nebulous (which the dictionary defines as unclear, vague, or indefinite) goals. Oh, and please remember – once again – that those are personal goals, so please don’t ask about evidence of well-being. (An inconvenient question, though – why should such personal goals be funded by others, whether it is the government or private insurance?)

And what if, as a result of those nebulous goals, the patients go through psychological, emotional, and physical distress for the rest of their lives, as detailed in the medical literature? Really, shame on you, you bigoted parents! Always such a nag! Always the party pooper. Why do you have to ask such inconvenient questions? Haven’t these caring physicians already made it clear that these are personal goals and that it really doesn’t matter that young children who are distressed might have no idea how to make a rational choice about the future? Who cares if they become hyper-fixated about something, as young children are wont to?

But then again, really, there is no pressure. No pressure at all. These kids are otherwise well-adjusted grown adults who know exactly who they are. Probably from the time they were toddlers. (What? You want evidence? This is getting really tiring. Give it a break, will you?) These are kids who are not immersed online, who do not gulp down narratives about “gender euphoria.” They are stable, rational human beings with a very clear idea of what the future holds.

All these well-meaning saints – these gender-affirming physicians – want is to give these kids a bright future: a future so bright that it will probably include that intense bright light these pitiable young men will see when they die decades earlier than their non-medicalized peers. Who are you parents to stand in their way?

==

This is quite a remarkable admission. If there are no metrics and the objectives are "nebulous," then that's the very definition of not-scientific, not-medical. How can this be "necessary," and even "life-saving" if it's also "nebulous"? God is both real and undetectable?

How can it be "settled science"?

You're letting people self-diagnose and self-prescribe in order to chase something nebulous? What the hell?

[bengiyo]

La Pluie Deserves a Standing Ovation

I hope y’all didn’t think I’d forgotten about this show after the finale. I was just traveling and have been too busy to write this final review.

La Pluie has been one of the most enjoyable experiences I’ve had as a viewer of TV ever. This show told us exactly what it was from the very opening scenes, and then spent the entire show paying that off. This show opened with an explanation about soulmates, and then immediately countered that with Tai’s parents’ divorce, the note that the pairing of people is ultra-rare, and a happy couple that wasn’t a soulmate pair in a café. Throughout the show it repeatedly stressed that love is about how we treat each other and not something you win via a lottery. It’s so rare these days that we get a show that trusts their audience this much to follow the thread and think about the big ideas along the way.

Doubt and Faith in Acts

One of my favorite things I observed in the show is that only Patts and Tien consistently make the kinds of choices that lead to long-term love without getting their asses handed to them. @shortpplfedup observed during her catch up that this story featured four different kinds of believers: an apostate, an agnostic, a believer, and an atheist. It’s notable that the apostate (Tai) and the atheist (Lomfon) are the ones causing the most harm to other people in the way they treat others.

Throughout the show, both Tai and Lomfon keep making standoffish choices. Tai has cut off his mom and avoids his coworkers. Lomfon is rude and standoffish. Neither of them is able to hold on to their loves because they are incapable of letting go of their own bullshit.

Conversely, Tien goes out of his way to take care of his brother, his family, and eventually Lomfon. I actually liked that Tai and Lomfon had to make opposite choices in the finale. Lomfon needed to show in his actions that he was serious about Tien, whereas Tai needed to show in his words that he was actually listening to what Patts had been asking for.

For Patts, he doesn’t believe that he and Saengtai are meant to be together because they’re connected by the rain. He does the work of caring for Tai because he is kind. He loves Tai because he’s Tai and not because he’s his soulmate. Patts stays present for Tai. He respects his boundaries. He tries to help Tai deal with his problems. He trusts him.

The Ambiguity

As a lapsed Catholic, I gotta say that I really love the way this show ended without fixing all of the soulmate stuff and giving concrete answers. I like that the show holds firm to its conviction that love is not ordained by the narrative; it is something built by people doing the work to be together. I love how this show challenged the notion of the narrative itself mandating the characters be together and instead reminded them (and us) to be present for our loved ones and to listen to their needs.

I think this show would have been weaker if Tai and Patts had restored their rain connection at the end. Besides, I think it gives them room to play with that idea if they get a second season. I also liked that Tien started hearing someone at the end of the season. He is a believer in soulmates, and I think it’ll be interesting to see someone as earnest as him face that challenge.

Releasing the Tension

Before I get to wrapping up, I want to reiterate again that this show has two plot-relevant blowjobs in it. So often these shows tease us and then don’t release the tension. Worse, when they do release the tension it doesn’t always feel like it’s something the characters lean into with their new dynamic.

After episode 5 ended, @ginnymoonbeam teased me for having a moment of panic that maybe I was misreading the show and that somehow Patts wasn’t into Saengtai because of how often I’ve been tricked or teased. Instead, these two end up making out on the floor and Patts was going to blow that man. Then, we don’t cut away from them. We watch them talk about what happened and why Tai is holding back.

Going further, they let Patts and Tai find peace and closure with Nara. Moreover, they treat Nara’s heartbreak seriously. She isn’t ejected from the group, and is allowed to be disappointed and sad about the loss. At the end of the show, they also confirm our suspicions about her and Dream.

It’s just incredible to have watched a show that didn’t rely on teasing us and instead treated the sex and intimacy seriously.

Thank You To Everyone Who Watched La Pluie

I cannot overstate how much joy I got from watching this show along with all of you. When @lurkingshan and I began writing earnestly around episode 4 in the hopes that more people would join us on this show, I did not expect so many of you to actually give it a try.

I think, if you have held off on watching this show because you’ve been waiting for confirmation about one plot point or another, just watch it if you’re still on the fence. When you do watch it, try to let go of what you think is supposed to happen or what you want to happen, and instead respond to what the show is giving you. This has been the most legible show at this caliber I’ve experienced since I Told Sunset About You (2020).

At no point did this show try to trick us about anything, and it trusts us to keep up and engage. This show is better when you lean in. It’s better when you discuss it with others. For a show so much about questioning belief, it is amazing how much this show rewards you for believing in it. I don’t know a better show this year.

I have a lot of folks I want to acknowledge here at the end, including but not limited to:

I want to thank @wanderlust-in-my-soul, @pharawee, and @liyazaki for letting me use their gifs in my posts.

I want to thank @lurkingshan and @ginnymoonbeam for being first through the door with me and committing to getting more folks to watch this show.

I want to thank @respectthepetty and @absolutebl for regularly sticking it out for shows and giving them an earnest watch through their lenses.

I want thank everyone else who contributed incredibly thoughtful writing to this experience, including @shortpplfedup, @syrena-del-mar, @neuroticbookworm, @wen-kexing-apologist, @chickenstrangers, @recentadultburnout, @williamrikers, @heretherebedork, @shouldiusemyname, @sunshinechay, @fadelikeclouds, @slayerkitty, @chinzhilla, @indigostarfire, @iguessitsjustme and @rocketturtle4

See you all in the next show!