#but it was in such a distinctly disappointing way. like of all the places u could have taken it u go with That??

[perenial]

finished private rites. haven't reached the final page of a book and said "wait thats it????" aloud in a while

[mariacallous]

A long trip on an American highway in the summer of 2024 leaves the impression that two kinds of billboards now have near-monopoly rule over our roads. On one side, the billboards, gravely black-and-white and soberly reassuring, advertise cancer centers. (“We treat every type of cancer, including the most important one: yours”; “Beat 3 Brain Tumors. At 57, I gave birth, again.”) On the other side, brightly colored and deliberately clownish billboards advertise malpractice and personal-injury lawyers, with phone numbers emblazoned in giant type and the lawyers wearing superhero costumes or intimidating glares, staring down at the highway as they promise to do to juries.

A new Tocqueville considering the landscape would be certain that all Americans do is get sick and sue each other. We ask doctors to cure us of incurable illnesses, and we ask lawyers to take on the doctors who haven’t. We are frightened and we are angry; we look to expert intervention for the fears, and to comic but effective-seeming figures for retaliation against the experts who disappoint us.

Much of this is distinctly American—the idea that cancer-treatment centers would be in competitive relationships with one another, and so need to advertise, would be as unimaginable in any other industrialized country as the idea that the best way to adjudicate responsibility for a car accident is through aggressive lawsuits. Both reflect national beliefs: in competition, however unreal, and in the assignment of blame, however misplaced. We want to think that, if we haven’t fully enjoyed our birthright of plenty and prosperity, a nameable villain is at fault.

To grasp what is at stake in this strangest of political seasons, it helps to define the space in which the contest is taking place. We may be standing on the edge of an abyss, and yet nothing is wrong, in the expected way of countries on the brink of apocalypse. The country is not convulsed with riots, hyperinflation, or mass immiseration. What we have is a sort of phony war—a drôle de guerre, a sitzkrieg—with the vehemence of conflict mainly confined to what we might call the cultural space.

These days, everybody talks about spaces: the “gastronomic space,” the “podcast space,” even, on N.F.L. podcasts, the “analytic space.” Derived from some combination of sociology and interior design, the word has elbowed aside terms like “field” or “conversation,” perhaps because it’s even more expansive. The “space” of a national election is, for that reason, never self-evident; we’ve always searched for clues.

And so William Dean Howells began his 1860 campaign biography of Abraham Lincoln by mocking the search for a Revolutionary pedigree for Presidential candidates and situating Lincoln in the antislavery West, in contrast to the resigned and too-knowing East. North vs. South may have defined the frame of the approaching war, but Howells was prescient in identifying East vs. West as another critical electoral space. This opposition would prove crucial—first, to the war, with the triumph of the Westerner Ulysses S. Grant over the well-bred Eastern generals, and then to the rejuvenation of the Democratic Party, drawing on free-silver populism and an appeal to the values of the resource-extracting, expansionist West above those of the industrialized, centralized East.

A century later, the press thought that the big issues in the race between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy were Quemoy and Matsu (two tiny Taiwan Strait islands, claimed by both China and Taiwan), the downed U-2, the missile gap, and other much debated Cold War obsessions. But Norman Mailer, in what may be the best thing he ever wrote, saw the space as marked by the rise of movie-star politics—the image-based contests that, from J.F.K. to Ronald Reagan, would dominate American life. In “Superman Comes to the Supermarket,” published in Esquire, Mailer revealed that a campaign that looked at first glance like the usual black-and-white wire-service photography of the first half of the twentieth century was really the beginning of our Day-Glo-colored Pop-art turn.

And our own electoral space? We hear about the overlooked vs. the élite, the rural vs. the urban, the coastal vs. the flyover, the aged vs. the young—about the dispossessed vs. the beneficiaries of global neoliberalism. Upon closer examination, however, these binaries blur. Support for populist nativism doesn’t track neatly with economic disadvantage. Some of Donald Trump’s keenest supporters have boats as well as cars and are typically the wealthier citizens of poorer rural areas. His stock among billionaires remains high, and his surprising support among Gen Z males is something his campaign exploits with visits to podcasts that no non-Zoomer has ever heard of.

But polarized nations don’t actually polarize around fixed poles. Civil confrontations invariably cross classes and castes, bringing together people from radically different social cohorts while separating seemingly natural allies. The English Revolution of the seventeenth century, like the French one of the eighteenth, did not array worn-out aristocrats against an ascendant bourgeoisie or fierce-eyed sansculottes. There were, one might say, good people on both sides. Or, rather, there were individual aristocrats, merchants, and laborers choosing different sides in these prerevolutionary moments. No civil war takes place between classes; coalitions of many kinds square off against one another.

In part, that’s because there’s no straightforward way of defining our “interests.” It’s in the interest of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to have big tax cuts; in the longer term, it’s also in their interest to have honest rule-of-law government that isn’t in thrall to guilds or patrons—to be able to float new ideas without paying baksheesh to politicians or having to worry about falling out of sixth-floor windows. “Interests” fail as an explanatory principle.

Does talk of values and ideas get us closer? A central story of American public life during the past three or four decades is (as this writer has noted) that liberals have wanted political victories while reliably securing only cultural victories, even as conservatives, wanting cultural victories, get only political ones. Right-wing Presidents and legislatures are elected, even as one barrier after another has fallen on the traditionalist front of manners and mores. Consider the widespread acceptance of same-sex marriage. A social transformation once so seemingly untenable that even Barack Obama said he was against it, in his first campaign for President, became an uncontroversial rite within scarcely more than a decade.

Right-wing political power has, over the past half century, turned out to have almost no ability to stave off progressive social change: Nixon took the White House in a landslide while Norman Lear took the airwaves in a ratings sweep. And so a kind of permanent paralysis has set in. The right has kept electing politicians who’ve said, “Enough! No more ‘Anything goes’!”—and anything has kept going. No matter how many right-wing politicians came to power, no matter how many right-wing judges were appointed, conservatives decided that the entire culture was rigged against them.

On the left, the failure of cultural power to produce political change tends to lead to a doubling down on the cultural side, so that wholesome college campuses can seem the last redoubt of Red Guard attitudes, though not, to be sure, of Red Guard authority. On the right, the failure of political power to produce cultural change tends to lead to a doubling down on the political side in a way that turns politics into cultural theatre. Having lost the actual stages, conservatives yearn to enact a show in which their adversaries are rendered humiliated and powerless, just as they have felt humiliated and powerless. When an intolerable contradiction is allowed to exist for long enough, it produces a Trump.

As much as television was the essential medium of a dozen bygone Presidential campaigns (not to mention the medium that made Trump a star), the podcast has become the essential medium of this one. For people under forty, the form—typically long-winded and shapeless—is as tangibly present as Walter Cronkite’s tightly scripted half-hour news show was fifty years ago, though the D.I.Y. nature of most podcasts, and the premium on host-read advertisements, makes for abrupt tonal changes as startling as those of the highway billboards.

On the enormously popular, liberal-minded “Pod Save America,” for instance, the hosts make no secret of their belief that the election is a test, as severe as any since the Civil War, of whether a government so conceived can long endure. Then they switch cheerfully to reading ads for Tommy John underwear (“with the supportive pouch”), for herbal hangover remedies, and for an app that promises to cancel all your excess streaming subscriptions, a peculiarly niche obsession (“I accidentally paid for Showtime twice!” “That’s bad!”). George Conway, the former Republican (and White House husband) turned leading anti-Trumper, states bleakly on his podcast for the Bulwark, the news-and-opinion site, that Trump’s whole purpose is to avoid imprisonment, a motivation that would disgrace the leader of any Third World country. Then he immediately leaps into offering—like an old-fashioned a.m.-radio host pushing Chock Full o’Nuts—testimonials for HexClad cookware, with charming self-deprecation about his own kitchen skills. How serious can the crisis be if cookware and boxers cohabit so cozily with the apocalypse?

And then there’s the galvanic space of social media. In the nineteen-seventies and eighties, we were told, by everyone from Jean Baudrillard to Daniel Boorstin, that television had reduced us to numbed observers of events no longer within our control. We had become spectators instead of citizens. In contrast, the arena of social media is that of action and engagement—and not merely engagement but enragement, with algorithms acting out addictively on tiny tablets. The aura of the Internet age is energized, passionate, and, above all, angry. The algorithms dictate regular mortar rounds of text messages that seem to come not from an eager politician but from an infuriated lover, in the manner of Glenn Close in “Fatal Attraction”: “Are you ignoring us?” “We’ve reached out to you PERSONALLY!” “This is the sixth time we’ve asked you!” At one level, we know they’re entirely impersonal, while, at another, we know that politicians wouldn’t do this unless it worked, and it works because, at still another level, we are incapable of knowing what we know; it doesn’t feel entirely impersonal. You can doomscroll your way to your doom. The democratic theorists of old longed for an activated citizenry; somehow they failed to recognize how easily citizens could be activated to oppose deliberative democracy.

If the cultural advantages of liberalism have given it a more pointed politics in places where politics lacks worldly consequences, its real-world politics can seem curiously blunted. Kamala Harris, like Joe Biden before her, is an utterly normal workaday politician of the kind we used to find in any functioning democracy—bending right, bending left, placating here and postponing confrontation there, glaring here and, yes, laughing there. Demographics aside, there is nothing exceptional about Harris, which is her virtue. Yet we live in exceptional times, and liberal proceduralists and institutionalists are so committed to procedures and institutions—to laws and their reasonable interpretation, to norms and their continuation—that they can be slow to grasp that the world around them has changed.

One can only imagine the fulminations that would have ensued in 2020 had the anti-democratic injustice of the Electoral College—which effectively amplifies the political power of rural areas at the expense of the country’s richest and most productive areas—tilted in the other direction. Indeed, before the 2000 election, when it appeared as if it might, Karl Rove and the George W. Bush campaign had a plan in place to challenge the results with a “grassroots” movement designed to short-circuit the Electoral College and make the popular-vote winner prevail. No Democrat even suggests such a thing now.

It’s almost as painful to see the impunity with which Supreme Court Justices have torched their institution’s legitimacy. One Justice has the upside-down flag of the insurrectionists flying on his property; another, married to a professional election denialist, enjoys undeclared largesse from a plutocrat. There is, apparently, little to be done, nor even any familiar language of protest to draw on. Prepared by experience to believe in institutions, mainstream liberals believe in their belief even as the institutions are degraded in front of their eyes.

In one respect, the space of politics in 2024 is transoceanic. The forms of Trumpism are mirrored in other countries. In the U.K., a similar wave engendered the catastrophe of Brexit; in France, it has brought an equally extreme right-wing party to the brink, though not to the seat, of power; in Italy, it elevated Matteo Salvini to national prominence and made Giorgia Meloni Prime Minister. In Sweden, an extreme-right group is claiming voters in numbers no one would ever have thought possible, while Canadian conservatives have taken a sharp turn toward the far right.

What all these currents have in common is an obsessive fear of immigration. Fear of the other still seems to be the primary mover of collective emotion. Even when it is utterly self-destructive—as in Britain, where the xenophobia of Brexit cut the U.K. off from traditional allies while increasing immigration from the Global South—the apprehension that “we” are being flooded by frightening foreigners works its malign magic.

It’s an old but persistent delusion that far-right nationalism is not rooted in the emotional needs of far-right nationalists but arises, instead, from the injustices of neoliberalism. And so many on the left insist that all those Trump voters are really Bernie Sanders voters who just haven’t had their consciousness raised yet. In fact, a similar constellation of populist figures has emerged, sharing platforms, plans, and ideologies, in countries where neoliberalism made little impact, and where a strong system of social welfare remains in place. If a broadened welfare state—national health insurance, stronger unions, higher minimum wages, and the rest—would cure the plague in the U.S., one would expect that countries with resilient welfare states would be immune from it. They are not.

Though Trump can be situated in a transoceanic space of populism, he isn’t a mere symptom of global trends: he is a singularly dangerous character, and the product of a specific cultural milieu. To be sure, much of New York has always been hostile to him, and eager to disown him; in a 1984 profile of him in GQ, Graydon Carter made the point that Trump was the only New Yorker who ever referred to Sixth Avenue as the “Avenue of the Americas.” Yet we’re part of Trump’s identity, as was made clear by his recent rally on Long Island—pointless as a matter of swing-state campaigning, but central to his self-definition. His belligerence could come directly from the two New York tabloid heroes of his formative years in the city: John Gotti, the gangster who led the Gambino crime family, and George Steinbrenner, the owner of the Yankees. When Trump came of age, Gotti was all over the front page of the tabloids, as “the Teflon Don,” and Steinbrenner was all over the back sports pages, as “the Boss.”

Steinbrenner was legendary for his middle-of-the-night phone calls, for his temper and combativeness. Like Trump, who theatricalized the activity, he had a reputation for ruthlessly firing people. (Gotti had his own way of doing that.) Steinbrenner was famous for having no loyalty to anyone. He mocked the very players he had acquired and created an atmosphere of absolute chaos. It used to be said that Steinbrenner reduced the once proud Yankees baseball culture to that of professional wrestling, and that arena is another Trumpian space. Pro wrestling is all about having contests that aren’t really contested—that are known to be “rigged,” to use a Trumpian word—and yet evoke genuine emotion in their audience.

At the same time, Trump has mastered the gangster’s technique of accusing others of crimes he has committed. The agents listening to the Gotti wiretap were mystified when he claimed innocence of the just-committed murder of Big Paul Castellano, conjecturing, in apparent seclusion with his soldiers, about who else might have done it: “Whoever killed this cocksucker, probably the cops killed this Paul.” Denying having someone whacked even in the presence of those who were with you when you whacked him was a capo’s signature move.

Marrying the American paranoid style to the more recent cult of the image, Trump can draw on the manner of the tabloid star and show that his is a game, a show, not to be taken quite seriously while still being serious in actually inciting violent insurrections and planning to expel millions of helpless immigrants. Self-defined as a showman, he can say anything and simultaneously drain it of content, just as Gotti, knowing that he had killed Castellano, thought it credible to deny it—not within his conscience, which did not exist, but within an imaginary courtroom. Trump evidently learned that, in the realm of national politics, you could push the boundaries of publicity and tabloid invective far further than they had ever been pushed.

Trump’s ability to be both joking and severe at the same time is what gives him his power and his immunity. This power extends even to something as unprecedented as the assault on the U.S. Capitol. Trump demanded violence (“If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore”) but stuck in three words, “peacefully and patriotically,” that, however hollow, were meant to immunize him, Gotti-style. They were, so to speak, meant for the cops on the wiretap. Trump’s resilience is not, as we would like to tell our children about resilience, a function of his character. It’s a function of his not having one.

Just as Trump’s support cuts across the usual divisions, so, too, does a divide among his opponents—between the maximizers, who think that Trump is a unique threat to liberal democracy, and the minimizers, who think that he is merely the kind of clown a democracy is bound to throw up from time to time. The minimizers (who can be found among both Marxist Jacobin contributors and Never Trump National Review conservatives) will say that Trump has crossed the wires of culture and politics in a way that opportunistically responds to the previous paralysis, but that this merely places him in an American tradition. Democracy depends on the idea that the socially unacceptable might become acceptable. Andrew Jackson campaigned on similar themes with a similar manner—and was every bit as ignorant and every bit as unaware as Trump. (And his campaigns of slaughter against Indigenous people really were genocidal.) Trump’s politics may be ugly, foolish, and vain, but ours is often an ugly, undereducated, and vain country. Democracy is meant to be a mirror; it shows what it shows.

Indeed, America’s recent history has shown that politics is a trailing indicator of cultural change, and that one generation’s most vulgar entertainment becomes the next generation’s accepted style of political argument. David S. Reynolds, in his biography of Lincoln, reflects on how the new urban love of weird spectacle in the mid-nineteenth century was something Lincoln welcomed. P. T. Barnum’s genius lay in taking circus grotesques and making them exemplary Americans: the tiny General Tom Thumb was a hero, not a freak. Lincoln saw that it cost him nothing to be an American spectacle in a climate of sensation; he even hosted a reception at the White House for Tom Thumb and his wife—as much a violation of the decorum of the Founding Fathers as Trump’s investment in Hulk Hogan at the Republican Convention. Lincoln understood the Barnum side of American life, just as Trump understands its W.W.E. side.

And so, the minimizers say, taking Trump seriously as a threat to democracy in America is like taking Roman Reigns seriously as a threat to fair play in sports. Trump is an entertainer. The only thing he really wants are ratings. When opposing abortion was necessary to his electoral coalition, he opposed it—but then, when that was creating ratings trouble in other households, he sent signals that he wasn’t exactly opposed to it. When Project 2025, which he vaguely set in motion and claims never to have read, threatened his ratings, he repudiated it. The one continuity is his thirst for popularity, which is, in a sense, our own. He rows furiously away from any threatening waterfall back to the center of the river—including on Obamacare. And, the minimizers say, in the end, he did leave the White House peacefully, if gracelessly.

In any case, the panic is hardly unique to Trump. Reagan, too, was vilified and feared in his day, seen as the reductio ad absurdum of the culture of the image, an automaton projecting his controllers’ authoritarian impulses. Nixon was the subject of a savage satire by Philip Roth that ended with him running against the Devil for the Presidency of Hell. The minimizers tell us that liberals overreact in real time, write revisionist history when it’s over, and never see the difference between their stories.

The maximizers regard the minimizers’ case as wishful thinking buoyed up by surreptitious resentments, a refusal to concede anything to those we hate even if it means accepting someone we despise. Maximizers who call Trump a fascist are dismissed by the minimizers as either engaging in name-calling or forcing a facile parallel. Yet the parallel isn’t meant to be historically absolute; it is meant to be, as it were, oncologically acute. A freckle is not the same as a melanoma; nor is a Stage I melanoma the same as the Stage IV kind. But a skilled reader of lesions can sense which is which and predict the potential course if untreated. Trumpism is a cancerous phenomenon. Treated with surgery once, it now threatens to come back in a more aggressive form, subject neither to the radiation of “guardrails” nor to the chemo of “constraints.” It may well rage out of control and kill its host.

And so the maximalist case is made up not of alarmist fantasies, then, but of dulled diagnostic fact, duly registered. Think hard about the probable consequences of a second Trump Administration—about the things he has promised to do and can do, the things that the hard-core group of rancidly discontented figures (as usual with authoritarians, more committed than he is to an ideology) who surround him wants him to do and can do. Having lost the popular vote, as he surely will, he will not speak up to reconcile “all Americans.” He will insist that he won the popular vote, and by a landslide. He will pardon and then celebrate the January 6th insurrectionists, and thereby guarantee the existence of a paramilitary organization that’s capable of committing violence on his behalf without fear of consequences. He will, with an obedient Attorney General, begin prosecuting his political opponents; he was largely unsuccessful in his previous attempt only because the heads of two U.S. Attorneys’ offices, who are no longer there, refused to coöperate. When he begins to pressure CNN and ABC, and they, with all the vulnerabilities of large corporations, bend to his will, telling themselves that his is now the will of the people, what will we do to fend off the slow degradation of open debate?

Trump will certainly abandon Ukraine to Vladimir Putin and realign this country with dictatorships and against NATO and the democratic alliance of Europe. Above all, the spirit of vengeful reprisal is the totality of his beliefs—very much like the fascists of the twentieth century in being a man and a movement without any positive doctrine except revenge against his imagined enemies. And against this: What? Who? The spirit of resistance may prove too frail, and too exhausted, to rise again to the contest. Who can have confidence that a democracy could endure such a figure in absolute control and survive? An oncologist who, in the face of this much evidence, shrugged and proposed watchful waiting as the best therapy would not be an optimist. He would be guilty of gross malpractice. One of those personal-injury lawyers on the billboards would sue him, and win.

What any plausible explanation must confront is the fact that Trump is a distinctively vile human being and a spectacularly malignant political actor. In fables and fiction, in every Disney cartoon and Batman movie, we have no trouble recognizing and understanding the villains. They are embittered, canny, ludicrous in some ways and shrewd in others, their lives governed by envy and resentment, often rooted in the acts of people who’ve slighted them. (“They’ll never laugh at me again!”) They nonetheless have considerable charm and the ability to attract a cult following. This is Ursula, Hades, Scar—to go no further than the Disney canon. Extend it, if that seems too childlike, to the realms of Edmund in “King Lear” and Richard III: smart people, all, almost lovable in their self-recognition of their deviousness, but not people we ever want to see in power, for in power their imaginations become unimaginably deadly. Villains in fables are rarely grounded in any cause larger than their own grievances—they hate Snow White for being beautiful, resent Hercules for being strong and virtuous. Bane is blowing up Gotham because he feels misused, not because he truly has a better city in mind.

Trump is a villain. He would be a cartoon villain, if only this were a cartoon. Every time you try to give him a break—to grasp his charisma, historicize his ascent, sympathize with his admirers—the sinister truth asserts itself and can’t be squashed down. He will tell another lie so preposterous, or malign another shared decency so absolutely, or threaten violence so plausibly, or just engage in behavior so unhinged and hate-filled that you’ll recoil and rebound to your original terror at his return to power. One outrage succeeds another until we become exhausted and have to work hard even to remember the outrages of a few weeks past: the helicopter ride that never happened (but whose storytelling purpose was to demean Kamala Harris as a woman), or the cemetery visit that ended in a grotesque thumbs-up by a graveside (and whose symbolic purpose was to cynically enlist grieving parents on behalf of his contempt). No matter how deranged his behavior is, though, it does not seem to alter his good fortune.

Villainy inheres in individuals. There is certainly a far-right political space alive in the developed world, but none of its inhabitants—not Marine Le Pen or Giorgia Meloni or even Viktor Orbán—are remotely as reckless or as crazy as Trump. Our self-soothing habit of imagining that what has not yet happened cannot happen is the space in which Trump lives, just as comically deranged as he seems and still more dangerous than we know.

Nothing is ever entirely new, and the space between actual events and their disassociated representation is part of modernity. We live in that disassociated space. Generations of cultural critics have warned that we are lost in a labyrinth and cannot tell real things from illusion. Yet the familiar passage from peril to parody now happens almost simultaneously. Events remain piercingly actual and threatening in their effects on real people, while also being duplicated in a fictive system that shows and spoofs them at the same time. One side of the highway is all cancer; the other side all crazy. Their confoundment is our confusion.

It is telling that the most successful entertainments of our age are the dark comic-book movies—the Batman films and the X-Men and the Avengers and the rest of those cinematic universes. This cultural leviathan was launched by the discovery that these ridiculous comic-book figures, generations old, could now land only if treated seriously, with sombre backstories and true stakes. Our heroes tend to dullness; our villains, garishly painted monsters from the id, are the ones who fuel the franchise.

During the debate last month in Philadelphia, as Trump’s madness rose to a peak of raging lunacy—“They’re eating the dogs”; “He hates her!”—ABC, in its commercial breaks, cut to ads for “Joker: Folie à Deux,” the new Joaquin Phoenix movie, in which the crazed villain swirls and grins. It is a Gotham gone mad, and a Gotham, against all the settled rules of fable-making, without a Batman to come to the rescue. Shuttling between the comic-book villain and the grimacing, red-faced, and unhinged man who may be reëlected President in a few weeks, one struggled to distinguish our culture’s most extravagant imagination of derangement from the real thing. The space is that strange, and the stakes that high. ♦

[thatonegeekygirl]

hi i love u

here's the story where Erch and Krit meet Seki

TAPROOT’S BAR AND RESTAURANT

SEKI

         “Hey! Get back here!” Seki had been so careless. She ducked and weaved through the crowd, getting farther and farther ahead of the dwarves chasing her, but her distinctly elven appearance made her stick out like a sore thumb, even in Ongavho; platinum hair was far less common than horns or scales here. Seki was hopeful that her small stature was enough to keep her away from her pursuers, but they’d know it was her if they saw her in Ongavho ever again. Judging by the weight of the wallet in her coat, they’d be pretty persistent. She’d only been in Ongavho for what, three months? She’d have to move again. Seki ducked under a bench. Thank the Court for elven flexibility.

         Or perhaps curse them for exiling her in the first place.

         She shook her head as if it would erase the thought from her brain. This was not the time to be bitter about rivalries between centaurs and elves. This was the time to be bitter about the fact that her lungs were burning, and she really should have gone for that old nāga with the stump for a tail, no matter how bad she felt for her. Dwarves were all about honor, and they’d hunt her until she returned the wallet and then some; she’d known that. Seki pressed herself to the wall behind a dumpster to catch her breath, but she froze when she saw one of the dwarves approaching from the other end of the alleyway.

         “There you are! Stuck up little twerp; what, having everything in the elven Court wasn’t enough for you? You had to come down here and steal from us in person?” Seki bit her tongue to stop herself from pointing out that the Court had stopped ordering taxes from the dwarven territories when they declared independence; she ignored the fact that she had been exiled for approximately fifty years; that would not make this better. She took a step back, ready to bolt, but then she heard a voice behind her.

         “Oh, you found her.”

         She backed up against a wall, but then in a blessed moment, her hand found a doorknob as it brushed against the old, dirty stone. She thanked the universe for everything as she turned it and found it to be unlocked. The dwarves started to close in on her, and Seki took one last deep breath before she was rushing through the door and diving to hide under a booth labeled ‘reserved’ in a surprisingly empty bar. She curled her body behind the table and pulled her hood up to stop her hair from catching the light as the dwarves burst in.

         “Of course that elf would hide out in here.” Seki grimaced at the way the dwarf made her race sound like an insult, but she had no idea what he was talking about. Here? She hadn’t chosen this place for any reason other than the fact that the doorknob was in her hand when she was cornered. “TAPROOT!” She nearly jumped out of her skin as the dwarf bellowed.

         “Coming-!” Seki watched as someone walked right by the table, unfamiliarly grey legs poking out of a long, dark blue dress. Instead of shoes, neat black talons tap-tap-tapped on the wood floor. She didn’t try to take a closer look, too afraid of being caught. “Oh. Hello and welcome to Taproot’s,” a new voice said, sounding noticeably disappointed and bored.

         “Where is she?” One dwarf gritted out.

         “…Who?”

         “The little elven thief that just ran in here! Where is she?”

         “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I was in the kitchen. You’re welcome to check if you’d like.” The words were said flatly, with an edge of annoyance. Seki inhaled sharply but silently, knowing that if the dwarves had enough sense to check, she’d be found immediately.

         Luckily for her, emotions tended to cloud one’s sense of reason.

         “I know you’re hiding her, goblin! I’ll get the Guardian!” Seki would probably have enough time to get out between the vigilante getting here and the dwarves leaving. But goblin… that was interesting. Seki had never met a goblin before, but the Goblo-Dwarven Wars clearly didn’t end the animosity between the two races.

         “Please do.” Seki could feel her shoulders slump as the dwarves stormed out of the bar. Said bar- Taproot’s?- went quiet, the only sounds being the occasional clink of glasses and talons tapping against the floor. She bent her head to look up at the goblin so she could make her escape, but she was immediately distracted by the wide, pointed ears of the goblin- specifically, the shiny pins shoved through the lobes. Seki felt her hand come up to her ear. It wasn’t as if she had never seen a piercing before; plenty of the questers had them, and often several, but never in ears so similar to her own.

         Her mistake was made obvious to her as a large hand wrapped around her upper arm and dragged her out from under the table. Her coat hung to one side obviously, and another hand easily took the wallet out of her pocket without even brushing her side.

         “Here you go, gentlemen. You are free to leave; she will be dealt with.” Seki huffed. One dwarf leered at her as the other caught the wallet. Her spine was now rigid, and she was extremely aware of the hand still on her arm and the breathing behind her. The dwarfs left yet again, and she was quickly spun around to meet the eyes of the man.

         They were brown. Not the light, glowing brown of a hamadryad, nor the dark reddish-brown of an older demon. And they certainly weren’t black. They were a medium, plain brown, one that was rarer here. He was wearing a black mask, so she couldn’t be sure, but he didn’t seem to have any facial mutations, and his jaw was set in a way that didn’t suggest unusually shaped teeth. His hair was brown too, and his skin was tanned in a way that seemed natural instead of magic-enhanced. Her hand came down to feel his gloved grip on her arm, and he tightened it, confirming to her that he was lacking talons. His ears were distinctly rounded, and he was only taller than her by about a head or so. Seki didn’t want to assume, but…

         “You’re human,” she blurted. His eyes narrowed at her, and she internally cheered at the confirmation that was quite clearly unintentional on his part. “The Guardian of Ongavho is a human.” Realistically, it made sense. Humans were often a particular brand of reckless and selfless, and while dwarves and elves and centaurs and lycans were all fighter races, humans were often adrenaline junkies, and this type of technically-illegal-but-morally-upstanding sort of occupation fit a human well. However. Humans were rare in their realm and often considered fragile, which was quite obviously untrue in the Guardian’s case.

         “Krit, I’ll take her to the Pack,” he said instead of addressing her claim directly. Seki felt herself stiffen and look over to the goblin, who was apparently named Krit. While this was a questing town, and being near the dwarven territories influenced Ongavho quite a bit, it was technically run by the Pack, a group of female lycans who had originally been on the lower rungs of other lycan packs. Due to their tenuous leadership, they’d give her a harsher punishment than she deserved to stay on the dwarves’ good side. Krit met her eyes and nodded once before speaking.

         “No, Erch.” The Guardian- Erch- dropped her arm in shock and she was immediately slipping away, only to be stopped by a much gentler hand on her shoulder. “Do you like stuffed mushrooms?”

         Seki whipped around and stared at the goblin. She could see that Krit was old, could trace it through the lines on their face and the way their skin was blotched with darker grey and freckled with white, but she also knew the goblin couldn’t be old enough to forget that Seki was a thief. Even if they did let her go out of pity for an exiled young elf with no future, there was no reason to offer any hospitality to an intruder.

         “I can’t pay,” she blurted.

         “That wasn’t the question.” Seki didn’t trust her voice enough to let it do the talking; she nodded, and Krit smiled, showing off teeth so white it was almost unnatural. “Good. Why don’t you sit down somewhere?”

         “Hold on, Krit, you can’t just-” Krit silenced Erch with a look. He stood awkwardly, shifting his weight from side to side as Seki sat down in a rounded booth, scooting all way in so she would be shielded by the table but could easily slip under it if the time called for an escape. Krit eyed Erch for a long pause before slipping through a curtain of shiny rocks and beads and metal. There were more paperclips and safety pins on it than Seki had seen in her life, and she briefly wondered if Erch had been the one to give them the human devices. That thought was interrupted when the man in question sat down next to her.

         “I need a drink,” he mumbled as Krit walked out with a steaming plate of stuffed mushrooms. Seki’s stomach growled eagerly, and she felt her cheeks flush rose gold in her embarrassment.

         “Need I remind you that your twenty-first birthday is next month?” Did this bar operate according to human customs? She hadn’t even voiced the question before Krit was shaking their head. “And none for you either; you are certainly not one-thousand-six-hundred-ninety years old.” Seki ducked her head and dug in. She hadn’t expected Krit to know the legal drinking age for elves, but they did own a bar.

         The mushrooms were amazing.

         She ate like a starving hydra. Despite the dish’s fungal nature, it was fresh in a way she hadn’t experienced since she was ostracized from the Court. While it was certainly different from the fresh fruits and sundried meats of home, she had to blink rapidly to keep her eyes from watering when Krit set a glass of peach syrup down next to her.

         She realized what she must have looked like when she finished, and she flushed rose gold yet again, but Krit smiled and Erch merely huffed. Seki wasn’t good at understanding when she was meant to say thank you, but she felt genuinely grateful now.

         “Thank you,” she said, and it came out quiet, but not a whisper. Black goblin eyes became mere slits as a smile widened. Krit heard her fine.

         “What are you going to do with her?” Erch cut in. He didn’t sound nearly as aggressive or frustrated as before. Actually, he sounded almost anxious. She dismissed the thought. Krit ignored the question in favor of asking a question of their own.

         “What were you exiled for?” Seki realized what Erch was thinking the exact moment his eyes flashed- he hadn’t known she was exiled. Of course, not everyone knew elven customs and she shouldn’t have expected him to. But it seemed to change something. His posture straightened.

         “I was associating with centaurs.”

         And Seki saw it. Something clicked for Erch. All of a sudden Erch was on his feet and leaving. He nodded to Krit when he paused in the doorway and turned brown eyes on her once again. She held her breath.

         “I’ll let you go this time. But consequences will come next time, alright?”

         Seki nodded, sighing in relief once he left. Krit laughed- quiet and raspy- and they tapped her on the nose once she turned around. Though she cringed away from black talons that were much too close to her eyes, she didn’t feel very threatened. She met black eyes with her own, and they narrowed again with Krit’s resulting smile.

         “I have an empty room upstairs and the need for a waitress.” Seki blinked once as she processed this, then blinked several times in rapid succession, hoping that the tears wouldn’t spill over. She was barely successful.

         “Thank you,” she said again, and she felt that she would soon say it a lot more when Krit refilled her glass of peach syrup.

KRIT

         Krit did not consider themselves to be very parent-ish. Or parent-ly. Or however it was supposed to be worded. They were generally alright with the concept of and continued existence of children. They just weren’t very good with children, especially non-goblin children. It was part of why they had opened a bar in a questing town instead of a restaurant in a city. And it was definitely why they had never sought out any to call their own.

         And yet, this little elf girl called Seki- and Krit found out the elf’s name and gender an embarrassingly long while after they invited her to stay because they had always been both impulsive and forgetful- was now theirs in a way that was unlike another creature’s selfish concept of possession, and they quite frankly had no idea what to do with her.

         Krit knew the basics of having a child. They’d interacted with children before. Once. Perhaps even twice. A child was to be kept well-fed, well-watered, and well-rested. They were to learn things, although what specific things was something entirely unknown to Krit. But Seki wasn’t really all that childish. She wasn’t inexperienced with the world; while age was usually discussed concerning one’s race and potential lifetime, it was still clear that Seki was much older than them. She wasn’t all too emotional either, and while she smiled and frowned and moved her face in all the ways you were supposed to when making your emotions clear to others, she sometimes reminded Krit of themselves as she stared off at the wall and let her face go blank. And she was almost entirely self-sufficient.

         So. What was a parent supposed to do with a child like Seki?

         There were other things about Seki that confused Krit: her explanation to Krit that most creatures found gender important, her strange fear of the dark, her way of immediately assessing everyone who came to the bar, and the way she always knew exactly when to cut a patron off and when to let them keep drinking. She was a lot like Erch, although Erch was human and that explained most of his confusingness.

         At the moment, however, Erch was being an entirely unreasonable creature that one should never hold a conversation with ever.

         “Look, Krit, if you’re taking care of Seki, you need to file it in with the Pack. You know this.” It was a late night at the bar, and Erch was the last customer of the day. Technically, the bar was closed and they could kick him out at any point. Instead, Krit huffed a sort of unnoise that Erch always said was odd; an unnoise was a lack of sound when one was prepared for sound, and while Erch always told them that was not a real thing, it was a goblin thing. “Krit…”

         “She is mine. No werewolf is coming near her.” As a goblin, Krit knew vaguely of her race’s adoptive tendencies with unwanted things. They’d been the same with Erch, although they’d had to partially give him up when he became wanted. They’d had many conversations about the idea of possession with Erch, none of which they understood. (Something about how even though he wasn’t particularly attached to his paperclips they couldn’t just have them because they were his. It was baffling.) But having this feeling towards a child was strange and new. Strange and new enough that they were using improper and impolite words such as ‘mine’ and ‘werewolf’ and not understanding in the slightest why.

         “Lycan,” Erch corrected. Krit made another unnoise, puffing their cheeks and making a face. Yes, yes, being unrude was important- polite, Erch would remind them if he could read their mind- but it was all so inconvenient when one didn’t like to be unrude. If that Pack tried to take Seki away from them, they’d have a lot more to say than ‘werewolf.’ “And it’s just filling out paperwork. Otherwise, this is technically kidnapping”

         “Sounds irritating and unnecessary and preposterous.”

         “It is entirely necessary,” Erch insisted. Krit sighed, wishing that this was a goblin town for not the first time in their life. Then they wouldn’t have to worry about opinions and tax changes and whatever else paperwork was meant for when they took in Seki.

         “Fine. But I get to lie.” Erch frowned disapprovingly but acquiesced. Krit would never fit neatly or nicely into any place that wasn’t distinctly goblin, and Erch knew that some red flags would likely be raised if they didn’t lie a little. (Tax evasion, mostly, was their biggest ‘crime.’ Taxes were just so perplexing and problematic, and a little illusion-work could go a long way. Erch should have been a little more understanding; he was the vigilante after all.)

         “You’re corrupt.” Krit never could quite tell if Erch meant that as a compliment or not. He’d protest whenever they thanked him for it, but he always said it so fondly.

         “Alright. Would you like some more sourdough?”

         “Absolutely.” Krit grinned at that and then walked into the kitchen, where they found Seki drinking a glass of peach syrup. She drank it so much that they were considering buying some extra cans of peaches when they went to the market next week, because while they had a good amount of it left, they wanted Seki to like it here. What else did elves like? Fruit, books, and sunshine? They’d have to ask around.

         “Hey, Krit! Are you…? Are you talking to Erch about me?” Seki’s teeth worried at her lip and Krit wanted to exclaim to the whole world that this was their child and that no one would be allowed to make her feel anxious ever again. That wasn’t exactly possible, however, and so they resorted to giving the child a brief hug before leaning over and taking a knife from the block. They had found that Seki was somehow very easily comforted by a hug, even though the idea was somewhat ridiculous- goblins were never so touchy with each other- but they tried to hug her at least once every day.

         “Erch says I have to do paperwork to officially make you my child, which is silly because I’m keeping you no matter what. But I’m doing it anyway because Erch can sometimes be tremendously bothersome.” When they had finally found the sourdough in the cupboard, Krit looked over at Seki, twirling the knife once out of habit, and was surprised to see Seki looking at them with shiny grey eyes and a dropped jaw. “Is there something wrong?”

         “You want me?”

         Oh.

         “Of course I do,” they answered instantly, setting the knife down. Any moment now, Seki was going to burst into tears, and they wanted to be able to hug her when she did so. “You’re mine. I’ll want you forever.”

         That did it. Seki pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. Krit gathered her into a tight hug, squeezing tightly as Seki murmured excessive apologies that they dismissed immediately. They glared at Erch over their child’s shoulder when he parted the curtain ever so slightly to peer in, and the glare worsened when Seki startled even at the quiet noise. Erch winced as Seki jumped out of the hold after catching sight of him.

         “Sorry for intruding, kiddo,” he said. He may be Krit’s best friend, but if he didn’t do something to fix the fact that Seki was currently tensed up and anticipating something, he was going to have to eat dwarven meats for a month. “Um, so you’re okay with Krit adopting you?” Seki nodded but didn’t reply, and thankfully Erch accepted that. “I- I thought so, so I-” He cut himself off, bringing out a thin stack of papers from his messenger bag. Krit’s glare vanished. Seki’s eyes went round and hopeful, and Erch would not be eating dwarven meats this month.

         “We can do it now?”

         “Yep,” Krit replied, popping the ‘p’ and ruffling their kid’s hair. They shot a grateful look towards Erch. Paperwork still seemed awfully superfluous, but they would do it without any further complaint now that they recognized that it was something important to Seki. Erch was a lifesaver; they knew nothing about most creatures’ emotional responses to things such as this.

         They sat down in the back room next to the kitchen, and Erch finally got another thick slice of sourdough, although he made a rule that none of them would leave until they were finished so they wouldn’t miss or muck up any of the questions or forms and not have the others around to intervene.

         The paperwork was a journey. Erch looked like he was about to have an aneurysm when they confirmed that they had never filled out a tax form in their life and that they had also likely never paid the correct amount, but he told them what to write when they came to that part. Seki found the list of Krit’s ‘crimes’- activities that were easy and fun and therefore frowned upon in adult society- unequivocally hilarious, and the sound of her giggles was enough to keep them telling stories until Erch threatened to leave them to fill this stuff out on their own. Both of the others were confused when they mentioned that goblins didn’t have last names. (This led to a conversation discussing why the bar was called Taproot’s, in which Krit explained it was the false name of the witch who used to live here, who was also likely an illegal caretaker, given the fact that they took in Krit. Erch couldn’t hold back his sigh.) The group was even more confused when Erch said his last name was Fischer and Seki said she was stripped of her last name when she left the Court.

         “But what did it use to be?”

         “I don’t know; it was taken from me.” Krit tilted their head, but after a moment, Erch seemed to have some sort of horrifying revelation.

         “Oh… Fae folk believe in the power of names as more than titles, almost as corporeal material, right?” Seki nodded, and Krit tried to process that. “So, they physically took it from you and erased your memory of it? So, they have- they have power over you now? Because they know your name, but you don’t?”

         “Yes? I was exiled,” Seki said softly as if this was normal. Krit did not like the idea that any elf could potentially take advantage of her child. Erch muttered a swear under his breath, but it wasn’t in any language they knew; they only recognized that he was swearing because of the many, many times he had said it. Krit made a frustrated unnoise. “It’s okay. If I can decide on a surname for myself, I can take that one, but until then, it’s okay. The Court doesn’t usually pay a lot of attention to the banished.”

         Krit put that matter aside; they were getting much too angry for a heavy conversation with a vulnerable child. Instead, they moved on to the next portion of the adoption paperwork, leaving both surname slots blank. Seki was quickly distracted by the fact that Krit technically didn’t own their house. They had filled out the paperwork (once, maybe) to purchase the lower floor from the older witch (who’d raised them from their so-called ‘teenage’ years) to turn into a bar, but that had been a long time ago, and they had just been unofficially given the top floor. Erch slammed his head on the table when they mentioned using illusions to come up with the right paperwork, but he eventually helped them forge the documents properly, berating them all the while about how most paperwork was checked for common illusion-work such as conjuring. It was a good thing Krit usually used summoning for tax days, though they kept that to themselves.

         Eventually, the paperwork was done, and Seki practically latched onto Krit. Krit was barely able to wrap their arms around her before she was bounding away and towards Erch to give him an even briefer hug. Seki’s face was overtaken by a sort of pinkish gold that Krit had seen before; it meant she was embarrassed. She quickly ran off to her room, and Krit couldn’t hide their chuckle when they saw Erch, still frozen.

         “I… I thought she was scared of me.” Krit considered that.

         “I think Seki’s scared of authority and punishments, but not necessarily you anymore. I think it helped her to see you aiding me in all of my less than legal enterprises.” Erch glared at them then, running a hand through his hair.

         “They’re called crimes, Krit.”

ERCH

         Erch twirled his knife as he sat on the railing of a roof. He believed he was on top of that one dwarven barbeque that he hated, but it was easy to lose track of where you were in a town where the roofs were so level and close to each other; thankfully, it was also easy to parkour across them. He didn’t know where he was, having only received instructions based on block number, but he knew he was in the right place. Erch squinted through the darkness, cursing himself for forgetting to ask Krit for some more of that night vision potion. But it couldn’t be helped. He wasn’t planning to make this a long patrol anyways.

         But he wasn’t exactly taking a break right now, so the patrol may be dragging on longer than he originally thought. He had received a tip-off from an old nāga who lived in the next town over, and he was inclined to listen for two reasons: one, nāgas were half-snake, half-human, which was a great combination for observation purposes, and two, those who weren’t local to Ongavho tended to pick up on unruly behavior better. Or, well, easier. Erch liked to pride himself on being vigilant, but even he knew he had become a little desensitized after spending nearly two years in this town. Not to mention the stuff he had seen when he was little, before he came through the gateway.

         Erch pushed away that thought. He’d never been one to dwell on the past so much; at least, not until he met Seki. She reminded him of himself in an odd way. Only, the younger him, when he was teenaged and stupid and chasing an adrenaline rush that finally wasn’t from huddling in a bunker under the ground during a bombing. He’d been harsher with her at first because he remembered how selfish he’d been as a teenager, but she wasn’t him. She was much better, and maybe that came from her literal hundreds of years of experience, or maybe that was just her. Either way, he felt sort of bittersweet whenever he saw her in Taproot’s, sitting in his booth and drawing little flowers on the edge of the table or helping Krit with a customer.

         He almost thought of her as a little sister, he realized when his eyes caught on the window of a shop across the street and he immediately thought that maybe Seki would like that shawl with the flowers on it. He’d never really want to admit it, but ever since he had encountered that party of centaur questers- on their way to die at the hands of a beast- he’d been a little hostile towards elves. But Seki was showing him (through her similarities to him and Krit and even the centaurs) that he needed to let go of his bias.

         He quickly flicked his gaze back to the alleyway in front of him, cursing under his breath in German. Erch needed to focus. Erch was the Ongavho Guardian; to do his job he had to keep others out of his head. He spun the knife in his fingers a few more times, eying the way the light caught on the off-white blade before he looked back down at the alleyway.

         He was about to call it quits when a light flicked on in the house next to him. He now saw the warm yellow seeping through the crack in the door facing the alley. Perfect. Now all he had to do was listen. He quickly uncapped the bottle for a sense enhancer and downed it, stuffing the empty bottle back into his supply belt. This specific potion was a difficult one; Krit had somehow rigged an enchantment to connect what he heard to the recorder in his bag at home. They hadn’t been able to connect his sight to his camera yet, but he was impressed with what they had already done.

         “-what, call the Guardian! See if I care!” A deep grating tone abruptly became audible. “You know I’m right! This may be a questing town, but I thought we had standards here in Ongavho. If the Pack is just going to kowtow to dwarven whims, the Pack shouldn’t be in charge. We’re practically a dwarven territory already!”

         “This is treason,” a lighter tone advised. Well, they were half right. Any action on this opinion would be considered treason. “The Pack is still independent; any action now would prove rash and foolish.”

         “I’m not a fool! And if you won’t join me, I’ll do it myself.”

         “You can’t just kill someone, Sakhal!”

         Oh, verdammt. He had stumbled across an assassination plot. Just what he wanted on this lovely moonlit night.

         “I assure you that I am perfectly capable. Or have you forgotten where you got that scar? Fighting alongside me in the wars? This is not what I fought for, Kenai! They are not our pack; our pack died fighting for our freedom. Why should it matter?” Verdammt. These were lycans, and even with his sense enhancers, he couldn’t take on two at once without having to knock them out. Normally, knocking them out would be acceptable, but he’d have to grab his recorder at the bar before he brought them to the Pack, and he couldn’t lug them around the town that far without running the risk of them waking up. (This wouldn’t be a risk at all if the moon wasn’t hung so high and visibly in the charcoal grey clouds.) He couldn’t deal with that. He sheathed his knives; they were too deadly a weapon to use on a creature without scales or magic, and lycans wouldn’t react to the fear tactics he tended to use.

         He pulled out his phone and texted Krit: meet me at the Packhouse with my recorder. They had to be awake, the insomniac. He’d have called, but lycans had enhanced hearing as well, and any talking would certainly catch their attention.

         “The dwarves are not ruling us yet, but if you kill any Pack member, they will take over-”

         “So we’ll fight!”

         “Then we’ll die!”

         “SO WHAT?” Erch flinched at both the words and the volume of them. Desperation was dangerous, and this lycan had nothing left to lose. “…Kenai, I swear to the moon, if you don’t help me, I will never forgive you.”

         “That’s not fair.”

         “And losing our pack years ago to a cause that is still not yet realized was? And being made fools because of a government of puppets is? And having an out but not going through with it because your packmate won’t listen to you is?” Verdammt. Sakhal was starting to convince Kenai, judging by the following pause. He looked back down at his phone.

         Coming. Be there in five minutes.

         That… didn’t seem to match up. Was Krit not at the bar? Whatever, that didn’t matter right now. All he knew is that he needed to draw out the lycans, knock them out, and drag them to the Packhouse. He whistled sharply, and the sound pierced the night.

         “…One,” Kenai started. “Mammal, non-magical. We can take them.”

         “Let’s see if they heard us.”

         The door opened without so much as a creak. Two lycans walked out, one with an almost blond fur type and the other a grey-brown. They didn’t look related, and Erch realized with a grimace that unless they were mates- which they likely weren’t, considering the lack of claiming scars- they probably were chosen packmates, and were bound to give him some sort of trouble. Usually, he would take out a smaller opponent first so he could work himself up, but he had to take out the blond one this time if he wanted to remain unscathed. A lycan would fight feral if their chosen packmate was injured, let alone knocked out, so he took out his taser, grimacing at the fact that his fight with the other lycan would be mostly hand-to-hand. The lycans were wary as they glanced around, and Erch pushed off, twisting midair so his feet landed on the blond lycan’s shoulders- it would hurt, but not injure seriously, as hardly any creatures were as fragile as humans- and swinging, making the lycan crumple to the ground. He leaped off, already landing a swing to the other lycan’s knee. His ankles were hurting from shock, but he knew it would pass- the drop hadn’t even been a full story, truly.

         “Sakhal!” Well, at least he knew he was fighting Kenai, the one that seemed to have a problem with killing. He couldn’t rely on that; their anger, on the other hand, could blind them to any of their obvious mistakes. Kenai was already snarling, but their knee was bent at an awkward angle, and they had shifted most of their weight off of it.

         Erch ducked as claws raked at empty air- or at least what he thought was empty air. His hood was torn into ribbons, but he didn’t have a scratch on him, so he quietly mourned his hood while swinging at the wrist that hadn’t quite retreated enough. He winced at the crack he heard, even though he knew it was likely just the joint popping, but it made the lycan startle and he took the opportunity to slam his bat into their head. Kenai crumpled to the ground. Erch felt bad, but he had to remind himself that lycans were much more ‘durable’ than humans, and neither would sustain any lasting damage.

         He slipped the bat into a loop on his belt, then maneuvered the two lycans against the wall so he could pick both of them up at once. Erch groaned as their weight settled on his shoulders, cursing himself for not taking his normal strength pill. He only took the magical ‘supplements’ as Krit called them- magical steroids- a couple of patrols a week, as they could have unfavorable health effects after too much exposure, but boy, did he want them now. He started the walk towards the Packhouse, thankfully finding out that he was not far when he reached the nearest street sign.

         He had to adjust the bodies on his shoulders multiple times, but at least he was at the last turn before his lungs started to burn. The Packhouse was in the center of town, so he was really lucky that he hadn’t encountered anyone on the street. Although, if Erch thought about it, the only one who’d be out this late would be a local or a regular, and neither option would interfere with the business of ‘the Guardian.’ His train of thought promptly derailed when he turned the corner to see none other but Seki.

         “Hey, Er- I mean, Guardian!” She half-whispered. Erch tried to ignore the awed look on her face as she scanned him and the two lycans. He sent her the most scolding glare he could muster, but he could feel the corners of his lips twitching, so it was likely not going to work.

         “You should be in bed, Seki.” Her eyes pleaded with him as they snapped up to his face.

         “But you sent that text! And Krit was out foraging and I didn’t know what else I was supposed to do!” Seki shoved the recorder into one of his hands awkwardly, and it stopped whirring, then reset itself. He felt the effects of the potions halt, and he sighed deeply. “Please don’t be mad-”

         “I’m not mad, kiddo, I just want you to be safe. You’re going to have to come into the Packhouse with me, so…” He rummaged through the pouch on his belt the best he could- he was carrying far too much right now- and finally pulled out an extra black mask. “You’ll probably need to adjust it, but wear this.”

         “Thank you!” Erch dismissed her with a half-hearted gesture and walked up the steps.

         “Can you knock?” Seki jumped at being addressed directly, then nodded and stammered as she processed it was a question. She knocked, falling silent, too embarrassed to say anything else if he was judging by the blush rising above the black material on her face- the one that was normally rose-gold but turned oddly silvery and reflective in the moonlight- and he smiled at her before realizing she couldn’t see through his mask.

         “Guardian? Who do you have with you?” Erch perked up at the familiar voice of Caralpa, the newest member of the Pack.

         “Two unconscious hostiles and my sister.” Seki’s eyes widened and he realized his mistake. “I forgot something for patrol and she had to bring it.” He was absolutely going to ignore this situation until he couldn’t anymore; besides, the Pack thinking they were family was only more beneficial for them.

         The door creaked open and Erch would’ve laughed at Caralpa’s wide eyes- she’d get used to his vigilantism soon enough- if he had the air for it. Seki waved shyly, still unused to talking with strangers despite having worked as a waitress for just over a month now. Erch could see the exact moment Caralpa internally went ‘aww.’

         “Come in. You can set them down in the front cell. What’d they do?” She unlocked the door and Erch sighed as he put them down, trying not to sway with exhaustion. Lycans were heavy. Especially these ones. Caralpa and most of the Pack were on the small side, and they were linked by their distinctive dark grey and white coloring. Technically, this was a coincidence, but Erch had suspicions about this specific type of lycan and the way they often treated the women in their pack. That wasn’t his business though; if there was an issue, the Pack would be taking care of it. He shook his head and stretched, huffing a laugh at Seki’s concern when his back made a noise like popping candy.

         “It was prevention, actually, but I have their conversation on tape. Recorded, I mean,” he explained. Caralpa still wasn’t used to his more exclusively human expressions, but her confusion cleared with the reiteration of his point. He made his way out of the cell, and as she locked it behind him, he popped the tape out of the recorder.

         “Oh, good. Then I can just-”

         “I want you to listen to this with the rest of the Pack if possible; it’s pretty upsetting.” Caralpa looked up from where he was handing her the tape, yellow eyes slanting in a tell-tale way. “I promise you I’m not underestimating you. It’s going to be upsetting for the rest of the Pack to hear as well, but it’s something you’ll need to deal with together anyways.” Seki looked between him and Caralpa and subtly shifted closer to his side, a movement that Caralpa obviously picked up on. Thankfully it relaxed her instead of aggravating her.

         “Alright. Goodnight, Guardian.”

         “Das lebwohl,” he said, saluting her casually. Seki mimicked him, and they left.

         The walk to the bar was a little long, and they spent the first few minutes in awkward silence. Erch could feel Seki staring, but he was trying to puzzle out what to say first.

         “…I really do think of you as my little sister, you know?” Seki abruptly stopped in the middle of the road, and Erch took the opportunity to guide them into an alleyway. He pulled his mask down, and she did too, revealing an awed expression underneath pale, shiny eyes.

         “Really?”

         “Really,” he confirmed. Seki’s breath hitched, and oh, did Erch want to hug her. He may or may not have voiced the want, but that really didn’t matter when she was already nodding into his chest. He squeezed her as tight as felt he could without bruising her fragile form. She clutched at his sleeves so he couldn’t pull away, not that he wanted to. “Can I ask you something?” She made a muffled affirmative noise, and he took a deep breath. Was he really about to ask this? “…Would you like to take my last name? Since Krit doesn’t have one and all.”

         Suddenly Seki was pushing away from him and he felt his stomach drop. (Of course, she was an elf; she’d find that weird or offensive or condescending or-)

         “Yes.” It took an agonizingly long second for him to process this, but when he did, Erch beamed at the response, his chest tightening after he saw Seki’s all too toothy grin that matched Krit’s.         “We have paperwork tonight, then,” he replied, his own grin becoming a little crooked. Seki giggled, and they started to walk back the way they came; they’d need to pick up the papers at Ongavho Hall, after all.

if i may have the honour of shaking your hand, sir! this is GRIPPING, ENJOYABLE, and HIGHLY EMOTIONAL and i love it so much. im officially invested. i do appreciate a "young" character who is actually like a thousand years old cause their race is just Like That TM, and seki is so sweet <3 krit is so crotchety yet kindhearted i am entranced by this combination. and once again i must say i am obsessed with the mix between modern elements and fantasy elements, like erch is internally dialoging about centaurs and magic potions and then casually whips out his phone to text krit---now THAT is good stuff.

also,

"He quickly flicked his gaze back to the alleyway in front of him, cursing under his breath in German." <- ERCH SPEAKS GERMAN??? THE MAN EVER HE IS A LEGEND

[rollercoasterwords]

i always find the discourse about wlw rep in the fandom sk interesting. like. i’m not gonna lie and say that it isn’t something i haven’t agreed with and gone “yeahh i do want wlw” “yeah omg why is there an attention on mlm”. it’s frustrating sometimes. esp when i was younger i distinctly remember being freshly new out of the closet (and by that time i was alr reading mlm ff) and then going to look for wlw and being kind of. disappointed. being older now, and interacting with a lot of other ppl, and understanding things more i wholeheartedly agree with ur points abt this. it’s true. it makes sense. but i can see why it’s so hard for ppl to grasp. and i understand why ppl are always always bringing up this discourse. before i had someone point it out to me in that sense like “look ff is different than the main media we consume” i hadn’t rly made that connection, bc to me, it was just media. it was entertainment, it was a silly little story just like so many id read before. and like. obviouslyyy now i see how while it may feel like it’s all the same to me, it’s not and it warrants a different type of behavior and attitude almost. but it can be hard to get to that point, even after someone points it out. and it can hard to let go to that way of thinking even after you know it’s “wrong” (i say this in quotes bc i don’t rly think it’s wrong per so but like. uninformed. or ignorant almost). there is a very fine line between the mainstream media we consume and ff but that line is hidden under layers and layers of ideas and concepts we alr have (and it’s hole only dug deeper with things like tik tok, where you see multiple multiple videos telling you every day that “we should demand more wlw rep” etc and considering it’s an app that doesn’t encourage ppl to think critically at allll) so yeah idk where i was rly going with this, but it’s just always smth i think abt when i see this discrouse.

and like side note, that’s not to say that there isn’t wlw there are so so so many great fics out there, and like you said, if you want it so desperately just simply do it yourself etc etc, but in the context of this, i think ppl cling to the idea of wanting a mega popular everyone’s read it this is the fic™️ fic for wlw abd they want the same kind of discourse and tik tok popularity and attention that mlm fics get yk? that’s why a lot of the times, the need snd incessant screaming for that drowns out the voices alr there.

yeah i mean i understand where it's coming from when people say they wish there was more "wlw rep" in the fandom and i do think that the people who act as if they need to Crusade for more wlw fic are mostly coming from a place of ignorance re: the way fanfic functions as an inherently different form of media from books, movies, etc. and i'm sure that part of it is coming from a place of wanting to feel like u can make some Real Change in the media u consume. however i do think a large part of it is also coming from wanting to virtue signal for brownie points and also knowing that stirring up controversy and acting as if u are Crusading on behalf of a Good Cause will get u more likes and views. and at the end of the day regardless of where it's coming from it is all equally annoying and equally harmful in the way that it seeks to drag fanfiction into some sort of internet profit economy. so! it's like...do i think that many of these people are just misinformed? yes, absolutely. but i will be honest and say that personally i am running out of sympathy for people who are just soooooo sad because they want more wlw fics simply because. well me myself and i when we looked around the marauders fandom and thought "hmm this could use some more lesbians" we simply wrote fanfiction about lesbians. and it's like well yes i understand that me myself and i are an immortal being with godlike power who is better than everyone but these people could still at least TRY to get on my level like c'mon now....this is perhaps one of the only forms of media where u actually have direct control over what "representation" u can find. and complaining that "there's no good wlw fic" is insulting to everyong who writes good wlw fics. not very #feminist methinks!!!

also to ur sidenote--i think this is so true! in my little foray into the tiktok comments on all these discourse videos over the last like week or so i have seen over and over and over again people going "we need an atyd but for the girls!!!" and it's like....why. PAUSE for one second. rewind. think about why u feel that it is necessary for there to be One Big Viral Fic in order for a ship to Officially Have Representation. what does that say about the way you engage with fandom. what does that say about your definition of "representation." what does that say about the metrics u are using to like....assign value to fanfics. because personally to me it signals that u have been so sucked into this weird tiktokification of fanfiction that u only think fic is worth engaging with if it's reached a certain level of virality on tiktok, which is half of what's giving way to this whole "representation" issue in the first place, because the problem isn't that people aren't writing wlw fics, it's that you aren't seeing them because they aren't one of TikTok's Top 5 Most Popular Fanfictions and you refuse to venture outside that corner of the fandom. and the snake eats its own tail once again </3

[red-dyed-sarumane]

OKAY VOCACOLLE SUMMER TOP 15 SONGS (my ranking) LETS GOO

1. Kannagi - Hiiragi Magnetite: the lyrics on this are going to keep me occupied for the longest time until i understand it better. the atmosphere of this song is just incredible, the addition of the bells in her hand in the song, the light chime-y parts of the the instrumental, the piano, the longer notes, u dont need to know the lyrics to know theres a sense of regret in here. theres enough in the chimes u can feel the inner reflection in this, & like other series songs it hits that standing at the end of world in the rain feeling. its paced so perfectly it doesnt even feel like 6 minutes. series wise i think thats not only a call back to kyuuyaku but like shoushitsu & kyuuyaku it shows off that loop theme, getting into whats going on building it up, theres a bit of calm and then it picks up again. lots of story telling & details in it to add to the narrative. haru fits it so perfectly & that's definitely by design. this song has already embedded itself in my heart

2. Stockholm Office - Crump: if kannagi wasnt posted this would take first place EASILY IMMEDIATELY. i cant say in words how much i loved this so instantly. the light whispery-ness of kafu & the spacey-ness of certain instruments and parts combined with the heavy groundedness of the rest of it is so so perfect. the poetic way the lyrics show off the state of things in this song without being super blunt about the complaints in it & the overall rhythm of it draws me in so so much. they really matched the mood of the instrumentals & the lyrics so perfectly. its not spacey enough for me to say true dissociation type feel but theres such a strong feeling of disconnection in this, that feeling of lying to urself to stick something out which im sure is entirely intended given the title. im about to become the number one promoter of this song its one of those found it at the perfect timing things for me.

3. Candy Drop - yurame: this has the usual yurame song feel. i can only describe it as sounding how carbonation in drinks feels. its trendy sounding but at the same time is all its own thing and authentic feeling. the lyrics are written in a way its like ah yeah i get that feeling. despite the lightness of the instrumental its good at getting that melancholic feel across & isnt jarring in the slightest. flower has that mix of rough & cute to suit this as well. very good song.

4. Quiet - szri: szri's usual quick & heavy pacing definitely building off what they did in anaphylaxis. even includes the smallest part of it & u know i love songs that connect to each other. gekiyaku & kafu are such a good combination too especially how they pull it off. not a very light song in terms of content but fun nonetheless & isnt that what vocaloids about.

5. Euthanasia - Dopam!ne: a lighter/simpler song in terms of instrumentals that he does. nice change & still very distinctly his style. definitely not a light song in terms of content the guy even put a content disclaimer at the end. still easy to listen to if u like his style tho. good song

6. Waste - mairu: this ones probably about as heavy as szri's quiet musically speaking though theres a few calmer sections. flower's roughness fits the topic well i think. another one where the mood of every part of the song just seems to align well. i dont have anything profound to say i just think its neat

7. OSINT - Sheeno Mirin: i love the atmosphere in sheeno mirin songs a lot & this one doesnt disappoint. interesting vocal combination choice not that they overlap in any part & they work well with what they were going for. theres something brain scratching (in a good way) about the instrumental, a full sound thats got a weight to it but isnt too much. its really good idk what else to say

8. groom groove - yowanecity: i feel like its been forever since ive seen anything from yowanecity i really should follow them anyway i got really excited to see they posted & this didn't disappoint. its got that bounciness i expect from their songs. fun & smooth sounding. makes u want to dance. definitely worth your time.

9. Capsule - Fuyuu: cat rime & sekai thats so fun i love that and then the gachpon theme on top of it so fun. the sound is not what you'd expect from that description tho. it has a darker feel to it almost grungy i want to say but definitely not off putting. as part of the rime lover nation i love this song. this is going to end up stuck in my head all the time just like crow crow does. very good & both sekai & rime sound like they belong in this song 👍

10. Gambit - Yunosuke: another trendy, almost bubbly sounding song from yunosuke. pretty atmosphere to it. love the whistles & traditional sound instruments mixed in with the otherwise modern electric type sound its got going on. this would be fun to sing if i take the time to learn the lyrics. super good very worth your time

11. Rain - Gomennasai ga ienakute: the usual simple sounding style they have, deceivingly simple sounding bc its very clearly not. the tension building part right before the 3 min mark hits me in particular. very cool rin high notes at the end. very nice melancholic mood to it. maybe i should rank this higher its growing on me the more i listen to it. their lyric sense is very good. compels me. definitely give this a listen.

12. Static Love - Hagino: kafu rap nation rise up. its got that chiptune sound at first that gradually gives into a more modern edm sound. a good mix of cute, cool, and fun sounding. underrated the mixing & execution of this is too good to only have a few hundred views & yet here we are. worth your time

13. Prototype - Aira: THIS SONG GOES SO HARD!! coko chisei is such a good combo too. interesting theme going on here but the melody & such is just very good. the lalala parts make it seem a little lighter than it actually is. love the slightly wavering slightly squeaky sound on both vocals. lends a certain charm to this song.

14. Lewder Liar - Zensen: another great electro swing song from zensen. very fun fresh sounding instrumentals & flower's in no way out of place here. good mix. kind of an interesting theme going on here what with the demon stuff etc.

15. Death Game - Uron Riyu: this one is so fun to me. kafu running a death game. posting this as a vocacolle song feels like its framing vocacolle itself as a death game between songs & thats such an interesting way to look at it. kinda fun. the composition on its fun in its own way too. ik it's supposed to be dark but its just a fun song to me.

[inkskinned]

I have to FAQ this post for once bc i got too many questions on it but genuinely wasn't expecting this gritty slush from my childhood to garner so many notes so like

yes, we had that much vanilla onhand. we often had huge amounts of staples at home bc in order to save whatever she could, my mom would order in bulk from places like costco and restaurant supply. also, we obviously were like. gonna use it. like you can tell she wasn't so much surprised as disappointed.

u can also tell it's real because the sibling knowledge "our mom wouldn't care if we used 3 cups of vanilla as long as we weren't WASTING it" seemed like a loophole we could exploit despite the fact that:

yes, this made us very very very sick. i didn't include it in the first post in case it gave ppl the Ick. so trigger warning for the rest of this bullet point (skip ahead to next for emetophobia) but i know we all threw up and i distinctly remember throwing up for like 2 days after. i will not go too into detail but. minty :/

"how did you not die" remember we split it, & i do not believe it was EVENLY split. i cannot promise we finished all of it, i do know we drank way more than we should have once we started getting sick. again, this was bc we were worried we would get in trouble for wasting it and yet:

we did (correctly) get in trouble for wasting it. my mom pretty much never got mad without good reason and this one was. a really good reason. we got SUPER in trouble. she STILL brings this up at every occurrence vanilla extract is being discussed, & no, she is (rightfully) NOT over the use of CUPS

yes there are three of us. out of all the ways i've had to explain myself on a post, being like "i am one of my brother's 2 little sisters did you forget middle children exist" is the most middle child answer i've ever concocted.

i cannot believe im saying this but to the people saying they're going to try this: do not try this. it was not meant to be a symbol of courage and a cinnamon challenge callback. i think i only survived bc our guardian angels covered god's eyes. i had the robust and forgiving liver and body of a child and this still nigh about wiped me clean off the face of this planet. most of us on this site are at an age where we throw our back out while sneezing. listen to me. i know you think it would be funny. i want you to understand fire lizards inhabited my alveoli. my flesh damn almost became soup.

This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here.....

ps. while this post would lead u to believe otherwise. we were actually all very grateful for the unrestricted access to the staples and in general extremely respectful of the kitchen and of food. all 3 of us are now pretty good cooks & bakers bc we had practiced skills early and were not generally a menace to humanity. although now that i'm writing this i am remembering that in like 2019 for thanksgiving our outdoor activity was competitive firebreathing which none of us had ever done before & the only form of safety was my dad standing by with our garden hose. i am realizing maybe too-often my life is just. choices made with the confidence of 3 grown siblings who all have now-officially-diagnosed "clinically extreme" ADHD

probably time for this story i guess but when i was a kid there was a summer that my brother was really into making smoothies and milkshakes. part of this was that we didn't have AC and couldn't afford to run fans all day so it was kind of important to get good at making Cool Down Concoctions.

we also had a patch of mint, and he had two impressionable little sisters who had the attitude of "fuck it, might as well."

at one point, for fun, this 16 year old boy with a dream in his eye and scientific fervor in heart just wanted to see how far one could push the idea of "vanilla mint smoothie". how much vanilla extract and how much mint can go into a blender before it truly is inedible.

the answer is 3 cups of vanilla extract, 1/2 cup milk alternative, and about 50 sprigs (not leaves, whole spring) of mint. add ice and the courage of a child. idk, it was summer and we were bored.

the word i would use to describe the feeling of drinking it would maybe be "violent" or perhaps, like. "triangular." my nose felt pristine. inhaling following the first sip was like trying to sculpt a new face. i was ensconced in a mesh of horror. it was something beyond taste. for years after, i assumed those commercials that said "this is how it feels to chew five gum" were referencing the exact experience of this singular viscous smoothie.

what's worse is that we knew our mother would hate that we wasted so much vanilla extract. so we had to make it worth it. we had to actually finish the drink. it wasn't "wasting" it if we actually drank it, right? we huddled around outside in the blistering sun, gagging and passing around a single green potion, shivering with disgust. each sip was transcendent, but in a sort of non-euclidean way. i think this is where i lost my binary gender. it eroded certain parts of me in an acidic gut ecology collapse.

here's the thing about love and trust: the next day my brother made a different shake, and i drank it without complaint. it's been like 15 years. he's now a genuinely skilled cook. sometimes one of the three of us will fuck up in the kitchen or find something horrible or make a terrible smoothie mistake and then we pass it to each other, single potion bottle, and we say try it it's delicious. it always smells disgusting. and then, cerimonious, we drink it together. because that's what family does.

[dankusner]

How Alarmed Should We Be If Trump Wins Again? “As Bad as All That.”

Even many of the ex-President’s opponents haven’t grasped the scale of the man’s villainy.

A city upside down with Trump supporters falling down. In the characteristic American impasse, conservatives can’t secure the cultural changes they seek, whereas liberals can’t secure the political changes they seek.

Donald Trump’s success stems from crossing those wires.

A long trip on an American highway in the summer of 2024 leaves the impression that two kinds of billboards now have near-monopoly rule over our roads.

On one side, the billboards, gravely black-and-white and soberly reassuring, advertise cancer centers.

(“We treat every type of cancer, including the most important one: yours”; “Beat 3 Brain Tumors. At 57, I gave birth, again.”)

On the other side, brightly colored and deliberately clownish billboards advertise malpractice and personal-injury lawyers, with phone numbers emblazoned in giant type and the lawyers wearing superhero costumes or intimidating glares, staring down at the highway as they promise to do to juries.

A new Tocqueville considering the landscape would be certain that all Americans do is get sick and sue each other.

We ask doctors to cure us of incurable illnesses, and we ask lawyers to take on the doctors who haven’t.

We are frightened and we are angry;

we look to expert intervention for the fears, and to comic but effective-seeming figures for retaliation against the experts who disappoint us.

Much of this is distinctly American—the idea that cancer-treatment centers would be in competitive relationships with one another, and so need to advertise, would be as unimaginable in any other industrialized country as the idea that the best way to adjudicate responsibility for a car accident is through aggressive lawsuits.

Both reflect national beliefs:

in competition, however unreal, and in the assignment of blame, however misplaced.

We want to think that, if we haven’t fully enjoyed our birthright of plenty and prosperity, a nameable villain is at fault.

To grasp what is at stake in this strangest of political seasons, it helps to define the space in which the contest is taking place.

We may be standing on the edge of an abyss, and yet nothing is wrong, in the expected way of countries on the brink of apocalypse.

The country is not convulsed with riots, hyperinflation, or mass immiseration.

What we have is a sort of phony war—a drôle de guerre, a sitzkrieg—with the vehemence of conflict mainly confined to what we might call the cultural space.

These days, everybody talks about spaces:

the “gastronomic space,”

the “podcast space,” even, on N.F.L. podcasts,

the “analytic space.”

Derived from some combination of sociology and interior design, the word has elbowed aside terms like “field” or “conversation,” perhaps because it’s even more expansive.

The “space” of a national election is, for that reason, never self-evident; we’ve always searched for clues.

And so William Dean Howells began his 1860 campaign biography of Abraham Lincoln by mocking the search for a Revolutionary pedigree for Presidential candidates and situating Lincoln in the antislavery West, in contrast to the resigned and too-knowing East.

North vs. South may have defined the frame of the approaching war, but Howells was prescient in identifying East vs. West as another critical electoral space.

This opposition would prove crucial—first, to the war, with the triumph of the Westerner Ulysses S. Grant over the well-bred Eastern generals, and then to the rejuvenation of the Democratic Party, drawing on free-silver populism and an appeal to the values of the resource-extracting, expansionist West above those of the industrialized, centralized East.

A century later, the press thought that the big issues in the race between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy were Quemoy and Matsu (two tiny Taiwan Strait islands, claimed by both China and Taiwan), the downed U-2, the missile gap, and other much debated Cold War obsessions.

But Norman Mailer, in what may be the best thing he ever wrote, saw the space as marked by the rise of movie-star politics—the image-based contests that, from J.F.K. to Ronald Reagan, would dominate American life.

In “Superman Comes to the Supermarket,” published in Esquire, Mailer revealed that a campaign that looked at first glance like the usual black-and-white wire-service photography of the first half of the twentieth century was really the beginning of our Day-Glo-colored Pop-art turn.

And our own electoral space?

We hear about the overlooked vs. the élite, the rural vs. the urban, the coastal vs. the flyover, the aged vs. the young—about the dispossessed vs. the beneficiaries of global neoliberalism.

Upon closer examination, however, these binaries blur.

Support for populist nativism doesn’t track neatly with economic disadvantage.

Some of Donald Trump’s keenest supporters have boats as well as cars and are typically the wealthier citizens of poorer rural areas.

His stock among billionaires remains high, and his surprising support among Gen Z males is something his campaign exploits with visits to podcasts that no non-Zoomer has ever heard of.

But polarized nations don’t actually polarize around fixed poles.

Civil confrontations invariably cross classes and castes, bringing together people from radically different social cohorts while separating seemingly natural allies.

The English Revolution of the seventeenth century, like the French one of the eighteenth, did not array worn-out aristocrats against an ascendant bourgeoisie or fierce-eyed sansculottes.

There were, one might say, good people on both sides.

Or, rather, there were individual aristocrats, merchants, and laborers choosing different sides in these prerevolutionary moments.

No civil war takes place between classes;

coalitions of many kinds square off against one another.

In part, that’s because there’s no straightforward way of defining our “interests.”

It’s in the interest of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to have big tax cuts; in the longer term, it’s also in their interest to have honest rule-of-law government that isn’t in thrall to guilds or patrons—to be able to float new ideas without paying baksheesh to politicians or having to worry about falling out of sixth-floor windows. “Interests” fail as an explanatory principle.

The Bus Ride from Hell

Does talk of values and ideas get us closer?

A central story of American public life during the past three or four decades is (as this writer has noted) that liberals have wanted political victories while reliably securing only cultural victories, even as conservatives, wanting cultural victories, get only political ones.

Right-wing Presidents and legislatures are elected, even as one barrier after another has fallen on the traditionalist front of manners and mores.

Consider the widespread acceptance of same-sex marriage.

A social transformation once so seemingly untenable that even Barack Obama said he was against it, in his first campaign for President, became an uncontroversial rite within scarcely more than a decade.

Right-wing political power has, over the past half century, turned out to have almost no ability to stave off progressive social change:

Nixon took the White House in a landslide while Norman Lear took the airwaves in a ratings sweep.

And so a kind of permanent paralysis has set in.

The right has kept electing politicians who’ve said, “Enough! No more ‘Anything goes’!”—and anything has kept going.

No matter how many right-wing politicians came to power, no matter how many right-wing judges were appointed, conservatives decided that the entire culture was rigged against them.

On the left, the failure of cultural power to produce political change tends to lead to a doubling down on the cultural side, so that wholesome college campuses can seem the last redoubt of Red Guard attitudes, though not, to be sure, of Red Guard authority.

On the right, the failure of political power to produce cultural change tends to lead to a doubling down on the political side in a way that turns politics into cultural theatre.

Having lost the actual stages, conservatives yearn to enact a show in which their adversaries are rendered humiliated and powerless, just as they have felt humiliated and powerless.

When an intolerable contradiction is allowed to exist for long enough, it produces a Trump.

As much as television was the essential medium of a dozen bygone Presidential campaigns (not to mention the medium that made Trump a star), the podcast has become the essential medium of this one.

For people under forty, the form—typically long-winded and shapeless—is as tangibly present as Walter Cronkite’s tightly scripted half-hour news show was fifty years ago, though the D.I.Y. nature of most podcasts, and the premium on host-read advertisements, makes for abrupt tonal changes as startling as those of the highway billboards.

On the enormously popular, liberal-minded “Pod Save America,” for instance, the hosts make no secret of their belief that the election is a test, as severe as any since the Civil War, of whether a government so conceived can long endure.

Then they switch cheerfully to reading ads for Tommy John underwear (“with the supportive pouch”), for herbal hangover remedies, and for an app that promises to cancel all your excess streaming subscriptions, a peculiarly niche obsession (“I accidentally paid for Showtime twice!” “That’s bad!”).

George Conway, the former Republican (and White House husband) turned leading anti-Trumper, states bleakly on his podcast for the Bulwark, the news-and-opinion site, that Trump’s whole purpose is to avoid imprisonment, a motivation that would disgrace the leader of any Third World country. Then he immediately leaps into offering—like an old-fashioned a.m.-radio host pushing Chock Full o’Nuts—testimonials for HexClad cookware, with charming self-deprecation about his own kitchen skills.

How serious can the crisis be if cookware and boxers cohabit so cozily with the apocalypse?

And then there’s the galvanic space of social media.

In the nineteen-seventies and eighties, we were told, by everyone from Jean Baudrillard to Daniel Boorstin, that television had reduced us to numbed observers of events no longer within our control.

We had become spectators instead of citizens.

In contrast, the arena of social media is that of action and engagement—and not merely engagement but enragement, with algorithms acting out addictively on tiny tablets.

The aura of the Internet age is energized, passionate, and, above all, angry.

The algorithms dictate regular mortar rounds of text messages that seem to come not from an eager politician but from an infuriated lover, in the manner of Glenn Close in “Fatal Attraction”:

“Are you ignoring us?” “We’ve reached out to you PERSONALLY!”

“This is the sixth time we’ve asked you!”

At one level, we know they’re entirely impersonal, while, at another, we know that politicians wouldn’t do this unless it worked, and it works because, at still another level, we are incapable of knowing what we know; it doesn’t feel entirely impersonal. You can doomscroll your way to your doom.

The democratic theorists of old longed for an activated citizenry; somehow they failed to recognize how easily citizens could be activated to oppose deliberative democracy.

If the cultural advantages of liberalism have given it a more pointed politics in places where politics lacks worldly consequences, its real-world politics can seem curiously blunted. Kamala Harris, like Joe Biden before her, is an utterly normal workaday politician of the kind we used to find in any functioning democracy—bending right, bending left, placating here and postponing confrontation there, glaring here and, yes, laughing there.

Demographics aside, there is nothing exceptional about Harris, which is her virtue.

Yet we live in exceptional times, and liberal proceduralists and institutionalists are so committed to procedures and institutions—to laws and their reasonable interpretation, to norms and their continuation—that they can be slow to grasp that the world around them has changed.

One can only imagine the fulminations that would have ensued in 2020 had the anti-democratic injustice of the Electoral College—which effectively amplifies the political power of rural areas at the expense of the country’s richest and most productive areas—tilted in the other direction.

Indeed, before the 2000 election, when it appeared as if it might, Karl Rove and the George W. Bush campaign had a plan in place to challenge the results with a “grassroots” movement designed to short-circuit the Electoral College and make the popular-vote winner prevail.

No Democrat even suggests such a thing now.

It’s almost as painful to see the impunity with which Supreme Court Justices have torched their institution’s legitimacy.

One Justice has the upside-down flag of the insurrectionists flying on his property; another, married to a professional election denialist, enjoys undeclared largesse from a plutocrat.

There is, apparently, little to be done, nor even any familiar language of protest to draw on.

Prepared by experience to believe in institutions, mainstream liberals believe in their belief even as the institutions are degraded in front of their eyes.

In one respect, the space of politics in 2024 is transoceanic.

The forms of Trumpism are mirrored in other countries.

In the U.K., a similar wave engendered the catastrophe of Brexit;

in France, it has brought an equally extreme right-wing party to the brink, though not to the seat, of power;

in Italy, it elevated Matteo Salvini to national prominence and made Giorgia Meloni Prime Minister.

In Sweden, an extreme-right group is claiming voters in numbers no one would ever have thought possible, while Canadian conservatives have taken a sharp turn toward the far right.

“Actually, it’s not real sabre-tooth.”

What all these currents have in common is an obsessive fear of immigration.

Fear of the other still seems to be the primary mover of collective emotion.

Even when it is utterly self-destructive—as in Britain, where the xenophobia of Brexit cut the U.K. off from traditional allies while increasing immigration from the Global South—the apprehension that “we” are being flooded by frightening foreigners works its malign magic.

It’s an old but persistent delusion that far-right nationalism is not rooted in the emotional needs of far-right nationalists but arises, instead, from the injustices of neoliberalism.

And so many on the left insist that all those Trump voters are really Bernie Sanders voters who just haven’t had their consciousness raised yet.

In fact, a similar constellation of populist figures has emerged, sharing platforms, plans, and ideologies, in countries where neoliberalism made little impact, and where a strong system of social welfare remains in place.

If a broadened welfare state—national health insurance, stronger unions, higher minimum wages, and the rest—would cure the plague in the U.S., one would expect that countries with resilient welfare states would be immune from it.

They are not.

Though Trump can be situated in a transoceanic space of populism, he isn’t a mere symptom of global trends:

he is a singularly dangerous character, and the product of a specific cultural milieu.

To be sure, much of New York has always been hostile to him, and eager to disown him;

in a 1984 profile of him in GQ, Graydon Carter made the point that Trump was the only New Yorker who ever referred to Sixth Avenue as the “Avenue of the Americas.”

Yet we’re part of Trump’s identity, as was made clear by his recent rally on Long Island—pointless as a matter of swing-state campaigning, but central to his self-definition.

His belligerence could come directly from the two New York tabloid heroes of his formative years in the city:

John Gotti, the gangster who led the Gambino crime family, and George Steinbrenner, the owner of the Yankees.

When Trump came of age, Gotti was all over the front page of the tabloids, as “the Teflon Don,” and Steinbrenner was all over the back sports pages, as “the Boss.”

Steinbrenner was legendary for his middle-of-the-night phone calls, for his temper and combativeness.

Like Trump, who theatricalized the activity, he had a reputation for ruthlessly firing people.

(Gotti had his own way of doing that.)

Steinbrenner was famous for having no loyalty to anyone.

He mocked the very players he had acquired and created an atmosphere of absolute chaos.

It used to be said that Steinbrenner reduced the once proud Yankees baseball culture to that of professional wrestling, and that arena is another Trumpian space.

Pro wrestling is all about having contests that aren’t really contested—that are known to be “rigged,” to use a Trumpian word—and yet evoke genuine emotion in their audience.

At the same time, Trump has mastered the gangster’s technique of accusing others of crimes he has committed.

The agents listening to the Gotti wiretap were mystified when he claimed innocence of the just-committed murder of Big Paul Castellano, conjecturing, in apparent seclusion with his soldiers, about who else might have done it:

“Whoever killed this cocksucker, probably the cops killed this Paul.”

Denying having someone whacked even in the presence of those who were with you when you whacked him was a capo’s signature move.

Marrying the American paranoid style to the more recent cult of the image, Trump can draw on the manner of the tabloid star and show that his is a game, a show, not to be taken quite seriously while still being serious in actually inciting violent insurrections and planning to expel millions of helpless immigrants.

Self-defined as a showman, he can say anything and simultaneously drain it of content, just as Gotti, knowing that he had killed Castellano, thought it credible to deny it—not within his conscience, which did not exist, but within an imaginary courtroom.

Trump evidently learned that, in the realm of national politics, you could push the boundaries of publicity and tabloid invective far further than they had ever been pushed.

Trump’s ability to be both joking and severe at the same time is what gives him his power and his immunity.

This power extends even to something as unprecedented as the assault on the U.S. Capitol. Trump demanded violence

(“If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore”) but stuck in three words, “peacefully and patriotically,” that, however hollow, were meant to immunize him, Gotti-style.

They were, so to speak, meant for the cops on the wiretap.

Trump’s resilience is not, as we would like to tell our children about resilience, a function of his character.

It’s a function of his not having one.

Just as Trump’s support cuts across the usual divisions, so, too, does a divide among his opponents—between the maximizers, who think that Trump is a unique threat to liberal democracy, and the minimizers, who think that he is merely the kind of clown a democracy is bound to throw up from time to time.

The minimizers (who can be found among both Marxist Jacobin contributors and Never Trump National Review conservatives) will say that Trump has crossed the wires of culture and politics in a way that opportunistically responds to the previous paralysis, but that this merely places him in an American tradition.

Democracy depends on the idea that the socially unacceptable might become acceptable.

Andrew Jackson campaigned on similar themes with a similar manner—and was every bit as ignorant and every bit as unaware as Trump.

(And his campaigns of slaughter against Indigenous people really were genocidal.)

Trump’s politics may be ugly, foolish, and vain, but ours is often an ugly, undereducated, and vain country.

Democracy is meant to be a mirror; it shows what it shows.

Indeed, America’s recent history has shown that politics is a trailing indicator of cultural change, and that one generation’s most vulgar entertainment becomes the next generation’s accepted style of political argument.

David S. Reynolds, in his biography of Lincoln, reflects on how the new urban love of weird spectacle in the mid-nineteenth century was something Lincoln welcomed.

P. T. Barnum’s genius lay in taking circus grotesques and making them exemplary Americans:

the tiny General Tom Thumb was a hero, not a freak.

Lincoln saw that it cost him nothing to be an American spectacle in a climate of sensation;

he even hosted a reception at the White House for Tom Thumb and his wife—as much a violation of the decorum of the Founding Fathers as Trump’s investment in Hulk Hogan at the Republican Convention.

Lincoln understood the Barnum side of American life, just as Trump understands its W.W.E. side.

And so, the minimizers say, taking Trump seriously as a threat to democracy in America is like taking Roman Reigns seriously as a threat to fair play in sports.

Trump is an entertainer.

The only thing he really wants are ratings.

When opposing abortion was necessary to his electoral coalition, he opposed it—but then, when that was creating ratings trouble in other households, he sent signals that he wasn’t exactly opposed to it.

When Project 2025, which he vaguely set in motion and claims never to have read, threatened his ratings, he repudiated it.

The one continuity is his thirst for popularity, which is, in a sense, our own.

He rows furiously away from any threatening waterfall back to the center of the river—including on Obamacare.

And, the minimizers say, in the end, he did leave the White House peacefully, if gracelessly.

In any case, the panic is hardly unique to Trump.

Reagan, too, was vilified and feared in his day, seen as the reductio ad absurdum of the culture of the image, an automaton projecting his controllers’ authoritarian impulses.

Nixon was the subject of a savage satire by Philip Roth that ended with him running against the Devil for the Presidency of Hell.

The minimizers tell us that liberals overreact in real time, write revisionist history when it’s over, and never see the difference between their stories.

The maximizers regard the minimizers’ case as wishful thinking buoyed up by surreptitious resentments, a refusal to concede anything to those we hate even if it means accepting someone we despise.

Maximizers who call Trump a fascist are dismissed by the minimizers as either engaging in name-calling or forcing a facile parallel.

Yet the parallel isn’t meant to be historically absolute; it is meant to be, as it were, oncologically acute.

A freckle is not the same as a melanoma; nor is a Stage I melanoma the same as the Stage IV kind.

But a skilled reader of lesions can sense which is which and predict the potential course if untreated.

Trumpism is a cancerous phenomenon.

Treated with surgery once, it now threatens to come back in a more aggressive form, subject neither to the radiation of “guardrails” nor to the chemo of “constraints.”

It may well rage out of control and kill its host.

And so the maximalist case is made up not of alarmist fantasies, then, but of dulled diagnostic fact, duly registered.

Think hard about the probable consequences of a second Trump Administration—about the things he has promised to do and can do, the things that the hard-core group of rancidly discontented figures (as usual with authoritarians, more committed than he is to an ideology) who surround him wants him to do and can do.

Having lost the popular vote, as he surely will, he will not speak up to reconcile “all Americans.”

He will insist that he won the popular vote, and by a landslide.

He will pardon and then celebrate the January 6th insurrectionists, and thereby guarantee the existence of a paramilitary organization that’s capable of committing violence on his behalf without fear of consequences.

He will, with an obedient Attorney General, begin prosecuting his political opponents;

he was largely unsuccessful in his previous attempt only because the heads of two U.S. Attorneys’ offices, who are no longer there, refused to coöperate.

When he begins to pressure CNN and ABC, and they, with all the vulnerabilities of large corporations, bend to his will, telling themselves that his is now the will of the people, what will we do to fend off the slow degradation of open debate?

Trump will certainly abandon Ukraine to Vladimir Putin and realign this country with dictatorships and against NATO and the democratic alliance of Europe.

Above all, the spirit of vengeful reprisal is the totality of his beliefs—very much like the fascists of the twentieth century in being a man and a movement without any positive doctrine except revenge against his imagined enemies.

And against this:

What?

Who?

The spirit of resistance may prove too frail, and too exhausted, to rise again to the contest.

Who can have confidence that a democracy could endure such a figure in absolute control and survive?

An oncologist who, in the face of this much evidence, shrugged and proposed watchful waiting as the best therapy would not be an optimist.

He would be guilty of gross malpractice.

One of those personal-injury lawyers on the billboards would sue him, and win.

What any plausible explanation must confront is the fact that Trump is a distinctively vile human being and a spectacularly malignant political actor.

In fables and fiction, in every Disney cartoon and Batman movie, we have no trouble recognizing and understanding the villains.

They are embittered, canny, ludicrous in some ways and shrewd in others, their lives governed by envy and resentment, often rooted in the acts of people who’ve slighted them.

(“They’ll never laugh at me again!”)

They nonetheless have considerable charm and the ability to attract a cult following.

This is Ursula, Hades, Scar—to go no further than the Disney canon.

Extend it, if that seems too childlike, to the realms of Edmund in “King Lear” and Richard III:

smart people, all, almost lovable in their self-recognition of their deviousness, but not people we ever want to see in power, for in power their imaginations become unimaginably deadly.

Villains in fables are rarely grounded in any cause larger than their own grievances—they hate Snow White for being beautiful, resent Hercules for being strong and virtuous.

Bane is blowing up Gotham because he feels misused, not because he truly has a better city in mind.

Trump is a villain.

He would be a cartoon villain, if only this were a cartoon.

Every time you try to give him a break—to grasp his charisma, historicize his ascent, sympathize with his admirers—the sinister truth asserts itself and can’t be squashed down.

He will tell another lie so preposterous, or malign another shared decency so absolutely, or threaten violence so plausibly, or just engage in behavior so unhinged and hate-filled that you’ll recoil and rebound to your original terror at his return to power.

One outrage succeeds another until we become exhausted and have to work hard even to remember the outrages of a few weeks past: the helicopter ride that never happened (but whose storytelling purpose was to demean Kamala Harris as a woman), or the cemetery visit that ended in a grotesque thumbs-up by a graveside (and whose symbolic purpose was to cynically enlist grieving parents on behalf of his contempt).

No matter how deranged his behavior is, though, it does not seem to alter his good fortune.

Villainy inheres in individuals.

There is certainly a far-right political space alive in the developed world, but none of its inhabitants—not Marine Le Pen or Giorgia Meloni or even Viktor Orbán—are remotely as reckless or as crazy as Trump.

Our self-soothing habit of imagining that what has not yet happened cannot happen is the space in which Trump lives, just as comically deranged as he seems and still more dangerous than we know.

Nothing is ever entirely new, and the space between actual events and their disassociated representation is part of modernity.

We live in that disassociated space.

Generations of cultural critics have warned that we are lost in a labyrinth and cannot tell real things from illusion.

Yet the familiar passage from peril to parody now happens almost simultaneously.

Events remain piercingly actual and threatening in their effects on real people, while also being duplicated in a fictive system that shows and spoofs them at the same time.

One side of the highway is all cancer; the other side all crazy.

Their confoundment is our confusion.

It is telling that the most successful entertainments of our age are the dark comic-book movies—the Batman films and the X-Men and the Avengers and the rest of those cinematic universes.

This cultural leviathan was launched by the discovery that these ridiculous comic-book figures, generations old, could now land only if treated seriously, with sombre backstories and true stakes.

Our heroes tend to dullness; our villains, garishly painted monsters from the id, are the ones who fuel the franchise.

During the debate last month in Philadelphia, as Trump’s madness rose to a peak of raging lunacy—

“They’re eating the dogs”; “He hates her!”—ABC, in its commercial breaks, cut to ads for “Joker: Folie à Deux,” the new Joaquin Phoenix movie, in which the crazed villain swirls and grins.

It is a Gotham gone mad, and a Gotham, against all the settled rules of fable-making, without a Batman to come to the rescue.

Shuttling between the comic-book villain and the grimacing, red-faced, and unhinged man who may be reëlected President in a few weeks, one struggled to distinguish our culture’s most extravagant imagination of derangement from the real thing.

The space is that strange, and the stakes that high.

[starkiller-009]

you asked for some sledge/snafu headcanon here's some?

you know what, i don't think sledge and snafu end up shacking up together. i think they live near each other and they visit all the time and they go out on man dates every week but i don't think they live together. snafu would be distinctly uncomfortable living beyond his means on someone else's money and sledge wouldn't be the type to "slum it" nor would it befit his station.

i'm not even sure if they're still "romantically involved" if you'll forgive the phrase. i don't know how they'd work it out. i have less of a case for them being interested in each other as people than i do for them being interested in each other for what they represent. it's a matter of psychological dependence vs love, goddamn this is gay as shit. sledge/snafu have a really strong codependence, but i'm not sure that would carry on for the rest of their lives. at some point, their respective personal issues straighten out. sledge stops being angry at everything, snafu stops hating everything. what have they got to hold them together other than that? once their little codependent bubble breaks open and other people start existing again, what makes them choose each other?

i don't really see it, anyway. i think after they stop needing each other, everything else just kind of fades off too. i think they're still really good, unlikely friends, but sledge eventually gets married, has kids, the like. snafu is everyone's cool uncle, and maybe he finds a creole girl with a really strong personality and a fantastic smile, or maybe that's a boy, or maybe he just disappears into the morning one day and lives on only as a figment in urban legends and broken bar stools.

no one will ever remember him growing old. he'll turn up somewhere, years down the line, and sledge'll get a call from somewhere in minnesota of all places and roe'll get one a couple hours after that and he'll have been dying for a while but didn't tell anyone, and sledge'll yell at him and roe will look disappointed, but he'll die with his friends by his bed and that will be his good death. he won't mind that.

there may or may not be a string of wild-eyed, wiry haired children littered across the nation. that's always a possibility

ive spent a month looking at this. thank u. quite hilarious tho i mean to get a headcanon which goes something like here is an analysis of why your fav dudes have no future together LMAO i agree tho ok. tbh ive really liked the idea of them staying as friends and parting their ways at some point. its bitter but it makes it.. more special in a way. it adds a unique sort of value to the relationship. it had heavily transformed but its still there, the connection. love. its nice. gives hope.

[curly-bangtan]

Heatwave Drabble #3: sucker for u

[Heatwave // Godless // Heatwave Drabbles]

^ you’ll have to have read those to understand the relationship!!

Pairing: Taehyung x reader

Summary: As your roommate/fuck buddy/friends with benefits, Taehyung knows he doesn’t have any right to get jealous or possessive when you sleep with other people. But that won’t stop him from being competitive about who can pleasure you better.

Genre: drabble, smut, bit of angst?, fwb au, roommate au

Warnings: boobs worshipping, lots of titty sucking, protected sex woohoo, jealous!Taehyung who doesn’t know that he’s jealous!, classic bratty annoying abrasive behaviour from oc, praise kink (Tae just wants you to tell him he’s the best boy), semi-angry sex?

Word count: 4.9k

A/N: Specifically requested by @mytaetaey :) I hope this was wanted!! Sorry for how annoying they both are -_- The next drabble will contain more plot!!

.

“Oooaah- fuck. Yes, just like that.” Your head sinks into the pillow, eyes rolling back at the obscene way he’s sucking your nipples. But then you quickly look back down at him again, not wanting to miss the chance of embedding this sight into your memory.

One of his hands is cupped under the breast he’s lapping up, the other rubbing your clit the vigorous way that you had taught him. Shit, he’s a fast learner.

“Keep going, Eunwoo.” You push his hair back to reveal his glistening forehead, fingers entangled in his black locks, remaining there. He glances up at you in those big round eyes of his, your nipple trapped between his teeth, and that old friend you like to call fanny flutters come rushing down to your core.

Eunwoo is a quiet shy boy in your university course, always sitting two rows from the front, diligently jotting down impeccable notes in lectures. He’s tall, he’s handsome, and he’s got a body that has every girl (or boy) in your class drooling over. He’s also somehow, by the miracle of god, a virgin. Well, soon not anymore. When you got assigned at partners for this assessed presentation you’re doing, you threw your fist in the air and did a celebratory yodel, because not only is he going to guarantee you a good grade, you also know you finally have the chance to seduce him. Taehyung had high fived you, but then also got kind of annoyed when you wouldn’t stop showing him Eunwoo’s instagram.

There has always been a tacit sexual tension between you two; you would glance at each other in class more than the ordinary, acknowledge each other’s existence yet never making the first step to speaking. When you had invited him over to yours to work on this project, there was a mutually known implication of what this would lead to.

And now he’s on your bed, allowing you to teach him how to pleasure a woman. Some people tend to avoid inexperienced boys, yet you see this as a perfect opportunity to mould them into sex gods. Eunwoo is exploding with potential, so pliable, obedient, eager to please you.

He is a great kisser, which increases the mystery of why and how he could still be a virgin. First, you had taught him about getting a girl wet, teasing her erogenous zones such as her ears, neck, hip. Kissing during foreplay is more than just about the lips, it’s about drawing the person deeper into you, hinting to them what is to come if things are taken to the next stage. Then comes making her wet, grinding into her, rubbing her panties, massaging her breasts.

You soon learnt that Eunwoo is a boob guy. Taehyung is an ass guy, so it took you by surprise when he fixated on sucking your breasts even as you guided him to finger your clit. It fits so well with his innocent-boy image; when you see him latched onto your nipple like this, it almost reminds you of an infantile scene. But no, let’s not go there, you do not have a mommy kink. That’s gross, your power complex is not as overboard as Taehyung’s to require someone to refer to you as their parent.

“Do you like that?” He releases your swollen bud for air, yet fingers don’t slow their pumping. It’s a genuine question, unlike the taunting of Taehyung when he tries to coax praise from you.

“Yes, you’re learning so quickly.” You pinch his chin between your fingers, watching the shyest smile spread across his lips at your reply.

God, he’s a cute thing.

.

There’s loud music coming from your room. Sexy music. Taehyung smiles to himself as he kicks off his shoes at the front door and swings his bag onto the couch.

As he pads closer to your room, his attention falls to a faint moaning that doesn’t take him half a second to recognise; he knows your moans when he hears it. Are you… masturbating? It’s not unusual for either one of you to go solo and get yourselves off every now and then. After all, self care is important. But it’s an infrequent occurrence, even for Taehyung who used to wank five times a day on average at the age of 13. He much prefers your mouth nowadays.

The thought of you touching yourself, too impatient for him to get home is really hot though.

Your door is slightly open, sound echoing towards him, beckoning him to follow. It isn’t until he is peering through the gap that he registers there are two sets of breathing coming from inside, the other very distinctly male.

From the door, Taehyung sees you sprawled out on your back, breasts being devoured by a black haired boy who’s running his condom-clad dick up your slit. “Yeah, like that, tease it.” You sigh into your pillow. Your fingers grip onto his dark tufts as your eyes shut in pleasure, a scene that both arouses Taehyung and makes him frown.

Why is this boy sucking your tits so much? If it were Taehyung, he would flip you over, tie your wrists up, spank your red, and tease your clit with his tongue and tip until you’re begging for him to drive his cock into you.

This boy looks like a baby suckling at his mother’s breast. It’s weird. Taehyung almost yells for him to stop.

Your eyes open and lock with his, widening a fraction at his sudden presence outside your room. Taehyung feels embarrassed, worse than being caught watching porn by his dad, because here, you’re his porn. But your face remains passive, nonchalant. You smile and do a quick wave at him in greeting.

Have you two really demolished any boundaries between each other that you’re not even fazed that he is witnessing you about to be fucked?

Taehyung waves back, but doesn’t smile. He’s never been able to force a smile. This boy is annoying him, he’s doing it all wrong.

You motion for your roommate to close the door for you, all the while praising the boy, “Fuck, you’re doing well, Eunwoo.”

Oh, so this is Eunwoo, your partner for this project assignment. How disappointing.

Taehyung reaches to shut the door as you requested, since it’s really none of his business, yet he finds his grip on the knob tightening as he’s unable to look away from the two of you. Eunwoo is being too docile, vanilla, he doesn’t even know what the fuck he’s doing! He is trying to push his member into your wet entrance, but it slips. The secondhand embarrassment hits Taehyung in the face. This guy is a fumbling mess, how could you stand him?

He glances down at his own bulge, then back at Eunwoo’s length, smirking knowing that he has an inch on him at least.

And so Taehyung takes it upon himself to swing the door wide open, announcing his presence as he storms in with overconfidence.

Eunwoo curses and scrambles to throw the covers over the both of you. “What the fuck!”

“Taehyung!” You shriek, eyes frantically searching his for a reason for his interruption.

“Get out.” Taehyung and Eunwoo say to each other at the same time, then freezing at each other’s audacity to do so.

“You get out, dude, what the fuck?” Eunwoo sits up beside you, straightening against Taehyung’s tall standing frame that towers over the bed. This kid has some nerve.

“You get out. I live here.”

“No, you get out. Can’t you see that we're in the middle of something?”

“No, you get out. Why are your clothes off when you’re meant to be doing a project? That’s inappropriate behaviour.”

“No, you-”

“Shut up, the both of you!” You yell over their arguing. They both cease their mouths immediately and turn to you, slightly scared like kindergarten boys being told off. Your eyes are burning holes into your roommate. “Taehyung, what are you doing?”

“Breathing. Blinking. Standing. Talking.”

You’re going to fucking kill him, you swear to god. He’s got that look on his face when he knows he’s being purposely difficult, jaws clenched, chin tilted an angle upwards. There’s a spark in his eyes that are still targeted at Eunwoo, as if he’s assessing the boy head to toe, challenging him.

Having known your best friend for this long, you know he won’t back down. So you sigh, turn to poor Eunwoo, “I’m so sorry about this. It’s probably best for you to leave, I’ll deal with him.”

There’s a flash of hurt in his eyes, but it was either going to be Eunwoo or Taehyung you’d offend, and you’d much rather it be him. “Okay.”

“I’ll text you.” You watch him gather his clothes from the floor, awkward hand over his crotch. In your periphery you see Taehyung tense at your words, his attention still unyieldingly fixed on the guy. Why is he like this? Why? Aren’t guys meant to be weirded out by the sight of each other’s dicks? Why is Taehyung still staring him down like that as if he were your guard dog?

Neither of you say anything more until the front door of your place falls shut at Eunwoo’s departure. After throwing a large shirt over your nudity, you pin Taehyung with a hard angry glare.

Defiant as he currently is, he glares back as if he hadn’t done anything wrong.

“Well?” You demand. “What shit are you pulling?”

Taehyung doesn’t move from where he stands at the end of your bed. Out of habit, your eyes flicker to his bulge, and though it isn’t fully hard, there is a slight prominence. “I was saving you from that amateur, you’re welcome.”

You scoff. “Ama- Ha! Taehyung, oh my god. Not this again.” Running your hands through your hair, you stand up on the mattress so your height now exceeds his. You don’t miss the way his focus momentarily falls to the edge of your top that hangs just enough to cover your ass, eyes running down your legs then back up to your face. “Yes, he was a virgin, but I’ve said this before. I like it when they’re like that!”

“What is there to like about a virg? He would have lasted 2 minutes, maybe even less.” Taehyung huffs in exasperation, unable to apprehend your preference.

“I like teaching them what to do when they’re inexperienced. I like it when they do exactly what I tell them to do, in precisely the way I want. You know that I like being in control too. You can’t just assume I wasn’t enjoying myself because you thought he didn’t know what he was doing. I was teaching him!” It endlessly frustrates you how Taehyung imposes his own mindset onto you. He thinks that just because he likes to be dominant during sex, it means that you always like to be dominated and that anyone who a tad less alpha than him isn’t doing it right. Does it ever cross his mind that it isn’t the only way to pleasure you?

“Yeah right, you were enjoying yourself. Tell that to me again when he blows his load before he even puts it in.” The jeering in his voice is winding you up. About anything else, he is never this bitchy; yet when it comes you your sexual partners, it’s like he’s your mother picking a husband for you.

“First, you’re not in a position to make fun of anyone ‘blowing their load before putting it in’.” A faint blush creeps beneath his honey skin at the memory he wishes to bury. “Second of all, I was enjoying myself. A lot. You’re not the only guy who can satisfy me you know?” Your volume is rising along with your temper, you know you should rein it in, keep it in check because you despise fighting with Taehyung. You rarely properly argue about anything serious; it’s always you getting annoyed at him but ten minutes later succumbing to his grovelling puppy eyes. This time, you don’t want to forgive him right away - he needs to know that this behaviour needs to stop.

“Okay fine, but I am the guy who satisfies you best.” Taehyung places his hands on his hips stubbornly, gazing up at you as he takes a stride closer to the bed.

Yup, so this is definitely about his pride. Like you, Taehyung is competitive even if he doesn’t wish to admit it. He likes to be the best, the favourite, have his ego stroked through praises and constant affirmation.

“How are you so sure about that?” You ask just to tug on his nerve.

He frowns at you, frozen for a moment, the clockwork in his mind slowly ticking as he tries to grasp what you are saying. “What do you mean…”

“I mean, how are you so sure that you’re the best sex I’ve ever had?” Fighting a sly smile, you raise your brow tauntingly at him. If he loves to push your buttons, why don’t you push his?

“W-Well- What do you mean!? Are you saying that I’m not?” Shocked, Taehyung’s mouth forms a pouted upside-down ‘D’. The insecurity flooding his face drops an inkling of guilt amidst your torment, but not enough to make you feel bad. But ha! How full of himself must he be to have been so certain in his abilities. For all he knows, you could have been faking your orgasms all along.

“I’m just saying,” you step in front of him until he’s arm’s length away, and you take his soft cheeks between your fingers, “that the way Eunwoo was playing with my nipples made me feel things that I haven’t felt before.”

You want to take it back the moment you say it, because you immediately realise what this is going to entail. Taehyung doesn’t back down from a challenge like this.

Wordlessly, he yanks you towards him and hoists you up from your rear. Your legs lock around his waist instinctively to prevent yourself from falling just as your arms fly around his neck, nose hitting the top of his head hard enough for you to yelp. His face is buried in the cushion of your chest as he carries you, scuttling on his knees, up the bed.

He falls on top of you, and it feels like his weight has broken three of your ribs and crushed half a lung. “What are you doing!?” You know what he is doing, or about to do.

For a drawn out pause, he stares intently into you, a carnal glint in his dark pupils. Gone is the bratty whiny childish Taehyung. In his place is a dangerous territorial animal who will fight to prove that he’s king of the jungle. “You did not just say that.” Face inches apart, you feel the fumes of his irritation radiate from him, his eyes boring an assertiveness into yours. His jaw is clenched, and despite this moment, you want to run your finger along its sharp edge. Your legs gradually slide down his back and fall into an open formation, and you’re keenly aware of the position of his groin so conveniently pressed into yours.

Why is he hard? Why is he hard? He isn’t supposed to be hard when you’re arguing.

And why does his stiffness make your clit twitch in anticipation?

“You made me hit my nose!” You try to avert both your attention to something else. Something that’s not the precariousness of the sexual tension in the air. You aren’t meant to fuck Taehyung today, goddammit. It was meant to be Eunwoo.

“You deserved it.” He grumbles, but kisses the tip of your nose nonetheless. “You’re going to regret saying that…” Frustration audible in his breath, Taehyung traces his lips to the corner of your own, a spot where he knows sends a tingle straight to your core.

“Saying what? That Eunwoo is the best at worshipping my tits?” Someone should really gag you before you keep running your mouth and do some actual damage to Taehyung’s ego. But you’re really fucking salty that Taehyung had just deprived you of some potentially amazing sex with the hottest nerd in your class because his competitiveness got in the way.

Silence.

And it is when Taehyung is completely still and quiet that you know you should be slightly afraid.

“Worshipping?” He lifts up from your face to reveal his blazing glare. “You want worshipping?” His fingers underneath your thighs rake on your skin, claws digging into you. “Fine, I’ll show you worshipping.”

That’s not a suggestion, it’s a promise.

Peeling up your shirt, to expose your front to the cold, you watch him slightly stunned as his eyes roam across your body lewdly. Your core twists and ties at the pure venery in his expression, hungry and desperate to prove himself to you.

A small noise leaves you involuntarily when he takes your breast in his mouth without warning, fingers darting seductively down your abdomen, arriving at your bare awaiting folds. His teeth scrape against the tender skin as he nips on the supply flesh around your nipple while his free hand cups under your other breast. When the rough pad of his tongue laps at your bud at the same time as his thumb rubbing on your clit, your whole body convulses under him.

“Fuck.” You curse, peering down at him to see satisfaction in his eyes that are fixed at yours to watch your reaction. Taehyung likes boobs as much as the next guy, but his focus is usually predominantly your ass and pussy. This much attention channelled to your boobs is a rarity from him.

There’s a very distinct difference in the pleasure one receives from the stimulation of nipples. It’s almost like welcoming the cold, as your body braces at the assail on those highly sensitive bundle of nerves concentrated at one point. It tickles in a way that makes the back of your scalp tingle and your toes curl. Your eyes threaten to shut from the overwhelming arousal, but you force them open, force yourself not to break eye contact with Taehyung.

Because there’s something so intimate about eye contact during any sexual act, as if your souls are reaching into each other and locking hands. And refusing to letting go.

Your fingers as usual find their way to his messy mane, gripping on his wavy tresses while his tongue mercilessly grazes your bud, not to mention his fingers now slowly sliding into you. You’re wet, embarrassingly wet, residual from Eunwoo but also from Taehyung’s display of need to impress you.

Then his mouth leaves your nipple, allowing a gush of cool air to prickle your goosebumped skin. “Do you like that?” Your memory flickers to the exact same words tumbling out of Eunwoo, yet this time impacts you so differently, so much more forcefully. Fuck, you hate that Taehyung’s right.

“Yeah…” You whisper. The smug smirk you’ve come to know so well reveals itself. “Take off your clothes, Taehyung.”

You can’t put your finger on it, but Taehyung doing anything to you as a different effect from anyone else. Even as he removes his shirt, your heart can’t help but quicken at how hot he unintentionally makes such a mundane gesture look. Maybe it’s because he’s your best friend, but it feels less superficial, rather, it touches a more profound depth in your core.

Twisting back, you pull out your drawer and take out a condom. Taehyung, naked on his knees, watches as your roll it onto his swollen throbbing cock, an action you’re so familiar with that you could do it in pitch dark. He always makes you put it on him, ‘it feels so much better’ apparently. And even having fucked so many times before, the sight of how hard you made him causes your cunt to weep.

After resuming the missionary position you were in, you expect him to pound into you without warning, he loves a surprise entrance after all. Except he returns to your tits and plant big wet kisses on your smooth softness. “See? I can worship your boobs if you want me to. So who’s better, me or him?”

And just because you haven’t had enough of teasing him, as well as getting teased, you say, “Him.”

Taehyung’s kissing ceases. And another one of those still scary silences follows. Then he angrily takes the flesh of your breast in his mouth and start sucking rosy colours, both hands groping you this time.

It’s an unspoken rule that you never leave hickeys on each other. Because why would you? You’re only casually fucking, there’s no ownership whatsoever. Plus how are either of you supposed to sleep with anyone else if there’s a blaring red splodge on your neck?

But this time, he’s marking you.

“Taehyung, what are you doing?!”

He releases your breast and assesses his piece of art. You glimpse down too, to find a crimson cloud pigmented beside your nipple. Oh for fuck’s sake. “Tell me I’m better.”

“You’re not-” Eyes wolfish, he dives back in to bite another fresh mark near the first. His fingers walk down your torso and tease open your folds, smearing your dampness all over your clit before pushing his digits up into your mouth. You suck, lapping up your own taste.

“Only I can make you this wet. Admit it.” There are now two bruises on your breast, but rather than getting vexed by his display of territorialism, it makes your cunt flutter.

“Since when was your ego so fragile.” You taunt, taking his rubbered dick into your grip and guiding him towards your slit.

“It isn’t,” he refutes, sighing as you swirl his tip around your clit, “I just want you to be honest with yourself and admit that no one makes you feel better than I do.”

“You’re actually- argmph-” You make a sound of pleasure as we eases into you slowly, his body tensing at your warmth embracing his cock. “So full of yourself.”

Well, to be factually accurate, you’re so full of him this very second.

Taehyung glances down at his length buried inside you, but you tilt his face to look at you. Eye contact. When he starts to move his hips back and forth, you see the hunger in his eyes, the hunger for you and only you. Amongst all things, you truly enjoy watching his features screw in pleasure as he pounds into you like a rabid animal. You feel powerful, content.

“Fu-uck. And. You’re. In. Denial. Baby.” He pants out each word at every thrust. The name drives you wild, you don’t know what it is, but it always makes your walls clench.

Lowering his frame, Taehyung rests his forehead on yours, his thumb gliding into your mouth for you to suckle on. You hum at the punching pressure in your core, entangling your innards.

And because you feel nice, mostly due to his covetous desperation, you whimper, “Fine. You fuck- me- so well.”

At your final admission, Taehyung’s eyes light up like a forest fire, pace quickening instantly as if energise by your words. The purity of his boyish victorious smile paints an ironic juxtaposing scene. “What else?” He urges.

What else? Good god, this man is drinking up the praise like wine.

“No one makes me feel as good as you do.” You huff, grabbing onto the back of his hair, your warm breaths mingling between your mouths. He shuts his eyes to bask in the praise, so you continue. “No one makes me cum even remotely like you do. No one makes me squirt except you.”

“Fuck…” His brows pinch, concentrating in the ecstatic friction of your cunt around him. He begins to twiddle your nipples between his finger; your neck immediately gives in and rolls back as he crudely pinches the buds of sensitivity, an uncontrollable tremor unearthing in your thighs.

“No one compares to your cock, the way you fuck me until I cry.” Taehyung moans as you keep lauding him. This initially was meant to mock him, except you find that everything you’re saying rings completely true.

“Yeah? You like it when I fuck you until you cry?” His hand closes around your throat, the other still toying with your nipple so sadistically. At the restriction of air, you feel your eyes water, vision obstructed by the emerging tears.

Fuck Kim Taehyung for how good he fucks you.

It’s impressive how his stamina has not dwindled one bit, but rather the speed and force at which he is ramming is even increasing. The pressure behind your walls are making you insane now, you feel the looming of your inevitable release, inching closer bit by bit. “Aaooh. Daddy, keep going. Your cock feels so good.” You feel like a pornstar with what you’re saying, but at least no one else can make you feel like a pornstar except Taehyung. The word daddy escaped so easily from your lips that you want to kick yourself. Why are you such a docile creature these days?

But then he plunges into you particularly hard and you remember why.

“I’m gonna come.” You cry, literally cry, as a tear of extreme exhilaration rolls out. “You’re gonna make me come.”

“Baby-” He sighs onto your cheek, grabbing your marked breast while he chases his climax.

And then it hits you both, one after another, the explosion of pleasure inside your cunt, swimming up your entire body like a ripple. Matched with the stimulation of your nipple, you cry out as you feel yourself twisting under your skin, unravelling. A throaty groan erupts from his throat as he spurts out his high, mouth clamping down onto your breast a second later. The vibrations of his exhale penetrate into your chest; your ears strain to hear a high-pitched whimper of bliss hidden by his baritone.

The couple of minutes after orgasming is always a blur to you. You always need a moment to piece your shattered mind and body back together. Taehyung is panting heavily beside you. He did all the work today, you’ll be sure to return the favour next time.

You realise that you didn’t kiss once throughout that whole intercourse. And for some reason, it kind of bothers you. You also realise that, in your post-orgasm haze, you’re wrapping your arms around his waist and pressing your face onto his shoulder, his coat of sweat cooling you.

Ew, what are you doing?

But before you can take back that action and roll away, he pulls you into him and nuzzles into your crown. Still naked, your breasts feel tender, thighs sore, as your damp skin stick to his.

After a silent minute to regain strength, he speaks. “That Eunwoo wouldn’t have been able to do that.” It’s a statement, but he makes it sound more like a question. Still, he’s seeking your affirmation. And you feel slightly bad about how insecure he is about this.

“He wouldn’t.” You soothe him, half your attention on the vibrant hickeys on your boob. Should you scold him? Hmm, you feel like you should, but you don’t. Post-sex Taehyung is too soft.

His long fingers are stroking your back - his classic aftercare, it makes your lids heavy. Taehyung almost always falls asleep after sex, while you never let yourself; sleeping together after sex feels too… intimate. At the end of the day, you’re just fuck buddies, there are boundaries.

“So you won’t fuck around with him again?”

Instantly you look up at him. Taehyung’s chocolate brown eyes are gazing tenderly at you, expectant, hoping for the answer he wishes to hear. You feel a kernel of annoyance. Taehyung doesn’t get to ask you not to sleep with a specific person, especially because you would never ask it of him. But you also know that arguing with him now would hurt him, like taking your dog to a dog park and feeding a treat to another puppy right in front of it. You don’t understand his fixation on this random boy all of a sudden, but you guess you’ll just have to let it slide.

You both are aware of this dangerous game you play, the thread-thin line you walk. It’s fickle. One wrong step, one fight and everything between you will fall apart.

So you just sigh and say, “Fine, I won’t. Happy? You’re the best boy. Happy?”

The twinkle in his eye followed by the babiest giggle threatens to nick your heart. His cheeks always rise like two loaves of bread when he does that genuine innocent smile like that. “Am very happy, yes. Because you don’t need to fuck him when you have me right here.”

Inexplicably, his words induces a weird feeling in your stomach. You can’t tell if it’s because you’re irritated by how clingy he is, or endeared.

Since this day, you uncharacteristically told Eunwoo that you should keep your relationship strictly as project partners, as much as it pained you to let go of such great potential. And since this day, Taehyung makes a point to never neglect your breasts again.

.

@taexxxiiaa @shookpreme @taetaeobsessed @tangledsparkles @nonexistentfucks @evilkookie @nbiased95 @taehyungmakesmeoof @itscalledgayhoney @tahaing @deliciouslydisturbed365 @expensive-bangtan-girl @jwlmnbt @herakimkim @dnyad @kaepjjang365 @expensive-bangtan-girl@gingerpeachtae @spring2787 @askingtheimportantthingshere @casualminiaturetimemachine @xblackclover13x @vasysauce @deadinsidebitch2412 @emiyooa @i-dont-even-know-fck @chimycthulhu @gixanjos @hisunshiine @xtaeyi @softjellyjimin @bluemooncnblue

[ten0rreaper]

Here’s my entry to the @pnatsecretsanta for 2020! @quarktrinity, I hope you enjoy! It’ll be crossposted to ao3, link will be in a reblog. Thank you for your patience!

Isabel: hey so

Isabel: when are u going to get here

Max: wat?

Max: its xmas ev

Isabel: you really need to get a new phone

Isabel: and remember? youre supposed to come to my place tonight, wait it out

Isabel: max?

Isabel: if you were spacing out again im going to kill you

Isabel: you WERE doing the face again now that i think about it

Max: u guys ned 2 mak imprtnt info cler. Y i spcd

Isabel: you need to listen! this time mr spender remembered to tell u and everything. youre not allowed to be mad at us this time

Isabel: in short, get ur butt over here before midnight. sneak out if u need to, thats what isaac does

Isabel: in long, if u dont santas gonna kill u

----

“Let me get this straight.” 11:30 P.M. December 24th, 20XX. Max sat in Ed’s room on a chair hastily drawn up, with a jacket pulled hastily over his pajamas and hat still jammed on his head, massaging his temples. “Santa’s real, he’s a spirit, and he hates all spectrals and is coming to kill us?”

“That’s a bit of an oversimplification, but yeah,” Isaac said, and Max shot him a glare. He could hear that smugness. “So like, there’s a lot of spirits that kinda grow from ideas humans have, right? I don’t know what’s up with Scrapdragon, but like, Muse came from the ideas around ancient Greek muses, like his name. They can be really off base but still have the same ideas- like Lucifer, Mr. Spender’s spirit, is just some lightbulb guy, but Lucifer does mean light and stuff, so they can just be along those lines. But like, a LOT of kids believe in Santa and think about him a lot, so there’ve been a few spirits that manifested around the idea of a guy who can get anywhere to deliver presents to good kids and punishments to bad ones, especially with stories like Krampus too.”

“But most spirits can’t interact with humans, so this guy mostly goes around to other spirits and ghosts and stuff,” Isabel said, distracted by her attempts to spin her umbrella like a top. “So he likes spirits a lot. And we kick a lot of spirit butt,” she punctuated this with a particular spirited spin of the umbrella, “so he hates us and comes to try to kill us every year. And because he can teleport, he can get inside the barrier. So gramps makes us all stay with him until sunrise every year so that all the adults can fight off santa and his reindeer so we don’t get put in a sack and teleported somewhere.”

Max groans and tries to fall backwards in his chair, but the chair doesn’t budge. “Your paint really isn’t good for drama,” Max informed Ed.

“Don’t be so dramatic then,” Ed snickered. “It’s not that big of a deal.”

“Says you, You just stay at home all night. I have to sneak out! My dad’ll kill me if he finds out!”

“I just put a pillow in my blankets and it’s fine,” Isaac says with a shrug. “If your dad looks harder than that, we probably have a tool lying around that can wipe memories or something.”

“I don’t want to mind wipe my dad,” Max grumbled, but resigned himself to slumping grumpily in his chair to watch Ed play some punching game or whatever. Bad enough that his own baseball bat might want to eat him, and he was trapped in this town with no way out- now Christmas hated him too. 

Isaac caught his eye and smiled sympathetically. “You get used to it,” he whispered.

“I thought I was used to it a month ago.”

Max jumped as a knock on the door sounded, glaring at Isabel’s laughter. The door opened without waiting for a response. Mr. Spender poked his head in through the door with a goofy grin. “Alright, kids! You all ready for this year’s Christmas night?”

Ed didn’t even look away from his video game, waving lazily. “We could use some snacks. That’d be nice.”

“Yeah, where are the snacks, old man? You want us to starve?” Isabel waved her umbrella at him like a grumpy old woman might a cane.

“You’re well fed enough already. I made sure of that.” It spoke wonders to how used to this existence Max had become that Mr. Spender knocking politely had scared him, but Isabel’s grandpa floating through the wall didn’t. The man’s bulk and imperious gaze still caused him some anxiety, though, and he had to consciously remind himself that he’s a punk, he’s cool, and he doesn’t respect anyone’s authority, even a scary ghost’s. Yeah, totally. 

The atmosphere of the room quickly shifted, and Isabel’s eyes dropped. “Yeah, I was just joking. Sorry, Grandpa.”

“Joke or not, this night is too much effort to make light of. My students and I are putting ourselves at risk for you,” Mr. Guerra said, looming over the room, “so only vocalize a need if you need it.”

Isabel glowered at the carpet. “Alright, Grandpa…”

“So. I will ask again. Are you all prepared? Midnight strikes soon.”

“We are, sir,” Isaac said. Max fought not to pull a face at Isaac’s please pay attention to me, authority figure tone, but for once it was helpful, so whatever. He could let it slide. 

Mr. Guerra eyed Isaac. “...good. We’ll get you once the sun begins to rise.” And with that, he turned away and slid down through the floor. Max could already hear him barking at the pupils below.

Mr. Spender grimaced. “Well… good! Everything’s all set then.”

Isabel grumbled, picking at the carpet.

“...trust me,” Mr. Spender said, forcing audibly fake cheer into his voice, “This isn’t a hassle at all. You guys getting stuffed into a sack- now, that would be quite the kerfuffle!”

They all stared as Mr. Spender slowly deflated. “...sure,” Max said. “Uh, we’ll be good, stay up here, it’s fine.”

“Great.” Mr. Spender nodded, stared awkwardly for a moment, and stepped out the door. “Well, Merry Christmas, children!” He shut the door behind him. Max listened with the others as his footsteps hurried down the hall to the stairwell.

Silence reigned for a few minutes, a distinctly uncomfortable experience for Max. It was almost impossible not to ramble, and he was reaching his breaking point and about to open the floodgates of inane and overly verbose chatter when Ed, thankfully, took point.

“That sucked,” he said simply, and Isabel groaned and fell back.

“I hate when he does that!” Isabel laid her umbrella by her side and waved her hands in the air exasperatedly. “It’s like he has no in between and I’m always either The Best And He’s So Disappointed In Me For Not Being Perfect or A Helpless Kid He Needs To Do Everything For! He always gets like this tonight!”

Ed paused his game, and reached around to pat her on the knee. “I mean, we could prove him wrong. We beat up spirits all the time, how hard could this be?”

“Okay, hold up, hand on,” Max said. “No? I- this is a terrible idea, you just got finished telling me about how if I wasn’t here I’d be killed by Santa, and now you want to go out there and fight Santa?”

“Well, not Santa,” Ed said. “Duh. He mostly just sends his reindeer to do everything and hangs out on rooftops.”

“And no offence Max, but uh…” Isaac scratched the back of his head.

“You’d totally get killed if you were on your own.” Isabel flipped herself upright. “All you got is that dinky bat, and magnet powers. You can’t even do a spec shot, dude, you’d get thrown in a sack in no time. We’d be fine.”

Max crossed his arms. “Alright, screw you too.”

“But other than that… that sounds like it could be pretty fun.” Isabel grinned. “Show the old man and his big dumb deer who’s boss. Maybe then he’ll stop coming to Mayview every year.”

“That would be pretty nice actually.” Isaac was clearly thinking hard- he had his broody face on. “I would like to stop having to sneak out every year. Sooner or later my parents will notice.”

Max shuddered. “Actually, yeah, Isaac has a point. I don’t want to die to Rudolph or anything, but if we keep having to do this, I’ll die to my dad, which is way worse honestly.”

“Your dad’s a teddy bear,” Isabel said, and rolled her eyes. “Stop complaining.”

“You haven’t seen him when I fail a test!”

“So are we going or what?” Isabel was already pulling her jacket back on, tucking her umbrella firmly under her arm. Ed bounced on the balls of his feet with a grin, already eyeing up the window and painting himself a rope. 

Max looked at Isaac, who shrugged and got to his feet. Max sighed, and stood up, regretfully leaving his scooter on the floor. “Yeah, alright. We’re going.”

Well, Max was regretting this. He was regretting this so much. He tromped through the snowy woods, eternally grateful for his boots. “Why in the world do we have to fight the spirits of Christmas in the woods? Why can’t we do it in town, or like, on the road at least? The roads we salted. The roads wouldn’t be as cold.”

“Cuz we’d get caught, dummy,” Isabel snorted. Or maybe it was a sniffle. “Either someone from the dojo would hear us and yell at us and get in the way before we can prove anything, or someone in town would yell at us and call the cops or something.”

“Maybe having people nearby to help isn’t a bad thing? You can’t just say that after saying that I’m the most likely person to die!”

“You came out here anyway,” Isaac pointed out, and looked all too unaffected by Max’s glare.

“I hate you. I hate you with everything in my being you- you chump elf.”

Isabel laughed. “Yeah, yeah. Anyway, this place looks pretty good, huh?” She stopped, looking around the snowy clearing they’d come into and turning in place. She nodded, satisfied. “There’s room to fight here, and we could come up with some pretty solid traps. Isaac wouldn’t have to worry too much about blasting a bunch of trees.”

“Looks pretty good!” Ed pulled off a mitten with his teeth and dug his paint brush out of his pocket. “What’re you thinkin, Izzy? Tripwire? Net?”

“Let’s go net,” Isaac said. “They can fly.”

“Plus, last time you tripped Isaac, remember?” Isabel elbowed Ed in the side. “Max and I are pretty fast, but Isaac needs some help.”

“Please. I can jump higher than your house is tall.”

“But you still fell just flat on your face,” she cooed. Isaac grumbled, cursing her just loud enough for Isabel to overhear, but she just batted her eyes and paid him no mind. “Okay, so,” she said, looking up at the sky through the hole in the canopy, “we probably only have a few more minutes before one of the reindeer finds us-”

And that’s when a dark shape, faster than cheetah and twice as forceful, barrelled into Max.  And off he went, hanging by the hood of his jacket on a wicked sharp antler prong, into the sky and away to the sound of jingling bells.

----

Things were quiet this year, Richard reflected. It was honestly a relief- maybe the spirit had finally given up. Probably too much to hope for, but, Christmas miracles and all. In any case, there seemed to be plenty of time to get the kids some mugs of hot cocoa and cookies to wait out the night with.

“Need any help balancing those?” Day asked, and Richard felt his mood become momentarily strained.

“Actually, that would be nice, if you think you could.” The tray of mugs and cookies he was balancing was quite the challenge, after all. Day reached up and somehow grabbed the plates of cookies perfectly- Spender could swear he saw her eyes flash for a moment, smart woman- and left him to balance the four mugs. A much easier task now.

“I really thought things would be more eventful, with how much Francisco was fussing over it, but everything’s pretty quiet, isn’t it?” Day smiled and followed Richard’s footsteps to the stairs.

“Well, usually there’s more cause for it, but the spirits seem to be laying low this year. Not an unwelcome reprieve in the slightest, but I do worry about Max… if this isn’t the new status quo, I don’t want him to get the wrong idea.”

“He’s a- well, he seems like a really smart kid,” Day reassured him. “I think he’ll make sure to be careful next year too!”

“I hope so. He does seem resourceful, but… he can be reckless.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” she said, before stopping with a small frown on her face. “They’re being pretty quiet…”

Spender listened for a moment himself. “Hm, they are… mayhaps they went to bed early?”

“That doesn’t sound like them.”

“No,” he said, dread creeping into his heart. “It doesn’t.”

He set the tray of cookies on the floor. He approached Ed’s room. He knocked.

He opened the door.

Richard’s lips thinned into a grim line as he surveyed the dark room. “They’re gone.”

------

Max screamed for his life as he was lifted faster than he could process into the sky. It was a clear, starry night, and they all looked like streaks as his captor circled through the sky, closer and closer to the top of the dome before colliding headfirst into it. Max didn’t have any more air in his lungs to scream as he was jostled loose and began to fall down, down- only to be caught again, this time like a sack of potatoes on the spirit’s back. He was overwhelmed by the sound of silver bells as he caught his breath, eyes screwed tightly shut.

Eventually, his lungs rallied to his call, and he was able to take in an unpleasant few gulps of animal-scented air. Max cracked his eyes open a peek- and immediately shut them again. Too high. He was way, way too high up. His heart felt like it was about to beat out of his chest, and the wind burned his face and the tips of his ears.

Hold on.

“My hat,” he wheezed reaching one hand up to grope the top of his head. “My hat’s gone!”

“Soon that will be of no matter.”

Max screamed- even he was getting fed up with his own screams at this point, but instinct didn’t seem to be on the same page.

“Quiet,” the rumbling voice said, and the spirit turned to look at Max. “Your sounds irritate me.”

The spirit that held Max on its back was by far the biggest deer of any Max had ever seen. It was shaggy and majestic, even as its fur was electric yellow, and its huge rack of knife-like antlers shivered as if they were made of candle flame. Its many eyes blinked, and it beared serrated teeth- a stark contrast to the many silver bells that seemed a part of its pelt. Max looked away, avoiding its cruel gaze, to see three pairs of legs, hooves thundering over empty air. And below him, seven more enormous shapes were blazing their way towards the distant forest clearing, led by an eerie red light. “Oh no, oooooh no, no no no no no no…”

“But yes, child. At last you have been retrieved, and soon your friends will be as well. Then, you can all face your punishment.” The spirit laughed cruelly. “I am Dasher, and I was simply the herald.”

“So you’re just, you’re just Dasher? Like from the poem? One of those things down there is…” Jeez, this was surreal. “...Donner? And, Vixen?”

“Many tremble in fear before those names. It would do you right to show some respect.”

“What? No, nobody does! You guys are like, goofy little stop motion dolls, man, how’d you guys end up looking like this?”

“Our powers are untold by your human poems-”

“Aren’t you guys based on the poems?!”

Dasher snorted and tossed his head in anger. “That is an egregious oversimplification-”

“I thought your name was Dasher, not Dictionary.”

The spirit cried out in frustration, and Max felt something in him settle a bit better. Poking things with words, he could do that. Just don’t look down. “So, uh,” he began, shifting a bit so it was less like he was thrown over Dasher and more like he was riding him, “why am I not in a sack yet?”

“Our pilot is attending to his annual business in Mayview,” Dasher growled. “It is we who have the ability to fight and fly- so it is we who collect naughty children. Once your compatriots have been obtained, then we may return to our stations.”

“Wow,” Max drawled. “I can’t believe Santa needs his reindeer to deal with three preteens.”

“You do have a teenager within your ranks. That does provide some extra challenge.”

“Whoa, wait, really?”

“Yes. He cannot fully be counted as a child by our pilot any longer- he has aged enough to become a teenager. It is not he that we seek.”

“Wow, that’s weirdly arbitrary and nitpicky.” Max was so going to tease Isaac about this later. If he didn’t, well, get thrown into a sack and… baked into a pie? Eaten alive? Thrown into a dungeon? Whatever. Try to be positive.

“If you take issue, you may air your complaints to our pilot.”

“Taking it straight to the manager, alright.” Max stared at his hands, balled in bright yellow fur, and took a deep breath as he relaxed them. He wasn’t going to fall, he was certain Dasher wouldn’t allow him, channel a Karen- and he released the fur, balancing on the spirit’s back with only his legs. Before he could lose his nerve, he swung his backpack off his shoulder and grabbed his bat. Okay, weapon acquired. Just… what to do with it.

Dasher huffed. “Puny weapon. Even with the power of an enslaved spirit, you cannot defeat me. Especially not with a spirit as weak as that one.”

“Ugh, not you too,” Max grumbled. At least this thing wasn’t getting aggressive. “I’m kinda tired of being called the weak one, it’s getting old.”

“It would have been better, then, if you had kept your power to yourself, and not bothered the true denizens of this world, as the other child does.”

“Other child-? You know what, I don’t know what you’re talking about and I do not care. Now let me think.” Max re-gripped Dasher tightly, this time grabbing the reigns, and looked around. Man, of course Max got magnet powers in the place where there’s no tall buildings anywhere- it would be great if they could pass by a skyscraper or two for Max to attach himself to. But alas… then, his eyes caught a gleam, a dark silhouette against the colorful lights of Mayview. 

A transmission tower in the woods. And they were heading right for it. Max shrugged his backpack back on to his shoulder and gripped his bat as tight as he could.

“Thinking will get you nowhere, child.”

“Yeah, but it’ll keep me quiet,” Max mumbled.

“True,” Dasher said. And started to turn back towards the clearing.

“No!” Max yelped, holding his bat out desperately- he knew the tower was too distant still, but he put all his will into the bat, trying to extend its power as far as he can-

Dasher lurched beneath him with a confused cry, the bells jangled, and Max’s focus was broken with a shout. Immediately, Dasher steadied beneath him.

“Child, if you do that again I will throw you off into the ground-”

“What- I don’t even know what I did-” Max’s breath caught as he realized what happened. The bells. They were metal, and he had what was definitely a terrible idea. But it was his only idea.

Quickly, before Dasher could retaliate, Max activated his bat. Dasher howled with rage as all the bells in his body strained in the direction of the magnetic center, and Max laughed with panic. 

“RELEASE ME AT ONCE-”

“No,” Max said, filled with thrill and panic, and directed Dasher back towards the clearing. The spirit barrelled towards it at supernatural speeds, a furious scream echoing through the night as he crashed into the snow like a comet. Max tumbled off of the spirit’s back, and the bat’s angle changed wildly, forcing Dasher in mad circles.

The other seven deer spirits, crowded in the woods, were as thrown into chaos as Isabel, Ed, and Isaac were, but Ed recovered fastest. “Max!” He crowed, head popping out of the snow. “You’re alive!”

“Somehow!” Max laughed, voice squeaky with panic. “For now!” In the corner of his eye, he noticed another spirit- a large one that was on fucking fire, so must be either Comet or Blitzen- and quickly swung his bat around to point at it. Dasher was forced to charge full speed into the other spirit, which dissolved into a wisp with a cry of shock.

Isabel whooped. “I can’t believe it! Magnet powers are good for something!”

“Serves you right!” He felt about to shake apart, and still dizzy from the crash, but spinning Dasher around like a top was easy enough- and the other jingling spirits were drawn in too. It was a glorious explosion of color, sound, and christmas spirits as one by one they melted each other away into whisps. Finally, only Dasher stood in the snow, puffing furious, cloudy breaths into the air.

“You will pay,” Dasher hissed. “Naughty children. You will not escape your punishment, this I swear to you.”

“Whatever you say, bub,” Ed chirped, and raised his scythe above his head.

“Wait!”

Max and the others turned back to look just in time to watch an arrow streak through the night and imbed itself in Dasher’s forehead. “No, no,” he groaned, watching Isabel’s face light up with glee.

Agent Day and Mr. Spender ran into the clearing, both panting and exhausted. “Thank goodness we found you,” Agent Day breathed, hands on her knees. “We were so worried that you were taken…”

“But I saw Dasher fall from the sky!” Spender’s chest heaved, and he swayed with effort, but he somehow managed to stay upright. “I’m so glad you’re all alright, even Dasher alone is quite the challenge to combat…”

“Nah, we got all of them.” Isabel grinned and punched her palm. “Max was able to yank ‘em around by the bells with his bat, and he got em all to poof each other. It was really easy to hit ‘em when they were all clumped up, too.”

“You- you really beat them all? Where are their tools?!”

“Right here, Mr. Spender!” Isaac called, arms full of a few rocks and sticks. “They’re, uh, not much to look at, but…”

“Amazing! Wonderful job, all of you- these will be great for the club’s stores!”

“But you shouldn’t have snuck out. We were so worried about you, and you’re glad we found you! Your grandfather is worried sick!” Agent Day wrung her hands together, cane stuck in the snow.

“Yes, he’s… not happy,” Spender admitted. “But, surely he’ll be proud when he finds out what you’ve accomplished?”

“Probably not,” Isabel sighed, sticking her hands in her pockets.

“...probably not.” Spender came over to put a hand on her shoulder. “But, for what it’s worth, I am.” Isabel looked up at him, then threw her arms around him. Spender smiled softly and hugged her in return.

“This is great,” Max groaned. “But I’m being crushed by a flippin’ reindeer, so can I get some help?”

Oblivious to Max’s irritation, Dasher continued licking Max’s hair life the reindeer he resembled. “You’re not so bad, I suppose. Resourceful child.”

“It always happens to me.”

“The arrow will at least last the night,” Agent Day said thoughtfully. “It should be safe for you to go home, in that case- you too, I think, Isaac! Since all the others are gone, after all… Maybe Dasher can take you home!”

“Nooooo!”

“I think that’s a wonderful idea, Ms. Day,” Spender said. “You could perhaps take Isaac and Ed back to the dojo, and I can take Isaac back to his home…?”

“Yes sir!” Day smiled. “Merry Christmas, Max, Isaac,” she said. “I hope you get back undetected.”

“Thank you, Ms. Day,” Isaac said. “You too.”

“You guys suck,” Max grumbled.

----

It took a bit for Max to wrangle Dasher into taking him home, but under Day’s spell, the spirit was a fairly easygoing ride. As Max climbed back in through his window to his undisturbed bed, he heard the spirit settle on the roof to keep watch for the sunrise. And, taking comfort in not being discovered and in the knowledge that next year, when he’s a teen, he won’t have to worry about any of this, Max changed back into his pajamas, settled into bed, and slipped into a deep sleep.

[hisakata-resutomoshibi]

Not to bother you, but I've been wondering what would happen next in that Inner Demon! Kuro au. It randomly popped into my head and now im curious lol. I'm not asking for another chapter if you dont want to write it, I just wanna know what u think would happen next! Your ideas are amazing and I love hearing from you! 🧡

Ah, you’re so sweet! Don’t take this too seriously as I haven’t planned any of it and barely edited it LOL but here you go my dear~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Alright, and what am I supposed to make of that?"

It was hours later, or perhaps just minutes, and Mahiru found himself staring up at the slightly damp, bug riddled ceiling of the cave. He seemed to have fallen to the ground after Kuro had released his grip; maybe he had taken too much blood? The thought froze his muscles in visceral terror and his mind in a bid to remain sane immediately rejected the idea. Either way, he did distinctly remember hearing Kuro say that he belonged to Mahiru now, or something to that effect, and really, who wanted to have a psycho like this?

"What does what means?"

 Kuro's eyes popped in to view over Mahiru's face and he flinched back, bashing his head further on the cold stone. Frowning in irritation, at the pain in his skull, the situation in general, he sighed. "What do you mean you're mine?"

 The bright red that had flooded through Kuro's irises hadn't faded, in fact it seemed to have almost solidified against the former blue, looking like a small pool of swirling metallic paint splashed across the sky. As he watched, entranced, Kuro grinned.

 "Pretty, right?" He blinked slowly, demonstratively. "The red is a nice touch, a very easy way to identify contracts."

 "Contracts?" Mahiru repeated curiously. "What- no, I mean, how did your eyes change color?"

 "This is your blood, Mahiru." Kuro said matter-of-factly. "I didn't expect it to be so beautiful, to be honest. Most blood mixes in like mud. Such a disappointing shade of brown. But this!" Kuro paused, fluttering a hand in front of his face.

"This is gorgeous. We must be compatible."

 "Compatible..." Mahiru echoed, laughing weakly. "Great."

 "You wanted to go home. I'll take you there."

 "Hold on just a second." He pushed out a hand into the scant air between them and Kuro obligingly sat back, his head cocked in innocent puzzlement. "How do you know where I live?"

 "I know everything that is YOU, now."

 "Again, what exactly does that mean?"

 Kuro smiled wickedly, leaning forward suddenly, a blur of vitality in the dank air of the cave. "Take it literally. Anything that means something to you, makes up a part of your identity, it's mine now. And in exchange-" He gestured down at himself, "you get this, anything you could possibly want."

 Startled into silence, Mahiru felt his tongue form the sardonic comment before he could think better of it. "You're quite confident." As soon as the words were out he regretted them, praying that the offense they caused wouldn't be enough to get him ripped into little pieces, but Kuro only laughed, lighter and softer than anything Mahiru had heard before.

 "Of course I'm confident. Do you still not know who I am, Mahiru?" His lips curled up mischievously and he ran a graceful, delicate finger, along Mahiru's jaw. "You're a bit thick, aren't you? Ah well, no matter! You're mine as well now, no turning back." Before Mahiru had the chance to feel offended, he continued. "I knew you were special the second I saw you."

 The conversation was running in circles and it was only a matter of time before Mahiru got motion sickness trying to follow it, so, trying to decide the simplest course of action, he chose, simply, to ignore it. Obviously Kuro was not who he had originally thought, the eyes, the horns, the preternatural speed, no, there was no way to fake that, he was something else entirely, but the question was, what? Mahiru glanced over to find Kuro staring at him raptly and he couldn't help the small chuckle that escaped. "Where am I supposed to hide you?"

"Is this just something that people like you can do?" Mahiru asked flatly, staring down at the tiny kitten at his feet. It turned it's wide, luminescent eyes (red like his blood, he thought) up to him and blinked. "I don't know what that means."

 "You really are a demanding little one." Kuro muttered as he phased back into existence, occupying the space the cat had previously. "Of course not all of us can, it is something unique to I and a few others." He paused, seeming to think carefully before speaking. "Eight total."

 There are seven others that can turn into animals?"

 Kuro nodded slowly, almost regretfully. "Yes. Seven. But you don't need to worry about them."

 "I'm not particularly worried." Mahiru sighed. "More like amazed." He watched for a moment as Kuro crept around his room, so cat like in his movements Mahiru almost laughed, and began to poke at several of the books piled haphazardly on his desk. "I do have a question."

 As though he had been in anticipation, Kuro spun on his heel, books and exploration forgotten and a lopsided smile in place. "Yes?"

 "Well, er-" Mahiru hesitated, biting his lip. "Not to be offensive or anything but, you're acting very... different now."

 "Oh?"

 "Uh, yeah..."

 "How so?"

 "Well." Mahiru glanced over, quickly looking away again when he met Kuro's amused gaze. "Well, to be blunt, you're not acting like a total nut job anymore."

 "A nut job." Kuro paused, digesting the phrase for a moment. "I do not know that one either." Four rapid steps had him directly in front of Mahiru again and he grinned. "There's so much you must tell me! But before that, what is the question?"

 "Why?" Mahiu blurted. "Why are you suddenly..." He trailed off and, at a loss for definition, gestured vaguely at Kuro. "Like this?"

 Shrugging casually, Kuro raised a brow. "One would act differently after becoming someone else, no?"

 Putting a finger to his brow in fatigued annoyance, Mahiru groaned. "No w I just know you're fucking with me."

 "Not yet, I assure you." Kuro said brightly, his grin widening impossibly when Mahiru blanched. "What can I say to make you understand?" He crossed his arms, gaze traveling lazily around the room. When his eyes lit upon the chair near the door and he paused. "I took from you and so you must take from me." He glanced over, his eyes shining through the shifting blacks and whites of his hair. "Give and take, tit for tat, you are a part of me and so I must honor that change. Act according to the new blood."

 Mahiru frowned, attempting to construct something realistic or even vaguely understandable from what Kuro had just said. "So, you're different because of me?"

 "Precisely. Perhaps if you were less stubborn I would not be quite so composed?" Kuro laughed, just a shadow of the maniacal, wild abandon from previously and shrugged. "It's an interesting change." He raised his eyes to the ceiling, as though looking up into the sky. "Not unwelcome. Certainly different from what I am used to."

 "What you're used to?" Mahiru prompted him after a moment.

 "Things at the court can be unbalanced." Kuro said slowly. "And so for the most part we are... unpredictable."

 Forgoing asking who exactly "we" was because he was fairly certain he didn't want to know anyway, Mahiru frowned darkly, remembering the shattered stalls and engulfing flames he had so barely escaped earlier."You seemed like a psycho."

 Kuro laughed happily. "That sounds like a compliment!"

 "It's not." Mahiru said flatly. "Psycho is bad." He too glanced around the small room quickly, taking in the limited space and lack of guest furniture. "So now what? I accept that you are some kind of- of- mythical creature. But I do not accept that I am stuck with you."

 "Whether you accept or not is of no consequence." Kuro sang, reaching out and plucking a sweater from where it lay draped over the foot of the bed. "We have a contract." He began to twist it back and forth, inspecting it from every angle, eyes wide in puzzlement.

 "About that. I didn't agree to any contract. So I don't really think it's legally binding." Mahiru crossed his arms, attempting his best impersonation of authority.

 Kuro shrugged, pulling the sweater over his head, horns turning to a bright translucent fog for a moment to allow for the collar to pass over them, and smiled, something quick and genuine, and Mahiru felt his heart skip a beat. "Unfortunate for you then that the fae do not care for legality."

It was an hour later, Mahiru standing in front of the cupboard contemplating it's bare shelving, that he finally admitted to himself that he was not the best at entertaining visitors. Not even a spare loaf of bread. He slammed the door shut in frustration and glanced into the living room, finding Kuri still curled up on the couch, eyes glued to the TV. Mahiru had turned it on in desperation about forty minutes ago and Kuro had not moved since. It was currently airing some strange episodic gum commercial but judging by Kuro's expression you would have thought it was a documentary of the end of the world.

 "How do they do this?" Kuro asked suddenly and Mahiru turned fully, watching as he pointed to the screen upon which was a helicopter view of the city.

 "Do what?"

 "Record this? Is that what you called it? It's so detailed!"

 Mahiru wandered closer, unable to ignore the impulse and peered over Kuro's shoulder. "You said you were some magical being but you've never seen a TV? Where have you been all this time?"

 "In the woods, mostly." Kuro answered casually. "It seems I should have ventured farther into town sooner!"

 Briefly imagining the utter devastation Kuro would have wrought unchecked had he indeed entered the heart of the town Mahiru held back a shiver and shook his head. "No. No way. You are way too much trouble."

 "It is not I that wishes for such destruction." Kuro said, flicking his sharp gaze up to Mahiru. "I only embody what you desire."

 "You keep saying that." Mahiru muttered, looking away in discomfort. "Listen. Do you need food? Or..." He trailed off in embarrassment, completely gobsmacked that the next words were about to leave his mouth. "Or are you actually a vampire?"

 "Vampire." Kuro rolled the word around for a moment and shrugged. "Call me what you will. You humans have always had such curious need to name everything. Regardless, it will not change that I simply am."

 Mahiru sighed. He really was getting so tired of all this mystical bullshit. "So then, did you want to get dinner?"

 Kuro froze, his shoulders going taut beneath the blanket he had huddled up in. "Dinner?" His eyes were darting from side to side as though in worry, though there was nothing but an innocuous soap opera preview on.

 "Yeah? You know, we go somewhere and get food? I honestly hate the idea of bringing you in public, but I don't have anything here." Mahiru admitted, frowning. "You have to behave."

 "Ah, I see." Kuro turned, fixing Mahiru with a strange look. "You need to eat then?"

 "I take it, based on this conversation that you don't actually require food." Mahiru muttered sarcastically. "But yes, I'm hungry."

 "Very well. Let's go." Kuro stood in one quick move, the blanket falling from his shoulders and to the couch and Mahiru flinched back a step, having completely forgotten just how tall Kuro really was. At his jerking retreat, Kuro raised a brow and a mocking smile flew across his face. "Do you truly find me so frightening?"

 An immediate affirmation withered on Mahiru's tongue as he studied Kuro's expression. It was neutral and empty but somewhere, deep beneath the veneer of indifference, he thought he could see a wiggling of disappointment. He didn't know what possessed him to do what he did, or even why he would care to do so in the first place but he found himself snorting and reaching out to wrap his hand around Kuro's wrist, tugging him roughly around the back of the couch and towards the kitchen. "Of course not, idiot. What's scary about you?"

[karliahs]

um for prompts idk anything specific but maybe more midoriya gettin angry over stuff and dealin?? really loved the way u handled it in something else to pretend, would love to see ur take on how he deals with more aggressive/harsher anger? idk tho

content warning for discussions of bullying and brief references to (canon) child abuse

“Why did Kacchan do that?” Izuku asks. It’s one of those shards of memory that lingers far longer than it should, muddying over years and re-rememberings, but never completely fading away.

Izuku can remember the question, his grazed knees, the sun shining on the grass. He can remember his mother helping clean him up, smiling a comforting smile and saying, “I don’t know, sweetie. I think he was angry.”

Izuku isn’t sure if the question that comes next comes from his mother, or if it’s just something he’s thought about so much over the years that it’s gotten tangled up in the memory, an unwitting passenger. “Don’t you get angry, Izuku?” someone asks.

ao3 link / continued below

In hindsight, Izuku is sure the thoughts that come next can’t be part of the memory. His five year old self wouldn’t be capable of this kind of self-analysis. But the thing is, Izuku thinks he knows what anger is. It’s not really that distinct from other kinds of overwhelmed, when the world is too loud, too much, too impatient and needling - and so he cries, because this happens every time a feeling is too large to hold all of it inside him, and ‘wanting not to cry’ is always one of those feelings, so there’s no way out.

Izuku supposes he must have thrown tantrums when he was little. Thrown his toys around, fallen on the floor, screamed. He can’t remember doing any of that.

He’s never felt whatever Kacchan is feeling when he pushes Izuku into the dirt. He tries to imagine it, a feeling bubbling over into bright, harsh action, like Kacchan’s explosions. He can almost get there, but after comes a sweep of shame that pulls him back into himself. Izuku Midoriya, quirkless and strange, who causes enough problems without pushing other children over. Izuku, who can feel the aftermath so much more distinctly than that initial explosion of anger. He can’t think about explosions without thinking about wreckage.

…

“Don’t you ever get mad?” Matsuda asks.

Izuku had been on his way to take shelter in the school library over lunch. He’d been distracted, as he walked, wondering if the doors would be open today - the library is sparse and neglected enough when it’s open, but the school’s staffing levels are such that he frequently turns up at the doors to find the whole place shut up and locked, leaving him to try and think of another place where he might be able to spend the next 45 minutes safe and left alone - so distracted that he hadn’t noticed Matsuda until they almost collided in the hallway.

He was lucky, really, that it was just Matsuda, not one of Kacchan’s true entourage, but a hanger-on who rarely missed an opportunity to take Izuku down a peg. In a class without Izuku there, it wouldn’t be that hard to see Matsuda in Izuku’s place.

But something about Izuku’s distracted expression during his taunts seems to have triggered something else, a kind of disbelieving disgust. “Like, ever?” he asks. “Don’t you ever get tired of like ‘thanks, excuse me, sorry for existing and all, good luck with the test tomorrow guys!’” He says this last past in a high-pitched imitation of Izuku’s voice, and Izuku thinks maybe they’ve returned to familiar ground, but Matsuda is still staring intently at him, seemingly waiting for an answer.

He doesn’t have one to give. Half his mind is still on those library doors, and whether they’ll be open when he gets there. The rest is fuzzed over with panic, leaving him with nothing but his polite, stammering default - which never makes it better, but silence never does either.

“Whatever,” Matsuda says, suddenly growing tired of him and starting off in the other direction. “It’s like you like it this way.”

Izuku takes a shuddering breath and turns the corner. The library doors are closed.

…

Izuku tries, later that day, once he’s safe at home, to get angry on purpose. He sits on his bed and tries to summon it up, like the opposite of meditating, reaching for fury instead of calm. For a few minutes nothing happens at all, except that he gets distracted thinking about other things and has to drag himself back.

He thinks about Kacchan pushing him down, and him never finding out why. He thinks about the look on his mother’s face when she came back from meetings during the dissolution of her marriage, meetings Izuku was kept well away from; he thinks about how hard she tried to be normal, but how her knuckles were white where she gripped her water glass.

Eventually, there’s a kind of hot, prickling feeling over his skin. He feels briefly untethered, out of his own body, and wonders if he really did end up meditating after all. Then comes a wave of nausea, so physical that he feels a prickling in the back of his throat. He remembers having the flu last semester, and the nausea that had flooded through him when he’d tried to walk just to get a glass of water - nausea that felt like a warning, like a plea; stop, whatever you’re doing, stop.

He opens his eyes to find he’s gripping his notebook in his hands, so tight he’s bent the spine, leaving little wrinkles of damage spreading out from where he’d held on. He releases his grip and tries to smooth it over, bend it back into shape, but it only looks sadder for his efforts, care shown far too late to help anything.

…

Always, at the root of anger, we find a desire for change. Izuku grips his highlighter pen, unsure. He doesn’t think this passage has much to do with the essay question he’s been assigned, but something about it peaks his interest anyway.

A person enraged is a person committed to affecting change in the world around them. If we all gave in to those desires at every opportunity, we would have a world of tyranny and chaos. However, the alternative extreme is no better - a world of stasis and apathy, drifting, stagnating. When we tell our children to banish their anger, we tell them to cut away a significant part of their own agency. When we tell this to some children and never to others, we invite a different, more incisive kind of tyranny.

Izuku is torn between a desire to slam the book shut, and the urge to try and pivot his essay in a direction that will let him analyse this. He highlights the words in yellow, realising that when he thinks of change, he doesn’t think of anger. He thinks of All Might, defeating impossible odds, saving dozens of terrified people, and doing it all with a smile on his face. What is that if not agency? Can you really not have one without the other?

…

He supposes what he’s doing is building a case, the way he always does. Trying to capture the sum of his understanding of something, so that when he needs the knowledge it will be there. The crucial, long, stuttering thinking will already be done, and in the heat of the moment he can just act.

That’s Hero Analysis For the Future , and he thinks that’s why he’s holding onto these memories too. Almost every aspect of a hero’s life affects their career in some ways; if anger does too, it makes sense that Izuku needs to work out what he thinks. Don’t you ever get angry, Izuku? Don’t you ever get mad? Always, at the root of anger, we find a desire for change. It’s like you like it this way.

Izuku wishes, for a moment, that feelings were as real and tangible as organs. He wishes he could go for a scan and have someone tell him yep, anger’s right there. It isn’t enlarged or shrivelled. It isn’t inflamed or sickening. It isn’t poisoning everything around it.

…

He asks his friends, now that he has friends, specifically targeting those who are more on an even keel - he already knows he can’t relate to big, obvious anger.

“Sure, Deku,” Uraraka answers. “Everyone gets angry.”

“What does it feel like, when you are?”

“Are you gonna take notes?” she teases, but then she’s concentrating, tapping her fingers together, trying to figure out how best to describe it. Izuku still isn’t used to this; if you’d asked him to predict what Uraraka would give him, even though he thinks the world of her, he assumed he’d get a quick, uninterested comment at most. Either his UA friends are so much better than most people, or his calibrations for what friendship is are all off; Izuku suspects it’s a little of both.

“I guess I have two types of anger?” Uraraka muses. “Like, there’s…determined anger? Like at the sports festival, I just got really fired up and wanted to win so bad!” She makes a fist, as if to demonstrate, and man, Izuku likes her so much.

She lets her hands drop. “Then there’s the kind that’s less fun. Like…when your heater is broken and you’re mad that it’s broken, and that you’re cold and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“Your heater isn’t really broken, right?” Izuku asks. “It’s been getting really cold out!”

Uraraka gives him a warm smile. “No, Deku. It’s fine.” He stares at her smile for a second too long, trying to grasp the idea of Uraraka being really, truly angry. He thinks it’s like how no one can really know that they’re seeing the same colours everyone else sees. For all he knows, they’re feeling totally different things and giving them the same name; he can’t imagine Uraraka feeling anything in the disjointed, sickly way that rage finds him.

…

Ashido is his next target, and she laughs before realising he’s serious. “Anger feels like anger, you know?” she says idly. “Like…” She holds up her hands in a claw-like gesture, and makes a kind of ‘rrargh’ noise.

Izuku must look slightly disappointed, because Ashido sighs and throws up her hands. “I don’t know, man! I don’t like to think about it. Everything is stupid when you’re angry, and I’m always there, so it’s like I’m stupid. The stupidest thing in all the stupid.”

She looks down at her shoes as she talks, and it’s so unlike the Ashido he knows that Izuku wants to apologise for having asked. Before he can, she lightly punches his shoulder, giving him a smaller, more subdued version of her usual bright smile. “You don’t always gotta dwell on stuff, you know?” she says. “No one’s gonna give you points for it. Chin up! Plus ultra!”

She skips away, and Izuku feels like he understands her both more and less than he did five minutes ago.

…

He doesn’t actually plan to ask Todoroki, but he’s in Todoroki’s room taking back his notes for English class when he finds himself doing it anyway.

“You…get angry sometimes, right?”

Todoroki blinks at him. Slowly, deliberately, he lifts his left hand, cupped in a way that makes Izuku anticipate flame, makes him aware of the ghost of it among his fingers.

“Yes,” Todoroki says simply.

“Yeah,” Izuku says, wanting to smile to soften things but not wanting Todoroki to think he’d been making fun of him. “I’ve been asking a lot of people. People in our class, I mean.” He fidgets with his hands for a second. “I think I’m doing it wrong? I don’t know if I have too much anger or too little, but…I don’t know. I think there’s something wrong with me.”

Todoroki waits patiently while he speaks, all his attention fixed on Izuku. Izuku thinks that’s one of the reasons he likes Todoroki; even for all of his ambition, he gives off this impression of patience that makes it feel okay to talk, to talk imperfectly and at length, now that he’s past Todoroki’s initial barriers. The other ambitious people Izuku knows, himself included, aren’t like that - he’s dogged, determined, but not patient. It comes from starting so far behind everyone else, making it feel as though no movement is ever really fast enough.

Todoroki thinks for a long moment before replying. “It can’t be worse than what’s wrong with me.”

Izuku gives him a small smile. Kind things hover in the back of his mind, wanting to offer reassurance, but he knows from experience that when you offer some glimpse of how you feel about yourself, sometimes the best thing to receive back is just space and acknowledgement, instead of attempts to convince you otherwise that mostly just make you regret speaking up in the first place.

Izuku knows he’s so behind with this, too; having friends, talking to people, trying to give them reasons to be glad that they talked to him. But maybe Todoroki would understand that, out of all of his friends - maybe they can muddle through together.

“I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately,” Todoroki offers, and Izuku thinks maybe he made the right choice after all. “I used to want to never be angry, so that I’d never act like my father. Now I think if I don’t get used to it, get control of it, I’m more likely to make the same mistakes he did.”

Todoroki flexes his left hand, frowning.

“You’ve come so far, you know?” Izuku says, before he can stop himself.

Todoroki meets his eyes. He’s familiar and strange all at once. Even now that they’ve spent more time together, Izuku can so rarely predict what Todoroki will say or do, just that he likes him, likes the strange angles of him, likes that for some reason he chose Izuku as the subject of his honesty.

“It doesn’t feel like it,” Todoroki says, but there’s a softness there, like gratitude.

“I don’t know if it ever does,” Izuku answers, thinking of all the times this year he’s been told that he’s making progress, and how sometimes he’s still convinced that he’s exactly the same on the inside; the same friendless nothing who spent his lunch breaks cowering in the library. “I just feel so guilty for being mad,” he says. “Even if I just sit with it and don’t do anything, it feels so…dangerous.”

The notes in his hands bring him back to that day in his room, trying to be angry on purpose. “One time I messed up one of my notebooks when I was angry, and even though it’s just paper, I felt so bad…I can’t think about anger without thinking about damage, you know?”

He looks up from the notes, from his own scarred hands, to find Todoroki watching him with a new intensity in his eyes. Immediately he wishes he hadn’t spoken, because of course Todoroki knows more about damage than he ever will. “I’m sorry-” he starts, but Todoroki shakes his head.

“I didn’t know anyone else thought about this the way I do. Especially you.”

Their eyes meet again and Izuku finds himself smiling, just from having spoken and been understood - it was still wonderful and new, every time, each moment where he realises he really does have friends. “Maybe there’s a class we can take?” he jokes.

“I think that’s just therapy,” Todoroki says, sounding thoughtful and disappointed in equal measure. “Tell me why you think you’re doing it wrong?”

Izuku gently sets the notes back on Todoroki’s desk, realising with another little leap of joy that he won’t be leaving for a while yet. He takes a seat and starts to talk about being five years old, about the time Kacchan pushed him over and the only explanation anyone could offer was anger.

[mysticdragon3md3]

PS5 Showcase Event Livestream by IGN

4:38 PM 9/16/2020 Spider-man Miles Morales Oh shit.  You know I love mid-air combat.  Do I have to get a PS5 now?  Damn it!  I swore PS4 would be my last console.   . I forgot about the PS5 livestream earlier today.  I hadn't even really been keeping it in mind.  But when I saw Professor Thorgi Tweeting praise for it...Now I'm excited.  

...

10:38 PM 9/16/2020 You can seep in all the nostalgic Final Fantasy music you want, but I'm just not feeling this new Final Fantasy.  When I think of Final Fantasy---what I PERSONALLY like about FF, it's that almost-steampunk mix of scifi and fantasy magic.  I love that modern, urban fantasy mixed with ancient magics.  That anachronistic amalgamation in the art style that can't really be placed anywhere.  

But even this costume design is so distinctly historic European.  With regular names like Joshua.  

The gameplay looks nice tho.

I don't think I'm interested in FF16.  Even if FF15 was disappointing, I loved Nomura's art style, the world design that is blatantly more than just "sword and sorcery" fantasy,...  I don't think I'll get Final Fantasy XVI.  

10:45 PM 9/16/2020 Or maybe it's just my depression talking.  I've been unable to enjoy things all day.  Getting excited about cool things has been out of the question today.  ;_;  

10:46 PM 9/16/2020 I stand corrected.  This Miles Morales trailer is making me cry AGAIN, and I already watched it earlier today.  You can do it, Miles!  ;o;  

10:48 PM 9/16/2020 Warner Bros?  Y'mean that new Bat Family game?  ...Oh no...Oh no.....Harry Potter.  ~_~  All those poor game developers working so hard on something that puts a bad taste in our mouths now, at the mere mention of it.  ~____~;  ...Ughhhh...  Just let it die.  ;_;  

10:57 PM 9/16/2020 Oh no!  Is Chris Redfield possessed?!???  Ok, old lady...  o_O!  So are they saying the lady reading the story IS Mia?  Ooh, stylized storytelling shadow puppets.  *.*!  Who is "Mother Miranda"?  VILLAGE.  SPOOKY.  Is that THE MERCHANT?!?  *O*  lol  

11:04 PM 9/16/2020 Yes!  There it is!  Devil May Cry 5 Special Edition!  ;U;  I passed up getting DMC5 last Black Friday, partially because I was hoping for soem kind of special edition...And here it fucking is!  *o*!  Sure, I've alreayd spoiled myself on the stoyr by now, but I want to play this game!  I always have so much fun playing this game.  ;U;  Ohmyfreakinggawd!!!!!!!!!!!  ;U;!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  ...Yeah, I know I saw someone mention a new DMC5 earlier, but it still makes me so happy.  ;U;  

IGN's stream is still off sync between the audio and visual.  Maybe I should switch to GameSpot's vid of the stream.  

11:09 PM 9/16/2020 Is this...FNAF??????????????? OMG  

11:11 PM 9/16/2020 Demon's Souls looks so high def and detailed, I didn't recognize it.  lol

11:16 PM 9/16/2020 OH YES!!!!!!!!  PERSONA 5 GETS JUST AS MUCH TIME IN THE MONTAGE!!!!!!!!!  More than 1 or 2 frames, like last time!  This time, SEveral seconds!  And the title reappears during the rundown of logotypes!  ^O^!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  

11:19 PM 9/16/2020 Oh, yes!  God of War!  Please go to Eagypt or some other panthenon! ...Oh, Ragnarok.  Well.  That'll be cool too, I'm sure.  It'll have way more gods than last time.  

11:17 PM 9/16/2020 Oh, PS5, you do look nice.  But I promised myself that PS4 would be my last console.  I just have to face facts now: I dont' actually play videogames much anymore.  It used to be a big part of my life.  An enormous part of my identity.  And I didn't want to let it go.  But I have to face the reality.  My backlog didn't pile up worse than normal gamers' for no reason.  I don't feel motivated enough to engage in such an active passtime anymore.  I need passive entertainment now in my "old age".  And look how overactive I already am, just reacting, making fan-art, and writing essays about all that passive entertainment I've been absorbed into instead.  I guess I'm too old and tired for videogames.  ;_;  Well, playing them, anyway.  I have enough fun watching let's players, and I waste enough time engaging with fan-art/fandom with just that already.  If I added gameplay time, I probably wouldn't have time to eat/sleep. And I'm too old now to not sleep, regardless of how much I already stave it off.  

11:23 PM 9/16/2020 PS5 November 12 release date. $500 with disk. $400 purely digital drive.  

11:24 PM 9/16/2020 Ok.  I don't care about IGN's reactions, when I know Professor Thorgi has a reaction vid on Twitch.  I'm going there now.  

[tsuncoon]

Can a Skeksis cry pt 2

I went off the rails and wrote way too fucking much ahah enjoy

--

SkekGra kept running , the further he got the more it pained him to be apart from urGoh. It felt like an elastic band was stretching thin, pulling him back to his other, his better half.

He just needed to get away from the whispers and the looks. His breathing rasped, it was like he was swimming against the tides. He could not remember the last time he had been so far from Urgoh, probably while he was still the Conqueror.

If the Conqueror could see what he had become, it was funny to think just how strongly he would oppose the path taken, how he would likely stop ar nothing to ensure this future would not be his. Yet here he was. Suffering the fate the other Skeksis refuse to endure.

He let out a loud and frustrated wail as he tugged on his fluffy mane, he hoped Thra was proud of itself for giving him the vision and making him suffer so, it was a just punishment for his crimes.

SkekGra’s fur bristled as he heard a twig snap near by, over the years he had let his senses dull while he was isolated with only himself. He hadn’t realized by smell or sound that anyone else was in the immediate area.

“Hmmmm old friend? Is that you?”

SkekGra recognized the curious humming

“Chamberlain” he breathed in surprise, the last time he saw another Skeksis he ended up with a knife through his hand. He was not sure if the Chamberlain came as a friend or foe. SkekGra certain did not want to fight another Skeksis, but if he must then he would without hesitation.

“Call Skeksil, we were once friends yes?”

SkekGra was once loyal to all of his kind, there was a strong sense of skeksishood, an unspoken bond tethered together by loyalty and a desire to not be alone, he could feel that bond even now. He recognized that no one could understand him the way another Skeksis could, not even UrGoh as much as he tried, they were opposites while he and the Skeksis were the same.

He felt great longing as he recalled his time in the castle, but those fleeting happy moments in the days of early Skeksis rule would always be soured by his fall to Heretic.

Distinctly he remembered the Chamberlain murmuring into the ears of their companions, and their emporor. These mutterings made expressions towards SkekGra grew colder and more suspicious By the day. He wondered what lies SkekSil had told them to make them distrust him so, or maybe he did not need to lie at all.

“No, I don’t think you were ever my friend" SkekGra admitted somberly, it saddened him to say it out loud, he was a fool to have thought otherwise back then.

The Chamberlain hummed “Could be friends now, I could help Heretic earn place black in palace. Be Conqueror again, in need of your talents times of war" Chamberlains hands were at his sides, very calm and open.

“No" he declined without an ounce of hesitation “I would never--"

“Conqueror once would never betray own kind” SkekSil interrupted “your loyalty is wavering! Cannot be trusted by Gelfling”

SkekGra’s expression must have revealed just how much that hurt him, since the Chamberlain smiled and continued on that line of discussion. “how long hmmm till selfish heretic betray gelfling for own desires like betrayed Skeksis?” his words were full of judgment and malice.

“Maybe you’re right…” SkekGra said quietly “I am a Skeksis after all.”

The agreement made the Chamberlin confused, he hadn’t expected the other to agree with him so easily.

He walked closer to SkekSil “If anyone stands in my way, be it a Skeksis or a gelfling, I will run them through with my talons" he was looming over him, standing close. His eyes dared SkekSil to pull that blade he had hidden on him.

SkekSil watched the fiery anger in the Heretics eyes, recognizing them as the Conquerors. He could see now that while his name changed his intensity still burned as strong as ever, unfortunately that fire which was once used as a weapon for the Skeksis empire now threatened to burn down the Skeksis throne.

“You are fool!” SkekSil hissed “When Urskek whole Urskek will try to purify self again! SkekGra wont come back as Skeksis, Urskek will destroy SkekGra to become a pure self!”

“I will not make that mistake again” SkekGra stated confidently, he and Urgoh made that mistake once, he was certain they would not repeat it.

“Heretic may think so, but Urskek cannot go home with Skeksis half, too impure!” SkekSil had a point and SkekGra knew it, even when combined they would still be stuck here, forever outcastes from their kind because of him…

“I would rather spend the rest of my days together as one than separated and alone"

SkekSil pressed his beak together into a hard angry line. An annoyed groaning echoed from his throat.

“aahh" Skekgra hissed, grabbing his wrist to see dull teeth marks appearing on the back of his hand.

“Urgoh..” he looked to the Chamberlin suspiciously, if he was here.. that means the Grathim…

SkekGra glared towards Chamberlain, he should kill the other… he hated the Skeksis almost as much as he hated himself. Still, he could not blame them, he understood their motivations, he once thought the same way they did. They were just as incomplete and hopeless to control their instincts ass he was.

“If I see you again, SkekSil, I will kill you quickly to spare UrSol any suffering" he promised. Although it pained him to kill a being as hopeless as a Skeksis he couldn’t be weak, sacrifices would have to be mmade.

SkekGra didn’t look back, he took the fasted form of travel, through the trees, lunging through the branches. Running towards Urgoh he suddenly moved much more quickly as the strain between them lessened.

UrGoh had followed SkekGra from the gelfling building, but he was too slow to keep up once his half ran into the trees. To make chase was a lost cause.

UrGoh frowned as he watched him go. He should not have left SkekGra alone knowing how negative his thoughts could get when his mind was not stimulated and distracted.

The Skeksis got an unenviable amount of emotion in the split, as only half of one being it was to much for SkekGra to bear at times.

Urgoh sat on a large mossy log, content to wait there for his other half until he was ready to return; Urgoh was after all very patient. He closed his eyes and began to meditate barely having time to find tranquility before a curious voice called for him.

“A mystic.. so the rumors were true” the gelfling sounded by intrigued by its discovery. “you are from off world right?”

UrGoh slowly opened his eyes and his mouth “….yes"

“What is it like outthere?” I’ve never met someone from a different planet before, till now I’ve never known they existed!”

“o…ne.. p…re…s…pe…ct..ive… do…es.. not…”

The gelfling looking on awkwardly, he had expected a long answer, but not like this.

“….p….a..int… a..n… a..cc…ur…ate…. Pi…c..t..u..re"

The gelflings ears fell in disappointment, such a long wait for a non answer.

“Well, what’s the picture you paint?”

“…..” UrGoh breathed out deeply in contemplation of the question. He was not sure he could even say. His memories were foggy and incomplete, they had been split with SkekGra, and without the other here to help put the missing parts together, his memories were a nonsensical mess.

“…h…o…me… wa…s.. n…ic…e" he didn’t know what else he could say to ease the little gelflings curiosity. Homeworld was like nothing a gelfling could understand, every bit of it was different in every regard, down to its cells and atoms. They were made up of different things, from galaxies unlike anything comprehensible.

Urgoh’s eyebrows lowered sadly, he could feel SkekGra had gone quite a distance.

“Maybe I’ll ask Augrah…” the gelfling entwined their fingers nervously, the Mystic seemed lost in his own world, staring ahead at the trees. Urgoh didn’t even notice the little gelfling run off when a commotion began to erupt around them.

A few of the gelfling that had gone ahead of the group to scout were running back with their voices high in alarm. “The Garthim! They’ve arrived!”

“What!?” Breas voice was heard near by, along with the shattering of pottery, it would seem these monsters were faster than they appeared, and had caught up with them so quickly.

“They are closing in fast! We have to get out of here and meet up with the oth-AUGH!!” a large claw wrapped around the gelfling before flinging it through the air with all its force.

UrGoh lifted his hand to his mouth, he bit down strongly into his flesh. He did not bleed but there was a noticeable teeth pattern imprint.

The mystic stood up from his log to surprise Brea when he was suddenly behind her “qu…I…ck..ly.. w..e mu..st.. get… to.. saf…ety" he urged

“I have to warn everyone first!” She had to take charge of the panic and usher everyone to safety, it is what her mother would have done. “Our injured will need help leaving!” She ran towards the old tree that acted as a shelter for those previously injured by the Skeksis and their monsters.

She ran past Rian holding back one of the beasts, its claws were powerful enough to snap a sward in two, its hide impenetrable. All he could do was avoid its attacks, and pray to Thra it would not land one.

“RIAN! Hold on a little longer!” she hoped her words would keep him going. She ran against the crowd, arriving at the medical tent where the healthy gelfling were attempting to hurry the injured to safety, but it was a slow process as many could not be moved so roughly.

Brea was quick to help up a gelfling who had lost his leg. “Come on now, time to go" she tried to sound her least frightened.

“princess.. you are too important to lose.. please.. leave me. I am no longer helpful to the rebellion"

“Nonsense!” she spoke in anger “no one will be left behind! Your life has worth, I owe you this debt for fighting alongside us" she assured, putting his hand around her shoulder, her other hand held his hip as they slowly waddled to the door.

The tree they were inside shook, debris falling from the ceiling. She was quick to cover the poor man, coughing as they both inhaled the dirt.

Outside she suddenly heard… silence

It had been a while since SkekGr ahad climbed and leaped through the foliage of Thra, it was much easier to grip than the stones that made up his home at the circle of the sun and the caves of Grot.

When SkekGra arrived he could see Garthim closing in on a small group of gelfling soldiers attempting to hold it back while others flee.

SkekGra pushed himself off a branch, launching at the horrific beetle monster with the dead purple gaze.

The gelfling shrieked “The Skeksis are here!!” they felt now that they were truly doomed.

One lone gelfling was trapped in the creatures claws, screaming and refusing to accept his imminent death. Just as the monster intended to snap the gelfling in two SkekGra intercepted, grabbing the attackers claw and forcing it open, the unharmed gelfling dropped to the ground, surprised but thankful.

The Garthims other claw stabbed into SkekGras side, but his years sustaining injury helped him fight through the pain. Even as felt warm ooze dripping down his side. From this he gathered that the Garthim were not smart enough to go for vital parts of the body, they relied on brute force to end the fight. But against a Skeksis hoping to win with brute force was not a good strategy.

SkekGra’s talons dug deep, piercing the hard shell of the monsters claw before swinging his arms enough to throw the beast over his shoulder and smashing the beetle into the dirt floor.

The gelfling who once trembled watched, astonished by the display of power, most of them had heard of Skeksis might, but had never witnessed it for themselves.

There was a reason so few Skeksis managed to control so many gelfling and creatures of Thra, their power was other worldly.

The monster struggled on it’s back until SkekGra stomped on its head until the purple light in its eyes drained.

The surrounding gelfling looked down to the felled beast. Due to the damage it had sustained the abomination began to unravel and fall apart.

SkekGra had left before the gelfling had a chance to speak. He put pressure to his wound as he ran against the crowd, he would never admit it to anyone but it was a challenge to avoid stepping on the little gelflings when they scurried around like this.

He spotting Rian dancing with one of the Garthim, he watched curiously, knowing better than to steal a kill.

“Where is UrGoh?” he inquired very loudly

“Little busy here!” Rian grunted, throwing himself to the floor to avoid being struck, only now he found himself in a vulnerable position, laying in the dirt.

SkekGra moved between Rian and the Garthim, he did not like to ruin another’s fun but felt it was appropriate to step in. Grabbing the dark creations clawed arm he ripped the appendage out of its socket, a trench of bile opened, splattering on those who got too close. As the bloody fluid emptied the reanimated being became nothing but a husk like the last one.

SkekGra put out his hand to help the little gelfling rise. Rian breathed a sigh of relief, glad to have been saved in the nik of time. “I am afraid I don’t know where UrGoh is. Aren’t you always with him?”

“We don’t always have to be together. It’s a choice" he rebutted, feeling a little insulted at Rians assumption that he was so dependent, maybe he was just defensive because it was true.

“We will find him. You’re alive so he must be fine” Rian reasoned. He had spotted another beetle monster scurrying towards a hollowed out tree that acted as a safe haven for gelfling to hide.

“Help me to push these guys back enough so the others can escape"

“Push them back? Gelfling with talk like that you will never beat the Skeksis. Were going to kill them" SkekGra said, rather aggressively stealing a sward from a trembling gelfling soilder.

Weak, he would never had allowed such a gelfling in his ranks before, but now days he didn’t have the luxury of choosing who fought. Everyone who could had to stand against the Skeksis.

Rian was a little hesitant to get chose to SkekGra, it was like a switch went off and the Skeksis was a totally different being. He seemed so.. combative. He was clearly looking for a fight.

With a large smile SkekGra bounded towards the fight shirking loudly like a war cry. He ran head first into one of the Garthim, pushing it far back, away from the rest so they’re attacks out be out of sync. He knew better than to take on too many at once, he needed to separate them first.

It had been so long since he last gripped a sward, this one was so light it felt like wielding a feather but he was energized none the less, lashing and cutting the blade through the east with his great power. The sward was left with dent after dent, too flimsy to withstand the impact of blade against the Garthim shell.

With his hands he tore the Garthims legs from its body, then proceeded with the other limbs until it was lifeless like the rest. Still SkekGra took out some pent up frustrations on the beast, thinking it was probably the only thing as monstrous as he was.

He flinched when he felt a gentle hand on his shoulder then turned to see UrGoh standing there next to him.

“I..t….I….s .. D…o…ne…” UrGoh urged his Skeksis counterpart away from the bloody pulp that was the monsters body.

He noticed his better half had very bloody knuckles, immediately he grew concerned that he had been attacked before realizing it was his own over zealous attacking that had damaged both their bodies.

SkekGra clenched his blood covered fists “..I hurt us again" he whispered very shamefully, getting a sympathetic look from the mystic “I…d..I..dn..t… e..v…en.. f…ee..l.. I…t.” UrGoh gave him an understanding pat on the shoulder and smiled.

As the adrenaline left his body SkekGra noticed the gelfling that had surrounded them, drawn in by the commotion.

SkekGra suddenly felt very exposed. He imagined he must look even more terrifying then he had before, covered in blood and allowing them to see a suppressed violent side to him.

“Heretic that was amazing! I didn’t know you had it in you!” Rian said excitedly and out of breath. He and a small army of gelfling were able to handle the other Grathim.

“What is going on here?” Brea walked towards her Skeksis friend, handing the injured soilder to a vapran herbal master to aid him.

“The Heretic took out two Grathim all on your own!”

“Three!” a Drenchen gelfling from earlier shouted, the very one SkekGra has pried from the beast at first arrival. “I had my doubts about you Heretic, but I am glad to have you on our side"

SkekGra was surprised by the warm reception he was getting.

“you know what this means?!” an unnamed gelfling shouted from the crowd “Were saved!” the chatter was rising along with excitement levels.

“He can be our secret weapon against the Garthim!”

“He can take the Skeksis head on!”

“I am glad he is on our side!”

“SkekGra the good!” the gelflings cheered and chanted. SkekGras eyes were wide, they weren’t afraid. They liked him.. despite being a Skeksis and all the pain he and his kind had caused.

He knew his nature, knew he was capable of horrible things. He would use his strength to help the gelfling he once conquered and with their help become closer to one day being whole.

[walkineternity]

Day 3: Delirium

(The Umbrella Academy x Sandman)

Klaus knew he was in trouble.

He had overdosed again. He tried to stay clean, for Ben and Vanya, for his other siblings, and for Dave. He so very much wanted to see Dave.

 But. He tried, okay. Tried so very fucking hard, and everyone was so focussed on Vanya that his efforts weren’t exactly…supported. Ben, of course, knew. And Klaus was grateful to have him. And he didn’t really blame everyone for not paying attention to him. They never really did that in the first place, unless he was causing trouble. And this time, it was because Vanya had nearly ended the world and he got that. He really did. He was trying to be there for them.

 But. He was an addict, okay. He can admit that. And…it was so hard to stay clean. He was so fucking high right now. He was so fucking sick right now. And Ben was yelling at him again.

 “Fuck! I can’t do this again, Klaus! You were doing so well! Fuck! I can’t even pick up the phone to call the ambulance can I! No! You are going to die in this alleyway and then I’m going to have nobody to talk to and, and, and you can’t leave me alone! Please, Klaus, please! Shit, okay, I’m going to try and get help, okay? I’m going to try.”

 Klaus felt himself drift. Ben was still talking, but then suddenly everything was quiet. He didn’t really get how he could still hear Ben with all the drugs in his system, but the other spirits had quieted down. And now, finally, Ben was gone too. He was going to die alone. Like he fucking deserved. His eyes shut, closing over tears that never fell and let the fog take him…

 Next thing he knew there was something licking his face. Okay, still alive. Still dying. Probably. He opened his eyes.

 Well. Where was he? This wasn’t the alleyway anymore. Maybe he wasn’t dying and he was already dead. But this wasn’t heaven. This was…he wasn’t sure. There were explosions of colours and shapes twisting in and out of existence and he felt simultaneously the highest he’s ever been and stone cold sober. He felt like he was awake and dreaming at the same time.

 And in the midst of all this madness, there was a rather ordinary looking dog, who was licking his face.

 “Well, hey there, boy. You wouldn’t happen to know the way back to reality now, would you?”

 He didn’t know what to expect at this point. And yet it still startled him when the dog stopped licking his face and spoke back. “Ah. You’re awake. Good. You don’t taste very good.”

 Klaus frowned. “Actually, I’m a snack. A delicious- wait. I’m…awake.” He sits up and looks around. Nothing was solid. There was no up and no down and he had no clue what he was sitting on because reality kept changing. Okay, he was definitely going crazy. “I don’t think I’m awake.”

 “Hm. Well. In a manner of speaking. And in another, you’re dead.”

 “Huh.”

 “You don’t sound surprised.”

 “Well, I’ve been dead before. And really, I was asking for it anyways.”

 The dog tilted its head, considering him, “I should be more specific. You’re only mostly dead, this time. This isn’t Death’s realm, but her sister’s.”

 “…mostly dead? What am I? The man in black now?” Klaus hadn’t seen the movie until his teens, when he was homeless and couch-surfing. Or rather bed-surfing. And old lover had the movie on VHS.

 “I don’t know what that means.” The dog huffed and then said, “I’m Barnabas, by the way. Not that you asked.”

 “Aw, what an adorable name!” Klaus tried to pet him, but Barnabas looked mildly offended and ducked his head away. He looked like he was about to say something snippy when a bunch of brightly coloured fish swam past his head. Klaus had been trying to ignore his surroundings for the sake of his own sanity, but this caught his attention.

 And then the…strangest voice followed after. “Ohhh, fishies! Come back here! …Hi, Barnabas!” He couldn’t really describe it. He could understand it, and for the most part it sounded like a young women’s voice, but something was distinctly…otherworldly. The voice sounded how this world looked. Chaotic, ever-changing, pitches and stresses in all the wrong places. It would have been called musical, if it wasn’t so discordant.

 And then a figure stepped out of the swirls of colours and then he realised that nothing was ever going to make sense in here. She was colourful herself. Rainbow hair cut in an odd style. Two different coloured eyes and the oddest combination of clothes.

 Though, honestly, he couldn’t say anything about his clothes. Currently, he was sporting the same outfit he wore in the real world and, frankly, wasn’t to off from this figure’s choice of clothes.

 Well, at least they had something in common. “Nice shoes,” he tries.

 The woman (girl? Young lady?) was talking to the dog and the fish, but turned to him at the sound of his voice. She drifted closer and peered down at him.

 “Well, hello there, traveler. You seem a little lost.”

 Klaus shrugged. She giggled. “Welllll, I suppose that’s, uh, that’s what you call life, now, isn’t it? Just a little bit lost and a lot bit lost! Go-ing on Forever!”

 Barnabas came a bit closer to her, to sit beside her, not quite touching, but close. Like he meant to offer her comfort. She absentmindedly scratched his ears, but still didn’t look away from Klaus. Oh, was he supposed to offer a reply?

“Well, I’m hoping that’s not the case. I’ve been trying, lately, you see, to settle down a bit. Stay clean and, y’know, be there for my family. Try to…have a home, a proper one.” His voice grew more unsure as he continued to speak.

 She was staring at him as he spoke, but not in his eyes. Just looking there briefly and then looking at his shirt and then his hair. Listening, but just couldn’t keep completely still. As she did, her nail polish changed colour and her ears changed shape and the rainbow in her hair shifted. This whole place was topsy-turvy. Strange how a talking dog named Barnabas was the sanest thing in here.

 She looked back up briefly into his eyes and then down at her feet. “It’s Nice to do things for fa-mi-ly. I have many Siblings too. I like to help them sometimes. You said I have nice shoes. Would you like to wear them? We can trade!”

 “Um.” Klaus wasn’t really sure what to say. “I don’t think our feet are the same size?”

 She frowned. “Oh, what does that matter? Its just for fuunnn. C’mon!” And she proceeded to take off her shoes. Which, were just as colourful as her hair. Rainbow boots that had really neat buckles shaped like the fish that swam around their heads.

 His were a solid black heel, stolen from Allison. They pinched his toes, not being the proper size, but they made his legs look gorgeous.

 Allison probably wasn’t going to be happy to learn her shoes were traded away, but then again, she probably wasn’t going to be happy with him either way. If he ever made it back, that is.

 He decided he should probably say all that out loud, and then he did, because they really weren’t his shoes, but the girl in front of him just sat down to better take of her shoes. “Oh, you’ll get out of Here eventu-ally. I like you, but you’re not mine to keep.” She finally managed to pull off both her boots. She was wearing mismatched socks, but those seemed to vanish. “And your family is just worried about you. If your sssister is mad, it’s only because she cares. You should ask them for help.”

 He shrugged and easily kicked off his own shoes, accidently kicking it too close to Barnabas. The dog just looked long-suffering.

 “They just think I’m useless and crazy. Well, maybe not Ben, but I’m not exactly doing my best there, y’know? He deserves to follow someone else around. Someone who won’t disappoint him again.”

 The girl hummed. “They say I’m crazzzzy too. But that’s alright. Mad-ness isn’t always a Bad thing….it helps when I know too much. Sometimes its nice to have a break from san-i-ty.” Here she started to slip on the heels and gestured at the boots, so Klaus grabbed one and put it on, stamping a little to get his heel in. Huh. Perfect fit. She continued, “And just because I’m mad, doesn’t mean my siblings don’t care about me. Doesn’t mean I don’t care about them. We aallll make mistakes, even Beings such as us, even little ones such as you, and we…oh, shoot, Barnabas! What’s the word? The- the Big one.”

 She glanced around as if the word she was looking for would suddenly appear. “You know. When the butterflies are iiiinn your body instead of outside them. Like stepping off the edge of a cliff, but knowing there is Someone to catch you, or for you to catch them.”

 Barnabas opened his mouth to say something, but she snapped her fingers (which made Klaus do a doubletake when the snap sound created visual shockwaves of colour, like they were in some sort of comic book), and then said, “Oh! Love! It’s lo-ve. We all love each other the same. They loved me when I was Delight, and they still love me as Delirium. I mean, look at Bar-na-bas!” She gestured with a heel in her hand. The dog sat a little straighter. “He was a gift to me from one of my bro-thers, to care and look afterrr me, and we’ve become such good friends! Destruction cares in his own way, and I know your siblings do too. You just got-ta….gotta ask, okay?”

 Barnabas smiled slightly. It looked a bit weird on a dog, but it seemed gentle. “I think we are the very best friends, my dear Delirium.”

 She put the other heel on and bounced up onto them, smiling at them both, at the world around them, at the tiny fish swimming above her head. The black of the heels swirled with spots of colour, but mostly stayed the same.

 Klaus finished doing up the buckles on both shoes and stood up too. He reached a hand up and the fish swam through his fingers and around his arm. The rainbow shoes felt warm and comfortable on his feet. He felt a bit giddy. He gave her a big grin and said, “Yeah. Okay. Sure. If I ever manage to get out of here, I’ll ask. Why not!”

 She gave him a grin in return. To match. Though hers stretched a little too far on her face. Still friendly, but not exactly a human smile. Her eyes changed colours too, but never the same colours at the same time. A fish swam in front of her face and this distracted her from him.

 “Well, how do I get out of here anyways? Not that I don’t mind your company, I should be getting back to the real world.”

 She looked back at him and seemed to startle a little bit. “Ohhhh, what were we talking about?”

 He blinked and looked at her and then looked at Barnabas, who said to her, in a reassuring manner, “It wasn’t important. Klaus was leaving soon anyways.”

 “Hm. My he-ad hurts. Was I talking Rightly again? That always Hurts.”

 “Yes, Delirium, but you don’t have to anymore. Why don’t we help Klaus go home and then play with the fish?”

 Klaus frowned at Barnabas in confusion. Delirium laughed joyfully and said, “Well, hell yeah! There’s only a few swimming around, buuuut I can make more!” She proceeded to spin around and do exactly that.

 Barnabas sidled closer to Klaus and said, “She does that, sometimes.”

 “What? Forgets?”

 “No. Remembers. The advice she gave you? How coherent she spoke? Does not happen often. You should take heed. The knowledge she has…is vast. So vast that it seems to…hurt her. Now, it’s time for you to go.” He didn’t say this roughly, but there was a sadness when he spoke.

 “Thanks,” Klaus said, heartfelt. “And thank her for me, too, even if she doesn’t remember.”

 Delirium wandered back over with a great many more fish swimming around, some bigger than others. Some so small he could barely see in the swirl of colours and shapes. “Oh yes! You!” She tapped him firmly on the forehead and said, “Say the magic words!”

 “Um, please-”

 “Wrong, so wrong. Try again.” And here she clicked her new heels three times.

 Klaus couldn’t help it. He laughed. He saw that movie too. And then he copied her action and said the “magic” words, “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. There’s no pla-”

 And then he was in an ambulance, the paramedic’s expression triumphant and relieved. Ben, hovering over him on the other side, looked similar.

 “Klaus, don’t ever do that to me again. You are so lucky there was this goth lady around. Apparently, you aren’t the only one that can speak to the dead. She was pretty Zen about the whole thing. Said it wasn’t your time and managed to find a nearby payphone. She didn’t even ask why I couldn’t call the ambulance myself!”

 Ben sounded a bit hysterical. The paramedic seemed to be chattering away as he checked Klaus’ vitals. Klaus felt himself tearing up. He could still feel the drugs in his system. “I’m so sorry, Ben. I can’t do this-”

 “C’mon, Klaus! I know you’re stronger- what about Dave-”

 “No, shit, Ben, just- I can’t do this alone, okay? I-I really need. I need help. I want to stay clean. Please. I just- please. I can’t do this alone.”

 The paramedic wasn’t paying attention to his babble, too focussed on actually keeping him alive, but Ben was listening intently. He tried to lay his hand on Klaus’ shoulder, but his hand passed through. Klaus shivered. Ben looked disappointed, but not surprised. He settled for leaning over, close to Klaus’ face, and said, “Never, Klaus. I’m here, okay. And the others…we’ll ask for help from them too. We’re all trying to be a family, right? And….and whatever you need.”

 Klaus felt tears in his eyes and with a rough voice he said, “Thank you, Ben. I always knew you were my favourite brother.”

 Ben rolled his eyes, but a smile tugged the corner of his lips. “Oh, please. I’ll remember that next time you say that to any of our other siblings.”

 “Why would Allison or Vanya be my favourite brother?”

 “Fuck off, you know what I meant.” Okay, definitely a smile now.

 And then Ben happened to glance at his feet. “Klaus, where the hell did you get those?”

 Klaus looked at his feet and saw that he wasn’t wearing Allison’s heels, but rainbow boots. Huh. So not a drug-induced dream.

 “Klaus?”

 “I’ve been thinking, Ben.”

 “Oh no. I didn’t know you could do that.” He gestured at the boots. “Are you not going to answer?”

 Klaus ignored him and stared at the boots. “I’ve been wondering if they might allow aquariums in rehab.”

 Ben stared at him a little. But he was also long used to Klaus saying weird stuff. “Well. If we manage to use some of dad’s fortune for rehab, they’ll allow us as many fish as we want. If…if that’s what you wanted the aquarium for.”

 It was…so fucking nice to hear Ben using “us” and “we” like that. He knew Ben was stuck with him, but it felt…. like he wasn’t alone. That Ben meant it. That he was going to have help this time, from the whole family. And if they used dear old dad’s money…well. That would be icing on the cake. Petty? Yes. Deserved, even beyond the grave? Hell yes. He’s glad that he didn’t have another visit from him. He doesn’t think he could stand anymore revelations or disappointment from him. He’d take a bizarre realm of multi-coloured girls and fish and talking dogs any day.

 Though, he really didn’t want to go back any time soon. Being mostly dead was exhausting.

 “Yeah, Ben, fish. Lots of colourful fish.” His voice sounded further away, like hearing himself through a long tunnel. Klaus could feel his eyes droop closed.

 Ben laughed softly. “Anything you need, Klaus. Have some nice dreams for me, will you?” Klaus’ eyes were closed, but for a flash, he thought he saw someone above him. He couldn’t see features, just a strange helmet and black robes. A pale hand sprinkled shining dust onto him. Onto his closed eyes. And then the figure was gone.

  And he swore, right before he drifted off to sleep, that he felt Ben’s hand on his shoulder. But then again, it could have just been his imagination.

[girlbookwrm]

AVENGERS: CIVIL WAR

THE MIGHTY PRE ENDGAME REWATCH

it took us two entire days to watch this, back in whenever we were watching this. I’ve got a Bundle of Papers here in front of me, and the CW Bundle is by far the thickest, and that’s with minimal salt content.

Speaking of Salt: The Roommate and I had to approach this as an Avengers movie. Because otherwise the salt levels in this would be toxic, possibly fatal. Even so, ppl with high cholesterol be warned

LET’S DO THIS

1991!

Winter Soldier: 

what is this

what is this please

dat beef tho

what is this op sec

honestly

NO mask

SHINY FUCKOFF ARM just HANGING OUT

CCTV???

~ooooooo he’s a ghooooooooooooost~

he’s got an extremely dedicated and very harried cleanup crew is what he’s got

OH! OLD LOGO ILU!!!

LAGOS!!

The Roommate: That’s a lot of sugar

i ain’t judging

what, you think her powers run on optimism?

is there an accent? is there not? Shroedinger’s accent.

droney the drone

sam’s lil sky roomba

i love him

guhhhh this scene every line shows character and growth and i just *clenches fist*

did

did falcon just throw steve

just yeeted him at the enemy?

god i love that

also: has steve bulked up since TWS?

that’s also on Sam, yeah?

CUT THE CHEEEEECCCCK

is this fucking NEUROTOXIN? STEVE WHERE’S UR MASK?

Steve, throwing himself into a room full of an unknown poison gas without a mask: I bet i can survive this

Bucky, in Bucharest: *breaks whatever he’s holding without knowing why*

god i love sam

“I don’t work like that no more” Means ?????????????

PARKOUR NAT

is also BRUNCH MOM NAT

“both grunting” is always one of my favorite subtitles

2 white boys fighting in the middle of the street like it’s a video game

god someone took the murder strut to heart wow that is some. that is some something that’s for sure.

give me even one (1) heterosexual explanation for "your pal your buddy your bucky"

there’s no way that bucky ever said this, right? this is just Rumlow fucking with steve, and the screenwriters fucking with us

because IN CASE YOU WERE NOT IN THIS FANDOM IN 2016, WE ALL THOUGHT CAP WOULD DIE IN THIS MOVIE

WE WERE SO SURE

wow i wonder if that will be relevant to anyone’s emotions here in the year of our lordt 2019

anyway, what bucky actually said was:

“please tell rogers... that he’s a big dumb dildo and he should wear a gas mask and also a parachute.”

listen i love this opening scene but also wanda is not at all responsible for this explosion and the fact that they act like she is undermines my ability to suspend my disbelief.

DIGITAL ENYOUTHENMENT ALERT

also, tony the fact that you are using your literal dead mom as an actual therapist is

wow

BARF feels right to me

too real, tony

it’s too real

how ARE you getting around the strings and taxes tho

Also can i say that i actually love that Pepper’s absence is this profoundly important to the story. The hole where pepper should be is a huge part of this story and i like that. i like that a lot.

WOW THAT EXTRA IS LIKE A MASHUP OF NAT AND WANDA. SHE IS THE GENERIC MARVEL WHITE LADY

more a+ visual storytelling with the elevator

I’m just so mad that they blame wanda and play that straight?

all they had to do was outright acknowledge one (1) time that the media is picking on her because she’s a woman/a foreigner

imagine that speech coming from nat instead of steve

though i do love Steve’s pep talk

again. give me one (1) heterosexual explanation

though why not have Steve say “they’re just bullies, you did the right thing” and hearken back to smolsteeb

The Roommate: Remember how i was mad at his Oscars Velvet Blazer? I am also mad at this sweater.... it looks... so soft... i don’t know if i want it on him or off him... just wanna tuch....... and wear..........?”

Vision’s Ascot is. Something else man.

The Roommate: Why is ross secretary of state?

Me: Why is Trump President

Me: I bet Ross is vegan

the roommate, who has vegan-related trauma: UUUUGGGHHHHHHHH

Nat's reaction to vigilantes: Bitch please. she is Unbothered.

you don’t have to show us footage we’ve got the ptsd nightmares

400 pages in 3 days

[tired american sighing]

we honestly can’t even criticize this plot point anymore just

[my longest and most american sigh]

CLEVELAND!!!

hail hydra continues to be the Most Terrible last words

but WHY does ross have the congressional medal of honor

do you know how HARD it is to get one of those????

yeesh

sassy black friends sassing at each other

is definitely a

thing that is happening rn

Vision: Well Actually

no one cares, vis

ok like

a kid is dead but

3.6 is an okay GPA

maybe all my friends are overachievers

maybe it’s just because most of them are women but like

it’s an okay GPA

i’d have 8000% more respect for Tony if he was more upfront like “look this is on me” especially here

are we supposed to be picking all this up as subtext, actually?

because i know that this movie ALSO had a Troubled Youth ala ant man

and i really do appreciate the Russos for relying on a smart audience but there’s a lot going on

and it’s very obvious to me that they had to shift gears 18,000 times in the script writing phase

so like, you’ve got old man vet steve

but it’s painfully obvious that he missed vietnam right?

like

it’s painfully obvious

and he’s v egotistical and self righteous too 

it IS a battle of the egos

and no one is right

except natasha

Steve: i have to go

me: mood

LONDON!!!!

oh god

oh god no

steve god no steve oh god

gfhskfdjjjksjdjjhrrrrhrhhrhfhh [wailing and rending of garments]

Re Peggy’s age:

SURPRISE IT’S ACTUALLY PLAUSIBLE

so the True Hallmark of a Cap Movie is Peggy telling steve what to do.

so weird to have that in an avengers movie

i do love this. GOOD BRO NAT CONTENT

Um. is vision a minor? is wanda?

again, nat is the only Correct one here

stay together guys

it might be

reeeeeeaaaaally important in 

*checks watch*

two years’ time.

~hug~

VIENNA!!!!!

CHAD WICK! CHAD! WICK! CHAD! WICK!

god i love the xhosa in this

There is a level of worldbuilding in this that we p much only get from the russos/markus&mcfeely. i mean -- internal consistency worldbuilding? if that makes sense? we get a lot of visual worldbuilding in black panther, but this is distinctly different and hard to articulate and it has to do with the way they approach things and how they assume audience intelligence

it just works for me

oh no chadwick boseman don’t be cry

Sharon deserves better

than being cockblocked by her own aunt

and also sam wilson (who also deserves better)

cryptid!bucky

Nat did you get that suit from jenny agutter?

LA Brunch Mom Nat

mah girl

she’s just so tired

steve (bless him) is just so exhausting

couples date sam and steve dressed to match

“at the gym”??? really? the arm is... a bit of a giveaway

i do feel bad for zemo in this one specific case

russian IS hard

how. did he get that in there?

Soft Plumboy Bucky

BEEF

Captain’s Log: Buck’s place is a shithole

Sergeant’s Log: Steve’s face is pretty

surprise bitch

“That’s Smart, Good Strategy” is an excellent phrase to use in everyday conversation in order to weed out who Knows and who Doesn’t.

What i have learned from civil war: 

Captain America is a projectile weapon

further query:

did bucky ever hurl small steve at assailants?

Bucky: *punts steve down an alley*

Steve, 90 lbs of rage at 90 mph: GET WRECKED

Bucky’s got big tommy wiseau cryptid energy here

And now there’s a cat

bucky:

I love this vampire running and also bucky’s thighs

Steve Rogers: Excuse me sir I need to commandeer this vehicle. YEET.

Bucky Barnes: Excuse me sir I need to commandeer this vehicle. YOINK.

Bucky and Steve: Wrecking your morning commute since 2014

WAR MACHINE!!!

god vis has the biggest dorkiest crush

so vis are you a child prodigy? or? what?

The Roommate, a cinnamon roll, too good for this world, too pure: vis have you eaten anything between CW and IW?

Me, sinnamon roll, not to be trusted: *dying* *thinking about how Vision’s got schroedinger’s dick. does it exist? does it not exist? who knows.*

Me: Y. Yes. I th. think he has. eaten something. between now and. and IW. something.

The Roommate: *betrayed look*

Me: DEEP FRIED KEBAB MAYBE? I DON’T KNOW.

The Roommate: *is so disappointed*

BERLIN!!!!!!

Bucky is. So tired. Let him rest.

fucking up the morning commute again i see

u like cats??

I love the ratio of overkill:ineffectiveness with this glass box they put him in.

why did tony  bring these fancy pens

the time spent explaining them could’ve been spent doing literally anything else

*i still don’t understand the accords*

GOD STEVE WANTS TO BE AN UNCLE SO BAD

“my fault”

there it is

“truth is i don’t want to stop”

THERE it is

“i thought the accords could split the difference”

THERE IT IS

"no, i don’t.”

THERE IT IS

“IT’S INTERNMENT.”

THERE! IT! IS!

gah.

wanda’s accent et al -- MAKE IT EXPLICIT MARVEL YOU COWARDS

no but really what are the accords

here followed a 20-30 minute convo about the accords

basically the summing up was:

Nat is 100% Right Ross is 100% Wrong Everyone Else is In A Grey Area

look this is actually a really good avengers movie

but

this is a moment when the back catalogue works against them because this conversation is so -- it implies a lot of friendly interactions between these two. they seem to have a relationship

but i keep looking at all the other movies they’ve interacted in like

BITCH WHERE? WHERE IS THE TONYSTEVE FRIENDSHIP? WHERE???

i am anticipating this will cause me A Grief later

The Roommate, looking at Steve in his Grey Shirt and Jacket: Damn, sir. Stop wearing clothes.

“BIRD COSTUME???”

“j a m e s”

big holt talking to rosa vibes there

“I don’t wanna talk about it.”

A VAST AND MIGHTY MOOD

Zemo’s plan is so ridiculous i genuinely don’t have time to get into it i still have two pages of notes to get through holy shit.

this fight scene. does things. for me.

hhhHNNNNHGH BEEFSTEAK

(oh tony left with no suit? growth dot gif)

THIGHS

T H I G H S ! ! ! !

CHADWICK!

Sam out here, serving looks, casually modeling

B I C E P S ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

TOO SEXY! *crashes helicopter*

I need twelve more scenes of steve and bucky faffing about in the water.

A more effective restraint than the custom made bucky bottle

(BRIEF 1991)

haaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAa biceps u stop that

Is Tony having a heart attack???

he has no concept of how to treat children because he never was one oh no i gave myself a sad feeling

QUEENS!!!!!!!

“I’m having a big fight in a parking lot with my superhero friends better go pick up a child as backup.” - tony stark

tony he doesn’t have a passport and if he understood what was happening he would not be on your side

Now That’s What I Call Vigilantism.

Why are you bringing a CHILD to a gun fight

Tony’s face, to me, suggests that he knows EXACTLY what he’s doing

also? it’s painfully obvious to me that these scenes were copypasted in late stage when they finally found out that yes they would have the rights to spiderman lol

for some reason they don’t feel the need to tell is that this is avengers compound in 400 point font

i’m so lost

where are we?

without the 400 point font i can only assume we are on mars

THAT’s a fine way to greet YOUR FATHER, WANDA

hawkeye is in fact the team lynchpin

is it

ugh

is it because they listen to him but he listens to natasha

ugh

i bet it is

UUUUUUGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH

Vision: I have been FALLING! for THIRTY MINUTES!

“i know someone who does”

i’m confused by the cut here, because it seems to imply that Sharon, deliberately or inadvertently, rats them out to natasha?

Birds and raccoons do not get along

steve

steve no

steve

ur timing is shit steve

Scott Lang might be the best thing in this movie

well except for Dat Bone Structure

CUT THE CHEEEEEECK

*costume change in a parking lot to the yakkety sax soundtrack*

Thinking about the coming battle i am forced to concede that Iron Man Has A Point?

“do you really want to punch your way out of this?”

Steve: I ALWAYS wanna punch my way out

god scott’s such a fukkin nerd

tiny quibble but Scott “got punched by hope van dyne” lang would never say that to the black heckin widow

“gimmick”

um

people in falcon houses shouldn’t throw spider stones, samuel

wanda

those cars belong to people

oh god iron man has a point

LET’S GO LESBIANS! COME ON LESBIANS LET’S GO

*catfight sounds*

“then why did you run?”

dude you attacked me in a catsuit

Tony’s true superpower is that he knows steve, that’s how spiderbabby gets the upper hand

althought god

Tony was pre-gaslighting peter

he was pilotlighting peter

*my longest UGH yet*

“Queens?” “Brooklyn”

MAXIMUM NEW YORK ACHIEVED

ant man is the MVP

hmmmmmm “we don’t trade lives” HMMMMMMMMM

why did that truck explode

also *omg iron man has a point*

tony tedward stark how did you not know how old this child was

also peter stop pretending you don’t know what Empire Strikes Back, AT-ATs and Hoth are.

why doesn’t Vis get more flack for this

hey. hey tony. you know what sam is? A MEDIC. maybe let him LOOK AT YER FRIEND THERE instead of SHOOTING HIM IN THE FACE.

zemo’s plan is noooooonseeeeennnnnnsssse

guh these two beautiful men emoting in different directions KILL ME

this doctor is just like “yup there’s a giant purple robot here seems legit”

natasha is the only one who’s 100% right

did... did the russos kill themselves in this movie? did they cast themselves as dead extras? was this a statement of some kind?

HOW did ross get the congressional medal of honor. H O W.

“you read it”

NO ONE READ IT, IT’S 400 PAGES

tony this is Some Nonsense

ffflslkds he’s taking one of Nat’s guns KILL ME

one (1) heterosexual explanation.

rode back in a freezer truck

got pneumonia

already had pneumonia

and you blew three whole dollars on some slut

(seriously. gimme one. i’m waiting.)

srsly tho, whether you ship it or not, these two are old marrieds

the red star looks weird on his beefcake arm. did they forget to scale it up?

KITTY

listen zemo is just really turned on by cam and he didn’t mean to say that and that’s the most relateable thing he’s done so far.

It’s not just that bucky killed his mom. it’s that bucky killed his mom AND STEVE KEPT IT FROM HIM.

life alert a senior citizen has fallen

T'Challa, observing this White Nonsense™: I truly should... check myself. Before! I wreck myself.

agism is what it is

god this bit

steve dropping the shield

look at him

he is Stick A Fork In Him D O N E

Rhodey really deserves better than this? He deserves development showing the evolution of his opinion between here and IW

i wish we could get more of him grappling with this

that said

gosh wouldn’t it fucking suck if Cap and Bucky got relegated to End Credit scenes in their own got damn movie to make room for Iron Man to emote at his buddy his pal his rhodey?

*looks directly into the camera like i’m on the office.*

Anyway.

Steve rogers: getting the last word in every argument since 1918.

“from the bottom of my heart: My Bad.”