#but i think probably just because of his own blindness and self preservation that resulted in a lot of self centeredness

[stompandhollar]

something something, the symbolism of how Stan and Ford were only able to see eye to eye when they were wearing one another’s clothes.

something about Ford in Stanley’s clothes, staring at his mirror image in his, and finally seeing Stan for who he has always been— a hero. who saved his family with his bare hands simply because of how much he loved them. a hero who has been protecting that family since he was a child and hasn’t ever stopped. Something about it finally clicking to Ford in that moment.

[sunthyme]

LAST PART!!! WE'RE IN THE HOME STRETCH, BOIS! Thank y'all so much, I know I keep saying it but I really appreciate y'all sm. The next post I do will feature my Yuusona or Prefect design and some headcanons featuring it. After that, I'll give y'all some options to see whatcha'll want. Now for...

🌹Diasomnia🌹

The disclaimer from Ignihyde is still in effect here, most of my headcanons are either because it looked cool or sounded cool lmao.

First up is...

🐉Malleus Draconia🐉

(he/she/they/it any basically) Agender - Panromantic Asexual

*giggles, kicks feet, twirls hair* Mal... Anyways! Some of y'all probably been waiting for this one! My silly fae prince, whose identity may or may not be based on my own. Sue me, this bitch is hella relatable.

- So, onto the headcanons, I felt like Mal wasn't all that intimidating when he first popped up outside our house. Idk, I see a cat-type personality and all my self preservation is thrown out the nearest window. She's just a big meow. But I wanted them to actually look rather intimidating, making his bangs cover his eyes a bit more, darker makeup, whatnot.

- I know Mal is canonically taller than the rest of the cast but Imma make her even taller. Its 6'6" without the horns and like 6'11 or 7' with them. I want them to be a cryptid!! Also the height difference with Lilia bout to be crazy.

- I like the idea that my prefect made her some lil Howl's Moving Castle earrings, even though it obvious doesn't exist in their world. Or maybe it does??? Who knows.

- *scientist voice* The autism is this subject is astronomical. *cough* Yeah, it's also not up for debate. The gargoyles, the general demeanour. Yuu is their favoured person.

- Malleus and my prefect would probably interact a little differently than Yuu does canonically, as we're both silly little autistic people, but I'll save that for my Yuusona post lol.

- Really tempted to throw in that it has a forked tongue. Does have fangs but Mal and Jamil probably both have forked tongues, j st for funsies.

- Loves to read sappy romance novels, is giggling and kicking her feet at soulmate stuff in particular. Has a whole list of little date ideas in a notebook (totally not saying this because /I/ have one or anything)...

Not mush else to say give I've only canonically interacted with her like three times but now for everyone's favourite grandpa!

🦇Lilia Vanrouge🦇

(he/she) - Bisexual

- Teehee! So I saw someone headcanons Lilia as Indian and I was SO here for it, though I think he's be half Indian, half Mexican or smth.

- Gave this girl SO many piercing. I feel like she got them 'cause she was bored. Idk, 500 years is pretty old, ya gotta spice things up some how.

- Some scars from 'ye old days'(tm) and I made his hair a bit wavy and added a green gradient to the ends, just to mimick Malleus' hair. Also, this bitch stands a proud 5'3" on a good day (aka with heels).

- He's the kind of dad that makes his kids wear matching pjs during the winter holidays and while he knows his kids like the back of his hand, chooses to give them silly gifts most of the time. Also, he spoils Mal and Silver rotten.

- Absolutely tries to get Malleus to properly flirt with MC but it never works out like he plans. Silver just watches with mild amusement.

Speaking of Silver,

🗡️Silver Vanrouge🗡️

(he/they) Demiboy - Achillic Asexual

- Yes, I was mad he doesn't canonically have a last name. I figured that Lilia would have officially adopted him at some point or another and typically you need a last name for a lot of things so I just gave them Lilia's.

- I think that Silver's gray hair is natural and once it gets to be a certain length, it just becomes gray. Additionally, Lilia's a cool dad so Silver got dyed ends and piercings too.

- I actually headcanon that Silver's blind and has narcolepsy (though that's pretty much canon). It was likely from birth or manifested early on and as a result, Malleus is a bit protective of Silver (and Sebek is too but he'd never admit it lol). He has a service dog, which is probably a cute golden retriever named Aurora, and records lectures to listen back to. He, Kalim, and Ruggie have little study groups as second years. Also, Silver's autistic. Lilia really out here collecting autistic children lmaooo.

- He really likes to knit. Don't ask why but I think he'd enjoy the rhythym of it. (He's made Ruggie and Kalim scarves and both treasure them a ton) He likes to make blankets for Malleus and Lilia as well as himself. He loves to work with the chunkier and softer yarns, especially because it makes keeping track of the stitches easier.

- Owes SO MANY plushies. His bed is half dedicated to them, most probably give to him by Lilia for birthdays and holidays. He loves soft things so all the plushies are like squishmellows and stuff.

Ah, I love Silver. Onto our last canon character,

🐊Sebek Zigvolt🐊

(he/him) - Achillic

Oh boy, this design was such a pain. I literally had to redo it because I didn't like it. Though, in the end, I think it turned out pretty neat.

- On with the physical stuff, I fucked around with his skin tone a bit because it did not look right with his hair in my og design which had a more lime, yellowy green instead of the mint. I made it warmer and ditched the yellow green for the original design's mint, just darker. Finally, I thought I needed a kick of something so I gave him some violet streaks and eyes and BOOM! A Sebek!

- I gave him a bit of a rounder face, I feel like he wouldn't have outgrown his baby chub yet, and a single dimple. I thought it'd be super cute, sue me. Cute lil freckles, the works.

- One thing I am super proud of was his Lichtenburg scar (I believe that's what it's called, I've only really heard in in TMA oops). While I certainly didn't do it justice here, I'll be fleshing it out at some point. I think it's a cool addition to the character based on lighting, maybe his magic accidentally hit him or damaged him at some point idk.

- He is, wait for it... also autistic. Shocker, pun intended. He's actually AuDHD to me and has issues with volume regulation, which is real idk. Would actually also be sensitive to loud noise, as backwards as that sounds. Has noise-cancelling headphones courtesy of Idia. Malleus is his favoured person and he looks up to him a lot.

- Grew up loving dragons and thinking they were like the coolest fcuking things then met Mal and was in awe. Was a totally nerd about dragons as a kid and still has figures and posters and whatnot.

God, I love the Diasomnia characters sm omgggg. It's time for my ocs!

🪡Thumbelina Souster🪡

Third Year - (they/she) Genderqueer - Pansexual

She looks like Zelda. I know... but she's pretty!

- Thumbelina is 'twisted' from the loom in the story of Sleeping Beauty. IF EPEL IS LITERALLY AN APPLE, she can be a loom. Anyhow, I made her a fae as well, likely one of the craft fairies, just taking on a more human-sized form. She takes a ton of inspo from the og story of Thumbelina, as a tiny little fae she got separated from her kin and raised by human parents. That's why she doesn't have the 'ick' about humans that most fae have.

- When she got accepted to NRC, Crowley gave her access to a potion that changes her size so she'd be able to attend school easier. Her parents were tailors and so she grew up around sewing but could never do it because of how tiny she was. When she changed sizes, she immediately wanted to try her hand at sewing, official joining (or maybe founding) the sewing club.

- After intially joining Diasomnia and seeing Lilia's piercings, they piqued her curiosity and she got some.

- As a fae, she loves to be outdoors and tends to a garden outside of the dorm. She also rather oblivious when some expresses interest in her as she's not familiar with human courting. Lilia adopts yet another autistic child lmao.

For another character based on something mildly abstract...

🥀Munkh Sarnai🥀

Second Year - (they/he/she) Genderfluid - Asexual Aromantic

- Munkh is my character for the thorns that encircled Aurora's castle. Minorly abstract but hey, cool ass character design.

- They're Mongolian and I wanted the spikey aspect to really shine through, giving them liberty spikes thanks to my friend's suggestion! Wanted to go really punk especially because I haven't really done so in a character design before and I LOVE IT!

- She was originally going to have a Maleficent colour palette for the spikes but it was getting too close to some of the other designs so I made it black and red to emulate roses.

- He's a part of the music club as well, likely a vocalist or drummer. He loves the energy and the people are really cool, plus obviously his vice housewarden's there.

- They're also on the athletic side and enjoy various sports, namely Spelldrive. Also, she does own her own blastcycle and immediately bonds with Deuce over a shared love of them. Deuce and Munkh like this 🤞.

Last but not least...

⏰Kyra Delano⏰

First Year - (she/her) - Sapphic

Pspsps... TMA fandom... pspsps Delano...

- Kyra's my oc twisted from Tick Tock, the alligator(?) from Peter Pan. I gave her the yellow-green from my original Sebek design and it looks way better here.

- I think as a reference to the clock and like 'ticking', she'd have Tourette's. It sometimes flares up more than others so she has an agreement with the teachers about class times where it's acting up.

- I think she'd have like mild beef with Josephina because they met on a wrong foot during orientation but it's not a huge deal. Probably sleep-deprived Josephina said something insulting Diasomnia and Kyra was like, "What the hell?". They have a friendly competition going on now, every gym class.

- She's a part of the track and field club and is one of the fastest on the team. That being said, she's not a huge fan of physical activity and prefer to read in the library or study.

Head's up, I lied. This isn't the last post. I have to do the staff and extra character like Neige, Che'nya, and Cheka. Plus Grim. I tricked you >:). Mayhaps it'll be up tomorrow... love y'all!🩷🩷🩷

[pink-booty-butts]

Psychoanalyzing Mat Baynton’s Characters (Enneagram Types)

Right so I know probably no one cares about this, but I used to be super into enneagram types and I wanted to try typing the baynton boys :D I’m not an enneagram expert and honestly I mostly know about my type, so please don’t kill me if they are inaccurate. Also, I’ll add the others when I watch those shows if anyone is interested! 

And if anyone is curious, my type is 7w8 sx/so :)

Disclaimer: This is just my opinion, and enneagram types are not the end all be all of a person’s personality, which is incredibly complex. Most people have aspects of every personality type, which is why your type is referred to as your core type, not your “only” type. :)

Note on Sx Subtype: I would just like to clarify because I’m not sure how many people who know about enneagram are reading this, the sexual instinct doesn’t have to do with literal sex. It’s also called the one-to-one subtype, and there are plenty of aromantic and asexual people that are sx-doms, because it has nothing to do with sex/sex drive. Instincts/subtypes are thought to be a result of our animal genetics, and therefore are based on what you feel like you need to survive or prioritize in order to have fulfillment. Eg. sx(sexual): needs to have an intense bond with a person; so(social): needs to have a group of people/societal recognition/a community; sp(self-preservation): needs to be able to survive on their own, concerned with safety/comfort/stability, as well as the health of their physical body.

---

Chris Pitt-Goddard - Type 7w8 sx/sp

Core Fear: Of being deprived and in pain

Core Desire: To be satisfied and content

MY MAN is the most stereotypical 7 I’ve ever seen(and I’m saying that as someone who is also a type 7). Though Chris is very loyal to his friends and is there for them, I’m typing him as a 7w8 since he doesn’t really seem to care about stability or security. He pretty much does or says whatever he wants in the moment, which I think is a more 7w8 mentality. A 7w6 would think about more about the possibility of danger or how it would affect the people around them, due to the influence of the 6. I think we can also see Chris integrate to 5 when he helps Tim with the court case, as he was extremely focused and determined and learned everything he could in order to help him.

I think Chris is a sx/sp with a social blind spot. Though again, Chris does care a lot about his friends, I feel like we don’t see much of the social 7 in him in terms of being self sacrificial and a people pleaser. He tends to just do whatever he wants and doesn’t really ask people for their opinion. Sexual/one-to-one as his dominant subtype definitely makes sense, when we see him with Bernie he’s completely infatuated with her(and maybe I’m just projecting, but as an sx 7 I can relate to Chris in terms of being super independent and all “i don’t need no man/woman” but then becoming the biggest simp when I get into a relationship). The self preservation secondary might be a hot take/I might be completely wrong because I’m 99% sure I’m self-pres blind, but from what I understand self-pres 7s tend to create a support system/safety net around them to fall back on. I think we can see this with Chris’s original job working at the computer shop, and his friendship with Tim. The social blind is evident just in that he doesn’t really seem to care much about the world around him/social recognition, he’s more concerned with doing what he wants for himself. A social dom/secondary would be more concerned with whether other people like them or not, which Chris doesn’t really seem to care about at all.

Ariel Conroy - Type 2w3 sx/sp

Core Fear: Of being unloveable and unwanted

Core Desire: To be loved

Maybe some will consider this a hot take, but I think Ariel being a type 2 is obvious. He has heavy integration towards 8 and 4, he’s just incredibly unhealthy. When unhealthy, Type 2s become obsessive and possessive, and they can feel entitled to other people’s love/gratitude(such as when he was lecturing Rhonda about how she should be more grateful for him saving her). We can see all of this in his relationship with Hawkwind, since he literally stalks her, and his entire pursuit of Jamie all has to do with him feeling like his mother didn’t love him and it made him feel inadequate/unworthy. His 3 wing is evident with his desire for success/wealth and even though he is more private, he still craves recognition as seen with his White Horse identity. His obsession with Jamie also makes sense with him being a type 2w3, as he feels like Jamie’s existence is a personal attack against him and his presence triggers his core fear.

Ariel’s subtype is probably sx/sp, with a social blind spot. I almost typed him as an sp/sx, but I think Ariel’s ultimate desire is to have someone. I think that due to Hawkwind’s absence his sp has developed more, to the point where they are very close in terms of effect on his personality. The sexual instinct is often described as a desire for “merging” with another person, and I think Ariel wants that kind of intense devotion from someone and will also reciprocate it. Sx/sp’s also tend to be extremely jealous and intense people. I also read something about Sx/sp that their secondary instinct is used as a means to an end to fulfill their primary instinct, which I think is clear in Ariel. Since sp is all about vitality, physical health, attractiveness etc, he would use this to his advantage to lure the object of his affections and portray an image of what he thinks they want. A good example of this would be when he kidnapped Frankie, I think he was being somewhat nice to her because he wanted Hawkwind to love him, but otherwise probably wouldn’t have put any effort into talking to her.

Though Ariel does seem to crave recognition from his White Horse persona, I think that’s more due to his 3 wing as opposed to having a social instinct. Ariel is very single minded and doesn’t seem to have any friends nor care about maintaining connections or social status, which we can see when he killed his Deus Ex partner without remorse and basically anytime he talks to another human being that isn’t Hawkwind. Some other good examples of this are when he kicks Rhonda out of the car after finding out she’s useless, and how he treated Sutton(sp secondary also with Sutton, when he asks her for money it’s to fulfill that instinct).

Jamie Winton - Type 6w7 sp/sx

Core Fear: Being without support or guidance

Core Desire: To have security and support

Honestly I struggled a bit between 1 and 6 for Jamie, but after considering instincts I realized he’s a 6(more on that later). Type 6 is notoriously hard to type, due to there being counter-phobic 6s and phobic 6s, but Jamie seems like a phobic 6. I think we see him shift a little bit towards towards the end of the show, especially as he gains more confidence in himself, which is something that a lot of 6s struggle with due to their constant anxiety and fear of things going wrong. Type 6 is known as the Loyalist and I mean… he was still in love with Layla, made videos for her everyday for 7 years, despite the fact that they barely spent anytime married together. If that’s not peak loyalty I don’t know what is! He’s very concerned with security and stability, and phobic 6s tend to place a lot of faith into rules/societal norms, which I think we can see in that scene in Ep. 1 where he is talking to Dave(type 7) in the kitchen about his career and paying the rent. 

Speaking of Dave, 7s and 6s do tend to get along quite well due to both being in the fear/anxiety triad, but I find it fascinating to see how that plays out in their relationship. I think if anyone is struggling between 7w8 or 7w6, or 7w6 and 6w7, watching the two of them together and seeing which one you relate to more would be a good differentiator.

Onto his 7 wing. I think at first Jamie doesn’t seem like a 7 wing, but I think this is because he’s more introverted. I think he could have/be very close to having balanced wings. I don’t see him as a 6w5 because he doesn’t seem to struggle with feeling like he’s incompetent as often, which is the core fear of a type 5. We see that Jamie does have a desire for spontaneity, which is from his 7 wing, but being a core 6 he is able to reign it in and keep it controlled for the most part. I think some good examples off the top of my head of when it comes out are when he decides to go looking for Layla, when he lets Dave stand on the car(he almost didn’t, but he still did), and when he stands up during Layla’s case and offers to pay for her fine. Type 7s are also described as having intense FOMO, which reminds me of that scene when he’s talking to Layla about how he wishes he could’ve gotten to know Frankie sooner because he missed out on all those years. He could also originally have been a 6w5, but due to being friends with Dave he brings that 7 side of him out more.

Our only non sx-dom on this list! Maybe I’m biased on these because I’m a sx-dom haha. So, Jamie is very clearly an sp-first person, because he’s very concerned with safety, his environment, career, etc. Maybe sx-secondary will be a hot take, because I really went back and forth between so and sx as his secondary. However, I really don’t think a so-secondary/sx-blind would’ve still been in love with Layla and holding out hope for her after 7 years, and then welcome her back into their life as quickly as he did. Sp/sx 6’s also tend to look very One-ish, which makes sense in terms of why he can seem more like a 1 at times. Sp/sx’s are very concerned with their loved ones and their opinions of them, and their focus on security is shifted to the people closest to them. In episode 1, we see that Jamie is  just going with the motions, living his life, because it’s safe and secure. However, once the apocalypse happens, his priorities shift to finding Layla, fueled by his secondary instinct. The sx-secondary also gives Jamie a bit more confidence than a so-secondary would have, as sp/so 6’s tend to be the most anxious of the 6’s. I think when the apocalypse happened, an sp/so would be much more worried about what this means for the world/his friends and family, as opposed to Jamie with his sx energy being like “im going to find layla no matter what”. :)

Thomas Thorne - Type 4w5 sx/so

Core Fear: That they have no identity/personal significance

Core Desire: To find themselves and their significance

Thomas is the most stereotypical 4 I have ever seen in my life! I think Thomas is a 4w5, because he’s more concerned with poetry because he loves/has an appreciation for it, as opposed to because he wants to become hugely successful off of it. He does still care about success/recognition, but not as much as a 4w3 would. Type 4’s are very concerned with what makes them who they are, and when they feel like they’ve discovered what that is they tend to become very attached to it. This is clearly shown with his poetry, as he’s constantly trying to write poems or make things sound poetic, because on some level he feels like if he doesn’t he won’t be “him” anymore(A good example of this is that scene where he’s sitting with Alison after they were camping, and what he said out of nowhere was very poetic and then he started trying too hard and she was like yeah no). Type 4s are also very introspective and tend to be extremely empathetic and understanding of other people’s emotions. Due to this though, they can sometimes come across as being a bit dramatic.

Onto his subtypes. Sx-dom is obvious, Thomas loves women and falls in love quickly, and his infatuation with Alison also points to sx-dom. I will debate on anyone else’s instinct stack except Thomas! “Divorce him, kill yourself, marry me” is such a stereotypical sx-dom thing to say, like I said before sx-dom is often described as a desire to “merge” with another person(Also idk why I thought of this for Thomas, but a good example of this “merging” idea would be with Morticia and Gomez from the Addams Family. Both of them are sx-doms!). As for his social-secondary, Thomas is very concerned with other people’s opinions of him, and he has a desire to be recognized/appreciated for his poetry. Sp-blind is obvious in regards to his death, he had no hesitation when defending the girl he loved and sacrificing his life for it. Even while he was dying, the first thing he asked was for his cousin to get Isabelle so he could say goodbye to her.

Sam Pinkett - Type 9w1 sx/sp

Core Fear: Loss and separation

Core Desire: To have inner stability/peace of mind

Sad times Sam Pinkett is a type 9, which is the hardest type to explain because it is so complex. Unfortunately Sam is very very much a 9, so I will do my best! So type 9s are known for being the all-rounders of the enneagram, in that they tend to have qualities of all the other enneagram types. Of course, all of us do no matter our type, but for type 9s this is the most prevalent. This is mainly due to the 9’s tendency to be self-dissolving, and as such they tend to accumulate aspects of all the other types as they go throughout life.

So, there are multiple reasons why Sam Pinkett is a 9w1. The first thing that clued me on in this is him saying he wants Lizzie to make all of his decisions for him, as 9s tend to be very indecisive and struggle with making decisions. 9s are very much known for responding with “you pick” when you ask them where they want to go/what they want to do. 9w1s, as opposed to 9w8s, also tend to be a bit more complacent and less confrontational which can be seen in Sam’s tendency to just “go with the flow” and kind of do what he thinks is expected of him, and he very much wants this kind of dynamic with Lizzie. Unfortunately 9s have a bit of a reputation for being a bit lazy, and this is mainly due to them being very risk-averse. I think we can see a lot of this in Sam’s hesitancy to leave his job even though it’s extremely clear he doesn’t really care about it. Another example of his slothfullness(is that even a word? idk) is when at some point during the show(I forgot when) he tells Lizzie he just wants her to tell him what she wants and he’ll do it so they can be together again. 

The 1 wing adds a lot of morality to Sam’s character, and he is very concerned with doing the right thing, which is literally the entire plot of the show so I don’t think I need to explain that haha. Another example of this is when he first becomes friends with Phil, which (according to the s1 finale) he did because he “felt bad for him”. His entire display of anger during that scene is actually very 9 behavior as well, as 9s tend to have outbursts like that once their anger has boiled past the breaking point(this is bc 9s are in the anger triad, and their fixation is being out of touch with their anger. 9s are the type of people to say “I never get angry!” bc they are very concerned with being peaceful/nice, and then emotionally blast you to pieces lmao).

Onto his instincts. I think Sam being sx-dom is pretty clear, his fixation on Lizzie and desire for her to make all of his decisions is very sx-like to me. I haven’t talked about this in previous typings of the Baynton boys, but a lot of times with the sx subtype there is a distinction between an sx who wants to initiate the merging, and the sx who wants to be merged. I think Sam is definitely the type that wants to be merged with, and that’s why a lot of people see him as being a sub(valid). I think the self-dissolving aspect of the 9 comes into a lot of play with this as well, as Sam seems to be very focused on doing what Lizzie wants/expects of him as opposed to considering or thinking about his own wants and needs. Sx subtype also tends to add a dreamer-like quality to a type, and being that type 9 is quite known for being very daydreamer-y I think it makes a lot of sense for Sam. In the second season he talks about how he always planned on going to London and doing something with his life but never did, and I think this illustrates his daydreaming side + lack of taking action quite well. Sp for Sam is second because he doesn’t seem much concerned with societal recognition or friend groups, he actually seems to be quite lonely, and even in scenes when we’ve seen him with people he used to be friends with there is this sense of separation that is very characteristic of the sx/sp. He also seems pretty concerned with doing what he wants/living his best life, even though he doesn’t take action towards it in the beginning of the show, this fixation on it is characteristic of a character with an sp focus. When these two instincts come together, you see a person who is very drawn to intense/close relationships such as his relationship with Lizzie and his friendship with Phil, but a seeming inability and/or lack of desire to maintain fringe friendships with people.

Personally I fricking LOVE type 9s so I’m going to write a whole goddamn essay about Sam Pinkett apparently. I think the beautiful thing about The Wrong Mans as a tv show is that we see Sam go from a typical unhealthy/asleep 9 in the beginning, to a healthy type 9. We see a lot of instances of his 6 stress coming out when he becomes concerned with losing the stability Lizzie provided for him, but throughout season 1 and season 2 we see IMMENSE growth towards 3, which I love for him so much!! 9s go to 3 when they stop falling asleep towards themselves and begin to move/pursue something that they care deeply about, which again I don’t think I need to explain for Sam if you’ve watched the show haha. I think its great and honestly I think Sam is one of the best 9w1s I’ve seen represented in media, and I think it’s amazing how clearly you can see him move through growth as the show progresses. And that’s it that’s my Sam essay, hope you liked it. :)

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Thanks for reading to the end! Again, please don’t take this seriously it’s just for fun!! :)

[ruckis--rookie]

I made these for funsies. I had nothing better to do. (small disclaimer: because of this being for personal use a lot of these assets I just yanked from google and I can't remember from where and which ones were free to use. I have no idea who to credit and or if any of the symbols used you had to pay for. oops 😬)

A little more in depth character look as to why some of these are the way that they are

Ruckis Kingstarr

Chastity/Lust: She's always been a mind over matter type. Especially when it comes to crude acts. She treats it as something sacred and something that should be done in privacy. Being open about it makes her feel extremely uncomfortable.

Kindness/Patience/Wrath: She tries to see the best and be kind to everyone, even to the worst of people. Sometimes she'll even try to help guide them towards being a better person. But her patience is incredibly thin and if she believes the sanctity of her or someone close's happiness has been compromised by someone who's seen as generally a crappy person, she's incredibly quick to hammer down some old fashioned justice through blinding rage.

Pride/Humility: She's very proud of what skill she has, despite having damaged self esteem. But she makes the conscious decision to humble herself, because "It doesn't matter how good of an artist you are, if you're full of yourself everyone's gonna think you're an asshole."

Geragera Guffaw

Temperance/Diligence/Patience: Gera is highly impulsive and his own self preservation is usually an afterthought. Foresight is nonexistent. His mouth and body run faster than his mind. But in high risk situations and situations where he's unsure, he'll actually stop for a moment and assess the situation. If he can avoid unnecessary conflict, he will. He just wants to have fun after all. There's also the fact that he's entirely devoted to his work, forever chasing lost time to increase his life span and to help support the family he made. Being diligent is his life blood. He has to combine work and play more often than not.

Gluttony: My guy has literally consumed worlds he's deemed "unsalvageable" for their mana and energy rich materials to add to his life blood to further increase his already near-eternal longevity. On top of that he's known to eat ridiculous portions, on top of things that you normally shouldn't eat. Missing a chunk of uranium? He's probably to blame. Threatened by a creature that should be considered your natural predator such as magic eaters and star eaters??? Yeah, he's outright used parasite tactics to eat his way through and kill his own natural predators. Also his frequent cannibalistic tendencies. He's the perfect example of an ancient never ending hunger.

Kindness/Wrath: First impressions are very VERY important to him. He's a firm believer in doing unto others as they would do to you. For this he's seen as very capricious or bipolar, since he can start out very sweet and kind only to become vicious and cruel in an instant towards those who did not grant him such kindness. If he believes someone has slighted him or those he cares about it results in instant karma, judged accordingly by how severe he believes the offense is. It ranged from minor inconvenience to corporal punishment.

Humility/Pride: The reason his pride isn't ranked higher and his humility is pretty low is because of his severe superiority complex that he uses as a coping mechanism for his crippling low self esteem. I can't fault him for false pride, but I can fault him for not taking the steps to be humble. He's far more stubborn than he is prideful.

post note: I like how both are pretty balanced to make them neutral, but Ruckis' is more concentrated where Gera's is all over the place. it reflects their dynamic perfectly.

[ichayalovesyou]

THE BIG VULCAN BIOLOGY POST (aka Vulcan is a Hell Planet)

DISCLAIMER: I am not a biologist, astrophysicist, neurologist, animal psychologist or literally anything that would qualify me to talk about this with 100% confidence. This is the result of dozens of headcanons and obsessive deep dive research. I don’t want this post to be three miles long, so after I address the planetary stuff I will oblige y’all with a Read More.

Adsfasdkfjhaslkdfh I’ve been working on this post for almost a month SO HERE WE GO!

First of all, Vulcan (aka T’Khasi) is a HELL PLANET, which is part of the reason they’re so badass, I say this for the following reasons:

No moon(s) (natural satellites)

Sodium (Salt) is so rare on the planet that Vulcan’s oceans are freshwater

It’s a “Super-Earth” (as in big chonkin’ planet of similar composition to earth in the “goldilocks region”)

Let’s do this.

“Vulcan has no moon Ms. Uhura.”

-Spock, The Man Trap

Tons of things change about our planet if there was no moon:

Much darker nights (no moonlight)

Much lower sea levels since there is no gravity from the moon to pull it upward.

Lower and weaker tides because the water is pulled by the sun instead of the moon, and it depends on how large the Vulcan solar system’s sun is for how big the waves are.

Stronger winds from faster planet rotation.

Depending on whether the axis of the planet would straighten or tilt further without the moon’s pull, combined with the faster rotation would lead to more severe seasons (strong tilt) or no seasons at all (no tilt)

The first factor may lead to Vulcan eyes being very catlike even if they aren’t nocturnal (I think they’re crepesucular but we’ll get into that later). Which given the likely nature of their blood and their herbivorous eating habits they probably aren’t. The sky would still be so dark that our human eyes couldn’t even see our hands in front of us, being blind when the sun goes down could be a death sentence. Alternatively, if they didn’t develop strong night vision that may be one of the reasons why they have such strong senses of hearing.

The stronger winds, faster rotation, and stronger (or nonexistent) seasons come from the lack of resistance and friction that stronger tides and the moon’s pull create on our planet. I suspect that Vulcan is larger, or at least denser than Earth, but I’ve been informed that according to the TMP novelization that it does rotate faster. I also think that Vulcan’s tilt is on the more extreme end to get the hostile extremes like storms and heat that we see on Vulcan.

If you look at this image of Vulcan, water covers way less of the planet’s surface than Earth. I don’t think this is necessarily because Vulcan has less water, but that it isn’t spread as far because of the lack of moon, and the fact that the oceans are freshwater, I’ll get into that shortly.

“My ancestors spawned from a different ocean than yours.”

-Spock, The Man Trap

In the Star Trek: The Original Series (third) pilot The Man Trap, there is a creature that kills its victims by draining their bodies completely of salt. Spock encounters the creature but does not die, implying his (and Vulcans overall) body contains little to no salt. His justification is that his species did not evolve from a salinized ocean.

What does it mean to have oceans with no salt?

This has to mean that sodium is a very rare mineral on Vulcan, as the reason our oceans are so salinized is due to erosion of minerals by rainfall, carried from river to ocean. Salt in the ocean is also generated by submarine volcanic activity, which means either that the volcanoes on Vulcan (which we definitely know exist) somehow don’t produce salt, or the vast majority of the submarine volcanoes have been inactive for millions if not billions of years. The active volcanoes on Vulcan must be very far inland and/or Vulcan has almost no rivers, which given how hot the planet is, wouldn’t actually be too much of a stretch of the imagination.

Which means every single lifeform on T’Khasi, including Vulcans, evolved biosystems that exist without (or with very little) salt content. Any salt that exists would likely be deep beneath the planet’s surface, and within volcanoes.

No saltwater has a ton of consequences:

Plants (like underwater algae) are rarer and may not photosynthesize the same way Earth plants do, meaning less oxygen and more carbon dioxide, which means more greenhouse effect, which means higher temperatures.

The lack of salt would also mean less diverse plant life (at least as humans know it) and given the lack of visible rivers and vast swaths of desert on Vulcan, we can safely say vegetation must be hardier and infrequent.

Lower sea levels as the oceans would have lower density due to lack of salt.

Little to no water convection, which salt is crucial for on Earth. Which means warm ocean water doesn’t move to cold regions and vice versa. Creating extremes, the equator being obscenely hot, and polar waters freezing at the poles more extensively.

Lack of convection means more frequent and stronger storms like hurricanes.

If you thought the lack of a moon made Vulcan inhospitable, compound it with the low sodium factor and you’ve got a planet of even more severe extremes than before. The heat, and the decrease of plant diversity definitely explain why the vast majority of Vulcan is rocky desert, even being near the water poses more extreme dangers than it would on earth due to the increased frequency of hurricanes.

“Mr. Spock is much stronger than an ordinary human being.”

-Kirk, This Side of Paradise

I am almost 100% sure that Vulcan is either bigger or denser than Earth. Which would explain why Vulcans are so much stronger than Humans and other species that exist on similar gravity worlds.

Effects of a high-gravity planet or “Super-Earth” include:

Everything is shorter or has very strong foundations, plants, animals, structures, and people.

More “Armageddon” class asteroids would hit the planet (like the one that killed the dinosaurs and created the Gulf of Mexico)

Larger liquid mantle under the planet’s surface, higher pressure under the surface as well.

Weaker magnetic field due to lack of convection in the planet’s core (not to be confused with the mantle interacting with the planet’s crust). Which means a weaker atmosphere, lower magnetism in surface metals, and increased vulnerability to solar flares.

More volcanically and seismically active due the the increase in the mantle’s size and generated heat, more earthquakes, and more volcanic eruptions.

Would have to have a smaller sun but be closer in orbit to it than earth.

Extremely deep oceans, potentially with water under so much pressure at the bottom that it becomes solid like ice. Luckily Vulcan is not an ocean world, because the pressure would block the planet’s core from interacting with the atmosphere, which would prevent life as we know it from happening.

There is plenty of evidence for this on so many levels. We never see any plant life similar to trees on Vulcan. Nor animals significantly larger than Vulcans, the ones that are bigger are much more muscular. Vulcan’s sky is more red than blue because of the lack of oxygen molecules for the light from the sun to filter as blue. I actually headcanon that Spock is unusually tall for a Vulcan because of his human heritage (Leonard Nimoy was around 6ft tall) , and may have had heart and muscle problems in his teens and early adulthood while on Vulcan.

Perhaps Vulcans are the result of many more extinction level events than we are, contributing to their hardiness. Perhaps they are, evolutionarily, not too much older than we are, and had more incentive to develop extraterrestrial technology than we have, so that they could repel Armageddon Class meteors and defend their planet against Solar Flares? Space travel being born out of self-preservation rather than curiosity. Which would absolutely account for their attitudes in the beginning of Star Trek: Enterprise.

It could be that Vulcans still maintain a semi-nomadic lifestyle even today because their planet is so incredibly volatile. Unsentimental and utilitarian in anything less than the most sacred of architecture long before they adopted the teachings of Surak. Their own survival more valuable than any structure that would inevitably be damaged or destroyed by their planet’s harsh environment.

In summary, Vulcan is a Nightmare Planet because:

So, so many much natural disasters, like, so many, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, hurricanes, twisters, just, so many more than Earth.

Water is relegated to specific locations in the world rather than spread across it due to lack of flow and lower sea levels.

Extreme temperature changes, intense heat, intense cold, hard to breathe, stronger gravity.

Due to the planet’s hostility, there is a smaller diversity of life than we have here on earth, which means fewer and hardier food sources that, like Vulcans, are very difficult to kill.

So… How do they handle it? What features have they developed to adapt and thrive in such an inhospitable place?

First thing is first, lets talk about

BLOOD

“My hemoglobin is based on copper, not iron.”

-Spock, Obsession

Funny thing is Spock, it’s not hemoglobin at all! It’s hemocyanin! In fact, there are earth animals that have it, among them Horseshoe Crabs, crustaceans, mollusks and spiders!

Hemocyanin is blue when it hasn’t been exposed to oxygen, and blue-green when it has, according to some sources on Vulcans their blood is orangey red when unexposed to air and that’s why they have pink lips and so on, but we can brush that off as chemical variation within their hemocyanin. Better yet, maybe it’s trendy for Vulcans to wear pink lipstick nowadays, ‘cause Surak knows how horny Humans and Vulcans are for each other XD! Anyway!

Hemocyanin does quite a few things that our blood can’t, it’s uniquely built for high pressure, low oxygen environments, as well as endure temperature extremes like cold (not unlike nights on their planet). Not only that, but it coagulates and clots WAY faster than our blood. Which means wounds seal themselves off from harmful bacteria and stop bleeding much faster than hemoglobin. Pair that with the Vulcan ability to enter a healing torpor, no wonder Spock keeps surviving environments and wounds that would definitely have killed a human.

Now, the animals I listed don’t have veins, which for us carry oxygen around via hemoglobin, so it’s possible that the same difference that causes Vulcan blood to be a coppery orange-red beneath the skin, is the same reason they have veins. Allowing them to look more like us and lack the exoskeletons and deep ocean delving that their earth blood cousins have.

“The ship’s temperature is increasingly uncomfortable for me. I’ve adjusted the environment in my quarters to 125 degrees.”

-(Elderly) Spock, The Deadly Years

Oh goodie, the Vulcan blood temperature discourse has arrived, the age old question, are Vulcans warm-blooded or cold-blooded? The answer to this question is

YES

I am firmly in the small (but hopefully growing) camp Vulcans Are Heterothermic. Among the earth animals we know to be heterothermic are bumblebees, several species of bats, the opah fish, and the arctic ground squirrel. Of all these animals, despite the opposite temperature intensity of Vulcan’s environment, I’m basing how Vulcans function on the last one, the arctic squirrel.

Which means they can deliberately control their body temperature in accordance to the needs of their survival. I imagine, just as arctic ground squirrels can drop their body below zero as needed (entering what is called a “daily torpor”) Vulcans can do the same. In turn, they could possibly skyrocket their bodies to temperatures that would be a lethal fever for humans. Which makes both McCoy’s “nonexistent Vulcan metabolism” comments in various episodes, as well as describing his blood as “ice water” make sense. As well as Spock being able to handle the heightened body temperature caused by Henoch in “Return to Tomorrow”. It also explains why Spock was in far better shape than Bones in the freezing temperatures of the planet from “All Our Yesterdays”.

However, like arctic squirrel newborns, they start out as ectothermic (cold-blooded) which lends itself to the Vulcan infants needing even more skin to skin to survive than humans theory by @acesexualspock. Being born cold blooded would prevent them from immediately dying the second they were exposed to the dangerous extremes of Vulcan’s heat. I also think they slowly lose the ability to control their metabolic rate as they grow older, slowing down dramatically as they age, which is why Spock gets increasingly colder as he ages rapidly in “The Deadly Years”.

“The brightness of the Vulcan sun has caused the development of an inner eyelid.”

-Spock, Operation: Annihilate

I wanna thank @tribbleland for inspiring this part in particular.

I want to offer a special congratulations to furries people who let their love for anthro-cats bleed into their love for Vulcans, turns out Vulcans are very catlike! Like our feline Terran friends, Vulcans have what is called a Nicitating Membrane. It’s functions that would serve Vulcans well in their desert home include spreading moisture across the eye, protect the eye from small water and small debris (like sand for example), as well as protecting the eye from ultraviolet radiation, which is more or less what Spock said in that episode. Other animals that have Nicitating Membranes aside from felines is actually the majority of the animal kingdom, and primates (like us) are the exception and not the rule. I also subscribe to the idea that Vulcans have other desert dweller features like thick hair and eyelashes, sealable nostrils, big feet, a crepuscular sleep cycle (avoiding extreme midnight and midday temperatures), and a tough as nails digestive system!

As an added bonus fact since this section is pretty short: It makes purrfect sense for Vulcans to purr! In cats purring is an emotional regulator when they are angry or scared (Vulcans are ALL about regulating their emotions) as well as purring when they are happy. It is also a mechanism for healing themselves, their kittens, and their owners, the frequency at which cats purr (25-140 Hz) cover the same frequencies that are therapeutic for bone growth and fracture healing, pain relief, swelling reduction, wound healing, muscle growth and repair, tendon repair, and mobility of joints. I’m over here getting emotional about the mental image of like, Spock or Tuvok or smth sitting next to a wounded crewmember and just like, purring with a completely straight face and that is soft and just a little funny and I am emotionally compromised.

“And are it’s natives predatory?” “Not generally, but there have been exceptions.”

-Spock to Trelaine, The Squire of Gothos

Surprise! This isn’t just going to be about Vulcan dietary needs, it’s gonna be about animal behaviors and self-domestication as well! I was trying to think of herbivores that are capable of eating meat, and then this idea hit me like a bomb going of in my head-

Vulcans are like Hippos!

I don’t mean I think they used to be hippo-like (visually anyway) somewhere along the evolutionary line. I mean that they were probably big, extremely aggressive, pack roaming herbivores that are able to eat carrion when food is scarce. Have you ever seen a video of a group of Hippos smashing an alligator to smithereens? They kill more humans than any solitary predator on the African continent! What about a murder of crows killing a cat that injured one of them, or a group of bison saving a calf from a lion?! Herbivores can be insanely aggressive while still being social, plant-eating animals.

With that in mind, let’s talk about self-domestication! This is something that we humans (and to an extent, cats too) did way back in our biology according to some studies, we bred out aggression and bred in cooperativeness and curiosity. Cats, while partially domesticated by us, started looking for mates that were more sociable so that their offspring could exist closer to humans (and their food) as well as to tolerate other cats. While I do think Vulcans self-domesticated to a degree, I do not think they were able to do so nearly to the same extent as humans or our deliberately domesticated companions. Vulcan is a harsh, violent, and unforgiving planet, even more so than Earth, if Vulcans were naturally as friendly and curious as we Humans are now, they would not have survived as a species.

I believe this is why their emotions are so primal and strong, and things like Pon Farr and their unusually high wariness of the new and unexpected still exist so strongly. How do they live together in such high numbers and develop a functional society? They developed other means of coping as a work-around the impracticality of decreasing aggression!

“Call it a deep understanding of the way things happen to Vulcans.”

-Spock, The Immunity Syndrome

So, how do you have a species as aggressive, unforgiving, and frighteningly strong as Vulcans keep from completely destroying itself (aside from Surak’s teachings)? You take the empathy that humans already have, turn it up to 11, and tack on every evolutionary possibility to increase it. We already know how the Earth comparisons for Vulcan empathy: the extreme vitality of touch for the survival and emotional stability, cats purring to heal each other and themselves (and regulate emotions), nonverbal communication, the ancestral instincts of an infant animal being able to walk days after its born. What if we had all of these traits in remarkable spades, Vulcans certainly seem to! (Be prepared, the science starts getting a little squidgy because there are no real world comparisons and neurology research is very jargon heavy)

Electricity is a fundamental part of the biology of nearly all living things, it allows synapses to fire, regulates our internal organs, and gives us our senses of touch and movement. Skin to skin is so incredibly vital to the survival of infants, and the emotional stability for adults, that needing any more touch could be impractical and counterintuitive. So what if we got more from less? What if our sense of touch, and the acuteness of being able to read the emotions of others from body language and touch manifested as a form of what looks like from an outsider’s perspective, telepathy!

Now what if the radius of the sensation of touch could be extended much farther, say being able to sense someone to the same intensity I described in the last paragraph, like, through a wall or from across a room? What if you could connect to other lifeforms with the same ability like a chain circuit that could connect a whole species together in one giant circuitboard? I just described what Vulcans call the kwar’ma’khon, the telepathic energy that connects all Vulcans to each other!

Imagine having this same intense telepathic connection to someone for an extended period of time, like a t’hy’la or Bond Mate. What if you had a relatively easy to master non-lethal attack against other members of your species, that comes to you easily due to your intrinsic understanding of nerves and touch, like the Vulcan Nerve Pinch. In turn, what if, through the intensity of this connection you could transfer everything you knew and saw and felt to another person in the event of your death. That way, if you survived the harshness of your world without dying violently or unexpectedly, you could deliberately pass on that knowledge and those instincts to your next of kin, like the Katra. (thanks @distractedducky @spacedancer1701 & @find-me-in-outer-space)

Now, that’s A LOT of empathy on top of A LOT of aggression, if you don’t have a work around for any of these, as a species you’d be rendered a complete emotional wreck pretty much 24/7 (or whatever the time cycles for Vulcan are). Which is where @ineffablebuddies theory that Vulcans can control, or at least mitigate their incredibly strong emotional reactions the same way they control their nervous system and metabolic rate. Which is how they are able to be touch telepathic, able to enter a torpor at will, and be heterothermic in the first place. The only reason Vulcans come off as unemotional to us is because we simply do not see and feel the way that they can. Unlike us, because of their ability to control their own internal chemistry, if they follow Surak’s teachings and/or Syrranite ideology, they can take that emotional regulation to the extreme.

(BIG EXHALE) Congratulations on getting through this insanely long post! I hope you enjoyed it, if you want sources on any of my non-tumblr post research just let me know in the notes. LLAP! 💚🖖🏻💚

[glassprism]

Saw this post that accused Raoul of gaslighting Christine when he said "there is no phantom of the opera". Any thoughts?

Which post. There are so many of them. So... very... many. I'll just assume it was this one, since it was the most recent that I saw crossing the Phantom tag, but I could probably point out more.

Anyway, my thought as always for these kinds of posts is, "Why oh why can't people learn the actual definition of gaslighting?" Gaslighting, as defined in the The Gaslighting Recovery Workbook, is "a cruel, deceptive activity put in place by an abuser to make their target doubt themselves and their real-life decisions, start to feel confused, and think they’re going crazy." The Gaslight Effect also describes a gaslighter as someone "who needs to be right in order to preserve his own sense of self and his sense of having power in the world."

What this means is that gaslighting is not just telling someone they're wrong when it turns out that they're actually right, which seems to be what a lot of people think gaslighting is. I mean, by that definition, then an argument between myself and a coworker about how to do a certain piece of paperwork would be "gaslighting". Instead, gaslighting is deliberate, done specifically to make someone doubt themselves and place trust in the gaslighter, and usually, long-term and part of a pattern of abuse.

None of that fits with what Raoul is doing in the rooftop scenario in the musical. For one thing, Raoul is not being deceptive; he truly does not believe there is a Phantom; phantoms are ghosts, and the notes, the threatening voice, Carlotta’s sabotage, Buquet dying, all of that are results of a human act. (And, you know, he's right, there really is no Phantom, he is a man.) For him to be deceptive and to fall more in line with the definition of gaslighting, he'd have to continue insisting there is no Phantom even, say, if both he and Christine witness the Phantom, like say during the Red Death scene, but then he goes to Christine and keeps going, "No Christine, you made it all up, nobody showed up to the masked ball." But as we see in the musical, that doesn't happen; once Raoul sees the Phantom with his own eyes, he immediately figures it out ("And so our Phantom's this man").

Furthermore, Raoul does not tell Christine there's no Phantom to make her doubt herself or to acquire power over her. He tells her that because she is literally panicking in that scene. Take a look at her lines with Raoul's removed:

"He'll kill me! His eyes will find me there! Those eyes that burn! And if he has to kill a thousand men, The Phantom of the Opera will kill and kill again! My God, who is this man who hunts to kill? I can't escape from him, I never will! And in this labyrinth, where night is blind the Phantom of the Opera is here, inside my mind."

Christine is not calm during this scene; she literally dragged Raoul to the rooftop of the opera house and starts telling him things that, to any other person, would seem fantastical. This is completely understandable on Christine's part, I should say, but if you pretend as an audience member that you never saw the first lair scenes, then you might be like Raoul and think she was just panicking.

I think the post I linked also stated that Raoul is not saying that the Phantom is a man, because he says line, "What you heard was a dream and nothing more" after Christine starts describing her experiences, but the entire context of that scene suggests not:

CHRISTINE: Raoul, I've been there - to his world of unending night. To a world where the daylight dissolves into darkness. darkness. Raoul, I've seen him! Can I ever forget that sight? Can I ever escape from that face? So distorted, deformed, it was hardly a face, in that darkness. darkness. But his voice filled my spirit with a strange, sweet sound. In that night there was music in my mind. And through music my soul began to soar! And I heard as I'd never heard before. RAOUL: What you heard was a dream and nothing more.

While Christine is not full-blown panicking in this scene, she's just come out of her previous state of hysteria (and moreover, is heading into an equally worrisome state of trance). Moreover, she's still describing equally unbelievable things. We the audience know all this is real, but to Raoul, a deformed man living in "unending night" and Christine apparently hearing angelic voices in her mind or spirit or whatever? It really does sound like a dream, and in the context of Christine running around panicking, it's like Christine is going stream-of-consciousness style, connecting the murder to superstitions about a ghost to her own dreams.

Finally, as part of the definition above, gaslighting is also usually long-term and part of a pattern of abuse. None of this is shown in the musical either. The rooftop scene is the only time we see Raoul telling Christine the Phantom does not exist; afterwards, he's fully on board and working to take down the guy. We also don't see Raoul exhibiting any other classic signs of abuse, such as controlling behavior, isolating her from friends and family, humiliating, judging, criticizing, or dominating her, withholding affection, undermining, trivializing, name-calling, or threatening her, or of course, hitting or hurting her or sexually abusing her. I suppose one can argue that we only see parts of their relationship and maybe he was doing that during the six months that pass between Act 1 and 2, but there's no textual evidence for or against it, so that can only exist in the realm of headcanons.

So there's my thoughts not only for that post, but for any post that accuses Raoul of gaslighting, and let this be the end of it.

[stressedoutcanary]

Do You Ever Feel Like A Misfit (Everything Inside You Is Dark & Twisted)

Dick Grayson x Reader

Word Count: 3.5K (I don't know how tf that happened)

Warnings: Explicit language, Blood and Violence, lots of angst, Hurt/Comfort ✌

A/N: Guess who's back! Just for some context the reader is a magic user and her style is similar to that of Zatanna <3

•°•°•°•°

She’d have reasoned with herself that stealing from one of the most secure and heavily guarded safe-houses of a deranged sociopath was probably not the brightest idea she’s had all day. It never even made it on her to-do-list for the weekend, but here she was, running across rooftops, holding on to the stolen totem like her life depended on it, it probably did. The three assassins sent after her were no Lady Shiva or Talia Al Ghul but they weren’t exactly amateurs either. The deep cuts and two broken ribs she got from their earlier encounter were proof of that.

She glanced back and even though there was no sign of her would-be-killers she knew better than to assume they’d just let her be. They were sticking to the shadows, exploiting her blind spots. The only thing she was sure of was that they were still hot on her trail and would happily plunge a dagger into her back given the opportunity.

She was right. As of this moment she hated being right.

She caught the glint of the two sharp objects slicing through the air, hurtling towards her at full speed. A slight shift of her upper body was all she could manage as one of the daggers got embedded right into her scapula while the other one, fortunately so, whirled past her, slightly grazing her left hip. The impact of the blade on her shoulder made her lose what little balance she had left. Despite her best efforts, when the wounded shoulder made contact with the hard concrete, a loud, ear-piercing cry ripped out from her throat before she could push it back down.

Cursing under her breath she knew, she knew all she had were those few seconds of numbness and disorientation to get a grip and figure out her exit strategy. However, all her hopes started to sink as she saw one of the assassins come closer, appearing more of a blur than a person. Then again that was probably because of the nice, little concussion she got from her fall. The assassin walked over to her, unsheathed their sword and placed it right on her neck, blocking any and every way out.

“You were warned. The Demon’s Head does not tolerate treachery. We are here under his orders to bring back the totem along with the witch’s head; your head”

If she could, she would’ve rolled her eyes at the classic villainous dialogues thrown at her.

“Witch? Who’re you calling a witch Snow White? I’m clearly a sorceress, don’t they teach you the difference between the two in assassin school or something? Hell, I’d even let you call me an enchantress, though that name’s already been taken but you get my poin-” 

The remaining words died in her throat as the sword on her neck shifted slightly. She knew she had extremely poor self preservation skills considering she’s clearly been instigating the very person sent to kill her, but even she wasn’t dumb enough to keep talking when the tiniest movement on either part could result in her having a severed jugular or carotid. 

‘This is a pretty shitty way to die’ 

She thought back to how she used the last of her mystic energy to hide the totem away before her fall and how stupid that decision really was because now she could actually feel the agonizing pain coming from her shoulder. It started to spread throughout her back like wildfire, eyelids grew heavy against her wishes. Suddenly she felt really tired and the idea to close her eyes just felt so goddamn appealing. 

‘No (Y/N) that’s the blood loss talking. Blood loss doesn’t get to make decisions’, she mentally scolded herself, still not breaking her eye contact with the person standing above her.

“Give us what you stole and we shall grant you the mercy of a quick death.”

That made her raise an eyebrow, “Ah, lemme think...the correct response here would be…”, she hummed, making a show of how hard she was thinking about the offer she was granted, “How about a fuck you? How would that do for you?”, she gave them a vicious grin, it was all teeth.  They probably weren’t impressed by her response and it showed.

She knew there was no way out but she had promised herself once that if she were to die, that if she ever goes out, she’d be anything but a whimpering and sobbing mess. She was scared shitless, more so than she’d ever been while fending off the league, she won’t deny that but she would rather die than let them know that.  ‘Well at least I got that ‘rather die’ part down to a T.’ she thought, eyeing the sharpness of the blade which was now raised up in the air

She felt bad for just giving up the way she did. Her whole life she was told to fight her way through the impossible, to attain the strength rivaling that of Zatanna Zatara, John Constantine and Doctor Fate himself. To be better than them, and there she was lying on the ground limp as a sword came down on her throat; all for a silly necklace. She would’ve huffed out a laugh if only her ribs weren’t broken, if only her body wasn’t screaming in pain, if only she had a way out. She didn’t. She was too tired, too drained, too numb to do anything else. Closing her eyes she stopped fighting, she let her growing unconsciousness claim her.

‘This is what you deserve anyway’, her barely there conscience remarked.

‘Fuck you too.’ she replied.

Everything went pitch black. The darkness encompassing her was peaceful, unlike the pain she had felt before. It was nice for a change. It sounded pathetic  but she couldn’t bring herself to care.

•°•°

 When she came to, the first thing she observed was the feeling of something soft against her back, next was a dull rhythmic sound which she realized was her own heartbeat. Though opening her eyes was a tiring task. It shouldn’t have been, but it was. She used all the energy she had into it and her eyelids fluttered open. She stared at the white ceiling and stayed like that for a few seconds; a few minutes? She couldn’t tell, but the pain was back now, not too much but enough to tell her it was there, to tell she was still alive.

She saw something shift in her peripheral vision and her body instinctively went stiff. Her mind which was blank before now ran in all directions.

‘Could be Ra’s Al Ghul… Could be worse’, she tried not to think about the worst case scenario, but she knew she had pissed off a lot of beings, beings far more powerful and far crueler than Ra’s himself. An involuntary shudder passed through her at the thought. That must’ve caught her captor’s attention as she felt the person move closer to her. Begrudgingly, she tore her gaze from the spot on the ceiling which she had been staring at this whole time and tilted her head. The man in black and blue who appeared, was probably the last person she had expected to see.

“Nightwing…”

Her voice was barely above a whisper and the hoarseness with which it came out it took her by surprise, but her body visibly relaxed at the sight of the familiar figure, at the sight of someone who would never hurt her.  

She watched him pull out a chair from the desk nearby. He sat next to the bed she was lying on and gave her a soft smile, a smile that spelled one word ‘relieve’. She remembered how when she first met him two years ago, she found that particular smile extremely annoying, she had no reason to, but she did. What she couldn’t remember was when she had grown so fond of it.

“How do you feel?”

“Like shit.”

He snorted a laugh which made her pout. She was planning to point out how he was being mean; laughing at her when her response truly defined the way she was feeling, but any words she thought of were cut off by the change in his expression. His smile faltered, lips were now pressed in a thin line, face contorted in a way which showed his genuine concern.

“This is the second time, this week.”

That you almost died, he didn’t say. That I had to save you and bring you back from the clutches of death, he didn’t say.

“I know.”

“That doesn’t make it better.”

“I know.”

The silence that settled, stretched far too long for comfort, but she wasn’t going to be the one to break it. She wanted to, but there was nothing she could say, that would make it better. Nightwing ran his fingers through the locks of hair, burying his face in his hands.

For the first time since she woke up, she took in his appearance, he looked disheveled,  his suit was torn in different places along visible faint cuts, most likely he got them when he rescued her. She felt a pang of guilt rising in her chest. He risked his life for her, she knew he had done it before, she didn’t get it then and she didn’t get it now. Why would someone do that? Why would he? She was pulled back from her spiraling thoughts when he spoke again, exhaustion evident in his voice.

“Why are you so reckless?”

“Excuse me?”

She looked at him like he had grown another head. She wasn’t ready for this conversation but by the looks of it they were gonna have it anyway.

“What if I hadn’t been there today? Or any of the other days you almost died. What then?”

“My best guess? I would’ve been dead.”

“And that fact doesn’t bother you at all?!”

She flinched at little when his voice rose, but she stood her ground, at least figuratively since she was still in bed.

“I don’t know, should it?” She didn’t try and tone down the venom dripping from her words. Her words cut deeper than the wounds he got from the assassins; she saw it clear as day on his face. She let out a deep sigh but continued. She had to get it out and he had to hear it, that’s the reason she gave herself for the confession that followed.

“I don’t need your help, Dick. I don’t know what gave you the impression that I did but I’ve never needed it.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. ‘Why was it getting harder to speak?’ “I don’t need you to save me every time. I don’t need you to risk your life for me and I definitely don’t…” She moved to sit up straight, her back resting on the headboard. She shifted her gaze on her open palms resting in her lap; palms covered in blood, in her blood, not very long ago.

“I don’t need you to care...”

The last part was a whisper and Dick was silent, so silent that for a brief moment she wondered if the man she’d come to care about even heard her, admitting something that was so painful for her to say out loud.

Dick moved to sit beside her, his shoulder bumping hers. He didn’t know where all this was coming from but he knew better to leave it unattended.

“(Y/N) I help you because I care about you. I always will, you know that.”

“Why? You have nothing to gain from it”, blinking back the unshed tears in her eyes, she looked at him with a hurt expression as if she couldn’t bring herself to understand.

“Why… as in why do I care?”, Dick tilted his head to look her in the eyes, trying to understand what she meant all the while making sure not to let his own surprise at her words show. She nodded not trusting her voice to not betray her anymore than it already had.

“I don’t care about you because I feel like you need it nor because I would gain something from it”, Dick knew he shouldn’t have to explain it to her. He briefly wondered what she had gone through to make her think that she needed to be useful to be cared for or that she had to need it to be cared for. He felt something pull at his heart at the thought; It was sorrow.

“I care about you because… well I do and there’s nothing you could or couldn’t do to change that. And it is because I care about you that I ask you to be better at taking care of yourself. Now I know for a fact that whatever you stole from The League’s safehouse definitely did not belong there, but I also know that whatever it was, it wasn’t worth your life (Y/N) It never will be.”

Dick grasped one of her hands, interlacing his gloved fingers with hers; she hadn’t even realized she was shaking until he did so. Closing her eyes, she forced herself to take a deep breath despite her protesting ribs. Opening the palm of her free hand she muttered an incantation with practiced ease

“Eveirter tahw saw neddih “, her hand glowed, the golden aura taking the shape of a object. When the light subsided, Dick saw the object in her palm as she rubbed her thumb across it, quietly leaning her head on his shoulder.

“It was this totem. It belongs to Madame Xanadu. Don’t know what Ra’s wanted it for though”, she shrugged as best as she could with an injured shoulder then continued, voice firmer than it had been the whole evening,“ She asked me to retrieve it in exchange for information on a girl I was looking for. The girl was somehow sucked into some other dimension, a mystic one and her mother was so desperate when she approached me that I just couldn’t say no. So when I say the Totem was important, then I want you to know that it really is.”

Dick shook his head at that. “Still not worth your life.”

“Dick…”, she sighed. It was all she could do at the moment because she was really getting tired from all the arguing.

“Do you remember the first time we met?”

“You mean the time I met the infamous vigilante Nightwing in a dumpster of all places.”

“In my defense I was badly injured”, she hummed in agreement.

“You smelled bad”

“You try smelling like flowers after falling from a building and into an open dumpster.”

His playful grumbling pulled a short laugh out of her. She was more than a little confused at the sudden trip into the past but happily accepted it as a change of topic. She should’ve know better than to think he’d have let the matter go.

“Anyway my point is when you saw me that day, you first instinct was to help me. You pulled me out and used your magic to heal my wounds. You didn’t have to. You could’ve dropped me at a hospital. You could’ve even walked away and pretended that you never saw me, but you didn’t. Why is that?”

“Because I thought you were handsome?”, she said trying to lighten this too-heavy-for-comfort conversation he was trying to have.

“Nice try. I know you. You saved me because you cared. You helped me and the Titans save the city more than once because you cared. It is who you are. I’ve seen you care about and worry over complete strangers without conditions. So why do you think that there has to be some kind of a barter system when it comes to you? Why think that I would want to gain something if I cared about you?”

“Because everyone else did.”

The words shot out from her mouth quicker than she realized. She had voiced her greatest insecurity to the one person who never had anything to add to it and Dick’s heart clenched at the implications of her words, ‘She has never been loved unconditionally before’ his brain provided.

The tears she blinked back earlier came back with full force. She felt two strong arms that wrapped around her, all the while being mindful of her injuries. Dick pulled her into a hug and that was it. She couldn’t control the sobs that tore through her throat, the pain in her body flared due her erratic movements. She knew once the tears started flowing they wouldn’t stop at least not for a while, but now that her façade had been broken she couldn’t bring herself to give it another thought.

He waited for her to let it out, let out all the pent up emotions she had. Now that he thought about it he had never seen her cry. He never questioned it, maybe he should’ve.

“I don’t know who’s responsible for hurting you (Y/N), God, how much I wish I did”, his arms slightly tighten around her at that. “I am so sorry that you have felt like you have to have your walls up all the time, even around me and I should’ve seen that, I should’ve realized that before but I didn’t and I am so sorry for that. I can’t undo the damage you’ve endured and I will not pretend that I can. What I can do is promise you that I’d never let you down like that, never.”

The words he spoke were clear. He didn’t try to tell her to put her walls down, to trust him when she had no reason to. He also didn’t need to justify himself or make such over the top promises but it felt nice to hear it. She had already stopped crying the moment he started speaking again but she still had her forehead pressed against his chest, listening to his heartbeat, it was calming in a way she couldn’t describe. She pulled her head back to look at him, and the honesty in his voice earlier matched the one in his eyes.

“Okay”

Hearing her response, he gave her his signature grin. It sent unexpected warmth through her, he always had that effect on her. She was sure she was just blushing at this point and was suddenly thankful for the dim lighting in the room. 

She ended up composing herself rather quickly, jabbing a finger at his armored chest with her usual smirk plastered on her face.

“Now that you’ve made that promise, know this, Dick Grayson, if you let me down I will drop a mountain on you.”

“You mean that figuratively?”

“No I mean that geologically”, he waited for her to say she was kidding. She didn’t.

“Alright, alright”, He held his hands out in mock surrender. After considering the look in her eyes, Dick refrained from questioning the feasibility of that action nor did he want to question her magical abilities or intent. Last he remembered, Wally did that and that conversation ended with him being teleported to Sahara and Dick would very much like to avoid the same fate as his best friend.

Deciding that was more than enough exhaustion for one night, he got up from the bed and kissed her goodnight, informing her that he’d be sleeping on the couch so that he wouldn’t accidently hit her injuries in his sleep. She agreed and watched him slip out of the room before falling into the blissful sleep she had been putting off since forever.

•°•°

She knew Dick Grayson was full of surprises but the next morning when he put forward the offer of become a full time Titan, in front of her, she wondered if she fell from the bed in her sleep and ended up  getting another concussion because he was so not making any sense.

“So let me get this straight, you want me to come live with you and your superhero friends, in the Titans freaking Tower?!”

“I was hoping for a little less yelling after an emotional evening but yes that is exactly what I’m asking.”

“Dick that’s just ridiculous!”

“Look, you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

He looked like a kicked puppy which made her feel kinda guilty for all the yelling.

“It’s not that…It’s just there is still a lot about me I haven’t told them. There is still a lot I haven’t told you. I don’t see a reason why you all would want to trust a possible threat, let alone live with it”, she gestured to herself.

Dick felt like there was a deeper meaning behind her words, as if she was voicing her own fear rather than theirs but he trusted her enough to tell him about it when she was ready, on her own terms. He could wait till then but for now he crossed the short distance between them, going around the breakfast table till he stood in front of her. He grasped both of her hands in his and ran his thumb soothingly across her knuckles. He bent down to place a soft kiss on her forehead, and then moved to meet her gaze.

“(Y/N), I know you and I trust you and…It sounds silly considering I was raised by the worlds greatest detective but I believe that you don’t have to know every little detail about someone as long as you already know what’s in their heart.” Bruce probably would’ve disagreed but he wasn’t Bruce.

“And you know what’s in mine?”

“And I know what’s in yours.” His statement was firm and left no room for argument, not when it came to this.

“If you’re sure about this, then I guess...”

“Is that a yes I’m hearing?”, There was that smile again, seriously what was up with him and his smile that made her giddy inside.

In between thoughts she realized he was still waiting for a response so she nodded. Any underlying doubts she had about her answer vanished when she took in how happy it made him. As cheesy as it sounded seeing him happy made her happy. A part of her said it wouldn’t last long, but seeing her boyfriend hop onto the couch full of joy as he called his friends about the latest development in their lives, she wanted to believe otherwise.    

°•°•°•°•

[fuckfacetheunicorn]

The portrayal of wealth in Knives Out is what makes it so good

It explores beyond the divide between rich and poor, showing the ill effects of large amounts of wealth on those who have access to it. 

Harlan: All wealth within the family is the direct or indirect result of his work. Every penny of what he has, he worked for, which gives him a certain level of appreciation for his privilege which his family don’t. I think that’s why he liked Marta so much. Because she was a working for her money, doing something she loved. His only fault is that while he understands the value of his money, he is blind to the effect it has had in his family, until too late.

Linda: Linda understands the concept of working for her money, and for the most part she has. But, she will gladly omit the fact that it was her father who gave her the money to start her business in the first place. She is so wrapped up in the fairytale image of her father, which is softened by his wealth, that she cannot completely grasp how his money makes her a different person.

Walt: Walt is the most difficult character. He’s the baby of the family and I think that shows in his work. Where Harlan gave Linda the money to start her own company and eventually become independent of the Thrombey wealth, Walt never left. Walt only understands the value of his father’s books in currency, rather than in the good his books have done for the people that read them. 

Joni: Joni married in, which means her sense of entitlement is slightly different but still there. She’s thinking in terms of preservation rather than in terms of accumulation. She honesty thinks she can’t survive without access to Harlan’s money.

Richard: Richard is shielded by his wife’s wealth and therefore thinks he is unchallengeable, even from Linda herself. 

Meg: Meg is extremely socially aware of the problems of concentrated wealth, but she isn’t self-aware enough to see that she is part of the problem. She strikes me as one of those people who like to play hero, and talk over those who’s voices need to be heard the most. Money is natural to her, so to be without it is a nightmare for her, no matter her raging about social justice.

Ransom: Ransom is the most interesting, because while he exploits his grandfather’s money just as much as the rest of the family, he doesn’t try to hide it. He is the smartest person in the room most of the time, and relishes in his family’s delusion. He sees the toxic impact Harlan’s money has had on his family, himself included, but he enjoys the privileges it gives him too much to care. So yes, he’s a murderous asshole, but he’s a self-aware murderous asshole. 

This all means that before Harlan’s murder, Ransom was probably the most honest person in the room at any given moment. And then he went and murdered his grandfather.

So the real lesson of this movie is not necessarily that wealth is bad, it’s that having no understanding of the effect wealth has had on your life is bad.

[trulyhumblenarcissist]

Abourt Rei Himura and BNHA Chapter 301

Now that I've read the official release of chapter 301 I can finally try to gather my thoughts. I think this time the particular rendition of dialogues and inflections provided by Caleb Cook is more crisp and clear than usual, especially in throwing "shade" upon Endeavor as a father figure. But let's do things in order...

Title: THE WRONG WAY TO PUT OUT A FIRE - a simple, but stark message that doesn't leave space for ambiguity. There was a fire, an imminent tragedy that could and should have been avoided, but whoever tried to fix it, did it all wrong and now we have to deal with a huge arson.

CARLESS HANDLING OF FIRE, on the other hand, doesn't quite cut it for me, because it seems like everything was caused by a foolish mistake. "I was carless and now I'm in a pinch"- type of situation, while it's perfectly clear that Endeavor and Rei decided purposefully which "strategy" to use with Touya. A BAD one to say it lightly. Rei's contribution and complicity is debatable, of course, and I'll touch on this later.

Let me get this clear though: I'm not trying in any way to critique the hard work of unofficial translators. I can't say anything relevant because I'm not a translator in the first place (I can barely understand English and my native language on a good day) and also because I am so grateful for everything they do in order to give us really good material FREE OF CHARGE basically a second after the release in Japan. I'm just interested about the different shades of subtext we can catch if we read the story through multiple filters. Every translation is unique because it carries the personal spin of the author even if the bias should be inexistent or ideally undetectable...

However, back to the chapter

REI'S CAGE

The first scene opens on a luxurious classic Japanese villa, with Enji, Rei and her parents discussing the motivation behind Enji's proposal. Or at least we initially think that's what's going on... Because in reality Rei's family couldn't care less about the motivation. Everything these people see is a wealthy, famous guy the next number one hero ready to take their daughter in marriage. I guess the Himuras are pretty broke, thight on cash, their old prestige is definitely gone and all they can do to save themselves from shame and poverty is "to sell" their only remaining asset.

During the whole ordeal, Rei is standing still, silent, cold as ice. She knows she doesn't really have a choice. How mortifying and sad is this? An adult, capable woman has no agency whatsoever, she is used again and again and she stoically accepts this treatment from every single dominant figure in her life until she can't be stoic anymore. I really hope Horikoshi's going to give her a much more proactive role in saving her family and it seems the narrative wants us to expect this type of character development.

I'd like to point out 2 panels in particular:

First one

In this scene the Todorokis are back from their trip to the doc, who clearly said they shouldn't try to conceive a child with a perfect quirk mix because it is dangerous (and morally questionable too). Rei understands this fact and tries to dissuade Enji, but he doesn't listen, because he's projecting all his pent-up resentment and frustration onto Touya. He knows how it feels to crush against an unbreakable wall, since he can't surpass All might and his son can't too. He had to learn this truth the hard way, so Touya needs to do the same. Enji is purposefully throwing upon his son years of failures, self consciousness and despair, just because the boy has to get it into his thick skull that he is a dud, just like his father. This is not a hopeless dad making a mistake bona fide, this is a broken man trying to destroy his self reflection by proxy, annihilating everything Touya is, swiping the kid's identity under the rug. He describes his son's dreams and sadness as something birthed from stubbornness. He is auto-convincing himself however (because Endeavor is not stupid). A little bit later he's basically saying: "Touya let's play make believe! We can go on like everything I had engulfed in your psyche never existed, you're a failed attempt so you don't exist. Your needs and wants are silly and useless, nothing worth dealing with now that I can't make you my prodigy. Why don't you go play with the other failures so that I don't have to look at myself while taking actually care of you. I don't want to see you, because it's too painful, because you're a remainder of my own inadequacy."

Note: If you want to read an incredibly well done analysis about Endeavor's motives and psyche, you can get it on @thyandrawrites , she's dwelt on everything extensively and way better than me.

I really want to talk about Rei though. In the panel I showed above, her expression is a bit tricky to analyse. At first she is very vocal about her position. She doesn't want to put Touya through useless suffering, especially since they have a scientific reason not to. They have no guarantee of success with other children, besides, they could possibly have to deal with other health related issues. However, all it takes to convince her in the end is Enji's half assed attempt at the "It's for Touya's sake" shtick. Is it really? Why doesn't she question her husband anymore?

Well... I think before Natsuo, she was probably hoping Touya would let go "naturally", with time and growth, maybe by taking interest in his other siblings. Rei said she wanted to have more children because in her mind they would have supported and loved each other. Maybe she was naive enough to think that a big family full of kids few years apart from each other was all Touya needed to distract himself from his purposes... BUT and here is the point I want to get across: She was deluding herself too, much like Enji. The ugly truth, in my opinion, is that Rei is a person prone to protect herself by going with everything other people want, especially if said people are capable of hurting her. Yes, she was hurt time and time again, but what would have happened if she really tried to stop Enji?

What I am trying to say is that Rei is the kind of person who endures to survive. She holds a "captive" mentality in which, by indulging her captor's desires, she can continue living with less possibile damage. If I stay still and silent, if I don't make a scene, I can go on, I can hold onto the few things I have that actually make me happy.

Let's think about it... Enji was so obsessed with his psychotic, power-hungry quest that he would have probably disown Rei. She would have been thrown away for a more compliant woman with an ice quirk, or something similar, this resulting in her probably losing everything, the respect and love of her family (the Himuras) and also her own children. Because we know Endeavor can definitely hold a grudge and is vendicative.

So, clarifying, Rei doesn't put up a fight because she is scared for herself in a way... She is scared to be hurt in the worst possible way (by losing her little bit of serenity), so her strategy is to endure and to keep up a facade of control and purpose.

Rei, ironically just like Touya and other characters in mha, doesn't really get what unconditional love is. Her family loves her until she can be useful to the Himura name and status, her husband loves her for her quirk. Her children, however, love her for who she is and she wants to stay with them... Only to be forced to leave them later anyway.

The few times Rei actually smiles are when she is with her babies. She is a deeply loving mother in her core, but her declining mental health makes her a very lacking caregiver.

This panel, in my opinion, shows the point of no return for Rei. She can't keep the glacial facade forever...

After Natsuo's turn to be deemed a failure, Endeavor is crazier than ever, because All Might is as popular and loved as ever and he hasn't make any progress into his eugenetic games. The last two images of Rei are very telling. She is exhausted, but she knows what her husband wants from her this time too. She looks like a lifeless doll and honestly I can easily see Shouto's conception as... Non consensual and I will stop here.

Then Shouto is born, the last, perfect specimen... And Rei isn't doing much for Touya, we can see she's apparently blind towards her eldest son's distress already after Natsuo's birth... But why?

Because she is actively avoiding to face the Touya's problems too.

If Touya is still suffering, is still feeling stressed and worthless, then everything Rei has endured, everything she pretended not to feel for the sake of her family has been completely useless. What Rei cannot look at is her own parental failure, is the concrete proof that while protecting herself and her peace she did not protect her children too, because the two interests were never really aligned, even if she really believed so. She never had a functional family to preserve in the first place and everything she accepted to do was all for the sake of a false sense of belonging.

However is too easy to say she should've rebelled against Enji and dumped his sorry ass. Abuse traps you and your abuser too in a cage tricky to escape.

What I imagine will happen next chapter is one of two things:

Enji stops Touya by using brute force, probably also saying something really scarring to reinforce the notion that Shouto is the only child he cares about.

Rei stops Touya by using her quirk. This act could be considered by Touya another confirmation that even his mother actually does something by her own accord only when Shouto's safety is at risk

Necessary conclusions

I don't blame Rei for her actions too much. She is a victim turned abuser by circumstances, but more importantly she's actually taken mesures to prevent herself from hurting her children again. She's trying to heal for her family's sake, really this time. Ten years spent dealing with guilt and having actual therapy seem a good plan to me. And now she's the one ready to snap Enji back to reality.

Enji, on the other hand, is trying too. It's too little too late, but if he stops avoiding reality and hardly works on understanding his family's point of view I don't think he is completely unredeemable. I don't see him surviving his last confrontation with Touya, thought... But I could be totally wrong.

Obviously everything I've said it's my personal analysis on Rei's character, as I interpret her actions and words, so feel free to contradict me and/or to add anything you might see fit.

[azurevi]

3 halloween tales (cater, jade & vil)

This is really random, but the ssr cards for the halloween show have given me many au ideas, so here are my self-indulgent stories inspired by them. The Cater one is especially long because I got a lot of ideas about it. For the Vil one.. it's pretty disappointing how it turned out, but I hope it's not too bad. PLEASE READ THE WARNINGS!

WARNINGS : death (all), mild mention of gore (cater), war + mild possessiveness + violence (jade) [let me know if there're more!]

the heart and its eternal weight

Cater is a cemetery caretaker. It isn't that he really loves it, but his father was one. He feels like it is only right to take after his steps.

He isn't into superstitions. Some people find distaste in his job, but it's something crucial for Cater. People, even after they're dead, should still be honored, and so deserve a hospitable place to rest. 

Everyday is a routine for him. Sometimes, though, the families of the passed talk to him about their stories and their emptiness once their loved ones are gone. Cater finds the beauty and softness in humans by hearing these stories, and it makes him even more dedicated to his job. 

It's natural to him, dying. His father was killed in an unintended accident, and sometimes it seems like his death could have been avoidable just as much as it was inevitable. He just wishes that he had had more time with him.

One of the lessons his father taught him about graveyard caretaking is to beware of ghosts. Those who recently died are more visible and intimate with the world of the living, and so they might appear before humans. Some are inhostile, of course, but there are malevolent ones.

Lore has it that some ghosts prey on hearts. It is said that the heart is the most important part of a human, as it is accountable for life, death and emotions. People believe that ghosts can be revived with a fresh, still-beating heart, and as a result the human giving up their heart will die in place of the ghost. Basically, the heart can also create ripples in the fabric of space-time.

Because of his job, he isn't all that popular among others, and he only has a few life-long close friends, his mother and sisters by him. So even if he has a crush on the most admirable person he's ever seen, he still won't make it known in fear of rejection. He figures that he still has time to figure it out.

And he's wrong. News about your tragic death spread around quickly like wildfire, and he's devastated. It feels wrong to even feel so, because he has never been acquainted with you in the first place.

Your body is buried in his cemetery, and a lot of people come to your funeral that day. Some of your family members are so heartbroken and pitiable, and so Cater offered to be their listener.

All he can hear is about the great work you've done, the care you put into everyone you met, the warmth that radiated off you while you were still alive. It breaks Cater how he's never had the privilege to know you, to experience all your graces with his own perspective.

One night, the moon is lit and hung up high in the sky, so close that it seems to be prying on Earth and the people roaming on it. Cater is patrolling with his lawnmower when he hears quiet and uncertain sobs.

He is creeped out, yes, but he's also curious. He's never seen a ghost before, and it could be a human for all he knows.

He's proved wrong once again, as he discovers your opaque body behind a giant tree. You are hugging their legs close to your chest, and a rotting hole's visible where your heart should be.

There's no way you can be hostile, and you certainly won't kill him for his heart, so Cater decides to approach you gently, tentatively, like you're smoke that will disperse the moment he intrudes.

To his surprise, you can hear him clearly, and even invite him to sit down with him. It's so bizarre -- a ghost asking for a conversation! But Cater doesn't mind as he pops down beside you. He notices how although you were no longer solid, it still feels like tense when his hand passes through you. Certainly it's because you've been dead not for long.

And so the two of you indulge in heartful conversations, and Cater finds himself regretting even more about how he never gathered the courage to go up to you. Mid-conversation you tell him about all the things that you wish you could've done and all the ideas you wished to spread.

Cater probably shouldn't have, but he is so absorbed in your ambitions and kindness that he offers to carry out all these great things for you. After numerous confirmations, you agree too to let him carry out your thoughts.

And so Cater works in his neighbourhood, sharing campaigns and donating, taking care of lost pets and cats and partaking in environment improvement. He's never felt so fulfilled before, and it's the first time he feels like he's genuinely making a difference in the world.

In times he's not representing you, he brings you up on the little hill behind the cemetery where the moon and stars are so close and vibrant, where they all dance in the dark ballroom and pulse in excitement of being seen. He wishes he could show you more hidden gems, but your spectral spirit cannot be too far away from your body. 

But it's enough.

A month passes and Cater notices subtle change in your behaviour as well as appearance, like how you're responding with less enthusiasm and how the hole in your chest is growing bigger. When he finally asks about it, he's told that ghosts generally only stay in the world of the living for 49 days, and their heart will rot away in this period. After that, they will have to go to the underworld, never be back again.

Cater is certainly shocked that the lore is more than a children's makeup story. He is well aware of the significance of the heart in relation to the soul and life. 

He asks if you'd like to have his heart instead, so bluntly and casually. You seem to return to their original intimate self when you refuse. 

"I'm already gone. It's you, the living, who should be making changes,"

So he pretends that you're not getting more and more unresponsive and less and less generous. He turns a blind eye against your wavering figure and how you can't be seen at all in the sun. He plays dumb when in reality, you're slipping away before his very own eyes, heart rotting away like nothing more than a fruit.

It hurts finally knowing and understanding someone and having to lose them. 

On the 48th day, you are already but a still, soulless shadow, leaning beside your gravestone and fresh, white flowers. Cater can still see you. Sometimes he thinks that you chose to be seen.

And he can't bear to see you go. To see your dreams go into flames, to watch such a pretty soul just - vanish.

So he gives you his heart. Alive and beating and sentimental. It doesn't even hurt a bit. 

You wake up immediately, your eyes glowing and body solidifying. 

"What have you done?" 

"What I can do to make a change,"

Time is starting to rewrite itself. Cater is going to die in your place. The space around you was warping and folding into itself, softly and rightly like a lullaby.

Just before you slip into darkness, you gather up a whole bunch of rose petals and desperately stuff them into the hole in Cater's chest, as if they can give him life in lieu of a heart, and you are sobbing and clinging onto his still warm arm, never wanting to let go.

It's all Cater wants, to save a wasted soul and to make a difference. 

And so he cradles your face, and leans in the moment everything goes black. When he wakes up again, he's weightless in the cemetery, where a bunch of well arranged roses lie on his buried body.

a melancholy specimen

To Jade, beauty needs to be preserved to be constant. It's just like flowers. They die away without proper care.

Just when he thinks he's seen all the beauties of the world and is getting bored of it, he meets you. A blooming flower sparkling in the bland, old boring world around it. He's immediately captivated - how a person can still manage to flourish in such a rotten world where everything is depressing and all man is for themselves!

You're the most elegant piece of art he's seen, and that's something considering that he owns a museum. Innocence lies in your eyes and bravery sings itself between your lips.

You find him just equally amusing -- gentlemanly, insightful and just a touch of flirtation. The two of you fall in love like Alice down the rabbit hole - amused and unstoppable, fascinated by the wonders evolving about.

But the world doesn't give a damn about love, nor do they understand your dreams of a bright future where everything is close to hearts. They call you both madness and nonsense.

"Their souls are tainted with war and sorrow. They are beyond the point of rescue. Victory and glory are all that can feed their ego,"

Jade is disappointed. War has gouged people's eyes out and filled them with wails and ash.

The two of you are the only stars in the night sky, still fighting for salvation, yearning for a better future where trees grow and flowers yearn for the sun. You promote and do your best to lift the veil of darkness off the world. 

But the sun doesn't understand either. War keeps going on and on, and people never have the time for aesthetic relaxations. It refuses to shed light on its pitiable humans.

"We should evacuate, Jade. They say a bomb is dropping tomorrow,"

Jade doesn't care and can't care. The most paramount thing is to open his eyes to the beauty of this world. He doesn't want to become one of those barbarous men, tasting dirt and blood on their tongue while they glorify violence and brutalness.

He stays behind while his neighbourhood dies away. You are the only ones yet to leave. 

"Please don't leave me, Y/N. You're the only light in my life,"

You can't bear to leave him, and so you stay. The bomb is dropped, and it's too close. Too hot. Too cruel, too inhumane. It ravages everything in its way, burning all the darkened things to the ash and bringing the only beauty left in this world with it.

Jade wails. Broken cries are engulfed by nearby explosions and the cackling of flames. Your soulless body lies amidst the destruction, just another wilted flower in the slit of a rock, deprived of water and sunlight.

He finally understands. Nothing can save the world anymore. It's gone way too far, and it will never recover from malevolence. All he can feel is pity for his world as his heart ache with spite.

Bandages around his hands, he wraps your corpse up completely, preserved underneath the layers. You will be his reminder that there was once a flower in this drought, an anchor keeping him from becoming one of those barbarians.

lifeless silhouette in the dark night

You can never recognize directions. You find yourself stumbling upon a seemingly inhabited mansion in the middle of the woods. Cold and bruised, you knock on its door.

Welcoming you is a tall man with blonde and lilac hair called Vil. His skin is unnaturally white, and his eyes seem to glow like orbs that eat your souls. But you are too tired to make notice of all these details, and he's kind enough to let you stay for the night.

He treats you with ravishing cuisine and a grand bedroom that was as grotesque as the rest of the house. Afterwards, he leaves you to rest, but not before warning you not to get out of the room post midnight.

You oblige- for the first half hour. Then you start to hear wails and footsteps that amplify and disappear. It's impossible to sleep.

The next morning, you confront Vil about it. He refuses to face the questions as he ushers you to get going, and so off you go.

You spend another day lost in the woods, then somehow come face to face with the mansion again. Vil is beyond shocked to see you, but then he breaks into a deep smile.

"It's almost as if you belong here,"

Weirdly enough, you could agree, There seemed to be an invisible force pulling you towards Vil. After dinner, he orders you not to leave the room again before making his leave.

Broken wails. Recurring footsteps. You can't bear it any longer, and you also wonder if Vil is aware of this. He properly is, and thus tells you to stay safe inside the room.

But dumb curiosity gets the best of you, and you open the door and step into the endless corridors.

The wails come from the host's room, where Vil is supposed to be. You're closing in when its door is suddenly flung open, and out runs a panting Vil.

"Vil? What are-"

His eyes are bloodshot and there's red stain in the corner of his mouth. Sweat dots his forehead. He looks disheveled and the complete opposite of how he was during dinner.

"You shouldn't be here. Get back - get back in!"

His voice booms in your skull, and you're running back to your room before you notice. 

It's another sleepless night.

To your luck, Vil doesn't wait for you to bring the incident up.

"Don't be creeped ou by it, please."

He seems very uneasy about it, but he's obstinate to give you an explanation.

Turns out that he is a vampire. One that has lived for 500 years and is waiting for his eventual death. He's seen everything in this world and lived through the best and worst of humanity. He understands people's fear about vampires, and so he resides in the remote part of the wood. He only ever drinks the blood of small animals that he hunt, and never has he once killed a man.

He knew nothing about what'd happen to him when he became a vampire. If he'd known about the repercussions, he'd never have become one in exchange of eternal beauty. Now he has to turn someone else into a vampire to end his immortality. It is only a cycle.

 Every night the moon rises and spills into his room, and he has to fight his urge to go out and taste the sweet blood of humans. 

There are times when he slips and loses control, but he always manages to get back to his senses. But it seems that your presence here in the mansion is awaking his desire to suck you dry.

You're bewildered to say the least, and frankly horrified. But at the same time you feel pity for him, for he is just a man who can't ever do anything as atrocious as hurting people.

And so you offer to end his suffering. Of course Vil disagrees. He just talked about how he never wanted to take a life, and now you're offering yourself to him? He'd never allow it.

But you're even more persistent. You keep staying in his mansion, and his sanity slips a little more every night. And you know that he's contemplating too, for he never tries to kick you out of his mansion.

"You deserve a rest, Vil. For your love and selflessness. For all the unspoken kindness you bestow on others. It is only fair that you get to rest,"

Vil has lived a life. He's but a mere walking corpse now, and a rest -- a sleep -- sounds just like what he needs.

And so he rests. Vil falls into a deep, serene sleep while you endure each and every dark night.

[warrioreowynofrohan]

Further Moash Discussion

There has been a good deal of Moash discussion on my feed recently and I’d like to weigh in on a few points. This isn’t the first time time I’ve written about the character: here is my post on his arc during WOR and here is the one focusing on Oathbringer and Rhythm of War. While I ageee that he is interesting, that the “eff Moash” meme is annoying and cuts off discussion, and that a redemption arc is not impossible, I think the apologia has gone rather far and is neglecting to acknowledge several salient facts. So I’m going to cooment on a few points I’ve seen.

Why is Bridge 4 so anti-Moash from the start of Rhythmof War?

Well, it’s not simply because he killed Elhokar. Or rather, that wasn’t an act performed in isolation. Moash switched sides and joined the enemy army that is trying to conquer Roshar in service of Odium. Traitors are generally ill-regarded by the former comrades that they betray, so Bridge 4’s reaction should not really be surprising. If he had killed Elhokar as part of a personal mission of vengeance, the reaction would likely have still been negative but not quite the same.

Secondly, the reactions we see from Bridge 4 early in ROW are after Moash has shown up in Hearthstone; killed innocents (the men in prison) and thrown Kaladin’s inability to save them in Kaladin’s face; and tried to convince Kaladin to kill himself. Of course Bridge 4 hate him for that.

Is Moash fighting against oppression? Is Moash motivated by fighting against oppression?

This is a crucial question of Moash’s character arc, and a nuanced one. Is Moash angry about Alethi oppression of darkeyes? Indisputably. Would Moash like to see the destruction of lighteyed dominance. Again, yes; he says so in TWOK. But is that the goal of the actions for which fandom hates him?

The assassination of Elhokar and his replacement with Dalinar would not have fundamentally altered the Alethi social system. Dalinar is not a social progressive; he is in fact opposed to Jasnah’s more transformative actions in Rhythm of War. The goal of the assassination is to replace a weak, incompetent leader with a strong, competent one, and simultaneously to take revenge on Elhokar. Graves case is that Elhokar’s kingship is bad for the stability of Alethkar; the assassination is to preserve the system, not to overthrow it. In fact, it’s to put not Dalinar as he is now, but the Blackthorn in charge: Graves expects that Elhokar’s death will spur Dalinar to become that man again. This would, with what we now know of the Blackthorn (though neither Moash or Kaladin knew it in WOR) be a change for the worse.

Moash wants revenge, but nothing he is doing is for the benefit of Alethi darkeyes as a group.

When we move on to Oathbringer, Moash’s arc in this regard becomes much more interesting. The chapter “Rhythm of Work” is fundamental to it. In this chapter, Moash is enslaved by the Fused; he reflects that he is enthusiastic, happy, and enjoying himself, and that the Fused are good masters. He considers the enslavement of the humans, darkeyed and lighteyed alike, to be just.

This was certainly far better than his days as a lighteyes, when he’d worried incessantly about the plot against the king. It felt good to be told what to do.

Moash has never thrown off the Alethi social ideology in which he was inculcated; instead, he has repurposed it. Throughout their youth, he and Kaladin were taught that the lighters ruled because they were grand, noble, superior, and that gave them the right to rule. Now, Moash has applied that ideology to the relationship between humans and Fused: the Fused are better, nobler, more well-judging, so it is just and right that they should enslave humans, and humans should be grateful for good conditions as slaves.

He is not fighting against oppression - quite the opposite! He’s simply discarded the unworthy lighteyed masters and chosen new masters who live up to the idea of what the lighteyes were supposed to be.

And this is the context of his thoughts when he rescues the Singers who Kaladin previously helped. “You’re becoming like us,” he says to the Fused. He needs the Fused to be better than humans, to not disappoint him like lighteyes did, because it is that conviction of their superiority that lets him accept enslavement and not be burdened with having to think for himself or make his own decisions.

There is something very strange to me in arguments that treat someone who is motivated by actively desiring enslavement as if he was some kind of revolutionary liberator.

And this isn’t an attitude that Moash throws off at some later point. Throughout the rest of Oathbringer and Rhythm of War, it is the same. He finds motivation only in relation to people from his past (Elhokar, Kaladin); the rest of the time he passively does as he is told without caring why, as with his murder of Jezrien. He seeks out manual labour because it is mindless (and perhaps, because it is physically painful). His sole drive in Rhythm of War is the same as it was at that moment in “Rhythm of Work” when he rescued the abused Singers - to remove anything that could cause him to question his choice to join Odium’s side. In Rhythm of War, that ‘anything’ is Kaladin.

That doesn’t mean he cannot change; indeed, it would make it particularly striking if he did. Venli’s change was no less radical. But he will not necessarily do so. At the moment, he is the precise opposite of a warrior against oppression; he seeks out and desires subjugation and unquestioning obedience, and only acts on his own initivative to destroy whatever might undermine that obedience.

That’s also, I think, whe he doesn’t feel sorry for killing Teft. To regret an action is to conceptualize the idea that it would have been better to have done otherwise. Moash’s fight all through ROW was to extinguish the existence of the concept that it was possible to do otherwise than he had done. He can feel bad, but that only leads to “I want to have still done this, but not feel bad about it” rather than to “I want not to have done this”.

As a result of this: I feel like saying that condemnation of Moash’s actions constitutes “condeming an oppressed person for resisting oppression in the wrong way” is wrongheaded because Moash isn’t fighting against oppression. He’s fighting for subjugation - of himself and others. We’re not talking about Kelsier killing off nobles here.

Is Moash responsible for his actions taken while Odium is removing his emotions?

Short answer: Yes. Fully as much as Dalinar was responsible. for his actions taken under the influence of the Thrill. A little more so, even since Moash knows exactly what Odium is doing, whereas the Alethi were not as clear on the nature of the Thrill. What Odium is doing to Moash is what Moash wants. To say he isn’t resposible is like saying that a person who, by their own choice, gets drunk, and then beats up another person while drunk, is not guilty by reason of drunkenness. This is not how either the law works (else it would be intrinsically impossible to convict a person for drunk driving) or how morality works. Moreover, the state that Moash is in is one he specifically wanted, and every time he loses it his reaction is to immediately panic and try to get it back as soon as possible, not to go “having no emotions led to me doing horrifically evil things; I want to not be like that.”

Given his current state, I don’t see Moash making any attempt or having any desire to be free of Odium; very much the opposite. The best probability I can see for a redemption arc is Odium throwing him off (a newly-blind soldier isn’t especially useful, and Moash’s peculiarities appealed more to Rayse, I think, than they would to Taravangian; Taravangian is much more big-picture than Moash), leaving him blind, alone, and with a mountain of guilt. But I’m biased in this regard; my instinctive sympathy with self-loathing characters makes this appeal to me.

[pocket-void]

Some Stuff About Marcus Pt.1

Alright, I’m finally gonna talk about Marcus in more depth for a lil bit because honestly the more I think about him the more I want to talk about him. So I’m gonna do just that! Both for fun and to get some stuff out of my creative system. ^///^

So let’s start with the man himself, shall we?

Marcus

Marcus is my personal version of the mysterious Orange side, and he’s more of an OC than a theory and I just really enjoy talking about him sometimes. So I do! I talk more about what he represents in this post (there’s also other miscellaneous scraps of info about him in the orange side tag), this one is gonna focus more on his exact relationship with each of the other sides (I always welcome more specific asks if you ever wanna know anything else! Since I’m very rambly and believe me when I say that I have answers to basically everything >///<). These are longer than I thought so I’m splitting it up...but if you’re still here, then strap in folks! u///u

Roman

Marcus doesn’t dislike Roman, but he’s not a big fan of him either. Theoretically they could have a better relationship but it’s hindered by a perception of Marcus that someone else had set a long time ago. (We’ll get to that)

One of the bigger reasons why Marcus and Roman don’t quite get along is simply due to their completely opposite levels of self respect. Roman is insecure and often unsure about his accomplishments and how others feel about him, while Marcus is too sure about his skills and how others perceive him. There are clear flaws to both.

In Marcus’ case, it’s made him incredibly stubborn and bitter as a result of being seen as a problem and not being able to do anything. It’s very difficult to convince him he’s wrong, and while he’s not dumb enough to think he’s right about everything, he gets more aggressive than necessary in the face of opposition at times. But more than anything Marcus is honest. He’s blunt and isn’t afraid of just stating how he feels to people, and Roman’s reluctance to do so really bugs him at times. In fact, he’s sometimes angry for him.

The fact that simple phrases can shatter Roman’s entire ego drives Marcus up walls, because if he were in his position he’d probably deck someone in the face right then and there. Being insulted? Getting what he fears most spat at him like venom? Marcus would never stand for that. Beyond that he’s also mad for the people who care about Roman. Why can’t he believe them? Can’t he see how much he’s cared about? How worried people are? Does he really? Marcus thinks that distrust and insecurity feels like an insult to them.

The thing about Marcus is that he’s been through being branded bad and evil. He’s still the bad guy in a couple of ways. He’ll play the bad guy if he has to. He’s over it, though not quite over it as he’d like to be... In a way, he’s also envious of Roman. Roman is important. The others do actually love him. And deep down, Marcus also respects the things he does and doesn’t want him to be crippled by his self doubt because what the two have in common is passion. A drive and determination to do the things they want, and to achieve the goals they aim for. It’s just a shame that their relationship is soured by their general perceptions of each other.

Marcus also just isn’t big on theatrics, but that’s because he uh, can’t see. He likes to make fun of Roman just like anybody else in casual conversation and only ever refers to him as “Red”, “Princey”, or on occasion “Ruby”. He jokingly takes Roman’s threats seriously when they quip, and while they never actually get into fights, Roman is aware that Marcus will actually throw down.

At the end of the day, Marcus wants Roman to consider himself his own hero. He doesn’t understand Roman’s need to keep up an image because he’s never had an image to live up to, let alone anyone who'd look to him for inspiration. Whether Roman likes him or not doesn’t really matter to him, he doesn’t care about people who’ve made up their minds about him and are too set in certain ways of thinking.

Which is hypocrisy at its finest, but we’re not there yet.

Janus

Right off the bat, they do not get along. Which you might find kind of odd, considering they’re both under the umbrella of “dark side”. The truth is, they’re tentative colleagues at best. Hilariously Logan probably gets along with Janus better than Marcus does, and there are a couple very fair reasons behind this.

On the one hand, they both agree on doing things for the “self” (Which in their case is c!Thomas). They both agree that the self should be the most important person in one’s life, and will do whatever it takes to protect it. However, the biggest difference between them is the methods they go about doing so. And it’s here that Marcus’ righteous anger often clashes harshly with Janus’ need for self preservation. Marcus doesn’t lie, he doesn’t see the need to. If he wants something, he’ll do it. If he believes something, he’ll say it. He does it because he knows he’s right, and that’s what matters. Obviously this would cause a lot of problems in real life if you actually are that blunt 24/7, and in those cases Janus has to reign him in quite a bit.

Marcus is fundamentally reckless, brash, and prone to getting carried away if not kept in check, which makes him kind of a danger to Thomas’ wellbeing at times. The thing is, both of them are aware of this. Which is actually why Marcus isn’t as spiteful about stepping down as he could be. He knows that he can do more harm than good if he ever steps out of bounds. This won’t stop him from feeling like his input would infinitely accelerate certain debates, and on a personal level he does still feel like he has the right to fight for that recognition, but he doesn’t because he’s not dumb enough to actively cause harm to others for the sake of himself. It’s not what he wants. What he will and often does do however, is do things that end with him getting hurt in the end. Maybe the reason he disagrees with Janus so much is because his own sense of self preservation is surprisingly poor.

A mildly exaggerated analogy I like to think about is that: If under any circumstance the two of them would have to plot revenge, Janus would focus more on personal safety and Marcus would focus more on personal vindication. Marcus has zero qualms about actually throwing hands, no matter the resulting physical consequence (If his scars were any indication) which Janus would 100% be against. Imagine the consequences of a physical confrontation! Absolutely not. Snake man would prefer more subtle and manipulative tactics, and would probably prefer to frame someone without being implicated himself if possible. They usually compromise, but always butt heads one way or another.

In casual conversation, Marcus is more snarky to Janus than anything. They trade sarcastic remarks often and tend to be a lil snippy, but they often agree on similar points? But also insist that they don’t get along, which is pretty funny. Marcus calls Janus “Yellow” or “Snake”, and sometimes a few yellow flower names like “Tansy” or “Marigold”.

Remus

Would it come as a surprise if I said these two actually get along ok? Think about it: They’re both blunt, forthcoming with their ideas (As wild as Remus’ are), and are at times prone to violence. They’re both seen as “bad” and both have experienced being forcefully repressed one way or another. They kind of just vibe on a similar plane of existence if I’m honest with you. More than that however, both are relatively accepting of themselves, Remus more so than Marcus actually. There are some things Orange unfortunately still has to come to terms with.

On a casual level, they probably can do some pretty reckless and dumb things together. Marcus respects anybody with self confidence really, and the way Remus just owns being the garbage man he is definitely gets a pass in his book. It doesn’t mean they never disagree though. In a lot of ways, Marcus is still tied to logic, and Remus’ chaotic nature isn’t always suited to how he works. They conflict the most when it’s time to put the chips down and actually get things done. Remus totally does his best to bug the hell out of him too, much to his chagrin. He makes it pretty clear how he feels about it, but the duke isn’t fazed. Tackle the blind man, he dares you.

Marcus isn’t exactly good with creative input, it’s not his function. In fact, he himself is actually locked in a very specific type of world view from his experiences over the years. It’s not intentional, he just tends to grow irrational when he gets too heated. Sometimes he forgets to take his hand out of the fires that burn him, and it inevitably comes at a detriment to himself. Remus has the capacity to make him incredibly furious under bad circumstances, and if they aren’t careful he might actually act upon dangerous suggestions that Remus just casually suggests. If Remus is the voice behind intrusive thoughts, Marcus is the impulse that actually acts upon them. He won’t, obviously, but spite and anger can push people to do rash things. They both know better than that of course, but it’s a possibility that will never go away.

Marcus calls Remus “Green”, though he also refers to him by odd green things sometimes like “moss” or “seaweed”. I like to imagine the two of them going off and smashing up random things to blow off steam/just for fun. But that’s just me. u///u

---

If you’re still reading then thank you??? This is honestly more self indulgent than anything, but I just have way too much stuff I could talk about and it needs to go somewhere akjbefkaefk.

I shall talk about the rest in Part 2 perhaps. o///o

[adultswim2021]

Welcome to Eltingville: “Bring Me the Head of Boba Fett” | February 26, 2002 - 4:00 AM | Special

Lots of personal baggage to unpack on this one, so please forgive what will surely read as a personal blog post:

Welcome to Eltingville was the first of Adult Swim’s “failed pilots” which aired as a special. It’s failed in the sense that it didn’t get picked up, presumably for being too expensive. It originally aired as a stealth premiere at 4:00AM on Monday night/Tuesday morning, I’m assuming to fulfill a contractual agreement. It had a “for real” advertised premiere on March 3rd, which is what you’ll find cited on various web sources.

It’s time I confess something here: I didn’t like this show the first time around. The early 2000s was a time when “nerd” culture was being clumsily embraced as a novelty. People suddenly started gravitating towards movies and shows about nerds, all usually portrayed in a cutesy and toothless way. Yes, I was too blinded by my own shunning of this trend to realize that this show was the antithesis of that. And yes, I was unfamiliar with the original comics that these were based on, which probably would have blown my mind if I was aware of them in the 90s. Hell, I would have shunned a Dan Pussey cartoon if I weren’t already in love with Dan Clowes comics.

Was it all overblown in my own head? Well, I can only come up with two examples to illustrate my distaste for “nerds stuff”, so yes, it probably was. First, Super Nerds, which was a 2000 pilot staring Patton Oswalt and Brian Posehn as two nerds who worked at a comic book store. I was sold on it by a friend as being the best sitcom he’d ever seen in his life. I also loved Patton Oswalt and Brian Posehn. But good lord, did I hate that show, a lot. The more mainstream example is the Comedy Central show Beat the Geeks, a trivia game show where normal people compete against experts (or geeks) in certain fields (usually popular culture related). The promos showed the geeks in question strutting around and ironically looking cool and triumphant. These promos were so profoundly unfunny to me that I found it insane and offensive when the whole “geek” angle seemed to hook other members of my family. “there’s this game show where guys have to compete... against GEEKS! haw haw!” I can still hear my dad’s voice echo in my head. I still hate it!

I also didn’t relate to traditionally geeky things, like superhero comics, science fiction/fantasy, etc. I hated all of that stuff, and I still mostly do (did I go through a multiple year phase in my early 30s where I tried to force myself to like super hero comics? Yes! I did! It didn’t particularly take). I am absolutely a comedy nerd, though, which is a much MUCH lonelier pursuit.

Hell, the comedy nerd isn’t even an archetype on TV shows; Freaks and Geeks came fairly close, but those guys also liked sci-fi and role-playing games and stuff. Square Pegs also had a comedy nerd character. There was that episode of Undeclared where Martin Starr is boring the rest of the cast by trying to explain that Freddy Got Fingered was an intelligent anti-comedy (the closest I’ve ever seen myself be portrayed on screen). All of these shows lasted one season, making the comedy nerd character the most potent poison since (NOTE TO SELF: google FAMOUS FICTIONAL POISONS, please pick a cool non-nerdy one [leave note-to-self in write-up if coming up with one is impossible {will come off as intentional meta-humor (everyone will love this)}]).

Welcome to Eltingville is about four friends who have created The Eltingville Comc Book, Science-Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and Role-Playing Club. They’ve presumably been together for a long time when this episode starts, and we see the dynamics of the club right away, the main thing being the constant petty bickering that quickly becomes violent and destructive. They’re all gigantic jerks who presumably only hang with each other because nobody else will. The main conflict of this show has to do with Bill, the Stan of the group, and Josh, the Cartman, who eventually come to blows over a rare Boba Fett doll-- I mean, figure. The first half of the show is a pretty good introduction to the would-be-series, with the guys playing a D&D style role-playing game and then getting into a full-fledged fist-fight over a VHS compilation of nude scenes that turns out to be a recording of the Hair Bear Bunch. The second half is an adaptation of the comic story “Bring Me The Head of Boba Fett”. Had I thought of it I might have read the entire run of Eltingville Club comics before reviewing this. Unfortunately it was a bit of an afterthought so I just read the first two stories, including the Boba Fett one. For the record, I own the Eltingville book, and definitely read and loved the two-issue series that serves as the ending of the Eltingville comics. It’s all those comics in the middle I still need to get to.

The show is very funny and it looks beautiful. According to the few interviews that I’ve found regarding the show (including a page of text found in the Eltingville book, which precedes a section showing off some of the character design sheets), there really wasn’t much reason given for the show not getting picked up. The show definitely looked better than anything else on Adult Swim, so the whole “too expensive” thing seems like as good an assumption as any. Apparently Dorkin spread himself too thin working on this, attempting to design/draw every little thing seen on screen. I actually wondered that while watching the show, because his art style is faithfully preserved here, which is great! The episode ends the same way the comic story does, with Bill & Josh in a trivia-off, competing over the buying rights for a 12 inch Boba Fett action figure at their local comic shop. With every rewatch of this show I confront one basic thing about myself, and it’s how much of the trivia I’ve picked up since the last rewatch. Bill & Josh’s trivia-off is a flurry of questions regarding all kinds of geek garbage, and the few years between viewings of this results in me knowing a few more answers. But, I have the internet, and can usually get hold of a movie or TV show or comic book almost instantly. It’s important to not lose sight that these kids (especially in the comics) are either high-school or college-aged and they learned all of this shit in an era when the internet wasn’t as ubiquitous as it is today. The original comic is set firmly in 1994, and when there’s a dispute over a question Josh runs home to get a large Godzilla reference book to prove that he’s correct. This changed in the pilot to Josh losing on a technicality with a slip-of-the-tongue; attributing a famous catchphrase to a fellow club-member who had adopted it for himself (the comic actually SEEMS to set this up, but doesn’t go in that direction at all, which is weird when you read it AFTER watching this special. I think that means the cartoon improved on that idea).

Wikipedia makes no mention of this stealth broadcast. It would SEEM to make more sense that it aired Monday morning following late night Sunday, but Adult Swim ended at 1AM back in these days, making early Monday morning still technically “out of bounds”. In fact, I very nearly “corrected” the air date to reflect this, but a quick google search for “Welcome to Eltingville” + “4AM” yielded this message board thread where we can see in real time that early Tuesday morning is indeed correct. So, if you’re ever arguing over a 12 inch Boba Fett feel free to uses this trivia in your trivia off.

[flysafepapi]

Noose

Any sane person would call him loyal to a fault, that it’s going to be his downfall one day. It’s not that he doesn’t see the flaws in the people around him, he knows them intimately, it’s just that he doesn’t care because they’re family and that means there’s no line he wouldn’t cross to keep them with him, where they belong. It’s not a blind loyalty, either, like he’s sure some people think, that it’s just because he’s wormed his way into the family and doesn’t want to lose the perks that come with it. He couldn’t possibly care less about the money, or the recognition, neither of those things have been of any interest to him. Every one of them, despite their flaws of which there are many, are someone he’d die to protect. Almost had, in John’s case. It makes him dangerous, in a way that’s different from everyone else, because there’s no self-preservation instinct in him. He’ll take their enemies down even if it means going down with them, but there’s no enemy to take down here, standing in a room flooded with white light with a noose around his neck.

There’s a million things he’s done wrong in his life, he can admit that, but killing the priest hadn’t been one of them. It might have been the death that had meant the most, to more than just him, and he’ll never regret being there, watching Michael pull the trigger. For years, he had felt the grasping hands on his arms, heavy breathing in his ear, and he hadn’t been old enough then to fight back. Somewhere along the way, he’d shoved it to the far recesses of his brain, to be forgotten until seeing him had brought it all screaming back. He regrets that they hadn’t had time to stop the charges from going off and turning the train into a burning wreck, that’s on all their consciences, but the regret stops there. Apart from that, there’s never been someone he hadn’t killed that hadn’t deserved it, hadn’t attacked first and been killed as a result of his retaliation.

“I guess this is it, yeah?”

He can’t quite turn his head, not all the way, the rope restricting too much movement, but he can see enough to get a good idea of the reactions of the other men in the room. Michael is to his left, and when Vincent turns to look at him he looks like he’s staring down the barrel of his worst nightmare. Maybe he is, Vincent isn’t a mind reader. It’s probably appropriate, he supposes, using the time to think about all the things that you wish you had or hadn’t done. Personally, there’s not much he wishes he’d done, he’d never been the sort to deny himself anything just because it wasn’t proper, or the other myriad of reasons people denied themselves their desires. Life was short, he figured, why not do what he wanted when he wanted. Well, he regrets that he’ll never get to know his son, because he’s always wanted a child of his own, and now that he’s finally got one, he’s going to be executed for something that should have happened years ago.

How many children have they saved from the horrors that he and Michael had gone through? He’ll never know, but even if it had only been one, it would have been worth it. God knows he’s killed too many people to count, regardless of gender, and even he knows that there’s things that you just didn’t do. One less monster in the world, preying on children that can’t protect themselves. He’s not afraid to die, so the situation isn’t particularly bothering, except that it’s not just him. The other three men with him don’t deserve to die, but no amount of trying to talk to someone about it had helped anything. If he’s honest, this isn’t far off from how he saw himself dying. It was always going to be violent, rough, but he hadn’t expected it to be like this. Maybe from a knife, or a gun, but never a noose. Not that he has any choice, forced into standing in the middle of the room with his hands tied behind his back. He can’t even reach out and grab Arthur’s hand one last time, and that pisses him off the most. Across the room, he can see the hand around the handle tighten, preparing to open the hatches they stand on, and takes a deep breath.

“I’ll see you all on the other side, then.”

tagging: @the-makingsofgreatness, @mia-grace21912

[theories-by-majority-vote]

Why Sou's win rate was 0.0%

First to start off: let's discuss the purpose of the first trial Sou experienced. For what reason would the organization give information this vital to a candidate?  The reason for that lies in the purpose of the first trial. The death game runs on simulations and the first trial is the key to changing the entirety of the game. For starters, say Sou’s first trial had him do the key room, perhaps him having to rely on someone else to free him. Would that not change how he’d trust others? Say Sara was the one who had to play Russian roulette with two choices, just like one of victim’s first trial? How would that change the game? Simply put, it would change the number of survivors of the game, the survivors themselves and how rest of the game might play out.  The first trial is vital to how the games will go. And I do believe that the reasons everyone got the first trials that they did was not by random chance. It was purposeful that everyone experienced what they did. Back to Sou though, under the cut.  Note: The analysis in this post is not excusing any of Sou’s behavior but rather giving a possible explanation of why he acted such. 

In the beginning of the game we see him wary of revealing his name/ occupation. With Sara’s internal monologue, she assumes him to be timid.  Gin’s dialogue commenting on Sou to get a job when he makes it out results in him looking a little distressed, which Sara interprets as this:

[Image Caption: Sara’s thought on Sou Chapter 1.1: (Looks like he’s being crushed under not only the immediate fear, but an uncertain future...)]

Sou is very clearly anxious at this part of the game, the news still incredibly fresh. I would also like to think he wanted to wait til mostly everyone introduced themselves to match his information with theirs, to seem just as innocent. After all it is revealed that in actuality that Sou is Shin and instead of being a job hopping late night convenience store worker, he’s actually self employed, perhaps as a hacker, judging by his computer skills. 

In this death game, Sou recreated his identity to keep his walls up, guard up. He distrusts everyone, withheld information, used people, blackmailed people. He did everything for self preservation.

[Image Caption: Sou Speaking in Chapter 1.1: “H... Hey now, I dunno about that... You can’t trust people like that, right?”]

We don’t have data on how the games really played out, not clearly at least . We don’t know how Sou acted in the AI versions of the game, and considering that he did break the monitor with his AI, it seems like that information is deliberately left from us.  But I do think it’s very different from the Sou we know in this game, considering he abandoned “himself”.

[Image Caption: Sou Speaking Second Main game Chapter 2.2: “I absolutely can’t survive this Death Game...”]

[Image Caption: Sou Speaking Second Main game Chapter 2.2: “That’s why... I had to abandon “myself"..!!”]

A term as severe as ‘abandon’ would imply there was a drastic change. So the Sou who constantly lie and withholds information, who sees everyone with distrust, isn’t really Sou. It’s natural he became intensely distrustful though, considering he thinks everyone as an enemy. To someone who’s only information is that people are killed by majority vote and his chance of survival is impossible would only consider that he is set up to be killed every time. 

[Image Caption: Shin’s thoughts in his flashback: (Everyone will choose me by vote...and kill me...)] 

In the first main game, we see Sou snap when everyone puts their trust in Sara. The group as a whole trusts Sara because of her behavior, of how her actions speak for her. She was the only who got them through the Russian roulette, something Sou didn’t see. From Sou’s point of view however, Sara’s trust is fake, because he saw the emails and interpreted as her being with the enemies. Of course he would think that too, considering he was attacked because of him gaining this information. Sou is no fool, but he is also blinded by preconceptions fed to him from the first trial. Sara has the highest percentage of wins after all, she must be deceiving everyone, using them, that could be what is in his mind.

[Image Caption: Sou in the first main game Chapter 1.2: “ Death is just a matter of time for you. That’s the way weaklings live!”]

This line Sou says, when he snaps, is from his anger and frustration of people not realizing that Sara is deceiving them all, because he believed that to be the case, when we the player as well as other characters have an understanding of Sara because of her actions. This reaction from Sou could be targeted at his true self too, perhaps considering it to be weak and as a result the cause of his death. 

To Sou, he never survived because he was weak, too trusting, too honest. These words do not describe the current Sou at all, however. Except, we do see glimpses of his kindness in the game, particularly in chapter 2. 

[Image Caption: Sara looking at Kanna in Chapter 2.1 and thinking: They’re tears... of salvation.]

He probably is very attuned to emotions and he knows what to say to help or hurt them. Hence why he was able to write something to Kanna that helped her feel free from the guilt of her sisters death. Sou has a soft spot for Kanna, because she is too honest for her own good. She is simply a child who has  been hurt so much, and she trusts Sou to be good as well. I can imagine Sou cannot distrust her, nor think of this girl as an enemy. He did something to relieve her of her emotional pain. He did something of the similar extent to Sara, when he created an Ai of Joe just for her, and that  final gift to her was what she needed to get past her hallucinations. 

Also, one of the biggest character shifts we see in Sou is when escape is most likely, when he successfully hacks into the security system. This is when his fears of being chosen to die has faded away, because you can’t be voted to die if all the survivors simply escape the game.

[Image Caption: Sou speaking to Sara in chapter 2.2 “Ahaha..!! It worked!! It worked, Sara!!”]

Sara points out that Sou seems lively when he is working on the hacking and when he completes and successfully hacks through the security systems, he calls Sara, Sara, not Miss Sara like he usually does. He also seems genuinely happy. He also wants them all to escape *together*. He doesn’t keep this information to himself nor tries to leave ahead of everyone, and instead tells Sara that they all will go together. 

Sou could easily have tricked them at this point in time, took the information to make a run for it. If he really only cared about himself he probably would have done so. 

All this information on Sou’s true self is necessary to understand his 0.0% survival rate in the simulation games. 

In my guess, I think the reason hes never survived the game is because he chose not to. If he died, it was not by the choices of everyone else, but his own choice. He would have acted such that in the end, everyone would have chosen him.

To elaborate on this, I do think that after the first main game, if Sou did survive, he would have done anything it took to make it so one of the people who died would be him, whether it would be by taking the sacrifice card, or convincing everyone to choose him. 

Just before the second main game, we get a glimpse of this scene/memory of sorts:

[Image Caption: Sara holding a dying Shin Tsukimi with Q-taro and Mishima in the shot. No dialogue]

Sou is dying, similarly to how he was killed in the second main game. Some things to notice, is that Professor Mishima is there, implying this may be a memory from a simulation. The dialogue in this scene shows concern and worry for Sou, there is not hatred, nor any animosity or indifference to him. From this scene, its clear that he was not hated by, at the very least, the people shown here. 

With as little information that we have here of the simulation games, I do find that coming to the conclusion that Sou self sacrificed himself in every game (that he survived the first trial of) to be highly plausible, especially considering his reaction to Kanna trying to self-sacrifice herself in the place of Sou. 

[Image Caption: Sou in the second main game Chapter 2.2 to Kanna: “ Don’t be ridiculous, Kanna!!”] 

His face is of shock and desperation. It is so incredibly clear that he cares so much about Kanna. If you do choose to kill her, he is beyond mad. He hates that someone chose to sacrifice them self for *him*. Especially someone he cares about. 

[Image Caption: Sou in the Kanna’s death Scenario Chapter 2.2: I’ll kill everyone one of you who killed Kanna...!!] 

When do kill Sou though, he says, “that’s fine” and accepts that Sara hates him.  He accepts the decision because that’s what he wanted. He wanted it so he would die in the place of Kanna.  

When it finally came to his death, he didn't curse them or hated them, and instead he accepts his fate. I think it’s at this point, when he is dying, does he realize why he didn’t survive any other time, hence why he says this:

[Image Caption: Sou dying, in Chapter 2.2: “Maybe I should’ve believed... in everyone...”]

Sou, if he had believed in everyone from the start, would only change how everyone perceived him, but not his fate, because to Sou, he could never let anyone die in his place. 

To conclude this particularly long theory/analysis, I must bring back the first trial once more. Why did the organization do something like this to Shin Tsukimi?  I think it went against the purpose of the game. The game about trust and distrust relies on each person’s opinion of others. And should Sou, sacrifice himself, it no longer is a game on majority vote but rather a single person’s personal decision. The organization had to change this part in Sou, and such, force him to take the drastic decision that resulted in everyone current perception of him. 

Thank you everyone who made this far in this theory post!

-Bee

[princegabriel]

@lilyistryingherbest requested Chained to a Bed with someone on the Carte Blanche or Damien. Of course, I picked Juno “Listen, when you get tied up as often as I do” Steel. Thank you for the prompt! @badthingshappenbingo 

Snare

by princegabriel/ FaintlyMacabre

Rated: M

Characters: Juno Steel, Peter Nureyev, Jet Sikuliaq, Vespa Ilkay, Rita, Original character

Summary: If, for whatever reason, you were to ask Juno Steel, he would tell you that no, seduction was not his wheelhouse. If he were feeling chatty, he'd probably tell you, without much exaggeration, that back on Mars, a night out had an even chance of ending in a bar fight as in a hookup. He was abrasive, and brash, and naturally unpleasant. 

But under certain circumstances, he can give it a shot. It just may not go as planned.

CW: This one’s kind of a doozy. (Under the cut)

Dubious consent—I'd describe it as uninformed consent on the part of one character, and unenthusiastic consent on the part of the other. Both are deciding to do what they're doing under their own steam, but for sketchy reasons. Also, as part of the plan, Juno drugs the antagonist to knock him out so he'll be out of the way for their heist. I didn't write sexual assault, but Juno experiences a loss of control that he definitely does not want to be experiencing, and panics as a result. The feeling/themes are similar, so if that's a no-go, totally get it, turn back now, take care of yourself! Also, alcohol, references to murder, and canon-typical quippy tone (may be jarring to some readers, given the subject matter).

---

If, for whatever reason, you were to ask me, I’d tell you that no, I’m not exactly a natural seductress. (Also, never ask me that. It’d be weird.) I’m not the type of lady who can charm my way into someone’s bed or even their good graces. I’ve got just enough charisma to be annoying.

Again, don’t ask me. But you know who maybe should have?

Buddy Aurinko.

Maybe if she had, I wouldn’t be lying here, chained to a bed in an unexpectedly swanky hotel room, but really, it wouldn't be fair to put all the blame on Buddy. Let me start at the beginning. My name’s Juno Steel. I was a private eye, who was a cop, who became a thief, and if most of the people I left behind in Hyperion City could see where my life has taken me, they wouldn’t bat an eye. Or if they did, the eye they batted would be mine.

Our crew's on a "relocation" mission to a little satellite hotel orbiting Pluto. The creep who runs this place is kind of a hoarder, and his is the kind of hotel where dreams (and, according to rumor, the occasional interspace traveler) go to die. The job was basically show up, rob a terrible person, get out of dodge. There was just one thing I didn’t like about this plan.

“Remind me why I’m doing this again?” I leaned back against the high top table, holding a drink like a lifeline in one hand and fighting the urge to push away the hair covering my eyepatch with the other.

“It’s because you’re so incredibly charming, love.” I jumped a little. That wasn’t the voice I’d expected to hear.

“Ransom?” I hissed. “Where’s Buddy?”

“Not happy to hear my voice, Juno?” The question was all tease and no hurt. “The captain thought I could use some practice working behind the scenes.”

Well, I knew what that meant. “So, you got bored?”

“When I have you to worry about?” Nureyev quipped. “You’ll forgive me my caution; you do have such a talent for getting into trouble.”

“Which brings me back around to my question.”

“You are playing this role because both Buddy and Ransom are wanted by the Plutonian government, and because the rest of us are unsuited to this kind of undercover work.”

“Big Guy! When did you connect to this line?” I'd nearly choked on my drink when Jet’s voice had rumbled into my head.

“I have been connected this whole time, since I dropped you off.”

“And you didn’t think to say anything?”

“There was nothing to say,” Jet said. “Talking would only have been a distraction.”

“You must admit, you do fit the profile of our mark’s usual type,” Nureyev said. I didn’t have to admit any such thing, but I knew. Osric Salazar, multi-millionaire, hotelier and general misanthropist, liked his partners more rough than refined, more sour than sweet; in the slinky dress that showed off a fair number of my scars and holding a double shot of whiskey that was threatening to vanish into thin air, I fit the type pretty neatly. It was maybe the only thing I’d ever fit into neatly in my life.

“Yeah, yeah, the role was made for me,” I said over the glass. “The part I’m not thrilled about is where I’m the bait.”

“'Bait' is such a strong word, dear,” Nureyev said. “This is really more of a honeypot job.” His voice sounded neutral, but carefully so. To anyone else, I'm sure he would have sounded genuinely calm, but there was something in his diction that made me think he was less assured than he let on.

“Well, either way, I’m pretty much just a piece of meat on a string—”

“The target is approaching on your three o’clock,” Jet cut in. “Do not turn quickly; it appears he is trying to stay in your blind spot.”

I made myself sip at the drink and lean on the table as though I wasn’t about to be ambushed.

“Don’t believe I’ve seen you around here before.” The voice was like honey over coffee grounds, and I probably would have liked it if it hadn’t belonged to the owner of this... fine establishment. The Renegade’s Arms was just far enough from everywhere that people only went there when they had nowhere else to be and just enough of a dive that it wasn’t frequented by anyone rich or flashy enough for people to make a fuss if they vanished.

“There’s a first time for everything,” I said, refusing to turn and look.

“Let’s hope there’s a second one, too.” Salazar walked around the table and into my field of vision, but… a little higher. He was a wall of a person, reminding me of Pilot Pereyra, who’d used their intimidating size and demeanor to cow every would-be opponent into submission for years as mayor. I hoped it would be easier to exploit Salazar’s weakness than it had Pereyra’s; that walk in the desert had been no walk in the park.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” I said, and ignored the rise of Salazar’s eyebrows as I knocked the rest of my drink back. “You gonna buy a lady a drink?”

“Oh, sugar, it’s on the house.” I tried not to flinch at the hand that Salazar planted on my back, which steered me the short distance to the bar. “Another?”

“Whiskey, neat,” I said, setting the empty glass down on the bar.

“Make it a double,” Salazar told the bartender. “Top shelf.” The bartender nodded and once again, all the bastard’s attention was on me. Great.

“So, what’s a pretty lady like you doing in a place like mine?” Salazar purred. The sound sent chills down my spine, but definitely not in the way Salazar intended. Well, probably.

“Currently, getting drunk for free,” I said. “So, thanks for that.”

“I’d take it as a personal offense to find out that a gorgeous creature like you would ever have to buy his own drinks.”

“If you wait there, I can give you a whole list of people I know who’ve personally offended you,” I said.

“Gorgeous and funny,” Salazar said, looking me up and down in a way that made me want to wash with sandpaper.

I did the next best thing and downed my drink. “Thirsty, too.” Salazar raised a hand and gestured to the bartender, who got me another. “So this is your place?”

“I haven’t exactly made it a secret,” he said, looming closer.

“I hear people do small talk,” I said, “you know, early in their acquaintance.”

“So you’re sticking around?” Salazar said. He was even closer now, and he smelled aggressively like mint and aftershave. It wasn’t terrible, and everything was going according to plan, but knowing who this person was, I felt kind of queasy about it. In my earpiece, barely audible, Nureyev huffed out a short, sharp breath.

“Not like I got anywhere else to go.” I looked down into my drink while I said it, trying to look like like I wasn't angling for anything more than a bed for the night and someone to help me keep it warm.

“I wish I were sorry to hear that,” he said, practically in my ear. “But really, the way I see it? Whoever you’re running from, their loss is my gain.”

I turned to look at him again and all I saw was teeth. I couldn’t help but recall the first time I’d seen Nureyev, when he was just Rex Glass to me, and the smile that looked like he could rip me apart, easy and natural as breathing. This was different. Salazar’s teeth were big and blunt, like tombstones; it would take him some work to tear into you and he’d enjoy it.

Hopefully he’d take my focus on his mouth as interest rather than self-preservation.

I’d told Buddy I was all right to kiss a mark if the job demanded it, and I was. I’d told her I was all right to do more than that if I knew about the possibility beforehand, though hopefully in this case the neurotoxin-laden lipstick I was wearing would do its job before that became an option. Nureyev and I had talked about it—we were both coming at this with our separate and collective baggage, but honestly, I’d thought it would be a harder conversation to have. We decided that if it was the best plan we had and if whoever was on the job was comfortable, it was all aboveboard.

When Salazar pushed the door to his apartment closed and then pushed me up against it to kiss me, though, I couldn’t think of anything but Nureyev on the other side of my earpiece. If he was still there. I definitely wouldn’t blame him if he’d decided to hand it off to someone else.

Salazar kissed like he was fighting, and I grabbed the collar of his shirt so I’d be ready if it swung in that direction. One of his hands slid up my thigh, taking the hem of the dress with it. I stopped him when he got to my hip.

“Not,” I said against his mouth, “doing this against the door.” At the very least, the farther into his apartment we went, the longer he’d be distracted. And it gave the lipstick a few extra seconds to work. Salazar was a big guy, it might take a bit.

The bed was in the next room. It was big, covered in a rich-looking comforter and sheets that probably had some kind of thread count, with a huge ornate headboard, from which hung a—Jesus Christ. He had a pair of cuffs threaded through it. I was starting to rethink the door.

I didn’t get a real good look at it after that because Salazar spun me around and walked me back until my knees hit the edge of the bed. He climbed over me, biting and sucking at my neck, and I had a moment to just hope this lipstick was as unlikely to re-transfer as Buddy said it was, before I felt his teeth moving up to my ear. The ear with the earpiece. The earpiece I was using to stay in contact with my fellow crewmembers for the purpose of robbing the person who was currently getting real familiar with my earlobe.

“Hey, uh, no,” I said, like a professional, “my earring—”

“Oh,” he said, pulling back, and I tried not to sigh with relief. “Let me get that for you.” And he fucking took it off. The only positive side to the situation was that it really was a gorgeous ear cuff with a hidden wireless transmitter and he didn’t seem to suspect. He put it on the bedside table and picked up where he left off. And I thought, “Maybe it’ll be fine, maybe they won’t need to contact me for a while, maybe they get what they need and I sneak out while he’s unconscious and that’s that, job well—” A siren cut off the “done.”

Salazar sighed, hot on my neck. “I hate to leave you here, gorgeous—”

“Then don’t,” I said.

He shook his head. “Nothing else for it.”

“Uh, hey, but wait,” I said. “If the fire alarm’s going off, shouldn’t I be getting out of here too?”

“It’s not the fire alarm,” he said, getting up and smoothing out his clothes. “It’s the burglar alarm.”

Yeah, I’d been afraid of that. “Okay, well, if there are dangerous burglars around, maybe I don’t want to be a sitting duck.”

“Oh, if that’s what you’re worried about, darlin’, don’t be.” He came back and I thought for a second that it had worked, turned out I was pretty good at distractions after all. He took my hands and kissed me, and yeah, I actually felt kind of smug about my performance right up until the cuffs closed around my wrists.

“What,” I said.

“Didn’t want to bring these into play so soon, but we adapt, don’t we, sugar?” he said, with a fucking wink. “I can’t have you running off before I get back. Don’t worry, I’ll lock you up safe as houses.” I wished a house would fall on him.

He took a handgun out of a drawer, waved at me without looking back, and then he was gone. I heard the click of two locks, and that was the last I saw of Salazar.

So now you’re all caught up.

I wait a few seconds before turning my head in the direction of my removed earpiece and saying, “Hey, he cuffed me to the bed, get me out of here.” I have no way of knowing if anyone is responding, or even if they can hear me at all. All I have is this dress, a pair of stupid strappy heels (what is it with Buddy and putting me in six-inch heels?), and zero arm mobility. Well, not quite zero. I look up at the headboard. It isn’t metal, at least, but it doesn’t look cheap either. It’s either wood or painted to look like it, and if it is paint, it's been expertly applied, which points to good quality. If Nureyev were here, he’d have a lockpick in his sleeve or metal-tipped nails or something useful, but he’s not, so I pull myself up to sit against the headboard and start scraping the chain against the back of it to try to wear through.

“That alarm’s still going,” I say through gritted teeth as I try to saw through the headboard. I hope they can hear me, but even if they can’t, it helps to think they might. “Means Salazar's probably knocked out, definitely hasn’t resolved the situation, so I guess you’re still holding your own. In case you’re done before I get out of these, I’m in Salazar’s quarters, the door past the stairs, in the second room. Two locks on the door.” The cuffs are chafing my wrists, but I just clench my fists and try to go faster. “God I hope you get here soon, this is the least efficient way to get out of this but it’s all I’ve got.” The alarm shuts off and instinctively, I stop moving. It’s too quiet to move.

“Damn it, whoever’s listening, say something!” I hiss. I’m getting uncomfortably close to panic. “Yell, come on, just say something!” I feel trapped in these shoes and this dress and these fucking handcuffs and so I start moving again, pulling the chain forward like I could break clean through the damn headboard. It doesn’t work, just like I know it won’t, but I can’t do anything else. I can’t do anything. I can’t do this. I can’t do this.

In the quiet, I hear the locks click and I freeze again. If it’s Salazar… he might suspect I’m part of this. Is he coming back to kill me? I get my legs over the side of the bed just for solid ground underneath me, the smallest illusion of control. It puts my arms at an even more uncomfortable angle, but they were never going to do me any good here anyway.

I can’t hear footsteps, and I don't know what the hell that means. I feel myself start to spiral again until I see Vespa in the doorway with a duffel bag.

“Oh, thank god.” Should have known—of course the assassin’s not going to make a sound. I’m sure I’d feel weirder about her seeing me like this if I weren’t so relieved.

“Where’s the key?” she says, looking right, left, up, right again, checking for… security cameras, maybe?

“I don’t know!” I say. I feel like my body hasn’t caught up to my brain, which hasn’t caught up to my mouth. Adrenaline is still rushing through me—it couldn’t shut itself off the instant I knew I was saved, but I’ve apparently started to autopilot into our usual dynamic. “He didn’t exactly give me a tour. ‘Hey, just to be on the safe side, here’s the key to the cuffs I just surprised you with, also I’m definitely not going to murder you—’”

“Shut up, Steel,” she mutters. She’s already got the drawer of the little side table open and there’s the key. I guess it’s not something he really has to hide. In a second, my wrists are free. “Come on, Sikuliaq’s got the car running.”

I grab the ear cuff and slide it back into place while we get out of there.

“Mistah Steel oh my god please don’t be dead or hurt, say something please,” Rita’s sobbing into my ear.

“Let's go, Steel," Vespa whispers over her shoulder. I nod and let my eye focus on the green shock of her hair to follow her out as I turn my attention back to Rita before I worry her into an early grave.

“Rita,” I say, “Rita, I’m okay. I’m out. Vespa got me.”

“Boss?” she says, sniffling. “That you?”

“It’s me,” I say. “I’m sorry I worried you.”

“Only I could hear you and I was trying to tell you Mistah Jet and Miss Vespa were on their way and you didn’t answer and you sounded so scared—”

Yeah, I don’t want to think about that right now. “I’m okay. We’re headed back to you.” Vespa's taking us out the fire exit, in the opposite direction of the guest area, and there's Jet, just like she said. We get in the backseat and drive away into the night as the last of my adrenaline gives up the ghost and I let the now-familiar smell of the car ground me.

I'm okay. I'm going home.