#but still choices this graphic and violent feel a lot more when it's you controlling what happens. or wjen you're supposed to be in control

[perilegs]

i think the best decision i made in bg3 was playing as the dark urge

[agirldying]

*Tw descriptions of the sexual abuse ( not super detailed or graphic ) just wanted to warn*

Hey bun,

To answer your questions in the previous ask response, I am currently 24 weeks pregnant so approximately 6 months gestation time.

I also wanted to answer that I have been with my fiance since 2017 so 5 years this August. Honestly it didn't start this way. We met a a time where we were both each other's only support system and we survived going place to place and being homeless together and many other traumas through the years until late 2020.

I would say that the abuse began in late 2020 and it started with the emotional and mental abuse then in January 2021 when his grandma died, the physical abuse really ramped up and then in march the sexual abuse started.

Honestly I think that his grandmother's death caused all of that to really happen because she was his everything and now that she was gone it made him just lose control, idk. He has a lot of trauma too that he doesn't talk about or address so there's no telling what pushed him over the edge but I think it was her death.

Unfortunately he turned to alcohol and that just made him more violent and he turned the violence on me because he didn't have anyone else he could direct all the anger to.

I think that it was the trauma from his mother that started the sexual abuse because she was unfaithful a lot during his childhood and also very manipulative about it. This made him, for some reason, constantly accuse me of cheating and lying about it which he still does today when he drinks, but I have never been unfaithful.

I think he forced me to sleep with all those people to like fulfill his fantasy that I was cheating so he made me do it? If that makes sense. Basically what he did was set up meetings between me and random men on Reddit pretending to be me and using my Snapchat and social media accounts to make them believe it was me talking to them. In reality I had no idea what was ever discussed until they came to the house and had their way with me while he watched. I had no choice in the matter because he would threaten me with violence when I begged for him to stop and not bring them over.

I'm sorry for the description of the abuse but I hope that gives you some insight into how long this has gone on and like what exactly was happening.

Again I just wanted to thank you for your responses and all of your advice, here and on traumasurvivorshelpingsurvivors, I really appreciate your kindness and your willingness to listen and try to help me.

DW 🍂

Hi DW 🍂,

It doesn't sit right with me that his grandma's death and substance abuse are what caused him to be abusive towards you. Abuse is a choice, not a byproduct. I feel like if he genuinely loves and respects you he would direct his aggression elsewhere. You should not be a punching bag (more than just physically) and as your fiancee he should know that. I don't believe he has an excuse because there is just no excuse on the planet for abuse. Yes, it's tragic that he lost his grandmother, yes it's tragic that his mother was unfaithful and manipulative, but the fact that others can come out of those situations without being abusive indicates that those aren't excuses to be abusive.

With the whole thing about Reddit, I just want you to notice how congruent this is with human trafficking. Admittedly I'm not that knowledgeable about human trafficking, so I did some research that I'd like to show you. Here is a link to humantraffickinghotline.org that talks about what human trafficking is and isn't through debunking myths. One of the first things it mentions is, like what you said, force, threats, violence, and other types of coercion to push the victim into it. "Human trafficking is the use of force, fraud or coercion to get another person to provide labor or commercial sex." You also say they would come to your home. "Survivors can be recruited and trafficked in their own home towns, even their own homes." And I think the ultimate point here is the fact that it says "Many survivors have been trafficked by romantic partners, including spouses [...]" It sounds like your fiancee was quite literally pimping you out to Redditors.

Knowing what you've shared here, I'm a bit worried for your safety, and I hope you can understand why. Ultimately it's up to you what you do, but I would urge you to look into some local shelters in your area. If you need any help with finding a place, I'd be more than happy to do some research for you, and if you need any financial assistance I am willing to chip in as much as my college student bank account can. Please know that you are not alone, please reach out to support if you are able, and just know that you deserve to be in a save environment and with someone who fully loves, respects, and listens to you. Please let you know if you need anything at all. I'm always here.

[awhitehead17]

Batfam Alphabet: F - Fear Toxin

Summary: When Tim gets injected with a new variant of Scarecrow’s fear toxin, all Jason could do is hold the kid in his arms to stop him from getting injured further as he waits for back up to arrive. 

A/N: As a warning violence happens, nothing too graphic but here’s a warning just in case!

Enjoy! :D

Jason pauses when his fingers grasp nothing but empty air. Snapping his gaze down, he frowns when he finds his pocket completely empty. He sighs and curses. This is just what he needs, he’s ran out of antidotes.

He looks up across the street to find Tim administering an antidote into another cowering civilian caught in the crossfire of Gotham’s latest villain scheme. Jason jogs over to his brother and glances at him through his helmet. “You got any more? I’m out.”

Tim shakes his head regretfully. “No. That was my last one. We really underestimated how far Scarecrow’s toxin got this time. We don’t have enough.”

Jason hums in agreement and observes their surroundings. They’re together in a back alley of Gotham’s streets, one that had been hit badly by Scarecrow’s latest fear toxin. They had the task of vaccinating all the civilians around with the new antidote. Back in the cave they calculated an estimate number of many people populated the area and had prepared more than enough between them, or so they thought, unfortunately their numbers were far from right leaving them with not nearly enough antidotes.  

Around them now, many civilians are still under the hallucinations of the toxin, some are screaming, crying or even violently yelling at empty air. Jason swears again, this is not how the night was supposed to go.

He’s brought out of his thoughts when Tim turns to him. “We’re going to need to go back and restock. We’re not much use otherwise.”

“Agreed.”

He wonders if the others are having similar issues with numbers and the lack of antidotes. The team’s spread out around Gotham’s most targeted areas, all of them working in pairs for safety and everyone working their asses off to help people in the city.

Wordlessly the two of them head for their hidden vehicles in a neighbouring alley. As they prepare to climb onto their bikes Tim glances his way to say something but ends up yelling in alarm instead. “Hood watch out!”

It’s thanks to Jason’s reflexes that he’s able to duck underneath the swinging arm in time to avoid being hit. He brings his gun out and turns to face his attacker. His attacker is probably middle aged man, a little on the heavy side and he’s wearing a shitty Halloween mask to hide his face. Jason dodges another swing and returns the favour, he takes him out in three quick and precise strikes with his hands.

A loud grunt gets his attention and Jason spins around to find Tim caught in a head lock with a gun pressed against his temple. Tim’s attacker is too wearing a mask as were the four others who now surround them. Where they came from Jason has no idea. How the hell did they miss these guys who had obviously been waiting and hiding for them to return to their bikes?

As Jason levels his gun at Tim’s attacker the four others surrounding him also raise their guns pointing them in his direction, this concludes them all into a standoff.

Tim’s attacker speaks up first. “Put that gun down or I blow his brains out.”

Behind his mask Jason rolls his eyes. How fucking cliché? He keeps his gun up though, pointing at the man and in a cocky statement he takes the safety off with an audible click. The man holding Tim snorts as he had been expecting Jason’s disobedience.

“Very well. I’ll show you how this is going to go. You get one warning and mate, you’ve just used that warning.”

He kicks Tim’s legs out from underneath him and lets him go, unexpecting the abrupt movement Tim crashes to the floor. Once he’s sprawled out on the ground the attacker stamps on one of Tim’s hands, causing a rather loud and sickening crack to ring out. Jason winces as Tim yells in pain but before anyone could react further the same man manhandles Tim to his knees and resumes their previous position.

He cocks the gun and presses it to Tim’s head. “Now, if either of you act up, you’re gonna get a hurt whole lot worse than a broken hand. Now follow us. No funny business! Get his gun!”

One of the men come and wrench Jason’s gun out of his hand and all Jason could do was let him. He doesn’t want to risk Tim any more than he has to.

He and Tim are marched out of the alley and into another before being directed into an abandoned building. They’re walked into the middle of the room and forced down to their knees, once on the ground a couple of the thugs come over to grab their hands and tie them behind their backs. Jason grits his teeth and refrains from doing something like headbutting the asshole, while next to him Tim lets out a pained grunt as his broken hand is jostled.

When they step away Jason twists his body awkwardly to get a look at his restrained wrists to find them tied with cable ties. Jason huffs in disbelief. His attention is soon brought back to the room when one of the attackers speak up.

“Boss we got’em just like you asked.”

Jason straightens up when a new figure walks into the room only to grit his teeth seconds later when Scarecrow is revealed. The bastard doesn’t stop moving until he’s looming over them. Unable to help himself Jason speaks up, sarcasm heavily laced in his tone. “Same shit different day Crane. Why don’t you go and get yourself a new hobby, go for something like knitting perhaps.”

Crane turns his head towards Jason, his expression hidden by that stupid potato sack over his head. “You would like that wouldn’t you? If I were gone there would be nothing to fear. Perhaps that clown but nothing else.”

“Sorry to break it to you but you ain’t that scary.” Jason quips, glaring through his helmet.

“Maybe not right now but with a little help, I will be, I’ll become your greatest nightmare.” Crane reaches behind him and pulls out a box, he makes a show of opening it up and producing a syringe filled with a clear liquid. “A person can learn to control themselves when feeling great emotion, sadness, happiness, anger, but never in times of fear. Fear is the minds greatest enemy and that’s why it’s so powerful, why even the greatest of men fall.”

Jason watches as Crane drifts over to stand in front of Tim, his brother simply looks up with a hard and determined expression not saying anything. Crane fiddles with the syringe in his hands, studying Tim as he does.

“It won’t work. We’re not stupid Crane.” Jason says feeling dread build up inside of him. He knows what’s about to happen and he has feeling he knows exactly what Crane’s response is going to be.

“I know. That’s why I’m sure you’ve worked out that this is a different toxin I’ve produced to the one I’ve already distributed. One of which you don’t have an antidote for.”

For the first time Tim speaks up, snarling at the man in front of him. “Go to hell Crane.” Scarecrow doesn’t answer Tim, instead he reaches down and grabs a fist full of Tim’s hair and yanks his head back to expose his neck.

From his position Jason lurches at the movement, ready to pounce but it stopped when the thugs immediately zone in on him. Guns point at him and at Tim, simply daring him to make another move. Uselessly he settles back down on the ground.

Crane jabs the syringe into the kid’s neck and injects the liquid into Tim’s body. Once it’s empty he steps away, pushing Tim down to the ground as he does. Jason is torn between worriedly watching Tim’s unmoving form on the ground and Crane’s retreating figure from the room.

One of the thugs speak up. “Uh boss now what? We not killing the big one?”

“No.” Crane says firmly. “He has a choice to make, come after me and leave the other to suffer or help him and let me go.”

“You bastard!” Jason yells as Crane exits the room, disappearing from his sight. “You’ll be sorry you’ve left me alive! I will kill your ass when I next see it.”

Jason snaps his attention to Tim who is now whimpering on the floor. He needs to get help, he needs to get Tim to the cave so they can start working on a new antidote to whatever the hell Crane just injected him with.

With some difficulty, Jason twists and wiggles around so he can move to get his restrained hands in front of him. Using a move Dick once showed him, Jason tucks up tightly loops his arms underneath his body so they go underneath him and end up in front of him. It tests his flexibility for sure but it works.

Once his arms are in front of him he reaches up and presses the comms, getting Barbara’s help.

“O! I need immediate assistance!”

“Hood what’s going on, why did you and Red Robin go radio silent-”

Not having the patience Jason cuts her off. “Now’s not the time! We ran into Scarecrow and he injected Red with a new toxin. We need to get him to the cave asap.”

“Shit. I’m alerting the others now and sending them your location. Do what you can to help Red.”

“Already on it.”

Jason signs off and moves to break the cable ties around his wrists. He tightens them up as much as possible, raises his hands over his head and brings his fists down to his stomach in one fluid movement. Upon impact the ties break and his heads are freed.

Not wasting a second he scrambles over to Tim who is now starting to wither on the floor, whimpering pitiful sounds. Knowing there’s not much he can do, Jason decides to break the ties from Tim's own wrists, he’s aware of Tim’s broken hand but that’ll have to be dealt with later on.

At least that was his plan up until he puts a hand on Tim’s shoulder. As soon as Jason touches him, the kid freaks out. He lets out a scream of terror and suddenly jerks up right and starts to scramble away from him. Jason freezes in shock as he watches Tim try and move away from him, but the kid’s movements were hindered by his hands being tied behind him.

“No no no no. I’m sorry. Please I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. No no no. It won’t happen again I promise.”

The words were quiet and raspy but Jason could hear them clearly in the silence of the room. He needs to stop Tim from moving and also to prevent further damage to his hands. He cautiously approaches Tim again, crouching down low and taking slow steps forward, but at the moment Tim only sees him as a threat. The kid screams and continues to try and scramble backwards away from him.

“No no no! I’m sorry! Please don’t kill me…”

Jason frowns at the words as his heart lurches inside of his chest at the sound of Tim’s pleading voice. When he takes another step forward Tim only screams again, making Jason freeze on the spot. He really ought to get Tim to stop moving, Jason doesn’t particularly want to use force to get him to restrain his movements but he doesn’t think he has any choice.

Sighing Jason takes off his helmet, something he admittedly probably should have done before now, and approaches Tim again. As expected the kid screams and begs as he tries to shuffle away, his legs kicks out and his body contorts uncomfortably.

Pretty much out of options Jason lunges for Tim. He grabs the kid’s ankle to stop him from getting any further away before diving onto the floor and situating himself behind Tim. He wraps his legs around Tim’s thighs and knees, pinning them in place and he wraps his arms around Tim’s torso and shoulders. He holds on tightly as Tim tries and fails to buck out of his grasp.

While the kid screams in his arms all Jason could do is hold him and wait until backup comes. He counts the never ending minutes as they tick by. His brother is weakly fighting his hold while tears stream down his cheeks as he whimpers out pleas, it breaks Jason’s heart to hear it all.

Thankfully the cavalry soon arrive, they burst into the room and take in the scene before them. Both Dick and Bruce rush towards them and immediately start making plans.

“How long ago was he injected?” Bruce demands as he grasps Tim’s chin. Tim tries to get out of it but Bruce holds firm as he removes the kid’s mask and studies his dilated pupils.

“Twenty maybe thirty minutes. Right before O contacted you. Crane got away.” Jason reports automatically. He’s furious about Crane of course but family comes first, he couldn’t have left Tim alone in this state.

“Hold him still.” Bruce grunts as he digs through his utility belt. After a moment he produces a small blood sample kit. With quick efficiency Bruce takes a vial of Tim’s blood, caps it off and holds it out to Nightwing who had been hovering on the side but not getting in the way. Dick takes it without words. “Get a head start to the cave, Agent A is preparing to start a new antidote trial.”

Dick nods, his gaze lingers on Tim before his head tilts in Jason’s direction. “Keep me updated.” He disappears before Jason could respond. When Dick is out of sight his attention is drawn back to Tim and Bruce.

“We need to get him to the car and then to the cave. You’ll need to keep him restrained so he doesn’t hurt himself.”

If the situation were different Jason would both be peeved and even upset at the detachment in Bruce’s tone of voice. Unfortunately in this situation he can understand why Bruce is like it, not being emotionally invested will allow him to focus on the task at hand, which in this case happened to be getting Tim back to the cave and working on a new antidote. He’ll let himself feel everything once he knows Tim is safe and sound.

Together he and Bruce manage to get Tim into the batmobile. The kid does nothing other than scream, whimper, plead and cry as they move him. Jason makes sure to tell Bruce about his hand and once in the car Bruce relays the injury to Alfred in the cave. Once they’ve worked out the antidote they can work on his hand.

Getting back to the cave seems long and tedious but once they’re there they move Tim from the car and into the medical bay. They settle him down on one of the cots, having to restrain his wrists and ankles to the bed to stop him moving so much and Alfred updates them on the situation with the antidote.

They were fortunate enough to be able to come up with a temporary antidote in that short amount of time. It turns out Scarecrow hadn’t used a new toxin but rather the same one as before, the only difference in this one is that there are hints of Poison Ivy’s hallucinogen concoction. Dick and Alfred quickly worked together to combine the two antidotes making a new one altogether.

Without much hesitation they give Tim the new antidote and watch as the kid quietens down on the bed and falls unconscious. It’s only after Alfred deems everything is okay that they all can breathe somewhat easily again.

While Dick, Bruce, Jason and Barbara (over the comms) discuss the next steps and about what the current situation is looking like, Alfred stays with Tim and patches up his hand, fixing a cast over the skin and bone until they can get it looked at professionally.

As plans are being made Jason watches Alfred work, his worry for Tim still heavily stirring inside of him. He doesn’t think he’ll be forgetting those petrified screams any time soon. Once the kid wakes up Jason is going to have a long chat with Tim, one to rest his own subconscious and secondly because he wants to make sure the kid is mentally okay after the ordeal. He’ll make sure Tim gets some proper r&r after all of this and maybe even for himself too once Crane is dealt with.

[alt-rose]

waste love - colson baker

colson baker imagine

waste love - you’re in a bad relationship, and your ex, colson, is there for you. 

word count: 5.9K (tis a lot)

WARNINGS: domestic abuse (lowkey kinda graphic), f-bombs?

please don’t read if this is a trigger in anyway, shape, or form for you. 

long story short, your boyfriend was kind of a dick. everyone knew that. your friend and co-worker, Pete had told you multiple times that your boyfriend Trevor was a pretentious asshole. even your ex, Colson, disliked him, but he honestly disliked everyone you dated.

you had called it quits with Colson right before Eminem’s Kamikaze came for him. you blamed it on lifestyle differences, but in the end, you couldn’t handle him getting wasted every night. you told him that you felt like he was constantly choosing drugs and booze over you, and looking back on it, Colson had to admit that you were right. you had a right to end it, but that didn’t dismiss the feelings you felt for each other.

for Pete’s sake, you and Colson remained friends. together, the two of you helped Pete through his breakup with AG and his struggle with his mental health. however, your friendship began to dwindle after a few months. the guys started to notice you slipping away from them when you started dating Trevor.

Trevor was appealing at first. he had a stable job as a manager for a production company. he stayed out of the party scene for the most part. at the beginning of your relationship, you felt like coming home to him was a break from the world. with your busy career as a cast member on SNL, you worked long and late hours, leaving you with two options: you could let yourself fall prey to the temptations that the New York nightlife had to offer, or you could go home. you tended to choose the latter and having someone to go home to made things less lonely.

by the third month, things had taken a turn. you had pulled away from your friendships, turning down opportunities to go out with them during the week. Trevor didn’t like you going out without him. you stopped talking to Pete and Colson for the most part, but you still saw Pete at work. Trevor didn’t like you hanging out with them. it even got to the point that Trevor didn’t like you talking about them so for your sake, you cut them out of your life.

for Colson and Pete, it was a blow. they missed you, and over the course of your relationship, they watched you change. the style of clothes you wore had changed. you traded in your mini skirts for jeans or loose-fitting pants; your dresses were more modest, always covering your arms and shoulders. you started wearing more jackets and turtlenecks. your skin was always covered, which is not to say that you walked around practically naked before. you were just less daring with your clothing choices now. even your makeup had changed. you were like a reformed version of yourself, looking more reserved compared to your usually expressive self.

unknown to them, you had something to hide. the jackets and turtlenecks weren’t because you were ‘always so cold’ like you’d tell people when they asked. you stopped with your makeup because you already spent so much time covering up bruises in the morning that you would run out of time to do anything else.

Trevor not only was possessive and controlling, but he also had a temper. it wasn’t that bad at first. it started with the comments. he’d comment on your hair. he’d comment on your makeup and clothes. you brushed them off at first because you were an independent woman who could look how ever she wanted to look. the comments were then accompanied by cheap insults taking shots at your insecurities. your tough exterior began to crumble at that when you began to doubt your looks and appearance. your confidence had faded. the last straw was when he had yelled at you for the first time. you were going to a banquet for his work, and he screamed at you for the dress you had chosen to wear, it was just a simple black dress that you thought was a safe option. he thought otherwise. he said you looked ridiculous, pointing out that it made your arms look flabby and that it gave you back fat. you offered to change, but he screamed at your even more, telling you that you were already running late so you would just have to go in what you were wearing. you cried to yourself in the bathroom as you struggled to fix your makeup.

ever since then, you made changes to your appearance because he was right. you started dieting. you stopped wearing your fun and creative makeup because Trevor said you looked childish. you started dressing tamer, only in sweaters and jeans. your spirit was dwindling away.

the first time he hit you was after the Tuesday night host dinner had run late. you were out later than you usually were, and Trevor had accused you of cheating on him. you of course yelled back at him, defending yourself. he responded by swiftly smacking your head into your pantry door and calling you a “lying bitch.” your head rung, and you pulled yourself away from him. you kicked him out that night, only for him to come crawling back to you in the morning with flowers and an apology. he seemed sincere so you accepted the apology, and he told you that he loved you.

the vicious cycle repeated for months. you’d be all lovey-dovey. you were happy, and he was kind. then, something would happen, most likely something small or insignificant that would set him off. then, he’d be angry. you’d fight. he would hit you. you would kick him out, or he would quickly apologize. then, you were in this weird period of walking on eggshells around him while he acted like nothing happened. then, he would do something sweet for you, like buying you a pretty piece of jewelry or making you a fancy dinner. then, you’d be the lovey-dovey couple that you were.

the things that set Trevor off the most was when you would support your friends. Pete had his movies out, and you wanted to watch them to support him. Trevor had caught you watching The Dirt, the movie that sparked Pete and Colson’s friendship, after it had been released to Netflix. Trevor was pissed. he claimed that you were still harboring feelings for you ex. you had argued that you no longer had feelings for the rapper/actor, but Trevor didn’t believe you. in his anger, he ripped the remote from your hand and had thrown it into your TV, shattering it in the process. the next morning, he took you out to buy a new TV, letting you pick it out so he could pay for it. you had learned your lesson from that one. you couldn’t have anything to do with Colson.

the summer was rough for your relationship with Trevor. without the stable routine that you had established with him when you were working at SNL, he began to spiral out of control. now that you were working on two films and couldn’t be in the city all the time, Trevor began to lash out at you to gain some sense of control over you. he grew violent and possessive, and you were grateful when you could travel without him.

at some point, you had ended up at Colson’s album party for Hotel Diablo. you had spent the night out with your friends, finally getting to party with Pete and Colson after months of never getting to see much of them. as strange as it may seem, the man of the hour had himself glued to your side the entire night. he brought you drinks and followed you around instead of celebrating with all of his friends. he danced with you like he had on your 21st birthday, the night that had started your relationship with him. later into the night, he sat with you as you lounged on one of the pool chairs in the backyard of the house that you were partying at. you started making smile conversation with him, now that you could hear yourself think.

             “how are things?” you asked staring up at the sky.

             “getting better, I guess,” Colson responded.

that night he told you about his dad’s prognosis, and you held his hand as you listened to him talk. he listened to you gush about the projects you were working on, and you listened to him go on and on about how proud he was of Casie. you laughed as he told you stories about the things he and his bandmates had done.

by the end of the night, it was safe to say that you didn’t regret going to that party. you didn’t think of Trevor once the entire night, and you felt free. however, problems started to arise once the party had ended. Colson had offered to drive you back to your hotel since he didn’t feel comfortable sending you off in an uber by yourself. you let him take you since he was sober. the two of you had stopped drinking about an hour into the party, and it was about 4 in the morning now.

Colson had his hand on your shoulder as he led you to his purple Aston Martin. you covered eyes as cameras flashed as the two of you left the party. the paparazzi had found you.

Colson quickly opened the passenger door for you, blocking the paparazzi’s view of you as you slid into his car. once you were safely seated inside, Colson closed your door before quickly making it to the driver’s side. he chuckled as he watched you turn on your heated seat and plug your phone into the aux, just like you had done when the two of you were dating.

when the two of you arrived at your hotel, Colson took your hand in his.

             “I’m glad you came,” he softly told you before placing his lips delicately on the back of your hand, a gesture that was foreign to you after the past few months.

             “I’m glad I came too,” you whispered to him.

your faces were so close together that if you took a deep breath, your lips would be pressed against his. part of you wanted to kiss him, and part of him wanted to kiss you. however, you pulled away before you could. you weren’t a cheater.

             “promise me you’ll take care of yourself?” his eyes softly gazed over your features.

he could tell that you were wasting away. despite your carefree attitude tonight, he knew that you had changed. your independent, badass attitude had diminished over time, and he only hoped that you would take care of yourself so you could return to the girl that he used to know.

you only gave him a nod before turning your eyes away from him. turning the conversation back on him, you squeezed his hand.

             “I’m really proud of you, Cols,” you smiled to him. “I can’t wait to hear your album.”

he murmured a response to you before placing another kiss on the back of your hand. with that, you had pulled yourself from his car, giving him a small wave as you entered through the glass doors of your hotel.

--

the next morning, you were on a plane heading back to New York. even though you were broken up and you were with someone else, the pain of missing Colson was still there. it was like something deep in your soul was crying out for him.

this trip was a breath of fresh air for you, and you had clarity now. deep down, you knew one thing to be true: you would rather have a little bit of Colson in your life than not have him at all. you didn’t realize how bad your situation was back in New York until you had an outside perspective. with Colson, you had people who loved you for who you were. no one tried to change you. no one tried to tell you what to do. they accepted you for the person you were, and they loved you unconditionally.

you needed those people in your life. Trevor, you realized, was not one of those people. he had done nothing but feed you lies about yourself that made you doubt your self-worth. he never treated you with respect, and every time he told you that he loved was like a punch in the face. it hurt worse than the ones with his fist.

stepping off the airplane in New York, you knew what you had to do. you had to breakup with him, and if you managed to survive, you promised yourself that you would never let yourself fall prey to a man like that ever again.

with your luggage in hand, you made your way to the pickup line, where Trevor was waiting for you. he insisted that he would pick you up, even though you told him that you could just take a cab.

             “hi,” you smiled to him after you placed you bags in the trunk.

he only gave you a nod of acknowledgement as you closed your door. the air felt thick. your smile faltered the longer you stared at him. you watched his movements carefully. he roughly turned the keys, starting the car. his knuckles were white as they gripped the steering wheel. his other hand picked at his lips. he did that when he was pissed, and it put you on edge.

he began to drive, only addressing you once you were stopped at a red light.

             “how was the party?”

your blood ran cold. how did he know?

             “what party?” you laughed lightly, trying to brush him off.

             “DON’T.” he slammed his hands on the top of the steering wheel before looking over at you. “DON’T FUCKING play dumb with me. I saw the pictures. did you fuck him? did you let him fuck you?”

             “NO,” you shouted back at him.

his fist slammed your head into the cool glass of the window. your head rung as tears prickled in your eyes.

             “you’re such a bitch, you know that?”

you watched the road in front of you. the light turned green. the lights around you blurred, and you let your head rest against the window. the tears ran down your face.

you said no word to Trevor when you arrived at your building. you grabbed your bag and quickly made your way into the building. Trevor quickly caught up with you, roughly placing a hand on your arm.

as you stepped off the elevator, you ripped yourself from his arm before making it to your front door. before you could unlock it, Trevor had you pinned with his hand secured tightly around your neck.

your eyes bulged as you gasped for breath. you began to kick at him, until he let you go. you stumbled into your apartment getting as far away from him as possible.

             “I want to breakup,” you rasped holding your throat.

             “why? because you love him more than you love me?” Trevor laughed throwing his keys on your counter.

             “no, you’re a monster.”

he seethed as he moved to close the gap between the two of you. he roughly snatched you by your arms pulling you close.

             “you are not leaving me,” he growled. “you’re mine.”

             “I am not yours,” you grunted out as you struggled to pull away from him.

with all of his force, Trevor tossed you to the floor. your shoulder slammed into the floor as you landed on your arm funny. pain began to splinter from your shoulder before echoing throughout your body. you moved to sit up, clutching your arm, as his boot collided with your ribs.

you gasped for air. your lungs burned. you took blow after blow, barely listening to the cruel words he shouted at you.

once he finally thought you were down, he turned his back to you. you had somehow managed to pull yourself up from the floor, swiping the bat that you kept hidden under your couch. with your weak arm, you swung at him, only landing a small blow to his back. he stumbled before taking you by your throat and shoving you into the fish tank on the small cabinet you kept in the hallway.

you heard the glass crank from the force of your body. Trevor had thrown you to the floor, and the fish tank came crashing down on top of you. you laid on the floor, covered in glass and dirty fish water. you watched Trevor’s boots as they made their way to the door. he spit in your direction before calling you a slut. the door slammed shut behind him.

your vision began to blur as you watched your beloved fish, the two angelfish that Colson and Pete had bought you, begging you to name them both after them, flop against your hardwood floor.

--

you opened your eyes, wincing at the brightness of your kitchen light. you were disoriented. you felt a buzzing in your pocket. gently moving your arm, you pulled your phone from your pocket.

Pete’s contact picture flashed across your screen, announcing an incoming call from him. you accepted the call before moving the phone to your ear.

             “hey girl,” you heard Pete’s voice flood through your phone. “whaddup?”

Pete could hear your raspy, heavy breathing coming through the phone. whatever he was planning on talking to you about was long forgotten now.

             “(y/n/n), are you okay? what’s wrong?” Pete gently asked through the phone.

his heart beat loudly in your chest as he heard your sobs.

             “I’m sorry,” you whispered to him. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

             “(y/n), what did you do?” Pete began to scramble out of bed, looking for the spare apartment key you gave him. “where are you?”

             “I’m at my apartment. I love you, Pete.” your speech was slurring. “tell Cols. tell him too.”

Pete called your name through the phone waiting for you response, but he was met with none. he called 911 as he ran from his apartment, catching a cab to your building.

the police had made it there before he had. damn, traffic. he stood at your apartment door as he watched the paramedics set you on a stretcher. you had an oxygen mask placed over your mouth and nose, and a paramedic began to tie a tourniquet around your thigh, above the shard of glass that impaled you when the fish tank fell.

as they rolled you out, Pete followed, holding the hand on your bad arm. your eyes found his face as the paramedics took you into the elevator.

             “Pete,” you sighed, moving the oxygen mask away from you with your good arm.

             “I’m here,” he nodded to you, stroking your wet hair. “who did this?”

you barely whispered Trevor’s name before you blacked out once more.

the second time you woke up, you were laying in a hospital bed. your body burned from the pain. your head buzzed. your neck was stiff. your lungs burned as you tried to breathe. your leg throbbed, and a shooting pain erupted from your shoulder. it took you a moment to focus your eyes, but you found your parents sitting in your room with you.

Pete had called them after the doctors rushed you into surgery for your shoulder. he also called the Mulaney’s, who had become your second set of parents. they were someone for you to rely on while you lived in New York City all alone. you could call them at any hour, and John and Anna would be at your beck and call, whether it was shopping for furniture or getting dinner. Pete felt like they would want to know.

he contemplated calling Colson, but today was his album release. Pete knew that part of you would be angry at him for bothering Colson, but he also knew that Colson would be even more upset with him if he didn’t call him. So, Pete made the call, only after you were out of surgery. your parents had arrived about a half an hour after your surgery had ended, and Colson was doing everything he could to get to New York.

you were kept overnight, but they planned on releasing you the next evening, making sure that nothing ended up infected and that your pain was manageable. your parents were out cold on the couch in your room. Pete occupied the chair next to your bed. your parents lied to the hospital staff, telling them that Pete was your brother. you could tell that the nurses didn’t believe them for a second, but no one wanted to argue with them. Pete was grateful that they let him stay, even after visiting hours had ended. after the state he saw you in just a few hours before, he didn’t feel comfortable leaving you.

from your spot in your bed, you watched Pete as he attempted to dose off with his head hanging awkwardly over the back of the chair. you saw his eyes pop open as if he could feel you staring at him.

             “hey,” he whispered sitting up and stretching his neck out. “how long have you been awake?”

             “not sure,” you whispered back as you picked at the hem of the thin hospital sheets you were given.

             “what are you thinking about?” he asked leaning forward to rest his folded hands on your bed.

he could tell that you were deep in thought.

             “I’m think about a restraining order.”

Pete gave you a small laugh.

             “after the amount of evidence, the police gather from your apartment, he might even do a bit of time.”

             “I don’t really care if he does time. I just want him gone, and I want him to pay for the stuff he broke,” you told him, moving your eyes away from the frayed hem in front of you.

             “he will. (y/n/n) will get him to pay for all of it.”

he gently patted the top of your hand resting on the pillow the nurses placed it on to help your shoulder heal. taking a moment to flick through the tv, you grew frustrated before landing on an old concert playing on one of the channels.

             “have you listened to it?” you asked turning to Pete.

             “listened to what?” Pete asked glancing over at you.

             “Cols’ album.”

             “Ah, yeah,” Pete sighed sitting back in his chair. “it’s a banger.”

             “he did good?”

             “fuck yeah, Colson always does good.”

             “good,” you sighed leaning your head back on the mountain of pillows.

             “have you not listened to it yet?”

you shook your head.

             “from the flight and Trevor, I didn’t get a chance.”

             “I can play it for you,” Pete said sitting back up. “do you want me to grab some headphones or something?”

             “no,” you said stretching your fingers out to stop him. “you can just play it out loud. I don’t want to listen to it alone.”

with that, Pete opened his phone before setting it on the table by the side of your bed. he hit play on the first track, adjusting the volume so that it was loud enough to listen to without bothering your sleeping parents.

you closed your eyes, letting the music surround you. you listened to the powerful lyrics in el Diablo and Hollywood Whore, taking in the struggles he had to face after the hate that came for him.

the opening to Glass House had tears prickling your eyes. you squeezed Pete’s hand as Colson sang the part about Nipsey and him. the first set of tears had slipped from your eyes. the tears were falling freely from your eyes when Colson sang about Peep, Mac, and Chester. you could feel his pain through the words he spoke. in this piece, he was completely vulnerable, open, sharing the darkness in his life and the loneliness he felt.

             “I didn't sign up to be the hero but I don't want to wind up a villain. I put my daughter to bed then attempted to kill myself in the kitchen. Yeah, I should've screamed, but nobody listened. So I passed out with the blood dripping. In this glass house, feeling like a prison.”

your breath hitched in your throat. Pete squeezed your hand before pressing his forehead to your head. you let out a few quiet sobs. the emotions from the day were crashing down on you. you were exhausted. you were fucking terrified, and you wanted nothing more than to call Colson. you wanted to hear his voice. you wanted to know that he was okay, even though you had seen him just the night before.

             “I think we should stop,” Pete whispered gently to you as you broke down.

             “no,” you told him. your voice thick with tears. “I want to keep listening.”

             “okay, okay,” he whispered, stroking your hair.

the two of you listened to Burning Memories, your heart clenched at the words he sang about his mother. A Message from the Count caught you by surprise, and you and Pete laughed gently at him and Colson messing around. the break from the heavy stuff was much needed, and your spirits were slightly better. you nodded along to Floor 13. you felt like the song was an appropriate response to the hate he received after Killshot, and you were proud of him for it. a small smile appeared on your face as you heard Casie’s outro for the song.

somewhere in the middle of the Truck Norris interlude, your parents had woken up. they gave you and Pete weird looks as they saw the position the two of you were in. Pete was awkwardly hunched over, resting his head against yours as the two of you bobbed along to Hotel Diablo.

Death in My Pocket had you in tears again. the rawness of the lyrics made your heart clench. you could feel his sadness through the lyrics about his aunt, father, and his relationship with his father. it reminded you of the conversation the two of you had the other night by the pool.

Candy was a bop to say the least, and you knew that that was going to be a fun song to perform. part of you couldn’t wait to see Colson perform on tour, but you knew that you should probably keep your distance from him for now.

Waste Love was another one that surprised you. the lyrics echoed your breakup from almost a year ago. you moved your head away from Pete, looking at him from your peripheral. your reaction had Pete lightly laughing.

             “I knew it,” he nodded at you.

             “shut up,” you whispered back at him.

your mom shot her head up at the two of you quietly bickering.

             “what?” she asked, causing the two of you to snap your heads in her direction.

             “NOTHING.”

--

Sunday afternoon, you sat on the edge of your hospital bed. the nurses helped you and your mom as your mom tried to help you get dressed. now, you sat with your hair pulled back loosely in a scrunchie, wearing a very large pair of sweatpants and sweatshirt that Pete had snagged from his apartment earlier that morning. your arm rested in a sling since you ended up dislocating your shoulder. your thigh was wrapped up, but you could still manage to limp on it. those were your two major injuries. other than that, you only had a few cuts and bruises.

the police had arrested Trevor last night, and as far as you knew, he was still locked up. you were relieved that you didn’t have to worry about him anymore.

now, you were waiting to be discharged so that you could go back to your apartment.

             “ready to go?” your dad asked extending a hand to help you into the wheelchair.

you nodded to him, and with that, a nurse wheeled you to the exit with Pete and your parents following behind. your dad ran to get the rental car that your parents had picked up that morning. they didn’t really want to take a cab back to your apartment.

when you got back to your building, you closed your eyes as your rode up the elevator. you had been silent the whole ride home, listening to your parents and Pete’s conversation. Pete and your dad held you under your arms to support you, so you didn’t have to put all of your weight on your bad leg. they helped you hobble to your door as your mom unlocked it.

inside you could hear the hum of one of your records playing on your record player. your mom set the keys in the bowl by the door as you unlatched yourself from your dad and Pete.

on the kitchen counter, you saw a bouquet of yellow roses sitting amongst a bunch of shattered glass. on the floor, you saw the water stain from your fish tank mixed with your blood stain. your eyes flicker with tears.

             “shit, I’m sorry,” you heard a voice from the sink in your kitchen. “I meant to cover that up before you got back. I talked to your landlord. he’s got a guy to fix that.”

standing in front of you was one of the only people you wanted to see. your 6-foot-4 blond giant friend. he had gloves covering his hands, and a bucket was filling in your sink.

hobbling forward, you pressed your head into his chest as you balled your good fist into the fabric of his black t-shirt. you could hear Colson take the gloves off before he wrapped his arms around you. you sobbed into his chest as he lightly stroked your back.

Colson gave Pete and your parents a look. they gave him a small smile, and your mom mumbled something about finishing cleaning up. around you, your dad took the bucket from the sink before moving it to clean your blood from the floor. your mom vacuumed your couch cushions to make sure there was no glass left behind. Pete pulled out a bottle of febreze to mask the scent of your dead fish.

you pulled yourself from Colson to laugh lightly at Pete. Colson gently wiped the tears from your face.

             “where are my fish?” you ask him softly.

             “they were too big to flush down the toilet, so I have them sealed in a zip lock bag for now,” he said gently. “figured you might want to do the honors.”

             “thank you,” you murmured to him before hugging him once more. “your album is really fucking good.”

you could feel him lightly laugh as he wrapped his arms around you again.

             “glad you liked it,” he murmured into your hair. his hands traveled up your back to cup your cheeks. “why are you crying?”

             “I don’t know,” you laugh using your good hand to wipe away your tears. “thank you for being here.”

             “always,” he smiled at you. “come on, I cleaned up your room. let’s get you off your leg.”

Colson helped you hobble to your room, helping you take your sling off before you laid down. he situated you on your pillows, propping your shoulder up and apologizing as you winced. he set your laptop up for you, giving you your headphones. he sat with you while you weakly scrolled through Netflix before finding the movie you wanted. The Dirt.

             “you suck,” Colson smiled at you, causing you to laugh.

             “I haven’t seen it yet. cut me a break.”

             “alright, alright.”

he pulled himself up from your bed, placing your favorite blanket over you. as he moved to leave your room, you reached your good arm out to grab his hand. with your hand wrapped around his fingers, he turned back to you.

             “did you write that song about me?” you ask him softly. your voice was so quiet that he almost missed what you said.

Colson gave you a small smile before raising your hand to his lip, pressing a kiss to the back of your hand.

             “of course, it’s about you.”

             “did you mean it?” you stared into his bright blue eyes, searching for an answer. “did you mean what you said?”

             “(y/n), I will always mean it, and I know now is not the time to tell you this,” he paused to sigh. “I never stopped loving you, and I will probably always love you. and, I know I fucked up. I fucked up our relationship. I wasn’t around, and I was always wasted. and, I am so sorry for that. you deserved better than that, and I’m getting better. and, when you’re ready, I want to talk about us because I don’t want to live without you anymore. this year sucked without you by my side, and I don’t want that anymore. I want you in my life, and I don’t care how long it takes for you to get there. I will always be here, waiting for you.”

you had tears streaming down your cheeks. he sat back on the bed to wipe away your tears.

             “you kinda suck,” you laugh as you used your good hand to wipe your eyes.

             “I’m sorry,” he sighed avoiding your gaze.

             “I missed you too, Col,” you said reaching up to trace his cheek. “it’s gonna take me sometime to get there because I want to get over this mess before I jump into something else, but I feel the same way. I don’t want to live without you in my life anymore.”

Colson smiled at you before moving to kiss you on your forehead. a knock on your door pulled you out of your little moment. Pete stood in your doorway with his jacket on.

             “hey, Colson,” Pete began, causing Colson to turn toward his buddy. “we gotta go now if we are going to make the store.”

             “okay, I’ll be there in a second,” he nodded to Pete as he got up from your bed once more.

             “where are you going?” you asked him still holding his hand.

             “we’re going to go get you a new tank. tomorrow, we’ll go get some new fish for you,” Colson said.

             “but, you can’t just buy a tank-”

             “I know,” he smiled back at you. “your dad made Pete and I a list. enjoy your movie.” he winked at you, closing the door lightly behind him.

--

the next morning, you stood in Randy’s Pet Shop with Colson and Pete, staring up at the multiple tanks of fish in front of you. like little kids in the candy store, the two of them made sure to pick out the craziest looking fish for your tank, begging you to let them name them. you of course agree, and the three of you left the store with Kevin and Barracuda, your new gold and blue gourami fish.  

you knew that it was going to be a while until you were going to be okay again, but at least you had the guys in your corner. no matter how far you strayed from them, they were always there for you, and you were forever grateful for that.

life could only go up from here.

.

.

.

i know this was a bit darker than usual. feel free to send requests - rose xx

[wingsofkpop]

Hiraeth - I.X: Was it Worth it in the End? Part Two

pairing(s): Hybrid!Im Jaebeom x Reader, Witch!Mark Tuan x Reader, Werewolf!Jackson Wang x Reader, Vampire!Park Jinyoung x Reader, Supernatural!Got7 x Reader

genre: Supernatual!AU, Dark Magic!AU, very heavy Angst, eventual Smut

warnings: Mature language, violence, explicit descriptions of fighting and injury, weapons, blood and gore, brief mention of a mutilated animal corpse, minor character death, description of trauma and mental illness, brief mention of suicide, mentions of murder, satanic themes and ritual, etc. 

Trigger Warning: This chapter does contain graphic and explicit themes regarding violence, trauma, and death. Please do not read if this will harm you. This is your final warning.

word count: 10,6k

synopsis: How far are you willing to go to find out the truth about Moon Dye Bay?…

chapter directory

The nighttime is hushed, almost anxious as Minho maneuvers his way past gravestones and overgrown shrubbery. It’s almost like nature itself is too afraid of accidentally provoking the witch, sensing the torpedo of dark magic and violent sorrow stirring through his veins. He peers up at the crimson moon, grateful for the illumination it provides, and continues down his path—ignorant of the cold air bleeding into his flesh. 

Minho knows this is probably not the best time for a visit, aware that his ex-covenmates are likely plotting some sort of mission to overthrow him, but he doesn’t care—he can’t care anymore. A part of him, the shameful, guilty part of his mind. actually hopes they will succeed, at least then, he would no longer have to endure the pain that comes with bearing this black magic. He can feel its poison rushing through his veins, seering his body from the inside out, killing his soul over and over and over again… 

But isn’t this what he wanted? Revenge? Retribution? Minho performed that spell to hurt the very friends that hurt him—to hurt Mark, and he got his wish… so why does it feel like the world is caving in around him, swallowing him whole? 

Once he reaches his destination, Minho collapses to his knees, unable to bear the weight of his burdens. His eyes burn with tears, but he doesn’t allow himself to cry. A silent gust of wind strokes his cheeks, painting his skin red with bitterness and anger. He welcomes the cold air, accepting the punishment, before lifting his hand to splay his fingers against the even colder surface of the headstone. 

“I’m sorry…” Minho whimpers, “It didn’t have to be like this…” 

The silence heightens his anguish—deepens the wounds in his heart. 

If he could take it all back, he would… but he can’t. 

“I wish you were here, noona…” 

His murmur is lost to the wind, but it doesn’t matter. He climbs back to his feet before sparing one final glance at the burial place of his lost friend. After a deep inhale and a wordless goodbye, Minho turns and hastily begins back toward the mausoleum. 

He was allowed this one moment of weakness—now he must get back to the horrible reality he manifested for himself. 

☽ ☽ ☽ ☽ ☽ ☾ ☾ ☾ ☾ ☾

“Can you be any more obvious…?” 

Mark quickly awakens from his mindless trance, discovering, to his dismay, Dahyun looking down at him with a single raised, all-knowing eyebrow. He fakes a cough into his elbow before shrugging his shoulders, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“You’re kidding me, right?... You literally haven’t taken your eyes off of her since we met up in the forest.” 

Heat immediately rises to Mark’s cheeks. As if on instinct, his eyes trail back to his subject of interest, watching as you wipe the sweat from Jaebeom’s girlfriend’s forehead and neck before shifting to do the same to Felix. It’s such a simple action, but you somehow look so ethereal—almost like an angel sent from heaven. 

He curses himself for his own cheesiness, then releases a defeated sigh. 

“We got into a pretty big fight earlier.” 

“Then don’t you think you should—I don’t know—talk to her instead of staring her down like a creep?” 

“I think the last thing she wants to do is talk to me.” Mark drags a hand through his hair. “I… said some really stupid shit in the heat of the moment. She probably hates me.” 

Dahyun scoffs, “God, you are such a fucking idiot.” 

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” 

“It means you need to get your ass over there and apologize to that girl.” 

Her harsh tone doesn’t falter beneath his glare, nor does her tenacious expression as the two proceed with their silent staring contest. After a minute or two, Dahyun breaks off the competition with a long, heavy sigh. Her eyes are soft when she looks back at him, and suddenly Mark finds the dried mud on his shoes a lot more interesting. 

“Mark, anyone can see how much you care about her—how much she cares about you.” Even when a gentle hand caresses his shoulder, the witch keeps his attention to the floor. “(Y/N) could never hate you—no matter how much stupid shit you pull.” She snickers, “And you pull a lot of stupid shit, so that has to account for something.”

He can’t help the amused chuckle that falls from his own lips. 

“Thanks, Dubu.” Mark says, tilting his head to finally meet the warmth of her gaze. 

“She’s a good one—a really good one, Mark.” The wolf hums, “Don’t let it be your fear that pushes her away.” She doesn’t give him a chance to reply further, pacing to a nearby corner to join a conversing Bang Chan and Yugyeom. 

Sparing the wolf trio one final glance, Mark musters up the remaining courage he has left and pushes from his perch against the kitchen countertop. He forces himself to walk in your direction—each step releasing more butterflies into the confines of his stomach. Once he reaches you, close enough to touch your turned back, he almost chickens out, content with spending the rest of the night watching you like hawk, but the sound of Felix’s breathy voice locks him in place: 

“—Channie-hyung and I have always wanted to go to Chicago… Is-Is it as windy as they say?” 

“Even windier.” You say with a laugh. “I can’t tell you how many scarves I lost, and don’t get me started on how freaking cold the winters are.”

Felix laughs too, although it resonates as more of a wheeze than anything. 

You shrug, “It’s a gorgeous city though—probably my most favorite place I’ve ever lived.” 

“Then why did you leave? If you loved it so much?” 

Mark’s interest piques when he notices how your figure grows tense at the young boy’s croak. He’s heard his fair share of stories of your heartfelt time in the Windy City, but he never quite figured out why you ultimately decided to move to Moon Dye Bay. You’ve always been reluctant to reveal certain details from your past, especially regarding your time in the foster system, but even then Mark has been able to pry the worst memories from your brain. 

This subject, however, has been a brick wall. 

“Because I couldn’t stay.” You finally answer, “It’s complicated, but something happened and basically I—” 

“(Y/N)?” 

He silently cusses as Felix interrupts your explanation, but his annoyance dissipates at the panicked expression etched along the teenager’s sweaty face. 

“What is it, Felix?” You shift your position on his bedside to better face the boy, leaning forward to place a gentle hand on his forehead. Mark can only imagine how hot the skin is to the touch. 

Felix’s words crack as they leave his lips, slicing at the witch’s heart like a dagger: 

“Am… Am I gonna die?”

“Of course not.” You immediately say, but Mark can sense the uneasiness in your tone. “Everyone is doing everything they can to help you, okay?... You’re gonna get through this, and one day you and your brother are gonna go see Chicago yourselves and try not to get blown away into the next century.” 

Felix sleepily chuckles, “Thanks, (Y/N).” 

“You should get some sleep.” The moment the command leaves your lips, Felix is already closing his eyes and diving headfirst into dreamland. Not wanting to startle you, Mark waits a couple seconds—partly to give you time to regain your composure, and partly to give himself time to think of what to say. However, he doesn’t have much of a choice when you suddenly turn, growing aware of his presence. A frown overtakes your face, and he instantly regrets ever leaving his countertop. 

“Did you need something?” 

“No—yes, I mean—shit.” Mark buries a hand in his tresses to tug at his roots, attempting to juggle between putting together the right spoken words and reminding his body to breathe. “(Y/N), I—” 

“If you came to apologize, I don’t want to hear it.” He helplessly watches as you rise from the bed before tossing your used rag on a nearby table. “I think you made yourself pretty clear back at my apartment.” 

“I shouldn’t have said what I said—” Before you can storm away, Mark latches his fingers around your wrist. “—please. Just give me a chance to explain.” 

Your shoulders rise and fall in a heavy sigh, but you make no move to tear away from his grip and he takes it as a chance to continue: 

“After my mom died, I was so fucking angry…” Mark notices your surprised gaze when you lift your head, but he doesn’t meet your eyes. “I was angry at the world, at her, at myself… and when my magic began to show up, things got a whole lot worse.” He shakes his head, “I thought about just ending it—jump into the bay or maybe drink myself to death—but then I met…” 

“Then you met Jackson.” 

“He taught me how to deal with the anger—to use it as a tool, not a weapon.” His eyes begin to burn at the countless memories that reel through his mind. “It was because of him I learned how to control my powers, and I was able to bring the coven together—hell, he was the one who told them to nominate me as Regent, which right now, seemed like the worst fucking decision on the planet.” 

Mark takes a moment to blink away his tears before taking a seat on an empty cot. He still can’t find it in himself to glance at your face, keeping his eyes trained to the wooden flooring. 

“But when Jackson had an idea, there was no stopping him.” He chuckles sarcastically, “The bastard was as stubborn as a goddamn mule.” 

“What happened to Jackson, Mark?” Your voice is both a sweet lullaby and a screeching siren against his ears. “How did he die? Really?” 

“The initial plan was to infuse enough magic into Jackson’s werewolf form so his venom would be lethal to the Primes, or at the very least, to Jinyoung. It all went smoothly in the beginning, I was able to channel enough power to complete the transformation… but something went wrong—

“—Jackson was different when he shifted. He was ruthless… He didn’t want to just kill the Primes—he wanted to slaughter every vampire along with those who protect the secrets of their existence… no matter if they were witch, werewolf, human—they all deserved to die…

“The combination of his determination and the bloodlust drove him fucking mad… If Jaebeom hadn’t ripped out his heart, there’s telling what he would have done—who he would have killed…” 

Mark leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees, attempting to hide his shame beneath the curl of his bangs. “—Jaebeom may have dealt the final blow, but Jackson died because the dark magic I used turned him into a monster—he’s dead because of me…” 

Silence encompasses the room like a vice grip to the throat. For a moment, Mark believes you left him, too disgusted and ashamed to even breathe the same air as him, but the entrance of your worn boots into his vision proves otherwise. The image is replaced by your face when you kneel in front of his broken figure, laying your hands over each bicep. He notices your touch is gentle, but not hesitant, and warm—always so warm. 

“You can’t blame yourself for his death, Mark.” Mark doesn’t realize he’s crying until you wipe a tear from his cheek. “How could you have known what that spell would do? You couldn’t have—”

“Magic always comes with price—especially dark magic.” He whispers, unable to hold back more liquid sadness as it trails down his skin. “(Y/N), if I ever lost you the same way I lost Jackson, my mom, I—” 

Mark’s voice cuts out into a sob, and once your arms wind around his form, he completely breaks, releasing every ounce of repressed sadness and despair and pain into the crook of your neck. He knows he’s selfish for melting into your embrace—for consuming your comfort like a demon expelled from the heavens—but he doesn’t care. 

When you guide his eyes to meet your own, Mark can spot the glassiness of your own orbs in the artificial light—along with enough compassion and ardor to send another flood of tears down his face. 

“I’m not going anywhere, okay?” You affirm, your tone unwavering and stern. “I’m here—and no matter how many times you fall, I’m gonna be here to pick you up…

“I’m here, Mark… Do you understand me?” 

He nods with a sniffle, tightly squeezing your hands between his own. 

“I’m sorry.” 

You smile at his apology. 

“I’m sorry too… for everything.” 

“Just… No more secrets. For real, this time.” 

“For real, this time.” Mark’s heart rate picks up when he suddenly notices how close his face is to yours. From this angle, he can count the constellations glistening within your eyes and map the delicate curves of your facial features. If he were to lean just an inch closer, just one tiny inch, his lips would be on your own—

“Sorry to interrupt, but we have an issue.” At Yugyeom’s statement, you and Mark immediately wrench away from one another, almost as if having been caught engaging in forbidden territory. Mark pretends he doesn’t miss the weight of your hands inside his own as he rises from the cot, making sure to put an appropriate amount of distance between his and your shoulders. 

He clears his throat before humming, “What’s going on?” 

“Chan wants to go and find Chaeyoung’s body.” Although Yugyeom’s face remains neutral, Mark can see the sadness lingering within his eyes at the mention of his fallen packmate. “He doesn’t remember exactly where she was, so him, Dahyun, and I are going to search the forest.” 

You immediately shake your head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Sunrise isn’t for at least another hour, and we have no way of knowing Youngjae broke the curse yet.” 

“I’m with (Y/N) on this one, Gyeom.” Mark agrees, “We’re safest here in the bunker.” 

“We can’t just leave her out there. I mean, she—” Yugyeom cuts himself off with a heavy sigh, before continuing in a softer tone, “You know how it feels to lose someone, hyung… Chaeyoung is—was… our family.” 

Mark takes a moment of silence to ponder, conflicted between his common sense and Yugyeom’s pleading gaze. As you said, sunrise is an hour away—but Youngjae, the coven and the Primes should have overthrown Minho by now, right? Plus, he literally blew Changbin’s head off with that shotgun. There’s no way his body could regenerate that quickly… 

“We’re all staying together.” He finally says, moving toward the kitchenette to grab his weapon from its perch on the counter. “And if anything seems shady, it’s an immediate retreat.” 

Yugyeom delivers a nod before heading off to gather the other wolves. Mark moves toward the bunker exit, but is stopped by your form. A heavy sigh cascades from his lips—just from your expression, he knows this conversation isn’t going to go his way. 

“(Y/N)—” 

“If you’re gonna tell me I can’t go with you, don’t even bother.” 

He shakes his head, “It’s too dangerous…” 

“If someone tells me that one more goddamn time—” He can’t help the tiny smile that spreads across his face at the sassy way you roll your eyes. And he doesn’t protest when you move to follow Dahyun up the ladder. 

☽ ☽ ☽ ☽ ☽ ☾ ☾ ☾ ☾ ☾

Youngjae inhales a deep breath, taking the moment to feel his lungs expand, before releasing the air in an even deeper exhale. Even with the relaxation attempt, his body remains tense and his thoughts disorderly. He can’t help but feel as if Minho is waiting somewhere in the darkness of the crypt, ready to pounce on him like a predator to its prey. 

Would he toy with his catch first? Or would he skip the pleasantries and go right in for the kill? 

A hand appears on his shoulder, wrenching Youngjae from his morbid daydream. He angles his head to meet Lia’s concerned gaze and immediately tries to mask his fear beneath an expression of indifference. Unsurprisingly, the female witch sees right through his facade:

“I’ve known you practically my whole life, Youngjae. Whatever it is, you can’t hide it from me.” 

His shoulders sag in defeat as a sigh blows past his lips. 

“I’m just… worried about Mark-hyung. He’s powerless out there.”

“Mark is smart—he’ll know what to do if he finds himself in trouble.” 

“And if he doesn’t?... I-I mean, what if Minho or Changbin found him before he could warn the pack? He could be dead for all we know—” 

Lia silences his desperate quip with a shake of her head, “You shouldn’t think like that right now—” 

“What else am I supposed to do?” Youngjae runs a frustrated hand through his hair before gesturing toward the main exit of their underground penitentiary. “Even with yours and Jisung’s energy, I don’t have enough power to take down the barrier spell.” 

“Help is on the way—” 

“How do you know that for sure?” 

Lia remains silent, simply continuing to stare at Youngjae. He feels almost uncomfortable beneath her gaze, resisting the urge to shrink back and become one with the shadows. 

“I don’t know… but I have faith.” She murmurs after a brief moment. “We’ve lost a lot, but I still believe that we’ll all somehow manage to come out of this alive. You should try doing the same.” 

With that, Lia leaves to speak with a dangerously quiet Jisung. Youngjae spares the pair a single glance before heading toward the crypt entryway. A single beam of moonlight illuminates the exit stairway, almost as if mocking him about his inability to escape the dingy prison. 

Youngjae knows Lia is right—of course she’s right. Worrying about the possible pitfalls of this plan won’t help him, or Mark, or anyone. He can only pray that his mentor safely found his way out of the cemetery and is sending backup right this very moment. 

He needs to have hope, if nothing else. 

“What if we somehow lure Minho down here?” Youngjae’s thoughts quiet at Lia’s suggestion, angling his head to meet her gaze. “Technically Youngjae just needs to touch him to siphon his magic… so why don’t we bring him to us?” 

“Minho-hyung won’t step past the barrier.” Jisung dissents, dragging his fingers through his already tousled hair. “He probably knows we’re planning something against him, so there’s no way he’ll believe whatever ruse we try to pull.” 

“Then we have no choice. Youngjae, are you sure you can’t take down the spell?” 

Youngjae sullenly shakes his head. 

“Is there something else you can siphon? Maybe the crypt itself?” 

“The crypt was built by humans.” He answers, “I can only draw power from the supernatural—”

“Then it’s a good thing my dear brother and I weren’t turned into superwolf bait.” 

Youngjae, along with the other witches, nearly leaps a foot in the air at the sudden voice. He whirls around to face the stairwell, which to his surprise, is now occupied by the last person he ever expected to see: 

Im Jaebeom. 

Jisung chokes, scurrying backward into the shadows as the hybrid approaches the trio. After taking purchase against the doorway, he offers his signature sly smirk. 

“Evening, Harry Potter and friends… Funny meeting you down here.” 

“Now is not the time for games, hyung.” Youngjae breathes a sigh of relief as Jinyoung’s voice echoes throughout the stone walls. Seconds later, he comes hustling down the staircase before shoving Jaebeom out of the way. The vampire then peers into the crypt, his gaze burning with the determination of a man at war. “Is anyone hurt?” 

“No. We’re okay.” Lia steps forward. “If you’re here, I’m guessing Mark reached the wolf pack?” 

“Your guess is correct.” Jinyoung nods, placing a hand against the invisible doorway. “My brother and I will do everything we can to help disarm the rogue, but I think it’d be best to free you all first.” 

Youngjae joins the conversation. “I can take down the barrier spell, but I’ll need to draw energy from one of you to do so.” 

“Let’s do this quickly then.” Jinyoung goes to roll up the sleeve of his white shirt, but is halted by his immortal companion. Surprise filters through Youngjae’s veins as Jaebeom shrugs the leather jacket from his shoulders with a huff: 

“With my luck, he’ll drain you dry and I’ll have to deal with this voodoo fucker myself. I think it’s best we use my energy—sorry not sorry.” 

“Alright, then.” Youngjae hums, “I’ll need you to push through the barrier just enough that I can touch you… It’s gonna hurt. A lot.” 

“Good thing I’m a sadomasochist.” Jaebeom snickers at his brother’s unamused expression, “Too much?” 

“Move your hand through that goddamn barrier before I throw you to the superwolf myself.” 

The hybrid rolls his eyes, but follows Jinyoung’s instructions and proceeds to force his limb past the invisible blockade. He remains silent, but Youngjae can spy the uncomfortable twitch of his eyebrow and the tension along his stone-cold features. Blood begins to bud along his knuckles like a patch of blooming roses before flowing down his pale skin the more he presses against the barrier.

The siphoner raises his hand in preparation. “Just a bit more.” 

A mere couple seconds later, Youngjae feels Jaebeom’s bloody flesh brush against his own. The skin-to-skin contact is slight, but enough, allowing the hybrid’s energy to spread through his veins like wildfire. Youngjae almost cries in relief as the magic conquers his entire body—a new kind of hope sparking somewhere within his chest. 

“Phasmatos Siprum… Emnis Abortum…” Youngjae murmurs, positioning both hands against the invisible wall. He feels it crumbling beneath his fingertips, unable to withstand the power flowing through his figure. “Fasila Quisa Exilum San… Fasila Quisa Exilum San…”

A proud grin stretches along his features as the barrier buckles, then completely shatters. With Lia and Jisung in tow, Youngjae beelines out of the crypt and into the stairwell where Jaebeom, who’s cleaning the crimson from his knuckles, and Jinyoung reside. The latter nods, which Youngjae is quick to return. 

“‘Kay, they’re free… Now what?” 

“Now we find Minho and end this once and for all.” Lia answers, not sparing the hybrid a glance as she dashes up the stairs. Youngjae and the rest of the group try to keep up with the female witch as best as they can, not faltering until they reach the surface. The cemetery is quiet when they emerge from the crypt, Youngjae notices—almost too quiet. 

He takes a short moment to breathe in the fresh night air before turning to a tense Jinyoung, “I need to get close enough to siphon Minho’s magic to perform the counterspell. You think you and your brother can find me a way in?” 

Jinyoung nods. “You can count on us.” 

“Stay close…” Lia warns with a sigh, “I wouldn’t be surprised if the bastard already knows we’re free—” 

Lightning suddenly strikes a mere few feet from where Lia is standing, earning a chorus of screams and surprised gasps from the witch trio. Youngjae watches as Jinyoung speeds forward, grabbing Lia just in time to avoid being burnt to a crisp by a second bolt. With Jisung at his side, Youngjae quickly takes shelter underneath the overhang of a nearby tomb as even more lightning bombards the earth. He surveys the area, searching for the perpetrator responsible for the weather abnormalities. 

“Minho!...” Lia screeches from behind a large tree, her tone far less than friendly. “Quit being a fucking coward! Come out here and face us goddamnit!...” 

Youngjae huddles closer to Jisung as the wind suddenly picks up, ripping at his hair and clothing like a vengeful spirit. He moves to speak to his younger companion, but his words die on his tongue as the subject of the hour waltzes into view. The heavy gusts don’t seem to affect him, though that’s no surprise since the wretched weather is his doing. 

Minho smirks, “They say lightning never strikes one place twice… You must be really special then, Lia.” 

“Oh fuck off! We’re tired of playing your stupid games!” 

“This only ends one way, Minho—” Jinyoung says, cautiously moving from Lia’s side to approach the powerful witch. His steps, however, are halted by another vicious bolt of electricity. Youngjae attempts to make out Jaebeom’s form through the blurriness of his wind-induced tears, but the hybrid is nowhere to be found. “—so we can do it the easy way, or the hard way! The choice is yours!” 

“Last I checked, this isn’t your fight, Prime.”

“It became my fight the moment you threatened my family and my friends!” 

Minho snickers, “Trust me, I had every intention of ridding this town of you and your brother’s filth.” 

“Was it also your intention to kill an innocent werewolf girl!?” Youngjae’s heart drops at the vampire’s following statement. “Son Chaeyoung is dead because of Changbin—because of you!” 

“Every war has its casualties.” 

“And what of Felix!? Will his death just be another trivial loss in your obsession for revenge!?” 

This time, Youngjae notices the cockiness melt from Minho’s features into something akin to trepidation. The wailing of the wind picks up to a screech, nearly drowning out the dark-haired witch’s weak inquiry, “What are you talking about?”

“Felix was bitten… and is dying as we speak!” Jinyoung shakes his head frantically. “Do you believe he deserves this, Minho!? Do you believe Chaeyoung deserved to die!?... You can fix this—make this right!” 

Minho remains silent, and for a moment, Youngjae wonders if the witch will actually come to his senses and call off this whole ordeal. But just as soon as it appeared, the pained look along his features transitions into something more sinister.   

“We’re all gonna die someday, so what does it even fucking matter!?” 

“Are you hearing yourself!?” Lia screams from behind a nearby tree, “Look what you’ve become, Minho! How would Nayeon see you right now!” 

“Don’t bring her into this!” Minho’s hiss blends with the moans of the wind. Massive raindrops begin to pelt down against the earth, immediately soaking Youngjae to the bone. For the first time, he notices the dark witch’s position in relation to his own. Realistically, Youngjae can be at Minho’s side in mere milliseconds, before he has a chance to blink. If only he can get him to move a bit closer… 

As if reading his thoughts, Jinyoung attempts to coax the witch another step forward. 

“Please, Minho… I don’t wish to hurt you.”

The latter shakes his head with a chuckle. “It’s too fucking bad that you think you can.” 

Minho raises his hand, harshly forcing the vampire down against the muddy earth. Youngjae watches in horror as Jinyoung’s limbs begin to contort and rearrange against his own will—the sound of cracking bones and the vampire’s pained groans filling his ears like a haunting melody. He forces his gaze away from the gruesome sight and prepares to advance on the dark witch, but Jisung stops him with a hand to his shoulder: 

“Not yet, hyung.” 

“But Jinyoung—” 

“Trust me.” His eyes are wide with determination—Youngjae can’t remember a time he’s ever seen Jisung so fierce. “I have a plan. Wait here until my signal.” 

Though filled with confusion, Youngjae does as the young witch requests and stays in place while Jisung himself carefully maneuvers his way through gravestones and buildings, attempting to remain out of sight. A sudden burst of lightning cracks through the atmosphere, and at first, Youngjae fears Jisung has been caught, but quickly realizes Minho has his sights set on another party: 

“I was wondering when you’d join the fun—I looked forward to tearing your bitch-ass apart.” 

“I would say I’m flattered, but I rather like my ass.” Jaebeom saunters across a nearby rooftop. In the midst of the storm, he almost reminds Youngjae of a superhero—or more likely in his case, the psychotic supervillain. “Look, you’ve had your fun, kid. Now I suggest you release my brother and cut out all this petty-teenage bullshit before I break your body in places you never thought possible.” 

“That’s it?... And here I thought you’d want the antidote?” 

Jaebeom’s face darkens. 

“...So there is a cure?” 

“Of course. Every spell has its loophole.” Minho finally lowers his hand, ceasing the painful reconstruction of Jinyoung’s skeleton. Youngjae watches in confusion as the former retracts something from his pocket—some sort of vial, it seems—and offers it toward the hybrid. “The blood which Changbin drank to turn—it’ll heal anyone fallen victim to his bite.” 

“You better hand that over before I rip your teeth from your skull.” Jaebeom growls darkly, hopping down from his overhead perch.

The witch shakes his head, “Not so fast, Mr. Wolf… See, there was only so much left—enough to heal one lucky soul.” 

“You’re a sick fucking bastard,” Jaebeom spits. “You wanted this to happen—”

“Your little bloodsucking girlfriend is dying, isn’t she?” Minho tosses the vial toward the hybrid, who effortlessly catches it between two trembling fingers. “If you want to save her life, then I suggest you go before the venom does its job.” 

“Jaebeom-hyung, don’t—!” Jinyoung gasps, slithering across the muddy earth like an earthworm lost to the world. 

“You know she doesn’t have much time—” 

“We can’t do this without you—we need you!... I need you, hyung!”  

Jaebeom, staring at the tiny container in his grasp, doesn’t reply to his incapacitated companion. Youngjae curses the smirk that spreads across Minho’s face—a sign of victory—and attempts to spot Jisung and Lia somewhere between the ferocious raindrops. He has no such luck, and instead decides to pray for a miracle instead. 

“If you hadn’t fucked around with the few people I care about, I might have actually liked you.” Jaebeom murmurs with a sigh before tucking the vial into his pocket and sending the dark witch a malicious sneer. “Well isn’t that too fucking bad.” 

Youngjae leaps almost ten feet in the air as lightning strikes for what seems like the millionth time, although this time, it’s inches from where Minho is standing. After searching the area, Youngjae discovers Lia and Jisung across the way, hands clasped, eyes bright with passion, uttering some sort of offensive charm. Minho attempts to sprint in the opposite direction, but Jaebeom easily tackles the witch before he can get far. 

“Now Youngjae-hyung! Do it now!” 

At Jisung’s cue, Youngjae takes off into the rain. The bitter feel of Mother Nature’s tears against his skin quickens his movements, wanting nothing more then to end this hurricane, both literally and figuratively, once and for all. He reaches Minho in what seems like hours and hurries to grab his wrist—but just like the tides during a storm, the tables quickly turn. 

At the wave of Minho’s hand, Jaebeom goes flying across the cemetery, crashing into a stone statue and collapsing into the resulting rumble. White-hot pain spreads through Youngjae’s veins like a poison, freezing his muscles and immobilizing his limbs from any further movement. He collapses to the ground, where mud immediately clings to his clothing.

Minho rises to his feet before stepping on Youngjae’s hand with a cackle, “Don’t you fuckers get it!? I’m untouchable! You can’t fucking win!” 

“That’s where you’re wrong, Minho…” Youngjae chuckles, curling his fingers around the tread of the dark witch’s boot. Minho realizes his mistake as soon as the former’s hand begins to glow, foolishly attempting to squirm from his touch. 

Thunder roars in the distance as Youngjae grins in triumph: 

“Because unlike you… we’re not alone.” 

The last thing Youngjae sees before he loses consciousness is a flash of white and the bewildered face of the dark witch as he collapses beside him.   

☽ ☽ ☽ ☽ ☽ ☾ ☾ ☾ ☾ ☾

“I take it Mark apologized?...” You nearly leap out of your own skin at the sudden inquiry. With a less than agitated frown, you turn to acknowledge the culprit for your almost heart attack. If you didn’t know any better, you’d swear some of these supernaturals have powers of teleportation or something… 

“Goddamnit, Dahyun. Not all of us have superwolf hearing.” 

“Sorry, dearie. Force of habit.” The she-wolf offers an apologetic smile, moving forward to hook her arm with your own. She allows Yugyeom, Chan and Mark to gain a bit of distance ahead before repeating again, “So Mark…?” 

“We both talked it out and apologized… so everything’s okay now.” You hum—the tiny fib leaving a bitter taste in your mouth. 

Truthfully, your encounter with Mark left you conflicted. Of course, you’re more than glad he finally opened up about his past, and even more glad that he trusts you enough to reveal his lingering feelings of trauma, but there’s still a pretty big fucking elephant in the room—one involving his dead best friend and the fact you can talk to him beyond the grave. 

You should have told him then and there—right after you promised to abolish all secrets—but something inside you couldn’t do it… and you don’t know why. 

“Why are you so interested in Mark and I’s relationship anyway?” You utilize your curiosity as a distraction from the guilt breathing down your neck, angling your neck to peer at Dahyun’s side profile. “Is there… history between you two?” 

“No, no—nothing like that. Mark and I have just known each other since we were kids. Our moms were close friends, so Mark, Yugyeom and I pretty much grew up together.” 

“He never told me that.” 

“Don’t take it personal, sweetheart. Mark doesn’t like to talk about his past—” Dahyun sighs, “—too many bad memories between his dad and the bullshit that happened with his mom. He’ll come around eventually… he just needs more time.” 

“I know his mom passed when he was a teenager, but Mark never actually mentioned how she died…” You bite your lip, sending a curious glance to your wolf companion. “It’s really not fair to ask you, but—” 

“Mark found her in their own kitchen with her entire throat ripped open.” Dahyun’s blunt answer leaves your throat dry, unable to speak another word if you wanted to. “The sheriff ruled it as an animal attack, but I’m sure you’re smart enough to figure out what really happened.” 

Your heart sinks, and you choose not to say anything further. 

“Dahyun! (Y/N)! Don’t get too far behind!” Chan’s voice echoes from somewhere up ahead. With the black of night beginning to fade, you can just make out his, Yugyeom, and Mark’s silhouettes a couple dozen feet away. Dahyun gives your forearm a gentle squeeze before releasing your conjoined limbs to catch up with her packmates. You do the same, meeting an armed Mark about halfway. 

His eyes glitter with concern underneath the fading starlight. 

“Everything okay…?” 

“Yeah, Dahyun and I were just catching up.” You inhale a deep breath before releasing it in an even heavier exhale. “But there is something I need to talk to you about—about Jackson and the whole resurrection thing.” 

Mark shakes his head, “You have every right to make your own decisions, (Y/N), but I wish you and Youngjae would have come to me.” 

“I know that, but it was more complicated than that—” You try to gather your thoughts while also attempting to make sense of your words. “I couldn’t tell you because, well—because Jackson told—” 

“Mark-hyung! We’ve got an issue!” Yugyeom’s warning immediately cuts off your explanation. Mark shoots you an apologetic glance before hurrying the two of you forward to join the wolf trio. It only takes seconds for you to distinguish the cause of the beta’s distress. 

A deer carcass lays precariously on the forest floor, and albeit it’s practically torn to shreds, you can just make out a single word carved into its bloody flesh: 

Die. 

“Shit—we need to go. Now.” 

“We’ve already come this far. Chae should be around here somewhere.” Chan ignores Mark’s directive, stepping over the animal corpse to traverse further through the forest. He barely takes a step before the witch is grabbing his wrist. “Let me go, hyung.” 

“Don’t be an idiot.” 

“Don’t tell me what to—”

“Shut the fuck up. Both of you.” Dahyun quietly hisses, “Listen.” 

You try to do as the she-wolf says, but all that meets your ears is the combination of your own labored breathing and uneven pulse. Judging by the confused expression along Mark’s face, he’s probably dealing with the same situation. 

“What is it?” 

“We’re being watched.” Yugyeom answers Mark’s inquiry in a whisper. “Mark, you and (Y/N) need to find somewhere to hide right now—Chan, Dubu, get ready to fight—”

As soon as the command leaves Yugyeom’s lips, Mark takes you by the arm and drags you behind a broad tree trunk. You fish Jinyoung’s pocket knife from your pocket while Mark cocks his shotgun in preparation. Who knew the day would come that you’d actually be grateful for the presence of two dangerous weapons…  

“If anything goes wrong—you run like hell, got it?” 

You shake your head at Mark’s demand. “I’m not just going to leave you—”  

“Yugyeom! Above you!” At Chan’s warning, you’re suddenly shoved to the ground by the witch, watching in horror as a deranged Changbin descends from the treetops onto the beta himself. His skin is a sickly ashen shade, and his black veins so prominent it would make a nurse weep. There’s no human emotion left inside his dark eyes as he strikes Yugyeom over and over again with his lengthy sharp talons, tearing open his skin like a birthday present—he’s a complete animal. 

“Bin, stop!” Chan throws his arms around Changbin’s shoulders in an attempt to pull him from Yugyeom, winding a tight arm around his throat before thrusting a knee against his spine. “Think about what you’re doing!” 

With Dahyun’s assistance, the two wolves manage to separate the dark wolf from that of Yugyeom’s wounded self. Even so, Changbin clearly does not appreciate being stolen away from his prey. He easily escapes from Chan’s hold, landing a couple heavy hits against the latter’s nose before shoving him to the ground. Dahyun takes the moment to strike, bringing the dark wolf to kneel with a harsh kick to his knee, but the action does minimal damage. Changbin punts the she-wolf a dozen feet away as if she weighs nothing. You wince as Dahyun connects with a nearby tree trunk with a vocal thud before dropping to the ground with no movements of rejoining the fight. 

“Shit…” You curse to yourself, “They won’t be able to take him down by themselves—he’s too fucking strong.” 

“Watch your ears.”  You notice Mark aiming his gun toward the dark wolf, waiting for an opportunity with his finger on the trigger. At his discretion, you cover your ears just in time for him to fire a first and second shot. A ferocious growl echoes through the trees, spreading goosebumps across your flesh like wildfire. 

You watch both Chan and Yugyeom take advantage of Changbin’s distraction. The alpha delivers a swift, yet heavy hit against his wounded shoulder while the beta goes for his legs. Similar to Dahyun, they manage to pin Changbin to the forest floor. For a moment, you almost believe the fight has concluded in your team’s favor—but the tides shift. In the blink of an eye, Chan is impaled with a large jagged branch and sent tumbling into some foliage whereas Yugyeom is dealt punch after strike after kick, unable to escape the barrage of Changbin’s wrath. He eventually, like the former two, collapses to the earth and makes no move to rise. 

Changbin cracks his neck before stalking toward where you and your companion stand. 

“Mark—” 

“I got it!” Mark quickly feeds another couple shells into the shotgun barrel, cocks the weapon, then aims down sight. He manages to sink a bullet into your target’s abdomen, followed by another in his bicep, but Changbin merely releases an annoyed snarl and continues charging forward. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck—(Y/N), move!” You leap out of the way just in time to avoid a powerful strike. Changbin’s hand splinters the trunk of the tree, sending pieces of bark in every direction. A particular shard catches the bridge of your nose, causing blood to warmly cascade down your skin. You quickly wipe the liquid from your right eye, ignoring the nausea fluttering inside your gut, before focusing back on the situation at hand. 

You look up in time to watch Mark swing his shotgun harshly against Changbin’s skull. Taking advantage of his disorientation, you rush forward to stab your pocket knife into the wolf’s back. Changbin practically roars in fury, angling backward to land a hit to your face before you have time to react. The force of his strike throws you to the ground, a sharp pain lingering in your left cheek. 

“Don’t fucking touch her!” Mark throws himself against Changbin, delivering hit after hit to anything and anywhere. Still, Mark’s human strength does little to outbeat the dark wolf, and you watch in horror as Changbin effortlessly pins the witch against his chest with a bloody hand around his throat.  You desperately search for something, anything, in hopes of saving Mark from whatever deadly fate awaits Changbin’s bloodlust, but fate doesn’t seem to be on your side.

“Changbin—please don’t do this!” You cry, praying to some type of deity that the wolf is sane enough to understand your words. Even so, your confidence is low, seeing as talking clearly had no effect during your last encounter, but you’re fresh out of options at this point. “You know this isn’t who you are!” 

To your surprise, Changbin actually answers, “You don’t know anything about me.” 

“Maybe not, but I know you don’t actually want to hurt anyone…” You cautiously rise to your feet with a shake of your head, wary of the tight hold Changbin currently has on Mark’s jugular. “Your thoughts are all sorts of fucked up right now because of the dark magic, so why don’t you just let Mark go and we can—” 

“Don’t you fucking get it! This fucker—” He yanks at Mark with more force than necessary, “—took everything from me! He took my pack, my alpha—the only people I ever felt safe with!” 

“I understand you—” 

“No, you don’t!” Changbin wails, “You can’t even imagine how I feel! How fucking hard it is to wake up in a world you know you’ll never belong! How much it fucking hurts just to go on and pretend like everything’s normal when it’s fucking not!” 

“Tell him it’s okay to feel angry—” You whirl your head around to find a seemingly exhausted, yet wild-eyed Jackson Wang at your side. “—but none of this was Mark’s fault.” 

You’re mortified at first, having never encountered the ghost anywhere outside your bedroom—but whether it’s the desperation etched along his features, or the flush of purple that overtakes Mark’s complexion—you quickly transfer back to reality: 

“Changbin, it’s perfectly normal to feel angry and cheated, but this wasn’t Mark’s fault—deep down, I think you know that.”

“What does it fucking matter anymore? I’m all alone anyways.” The pure agony etched along his face has your heart splitting in two. 

You’ve never seen a creature so strong and so powerful look so… vulnerable. 

“You said the exact same thing to me when we first met…” Jackson murmurs softly.

“You told Jackson you were alone at one point too…” 

An obvious wave of tense silence washes through the forest, making the beat of your heart that much more prominent in your ears. 

Changbin’s whisper is dark—dangerous. “How the fuck do you know that?” 

“Because… Because he’s here, Changbin.” You say, your eyes meeting Mark’s as the words leave your tongue. “You’re not alone because Jackson is still here.” 

You don’t know what kind of reaction you expected from your revelation, but it certainly is not the heinous laughter that spills from the dark wolf’s lips. 

“You must have lost your goddamn mind… Jackson-hyung is dead!” 

“Maybe physically, but his spirit still remains.” 

“You mean—” You turn to discover a bewildered Yugyeom unsteadily leaning against a tree, “—his… ghost? You—You can see his ghost?” 

You nod.   

Changbin sneers with a low growl. “I don’t fucking believe you.” 

“There’s a cliffside back along the bay about twenty miles from the lodge,” Jackson begins, his tone a blend of nostalgic and sorrowful. “Changbin and I used to go there to watch the full moon rise before we turned into our wolf forms… I-I’ve missed that so much…” 

“You and Jackson would always watch the full moon rise on a cliff overlooking the bay before you transitioned,” You repeat. “He says he misses those moments with you…”

“Stop it!” Changbin frantically shakes his head, “You’re lying!” 

“He’s here, Changbin… He’s really here.” You move forward again, more confidently this time, and raise your hands in a sympathetic gesture. “And the last thing he wants is for you to make the same mistakes he did, so please—let Mark go and let us help you…” 

It’s as if time freezes for a moment. Changbin seems to fight a battle with himself—countless emotions rushing through his teary eyes. You watch the dark wolf glance toward an unconscious Dahyun and Chan, then to a silent Yugyeom, before finally setting his focus back to you. You can only pray your face reflects the hope swirling throughout your veins—pray that Changbin will do the right thing. 

To your delight, the blackness of his veins gradually begin to fade and the sharp claws protruding from his fingertips recede. You don’t realize you’ve been holding your breath until Changbin finally retracts his hold from Mark’s neck. You’re quick to take the unsteady witch in your own arms before sending the now normal wolf a thankful smile. 

“Thank you, Changbin…” 

He nods shyly before wiping a couple tears from his cheeks. You watch as Yugyeom cautiously makes his way toward the younger boy, murmurs something, then tugs the latter into a tight embrace that pulls even more liquid sadness from his eyes. The sight has your heart melting into a puddle of warmth—the emotion doesn’t last though, not when Mark’s dark croak enters your ears:

“You… can see Jackson…” 

You shrug sheepishly, “I wanted to tell you, but he said not to… He didn’t want to hurt you anymore than he already had.” 

Mark remains silent. You try to search for his features for some kind of anger or disappointment, but are only awarded with his surface level blank stare. Worry flooding through your veins, you look to Jackson for any possible guidance, but the ghost merely shakes his head. 

After a couple tense seconds or so, Mark finally murmurs, “Jack… I—I’m so sorry. For everything.” 

“You have nothing to be sorry for.” Jackson says immediately, “If only I had listened to you, then maybe things would have played out different.” 

“He says it wasn’t your fault—he should have listened to you.”

“We both made some pretty shitty mistakes.” Mark hums, “I miss you, man. So fucking much.” 

You don’t wait for Jackson to reply, already knowing his answer. 

“He misses you too, Mark. Just as much.”

“How is this even possible…?” You and Mark turn to find the shocked gaze of Yugyeom, who is closely followed by the despair of that belonging to Changbin. “Supernaturals can’t even see spirits, much less mortals…” 

“We never exactly figured that out. Jackson said he felt drawn to me from the Other Side—he kind of just showed up in my bedroom the night after Mina and Momo died.” 

“Any contact with the dead usually requires some sort of spell or medium.” Mark bites his lip in confusion. “I’ve never seen anything like this before, not even in any of my mother’s grimoires—”

“Jackson!” Your body grows rigid as Jackson suddenly collapses to the ground with a pained groan. You hurry forward, kneeling next to the man, and reach for his shoulder. The realization of his phantom existence hits you like a bag of bricks when your fingers phase through his form. You settle for calling his name again instead, “Jackson—what’s wrong?” 

“What the hell is going on?” You hear Changbin stress from somewhere behind you, but your focus is completely on the ghost in question. 

Jackson lifts his head with a gasp, revealing a line of blood dripping from his nose. “I-It’s the witches!... They know about our plans—they’re trying to force me back to the Other Side—”

“(Y/N)?” 

You shake your head feverishly, “It’s, uh, it’s the witches on the Other Side—they don’t like Jackson crossing over, so they’re trying to bring him back…” 

Mark nods. “Witches, dead or alive, will do anything to maintain the balance of nature.” 

“(Y/N)—shit—I don’t have a lot of time—” Your chest tightens at the urgency behind Jackson’s words. “I know so much just went down, but—” 

“Don’t worry, Jack. I won’t let you disappear again.” You affirm before climbing to your feet to face your new subject of interest. “Mark—I need you to perform the resurrection spell.” 

“Woah, wait—” Mark shakes his head, “(Y/N), I can’ t—” 

“If we don’t resurrect him now, then Jackson is gone forever!” Your warning spreads a new tension across the atmosphere, manifesting in the form of sullen and panicked expressions. “Please, Mark—we have a chance to bring him back!” 

“I can’t do the spell because I don’t have any magic…” Your heart sinks at Mark’s revelation. “Minho absorbed all my magical energy back at the graveyard… I’m so sorry, Jackson…” 

“Hold on, you told me that there’s different types of magic…” You push, “Can’t you draw energy from something? Like the forest, or the moon, or, or—”

“Or me.” You turn, discovering the speaker of the response to be none other than a determined Changbin. “Minho-hyung’s spell may be gone, but I can still feel the magical energy lingering through my body.” 

Mark hesitates, “I-I don’t know if it will work… and if something goes wrong—” 

“Do you want Jackson-hyung back or not?...” 

A moment of silence passes after Changbin’s question. You keep an eye on a repeatedly wincing Jackson, and the other on the witch’s face, attempting to decipher his thoughts inside the glow of his gaze. For a moment, you wonder if Mark will even provide an answer, until the words finally leave his lips: 

“Fuck the balance of nature. I’ll bring you back, Jackson—I promise.” 

☽ ☽ ☽ ☽ ☽ ☾ ☾ ☾ ☾ ☾

Jinyoung stares at the sun as it gradually rises past the horizon, bathing his skin in a warm, celebratory light. His gaze wavers across the cemetery to the notorious mausoleum, where he watches Lia and Jisung carefully assist a barely conscious Youngjae past the doorway. After this crazy night, the siphoner definitely deserves a good, long rest. Then again, so does everyone else. 

He releases a heavy sigh before shifting away from the witch trio. After sparing one final glance to the sunrise, Jinyoung allows his feet to carry him through the early morning glow, past countless tombstones and other structures, and settles beside a second figure in front of a particular burial site. He silently reads the engravings along the headstone before addressing his companion without so much as a glimpse: 

“I assumed you would be halfway back to the bunker by now.” 

Jaebeom doesn’t respond, not that Jinyoung really expects him to. He peers at the hybrid through the corner of his eye, attempting to seek meaning beyond his blank features. Centuries later, Jinyoung still can’t predict the workings of Jaebeom’s inner thoughts. Especially when it comes to the situation at hand. 

“Mark called. Changbin is no longer affected by Minho’s spell.” He explains, “They’re also preparing a ritual to resurrect Jackson Wang—” 

“Tzuyu…?” 

Jinyoung’s chest tightens as the name falls from Jaebeom’s lips. 

“Their youngest, Ryujin, is looking after both her and Felix.”

“So she’s still alive…?” 

“It seems so.” 

A brief moment of silence passes between the pair. The earth grows brighter and brighter as the seconds roll by, reminding Jinyoung that time is a friend to no one. 

“Hyung, did you… truly switch off your humanity?” 

“I did, at first.” Jaebeom’s answer is quiet, and Jinyoung can detect the subtle hint of vulnerability hidden beneath his gruff tone. “But I guess I can never completely turn it off.” 

“It’s alright to feel, hyung—be it anger… or passion… or fear…” 

Jinyoung notices Jaebeom shift uncomfortably before glancing down at the glass vial in the palm of his hand. For once, he can actually distinguish the emotions present within the hybrid’s dark eyes. The knowledge only jabs at his heart. 

“Everything is taken care of, right?” 

“The night has ended, and Minho is safely sealed away in the crypt.” Jinyoung nods, “We live to see another day.”

He watches his companion tuck the precious vial into the pocket of his jeans before turning away from the headstone. Jinyoung is not sure where the urge comes from, but he abandons his perch, grabbing Jaebeom’s shoulder before he can leave the cemetery. He ignores the hybrid’s confused expression and pulls him into a tight embrace. 

“Thank you for staying, hyung…” Jinyoung’s murmur is slightly muffled against the fabric of his jacket, but he knows his companion heard them loud and clear. 

Jaebeom hesitates for a moment, clearly taken aback by the sudden act, but eventually winds his arms loosely around Jinyoung’s back with a gentle murmur of his own:

“You will always be my family, Jinyoung… Always and forever…”  

☽ ☽ ☽ ☽ ☽ ☾ ☾ ☾ ☾ ☾

“I’ve never used magic like this before, so I can’t promise this will work.” Mark glances to where he assumes Jackson’s spirit is located inside the white circle makeshifted out of a bag of flour Dahyun managed to find in a bunker cabinet, before glancing to the companion at his side. “You sure you’re up for this? It’ll feel like I’m literally sucking the life force out of your body…” 

Changbin nods, “If it means bringing Jackson-hyung back.” 

“Okay, then.” Mark turns to the surrounding crowd next, “In order to do this, I’ll need to lower the veil to the Other Side. This will create a temporary door that Jackson can pass through to physically enter our realm. Once he crosses over, he should become mortal again.” 

“Seems easy enough.” Dahyun snickers, although the sound is dry and forced. “Anything else we need to know?” 

“Whatever happens, do not enter the circle.” His eyes drift from the she-wolf to your silent form. As if sensing the scrutiny, your gaze connects with his own, and knowing he has your attention, Mark continues in a darker tone, “Just as spirits can pass into our realm, we can cross to the Other Side… so for the love of god, don’t do anything stupid.”

Your and Mark’s staring contest ceases when your head snapes toward the circle. Seconds later, you break the tense silence with a soft murmur, “Jackson says it’s getting worse. He can feel the witches trying to drag him back.” 

“Then I guess that’s our cue.” He sighs before nodding toward the circle one last time, “I’m gonna do my best, Jack. Just hold on.” 

With one final glance to the grimoire you gave him earlier, Mark inhales a deep breath and takes Changbin’s outstretched hand into his own. He closes his eyes, focusing every part of his brain on the electrifying sensation of the magical energy coursing through the wolf’s body. Bit by bit, he feels Changbin’s power bleeding into his own veins, awakening the slumbering supernatural nature of his soul. Once he’s sure enough he’s acquired enough magic, Mark opens his eyes and begins the incantation: 

“Vita mortem, mortem vita est… Partis inferioris velum, partis inferioris ante illum vetum…” Almost instantly, the wind picks up while the air grows uncomfortably cold. He ignores the violent shivers wracking through his limbs and proceeds to repeat the words as the temperature continues to drop. With each spoken syllable, Mark’s head becomes dizzy and his flesh feels as if it’s being scorched off, but he continues. 

No amount of pain could ever dull the hope of seeing his best friend alive once more.

“Holy shit—it’s actually working!” 

Mark doesn’t realize he had shut his eyes until he opens them, nearly yelping in delight when he discovers the image of said friend standing in the center of the white circle. Jackson looks no different than the day he last saw him, and he can’t decide if he wants to laugh out of irony or burst into tears. 

“The veil is down! I’m gonna start the spell to cross you over!” Mark yells over the howling of the wind, clutching Changbin’s hand tighter as he transitions to the next phase of the spell. “Ohto eestanay as vazat esvet ohnaz eespalit… Ohto eestanay as vazat esvet—fuck!” 

A brutal force comes down against his head, almost resembling that of a punch, before spreading hot fire down his neck and to the rest of his body. Mark doubles over with a wheeze, attempting to fight against the painful sensations by grounding himself in Changbin’s touch. However, as soon as the first wave concludes, a second, even more excruciating one follows. He feels as if someone is trying to crush his brain—to kill him from the inside out. 

“Mark-hyung! What’s wrong!?” 

“It’s the witches!...” Mark is thankful that Jackson answers Yugyeom’s panicked inquiry, “They’re trying to break the spell!” 

“Like… hell they will…” Mark hisses, righting himself with a pained groan before grabbing Changbin’s other hand. “I’m not going down without a fight—hold on!...” 

He jumps back into the spell, weakening the manipulated pain through the absorption of more of the wolf’s energy. Borderline high off the power, he pushes everything he has into the ritual, determined to see it through to the end. After a minute that passes like a decade, Mark detects a shift in the atmosphere, indicating the near completion of the spell, and shouts: 

“Jackson—get out of the circle! Get out now!” 

As if in slow motion, Mark watches Jackson quickly move to escape the white border. But just as soon as his toe brushes the edge, he is wrenched away and lifted from the ground. 

Dahyun cries, “What the hell is happening!?”

“They won’t let me cross over!” Jackson squirms and writhes, attempting to escape whatever invisible grip is holding him hostage. His efforts are futile, and he continues to rise higher and higher off of the ground. 

“Hang on, Jack!” Mark releases Changbin’s hands and raises his own palms in Jackson’s direction. However, the same torturous pain from before returns once more, hitting his nerves like a sledgehammer to a brick wall, and throws him to the earth. “Shit—no! H-He has to pass through the circle!” 

“(Y/N)! Don’t!” 

Mark raises his gaze at Dahyun’s shriek, only to watch in horror as you rush past the flour boundary and grab hold of Jackson’s hand. A blinding light immediately erupts from your clasped palms, expanding through the area until all Mark can see is white. 

After a long moment, his vision eventually returns, and he finds the forest completely silent. The temperature is no longer frigid, he notices, and the strain within his brain is gone. For a moment, Mark is filled with prowess, victorious at the fact he successfully carried out an ancient resurrection ritual, however, his triumph is temporary, especially when he notices your form laid motionless in Dahyun’s arms. 

“(Y/N)—fuck!” Mark hurries to where you lay, stealing your figure from the she-wolf to cradle you in his own hold. “Shit, shit, shit—she’s not breathing! Fucking goddamnit!” 

His panic only grows tenfold when he hears the murmur cascade from Dahyun’s lips: 

“Mark… where’s Jackson?”

☽ ☽ ☽ ☽ ☽ ☾ ☾ ☾ ☾ ☾

Jaebeom scales the final rung of the ladder before making his way toward the corner where the snoozing trio resides. He moves cautiously, mindful not to awaken the young werewolf caretaker, yet eventually finds himself perched on the edge of a familiar cot. His heart thunders inside his chest, and he cannot tell if it’s out of anxiety or hope. Though at this moment, Jaebeom can really care less to find out. 

“It’s about time you showed up…” He winces at the broken husk of his companion’s voice, attempting to keep his expression as neutral as possible. “I thought you were actually going to leave me to die in the hands of a neurotic teenage wolf…” 

Jaebeom doesn’t respond to her quip—he can’t find it in himself to do so. 

Tzuyu raises an eyebrow, “What’s with the face? Did you take down the witch or not?” 

“We did.” He hums, “The spell is broken.”

“Good thing—” The vampire pauses to cough, and the sound is like broken glass against his ears. “—you and your brother are safe for the eternity to come.” 

“Tzuyu… I found the cure.” 

“What are you waiting for then? My consent?” She snickers playfully, “We fuck for over a century and this is the most gentlemanly behavior I’ve ever seen from you, Beomie.”

Again, Jaebeom remains silent. 

Recognizing the obvious tension in the room, Tzuyu’s face falls. “But… I guess it’s more complicated than that, hm?” 

“There’s only enough for…” He’s unable to finish his sentence, not when his companion’s eyes are gazing at him with such sullenness and sympathy. Jaebeom has to look away for a moment, though the action does little to relieve the tightness of his chest. 

“Ah, I see.” Tzuyu hums, glancing across the way to a slumbering Felix. Her pale lips twitch, as if attempting to upturn to a smile, but it instead appears as a weak grimace. “You know, I really never meant to hurt (Y/N)… or you.” 

“Tzuyu—”

“I’ve known you for decades… but I’ve never seen you look at someone the way you look at her.” Another violent cough wracks through her body, expelling a mass of dark blood past her lips. Jaebeom is quick to wipe the splotch from her skin with the blanket, trying not to dwell on the fact that her skin is ice cold. “I’ll admit, I was jealous at first… I’ve always wanted someone to look at me like that… 

“I know you’re afraid to care—to love, Jaebeom.” Tzuyu murmurs sadly, lifting a hand to rest against the hybrid’s cheek. “Especially someone like (Y/N)… and you’re right to. She’s too good… too human. 

“One misstep and you could lose her forever.” 

“I want to be selfish…” Jaebeom whispers, “I want to be selfish so fucking bad—”

“But you can’t be, Beom. Not with her.” 

“Then let me be selfish with you.” 

Tzuyu smiles. 

“I’ve lived over three lifetimes, and he is barely a ways into his one—so you’re going to give the cure to that damn kid, Im Jaebeom.” He leans further into her touch as she caresses the apple of his cheek. “Promise me that you’ll stay away from her—to keep her safe?”

He nods.

“Good… Can you hold me for a moment? I’m cold.” 

“I’ll hold you as long as you want me to.” 

And so Jaebeom takes Tzuyu into his arms. However, it’s not until the vampire grows still does he allow a single tear to cascade from his eye, staining the bloodied bed sheets with the agony of a heart that has been broken too many times to count.

[mnemo-li]

Calebros: A Rant About My Favorite VTM NPC

I do love the newer Vampire: the Masquerade content, but sometimes the writing leaves a lot to be desired. A prominent example is - what in my opinion is - the butchery of Calebros’ character in Beckett's Jyhad Diary.

While I do love seeing the more brusque side of Calebros’ personality, I don’t think I’ve ever recalled him being this vulgar in the original Clan Novels. He was definitely not dropping the f-bombs left and right, and even his gruff manner had more to do with dry humor, sarcasm, and keeping up the dignified image fit for a clan leader. I do realize that this series of chat is set much after his whole ordeal as Prince of New York is over, so maybe the experience really changed him. However, the in-universe explanation of his drastic shift in personality is lacking– it is most likely the result of a change in writers which led to inconsistent writing and characterization.

Here are some examples of scenes that presents his characterization in a more nuanced light.

Scene 1: The Nictuku Accusation

“They would have eaten me, I tell you!” “I believe you, Jeremiah,” Calebros said in a forced, calm tone. He was tired of nodding politely, of reassuring his clanmate. Jeremiah could be a difficult person to like at times. This was rapidly becoming one of those times. “Don’t you humor me!” Jeremiah snapped. “I’ve been coming to you about this for weeks now.” Seems more like years, Calebros thought. “And still you’ve done nothing. Nothing!” Jeremiah paced around, gesticulating wildly. There was no second chair by Calebros’s desk, and for this very reason. He mostly didn’t like guests, didn’t want guests, didn’t want to encourage them to sit down, to take a load off and stay for a while. Most anyone who had reason or inclination to visit Calebros was irate, complaining, or tiresome. Jeremiah happened to be all three presently. “That is not true,” Calebros assured him. Jeremiah snorted in disgusted. “What, then? Tell me. What have you done?” “I have considered quite carefully your report.” “Ha! Like I said, nothing. ‘Considered my report…’” Jeremiah repeated contemptuously. “This is what I think of you and your reports—” he said, grabbing a handful of papers from the nearest stack on Calebros’s desk. Jeremiah made to fling them into the air— Instantly, Calebros’s hand shot out and latched around his visitor’s wrist. Talons pricked undead flesh ever so slightly. “Believe me,” said Calebros evenly. “You do not want to do that.” They faced each other for a moment, one monstrous creature restraining the hand of another. Jeremiah’s fingers, biting into the papers, were long and grotesquely thin, little more than needles of bone. His entire body was thin and hard and covered with knots, bulging masses of hardened tissue, like an old, gnarled swamp tree. Finally he stopped resisting Calebros and returned the reports to the desk. “I’m sorry,” Jeremiah said and resumed his pacing, just as intently if less frenetically.

This is from the Nosferatu clan novel. Here, Jeremiah is trying to get Calebros to believe that there truly are Nictukus dwelling in the sewers. Calebros is, frankly, tired of hearing the folk tale especially when he has other pressing matters to deal with. Yet, even with his patience paper thin, he does not lash out at his broodmate. He is shown to be deeply introverted, anti-social perhaps, but he does not let his own nature affect his duties. As the Nosferatu primogen - as the leader of the clan - he has to listen to the concerns of his family, no matter how absurd. He knows when to express his authority, and he never abuses it. Again, no f-bombs dropped.

Scene 2: The Salt Lake

“Geez, what am I, your mother?” Emmett asked. “No,” Calebros said. “You are my brother, my broodmate.” “Brood, litter, whatever. We were both chosen to suck the old blood tit, so who am I to ask questions?” Calebros sighed. Blood tit, indeed. “That’s not how you remember it.” Now it was Emmett’s turn to sigh. “Don’t do this. Don’t get all… You always do this, get all touchy-feely we’re-all-brothers-in-the-blood, when you soak your head, blah, blah, blah…” “Make light of it if you will—” “I will. Thank you very much. Got enough salt here?” Emmett flicked some at Calebros.

This is from the Nosferatu clan novel. Here, Calebros has just came up from his meditation within the mud hole / salt lake. He is shown to be introspective and even sentimental. In terms of character voice, his more poised speaking style and inner monologue is contrasted against Emmett’s rough, colloquial style.

Other Sources

In the Calebros graphic novel, a similar scene is shown where Calebros is depicted to be trying and failing to remember his past before he became a vampire, losing his mind as he mixes up imagination with false memories. His inner dialogue in the graphic novel shows him saying:

“Do I tell him that his prince, his... compatriot?, is losing his mind? Never.”

This very much reflects his true nature. In Vampire: the Masquerade, there is a system of nature vs demeanor. According to his character sheet, his demeanor is that of a “director” while his nature is a “martyr (penitent)”.

Director: To the Director, nothing is worse than chaos and disorder. The Director seeks to be in charge, adopting a "my way or the highway" attitude on matters of decision-making. The Director is more concerned with bringing order out of strife, however, and need not be truly "in control" of a group to guide it. Coaches, teachers, and many political figures exemplify the Director Archetype.

Martyr: The Martyr suffers for his cause, enduring his trials out of the belief that his discomfort will ultimately improve others' lot. Some Martyr simply want the attention or sympathy their ordeals engender, while others are sincere in their cause, greeting their opposition with unfaltering faith in their own beliefs. Many Inquisitors, staunch idealists, and outcasts are Martyr Archetypes.

Penitent: The Penitent exists to atone for the grave sin she commits simply by being who she is. Penitents have either low self-esteem or legitimate, traumatic past experiences, and feel compelled to "make up" for inflicting themselves upon the world. Penitent Archetypes aren't always religious in outlook; some truly want to scourge the world of the grief they bring to it. Repentant sinners, persons with low self-esteem, and remorseful criminals are examples of the Penitent Archetype.

All of these quotes, if feel, matches very much with the Calebros I knew from the clan novel saga. Below are also a set quotes detailing Calebros’ inner dialogue in his graphic novel.

“As prince, only I can save them, only I can keep them from looking where they shouldn’t. A force exists underneath this city, sleeping, and it must remain so, lest we all perish.

“Augustin, my sire, left us to investigate the Nictuku, and came back to me with this information. Could this be Gehenna? The Final Nights? When the Ancients awake to devour their errant children? Can it be stopped? Should it be stopped? Everything that is done is a hope of staving off the inevitable. Why?”

“My embrace into this world was a foregone conclusion, made for me by Augustin. It is no different for anyone else. Why then do we not welcome the coming Armageddon? Exchange one world for another. It sounds almost painless, except I would never accept such a course, neither would my fellow Nosferatu. Neither would my fellow Kindred, for that matter.”

He is incredibly contemplative, and determined too, willing to fight against the inevitable apocalypse of the vampires. As long as his clan and the Kindred as a whole does not give up, does not give in the the despair of Gehenna, he too will be willing to fight for the survival of others.

Scene 3: Against a Master Manipulator

The character of Hesha is... complex. I see him as sort of a sweet-talking, cunning, charismatic cult leader. Here is a dialogue between him and Calebros.

“No harm was done,” Hesha said softly, his voice still the slightest bit scratchy from the ordeal he’d undergone. “As you say,” said Calebros, not looking up and continuing to write furiously. “You concede without agreeing.” Hesha laughed quietly. Calebros’s head whipped up. Angry words were ready on his lips, but the Egyptian’s smile was not mocking. The Setite obviously realized the weakness of his position, physically and strategically, as well as the fragility of their alliance. “Candor is important between friends,” Hesha said. “Otherwise, perceived insults take hold and fester.” “I am quite accustomed to festering,” Calebros said curtly. “I fear that I’m growing so as well,” Hesha said, squeezing one of the boils that stood raised about one of his many open wounds until the canker popped, and frothy pus ran down his arm. He laughed quietly again. Calebros punctuated a written sentence with a particularly violent period. “Your woman willfully disobeyed her instructions.” “She exercised discretion,” Hesha countered. “She blatantly disregarded the safety of my people.” “If anything had gone wrong,” Hesha said, “it would be Pauline lying torn on the ground. Your people would have faded into the night, none the worse for wear.” Calebros fumed. Probably Hesha was correct—but the Nosferatu was not about to admit as much. “I will speak with her,” Hesha said reasonably. “She has not encountered those of your clan before. She’s not aware of how strongly your predilection for…” “Cowardice?” Calebros suggested accusingly. “Prudence, I was going to say. She’s not aware of how strongly your predilection for prudence runs.” Good choice of words, Calebros thought. But, then, Hesha always chose his words carefully, always seemed to know just the right thing to say. It was discomforting in a way, how easily the Setite could alleviate tension with just a few words. Go ahead, Eve. Take a bite of the apple. Adam might like some too. But it seemed that they needed one another—and that outweighed their natural and mutual tendencies to distrust one another. Just barely.

Hesha’s actions managed to get under Calebros’ nerves, as seen in his curt speech, his furious writing, his accusatory reply to Hesha. He is angry for the safety of his clan (which, as seen from all the other sources, is something very dear to him). He is even shown to be stubborn, refusing to admit that Hesha was correct. Even still, he keeps his head rather than loose his cool completely. He also realises Hesha’s smooth words for what they are- manipulation. He is willing to compromise and form a sort of alliance with Hesha too, despite of his distrust and personal feelings.

Calebros and Ramona

I found the strange friendship Calebros had with the Gangrel Ramona to be incredibly touching, and tragic due to the turns it took towards the end (which I won’t spoil). Below are some excerpts from the Nosferatu clan novel showing Ramona’s initial meeting with Calebros and his later assessments of her character.

Neither Pauline nor the other girl, Ramona, had been subjected to the full brunt of facing a Nosferatu. Not until now, that is, when they were brought into Calebros’s presence. He did not hide his true appearance from them. And he could read the dismay, the fear and disgust, on their faces. Of the two, Pauline made the worthier attempt, attempt, to maintain her demeanor of professional detachment—perhaps Ruhadze had taught her well. The Gangrel, unsurprisingly, was not so couth. She gawked, both at Calebros and at Hesha in his current condition, and she hid her revulsion quite poorly, if she tried at all. […] Ramona looked at Calebros again, a more measured look this time, trying to see through the deformities. Good girl, Calebros thought. Young and brash, but not stupid.

Ramona reached for a calendar on Calebros’s desk, but tossed it back when she realized it was from 1972. “That’s still a whole month, and nobody knows where Leopold was that whole time. He could have gone back to the cave.” Smart girl, Calebros thought. He was leading her along the same path of reconstructing events that he had followed.

He compliments her intelligence again and again, and seems genuinely fond of her. Which I believe is why, after he became Prince of New York, he allows her a private audience with him to which he offered her a safe passage out of town which she rejects, viewing his actions as a betrayal. Below is an excerpt from what I think is the Clan Brujah novel.

The hunched form stepped forward, leaning heavily against the seatbacks as he came. Ramona kept straining to pick out the sound of broken gasps that must accompany such labored progress, but the air did not stir. "You had requested an audience, my dear. A private audience. I have gone to some pains to secure a place where we might be alone. Privacy is such an indulgence here. All too often, I find myself unable to justify the expense of importing it. And there is always someone else jealous of such decadence. But you have not come to hear of my distractions. Sit here, next to me, and tell me why you have come.”

[…]

“Calebros chuckled low, a sound like an engine turning. "No, I don't imagine you would. I will miss your straightforward style, Ramona. I find it refreshing. But already you know that there is no longer any place for you here. In the midst of battle—against the Sabbat and later, against Leopold and the Eye—we could afford certain marriages of convenience. But these partnerships will not survive the challenges of peacetime. Your associates, Mr. Ruhadze and Mr. Ravana, they found themselves in much the same position. Each has already left New York.”

[…]

“Calebros was silent for a time, letting her wind down. "I'm sorry I couldn't help you with the Eye, Ramona. And I'm sorry you will have to leave us. Believe me, I would like nothing better than to find a place for you here. I will have sore need of people who can be relied upon in the nights ahead. But you know what you would be up against if you remained here— the posturing, the none-too-subtle snubbing, the outright backstabbing. You are a rarity among our kind, Ramona. But because you are different, you will be hated and eventually destroyed if you stay among the society of the damned. Know that I will remember our time together fondly. If I can be of any assistance to you in relocating..." "No, I understand. It's 'thanks for your help; here's your bus ticket.' Well, I don't need any of your favors. I don't like the strings attached to them. And I resent the fact that you think I'm so stupid that I'll let you screw me over and then thank you for it." "Ramona...”

Again, even during his tenure as Prince of New York he is so damn eloquent, I definitely can’t fathom the word fuck ever slipping out of his mouth. He is compassionate, helping Ramona perhaps for future gains too, but mainly I believe he genuinely wants to do something right, give her the happy ending she deserves for once.

Moreover, I have a soft spot for this quote of Calebros pondering about Ramona’s nature, why she’s always so angry at the world, why every word out of her mouth sounds like an accusation. It showcases well his world-weariness, a cynical attitude that hides his concerns for others.

What have you seen that makes you so angry, so bitter, little one? Calebros wondered. Family killed? Have you been betrayed? How many times, I wonder. You’d best get over it, if you hope to survive.

So... yeah. I’d pay money to see an accurate portrayal of Calebros in a newer media otherwise I might have to write my own fanfic pairing my OC with him

[soldouthaz]

hey all!  it’s nearly the end of the year now and it’s time to finish the list of my favorite 2020 fics! (you can find part i of this rec here !) I can’t thank these authors and anyone else who published things this year enough. it’s been many long months where a distraction was much needed, and we got such amazing content for FREE. being able to escape into another world for even just a few minutes right now is priceless. 

to everyone who wrote something, read something, or simply made it through this year, kudos to you! wishing everyone a much more relaxing 2021 with even more amazing fics to come. :)  thank you guys for everything – happy holidays & new year, and happy reading!  

there were so many good ones out this year and there’s no way I can include all of them, but I enjoyed so many more than just the ones on this list! the ones I picked just stood out to me for some reason based on how I was feeling or what I was going through at the time, and they all helped me in some way or another. :) not to mention, I am sooo behind on recent fics and most of the blff, so I will be making more recs slowly into the new year as well!  

quick disclaimer! as with every time I put these together, this list is based on my own opinions and features a variety of different kinds of fics and tropes. I include the info next to them for a reason! please stick to your own preferences and leave any hate out of your choices. that being said, if you enjoy any of these, please leave the author a kudos, comment, or send them a message to let them know you liked it!  

okay, in no particular order!:  

a place with skeletons by @crazyupsetter / whoknows 
 E | 50k | b!L | veela!Louis 

“I would choose anyone other than you,” Louis says, picking up his train of thought again. He feels a lot more cornered and defensive when they’re in Harry’s house, for some reason. 

It doesn’t really make sense, considering that this time, Louis was the one who couldn’t hack it any longer. He broke first. There’s something about being in Harry’s space, though, the green and earthy feeling of it. It should feel like open space with all the plants, but Louis has never felt more claustrophobic than he does when he’s here. Harry’s chest moves against his back, a sharp intake of air. 

Before he can open his mouth to defend himself, Louis keeps going, “If I had a choice in any of this, I would have been saved by that elderly security guard over you. I wouldn’t mind having to have the occasional cuddle with her.” 

even the best laid plans by @falsegoodnight
 E | 25k | b!L | uni au  

Louis wants to have sex with someone and decides Harry is the perfect alpha for the job. 

runaway darling by @solvetheminourdreams 
E | 26k | no smut | wedding au  

An AU where Louis hates weddings, Harry loves them, and together they help a bride skip hers. 

three days in february by @mercurial-madhouse / writing_practice 
 E | 187k | b!L | magical realism  

Louis is cursed after a night out with the lads and the five have just three days to figure out what happened and how to break it before Harry and Louis both lose their sanity and maybe something more. Louis can hear everything Harry thinks and Harry isn’t sure he can keep his feelings for Louis a secret from his own mind. 

a springtime’s wilt, an autumn’s bloom by snowcaplou  E | 20k | b!L | abo 

Harry is Louis' personal chauffeur, and although he hides his feelings for his boss behind a wall of rigid professionalism, Louis still manages to squeeze through the cracks.

just a flicker in the dark by @falsegoodnight 
 E | 57k | b!L | witch!Louis 

Louis is a struggling witch desperate to prove himself after yet another magic disaster and finds a calling in the haunted house of client Niall Horan. Things get more complicated when he’s assigned a case partner: acclaimed medium and ex-boyfriend, Harry Styles. 

terror of surrender by @loubellies 
E | 31k | b!L | yoga instructor!H  

Louis is a recent divorcee with a new favorite yoga teacher, Harry. 

loving you’s a bloodsport by @rosesau
 M | 106k | no graphic smut | royalty au  

harry is a bratty prince, louis is a guard who works in his palace, and niall is the only one who’s got his life in control. 

spoonful of sugar by @zanniscaramouche (check out this part too!)  
E | 43k | b!L | mob boss!Harry  

Louis Tomlinson cares for his family above all else, a fact that’s led him on a twisted path peddling drugs to support them. Just as he’s made the decision to jump ship, Louis gets snared between the two largest crime syndicates in the city. To keep his family safe he’s forced to trust the man that failed to keep his promise two years ago, the resident drug lord he’s unknowingly been working for, Harry Styles. 

quiet people have the loudest minds by @2tiedships2
 M | 38k | referenced b!L | abo 

The one where Louis is a nonverbal omega who has accepted the fact that he will never find an alpha that will treat him as an equal. On the other hand, he’s never met anyone like Harry. 

works like a charm by @falsegoodnight 
E | 18k | b!L | Hogwarts au  

Ever since Louis joined the team in fifth year, a few facts have become set in stone. 

One: Louis is the best chaser in Hogwarts.  

Two: Harry is the best beater in Hogwarts. 

Three: They do not get along.  

So it’s really unfair of Liam to think that forcing them to spend time together as Louis recovers from his injury will make them the best of friends. The last thing Louis would do is get along with that git. 

show you the stars in the daylight by @yvesaintlourent / bruisedhoney 
E | 13k | b!L | friends to lovers  

The one where Louis has a type and at sixteen and scrawy, it’s definitely not his best friend’s little brother Harry…ten years later, he changes his mind. 

in a sea of mist by @tomlinvelvetfics 
E | 126k | b!L | mythology au  

A Greek Mythology/Camp Half-Blood AU where Harry is lost, the road to peace is a wretched one, and somehow, through a mist of confusion and regrets, Louis seems to be the only thing that makes sense and everything Harry needs. 

confessions of a fabricated alpha by @jaerie 
E | 18k | b!H/b!L mention | abo  

famous alpha Harry Styles has a secret and paying an alpha to roleplay a relationship with him over the phone is the only way he can be himself. 

take my whole life too by @goodmorninglou
  E | 24k | b!L | d/s elements | WIP

Louis knows three things, at the base of it all. 

He likes when Harry hurts him. He doesn’t know why, not really, but he knows that he likes it. Likes giving up control, likes feeling small and taken care of, likes being praised for taking whatever Harry gives him for as long as he gives it. He and Harry are meant to be. No matter what time they finally fall together, what day, what age, what place, the moment that they do, that’ll be it. It’s going to be them against everyone else, hand in hand for the rest of their lives. That’s been a given since they met. The half of Louis’ soul that’s missing is Harry’s. 

And, sans those two things, he doesn’t really know much of anything at all. 

sweet like honey by @falsegoodnight  
E | 33k | b!L | amateur porn au  

Harry and Louis need money and they find an unconventional solution in the form of PornHub. It’s not supposed to be a big deal. 

a few rereads posted from before this year that I enjoyed again!  

the case of the (definitely not haunted) styles mansion by briamaria  
E | 40k | b!H | nancy drew au  

the Nancy Drew AU where Marcel is a man of logic, Louis is a private detective who believes in ghosts, and the Styles Mansion is definitely, absolutely, positively *not* haunted. 

canyon moon by @eeveelou  
E | 40k | b!L | abo  

For as long as Louis has remembered, he has been promised to be mated to Harry, his best friend and the future pack alpha. But Louis’s heart belonged to the forest and to the hunt more than he could ever imagine it belonging to Harry.  Then Harry’s father dies in a violent accident, and Louis’s future alpha disappears on the wind.  

An A/B/O Lion King AU 

lemon eyes by @turnyourankle  
E | 50k | b!H | abo  

It’s not proper for omegas to mess around with alphas before finding their bondmate. But Harry doesn’t give a damn what’s proper and fully intends on getting as much experience as he can before even trying to find one. As far as he’s concerned, the right alpha won’t care, and he’ll have some fun on the way.  And who better to start with than Louis Tomlinson, the alpha with the worst reputation on campus? 

all this delusion in our heads by snowcaplou 
 E | 15k | b!L | exes to lovers  

After Harry and Louis break up, they cope with it in very different ways. What will happen when Harry keeps calling his ex over when things go wrong in his life, but Louis just can’t take it anymore? 

the way the storms blow by @rbbsbb  
E | 21k | b!L | roommates au  

Louis doesn’t have a habit of thinking about Harry’s dick. 

That would be weird, seeing as they’re best mates, and they share a flat, and they’ve spent holidays at each other’s family homes. 

Their friendship hasn’t ever risen to a point where Louis should want to see his mate’s dick, and he’s happy to keep it that way.  Except, all that Louis can think about is exactly that. The size of it. The shape. The amount of people it’s been in.  

Maybe it’s the tequila talking, or the fact that Louis’ just recently walked in to an eyeful of Harry taking turns on some slags that he’s never seen before, but. Louis’ mind can’t stop obsessing over the idea. 

and a few more recs from some other fandoms for anyone who might be interested! (feel free to rec me some more if you know of any!)  

burning the ground by lq_traintracks (drarry)  
E | 10k | b!draco | abo 

“Strap him down,” someone said, and Harry felt the rage thicken inside him – the viscous fear. Magical bindings pulled taut around his wrists … He felt a wand touch his arm and then a sharp bite as something punctured the skin, and a sweet, cool tonic rushed his veins. His breathing slowed. His eyelids drooped. The ceiling went grey and dark. And then he heard a woman’s voice sigh, “Someone, get Healer Malfoy.” 

every step you take by nokomis (sterek) 
 E | 50k | light b!Stiles | abo  

Stiles accidentally ends up magically bound to Derek. It’s super. 

+

alright, I think that’s it for this rec! as always, please let me know if i’ve tagged anything incorrectly or if you’d like to be untagged from something!  

and like I said before, I am wayyy behind on reading for these last few months and I need to catch up. when I do, I’ll definitely make some more recs into the new year! 

I just want to say another thank you to anyone who wrote or read or created or just existed this year. it’s been hard on us all but having this outlet definitely made it easier. I can’t wait to see what else is published next year! happy reading everyone, and happy new year! :)

[yandere-daydreams]

Bakugou vs. Todoroki Headcanons if you allow that,thank you

Such a polite request! Of course, I’m more than happy to write about our favorite feral boys, especially if they’re at each others’ throats. It’s their default state of existence, honestly.

TW: Kidnapping, Non-Graphic Violence, Emotional Manipulation and Unhealthy Relationships. 

~

Bakugo vs. Todoroki Headcanons:

~Let’s get one thing straight, neither of these boys are here to play nice. They may be adults, they may be Heroes, but when it comes to you, they might as well be toddlers who never learned to share their favorite toy.

~Chances are that you’re already with one or the other. With Katsuki being the more reserved of the two, it’s likely that you’re still in the early stages of your relationship by the time you meet Shoto, his protective tendencies just starting to take shape. That’s where a lot of their aggression comes from, honestly. Katsuki fixated standing his ground, keeping whatever he believes to be his his, while Shoto doesn’t see why he has to stay away from something he wants. Your feelings on the matter aren’t important. You could be a conscientious objector, an active deterrent to their growing rivalry, or the type to just sit back and enjoy the attention, but as long as you’re alive and breathing, they’ll have a reason to pick a fight.

~If you’re with Shoto, initially, Katsuki will try to be a little more manipulative. He’ll play the part of a concerned friend, a ‘voice of reason’, your shoulder to cry on when big, bad Shoto’s mean to you. Every new bruise and scrape will earn an attempt to ‘reach out’, a consultation by your oh-so-caring buddy, and he’ll inflate whatever Shoto does to make your current partner seem like a monster, regardless of whether or not you’ve shared the more problematic parts of your relationship yet. It makes Shoto paranoid, too, enough so for him to be a little more wary about letting you go out on your own. As if he wasn’t looking for a reason to keep you close to him, before.

~Don’t get me wrong, Katsuki isn’t altruistic. He acts like he has your best intentions in mind, and he really believes everything he does is to help you, but opposition always brings out his more possessive side. He still wants you to be safe, for you to adore him and for the two of you to be happy, but now that there’s someone else claiming to want the same things, he can’t help but feel a little selfish. It’s not a major change, but he’s more temperamental, more on-edge, more willing to use drastic measures if it means making you more obedient.

~On the other side, Katsuki will have to do something extreme to warrant a reaction from Shoto. While Katsuki’s constantly patrolling for threats (both to you and your relationship), Shoto operates under the assumption that the world overall is bad and needs to be kept at arm’s length. While Katsuki’s pulling out his hair and attempting to come up with a fair compromise, Shoto’s wondering what punishment he should give you for smiling at that cashier last week. The change is jarring, to say the least.

~They can compromise, though, even if it takes a few rounds of kidnapping for both of them to come around. One of the few things they agree on is that you aren’t strong enough to handle yourself, and that they’re the ones who should be in charge. Needless to say, you’ll be taken hostage in all-but name, made to prioritize keeping the peace over any genuine interests or concerns. Their arguments turn violent too often to be safe, their quirks rarely coming into place but fists and kicks and teeth taking their place, and once that’s done, their anger often turns towards you. I shouldn’t need to say why it’s easier to prevent their spats entirely.

~They tend to be more… cooperative when it comes to your misbehavior, too. Both are strict, and when it comes to defiance, they can agree that they refuse to stand for it. The slightest hint of contempt, the briefest glance towards an open window, anything will get you thrown over their knee or locked in your room so you can ‘think about what you did’, depending on who’s watching over you that day.

~Being your ‘favorite’ is a running competition between the two of them. It’ll always start off playful, with you in Katsuki’s lap while Shoto’s head is resting in yours, but then they’ll start probing, each question more personal than the last. What you’re asked ranges from ‘who you think is stronger’ to ‘who’s Pro-Hero get-up you think is cooler’ to ‘which one you love more’, all while both partied are assuring you they won’t be mad, that nothing you say could ever possibly upset them. Pretending you don’t have a bias is probably the safest option, since showing a preference will always end with a tantrum from your unappreciated caretaker, and any attempts to soothe their dented ego will just lead to your faux-favorite pouting and going on about why you lied, why you clearly prefer their counterpart, why you hate them so much. It’s a mess, to say the least.

~You’re always going to be marked, regardless of what you do, that’s non-negotiable. If they’re feeling subtle, Katsuki may be satisfied by one of his shirts or something branded with Ground Zero’s colors, and Shoto the sight of one of your many, many collars around your neck, but they’re both pushed over the edge rather easily. Your chest is more bruises than skin, after a few weeks, and neither is particularly picky with which part of you they make their chew-toy. I wouldn’t be surprised if they get fairly liberal with where they start marking, after they have time to get comfortable with the idea.

~The lack of autonomy may be the worst part. It’s a volatile arrangement, a dangerous one, the kind of relationship that leads you wishing they’d just shut up and kill each other already, as long as it means you don’t have to tolerate another heated argument on what outfit you’ll wear that day. They don’t let you make the smallest choice, both are utterly fixated on controlling whatever aspect of your life you leave vulnerable, so your independence is limited to how often you breathe or blink and whether or not you decide to make a scene, that day. If you’re still allowed to decide where the three of you go on your rare ‘date nights’, count yourself lucky. They must think you’re more responsible than the average captive.

~They’ll pamper you, but that might be the only silver linging, whether Shoto and Katsuki are working together or still trying to handle things through brute-force. It’s a match made in hell, considering how personally Katsuki takes competition and how territorial Shoto can be, but I guess that’s your problem now, isn’t it? You’re the only one stopping them from ripping out each others’ throats, after all.

[talesofthefrontier]

INTERVIEW: Jamie Ryder Might Be Dead By Dusk

Getting your work out there isn't always easy as a writer, so it's always useful to be part of communities that can help to give signal boosts.

The horror community is extremely welcoming and it was through this connection I was interviewed by Ginger Nuts Of Horror, a UK-based horror website that promotes authors in the genre.

In this interview I discuss horror influences, writing AT THE DEAD OF DUSK and philosophy. You can also check out the interview here.

Could you tell the readers a little bit about yourself? I’m a fiction writer based in Manchester in the UK and grew up reading from a young age, which laid the groundwork for wanting to become a writer in as many different avenues as possible. When not writing horror and fantasy fiction, I enjoy indulging my inner pop culture geek with comics and other interests, which include Japanese culture, Stoicism and rum. I’ve mashed all these interests together in a portfolio of websites, which include The Comic Vault, Yamato Magazine and The Rum Ration. Which one of your characters would you least like to meet in real life? Good question. I’m going to say it’d be Agnus Cartwright, a powerful witch from The Tales Of The Frontier series. She’s terrifying and her ruthlessness would make me think twice about crossing her! Other than the horror genre, what else has been a major influence on your writing? The fantasy genre has had a big influence on my writing style and reading habits, particularly authors such as Sebastien De Castell, Andrzej Sapokowski and Neil Gaiman. I’ve always been in awe of writers who have the ability to create a completely new world from nothing and make you believe in the mechanics, concepts and characters within the world. Comics are another major influence, in the sense that having larger than life characters can be grounded in a realistic setting such as the DC Universe and that there are shades of grey when it comes to anti-heroes like Red Hood, Punisher etc. A recent concept that’s also resonated with my writing style is the philosophy of Stoicism and how it can be applied to the practice of writing. It’s about understanding the things you can control e.g. how much you want to write per day, and the things you can’t e.g. how people are going to react to your work. The term horror, especially when applied to fiction always carries such heavy connotations. What’s your feeling on the term “horror” and what do you think we can do to break past these assumptions? For me, the greatest kind of horror is found in human action. The lengths someone will go to for carrying out a goal. The justifications we tell ourselves when we think we’re doing something ‘good’ that can be seen as ‘bad’ from someone else’s perspective. Everyone has the capacity to be a monster and it brings to mind that famous Nietzsche quote of “beware that when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster.” It’s in these kinds of everyday, human drama kind of stories that I think there’s still plenty of room to break past what it seen as traditional horror. A lot of good horror movements have arisen as a direct result of the socio/political climate, considering the current state of the world where do you see horror going in the next few years? I think there will be an increase of horror being seen through the lens of more diverse groups such as the LGBT and BAME communities. There’s limitless potential in redefining tropes within these two categories and showcasing stories that are special, spooky and resonant. Given the dark, violent and at times grotesque nature of the horror genre why do you think so many people enjoy reading it? Coming from my own perspective, I enjoy watching and reading horror stories out of a subconscious desire for facing the unknown. The fear of the unknown is actually my biggest fear and if you think about anything outside of your comfort zone too much it can paralyse you worse than any monster, ghost or serial killer. I think that being exposed to horror has the potential to build up your resilience to real-life scenarios. What new and upcoming authors do you think we should take notice off? A couple of authors come to mind. V Castro has been doing some amazing work with redefining Latin horror through stories like Queen Of The Cicadas and Goddess Of Filth. There’s also Eric LaRocca and Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke is a tremendous piece of transgressive horror. While Donald Robertson isn’t a new author, he’s new to the horror and comic genres and I’m looking

forward to seeing the release of the graphic novel Verissimus, which tells the life of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. What aspects of writing to do you find the most difficult? The editing process is the most difficult by far. There’s the old writer cliché of having to kill your darlings and it’s true that they do feel like your darlings sometimes! But once you move past that initial feeling, you do come away with a much stronger manuscript. Is there one subject you would never write about as an author? I’ve always said to myself that I’ll never write about any subject that I can’t capture realistically on the page, make it believable or do it justice. It’s only after I’m well-informed enough to know what I’m talking about that I’d even attempt to start writing something. Writing, is not a static process, how have you developed as a writer over the years? By constantly writing. That’s the most effective way I’ve continued to develop. Short stories. Articles. Blogs. Poems. Scripts. Exposing myself to different mediums has forced me to think about writing differently and become more fluid in how I approach things. What is the best piece of advice you ever received with regards to your writing? Don’t worry about whether the first draft is good or bad. Just finish it and then start editing. Which of your characters is your favourite? My favourite character is Clay McNab, the protagonist of At The Dead Of Dusk. He’s an asshole who doesn’t pretend to be anything but what he is and there’s a refreshing amount of honesty when inhabiting the headspace of a character like that. Yet there’s a lot more beneath the surface and it’s so much fun to write an anti-heroic character who’s self-aware enough to see his own flaws and try to do what he thinks to be right from his own perspective. Which of your books best represents you? At The Dead Of Dusk is my first standalone novella, so I’d say that represents me the best (So far!) Do you have a favorite line or passage from your work, and would you like to share it with us? There’s quite a few lines from At The Dead Of Dusk that I loved writing. While I’m not going to give away any spoilers, I will say there’s a scene with Clay delivering a monologue kind of speech in a highly charged emotional situation that got me right in the feels when I was writing it. Can you tell us about your last book, and can you tell us about what you are working on next? The next story I’m working on is a cyberpunk novel set in a futuristic version of my home city of Manchester. It’s about two brothers who come together to try and unlock the riddles of their father’s death and has a mixture of noir, crime, and sci-fi themes. If you could erase one horror cliché what would be your choice? That jump scares are the only way to tell a good horror movie. What was the last great book you read, and what was the last book that disappointed you? The last great book that resonated with me was How To Think Like A Roman Emperor by Donald Robertson. In terms of disappointing books, nothing comes to mind as I think there’s something good to be taken away from whatever you read if you’re in the mindset to look for it.

[randomfandomimagine]

Games With Trish: The Last of Us Part II

Granted, I didn’t actually play this myself but watched my brother play it instead. Still, I’m kind of glad he had the controller because the game looks so difficult and scary. Overall, I absolutely adored the game and it has so many good things. For that reason, I’ll say the bad things first since there are very few.

I know this game was very controversial, but this is my personal opinion and thoughts, not facts. Let me know your opinion if you want (as long as you’re kind and polite, please!). 

Long rant and spoilers under the cut!

Bad things

I have two main things to complain about in the game: the violence and its heavy emotional charge. Now, I don’t necessarily hate them because not only does it make sense that it’s a violent game taking place in a post-apocalyptic world where it’s kill or be killed, but it also goes along with the message of hate and revenge the game wants to tell. 

Still, the game gave me a lot of anxiety and I didn’t enjoy it as much as I could have for this reason. I averted my gaze a few times (when they break Yara’s arm being one of them) because it’s so brutal. I’m also a very sensitive person, so each time we played it was so tense and sad that I ended up exhausted. Every time a character died it was so harrowing... Abby’s Day 3 was so intense that I was a little overwhelmed, and Yara’s death was like the final straw and we had to take a break from the game. Characters also die so quickly, which is realistic, but it didn’t give you enough time to react before you were thrown into another scene or shootout. Between how frantic some scenes are and how brutal or tragic, I had to ask my brother to pause it a few times. The game really doesn’t give you a moment to breathe. That’s it, that’s my only complaint about the game. Now on to the good things.

Characters

First of all, and always my favorite thing about any story: the characters. Ellie is my all time favorite character, and even if I don’t agree with her choices and actions in this game, I can still empathize with her and love how complex and deep she is. She’s just human, and she is traumatized, so she does some questionable things.

Obviously, Troy Baker’s and Ashley Johnson’s performances are flawless, but Druckmann’s dialogues and writing is so... human. The characters interact like real people, they are spontaneous and natural, they have intimate moments of love, anger and a wide range of emotions. These characters fidget, frown, smile and have a myriad of human gestures (also improved with the amazing, mindblowing Naughty Dog graphics) that make them feel real. You can feel the emotion pour out of every gesture, every look, every expression.

I know Abby is also a controversial character but... I adore her. Of course we are meant to hate her at first, but the more time we spend with her, the more I grew fond of her even if I missed playing with Ellie. I couldn’t help but to admire Abby’s brute strength and bravery, even when she faces her fear of heights. When she tells her story, you understand her motivations as much as her actions hurt. Joel (like every character in this game and every person in that world) was not a good person, no matter how much we love him. Besides, at the end of the game it’s hard not to feel for Abby. She loses everyone as a direct result of her own revenge that she very much ends up regretting. When Ellie finds her at the end, it was hard to even tell that was Abby, I literally didn’t recognize her. So it was nice knowing that she found redemption and got her happy ending with Lev, her new family.

The side characters are all amazing. I was especially fond of Lev and Yara (Lev is an adorable little boy that must be protected, I just wanted to hug him) from Abby’s part and Dina and Jesse from Ellie’s part. I also loved Owen, Nora, Manny, Alice... everyone. Even Mel, who seems a bit more bland in comparison, has a defined personality. 

The plot

It is so well written, it makes so much sense, coherently and thematically, that I don’t understand some complaints. It’s also so compelling! People complain that Joel’s death made no sense and was just for shock value? It was a direct consequence of his actions at the end of the first game when he killed lots of people and literally doomed humanity out of selfishness. I still love Joel and I’m glad he saved Ellie, but this can’t be denied. Besides, the game deals a lot with the consequences of the characters’s actions, so it makes perfect sense to me.

Everything that happens in the plot and the story has a point. You kill lots of people as Ellie to avenge Joel, but then you get Abby’s point of view and grief the loss of those same characters. The game tries to make you feel for every person, which is why they all have names and their friends call out to them when they are shot. The main goal of the game was to get you to feel empathy for the ‘bad guys’. The point was that there are no good or bad guys in this story, only people with personal perspectives. Ellie and Abby are just two women who felt they were in the right. And in a way, they both were.

I just think the plot was coherent, with lots of interesting things, twists and surprises. Overall, it was realistic. There were no deus ex machinas, no crazy expectation subversions (because the twists were well established) and to me it felt like everything that happened had a meaning, as heart-crushing as it could be.

The themes

Now, this is one of my favorite things about the game. I read that Druckmann said that Ellie and Abby would have been friends in another life, and I agree. They are two sides of the same coin, or two different moments in the process of recovery from trauma and grief. 

Abby got her revenge and is dealing with the consequences of it, with the guilt and the rejection of those that don’t approve of her hate and resentment. When she got her revenge, she didn’t feel better (in fact she felt worse) so she does something good to change that. She literally returns to Yara and Lev to make amends for killing Joel, and in it she finds a new family. In the end, Abby actively choses not to do bad things anymore (even to the point of refusing to fight Ellie) and let go of that hatred.

Ellie is in the first stages of grief, needing to look for Abby until she kills her for what she did to Joel. There are some hardcore visceral moments that show the dark side of revenge, like when she finds Nora or attacks Mel and Owen. Even when Abby lets her go she still can’t forget about Joel’s death. It was a nice respite in the farm with Dina and JJ, but her guilt and PTSD don’t leave her and she has to go again. She is literally going through what Abby already lived, hence why she tells Ellie ‘I’m not doing this’ when they meet at the end of the game.

Ellie and Abby were on the same path even if they started on different places. Abby had done terrible things for Isaac as a Wolf but finds redemption when protecting Lev. Ellie mostly wanted to live a happy life until her father figure was taken from her. They meet common ground at some point and then go on their own paths again, which is why the game didn’t end on the theatre.

The first Last of Us was about love, but Part II is about hate. It speaks about how hatred and revenge never end, an eye for an eye and everyone will end up blind. The characters have to make conscious choices to avoid it ruining their lives even further and that’s why the ending is so good. More on that later.

Little things

The setting is incredible, it feels lived in and sometimes it’s absolutely gorgeous. Every place has a history and some of them are just so cool. The musem with the flashback of Joel and Ellie was one of my favorite places, as well as the aquarium. Also, the part of the game where you go to Ground Zero? Terrifying! I was freaking out only watching my brother play, and I’m impressed that they managed to make it feel so dark and ominous. It’s brilliant that they thought of putting something like that in the game, as scary as it was.

The game has so much attention to detail, from how you always find alcohol and scissors in places like kitchens or bathrooms to how accurate the animations are. I was blown away when I saw the trailer with how you crawl under cars and cock the guns and everything, and the game has so many details like those.

Even the AI was insane, NPCs have dialogues if you let them speak and they are so smart. They turn around in the middle of their walking, like real people would, and make it extra challenging. I was so impressed with the AI.

The music was phenomenal as usual. The score just pulls the correct emotions out of you, whether it is making you feel the adrenaline with the drums or feel nostalgic or just make you sad with the guitar.

The ending

Finally, the ending. I think many people didn’t like it, but to me it was perfect. I was so convinced that either Ellie or Abby were going to die, or both! I was relieved that they both lived, and in a way that made so much sense. To me it was a satisfying end to everything that had been set up, a coherent end to all the themes and the message that the game sent. Revenge is bad, let go of that hatred or it will consume you.

Ellie can’t kill Abby. She spent so long thinking about Joel in his last moments, about how she was helpless and couldn’t save him, and that fueled her anger and hatred. Her survivor’s guilt from the first game only got worst when it meant seeing her father figure die. Still, when she is about to kill Abby she thinks about him in a different way. She sees him fondly, with his jacket and coffee and playing guitar. She doesn’t see him bloody and dying as he was that dreadful day. That’s why she doesn’t kill Abby. 

Abby and Lev find Santa Catalina after everything they went through. IT’s Abby’s ‘reward’ for not going after Ellie again after what happened with Owen, Mel and everyone. They get their happy ending together as a family: Lev can be himself and feel safe even with everything that he loss, Abby can start forgiving herself for her guilt and honor both her father and Owen by returning to the Fireflies. She was lost in the darkness but found the light. It’s also symbolic that she isn’t as buff or has her long hair because she’s letting go of the reason why she had them.

Ellie lost everything. She couldn’t let go of her hatred and in doing so she was left completely alone, which was her worst fear. She risked everything and the only thing she had left, which was Dina (the representation of a happy life) is gone. It was also heartbreaking that she couldn’t even play guitar (as a guitar player myself and music lover, that hurt me profoundly) because she lost her fingers as a consequence of her attempt at revenge. 

I saw theories that Dina was actually waiting for her somewhere else because Ellie was wearing her bracelet, and I hope so too. It seems strange that Dina would abandon her dream of living in a farm if she was staying with Ellie, but I still want to hold on to that hope. I shipped those two so hard, and I really want Ellie to have a somewhat happy ending.

The last few minutes were beautifully tragic. Bittersweet. Ellie is alive, but leaves everything behind, all of her belongings (including Joel’s guitar) in order to move on. It was the only way she had to let go of her grief from Joel’s death and start a new life instead of repeating the vicious cycle of revenge. Just... powerful and moving.

Amazing lines and scenes

My brother knows me well and he said that my favorite scene would be the one in the museum with Ellie and Joel, and it probably is. It feels like a continuation of the first game and it’s a sweet father-daugther (parent-child and found family tropes are my weakness) moment in which Joel tries to make Ellie happy with the nerdy things he knows she loves. 

I also adore all the moments between Ellie and Dina. They are adorable and they just feel like a real couple, caring about each other and joking and flirting. 

All of the flashbacks were emotional and amazing, but my favorite is probably the last one. When Ellie tells Joel that she wants to forgive him? When he says ‘if I had another chance I would do it all over again?’ I’m getting choked up just thinking about it. I think that’s actually my favorite scene in the game.

Another one of my favorite lines was ‘hey, you’re my people’ from Abby to Lev. It’s so important and such a turning point for Abby, because if it weren’t for Lev she might have killed Ellie and Dina in the theater. She cares so much about him that she keeps going. And that line is the first moment we really see how much that kid meant to her.

Final thoughts

This was probably the longest rant I’ve written here, but The Last of Us was already my favorite game and Part II only topped it for me. The few bad things are greatly overpowered by the countless good things. The game just left a mark on me and I will never forget how it made me smile, laugh, gasp, cry, cringe in fear and overall... just feel in a way nothing had ever made me feel before.

[otonymous]

Origins (MLQC Lucien)

Description: Discover the truth about the MC (MLQC AU) Warnings: 18+:  Explicit/graphic language — reader discretion is advised.  Potential trigger warnings: mild mentions of violence, blood and gore; scientific experimentation & related unethical behaviour.  Spoilers for chapter 13. Word Count: 1647 words (~8 mins of darkness, angst, and (hopefully redemptive) fluff at the end) Author’s Notes:  

@marytheredqueen​ requested a drabble about Lucien with a s/o he created himself (like a romantic version of Victor Frankenstein).  This was an intriguing Ask that took me in a very interesting direction which, unfortunately, was more conducive to angst than lascivious thoughts (and also turned out to be much longer than a drabble)!  So apologies, dear requester!  I do hope you enjoy this story nonetheless, as I had a lot of fun writing it 😊

This piece contains some spoilers for Chapter 13 of the game, but the rest is a conglomeration of speculative AU dabbling.  The lines marked with an asterisk were taken directly from Chapter 1 of the game.

Please note the trigger warnings listed above, and happy reading! 👍🏼

All characters & Mr Love: Queen’s Choice owned by Elex

Blood splattered thick across bulletproof glass, crimson smear obscuring the view into the room, grey and bare save for a single straight back chair of brushed steel and an overturned table resting against the far wall.  

And the woman, chest heaving as she stood beneath fluorescent lights, impeccable were it not for the wayward splashes of red marring her white gown like macabre polka-dots.

“I didn’t mean to do it,” she would later tell him, head bowed and gaze on the ground before it swept up to meet his, her eyes wet with tears.  "I thought they were going to hurt me.  I was scared.  Do you believe me?  Are you disappointed?”

Panic had set in her voice when her hand, delicate and small, flew up to encircle his arm in a grip firm enough to make even the strongest of men flinch.  But Ares didn’t even bat an eye.

He could never turn away from his own creation.

“Of course I believe you, foolish girl.  Why would I be upset with you for disposing of garbage?"

He placed a gloved hand over the crown of her head to see her smile of relief, felt the warmth seep through black leather as she nuzzled into his touch.  Ignored the soft groans of the men in neon hazmat suits when they entered the room, trying their collective best to hold in stomach contents while gingerly sidestepping body parts strewn across the concrete floor.

“I hate having to clean up after his experiments.  That girl is a fuckin’ freak, tearin’ apart all these guys without even having to touch ‘em.  Scares the living shit outta me.”

“Shut your goddamn mouth or he’ll hear you.  You may have a death wish buddy, but I wanna live.”

The faintest expression of amusement crossed Ares’ face.  As if he had the time or inclination to deal with every small fry who spoke behind his back within those walls of black steel, the carbon towers of the Black Swan collective stretching high into the sky like impudent fists bucking the laws of nature herself.

Freak, they had called her, when beautiful was what she really was.  Surpassing all of Ares’ expectations even when those convened in that hall of polished obsidian murmured objections under their breath, the organization’s top brass silently gloating that finally, finally…there was something that Ares, the golden child, couldn’t do:

“I heard the project was a failure.  The subject’s too violent…”

“Out of control.  Unpredictable.  She’s a ticking time bomb.”

“Hiding in plain sight?  Ha!  The girl won’t even be able to integrate into normal society.  It's out of the question...”

Even still, the lot had gone silent when Ares swept his cool gaze in their direction, the placidity in dark eyes sinister in a way that none dared to challenge.  It wasn’t until a metal ring began to tap sharp against steel that the tension in the room was broken.

“They say the subject is unstable, Ares; that your project is unsalvageable.  Why do you persist in a futile endeavour?”  The voice projected from the shadowy dais, bouncing off expansive walls in an eerie echo.

“Oh?  And who, pray tell, is best positioned to determine whether or not an experiment has yielded usable results than the scientist himself?  Subject LUC13N is the most advanced prototype I have developed to date, and is, as it stands, our organization’s best chance at achieving its goals.  But you don’t need me to tell you that.  You’ve already witnessed first-hand what she is capable of.”

The metallic tapping ceased, an uncomfortable silence descending upon the standoff between the two men until it was finally interrupted by the one seated on the dais, speaking in a tone both amused and threatening at once:

“Proceed with your plan, Ares.  But know that I do not tolerate failure.”

The scientist rose from his seat at the glass table, the long tails of his black coat sweeping behind him as he left the others in the rumble of discontent that erupted in the wake of the proclamation.

He had no time to listen to the fallout.  There was still much to do.

“I’ll get better, train harder…try to control my abilities!  Isn’t there another way?!”  Her hysteria dies down the moment she sees the look on his face: firm, resigned.  Studying the matte, black capsule on her palm, her voice grows small.  “I don’t want to forget you, Ares.  You’re everything to me…everything I know.”

His large hand reaches out to cup her face, thumb rubbing against the softness of her cheek when he says in a voice laced with fatigue, “It’s the only way.”

She blinks, delicate eyelashes fluttering to make the breath catch in his throat.  The hitch in his movement is slight; Ares is careful to conceal it.  She mustn’t know that as she had begun to change, evolving into something greater and far more complex than his initial designs, so did the way he had come to see her.

As something more than a test subject.  A person.  The woman who carried the genes he so painstakingly extracted and recombined within the mutating cells of her beautiful body.  Tremendous power hidden in an unassuming package — soft and tender and always so pliant in his hands.

And — in what might be the most surprising discovery of all — a creature who had unwittingly breached the barriers to human emotion and learned what it was to love…teaching him how to love in the process.

Ares pulls away, reaching for the tall glass of water on her bedside table to hold it out in offering.  She takes it in a trembling hand, hesitant.

“What’s going to happen?  I swallow this and forget?  What of my mission?”  She looks again at the pill, rolling it about on her palm as if all its implications could be revealed in the contemplation of its featherlight weight.

Kneeling before her, Ares’ lab coat spreads about his legs in a bright halo on the muted concrete floor.  He brings his face level with hers, slowly sliding the glasses down the bridge of his nose before resting them on her bedside table beside a pair of paper cranes.

“You’ll forget all of this.  Forget Black Swan, forget me.  I'll give you new memories: a happy childhood, friends and family who love you.  You'll get the chance to know what it's like to live like a normal human being.  Go to work, come back to a warm place you can call your home.  Eat foods you’ve never before tasted.  Laugh and cry at the movies.  Maybe even fall in love-”

“I’m already in love with yo-”

Ares silences her with a long finger laid gently upon her lips.  He hoped she wouldn’t catch the way it trembled with the force he exerted to keep himself from losing control, holding back the painful emotions that stabbed deeply into his heart.  He couldn’t stand to hear her state what they both already knew to be true, even if they had refrained from confessing up to now:

That Ares had fallen in love with a creature of his own making.  And in an unlikely miracle, she returned his feelings.

“In exchange, the pill will bury the power inside of you until the time is ripe for you to awaken."

The girl remains motionless save for the gentle rise and fall of her chest, slowly processing the words of the man who made her.  “Awaken…and when is that?”

“That’s not for you to worry about, silly girl.  I'll be there when it happens, watching over you. Or did you think I'd leave your side?"

At this, her head snaps up, eyes darkening as pupils expand in an attempt to capture this last image of the man more important to her than life itself.

“Never leave me,” she says, pinching the pill between thumb and forefinger and lifting it to her lips.

A faint smile, beautiful and bittersweet, graces Ares' handsome face when he nods.  "I promise."

Her lips part, sealing their fates as the capsule disappears into her mouth to be swallowed whole.

“Hello, I’m looking for Professor Lucien."*

The woman approaches him on the stairwell of the research centre, eyes squinting for a moment as bright sun shone through the windows to set her face aglow in a way that took Ares’ breath away.

Finally, together again.

He schools his voice, trying to temper the euphoria that threatened to overwhelm him at their reunion.  "Lucien?  What do you want with him?"*

“I’m a producer from the Iridescent Images company.  Here’s my card.  I want to invite the professor to be our guest on the show ‘Miracle Finder.’”*

Ares looks at the delicate hand extending the business card in his direction, remembers the way it used to grip his arm whenever the girl was anxious or scared.  Sees the shy hesitation in the eyes that once looked upon him with love and affection, and is warmed by the prospect that they could have that happiness once more.

And so, it begins…

Thank you so much for reading!  Check out more of my work here! 📚

[innuendostudios]

Thoughts on Even More Games

[vague, unspecific spoilers for Heaven’s Vault, Later Alligator, and Life is Strange 2]

Thoughts on Heaven’s Vault

Heaven’s Vault is a game about archeology, which means it’s also a game about incompleteness. This is very clever. Inkle - also the developers of 80 Days, which I will play someday! - specialize in deep narratives that can be explored many, many ways, allowing for a lot of player choice. You make a lot of small decisions - do you share a discovery with the trader in exchange for a valuable item, or hide it so he doesn’t plunder it? do you go looking for your missing friend, or let her stay missing in case there are people trying to follow you to her? These all have their own little arcs and resolutions, and there are so many of them, and so many ways they can play out, that the game can never be played the same way twice. The overall story begins and ends in the same place and theoretically hits the same major beats, but the journey is tailored broadly and finely to each player; it’s a style of design Aaron A. Reed refers to as “not... a branching tree but a braided rope.”

Making a narrative about archeology is how you dodge the exponentially complicated nature of that design: if there are dozens of locations, characters, plot threads, bits of color, which can be engaged with at many points in time, or ignored, or dropped by the player halfway through, how do you avoid telling a story full of gaps and dead ends? Well... you don’t. Having only partial information and having to infer the rest is what archeology is.

The protagonist of Heaven’s Vault, Aliya, is digging up the secrets of an ancient civilization, having been sent by her academy to find a researcher who’s gone missing, and stumbling into his incredible discovery. Everywhere she goes, there are holes: she has partial understanding of the researcher’s journey and motives; he, in turn, had partial understanding of the mystery he was uncovering, and Aliya has only fragments of his knowledge; the ancient texts she translates are usually fragments of larger works, and she is guessing at the meanings of many of the words; the game’s constantly updating historical timeline has entire centuries with nothing but question marks. Aliya arrives in a new location and wonders aloud to her robot companion about what this place was, when it was founded, when it was abandoned, how her predecessor found his way her and where he went next and what he took with him.

The constant feeling of discovery - of unearthing - is magnificent. Site after site, I asked, “What is this place?” Always thinking, if the eventual answer is any good, this is going to be one of the best games I’ve ever played. And, in the end, it doesn’t give you an answer, it just give you enough to make the story feel complete. It answers by not answering.

Also, translating alien texts is just extremely my jam. I’m the weirdo who enjoyed the ending of Arrival but secretly wished the whole movie had been about xenolinguistics like the first half. I guess Inkle felt similar.

The game’s by no means perfect. I think I enjoyed the sailing between worlds more than most - it’s slow, but very pretty - but it’s going to discourage a replay. I don’t think the relationship between Aliya and her robot, Six, ever gets terribly interesting. Some of the archeology is a little too obviously game-y - sail around, wait to find a random ruin, beam Six down to grab an ancient doodad, translate a bit of text, lo and behold it’s from one of the sites you’re looking for and it’s narrowed your search radius somehow. (It gives Star Trek explanations the first few times - e.g. “it has radiation that only exists in one part of the nebula” - and then stops bothering.) And the game sags a little in the middle; it could’ve hacked out 3 or 4 dig sites and still given me the same experience.

But, all told, there’s magic in it, and it just feels good to be there. Do not sleep on this one.

Thoughts on Later Alligator

There’s not a ton to say about this game except that is charming as hell. Lindsay and Alex Small-Butera have build a beautifully animated world of cute alligators, one of whom is having a birthday party where he’s convinced he’s going to be murdered. He wants you to run around getting information out of everyone who’s going to be there, which you get by completing minigames. It’s a cast of weird and funny characters with weird and funny dialogue and there’s not much more to it than that.

The design can be a little frustrating. Some minigames, if you lose, you don’t get to try again. Some are annoyingly finicky. You need to complete them all to get the true ending, which means, in my case, playing the game three times to complete all the bits you missed or got locked out of. The ending was a little different each time, so it wasn’t a total wash, but the game’s on a timer that only advances when you play a game or take the bus, and once you’ve completed most of the games there’s a lot of traveling back and forth from one nowhere to another just to advance time to the next unskippable plot beat.

(It’s also a little unclear what you’re missing as you try to get the final ending, as some of the ongoing puzzle are optional.)

But I can’t get mad. The game is too damn cute! Each character is lively and unique, with tons of personality, and the dialogue is just clever enough not to fall into empty adorkability.

It good.

Thoughts on Life is Strange 2

Somewhere, early in the development of Life is Strange 2, some Dontnod employee wrote in a design document “Episode 4 - cult?” (but in French) and nobody told them “no.”

I will not forgive them for this,

After twenty minutes of LiS2, I was ready to yell at everyone who had reported it was boring. It has one of the most powerful, gut-punching openings of any game I’ve played in recent memory. And all through the first, second, and third episodes, I was in love. Unlike Before the Storm, this was its own creature, willing to make dramatic departures from the original game’s template. Instead of controlling a character with supernatural powers, you play as the superpowered character’s older brother. The one with the magic is a 9-year-old, unable to fully understand or control his abilities, suffering a recent trauma, and needing to be guided through a dangerous and racist world. All the ambition missing from Before the Storm is back, and this time the animation isn’t creepy and the writing is wildly improved (thanks to some journeyman script work from Fullbright’s Steve Gaynor) and I even have a computer able to play it on higher graphical settings.

But nothing good lasts.

Everything good about the series screeches to a halt in Episode 4, the one where some asshole said “cult?” and didn’t get a Nerf football thrown at their head. And it’s not just that it’s a terrible idea; it’s actually sort of amazing how much the game relies on an alchemy of plot, tone, theme, and writing, and how a slight imbalance can throw the whole thing off. Episode 4 has scene after scene that are powerful in their conception - brothers reunited after a violent rift; a boy having his first conversation with his estranged mother in nearly a decade; getting interrogated by the feds for a crime that can’t even be explained by physics - fall flat because the writers can’t think of anything interesting for the characters to say. (Steve Gaynor’s name stops appearing in the credits as of this episode.)

And here the game’s rickety bits, kept delicately together for three episodes, start to shake apart. Dontnod’s overly-earnest voice direction, which I didn’t notice in the early episodes, started to wear me down. (”Could you sigh mid-syllable, like you’re slightly overwhelmed with emotion?” “Sure, on which line?” “All of them.”) The thinness of the secondary characters, most of whom pop up for one episode and disappear, became more noticeable. The lack of a mechanical hook like the time rewinding of the original game, and the attendant commentary on choice-based games and power fantasies, made the game feel less substantial. The surreal imagery of the original, obligatorily evoked in the prequel, is sensibly absent, but there’s nothing equally striking that replaces it. Even the branching path decisions become less clear: the end-of-episode stat screens for the final episodes mentioned at least a dozen choices I didn’t even know I’d made, some of which were critical in shaping my younger brother’s morality and were not necessarily the choices I’d have made if I’d known I was making a choice at all.

Come the final episode, I got An Ending that seemed right for the way I’d played, but much of the way I’d played felt accidental.

So what are we to make of this? Life is Strange is a beautiful disaster, an ambitious disaster, where Life is Strange 2 is almost less interesting for being  more competent. It has a huge mess of charged topics - American racism, teens losing their virginity, raising a child outside the nuclear family, grief and trauma - and, while it handles them without the gracelessness and sledgehammer subtlety of the original, it doesn’t come to any conclusions about any of them. LiS1, for all its jank, had some opinions, where LiS2 falls into the category of “this sure is some shit, innit?” games.

It starts with a powerful premise, deeply relatable characters, fine writing, beautiful art, but can’t even manage, in the end, to be a disaster. It is the only game in the series so far to be forgettable.

[teamhawkeye]

unfiltered and massively spoiler filled thoughts on RE8 below the cut [MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD]:

The Good

The first half of the game

The initial village segment and the castle portion and even “the house in the mist” sections were all pretty taut and well put together. i loved exploring the castle - was more than a little disappointed that you get locked out after Alcina’s boss fight, i didn’t explore it fully D: - and the unexpected terror of Donna’s section really pulled me out of the sense of comfort i had started to fall into, right as i was saying to myself “this hasn’t been scary at all”

The return of some series high notes

Revisiting things in previous Resident Evil games is not always a bad thing. I really enjoyed the return of weapon customization and treasures, those were aspects i enjoyed in RE4 and RE5. The return of the Merchant, in the form of the Duke, was welcome as well. The Duke is a G - he’s a good guy and i respected him most

Graphics, scenery, etc.

It’s a pretty game to look at, there’s no getting around that. I liked the set pieces, especially the Castle portion

Ammo crafting

Now this was something i greatly enjoyed. There are often times you get too much ammo for the gun you use least or you run out of ammo in harder difficulty levels. Being able to collect scrap material and make your own ammo was a very nice addition that i greatly appreciated

The Bad

(some of these are going to be personal opinions about the storytelling and narrative choices, so be prepared for that)

Pacing and direction

RE7 was a return to the series’ “roots”: so back to the footnotes of RE1 and RE2. If that was the case with 7, then RE8 did a speed run of RE3, Code Veronica, RE4, RE5, and RE6 all at once.

I know i said earlier revisiting hallmarks from previous games isn’t a bad thing, and it’s not - but while RE7 did it masterfully with sticking to mainly RE1 and RE2 and pulling in just a few old hallmarks, RE8 went absolutely buck wild in trying to cram in as many past enemy types and encounters as possible. A callback to one standout enemy is one thing, ala the Stalker type that is Mr. X, Nemesis, and Ustanak that Lady Dimitrescu also serves as...but then also the giant water monster from RE4, the Executioner of RE5, the “chainsaw” enemies (here, drills instead) of RE4, RE5, and RE6. hell, even the Lycans after a time started to feel very Las Plagas-esque in their ability to use weapons and track and coordinate. And you can’t tell me you didn’t see very similar designs/similarities between Miranda’s boss battle that you did with Alexia’s in Code Veronica...

The pacing started off solid with the initial few segments, but quickly seemed to lose its footing once it oscillated violently between wildly different styles of play and storytelling and didn’t regain its stride the rest of the game. One moment, it’s classic RE. The next, it’s P.T. + Outlast. The next, back to “a mash up of action and horror, leaning more on action” styles of RE4 + RE5. Then the finale straight up started to feel like an entirely different game before you reached that final boss fight - it felt like i was jerked in one direction one minute, and a completely different one the next

There is a lot of exposition and explaining that doesn’t happen until legit the last 45 or so minutes. Not new for the series to withhold information until the back half of the game, but there was legit almost no build up to the very sudden plot bombs that got dropped successively in the last throes of the story. Previous games rewarded you with fragments at a fairly even pace - i felt like all of RE8′s story gets dropped on you in a single monologue and a handful of notes just before the endgame

I’m not even gonna go that deep into how hard it was to keep up with all the different infection methods the mold managed to have - it was just A Lot and i’ve played a lot of Resident Evil in the past, so i know just how many different ways a single pathogen can have on humans and animals...and it still felt excessive

I honestly felt like the third segment with Moreau wasn’t even necessary. they really played up these “four lords” to not have them do a whole lot of anything. and i know there’s always been mini bosses before you actually reach the final Big Bad, but seriously, Moreau’s segment can be blitzed through in a span of 20 minutes or so first playthrough. the castle segment with Dimitrescu was solid, the house segment with Donna was nightmare fuel, lmfao, but still engaging and challenging. by the time you get to the third and sprint right through, you’re left wondering what the point of it even was. you can tell that was the least cared about narrative arc in the whole story

A giant point of note is that a huge chunk of RE8′s story could have been avoided or altered had Chris just actually fucking spoken to Ethan at the start about what the fuck was going on. And for him not to is completely unlike Chris past RE5 and RE6, that made no narrative sense whatsoever. Just another opportunity to pile on some more trauma and guilt onto Chris’ shoulders by making him “responsible” for Ethan being pushed to far and dying as a result

“Ethan actually ‘died’ when first meeting Jack Baker and was completely taken over by mold, it’s a big secret to everyone but Mia. also, he’s gone too far, there’s no saving him, he had to die”

You’re going to tell me that Ethan still being infected or impacted by the mold from RE7 is some big secret??? did the BSAA not run tests on him and Mia to make sure they were back to normal levels??? how do they not know?!? the government was able to figure out that Sherry’s exposure to the G Virus altered her permanently and study her healing capabilities, how the fuck was that not the same with Ethan???

Also, how is it that the mold’s impact on him is so much higher? he was at the Baker estate for like, 2 days max and while, yes, he did sustain some serious damage, he never fell prey to Eveline’s control and showed absolutely no signs of infection outside of being able to heal/use his hand after it was chopped off. and depending on how you played RE7, the only major injury he sustains aside from probable bruising or broken bones is that hand being cut off as mentioned before

You’re also going to tell me of the number of Resident Evil characters who have been infected with viruses and parasites and what have you and have been cured or had the negative effects negated, Ethan was the only one “too far gone” to be saved??? Jill got infected with T Virus, Claire has been infected by two separate viruses, Leon has survived a parasite infection, both Zoe and Mia were exposed to mold for years and seem to be okay...why is it that Ethan was the only one who couldn’t be saved? because he “died”? how in the world did he get infected so fast - he’d been there an hour, max! - that he was able to be revived in the first place and it wasn’t even noticeable that he had changed at all???

“the BSAA can’t be trusted anymore, they’re involved in shady shit, like deploying bioweapons into battle”

we already went through this a bit back in Revelations 1 with the blackmailed director and double agents. but to full on go “well, the entire organization is now dirty” after it was legit founded by Chris, Jill, and Barry to combat bioterrorism really sits wrong with me. all i can think is that they are running out of villains at this point and now are poising the BSAA to be a Big Bad in the future. which, again, doesn’t sit right with me

Retconning

Tying Ozwell E. Spencer back to Miranda wasn’t such a huge dealbreaker for me, but it is a bit obnoxious to now have to go back and amend “he came up with the idea for Umbrella and its pursuits with Marcus and Ashford, its other founding members” to “well, he didn’t actually come up with the idea for Umbrella and its research with Marcus and Ashford, he already had the idea from his time spent with Miranda uwu”

More so, the retconning around Eveline is a bit of a pain in the ass. So she only came about as a result of Miranda crossing paths with the Connections and giving them some of her mold to work with? And Eveline was only a failed experiment to Miranda in her attempt to be able to transfer her daughter’s essence/subconscious/whatever into a living child? And there are pictures of ‘10 year old” Eveline in Miranda’s possession - how come Evie didn’t have any memory of her at all (speaking of Evie, why the fuck did she appear in 8 briefly as a hallucination [?] to explain to Ethan his condition???)

How are you going to try and tell me that some village from prior to the 19th century was using the “Umbrella” symbol and Spencer just snatched it for himself? that was just stupid, honestly - even more stupid how Ethan didn’t recognize the symbol, despite flying off in a Blue UMBRELLA helicopter at the end of RE7

Mocap and cutscenes

Was it just me or did parts of this game look severely unpolished compared to RE7??? some parts looked good - like the Dimitresus all seemed to be rendered very well. It became very noticeable to me in the back half of the game, mainly with Chris and Mia, but a little with Heisenberg too, where their mouths didn’t match up with the dialogue a lot and they looked a lot less put together than previous scenes and characters. Mia in particular, i was struck by how much better her mocap seemed in RE7 compared to RE8. Maybe because there was a bigger ensemble cast in 8 that they spread themselves a little too thin in that regard?

[honmakurara]

Kyuso wa cheese no yume wo miru: extensive manga review

Tormented and explicit, sharp and sophisticated: what Mizushiro Setona's masterpiece really is.

Warning: minor spoilers ahead. "I want to read something erotic and violent": this is what Mizushiro Setona's editor asked her, echoing the request of their chief editor when assigning to the mangaka a story for the supplement of the Josei magazine Judy, meant to be read by an adult female target: "I don't expect you to write a nice story. You have other skills you can count on. You can narrate about gay people, for instance, or about sadomasochism."

Starting from the first casual incursion of Mizushiro-sensei into the world of Boys' Love, between the years 2004 and 2006 Kyūso wa Cheese no Yume o Miru (窮鼠はチーズの夢を見 - The cornered mouse dreams of cheese) was born and defined; it is one of the most beautiful and intense stories ever written about such a genre and beyond, which did even receive excellent notes from the well acclaimed Takemiya Keiko-sensei of the renowned Group 24. Starting with these premises, one can already understand how Mizushiro-sensei, who was not a master of Boys' Love back then, has nonetheless been able to offer an excellent tale that transcends the borders of genres and ranges over way beyond what it had been asked her: the story had been initially conceived as a few chapters later compiled in one tankobon, but it eventually came back on the pages of Judy with a new series of chapters. These ones have also been later published, three years later, in a sequel tankobon titled Sōjo no Koi wa Nido Haneru (俎上の鯉は二度跳ねる - The carp on the chopping block jumps twice). After the renewed interest offered to Otomo and to the cunning Imagase's story, that the live action movie announcement awakened, the new manga chapter Hummingbird Rhapsody has been added to the whole franchise, which is included in the recently revised Japanese edition of the manga.

"Imagase... I'm scared of you...!"

"And I'm... scared of you, too."   There's however not only violence and eroticism in this intricate story, and such a definition would actually mean to simplify way too much what it portrays, not to mention it would not fit exactly what the author was actually able to convey into it; other than the most obvious themes and elements, many others way more implicit and elaborate ones can be found there. We can even have a hint of that by peeking at the cover illustration of the volume, where a languid surface does not betray the contradiction of the soul. We can see an elegant portrait of the two main characters, who both hide all but dignified emotions inside them; a very accurate mirror of such a picture, which graphically reminds us of the previous editions of the manga, is the mind of the thirty years old Otomo Kyoichi after his encounter with Imagase. Otomo is a married adult man, leading an apparently impeccable life: he has good looks, polite manners and a nice job. He is gentle and esteemed by his colleagues and is able to make the many women crossing his path sigh from expectation. He cannot resist women either, that is why his life is an endless sequence of cheating on his wife. He reckons they are of no importance, at least until his wife hires the private eye Imagase Wataru to investigate upon his possible infidelities. Imagase is no new man in Otomos' life, being a kohai within the tennis club at university: he proposes to Otomo to be silent with his wife, in exchange for the heated make-out session that he never dared asking before, despite his being a unprejudiced homosexual guy having a crush on Otomo since forever. After the end of Otomo's wedding, though, the intimate encounters between the two men do not stop at all; they are pushed towards a fierce depth instead, symbols of a spiral of lust and psychological turmoil from which Otomo cannot willingly go back any more. "I am no good one."

"I know this. Bad natured men like you are the worst. Do you think that everyone is looking for that perfect person? You can't fall in love with anyone but that one person?"

"Someday, you'll find true love, too. The time will come when you can't help the feelings that well up inside you and you'll be carried away."

The themes and the premises are taken from various undoubtedly not new Boys' Love clichés; Mizushiro-sensei makes skillfully use of them to plumb the human soul as she does in many other works of her, making the story evolve quickly into something way different and way wider than what the numerous and explicit sex scenes might make us think at first. It takes a doting and obsessive homosexual guy into the life of some apparently happy man like Otomo in order to make the latter understand that his marriage is merely an empty shell, built with no true nor deep feelings to live an ordinary life. The encounter with Imagase, though, forces Otomo to think back deeply about his own actions and the meaning to give to his own life, until he gets to understand that despite his true gentleness, he has never cared for other people's feelings at all.

The relationship with Imagase makes his worst side come to the surface: jealous impulses, selfishness and possessiveness, unsuspected masochistic and yet dominating preferences, obscure compulsions and a never missing inclination towards all sorts of temptations. Otomo is no role model nor someone to praise and yet, he's neither a man whose submissive personality can be easily blamed. Such a personality is a spectrum of a lid hiding a lot of things, a reflection of our own fearful and insecure behaviour, our own incapability of getting to call ourselves into question until the moments, those surprising and unexpected moments, that are to change life for real. That these two lovers embody a strong universal value is further suggested by the choice of the Japanese kanjis with which their names are written: Mizushiro-sensei identifies Otomo Kyoichi (大伴恭一) with the definition of 'partner' itself, a potential alter ego of each of us; she entrusts Imagase Wataru (今ヶ瀬渉, from the kanjis of 'quickness', 'crossing', 'involvement' and 'human relations') with the importance of getting to catch the 'carpe diem', the fleeting moment. Should we were to play with the language a little bit, we would find out that the union of the two main characters would lead us to the meaning of a 'relationship with a partner', the play of the cat with its little mouse happening here and now, the moment that we are to live in every single instant.

"You're kidding?! I cannot believe it… You can't decide?! Between a woman... or a man?!” - Natsuki -

"Maybe Imagase is right... maybe I still have to know what true love it. Next month, I’ll turn 30."

Otomo meets a long series of women, each of whom is identified by a definite face and a marked, strong personality. Each of them leaves a vivid notch into Otomo's life; and yet, no one of these figures is able to open a gash into his soul. The true Otomo is unfathomable to anyone, himself included, just like he himself can finally understand after the new encounter with Imagase breaks the quiet surface of his existence. The desirable man that Otomo is in his colleagues' eyes, through Imagase's cynical and revealing gaze he proves to be none other than a failed seducer, a man devoid of lash and decisiveness, a figure suddenly insecure even about what the true and intense physical pleasure is and how to gain it. It is Imagase who makes the miracle, intercepting his senpai's emotional black hole, and the latter finally manages to find out where the borders of his own self lay and how to humbly face his own limitations and inner being. This does not happen thanks to a man, nor thanks to a good guy, but rather because of a tempting snake who exploits Otomo's weaknesses with a cheeky and direct attitude towards him; by acting like so, Imagase takes a vengeance towards his own young self, first of all, the one who had been unable to face with sincerity the object of his adoration, back then. "No matter how sweet he might be, he is war away, like the moon."

His impetuous whims and his sensual attentions take the lid off Otomo's soul in the deep and they produce the most unexpected of effects, by reversing the parts of this play: Otomo, the one who never even thought he would were to find himself one day on the verge of turning 30 years old by asking himself about the true nature of love, becomes fond of the weird daily life established with Imagase, and he adapts himself to such cohabitation with surprising rapidity. He becomes more and more aware of a homosexual relationship in which he, however not knowing how to move, goes on with the cautiousness, the tenderness and the care he had never reserved to any other person before, in his whole life. He even gets to question himself what it is that truly determines the happiness of a couple, both in the short and medium-long term. As for Imagase, he teaches his senpai how to increase the physical pleasure in a more and more intense way, making him find out what offering someone unconditional love means. Someone who is clearly an imperfect one in all his weaknesses, but at the same time someone who is loved for the one he is, and not just because he embodies the ideal of an unattainable perfect man.

As the relationship with Otomo evolves, though, it is Imagase slowly losing the control he had on the whole situation, as he lavishes his spasmodic need for affection -also made up of a sometimes exasperating and childish attitude-  on a story born out of a youthful crush later evolved in true and heartbreaking love, against every possible prevision.  

"I'm just eating away your current existence. I can't make you happy."

"I'll decide whether or not I'm happy. We're both so selfish."

That is why within the play of the cunning black cat with his naive mouse, it is no obvious at all who the real prey or the predator are; quite on the contrary, the roles are repeatedly overturned, both on a psychological and on a sexual level, in a turn-up which is mostly unprecedented as for what Boys' Love works are concerned: as the pages become more daring, there's a parallel growth of the sexual purse power that each of these main characters can use towards one another. A strong and undermining power. Playing tag, letting go, keeping on running after each other once again: all of those are demonstration of a love both childish and adult-like in its elements, a overwhelming love taken to the limit of the obsession, a deep affection that while looking straight into reality, forces both men to ask themselves how much they are willing to leave back of their own selfishness in exchange for an improper relationship, and yet a fulfilling and indispensable one. That is why it is equally truly fitting, the choice of borrowing the name of animals for the titles of the chapters, and these very same animals appears as 'guest-stars' inside the story itself: from a frame hanging at a restaurant to a lighter herald of jealousies, there is no similarity more proper than fish, cats, snakes, owls and butterflies to suggest us behaviours that are to recall the most primeval and animal-like instincts of the human beings. Weaving traps and spider webs: those mean, sleazy and petty acts that people also do when they're in love. "The obstacle is you. And so am I." The frame of this symbolism closes with a gaze looking up at the cover illustration, where the portraits of animals silently stand out in the background behind the main characters. At the same time, such a gaze looks suggestively up at the moon: the Romeo and Juliet described by Shakespeare invoked the moon for an eternal oath, while the Japanese writer Natsume Soseki in his famous 'Tsuki ga kirei, desu ne?' (the moon is beautiful tonight, isn't it?) metaphorically used the moon for a declaration of love. Mizushiro-sensei entrusts the white satellite with Otomo and Imagase's most unspeakable thoughts, for which the moon so becomes a silent leitmotif, as if it was a sensual tokonoma opening inside the story for all those people who can see beyond it: a sort of a story in the story, like a delicate, deep, subtle and intimate alcove. It goes beyond saying that every single dialogue of Kyuso wa cheese no yume wo miru manga is either enigmatic and cheeky and equally provoking and misleading: what we do reckon we understand about Otomo and Imagase, through their own words, gets later regularly denied by other facts. With thick lines and dialogues that are to tell us the very contrary of what they actually intend to convey, we cannot help but rely then on the inner voices of the many Otomos in his mind, in order to understand the nude truth: the white Otomo, the black and the grey one can maybe remind us of the concept behind the Pixar movie Inside Out, but Kyuso's one is by far forerunner of the latter. Mizushiro-sensei will make excellent use of such theme again by exploring it fully, and not without a subtle humour, in her following Nōnai Poison Berry manga; at the same time, the intricate juxtaposition of human beings and animals comes back to life in the well appreciated Shoujo manga Afterschool Nightmare, while the ultimate aim to attribute to ourselves and to love becomes the core of the romantic comedy Shitsuren Chocolatier, winner of the 36th Kodansha Manga Award - Shojo/Josei and also nominated for the Tezuka Award in 2014. Other than a fully substantial work per se, Kyuso wa cheese no yume wo miru can be also seen as a sort of effective experimental testing ground for the mangaka herself and her various best works.

"You think that's acceptable?!"

"Acceptable to whom?"

"To society!"

"You're overly self-conscious, as usual... society doesn't care about your sex life."

Mizushiro-sensei's style distinguishes itself for a modern and state-of-the-art graphic, an elegant and refined one, and Kyuso makes no exception: the peculiar design, so clean without any trace of deburring, gets softened as time and years passing by, as we can see by comparing the drawings made for the first chapters of the story with those from the Melancholy Butterfly onwards, and until the recent Hummingbird Rhapsody. Here the lines are so delicate and thin that they almost suggest us they could literally flake off under the piercing gaze of the reader. By leafing through the tankobon, all we can see are tidy pages, sometimes with no balloons at all, thus resulting in a huge expressive performance. The design is sharp and essential as for what details are concerned, but it is no minimalistic one; it is accurate in the depiction of bodies in every detail and characterized by a certain subtle sensuality, this latter marking not only the most rated scenes but also able to permeate the whole work instead. As used as she is in narrating with extraordinary ability about twisted and askew themes and exploring the human psyche with related sexual and gender identity issues, Mizushiro Setona offers us pages with highly aesthetic value, thrilling and bold ones, not without a sort of a certain aesthete voyeurism when depicting lovemaking scenes, however never vulgar at all. They manage to effectively evoke with a surprising visual impact, instead, the devastating passions from which both the characters and the readers end up being shaken and overwhelmed from. The violence this manga is impregnated with is mostly about its psychological insight, rather than the physical one, sex being however undoubtedly an inescapable element of the complicated events binding Otomo to Imagase: it is a key of the story but no ultimate reason of it. That is why we cannot help but follow, almost in a state of trance, how this couple is eventually able to get to intimately know each other by starting from a kiss born out of a blackmail, and thenquickly slackening every inhibition under the sheets through reversal of positions, seme/uke roles and sadomasochistic implications.

"Do you love me? Or after you got a taste of being loved so passionately are you pretending to be my lover as compensation for my feelings?"

How such a sentimental-psychological tangle can be outlined into a story constantly in balance between drama and comedy, keeping a perfect balance between each of its many faces always, without ever falling nor losing a thing, the reader can find it one page after another, surprising himself together with Otomo and Imagase in a thick and tormented love story, terribly authentic as much as its complicated and complex characters are. The pressing storyboard does now allow any rest nor break nor peace: accusations and skirmishes rebound from one man to the other in a never-ending evolution and involution of the personalities of the characters, that is until the unsettling ending; when the time of the games finishes and infantilism stops, another moment inevitably comes. The moment when the face of the adult we want to show to other people outside, goes finally and fully matching the inner essence of us as human beings. That very moment when one can take responsibility towards its own self.

"Poking holes in happiness makes you unhappy.

Nobody understands what I'm going through.

No one knows about the happiness I got to feel despite navigating into an ocean of doubts."

Otomo' sexism, while appreciating what Imagase offers him despite never intimately accepting it’s a man providing him with such a pleasure, vanishes in the very moment he gives his lover a vintage Château Pétrus bottle: it is one of the finest French wines in the whole world, thus suggesting his precious man the implicit idea of being an equally unique and irreplaceable one. Carrying on with a relationship where people can look at each other's eye and discuss, offering our whole self not in order to give back something we received but rather to go beyond our own self, it is then something quite different from seeking the pleasure of a night without any involvement: it is not the same indecisive man he was before, the one for whom appearances in society stops being an excuse, the man suddenly questioning himself how it might be wooing a man rather than a woman, or whether the relationship between two homosexual guys might even be more complete and deep than the one a heterosexual man might start with someone belonging to a ‘different’ universe from his own one.

What is love, then, if not the innate strength that allows us to see beyond our stiff self-esteem and pride, in order to overcome our limitations and arrive and reach the most intimate recesses of the one soul we naturally tend? And it is not only the Boys' Love theme per se to be central in this story, quite rather something that transcends every gender limitation to virtually embrace every kind of love, regardless of any possible colour or legitimacy. And that is because a different way of loving is no inadequate love nor a "less" love. However merely brushing LGBTQ+ themes, however never aspiring to become a gender manifesto, the Kyuso wa cheese no yume wo miru manga is able to outline some of these aspects with great perspicacity; there's then the excellent portrait offered to the weaknesses of the human being, slave of a need for affection as much hidden as obscure and here translated into the relentlessness of a physical and lacerating love. It does confirm to us how much the social and psychological themes are here treated with crude realism and keen sensibility. In a perfect synthesis of the Yin and Yang elements, Otomo and Imagase's greedy, mean and liar characters are flecked in a sometimes merciless way, not to mention the moment they mean to hurt other people but end up cleaving their own self instead first: it is a couple of uncomfortable characters the one we have here, someone with whom it is definitely not a pleasure to identify ourselves with, someone we wish never to meet, if any. Someone that nonetheless chooses never to give up when in front of human frailty, and that is why these characters end up being unusually authentic, charming and unforgettable ones. " I was hoping, someday, that by sharing my way of loving with you, you would have done the same to me one day." - Imagase -

 "Ugh... I don't lose my temper like this with women." - Otomo -

The new revised All in One Edition reunites the two original volumes into one, which comes with a few color pages in the introduction and the brand new extra Hummingbird Rhapsody chapter. As for what the censorship is concerned, the original pages have actually been partially edited in a very few graphic details: it has been Mizushiro-sensei herself to provide them at the request of the Japanese publisher for the revised edition, which is meant to remove every explicit content starting from 28th January 2020. That happens in order to make the manga available also to a younger target, as the live action movie received a R15+ rating. Censorship involves however only the depiction of male genitals in a few specific, small and delimited portions of the pages, mainly in the first chapters of the story, and does not apply anywhere else. Female nipples and breasts, naked bodies and rated love making are left totally untouched, and so are the original dialogues, the true quintessence of this manga. Even the revised edition presents the harsh and explicit tones of the original pages and there is none of the messages conveyed by the manga that has been damaged or watered down by the re-print. "Love is divine punishment."

Carrying a perfect balance between seduction and feelings, the Kyuso wa cheese no yume wo miru manga is a challenging, demanding and intense reading. It is a mature story filled with issues, a complex and provoking one; it is compulsory to get near this story with the utmost attention, receiving though a crescendo of emotions that the reader will feel entangled with until the very last page. The Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi would have probably defined it a "matto e disperatissimo" love, a 'mad and utterly desperate' one. Like a river in flood sweeping everything away, the need for getting to know how to slacken control of ourselves and how to gain it back: educating the passion in a relationship is complicated to the point of seeming almost unmanageable.

Love in daily life is quite a different issue from the feelings of a romance novel, an engagement that forces people to swallow bitter bites sometimes, an endless tension towards the other and towards ourselves. In this story that happens to painfully disturbs the deepest part of the heart, we do not know who is the one leading the game; both characters here overthrow the typical Boys' Love canons, an audacious, cocky and authentic couple ready to question itself always.

A story that cannot be missed for all the lovers of the Boys' Love genre, Kyuso wa cheese no yume wo miru is also quite appropriate for all those one searching for an atypical love story, a strong and nonetheless sensual one, sublimated by a masterful introspection and a very welcome hint of subtle and stinging humour. It is a work dealing with many interesting and complicated issues, though never boasting about none of its many qualities.

A story that knows no limitation and no borders. One of those volumes to keep on the shelf of our own personal bookcase with the utmost care, to take up every now and then in our hands and find new shades of meaning after every new re-reading.

**

Originally written and posted in Italian @ Animeclick

[bittermarrow]

heya! thanks for answering my inquiry from earlier :) could i get a horror-tone fic or h/cs (your pick) of yandere!bubba with some gore?

A/n: This fic kind of took a mind of its own, I apologize If it wasn’t what you had in mind considering it’s not really horror-toned, more angsty, and isn’t really all that gory unless you count the per usual dismembering of humans… I didn’t expect this to turn into what it did!

Side-note: The reader here is gender-neutral! 

Warnings: Yandere Bubba, unhealthy relationships, graphic gore. my dumbass can’t come up with titles.

Words: 1.8k+

…

Ride or Die

It hadn’t taken long for Bubba to get this overly-attached to you, clinging to your side wherever you went like a moth to a flame that wouldn’t bite back. It was innocent at first. You didn’t mind his desire for closeness, or support, or even his sometimes overwhelming meltdowns when you’d been out of his sight too long. You’d just figured he’d never had a meaningful relationship like this and he’d grow out of it. For a while that excuse held up, it wasn’t like he he wasn’t angry that you weren’t there with him all the time, he was afraid. Afraid that you’d abandon him.

You’re not going to pretend wasn’t a worthy concern either, you’re a free-spirited type who loves to travel and marvel at the world’s many riches. Natural and Man-made alike. It wasn’t in your nature to stay in one place too long. Soon you’d get restless and antsy. Staying put this long has made you all sorts of stir crazy. And you’re living in a house full of cannibals, who wouldn’t want to leave?

Time after time you’d tell him “I’m not going anywhere, Bubba. I promise.” And while it satisfies him in the moment, the next you find yourself being dragged away from doors and windows as if you’d jump at the slightest chance to hit the road.

It was frustrating to say the least. You loved Bubba, you truly did, but you missed your old life. Going from motel to motel with different friends and cool strangers, attending to pool parties and raves all over the states, knowing the best connections to get in. You missed your freedom, your independence… and boy was it one hell of a mistake to voice that forlorn thought to your love. He put you on lockdown for a week! You weren’t allowed outside, or out of his sight for longer than two seconds. It was bad enough you couldn’t confide in him anymore since he’d only freak out, and bottling it all up was unhealthy.

But shit, this relationship was unhealthy! If this was going to work, you needed some kind of leeway, some kind of freedom! Enough is enough, you need to put your foot down. You either need some space or you’re high-tailing it out of here for real.

You square your shoulders even though your eyes swirl with anxiety, and look up to Bubba who is currently gutting last night’s catch. You cringe at the sight of their open chest, their ribcage visible from where you sat, surrounding a cave of thick blood and muscle. You shake out of it and find your voice once more.

“Bubba,” He jumps slightly, even though you know he’s always aware of your presence in the room. He makes a sweet, questioning sound in response like he enjoys the sound of his name on your tongue. “We need to talk.”

His chitters nervously under your gaze as he processes your words, but nods for you to continue while simultaneously trying to continue working. You flinch when you hear a sickening crack as he tugs on what sounds like a bone, and take in a shaky breath, gulping down your nervousness.

“I’m restless, Love. I’m not built for this life, I want to stay here with you, but If I’m going to you’re going to have to give me some sort of freedom. I can’t stay cooped up in this house all the time, it’s no good for me and you know it.” You decide to be straight with him, and if he starts being difficult then you can resort to a little sweet talk, but for now, you just want to get your point across.

He makes a pained, whimpering type noise and you don’t let it get to you, knowing it’s as much of a manipulation tactic as it is pitiful. He shakes his head with a grunt the cleaver coming down on the meat with a bit more force than normal, and the impact makes you jump in your seat. He notices and starts babbling apologetically. He abandons the dismembered corpse on the working table, really just a slab of what looked like an old wooden crate.

You decide to let him come close and wrap you up in his arms, despite the irritation of knowing he’s dodging the subject. You sigh and hug him close to you, but you aren’t backing down, not yet.

“Bubba, It’s either you let me go places on my own, or I’m going to have to… have to…” You trail off, when he starts shaking, no doubt trying not to cry. He was so emotional, so sensitive, and it hurt your heart to upset him like this but you couldn’t live like this either. “Or I’m going to have to go.”

That’s all you needed to say for the dam to break, he drops to his knees on the floor before you where you stay seated on a chair just a ways from his work table. He’s sobbing and babbling uncontrollably into your stomach, hand scrambling for purchase, you take his hands in a brief moment of panic and wince at the force of his grip. You’ve never been good at seeing your Bubba cry, so naturally, you wrap him up n your arms, bending over him to cradle his head to your chest as he cries. You shush and coo soothing words into his ear as you rock him, hands carding through his dark curls comfortingly.

It’s always hard to get Bubba to calm down once he’s been worked up, and even once he’s simmered down he’s all hiccups and sniffles for a good long while after that.

“Shh, hey, it’s okay, it’s okay…” You whisper to him as he shakes in your arms, hands having gravitated to surround your knees in the same iron grip. You know that the best way to go about this was to comfort and coddle him now, trying to pry more with him in this state could only result in him throwing a tantrum. But, you aren’t going to give in to his pleading, you’ll love on him willingly, but you’re no pushover. You wouldn’t be able to stand another lockdown.“You’re alright, baby, I’m here, you’re alright.”

He starts to settle down under your gentle reassurance and soft praise, as he always did when he had a breakdown. As you suspected he’s still hiccuping, the tremors causing his body to jerk into each one. He’s at least stable enough to continue talking to you decide, though you keep him cradled to you. Knowing he’ll want to be held when you start talking again.

“Bubba, you still have a choice to make, I can’t stay cooped up here all my life. I only stay here for you, and if… and if it truly hurts you so much that I might leave…” You sigh, hands petting his neck and shoulders soothingly as he remains quiet for you, letting you speak this time. “Then hell, Bubba, come with me.”

He’s tense now, and the look in his big brown eyes is nothing short of violent mortification. He shakes his head rapidly, whimpering into your wrist as he seizes one of your hands to feverishly leave kisses on your flesh. He’s scared. And you know why, the thought of leaving the family he has, no matter how abusive they may be must truly terrify him.

“I know that scares you,” You chuckle half-heartedly, the sound bittersweet on your lips as you caress his cheek through his mask, eyes drifting away from him. “But the person I’ll become If I stay here too long scares me.”

You can feel the tears welling up in your eyes, glossy and warm as they start to drip down the side of your face. You reach a hand up to hastily wipe them away, eyes still avidly avoiding his own. You couldn’t help it, crying. You’d kept these feelings in for so long that it’s almost too much to handle without falling apart like Bubba just did. 

“I wouldn’t mind taking you with me, we’d have lots of fun together,” You say, a half-hearted smile on your lips as you bring your solemn eyes down to his. The dreamy look in them shocks you, could it be that he wants that too? The thought pulls at your heart-strings, and you smiled wider at the thought of driving around the world with him, his head sticking out the window like a puppy as you show him things he’s only ever seen on the television. “We wouldn’t have to worry about food, Drayton, money… I have some friends that could get me my old job back, we could go anywhere we want.”

“Would you like that?” You ask, wearily, and Bubba looks away anxiously. But he nods after a moment of deep thought, but he looks back to the table where the carcass sits open, blood pooling over the side. 

You realize that he’s worried about how his family will survive without him, and you yourself are stumped on that detail. But this is about the two of you, his brothers shouldn’t be able to control his whole life like this.

“I know it’ll be hard to leave them behind, but we can always come back and visit, whenever you want. I think… I think they’ll be okay.” You almost felt like a teenager running away with a boy, like those cheesy, ride or die films about the goodie-two-shoes female lead and the bad boy sweeping her off her feet to a better life.

Perhaps that made you the bad influence and him the angel, but you find that it doesn’t bother you.

Bubba doesn’t feel like he can bear to part with you now after he’s been subjected to your affection this long. After his obsession with you has grown this great, the thought of you leaving him after all of that almost physically pains him as it crosses his mind. All other coherent reason and worry for his family that he cared so deeply about faded into the background, silhouettes as you and your light became his whole world. 

He couldn’t let you go alone, let you leave him, leave without him.

He seethes at the thought, the pit of blackness gripping him in the jaws of his love. The impulse of infatuation and obsession circled him like hungry wolves, feeding on the morals he still had left until all that remained was you.

He’d protected you, killed for you… and now he was going to leave for you.

[tidustargaryen]

The Last of Us Part II - A unique experience you can never get rid of (My interpretation of the story - Full of spoilers!!!)

I made some screens of the game, but I messed up while forgetting to remove the black frame of options from photo mode. I was so proud of the screens! ^^ Sorry. 🙇

Wow...Wow...Wow... 🤩🤩

 I couldn't not talk about this game, and what it felt like to play it.I went through all the emotions, I smiled, I cried, I screamed, I laughed, I was scared, I was anxious, I sang, I felt anger, even hatred, but also compassion, pity, empathy and the desire to forgive and forget. They broke my heart, and then filled it with rainbows. It was really the roller coaster of emotions. That's what I wanted when I bought this game. I wanted to feel things, a whole lot of things. I wanted to smile, I wanted to laugh, but I also wanted to cry. Because crying is not necessarily negative. It's a human emotion that also does good things.

I love Red Dead Redemption 2, I played it a lot, but I didn’t have the need to put words on my feelings. And especially not to give it such praise, that is to say how much The Last of Us Part II affected me. I also find it hard to describe my thoughts, my feelings in another language, and the review took me time and effort. There will surely be plenty of mistakes, but I love this game too much not to grant it the honor it deserves.

The job is successful, it's more than successful, this game has affected me deeply, in a positive way. When I put the controller down at the end of the game, wow... Just wow... That's all i could think of. And I must confess, I don't understand the negative feedback. I understand of course, that you can dislike a scenario, I myself dislike some movies, we like, we dislike, for different reasons, it's our most legitimate right. But hatred for a game? Putting a zero grade on it? It's not objective. The gameplay is excellent, much better than the first one, the immersion is incredible, the visual and sound atmosphere... damn! The motion capture is unmatched. More weapons, more actions, more everything.The graphics, the dialogues, the music! Even if the scenario is not good for you, you have to admit that the rest is almost perfect... So it's impossible to put 0 to this game. It may not please you, it's legitimate, but when I don't like something, I leave it, I don't spend days talking about it, in a bad way. I would also add that reading the leaks is one thing, playing the game, living the story with the controller in hand is something else. Maybe you're missing out on something huge, it's your choice.

If I say that, it's above all because I would really like a third opus, I want other stories with Ellie. I liked her in the first one, but I got so attached to her in the second part. And I like the world of the Last of Us, I got attached to the Ellie/Dina relationship as well, and I'll come back to that in the development I'm going to do on the characters right after.

All that to say, for anyone who didn't like The Last of Us Part II, your life is not going to change whether or not there's a part III, but I, and other players, would really like a sequel. But I'm not sure there's going to be one after this outpouring of hatred. So good for you, so bad for us, I guess. But I'm not selfish.

I've also seen some very positive comments, a lot of “masterpieces” and objective opinions, full of very good reviews from players who have had the same experience as me. I've played a lot of games that I liked, very few of them made an impression on me like The Last of Us Part II, none of them made an impression on me like The Last of Us Part II in fact, thank you Naughty Dog. Really, thank you, because, and this is my personal opinion, this sequel is much better than the first opus. Yes, that's what I think, and I had heard and seen a lot of press reviews that said it was better, I couldn't believe it. And yet, since I finished the game, I can't stop thinking about it, I can't stop rewriting the story, imagining a sequel, and that's what I wanted this game to do, to touch me emotionally, quite simply. This game haunts me since I press “start”. Well done, I admit.

Spoilers, ahead.

They didn't lie on this, I knew what game I was buying. A violent game, which deals with difficult subject, revenge, hate, the worst human emotions. It's hard for the players to understand the choices they made in the script, but it's also because it's hard to imagine living in a world like The Last of Us.  Anyone can die at any time. And the survival instinct brings out the worst in humans. In their world, we too would become violent, hateful, we would do anything to survive. We will do the same things as Abby, Ellie, Joel and everyone else. Yes, it would be so much simpler, and more productive, to cooperate, to be united, this is the solution, the only one. Unfortunately, humans do the contrary, because the fear of the other, of the unknown, makes one strike before being struck. Already, in our current world, people find it very difficult to show solidarity, there is solidarity, but how many there are out of billions ?? They said it would take an open mind to enjoy the game, and understand the choices of characters. And they were right.

The game could have dealt with the story of a father and his adopted daughter, wanting to survive in a cruel world full of infected people who want to devour you, but who are not the worst enemies. It would have shown these characters succeeding and living a happy life in the town of Jackson... and it could have been believable, why not, with a big stroke of luck... Because honestly, in a world like this, where anybody can die at any time, realism is very important. The worst thing that could have happened to this game is not hate, it's indifference, and the game does not leave indifferent, far from it. People still haven't understood that to show disappointment in a game, a movie, a series, or whatever, hatred is not the solution, but indifference. Hatred proves that you are interested enough in the subject to talk about it a lot. This is indifference, the opposite of love.

Because, yes, in this world, you can die very cruelly, horribly, just like Joel... It's hard, it hurts, but it's realistic. When I first played the first opus, at the end I said to myself "If there's a sequel to this game, Joel will pay harshly for the consequences of his decision..." Because Joel's choice was selfish, it was very human, but it was very selfish. I love Ellie so much that I'm thrilled, but he saved a little girl that he cared so much about, a love that he didn't think he'd feel since he lost his little girl. But tell me, how many other little girls has he sacrificed in the process? How many people has he forced to live in such a terrible world? This vaccine could have saved them all. It’s unthinkable to me that the surviving Fireflies wouldn't want revenge. And it's even more natural to want revenge on the murderer of your father.

Yeah, I wish Joel would've survived, or not died so cruelly, especially not in front of Ellie. But Joel is paying the consequences for his choice. It's hard to put yourself in that position, but I don't think I would have made the same choice Joel did. And maybe, when you think about it, was it better for Ellie to die saving the world, rather than go through all that she had to go through next ?

The Last of Us part II, it's clearly not a game where everything is white or black, the development studio took a big risk, making us play inside the head of the person we're supposed to hate, the one who took Ellie's dearest love. Most games make us play nice people, who fight against the bad guys, but here, the bad guys aren't always bad, they can do good deeds, and bad ones, just like Ellie. These shades of grey in each character are very interesting to study, the story becomes more complex, more captivating. Joel wasn't a "good guy" either, he did a lot of bad things before he crossed Ellie's path, he ambushed people to kill them and steal from them... That doesn't stop us from loving him, it's also true for Abby and her companions.

That's what I love about this game, the nuances. The questioning of the character choices, and the morality that's built into it. And for me, this game is clearly an essay about what makes us feel and what drives us to hatred and revenge, and what we get out of it... Nothing, as we can see with my poor girl Ellie. She brutally loses Joel and in her quest for revenge, loses everything else.

 There's clearly no way in hell she's going back to Jackson, she's leaving, for good, and alone.Besides, we saw her head toward the door at the back, not the one on the side, which leads to Jackson. And when she walks with JJ, towards this door, she tells him that only bad things are behind this door. No, unfortunately, Ellie does not return to Jackson, and that is understandable. This quest for revenge has affected her deeply. For me, it's like a stain on her soul. Is it legitimate for her to want revenge? I think it is. Should she give in to hatred and revenge? Of course, in this story, for Ellie, the answer is no. "I'm gonna find, and I'm gonna kill every last one of them," I think she could've added, "No matter what it costs me." Her future happiness. Neil Druckmann brought up a possible part III, and perhaps this part could imply a redemption from Ellie. She tells JJ that behind this door there are only bad things, maybe in the end, she goes to these bad things, to try to destroy as much as possible.  And to finally be able to do what Joel stealed from her, and finally answer this question of why she is immunizing, why her ? To save people.

Ellie can't move on. She has a lot of nightmares, she's been through a trauma and can't get over it. Despite the peaceful life she has with Dina and JJ, she is not happy, at least not entirely. Part of her has stayed in that house near Jackson, on the ground where Joel died cruelly. And that part she'll never get back, and she doesn't know it, but even killing Abby wouldn't change anything. Ellie lost too many people, and Joel was the one person she couldn't lose. But even if she doesn't give in to the last siren of vengeance, the damage is already done. After Nora, whom she tortures for information, Owen's death and his pregnant girlfriend, it's too late. Not to mention all the other people she had to kill to get there. It's not without consequences,the guilt is too big,for what she did to those people and also for Joel,who she feels she has to avenge,rightly or wrongly,out of love,out of loyalty, or both.

And it's very clear when she kills Owen and then Mel. Of course, she's just defending herself, she didn't want to kill them, she just wanted to know where Abby was. And most of all, she didn't know Mel was pregnant, and in that moment, she knows she's gone too far, that her revenge cost her too much. But it's really when she sees Jesse die, when she thinks Tommy's dead, too, and she almost lost Dina, that she gives up on revenge, for now. She chooses a quiet life with Dina, but Tommy won't give it up, and Ellie is still very affected by Joel's death.

She must avenge Joel, even if it means losing everything, she will find Abby. She'll finally give up on killing her, and I completely agree with that choice. All this was for nothing? Well, yes, because Ellie realized too late that revenge would never heal Joel's death, would never make up for her great loss, and that Abby's death wouldn't bring Joel back. The problem is, she realizes that too late, she already lost everything else, including herself.

As far as I'm concerned, she knows the farm will be empty, she just needs to go back, as if the last bit of happiness she has left is in this house. And maybe, with a spark of hope, that the person she loves the most after Joel, hasn't abandoned her. I think she also thinks that Dina and JJ deserve better than her, someone who got lost on the path to revenge, a ghost of the Ellie that Dina fell in love with.

Yeah, it's not a happy story, but that was never the point. I think it's hard to imagine the world they live in compared to ours. This is not a world where happiness exists, and if it does exist, it is hard to find, let alone keep.

The game did something very daring, making us play Joel's killer. It's ballsy, isn't it! And yes, bad guys have a life, a story, and a reason to do what they do. They're just as human. I hated Abby, that's a strong word, but I wish Ellie had killed her right then and there, and then I was forced into her head. Abby lost her father, and so did Ellie. Joel killed Abby's father, and she killed Ellie's father. An eye for an eye? A lot of people hate Abby, so I'm going to put it another way. Would you have let your father's killer live? Abby couldn't. It's very legitimate, I wish she'd killed him quickly, his death was cruel. But as much as Joel's choice... All the loss, all the hardship, all of it could have been stopped with the vaccine. All because of Joel. Maybe you wish she would've kissed him and thanked him?

And yet, she spares Ellie and Tommy and Dina, something she's gonna regret, by the way. Because, later, Tommy kills Manny, her best friend. And Ellie kills Owen, the man she loves. And once again, in spite of that, she spares Ellie again. This time, her mercy will save her life, when Ellie delivers her from this new group of slavers she meets. (Ellie the breaker of chains xD) Abby doesn't want to fight anymore, doesn't want revenge. She gives up punishing Owen and Mel's murderer, and their babies, and also the others. (If Abby knows about Nora, etc.)

She knows what it cost her to take revenge, it didn't bring her father back, it didn't ease her grief, and that caused the death of her closest friends, when Ellie, in turn, wanted get revenge. The price is too high. I had no particular affinity with Abby, but I understand her character. In her quest for revenge, Abby only kills the man responsible for her father's death, when Ellie wanted to kill them all, and kills many. Abby also has her bad choices, she condones Isaac's torture methods which are just horrible, but her revenge has not controlled her like she did to control Ellie. Punishing the one responsible was enough, but not for Ellie.Yes, at the beginning, I wanted Abby to die, and kudos to the developers, because at the time when Ellie had her hands around her neck, I had only one thought, let her live, please… Well done to make us pass from a desire for revenge to an act of pity.Yes, Ellie made the wrong choice, but could she make another one? In a world like that, I don't know, it's very difficult to imagine the impact of such a harsh universe on our psychology. But it shows that revenge brings nothing, it takes everything. And hatred also does nothing good, especially if it is your main driver.

This is a great lesson that the developers are giving us, it pushes us to question certain morality, and that was their goal. Our world is also filled with hatred, and some people give in to it so easily. I don’t understand how you can feel all this hatred for people who just created a video game ... Isn’t there a bigger fight in the world? Racism, homophobia, slavery (yes, yes it still exists), pedophilia, rapists, misogynists, the people who govern us, the powerful who buy everything with money, animal and family mistreatment … Why waste time on developers whose only fault is wanting to create a game to entertain people? Were they not successful for you? Go on to something else. And I'm not even talking about everyone who hates the game without ever even playing it. It's just a game. There are more serious things that deserve your anger, don't you think?

This is my opinion and I give it with all the objectivity I can. If the game was bad, I would not have wasted time writing all of this in another language, I would have moved on but that is not the case. Yes this game is huge! And even more because it highlights things that some people want to hide. Personally, I loved that the two characters we play are female! Especially on such dark themes !! It's always for men... two women, who want revenge, who gives in to the darkest and most human emotions. Not men, finally. Thank you Naughty Dog. A gay heroine! I love, and I don't understand all the controversy around LGBTQ propaganda ... So, according to this reasoning, do other games make heterosexual propaganda ?? And gay people have to go through this ?! It's a shame !

No, I'm not gay, I have no personal interest in defending it, just the freedom of everyone to be able to live. It is out of the question that people live unhappy all their life, just so as not to shock people who are too closed to understand that the sexual life of others does not concern them ... More games like that please, and with men too… because homosexuality in the media is often represented by women.

I also didn't understand that we can take offense for the visit to a synagogue ... Should we blame Assassin's Creed for all the cathedrals in which we did stunts and break a lot of things ??

Again, everyone has the right to like or not like the game, but I don’t think you should be so disrespectful of all those people who worked hard on this game. Especially when it’s unwarranted. And I know something about it, I watched GoT season 8, I know what it's like to betray the soul of a story Clearly, this is not the case, here. I’ve seen some very constructive reviews explaining how amazing this game is, but it couldn’t please everyone, and I’m sorry for all those who didn’t like it (those who played well sure, the others are not legitimate for me) but don’t prevent us from enjoying this game, especially if we can have a sequel.

I needed to put all my thoughts on my keyboard, and on my blog, because as I said at the very beginning, this game affected me deeply and it is, for me, the best game I ever played. (sorry RDR 2, sorry Arthur, but Ellie gave you a nice slap there 😋 ) I highly recommend it! However, I know that it cannot please everyone, like all works of art, it’s subjective.

I would like to end with my favorite scenes, no matter they made me smile or cry, because there are really magic and unforgettable moments. Not necessarily rank in order of preference.

- The guitar scene with Dina. The cover of "Take on me" which is just beautiful, I still listen to it often, and it's a moment of peace (like the giraffes in the first one) in this terrible world.

- The scene where Joel takes Ellie to the science museum. Same, wonderful moment in this world of brute. And a wonderful gift from Joel to his daughter. I'm still crying. And that is to bring it perfectly, they could have put this scene to us before his death, it would not have had the same impact. After Joel's death, it hits where it should.

- Of course, the scene where Ellie and Joel talks about his choice to save her. This moment, or Ellie tells him that she can't forgive him yet, that she may never be able to, but that she wants to try, I think that is also one of the reasons why Ellie doesn't want to give up on revenge. Joel died when she still resented him, and they were both on cold terms. She can't forgive herself.

- The scene where Dina offers her her bracelet, I love this bracelet.

- All the null jokes of Ellie !!!! xD

- I cry when Ellie thinks that Dina could leave her for Jesse. And then after, when she comforted her.

- The scene at the farm, when Ellie is walking with JJ, I loved it, she seems happy, but shortly after, we realize that this is not the case, or rather, that something is missing, or someone… The scene of the return to the farm, for me has made it harder, already because it's the end, because Dina is no longer there, even if it was easy to imagine. And the scene where it seems to me that she plays the song that Joel sang to her. She lost him, And then she lost herself. The song he sang to her at the beginning sums it all up. This is the saddest scene for me. In the first game, Ellie told Joel that all the people she has ever loved are dead or have abandoned her. She finds herself alone, and it's partly her fault.

Various :

I hate having to hit Ellie while playing Abby, especially with her arms so big, she must hurt very much!! I'm not a fan of tattoos but Ellie's is just beautiful! I would like to visit a little more Santa Barbara, it changes from Seattle ^^But Seattle is really beautiful. The lifespan of the game is enormous and the difficulty much bigger than the first one. In normal mode I sometimes suffered a lot ^^ Naughty Dog has dared to model the penises of the infected !!! (Yes, I took photos, no I would not show them xD)

The first game had given us a tragic death from the start, Sarah. She is the first playable character for a very short time, and we are just walking with her. And witness helplessly at her death. The second game does the same, but it’s her father who dies this time just after we play a little with him, just for a horse riding with Tommy. Poetic ?

Yes, the game has faults, some bugs, some passages are long, but given the quality it offers us, personally, I forget these faults, nothing is perfect, nothing needs to be.

And the only criticism I have of this game is that I wanted to play with Ellie a bit more (it's relative, the game still has a long life, but I'm greedy, I wanted more of Ellie). I really want to play with her again and I hope that where she goes, she will be fine. I liked her in the first opus, I love her now. She enters the top of my favorite fictional characters, with Daenerys Targaryen, Ellie in second place, and Arthur Morgan (sorry for your second place big boy 😋 ) And I now understand the Youtubers who said that they envied us for still having to discover the game and the scenario. Now, I wish I could forget it and find out again. What is certain is that I will not be able to say goodbye to Ellie, impossible. She deserves a very, very big hug after everything they've done to her.

I haven't read the leaks, I haven't been spoiled at all, and I hate that. I trusted a Youtuber when the fans started to hate the game, without ever playing it, and I was right. For those who compare The Last of Us with GoT: I read the leaks of GoT, I was happy to have done it given the parody they did of the show, I would have really regretted having read the The Last of Us part II leaks. Reading and living the game are two different things.

I probably forgot some things, I will do a second part, I may add things later.

This game is simply and deeply human. In these most beautiful qualities, and especially in these worst flaws.

Best game ever. My opinion.