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logicalbookthief · 4 years ago

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Things Left Unsaid -- An Analysis of Rei & Touya

Apparently Rei has been getting a lot of flack lately, all of it undeserved, and since I had a post analyzing her relationship with Touya in the works already, I figured no time like the present.

Disclaimer #1: There are a lot of issues with the writing for Rei’s character that have nothing to do with her and everything to do with how the storyline is using her, which I will address and examine.

Disclaimer #2: I’m someone who, while always curious as to what kind of relationship Rei had with her oldest son before he died, never thought it would be revealed that Touya was close to his mom. I don’t think you get the Dabi we see in Chapters 290-295 without him being so warped by his relationship with his father yet so dependent on his attention that he was willing to kill his brother and himself simply for his father’s acknowledgement.

But that’s what I find so interesting about Rei and Touya -- it’s a relationship that mainly consists of regrets and things left unsaid. There isn’t the anger or resentment Dabi feels for Endeavor, because that intense level of emotion sprung from the loss of the father who used to be his whole world. His feelings toward his mother seem more amicable, but also more distant.

And while she could’ve done some things differently in regards to her oldest, I want to make it clear that the distance between them was very much by design.

After all, Touya was the end goal of their marriage. It was never any secret as to why Enji wanted to marry her and to some extent Rei must’ve realized that this child was not meant to be hers: the child was the transaction, the thing she was needed to create, to give to her husband. Of course she loved Touya and was likely his primary caregiver for most of his life, but there was no doubt that once his quirk manifested and he could begin his hero training, his life would be dominated by his father. Which is what happened.

Here, I would like to point out something I noticed in the flashback chapters. We never see any panels of Enji alone with any of his children during their infancy -- even with Shouto, the perfect child he longed for, we see Rei holding Shouto, sitting by him as he sleeps. Enji is there tangentially. Once Shouto begins his training, that is when we see him with his father.

So to see Enji with Touya when he was a baby, prior to his quirk manifesting, strikes me as a big deal. But it makes sense if you remember that he’d placed all his hopes, dreams and expectations on his firstborn. Initially, it doesn’t look like he even considered the possibility that Touya wouldn’t be his successor or that his little eugenics experiment would fail; this was his first, most optimistic attempt at a masterpiece. So I don’t believe it’s far-fetched to see him spend more time with Touya right off the bat (it’s what will make the eventual abandonment all the more crushing).

However, Rei isn’t seen at all in the snippet of Touya’s infancy, despite us knowing she was relegated to the caregiver role. Rei is literally out of the picture. Compare this to how she features prominently in Shouto’s infancy or how we see her holding a baby Natsuo. You could argue that, hey, we don’t see her holding a baby Fuyumi either, but there’s other scenes where Fuyumi’s attached to her mother’s hip or crying over her being hurt. Things that suggest a closeness, when the only scene we get of just her and Touya is one where they’re at odds.

As we move further into Touya’s childhood, though, Rei becomes the only voice we hear advocate for him against his father. I’m referencing two specific instances:

When Enji coerces her into having more children to replace Touya now that his father has deemed him a failure, something she knows will hurt their son deeply.

And after Touya lashes out at Shouto, which Rei doesn’t blame on Touya, but rather on his father. She delivers such a satisfying condemnation of his actions, probably the most cutting one Endvr’s received to date, and it so accurately sums up one of his major character flaws.

How can you call yourself a hero when you can’t even face your own son?

The tragedy of it all is that Rei never said any of this in front of Touya -- it was always said in private, just to her husband. That alone took courage, yes, but it would’ve meant everything to Touya to hear her condemn his father aloud. Instead when she does speak to him, she says this:

It’s why I can’t wrap my head around that scene in Ch 302, where after Enji admits he didn’t know what to say to Touya, Rei replies, “Neither did I.”

When we’re shown in flashbacks during that same chapter that she did understand her son. “He just wants to be acknowledged by you” is quite the indication that she, at the very least, understood the cause of Touya’s turmoil even if she couldn’t fully relate to it herself. So why can’t she say any of this to him?

The answer is in the way she addresses Touya, as it is nearly identical to how Nao addresses Tenko in this scene:

Both Touya and Tenko grew up in similar households: the father had all the power, physical and financial, so the mothers were left to try and comfort their children in a way that didn’t go against their husbands’ desires -- and so, to use Tenko’s own words, they would “reject them with kindness.”

So it’s no wonder that Touya lashes out at his mother after she suggests he pursue other things. He isn’t five like Tenko was, he’s thirteen and has a much clearer understanding of why she says this and why it’s a bit hypocritical, since he’s aware of her situation, too.

Just as she was bound by her family, who wanted her to marry Endvr for the money and status, he’s bound by the expectations of his family. I’m not sure if I’ve seen anyone else touch on this detail, but when Touya states that he knows his grandparents sold his mom into marriage so his dad could have a child, we could infer that Touya knows enough to realize that his mother might not have necessarily wanted him.

Not him specifically, but any child — the story has neglected to flesh her out beyond her marriage and motherhood, so we have no idea if Rei wanted to become a mother prior to this arrangement, despite how much she loves her kids now — although it is possible that he might’ve internalized it this way.

So you have Touya, who at least knows with certainty that his father wanted him to exist, yet he comes to understand that his father only wants him if he can meet a specific set of expectations, and if he cannot, he’ll be discarded. If he can’t surpass All Might, he can’t fulfill his reason for existing and his father will have to replace him. So to have his mother urge him to follow a path other than becoming a hero would mean, to Touya, accepting that he is the mistake he fears he is. Of course he isn’t going to respond well to that.

I don’t like when people try to compare Touya’s reaction in this moment to Shouto’s when Rei tells him he isn’t bound by his father’s blood, using that to paint Shouto as the “good” child and Touya as the “bad” one. They didn’t react differently because of any innate sense of goodness or lack thereof -- they reacted differently because the situations are different.

Telling Shouto that he didn’t have to be like his father comforted Shouto, who only knew his father as the bully who hurt his mom. He associated his father, and his father’s fire, with all of that fear and pain -- and thus, he associated the part of himself that took after his father with those feelings. She wasn’t denying his dream of becoming a hero, only assuring him that when he became a hero it could be whatever kind of hero he chose to be, that he wasn’t doomed to be like his father.

Whereas what she tells Touya sounds a lot like what his father told him, which was to give up on being a hero and pursue other aspirations.

Encouraging Shouto to become his own version of a hero still falls in line with what Endvr ultimately wants, which is for Shouto to be a hero capable of surpassing All Might. Whereas this is what happens when Touya continues to train to do that against his father’s wishes:

This is where the framing begins to bother me and where Rei’s characterization becomes inconsistent.

So in this scene from Ch 302, we see Enji abusing his wife for “letting” Touya continue to train, punishing her for her “failure” to stop him. Obviously, none of that is Rei’s fault. If anything, Enji would be more responsible for preventing Touya from hurting himself since he’s the reason his son is hurting himself in the first place.

Moreover, the fact that he hits Rei over this sort of muddies the water of an previously-established narrative. Since the Sports Festival arc, we’ve known that Endvr abused his wife because she tried to interfere with Shouto’s training. It got to the point where she was terrified of her husband and it drove her to a breakdown. Why introduce this new aspect to the abuse, when it was already established that a) he was physically abusive and b) his motivations for abusing her were explicit to the audience?

I’m not saying it doesn’t make sense that a man who hits his wife for one reason could find another reason to do it and justify his actions to himself. And while the scene does portray Endvr in a bad light to show how wrong his actions are, literally draping his figure in shadow, why does it even dare to suggest the idea that Rei was remiss in her duties as a mother? Again, the scene isn’t even necessary, since the narrative has long-since showed the audience that Enji abused his wife.

By itself, the scene would read as further exploration of how Rei was victimized and how it affected her children. When you look at it with the chapter as a whole, though? Remember, this is the chapter where Rei claims that all of the family shares the blame in what happened to Touya, displacing some of the blame that rightfully rests on Enji.

But my major gripe with this scene is how it reframes the sole moment we get of Rei and Touya alone. Because we know that Rei understands Touya, based on her confrontations with her husband in Ch 301 & 302. Rather than encourage him to be what he wants or acknowledge that his father is in the wrong, however, her advice falls in line with what Enji wants -- to stop Touya from training. And this comes after a scene where we see Enji beat his wife when she doesn’t stop Touya from training.

With all that in mind, it could potentially be read as Rei trying stop Touya for the sake of protecting herself and the family -- I don’t think it’s coincidence that in the scene where he hits her that we see Shouto, Fuyumi & Natsuo all as witnesses who are very distressed by what’s happening to their mother -- at the cost of Touya’s need to be validated. And if executed well or at least better than it has here, that wouldn’t be a bad choice of narrative per se, and it would fit into the pattern where the households the villains were raised in -- notably Shigaraki, Dabi & Toga -- mimic the society they live in, just on a smaller scale.

Except. Does that sort of narrative make sense based on what we already know about Rei?

Certainly, it is natural to want to protect yourself under physical and/or emotional duress by appeasing your abuser. This sort of complicated dynamic appears in the Shimura family, too. Just like in the house that Kotaro built, the Todoroki family revolves around the desires of the abuser and is dictated by his whims.

I would argue that Nao does give us a well-written example of this narrative. From the beginning, it’s established that she loves Tenko dearly. But in the house her husband built, there’s no room to love her son as he deserves. She prioritizes the feelings of Tenko’s father for the sake of maintaining peace in the household and this is established quickly and plainly.

Early on in the flashback, Kotaro exerts his control over the house, while Nao + her parents look uncomfortable. Despite this, we watch as they comply with his rules, all at the expense of Tenko’s feelings. When she stands up to Kotaro at last, it is not where Tenko can see and already too late. It’s a painful story, full of regret and sadness, but it is consistent from start to end. Nobody feels out-of-character or there to prop up anybody else.

So why doesn’t Rei feel as consistent in this narrative?

Because it doesn’t fit with everything we knew about Rei prior to her abuser’s subpar redemption arc.

The way she interacts with Touya would make sense, if this was how she was portrayed from the start. However, her behavior in Shouto’s flashback -- where she was first introduced -- contrasts what we get in the later Todoroki flashbacks.

Let’s compare this to the scenes in Ch 302. Here, Rei interferes on Shouto’s behalf. She advocates for her son in front of Shouto where he can hear. She stands up to his bully/villain and tries to protect him, while also validating his feelings in the process. Directly after this, Enji hits her, not for failing to comply with his demands, but for defying him.

It is difficult to reconcile this Rei with the Rei we get in Ch 302. And if you try to find an in-story reason for the inconsistency, the options either do a disservice to Rei or make things even more painful for Touya. But I’m sure most of you have realized that I’m going to suggest a reason for this inconsistency that goes beyond the canon.

Because when Rei was first introduced in the story, Endvr was unequivocally the villain in the Todoroki family, not some misguided patriarch trying to atone for his “past” mistakes. Years later and in the midst of his redemption arc, the narrative seems to be intent on making this man more palatable to readers, and it’s used Rei at every opportunity to prop up his efforts to be better. Often, though, it takes some of the heat off Enji by displacing it onto other family members, most significantly Rei & Touya.

Like, you can literally see the difference in the frame from early in the manga to now:

Ch 39: Endvr trains his five-year-old to the point where he’s throwing up due overextension and being punched by a fully grown adult who is also his father. Rei tries to protect her son and gets slapped by Endvr. All the blames rests squarely on Endvr, who is clearly the aggressor and painted as the villain here.

Ch 302: Endvr hits Rei for not preventing Touya from sneaking out to train, knocking her to the ground. Again, Endvr is clearly the aggressor, but oh this time it’s not driven solely by his selfish desires it’s also cocnern for his son; Rei is the victim but oh she also should have been watching him more closely, and oh well why was Touya going out in the first place, when everyone has told him to stop and he knows his mom will get punished for it?

Honestly, I can understand where some people have mixed feelings over Rei’s character, particularly since the writing has done her such a disservice recently. With that being said, however, it takes a minimum amount of critical thinking to recognize that while you can criticize some choices she made, you cannot hold her to the same standard of accountability as Enji, it’s absurd. The power imbalance was obviously tipped in Endvr’s favor, always.

It is a shame, too, that we can’t have more discussions that don’t turn into some readers (a lot of whom are attempting to make Endvr sound less horrible than he actually was) trying to demonize her. It’s doubly a shame the story itself doesn’t bother to flesh her out as a person, instead using her as a prop, because the complex relationships she has with Touya -- with all her children, really -- has plenty of room for exploration.

Like, there was no reason to add this new dimension of resentment due to her spouting Enji’s words back at Touya, when there was already a source of tension supported by previous canon -- the neglect the Todoroki kids suffered because Rei couldn’t be the parent they needed, due to her declining mental health and eventual breakdown.

Or, if you want to complicate their dynamic further, why not add something that focuses on Rei and has nothing to do with Enji? We learn in the flashbacks that Rei agreed to the marriage more-or-less to please her family, lamenting that she “intended to smile through it to the end,” essentially admitting that her hope was she could grin and bear it. It is telling that she had this attitude before entering her marriage; evidently, she was raised with the idea that she should be acquiescent to her parents’ whims and not express herself if she was only going to be contrary. Maybe she didn’t know how to deal with Touya’s very expressive, very emotional outbursts as a result. And her inability to respond would be the exact opposite of what Touya was seeking.

Not to mention that Touya died, and for the last decade, Rei was under the impression she had lost her son forever. He died while she was hospitalized, torn up with guilt over what she did to Shouto, only to find out that her other son died in a frankly horrific manner, and she could do nothing. By the time she would’ve found out, it was too late to even try to do anything. I can’t imagine what she must’ve felt in terms of regret alone, plus her grief. And I’m still mad we were robbed of her reaction to Touya being alive, because now suddenly there is a chance to do something, to change what was once written in stone.

Or what about Touya’s feelings for his mother, that have yet to be given much depth? As the oldest and most aware of his existence, it seems like he was the first to truly understand his mother’s situation and I can’t help but wonder: If Touya knew he vessel for his father’s ambition, and his mother was sold into role of creating/caring for him, did he question her love for him? Once he found out one parent’s love was conditional, it wouldn’t be a leap for him to consider it for the other. And yet if that’s true, Dabi doesn’t appear to hold any ill-will towards her for that. He was angry at her hypocrisy, because he knows she should understand, but her words to him didn’t reflect that.

All of that is fascinating and so much better than what we got in canon, so far at least. I’m hoping for them interact in the present at least once before the end of the series, and I think they will, but as to how satisfying a reconciliation it’ll be, I guess we’ll have to wait to see how the Todoroki plotline progresses from here on out.

#bnha #touya todoroki #rei todoroki #bnha meta #bnha analysis #this took way too long because I kept having more thoughts which made it even longer lol #and it actually gave me another idea for a touya & rei meta post but this is already a monster so that'll have to be its own separate post

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adifferenttime · 4 years ago

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Andrew Ryan vs. Robert House

On almost every House post I make, someone in the notes will reliably reference Andrew Ryan. I totally get it - they look similar, they're based on the same guy, the parallels are so clear that the NV dev team added an achievement for killing House with a golf club - but I think these commonalities tend to engulf both characters, blotting out some of their more interesting ideological/personal differences. It's useful to examine them in relation to one another, but part of that is figuring out what distinguishes them, which is just what I’ve attempted to do.

It's difficult for me to talk about Randian objectivism because I don't think it's sound enough to address on its own terms, but considering this is the philosophy Andrew Ryan has adopted, I kind of have to. What I’d identify as the core premise of Randian ethics is this: altruism is a moral wrong. Some Randians have argued that isn't really what they believe - that the real point is anything resembling altruism is self-interest in disguise - but they're departing from the beliefs of their icon when they make those claims. Per Rand:

The irreducible primary of altruism, the basic absolute is self-sacrifice – which means self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-destruction – which means the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as a standard of the good.

The way Rand defines altruism is by linking it to self-sacrifice, which she uses to differentiate it from kindness or benevolence. Aiding others at no cost to yourself is benevolent, but not altruistic, and therefore not evil. Sacrificing your happiness to help another human being is, from Rand's perspective, evil, as is any philosophy that prioritizes the other at the cost of the self. This whole idea has been broadly rejected by most scholars on account of it being really fucking stupid. What justifies the leap from "man is naturally selfish" to "selfishness is good"? If selfishness is moral, wouldn't the most moral behavior be to exploit others through whatever means necessary, favoring force over the market? Rand defines happiness as "using your mind’s fullest power," achievable only when you "do not consider the pleasure of others as the goal," but why is this the only definition? What if your only options are self-sacrificial in nature? How do you weigh them if neither sacrifice is linked to values, individual achievement, or "your mind's fullest power" at all? Rand didn't care because she was too busy trying to ethically justify cheating on her man with her best friend's husband, but nonetheless, this is the philosophy Andrew Ryan’s adopted. He claims that "Altruism is the root of all Wickedness," in what's almost a direct quote from Rand herself.

To that end, Ryan builds a system that doesn’t just accept selfishness but actively incentivizes it. Every other principle he expresses is subservient to the ideas that selfishness rules man, and that for Ryan to act on his own selfish impulses is the highest good in the world. His lesser political principles (individual liberties, negative rights, the creation of a stateless society) don’t matter to him as much as the central precept from which they stem: that selfishness is his moral imperative.

What is the greatest lie every created? What is the most vicious obscenity ever perpetrated on mankind? Slavery? The Holocaust? Dictatorship? No. It's the tool with which all that wickedness is built: altruism.

It doesn't come as a particular surprise to me when he starts imprisoning dissidents or executing rivals or banning theft (standard practice in most societies, but not what an egoist would pursue; if you can get away with taking it, you deserve to have it, or so the thinking goes). I’ve seen him described as a hypocrite, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true considering everything he does is in line with his opposition to altruism. He'll adhere to his other principles only if they don’t sabotage his pursuit of personal power. This is evident in the fact that he only adopts a negative perception of Fontaine when his own interests are threatened, but doesn’t give two shits what Fontaine might be doing to sow conflict and harm people before that point. A guy named Gregory asks Ryan to step in against Fontaine early on before Fontaine's fully established himself as a threat to Ryan's power, and Ryan's extremely blase about it.

Don't expect me to punish citizens for showing a little initiative. If you don't like what Fontaine is doing, well, I suggest you find a way to offer a better product.

Contrast this with how he reacts when Fontaine has risen as a genuine business rival. This is from the log titled "Fontaine Must Go."

Something must be done about Fontaine. While I was buying buildings and fish futures, he was cornering the market on genotypes and nucleotide sequences. Rapture is transforming before my eyes. The Great Chain is pulling away from me.

This double standard is the natural outgrowth of his prioritization of self-interest. If your most deeply-held belief is that you should never give up your interests for others, ancillary rules become flexible in times of personal crisis, and Bioshock makes the case that putting someone like that in charge of a city will leave you with a crumbling, monstrous ruin.

Superficially, House has some similarities. Ryan executes political rivals; House has you blow up a bunker of his ideological opponents. Ryan is the highest authority in Rapture; House is the absolute monarch of Vegas. Their goals and moral codes, though, are almost diametrically opposed. When you ask House why you’re expected to trust him when he’s openly admitting to installing himself as the despot of the New Vegas Strip, he says this:

I have no interest in abusing others... Nor have I any interest in being worshipped as some kind of machine-god messiah. I am impervious to such corrupting ambitions.

Most of his resources are devoted to large-scale, impersonal projects, aimed either at building the power of Vegas or securing his long term goal of “progress” as he sees it. He’s rejected selfishness as a moral good because House is very far from Randian objectivism. He's a Hobbesian monarch.

In that respect, he shares an outlook on human nature with Ryan that I deeply disagree with (that human beings are essentially selfish), but in terms of what that means for the structure of a utopian society, House takes a very different position. From his perspective, human nature breeds suffering, not industriousness, and the only way to stamp out conflict - and, in a post-nuclear age, ensure the continued survival of the human race - is through a strong sovereign. The purpose of a state as laid out in Leviathan aligns very, very closely with the one House expresses.

...the foresight of their own preservation, and of a more contented life thereby; that is to say, of getting themselves out from that miserable condition of war which is necessarily consequent, as hath been shown, to the natural passions of men...

The monarch's successes are reflected in his society and the well-being of humanity as a whole. To subvert his goals is to subvert society's goals, and to doom humanity to the war, death, and suffering that exist in a state of nature. When you destroy his Securitrons/kill him, he doesn't plead for himself or get offended on his own behalf. He accuses you of betraying not him, but mankind.

Single-handedly, you've brought mankind's best hopes of forward progress crashing down. No punishment would be too severe. Fool... to let... personalities... derail future... of mankind? ...Stupid! Slavery... the future of... mankind? What... have you... done?

An important corollary of this idea which again distinguishes House from Ryan appears in Leviathan’s description of the political/moral responsibility of a monarch to his subjects:

...that great Leviathan, or rather, to speak more reverently, of that mortal god to which we owe, under the immortal God, our peace and defence. For by this authority... he hath the use of so much power that, by terror thereof, he is enabled to form the wills of them all, to peace at home, and mutual aid against their enemies abroad.

Hobbes and House give the monarch virtually unlimited power but match it to the monarch's duty, which he lives to fulfill. His obligation is to speak for the people, act for them, and protect them from all threats, internal and external. House generally abides by this, orienting his decisions around his goals for society irrespective of the personal cost (the negative consequences of his actions are a product of his fucked evaluations of what’s best for society, not personal greed). It’s not just a departure from Ryan’s philosophy but a complete refutation of it. He's almost died for what he's misidentified as the greatest good.

Given that I had to make do with buggy software, the outcome could have been worse. I nearly died as it was…. I spent the next few decades in a veritable coma.

This is not the behavior of an egoist. This is the behavior of an extremely arrogant but marginally altruistic (from a Randian perspective lmao) guy. This is some distorted “from each according to his ability” shit if you’ve managed to convince yourself your abilities exceed those of everyone else who has ever lived and that you can get the Mandate of Heaven by being really good at statistics.

The reason these guys develop such similar structures and hierarchies despite the ideological gulfs between them is because both of them are elitists who’ve experienced a massive failure of self-consciousness. They’re unable to conceive of other people as being fundamentally like them. Ryan separates people into the clearly-delineated classes of “producer” and “parasite,” ignoring the fact that everything he’s ever “produced” was reliant on a huge, coordinated effort between workers, architects, accountants, middlemen, and others, all of whom, in conjunction, contributed more to the realization of his dreams that he ever could have alone. Rather than realizing his own position is more parasitic and reliant on other people’s labor than that of anyone else in Rapture, he adheres to his doctrine of selfishness even when it’s not reflective of reality and is ruining the the lives of an entire city of people. He deludes himself into believing he’s a superman among ants instead of one flawed man who is reliant on the goodwill of others to help him survive, as are we all.

House, too, thinks he’s exceptional. Unlike Ryan, he acknowledges the necessity of the worker to a functioning society, but while he’ll accept his reliance on that labor, he doesn’t trust the laborer enough to share political power. House knows he’s invested in humanity’s survival and the creation of a better world, but he refuses to consider that he might not be alone in this goal. He chalks up the existence of the Legion to fanaticism/the ambitions of a sultanistic dictator and attributes everything the NCR has done to greed, without it ever occurring to him that the massive harm these nations have done was partially motivated by the same goals he’s devoted himself to - and that the atrocities he’s committed since his rise to power are, in some respects, very similar. House knows himself to be invested in the well-being of humanity, but he’s too arrogant to ask himself if his methods are wrong or trust other people to build a new path, one that doesn’t necessitate his complete control over the land and people of the Mojave. Ryan and House’s worldviews are distinct, and their flaws, as highlighted by their respective narratives, say some interesting things about how each set of devs view power and the pitfalls of elitism.

Anyway. If you put these two men in a room, they would probably try to murder each other, and I think that’s great.

#Robert House #Andrew Ryan #fallout meta #bioshock meta #fnv #bioshock #fallout new vegas

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thetimelordbatgirl · 3 years ago

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While me and my friend, @disneyfan50 , are still messing around with our Owl House inspired AUs and changing some stuff with season 2 still coming out, decided to maybe at least explain the character roles in the AUs, this one being The Flower House, an AU on disneyfan’s Descendant of Loki series and my series, Marvel Descendants:

*Dea Astor- also known as The Demon Lady due to her cursed form, Dea used to be with the Emperor as his student and eventually, lover, but one day things all went wrong and in present, without a coven, Dea is often hunted down by the Emperor's coven and when it comes to how she survives, she does so through selling human junk she gets from the human realm through her portal door, but when selling one day, she ends up with a human walking through the door and as a result, Dea’s life changes from that point onwards.

*Locket Lawson- a human from the human realm, Locket grew up with a pretty strict father who would often make it hard to be a child and was harsh if she messed up, meaning her school was the closest place she got to being able to share her love for fantasy, but when one of these incidents includes snakes and fireworks, her dad plans to send her to a summer camp to straighten her out, but instead of going, she runs after a sparrow who has her book and in the process, finds herself in a realm right out of her books.

*Fluffy- a demon that resembles a dog, Fluffy’s origins are unknown outside of the fact that while on the run from the emperor's coven, she found a hiding place with Fluffy in it and when she left, she took Fluffy with her and despite insisting he’s scary, Fluffy is considered adorble by most, especially by Locket.

*Snippy- a demon that resides within the house, Snippy is the Flower House in some sense and therefore, when not residing within the door, he is roaming the house and sometimes beyond the house and despite coming off as creepy and annoying, he does mean well.

*Sparrow- Dea’s palisman that she made out of palisman wood while younger, Sparrow is well, a Sparrow palisman that when not being used by Dea and Locket eventually, roams the house or grabs human junk when Dea sends him to the human realm.

*Mariana Malora- the daughter of the Emperor, Mariana is rumored to have been behind why the first Emperor was taken off the throne as she is a loyal member of the Emperor’s coven and when it comes to Dea, she has the task to bring in Dea and get her human realm door somehow.

*Amanda Morris- a student in Hexside, Amanda was a latebloomer as a child and as a result, Amanda and her childhood friend, Victoria, fell out and in present, Victoria likes to go after Amanda, especially when Amanda fails the Abomination Track, but after sneaking a human into school, Amanda finds herself switched to the Healing Track and even finds herself befriending the human in the process.

*Theo Falconer- a student in Hexside, Theo comes from a soldiers family and so far lives up to his families legacy with him being in the track off Beast Keeping Track, but he also has a love for the human realm and its treasures, meaning when Amanda sneaks a human in, he ends up befriending the human and becoming a loyal friend.

*Victoria Von Doom- the youngest child of the Von Doom’s, Victoria is known to often come off as aloof and cold and due to her bad history with Amanda, she often tormented Amanda when Amanda failed at the Abomination Track, a track that Victoria excelled at, but after a few run ins with the human, she finds herself slowly changing for the better and while befriending Amanda again, she slowly finds herself falling for the human.

*Sarah and John Von Doom- the eldest Von Doom children, they are both known for their mischief and are known to use tricks from the Illusionist Track in their mischief, but when it comes to their sister, they either get along with her or turn nasty when she tells on them.

*Angelica Blood- a student in Hexside, Angelica is known to use her families status to get away with anything, including tormenting others and especially tormenting Amanda, but she still manages to be the schools sports star and manages to excel in the Construction Track.

*Lizzie Octavious- a student in Hexside, Lizzie comes from a potions coven family and therefore, does study the Potions Track as well, while being Angelica’s sidekick in bullying people.

*Victor Von Doom- the father of Victoria, Sarah and John, Victor is known to be very strict with his children and is known to expect nothing but the best from his children, especially Victoria, and is in the Abomination Coven himself, while owning and running Von Doom Industries.

*Emperor Samaris- the ruler of the Isles, Samaris came into power after the removal of the first Emperor and when he did, he installed the coven system, with any wayward witches being punished instantly, but he still intends to reach his power into the human realm somehow, and needs the door to do that.

*Jake- Samaris’ right hand man, Jake is known to be eager to do anything for the Emperor’s coven and is known to enjoy his colleagues failure, but has a dislike for the Golden Guard’s due to them stealing his jobs a lot.

*The Golden Guards/Balthazar and Lilith ‘Lily’- the twin children of Mariana, they were told their father left them before they were born, and in present, have trained to child prodigy status and are willing to do anything for the emperor’s coven, but only later do they get doubts about certain things they are told.

#megan's fanfiction #dani's fanfiction #the flower house #alternate universes #OCs

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burnedbyshoto · 5 years ago

Text

scoops

— In what was to be a summer of excitement, love, and adventure, you’re doomed to a summer working a job to pay some bills. But hey, who said romance still wouldn’t find a way to work while working at Scoops Ice Cream Parlor? —

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pairing: kaibara sen x reader

warnings: fluff, cursing, modern!au, ice cream shop!au

word count: 6,361

a/n: this is for the bnharem summer collab!!!! I am so very tired, when am I not at this point... um... yes, kaibara is def my fav class 1-b boy, sorry not sorry.

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The best part about summer… well, you really couldn’t begin to list what you loved about it. There was no bad part about summer. Sure, the days were hot and humid, but they were long and bright for so long you could go and do things for countless hours. You were able to stay out in the sun and feel the heated rays against your skin — road trips with friends and days when you had no sleep and those when you only slept.

Summer was indeed the best time of the year.

This summer was supposed to be the best, with your saved money from working at the student store for this last semester, you were ready to go places with your friends. Explore the unknown all in the name of youth.

There indeed wasn’t anything better about this time of the year than that.

Cute clothes, cute bathing suits, and cute accessories, as you trailed out of your classroom with your final finally done and completed, you were ready to zoom on toward home.

This was going to be the best summer ever, you thought, your heart racing in anticipation at the thought of your best friend pulling up at your home with a car full of friends. Your parents waving you off as you descended into the purpling and pink sky with nothing but an uproarious scream and celebration.

You really hoped you’d find someone attractive… maybe a summer fling?!

You giggled at the thought, your face warming even more under the deep sun rays, your body avoiding passing commuters.

This was going to be your summer!

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“You’re… you’re kidding me,” you deadpanned staring at your mother, who was in a full-body cast.

She looked at you with a sheepish emotion on her face, her eyes full of sorrow yet no pain. The moment you had gotten home and had switched from your finals outfit to something more practical, you had gotten a phone call from the hospital. It seems that your mother, in all her clutz, had tumbled down the staircase at her work. Through this, she managed to break both arms and legs, two ribs and broke her collarbone.

“M… Mom,” you groaned at the way she was laughing in total embarrassment; after all, miraculously, she was in little pain despite being hospitalized. “How did this happen?! Why did you — oh my god…”

“There was a mosquito flying by my head, and well… I tripped and fell,” she laughed loudly, smiling in gratitude when the nurse came to adjust her pillows.

“Why were you even leaving the office?! It isn’t even lunchtime for you, and you always eat lunch on the roof?” you questioned more, your arms folding across your arms.

“Well, um… you know how there have been cuts at the office, I just… I was let go,” she whispered in a small voice, face twisted with embarrassment and shame. While you wanted to feel sorry for your mother because after all, she had suffered horrendously, there was a quick realization of what those words meant.

Medical insurance was now gone.

“How are we going to pay for this?!”

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Having to wave your friends away with tears rolling down your face was hard. Their faces sullen at the fact that you had handed over your entire job savings to begin paying off the massive debt your mother built in a single minute. You also knew you couldn’t return to your job at the university, they were closed during this time.

There wasn’t much you could even find while looking around. Your resume wasn’t strong enough to earn jobs that would help your future career, not when competing against graduate students. The local shops and malls were already filled to completion; they always prioritized the highschoolers anyways.

You had almost thought it was pointless to even be searching until you stumbled across a corner ice cream parlor. It was the closest ice cream parlor to your house, and if you thought hard enough, you definitely remembered coming when you were small, and fortunately for you, they were hiring on the spot.

So here you were, in an old t-shirt, shorts, an apron fastened on, and your hair free from your face. The owner of the ice cream parlor showed you around, pointing at the different things that were lying about. He was a simple tour guide, he had told you, a simple introduction to what was lying about. Your coworkers would be the ones to teach you how to create the unique menu items, teach you how to work behind the scenes.

The smile on your face was stiff and very unnatural as he showed you about, stories of the old employee he had that had quit on him because they were moving suddenly. It was apparently a struggle for him to find willing workers at this time. He was also sure to name off the three other employees that worked here, and by the sounds of it, two of the three names were retired people who were so bored that they sought out a low-stakes job.

“Ah, there he is!” he exclaimed, his hands thrusting outwards as a tall, dark-haired man emerged from the back, a gallon of ice cream in his hands while he looked lost in thought. “This is Kaibara Sen! My youngest…er, second youngest employee now! He will be handling your training, he is very competent and well… a much better explainer than I am!”

You tried not to stare too much at the man, but he was for lack of a better term, beautiful. Dark hair, brown eyes, and a look on his face that just told you he definitely did not want to be here… it was basically love at first sight for you.

“Kaibara, this is y/l/n, our newest member of the family here at Scoops!” the owner exclaimed, his cheeks warm and his body brimming with excitement. “Please explain everything, I have to go now! My daughter should be out of school, and I have to go pick her up!”

You watched in silent awkwardness as the man picked up all his items and rushed out of there without a single word. Smiling awkwardly, you returned your attention to Kaibara, who was studying you without saying a word. Your smile began to pinch at your cheeks, the strain of the faux smile beginning to tire you out to completion while he changing the empty gallon of ice cream for the new one — you had to will yourself from staring at the very, very nicely toned arms of his.

“Hold this,” he spoke, his voice low and flat, almost entirely passive and bored while he pushed the empty cardboard into your arms. You hitched a breath in your surprise, your head nodding in your overall confusion.

The tub was cold in your arms, contradicting the overall harsh rays of the sun. You watched as he turned on his heel, moving back to the door, and you stayed put, your eyes wide in confusion and your increasing inability to stop checking him out. “Are you going to stand there all day, or are you going to follow?”

Blood flooded to your face in your embarrassment, your head dropping while you rushed after him.

Needless to say, your first day on the job was an interesting one.

While your first impression of Kaibara was that he was hot enough to melt you into a puddle, you found yourself at a quick and immovable realization that he was an overall dick. He was disgustingly bland, his tone only riling you up when he crudely pointed out your mistakes and issues. He had explained to you in five minutes how the entire ice cream parlor worked — yes, in five minutes, and yes, he expected that you memorized and retained all that information.

Refill the ice cream when there’s only five centimeters left. Don’t touch the soft-serve ice cream machine because it often broke. Don’t flirt with any customers, don’t destroy the whip cream swirls on the ice cream sundaes. Don’t ever go into the freezer without someone knowing, don’t forget to clean the counters every hour if it isn’t that busy, don’t forget… well, you got it. There were many don’t’s in his vocabulary surrounding the rules and regulation of this ice cream parlor. Furthermore, he had thrown you to the wolves because the moment he finished up the rules here at Scoops where they ‘live to bring a lick of happiness one scoop at a time,’ a customer had walked in and of course, because beginners luck was not a thing, ordered the hardest thing on the menu.

Your back had never been sweatier, and your arms trembled as he practically breathed down your neck. There was no stopping this incessant mother birding of his, and your ears seared with heat when he called you out for every mistake you made.

“I thought I told you to not do that!” he muttered just loud enough for the customer to ask with worry if everything was okay.

The second you had handed of the quad-layered ice cream sundae that was most definitely a kickstarter to diabetes did you almost collapse in gratefulness of being done with that wretched thing. The customer did, however, frown significantly at the sight of the very ugly sundae, and you wanted to collapse in your failure.

The two of you were not… compatible coworkers, and that was apparent as the summer sun while the day went on.

He ridiculed your every technique, he frowned at the way your voice pitched when you welcomed customers, scoffed when you were overly sweet because he would love to see you being that kind in a month, and he glared a hole through your head the moment you tried to socialize while there was nothing to do.

So when the summer sun had set for the night and your arm burned from the repetitive and laborious action of scooping ice cream all day, you walked out of Scoops with a wavering bottom lip. This was going to be a long summer.

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“For someone who’s been here a whole year more than me, I’d’ve thought you were better than this,” you sang, pocketing the extra cash you got as a bonus for the fantastic and helpful review you had gotten on Yelp. Yes, America’s disaster of an app had finally made its way to Japan, and three weeks ago, your boss said anyone with a useful review on top of a five-star recommendation would get a bonus. You were always getting it. “What was that you were saying when I first began? Don’t suck? Hm, well, I think you need to get that under control on your own part.”

Kaibara rolled his eyes so hard you swore you could hear him do it. You tried not to allow the prideful smirk to become too apparent while you went about your shift reorganizing the front of the store. You had just managed through a demanding crowd of children, couples, and the elderly, and it was a mess.

It had only been the two of you today, too (the owner only worked the register, leaving the two of you to make the orders). While there was no getting along for either of you, there was a good work ethic between you that allowed you to work efficiently together. But of course, the teasing and taunting from your voice while you graciously took the extra cash made Kaibara seethe.

It was an unspoken, spoken competition between the two of you, and to make things worse for the environment between everyone, the both of you sorely got along.

He had called you incompetent, you called him lazy. He called you a useless employee, you called him fifth-rate at best. There was just a lot of tension between you and the man you had once thought was painfully attractive.

“It doesn’t count when you beg customers for the comment. Of course, they’re gonna take pity on you and your ass life; why do you think people give spare change to the homeless?” Kaibara smoothly stated, his fingers digging the cleaning rag harder onto a piece of fallen dried, sticky ice cream.

You nearly cracked the waffle cones in your gloved hands.

“At least I’m the one with the extra cash in your pocket!”

“It fell out actually, free change now,” Kaibara stated, pointed at the rolled money on the floor and quickly scooping it from the floor well before you could snatch it.

Your face twisted when you ended a near chest to chest with him, his eyes seeming to read you entirely while you definitely met his gaze, yet also managed to look cities away. Your upper lip curled with your frustration, and you shoved his chest, grabbing at the money in his hand.

Unfortunately for you, he was both quicker than you, stronger than you, and taller than you. He merely rose his clenched fist well above his head and smirked at how your face blanched at his actions.

“You’re a fucking dick!” you yelled, your hands latching onto his bicep and pulling down with all your strength. “Give me my damn tip!”

“It was on the ground, it’s finders keepers,” was his smooth response, his arm somehow freakishly strong enough to fight off your full weight and stay defiantly up.

Well, you definitely understood why no one liked working with the two of you, you were both annoying together.

“Kaibara Sen, if you don’t give me back my damn money right now, I will—” you were interrupted by how his lips pulled past his teeth into a fierce, biting grin.

“You’ll what? Punch me? It hasn’t hurt the last ten times you’ve tried.” He taunted you with no mercy, his head tilting just the slightest bit to further his point and to have your blood pumping yet again.

“That’s only because I wasn’t trying before!” you counter, your fingers pressing into his palm, your nails beginning to dig into his flesh while he tried not to let on that it hurt.

“You’ll have a friend of yours write a five-star review for you, and write a complaint about me?” he asked, bringing back to light the one time that your friends left not one, but fifteen five-star reviews. Of course, a handful of them had also decided to include that they were not happy with the treatment they received from Kaibara — not that it was possible given that they were not anywhere near here.

“Well, I didn’t know they were going to do that! All I was doing was exchanging stories about how I was working while they were all out having fun!” you attempt to defend, but it sounds weak because well, it happened.

“Ah, okay, I’ll try to remember that when I have my friends doing the same to you,” Kaibara sarcastically smiled, his arm finally dropping so that his fist was in your face, but it still remained defiantly closed. “I mean it’s only fair, and they didn’t abandon me on a whole summer long getaway!”

“I told them it was okay to leave, you jerk!” you grit out, your fingers trying to slip under his so that you could rip the money from his hand, but yours were beginning to sweat.

“Ouch, a jerk? Don’t hurt my feelings, please y/n, it’s making me tear up,” Kaibara sighed, his eyes very much interested in the way you were failing to get his fingers to open up.

“D-Don’t call me y/n! We are not friends enough for you to try acting casual with me!”

“Should I call you y/l/n-sama instead?”

“W… WHAT?!”

“Yeah, sounded weird to me too. I mean, after all, I don’t garner any respect for you, so why would I use that, to begin with!”

If you were a bird, you were absolutely positive that your feathers would be bristled and standing while you glared up at Kaibara with a near snarl on your lips. He matched your glare, his typically passive eyes ignited while the both of you neared in this hate-filled magnetism.

“Would you two please stop! This is the time for summer flings! Not swinging fists!”

The both of you whirled around to see your practically sobbing employer watch on with tears rolling down his face. He had been the most disheartened at the fact that both you did not get along at all, it was his biggest regret he had said many times over. While both of you did not fly twenty meters apart, Kaibara’s fist relaxed, and you managed to retrieve your money back from him with a satisfied ‘hmph’ before turning around.

Really you knew both of you together were insufferable. But to your credit, both of you were always civil in front of the customers. Well, at least polite enough for no one to speak up. But as you returned to your place by the corner to continue cleaning with your rag, you couldn’t help but look behind you at Kaibara, who was also staring back at you.

What an insufferable prick!

He stared at you, his lips pressing into a smile that you refused to admit made your heart hammer just the slightest bit faster in your chest, and the moment he caught on, the smile became a smirk before his tongue stuck out, and his finger pulled at his eye — or in other words, he threw you an Akanbe… well, your boss then had a ten-minute talk about how it was not okay to throw dirty rags at your coworkers.

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It wasn’t that Kaibara didn’t like you.

No, of course not, there was no point in garnering unpleasant feelings towards someone who didn’t matter to him at the end of the day, but sometimes… sometimes he really thought you being a piece of shit just to enact rage and violence from him. After all, as part of working at the ice cream parlor, their break time leisure was always brought with a free sundae with whatever you wanted because you worked, and tips were only really brought in by the rare American tourist.

But you were doing this on purpose.

“I want to add a caramel and chocolate drizzle, don’t forget to add peanuts… should I get whipped cream??? Is there enough??? I know we used almost half of our weekly supply on one kid?” Kaibara watched as you stroked your chin, ordering your custom-made sundae while you created this sugar-sweet dessert based on what he hated to create. “You know what… yes, I want some whipped cream, but I also thought that you could maybe smash it up like at Cold Stone? It makes it easier to eat.”

“I’ll spit in your ice cream if you make me do that.” Kaibara deadpanned, his fingers twitching on the serving spoons. If he was going to smash your toppings on the counter, he just cleaned, he was going to throw this in your face.

“And violate Healthcode Section 242?!” you gasped loudly, almost offended that he would do such a thing, and he wondered if you were pulling a number out of your ass. “Do it, I dare you! I really would like to have you replaced!”

He watched you triumphantly stick your nose in the air, your lips set in a victorious grin, but he just sighed. “You’re a fucking pain in my ass.”

You seemed to have expected that from him, but you still played it off in a shocked manner with your hands pressing to your cheeks in your horrified expression.

“Oh thank goodness, I thought for a second there you were going to say something horrendously rude!” you laugh, your hands stretching out for your finished sundae, and he watched your tongue wet your lips while you brought it close to you. “My mom tells me that all the time, and she’s still in a full-body cast.”

“And that’s relevant because?” he asked, his eyes blinking slowly, his head tilting in his faux boredom — he wouldn’t admit it, but he was never bored with you around.

“Nope, totally irrelevant! But I figured your life is so boring that my daily news about my bedridden mother must be like what Fashion Week is for Youtubers,” you chide, walking over to an empty table and plopping down on the chair with overdramatic confidence and slight exhaustion.

“I think maybe you should stop talking and eat that ice cream before your break is over.” he returned, his hip pressing into the cold counter while he cleaned up the small mess he had made creating your monster of a snack.

“You’re probably right… your small brain needs a break.”

Your words were nothing new, but he still stared at you with a growing smirk while you brought your spoon of ice cream to your mouth and took your first big satisfying bite… well, that was until you tasted it. “EW! HEY! KAIBARA! THIS IS FUCKING DISGUSTING WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO TO MY SUNDAE?!”

“I added cherry sauce.” He shrugged, his arms folding across his chest while your face fell, your spoon digging into the sweet cream to shove the black sauce, which was not chocolate, to the side.

“THAT’S THE—”

“Worst? I know!” Kaibara nearly snorted at the defeated, almost depressing look that overcame his face. He wanted to dig more at you because of that, but was unfortunately interrupted when the front door opened and in came a customer. “Oh, welcome.”

He didn’t want to look away from the fact that you were pouting and eating your sundae still; your guilt of wasting food outweighing your distaste much more. But a weird twist of his stomach made his eyebrows scrunch when he noticed how the incoming customer stared at you. It was a look of interest, and while he didn’t even like you, why was he feeling like this.

He ignored it, shaking his head, he focused on the customer who said they were still looking, and he sighed.

It meant nothing… right?

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Well, it finally happened.

Today was your day off, but at precisely 12:35 p.m., your phone violently buzzed with an incoming call from your boss. You had been out on the backyards lawn trying to sunbathe with your towel on the dirt floor, trying to live the best summer experience you could. Your music had been blasting, so when the call came, you quickly picked it up to figure who was calling and why.

“Hello?”

“Y/N WE NEED YOU IN THE SHOP RIGHT NOW! THE EVENT IS CRAZY RIGHT NOW, AND THERE’S A LINE OUT THE DOOR! I’LL GIVE YOU OVERTIME JUST GET HERE NOW!”

There wasn’t even a chance to argue, a chance to say you were doing more important things, because the line ended immediately and you groaned loudly. To work it was, it seemed.

It took you fifteen minutes to get to Scoops Ice Cream Parlor, and you were surprised, to say the least, about how false your boss’s statement was. It wasn’t a line out the door, it was a line that went out the door and wrapped around the block?!

You locked eyes with Kaibara, who was also apparently called in today, and he merely raised an eyebrow at you before continuing what he was doing. In forty-five seconds flat, you had managed to get yourself ready to assist and were on it.

It was times like this that everyone was grateful for how efficiently you and Kaibara worked together, as odd as it was. The two of you worked on multiple orders together, passing things off to one another, gathering items, and sharing. It was done wordlessly, effortlessly, and efficiently; it indeed was not a reflection of how you two behaved normally.

In an hour and a half, the line had finally reached the last ten people, and you could almost cry in relief.

“Ah! A soft served vanilla ice cream with a chocolate drizzle! Y/n!” your boss commanded, and you nodded, your sweating cheek pressing to your shoulder to wipe whatever you could off. Without a word, you went back to the soft serve machines and without so much of a thought, pulled on the lever.

You quickly realized that pulling on that lever was a mistake, not a mistake you purposefully made, but a mistake.

Do not touch the soft-serve machine because it often broke… that’s what Kaibara told you all those weeks ago, but when he meant broken, he didn’t mean it didn’t produce ice cream. No, no, no. That would be too nice by the universe, after all! When he said it broke, you never expected the soft-serve ice cream to begin to pour from the machine, with no stop in sight.

“OH NO!”

The white vanilla cream poured endlessly from the machine, and you shrieked while trying to keep it on the cone you brought with you, but you were no expert in making those Instagram famous towers. Eventually, you watched in horrific slow motion as the ice cream tipped over and splattered on the floor, and in your moment of not knowing what to do, you attempted to gather the ice cream in your hands instead of letting it fall to the floor.

“Oh my god, stop! Please stop!” you chanted, your hands jiggling onto the lever hoping that it would make it stop, but it was to no avail.

With every passing second, your arm filled with more ice cream, growing colder and stickier with every moment.

“What the fuck is taking you so long — oh my god!”

“KAIBARA PLEASE HELP ME!!!!” you sobbed, feeling like a pathetic toddler of all things as your foot desperately tried to drag the trash can near you to keep the building icecream from falling onto the floor, but your legs were too short it seemed.

“What did you do?!” he hissed, running over slamming the trash can near you, but slipped on the fallen cone and crashed into you.

Much like how the ice cream cone had fallen in slow motion, Kaibara crashing into you, exploding the armful of ice cream gathered in your arms everywhere, sent you both to the ground.

“WHAT DID YOU DO?!” you sobbed in your hysteric laughter, the both of you now fumbling on the ground, the ice cream quickly seeping past the threads of the apron to seep into your clothes and burn your bodies slowly. “YOU MADE THIS SO MUCH WORSE!”

“Oh my god, would you stop?! Please stop yelling!”

“Get off me first! You’re so heavy!”

“The floors are so damn slippery, I can’t!”

“Roll off, you idiot!”

It was a chaotic, wild attempt by the two of you to calm down the machine that wouldn’t stop spitting out ice cream until it was empty. While no one else had seen the two of yours struggles to get into your feet (a feat that took twenty minutes and provided hilarious footage for your coworkers who watched it before closing), the both of you couldn’t speak of what happened without feeling like you needed to crumble away.

Thankfully, both of you were sent home afterward, before the ice cream could glue into your skin. But as you were walking out, your arms not being able to bend at the disgusting horror of the sticky firmness of the dried ice cream on your skin, you were surprised when a hand grabbed your shoulder and stopped you.

“I wanted to apologize,” Kaibara says the second you turn to look at him.

“What?” you stupidly respond, your eyes blinking rapidly as if you couldn’t understand him.

“I wanted to apologize about how I’ve been… how I’ve been behaving. We aren’t really friends, but after all that today, I just… can we start over?”

And somehow those four little words sparked a friendly fire in your core, and your lips stretched into a smile as sweet as the ice cream on your body.

“Yeah, I think we can.”

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This date was going horribly.

About nine days ago, a customer had walked in, seen you moping with an ice cream sundae made by Kaibara with black cherry sauce, and had asked you out. You were sure what exactly willed you into saying yes; after all, you didn’t know the guy personally, but here you were. Without wanting to seem rude, you definitely thought this date was going horrendously, and you wanted to get out, not that this man noticed anyways.

“Do you want to get some ice cream?” he asked, a smile spreading on his face while both of you exited the movie theater.

You thought about it, Kaibara wasn’t working today if you remembered correctly, and with Scoops being the only ice cream joint nearby, you weren’t about to stroll in on a date with him there. Since the whole broken soft-serve ice cream machine, both of you had taken to be friends like honey and flies.

The bickering didn’t stop, not one single bit, but the tone and the atmosphere behind the genuine arguments no longer felt like an introduction to some World War and now instead teasing and playing between friends. However, admitting and seeing that you were friends brought up an issue that you never thought was going to happen again — you once more found yourself attracted to the dark-haired man.

Yes, like some overzealous whore, you were out on a date while having very real feelings for your coworker.

But well, going back to whether you should go get ice cream, it would give you yet another reason to speak up at all.

“Sure!”

But of course, summer was not being your friend this summer it seemed, because when he held open the all too familiar front door, and you walked in with a grateful smile. You felt your heart twist and die the second that Kaibara walked out from the back, his already neutral face falling into stony coldness at the sight of you and your date.

“Welcome,” was his unwelcoming call.

Please let there be some freak accident that causes time to reset so you wouldn’t have to do this, you prayed, trying to calm the blood that threatened to rush to your face while your date began to talk to Kaibara. Your eyes glued immediately over onto the menu as if you hadn’t already memorized everything up there. Still, even with your attention very focused on the menu, you knew by heart already, you could feel those dark, nearly black eyes piercing through you.

When Kaibara was asked to cover a coworkers shift today, he expected it to be busier than it was today. He guessed that’s just how it was at times when the heat of the summer day failed to make anyone want any ice cream, but while it was nice to get paid without doing much work, it definitely sucked doing nothing. Which is why when the front door chime sounded, he offered to take on the customer… but he didn’t expect to see you here with some random guy.

He didn’t know why it bothered him really, the both of you were finally getting along superbly but seeing you there next to some guy who was trying to talk about just how amazed he was by all the ice cream flavors and how he met you here soured his mood intensely. At the same time, he continued to look at you. You were staring at the menu; he knew you could recite to the very typo on the board because he had riled you into memorizing it within the first week.

But when your sheepish gaze met his, Kaibara did not want to admit that the bizarre emotions he was feeling both disappeared altogether and intensified utterly.

“What d’ya want, y/l/n?” he asked you after taking down this assholes order. He took to your gaze, trying not to have some lame physical reaction to how he felt when your eyes warmed at the sight of him.

It meant nothing, it meant nothing, it meant nothing.

“I’ll have the caramel banana sundae,” you ordered with a smile while your date grinned after your selection.

“You really order the worst things on this menu, don’t you?” he couldn’t help but jab, knowing you would instantly focus on this mindless banter.

“Kaibara, I swear, say that to my face one more time!” you instinctively yelled. Although you were here on some date, he would confirm later (and would then have to internally admit that he was, in fact, jealous) he liked the fact that you spent the majority of your date in here talking to him.

⋄⋆⊹⋄⋆⋄⋆⊹⋄⋆⋄⋆⊹⋄⋆

Sometimes you really wished that arresting the sun was an actual concept.

Why in the world was it even legal for the temperature to be 114°F and for workplaces to still be expected to run normally. God, it was so hot that it only felt normal in your ice cream parlor employment that your only moment of grace was when you walked into the back freezers.

“I think I’m slowly dying,” you whispered to Kaibara while you arranged the ice cream for the waiting customers.

Today had been reasonably busy, everyone coming in and exclaiming that they needed some ice cream to combat the summer sun, and you always nodded in agreement. But you guessed despite the blistering heat that couldn’t even stay away from the ice cream shop, you appreciated being able to suffer together with Kaibara.

“If you die and leave me here, I will kill you.” Kaibara’s eyes narrowed at you, and you laughed, shoving him with your shoulder.

“Good luck!”

You handed the ice cream concoctions to the family and watched as they seem delighted to have it before walking away.

After a perfect steady flow of customers, the parlor was at the moment empty, and you looked at the different ice cream gallons in search to see which needed to be refilled. You counted five, and you cringed, the both of you had been slacking it seemed.

“Come help me switch out the ice cream,” you demanded, spinning on your heel and marching off back towards the freezer.

Since your date, it had been… awkward with Kaibara, you hated to admit it.

The fact that he had seen you on a date was never again brought up, but it seemed that maybe it should have been considering the very awkwardness that bled into your relationship. Sure, he was beyond pleasant with you; as a matter of fact, there was hardly any bickering between the two of you because whenever it started, he would bite his tongue to keep from returning any of your lines — and you knew he had some comebacks.

You walked into the freezer first, reciting the ice cream flavors that needed to be replaced like a mantra to avoid multiple trips to and from the freezer. With Kaibara coming in behind you, you immediately walked over towards the frozen gallons and began to pull out the flavors that you needed to take.

“How’s your boyfriend?” Kaibara asked suddenly while you placed two of the gallons onto the floor so that you could grab the other ones.

You felt your spine stiffen at his words, your eyes wide while you turned behind you to see that Kaibara had also grabbed another two of the flavors which lead you with one more, which was nearest to you.

“Not my boyfriend,” you corrected awkwardly, your ears burning while you walked carefully over to the gallon in the far back wall. “I didn’t like him, I was promised a free ticket to a movie, and you know with my mom and everything I couldn’t pass it up.”

Without even looking at him, you knew that Kaibara had nodded his head in understanding.

“So you don’t like him?” he asked, his voice seeming to come from a few steps behind you, which caused a shiver to roll down your spine, but you mentally blamed it on the freezing air.

“No, I um… I like someone else,” you respond honestly, trying not to let on your embarrassed and flustered state while trying to take the gallon of ice cream out from the rack but was currently failing. “Stupid fucking ice cream!”

But your frustration towards the ice cream container was quickly and almost immediately forgotten the second his unexplainably warm hands grabbed onto your shoulders and spun you around. Your eyes widened at the sight of his slight shaggy black hair falling onto his eyes while he looked at you and then down at your lips.

“Am I that someone else?” he asked, and all the air in your lungs froze over and died. He read you like a book, and the soft chuckle that left his lips made your body vibrate with warmth as he nodded his head in perfect understanding. “Lucky guess, huh… you think I can kiss you, y/n?”

A simple sentence crossed his tongue, and yet your mind spun at his words as if he had offered you only the greatest riches in the world, and you found yourself nodding your head while reaching up to meet his own eager lips into a scorching kiss. You weren’t sure how long the kiss lasted, only knowing that with your fingers twisted into his soft locks, his fingers digging into your waist and keeping you breathlessly near, and the buzz that came alive with your dancing lips. He inexplicably and irrevocably overwhelmed you, and the near frantic breathing that passed through your nose was evidence of that.

By the time you two parted, you felt the world turn into some rose gold haze while you stared up at his smiling face.

The two of you would later find out that you had been locked in the freezer together, but on the hottest day of the year, next to someone who kissed you with enough intensity and passion that the freezer couldn’t even make you shiver, it was all okay.

#kaibara x reader #kaibara sen x reader #bnha #bnha x reader #mha x reader

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abizarreyodelingincident · 4 years ago

Text

Our Nightly Confidant 6

Live up to your own Legend

The pink has largely faded from his hair and Legend is ready to put that humiliation behind him.

He is.

But the problem with sharing your secrets with others is they constantly remind you that they know. Oh, they are subtle about it. For all that Sky and Twilight are earnest and open, they can both clam up with the least social of them.

A smirk stretches his lips as, despite himself, Legend recalls the 'incident' if it could be called that.

The whole group was there, sitting by the campfire, digging into one of Wild's stew. The blend of herbs, potatoes and meat had been one of those hearty dishes for calm evenings after a weary day of traveling. It was quite tasty, and Legend was content to fill his stomach with hot food. It was more than he had been able to do on many, many evenings during his adventuring days.

It had just so happened that some of the others agreed, and were much less silent in their enjoyment.

“Man, Tetra wishes we could eat that well on the sea,” Wind said, waving his spoon around without a care for the splashes of sauce. To be fair, neither Hyrule or Wild seemed to be bothered either.

“Yeah, it's great, Wild,” Hyrule agreed. “What is it?”

“Rabbit.”

Sky's mouthful sprayed out of his mouth in a dramatic cloud of sauce and half-chewed meat. And because someone upstairs had decided that Legend had suffered enough, the person sitting directly in front of Sky at the time had been Warriors.

The ensuing chaos had given Legend time for his stomach to settle, and he suddenly had the answer to a question he had never meant to ask, but he would, indeed, have made a delicious meal if the monsters of the corrupted Sacred Realm had ever caught him. It truly was just like Wild to provide that kind of answer to Life's hidden (and for good reasons) secrets.

The Goddesses love a good joke at their heroes' expenses, didn't they?

Yet, the worst part might just have been what he had realized afterward. Twilight, chillingly, hadn't reacted much beyond a chuckle at Sky's reaction and a pat on the back to a confused Wild. He'd also finished his bowl despite the incident happening before he had.

Legend wishes he knew how to feel about that. Even today, he has mixed feelings on Twilight's non-reaction. Above all things, he is not a rabbit and the rancher is not a wolf. That's the reflection of their inner light when shrouded in shadows of dark magic. It's a curse. Twilight can make use of a curse all he wants (he can't judge, what's with Ravio's bracelet), so long as he doesn't let that shadow crystal near him again.

Unfortunately, he can't exactly put it out of his mind when Sky took him aside during the morning and apologized, both for the scene and, well, you know. Sky, sweetheart that he is, mentioned that he told Wild some tall tale about it being sacred in Skyloft or something. Wild would try and avoid rabbit meat from now on.

Legend's words of gratitude come out through a curtain of heavy rain to his own ears, it feels like. The consideration is more than he knows what to do with. And... and part of him wasn't even asking for it. Heroes must stand on their own two feet.

So, yes, perhaps he is a bit more cautious than usual when traveling near Twilight or Sky today. Maybe he does slide over to the corners of their battle formations away from those two. He needs time to think, and he's no moron. He's not gonna let that affect his performance in battle in the slightest.

In fact, he was the one to land the killing blow on the hinox. Ice rods to freeze its feet, followed by a jumping great spin. Warriors lets out a low whistle upon witnessing it.

Legend's bow is only mildly sarcastic. That was damn fine fighting, if he says so himself.

They made progress today, and are nearing their objective, one of Wild's shrines. One covered in the darkness of a moonless, starless night at all times. But they do need to clean their scraps and maybe heal that concussion. Nasty hit, but Hyrule's is firm: Wild will be good as new after a few rounds of healing magic and a fairy. Which, for once, they have to spare.

Food, on the other hand...

“I've got some salted jerky,” Twilight offers.

“Ooooh,” Warriors feigns enthusiasm. “And with my goron bread and Hyrule's salted cheese, that'll be sure to finish the job.”

Hyrule's hands, which had been illuminated with the Life spell signature, twitch. “Hey! What's wrong with my salted cheese?”

There is hesitation, most of all from Legend, and then Four takes the dive. “It could give a family of plague-spreading rats a run for its rupees.”

Sad, but fair. Hyrule's cheese is a testament to his cooking as a whole. It might be edible, but Nayru herself wondered how.

Hyrule's back hunches a bit before he straightens and turns away from the other with a huff.

Legend's hands hover uselessly at his sides. He ought to say something. He wants to say something. Except he's not gonna lie and say the cheese is okay, because even Ravio wouldn't try to sell it. And then his chance is lost.

Time steps in. Strides right in the middle of the group, massaging his sore shoulder and running a hand through Hyrule's hair as he passes him by. “Alright, you've had your fun, but we do need to decide on a course of action for our next few meals. There's still plenty of mushrooms and fruits in Wild's slate.”

Sky offers himself. “I can whip up something. It won't be great, but it'll be filling.”

“Okay, but we can hunt too, can't we?” Wind jumps in. “Like, we're not in a malice-infested area or anything. I know I saw a couple of goats and deers earlier on the road.”

His stomach takes that moment to growl. And his mind wanders back to Wild's previous meal last night. His mouth even waters, before he remembers everything else about the stew and there goes his appetite.

“We've got plenty already,” Twilight says.

“Yeah...” Four gives him the side eye. “No offense Sky, but it'll be bland enough without some meat.”

It's one of those truly bizarre quirks. And Legend gets it. He hasn't survived this long without being able to understand different people. There's a... well, not certainty, but an assurance when it comes to food security and times of peace. He gets that farmers have dry years, chu-chu infestations and the likes, but Legend's known all his life to never pass up an opportunity for food, and he sees it even more pronounced in Hyrule.

It's their damned timeline. The whole thing is doomed to die.

“Let's skip another radish failure, shall we?” Legend snarks. It's only a fraction of the resentment in him, but it helps settle his heartbeat.

“I think you're outvoted, pup.”

A look of annoyance crosses Twilight's face, but he holds his tongue. Another way we are nothing alike, Legend thinks.

“We need people to forage, hunt and make camp. And look over the wild cub.” And so Time begins to pair them off, balancing them between skills and health. It's all fine and dandy, until the Old Man looks at him and Twilight, deadpan, and shrugs. “I've got a good feeling about the two of you working together.”

Sometimes, Legend just really wants to deck Time. He's certain others share this feeling. Even Twilight, for all he plays the dutiful son's part.

“Alright,” Twilight says, patting him on the back as he leads the way outside the camp. “Let's do this. Can't let Pretty Boy show us up, can we?”

Legend snorts. So, maybe they share one or two traits. But he's willing to chalk that up more to Warriors being ungodly annoying at times.

“Not gonna throw off my aim, are you?” Legend jeers. It's meant as a tease, but it comes off harsher than he meant.

Typical.

What isn't is the way Twilight just shrugs, his wolf pelts like a wave of black fur. Legend's not blind. He knows his sharp tongue used to burn Twilight's fuse. At some point though, when he wasn't looking, the whole thing had been replaced, longer and shinier than ever before.

And the way Twilight grins at him has the sort of familiarity he thought was only deserved by the likes of Time or Wild.

“You didn't forget where I grew up, didya? What do you think we do with goats exactly?”

The hook's too good not to bite. And, Ravio does say he has sharp teeth. “You'd wash my mouth with soap if I told you the truth.”

And there it is, the tick and twitch of Twilight's ears. Warriors is the only one that constantly manages to bring it out. But, well, Legend aims for greatness, doesn't he?

“Tch, ain't ever seen a Gordonian Oat up close, have you?”

In two strides, Twilight has broken the gap between them.

“For starters, they're tall.” Another step closer. “Grow up about the size of Epona. But less even tempered.”

Legend stares, resisting the urge to back down as he realizes that Twilight towers over him, and at this angle, the setting sun cast his face in shadows.

“Hu-uh.”

“More importantly, they've got horns,” he says, putting his hands up in some poor imitation of the real thing. “Can knock down a man charging. And they will. Males have a foul temper.”

Then, as if nothing happened, Twilight pulls back and knocks his bow over his shoulder.

“Besides, it's needless hunting that gets my goat.” – Legend snorts despite himself and subsequently hides away from Twilight's grin. – “I could never resist one of the Cub's meat skewers.”

Is it him, or are Twilight's teeth a bit sharper than a Hylian's should be?

“I don't think you can resist any of his cooking,” Legend snarks, smacking Twilight's stomach. “Guess you gotta fuel those muscles of yours with something, huh?”

Said big and strong hero proceeds to pout. “Like you're any better.”

Legend shrugs. “Never refuse a meal you don't think is poisoned, is my motto.”

There's the beginning of a frown, but Legend is not up for that.

“Come on, I'm not letting Pretty Boy outdo us.”

Twilight hesitates, then shakes his head and starts forward. “Do aim for the throats, if you can. I'd rather not deal with the screams.”

The screams.

Legend falters then accelerates to catch up. Screams.

Animals don't... they'll thrash, struggle, make noise, but it wasn't...

The thought lingers well into their travel, when they've passed the turn of the road and shadows burst out of Twilight's necklace.

Wolfie bounds into the undergrowth, his dark tail vanishing behind some leaves.

***

The first prey they come across must be a rabbit.

A shy thing gnawing on leaves in the grass. Crouched low and near invisible in the dale with its brown coat. But Wolfie's senses detected it with ease. With that help, Legend sees it too.

The arrow is held tight in his hand, notched but not quite ready to fly.

Twilight glances back.

Sky would take the hard decision out of his hands and chase off the rabbit.

Twilight waits for him to choose. No matter which, Twilight'll go all the way.

They're both considerate in their own ways.

It makes Legend want to curl up in shame. To be able to at least pick how he wants to treat that secret. But he doesn't know. He spent years not thinking about it, and surprise, that did not prepare him anymore for when it blew up in the open.

Zelda would scream the mother of all 'I told you so' if she ever caught wind of this. Which is why he'll spend a lot of time ensuring he never does.

Which is another way of saying he'll run away from his problem.

Shy, nervous thing.

One cracked twig has the rabbit tense up, then scamper back into its den.

Legend lifts his foot from the twig and glares.

“You good?” Twilight asks as he emerges from shadows.

“Yeah, yeah,” Legend snips. “We had rabbit yesterday. And it's hard to hit the throat of the little buggers.”

Twilight nods sagely like that wasn't pure bullshit. “Fair enough.”

By the Goddesses, Legend must be ill because he suddenly hates the idea of getting away with it. “You know you can call me out, don't you?”

“Don't really see the need to force you to talk. Either you do or you don't. It's not like I know what you should be saying anyway.”

Well, there goes one of his hopes. Twilight looks and acts so comfortable in his skin (both of them) that Legend is a bit jealous.

“Well... what's it like, being a wolf?”

Twilight turns his head to the sun disappearing between the hills. To the darkness seeping into the sky. His gaze looks miles away from him.

“Dangerous.”

Funny, Legend would have said the same of being a rabbit, but, he suspects, for different reasons.

“Wolves aren't loved. And there's a good reason for that. They're powerful beasts with powerful senses. Sometimes, I find myself sniffing for scents I couldn't possibly catch as a Hylian. Thinking of sinking my teeth into something. You wouldn't believe the meat cravings I get sometimes. Farore, the faces my ma made the first few meals we had together after I got back.” A faint chuckle. “It's a good thing Ordon's not just harvesting wheat, 'cause I would be a miserable man in there.”

What do you think we do with goats exactly? Raise them, protect them.

Eat them.

“Still better than turning into prey.”

Twilight's smile is smaller, but it feels more real. “Yeah, maybe, but if you ever reflect what you are on the inside, then you'll be soft, cuddly... loved.”

Legend hears everything his brother doesn't say. What would happen to Twilight if he ever let loose completely? If he gave in to his inner self?

He has a feeling his brother knows. That he felt it already.

For a second, he thinks to place a hand on Twilight's shoulder, but... he can't quite bring himself to do it.

“... Want to get back to it?” Twilight hints at the trails he was following as a wolf. “We still haven't caught anything, and I can hear Wind's accusation from here.”

Yeah, he can too. The sailor would ask him if Twilight was being a sore loser, and the others might believe it. Legend might have done that in Twilight's shoes. He's spiteful like that. Nothing like a bunny.

Twilight clutches his necklace and goes down on four legs again. No hesitation to it.

One of them embraces the shadows, the other flinches at them, and now he wonders if they aren't both stupid.

The animals they come across next are the slow grazers, the desperately hungry or the uncautious. Those that thrive in dusk, right before the nocturnal critters make the fields and woods their own.

They hunt in a silence filled with cacophonous thoughts. It doesn't affect Legend's aim. He could strike an enemy sleepwalking at this point.

And true to his word, Legend did shoot the deer dead in one hit. No struggling. No... screams.

He's about finished butchering most of it and filling his inventory with carefully wrapped pieces when Twilight comes back from his circling watch (monsters are always a concern). Judging by the bit of dark blood on Wolfie's collar, it was a successful scouting trip.

The excuse was often bullshit, but it never meant Twilight was leaving them to dry. It's a comforting thought. He's always taken a big brother role to them the way the Old Man slips between commander and father to a bunch of bokoblins.

“Hyrule talks, you know?” Legend says, softly.

Twilight plops down next to Legend's bags and makes a curious 'bork'.

“He showed me his new collection.” Legend recalls the mile-a-minute explanation, and how warm his successor's happiness had made him feel. “It was like you hung the stars in the sky. Thank you.”

There's a big dog-like grin on Wolfie's face. It's too similar to the one on his Hylian face for anyone with a brain not to link the two together. Twilight's always wearing it when he pulls Wild up, when he gives Wind a piggyback ride (and the sailor calls him a trusty steed with the thickest pirate accent Legend has ever heard). It's his grin for little siblings he's so proud of.

“How do you do it?”

Twilight tilts his head to the side, like he doesn't instantly get the question. (Maybe he doesn't, whispers a small part of Legend, maybe it's natural and it's only him that struggles with connecting to his fellow heroes.)

The words don't want to come, but he's a Chosen of Courage. He never could back down from anything.

“The big brother act,” he says. “Hyrule. I don't know what to do with him. How to be around him. I like him, he's more tolerable than most of you meddling bastards.” – A look of offense crosses the wolf's face, and it's properly ridiculous. – “He's sweet, earnest, resourceful, heck, he even has manners despite growing up in a cave! What does he see in me?”

Twilight moves a paw over the middle of Legend's chest.

But he doesn't think that's right. It can't be that.

“I... I don't get why he chose me to admire. Sure, I'm the sucker that went on the most quests, but he's gone on two himself. It can't be my charming personality. I'm a stubborn jackass who doesn't know when to quit and that cuts just as much with my wit as with my arsenal. Is it just... being his predecessor?”

A crossed look passes over Twilight's face. His ears go flat on the sides of his head, his eyes narrowing. It's a little silly, knowing Twilight, but there's also that familiar pang of fear that helps Legend survive so many quests.

His instincts prove their worth when Twilight lunges and knocks him to the ground quick enough that Legend only realizes what happened a second later.

“What the-? Get off, Farmer.”

He could. And Twilight knows he could. Twilight's just relying on the knowledge that Legend won't.

Legend resigns himself to a moment of lying on his back with a fifty tons wolf crushing him to tiny pieces. That's it, that's the only reason he doesn't whip up his high-level strength bracelets to throw off the overly affectionate wolf on top of him.

Even if he has to fake the annoyance.

“Urgh, you stubborn a-” he doesn't complete the thought.

It's like an electrified chu-chu ramming into him.

By now, every one of them has seen Wolfie wrangle Wild around the camp at least once. Has been witness to their unorthodox brother sighing and huffing about his mentor forcing him into rest. Grumbling something about hard-headed mother cuccos and joykillers.

And the next day, the two of them grinning at each other over the battlefield. Wild seeking approval like he hadn't pulled his tongue at the rancher earlier.

“... That's not the same thing.”

Wolves don't have the right to look this fucking smug.

That manipulative goat-minder!

“It's not!” Legend protests, even knowing that, yes, it is indeed the same thing.

Words unspoken drift between them from the force of Twilight's gaze. Self-deprecating things, faults and flaws and fights, the sort of things Legend cringes at the thought of, but has to acknowledge. Wild admires Twilight, and it's not a matter of perfection.

Being smushed under a wolf has a way of making you accept that, no, that brother of yours isn't that great a person.

“Even so... ”

The rumble is a question.

“That doesn't tell me how to do it.” He raises an eyebrow. “Unless you mean to tell me I should sit on Hyrule until he feels the love.”

A laughing bark.

Legend smirks to himself. “Yeah, didn't think so.”

And a distant, experienced and – maybe too – cynical part of him starts to understand what Twilight is doing. Why he is not shifting back to Hylian form. Even knowing the truth, knowing that the sacred beast is his dull, dutiful brother does not get through to his subconscious. Knowledge does not weigh as much as the wolf splayed over him, does not warm him the way the mantle of soft fur does. He can't build up his walls fast enough. No, not quite. He can't bring himself to build his walls fast enough.

He missed this. Someone to watch over his shoulder, someone safe, that'd step in so that Legend wouldn't be needed.

He believes in no goddess, be they the Three, whom he knows are the object of his Princess' devotion, or even that Hylia that Sky mentions sometimes. He's long since gotten into the habits of cursing the Heavens, whoever resides there. It was only fair, after they cursed him with the world.

With the Windfish.

But just this once, being protected and smothered in ways that remind him of stormy nights when his uncle was still alive. The sort of stubborn strength that held in the face of the night, of monsters. Everything.

Twilight, Legend realizes, has a mind like a bear trap. Unassuming until it springs. Then, it never lets go.

Stubborn. He hates the part of him that likes it.

“We're not the same,” he hisses.

Because Twilight's friendly, personable, easy to talk to. Because Twilight is one of those bastards that's hard to hate no matter what he does. That wins you back with a couple of words and a steady hand during a difficult time.

Legend would sooner stab you once and be done with those messes.

And Wolfie's blue eyes are this shade of cloudless sky, clear, so frank. It's impossible not to see how Twilight doesn't believe him.

Legend's heart comes ablaze.

“None of your decisions have doomed a world!”

The wolf in Twilight whines. A low, pitiful noise.

“That's how I lost her. By destroying her world and everyone that lived in it.”

Twilight nuzzles him, something a bit desperate to the force of it.

Near misses, he thinks. It worked out. But some part of Twilight probably thinks it shouldn't have. Legend knows that madness. That jump of faith through the insane traps of ancient temples and half-baked schemes in the middle of a boss fight.

Near misses, they don't count, but they're the last steps before the cliff opens up below you.

And Legend has been falling for a long time.

Telling Zelda was a second's respite clinging to an unexpected root pooking out of the earth and rock.

Now he's found another.

He's strangely not bitter that he was the only one to go through this. To triumph in the destruction of a whole island. The closest to experiencing failure on that scale would have to be Wild, who was neither subtle nor all that quiet about his conviction in his perceived flaws.

And this must be what he receives when the feelings overwhelm him, when he needs the wolf instead of any of them. Quiet, unwavering support.

The lack of words coming from Twilight is half the healing balm.

Legend's not looking for words at all. Not some magic words that'll make the turmoil die out at any rates.

He couldn't bear to hear a platitude. To hear any variation of 'it's okay' or 'it was not your fault'. It was. It had been his decision in the end. The choice sucked, but he picked one anyway. Because he is the Hero.

There had been no one else. Just him.

“What's my next decision going to bring?”

The warmth and fur shifts over his body, but still Twilight doesn't talk. With the tighter, smaller posture against his chest, Legend would guess he feels some guilt over forcing that confession out of him. It's worth a grimace, maybe, but he is too tired to give a fuck.

Legend takes a moment just staring upward. He's forgotten which Hyrule this is, how far from home he is. But the stars haven't changed. He'll bet good rupees that the constellations are nothing alike between one kingdom and the next.

He points to a cluster of lights. “That's the 'Fairy Spring'. And right next to it, 'The Raging Lynel'.”

Twilight makes a noise like a noble being shown a peasant. Oh, he must never say that outloud for fear of being punched with those moblin arms of his. Though, he had thought Twilight didn't have lynels in his era, the lucky bastard.

More names come to him. None of which trigger recognition in Twilight, but his brother listens all the same, attentive, patient. This is nice. Better.

His eyelids start threatening to droop.

A gentle, concerned whine ring to his ears, and a paw scratches his tunic.

Right. Right, they are too far from camp for him to nap. It's already a long walk, for a Hylian.

Legend suppresses the pang of envy in his chest at Twilight's cursed form. He shouldn't! But what does it say about him, the boy grown in a world always threatened by dark forces, when his inner self is a harmless bunny? What does it say about Twilight, grown through an era of peace, when his inner self is a dangerous predator?

The successors of the Hero of Time, ladies and gentlemen!

The real shame, though, is probably that he misses that softness.

I used to love saving people... he thinks, and only notices the tear when Wolfie nuzzles him.

He knows there and then that their earlier conversation was wrong. Even if Twilight lost himself in the shadows, there'd still be something to love about him. Because Wolfie is a beast, but the others aren't wrong when they call him a gift of the Goddesses.

“Urgh, don't try and be physically affectionate with me,” he says, pushing off the cold nose.

What about me? Is there anything loveable about me, besides saving a couple of countries?

Would Uncle still be proud? Would she be able to love me as I am now?

“Why am I like this?” he asks, and is grateful for the silence.

The answer, he's known for some time.

It's when I realized no one would save me. When it comes to saving the world, I'm it. No second chances. No one to pick up the torch. If I fail, that's it. There's only me.

Wolfie's soft barks bring him out of his head, and pull a smirk out of him. He deliberately ruffles his brother's head, rough, because it wouldn't do to have him think he's gone soft that easily.

But his fear just isn't true anymore.

Twilight would save him. Hyrule would. Sky would. Any of the others would. And he'd jump in front of a sword for them just as easily.

He hasn't let down the walls long enough to

… Maybe he could try.

Leaves suddenly rustle and bushes part to let another Hylian through.

“Legend?” Hyrule's eyes flicker to the tear tracks on his face. “... This isn't the direction we saw that river, is it?”

Legend sighs and pushes Twilight off. “You're off by thirty degrees.”

Red blooms across Hyrule's cheeks, his gaze lowering to the ground.

Damn it! He isn't prepared for this! If he had just a minute to gather his wits beforehand...

“Why didn't you tell me he was coming?!” Legend hisses, resisting the urge to smack Twilight on the nose.

He prefers his fingers unnipped, thank you very much.

“Are you okay?” Hyrule asks, fidgeting. “Weren't you with Twilight?”

“Oh, huh, he went scouting ahead.” Farore! Now the rancher's stupid excuses were infecting him. Why was he the one to share that secret?

Hyrule nods. “Ah, makes sense.”

Some crows above caw.

It's the only noise in the woods.

Legend stumbles when Twilight headbutts his rear end. “Oi!” he says, turning a threatening glare at his idiot brother.

“Oh, hey Wolfie,” Hyrule says with a timid wave.

Right. Hyrule's most frequent experiences with Twilight's beast forms revolve around him being herded back to camp after another ill-fated self-appointed scouting mission. Worse when the Champion got involved and the two got into their heads to have an adventure whilst on a supply run.

Got to have fun...

He glances between Hyrule, trying to look steady in front of him, and Twilight, who is staring back at him intently.

“You don't need to be so nervous, you know?” he hears himself say.

Hyrule blinks in surprise, as does Twilight. But, well, Legend committed. He might as well go all in.

He lands a hand in the scruff of Twilight's neck, scratching through the fur. “He's a big softie.”

That would normally get him a warning growl or a painless bite. Except Twilight can't very well protest and undo all his hard work over petty jealousy, can he?

“Come on,” he tells Hyrule. “If he gets snippy, I'll bonk him on the head whilst you make your daring escape.”

“I wouldn't run!” Hyrule says, hotly. “I mean, I don't know if Life works on wolves, but I'd have to try, knowing your strength bracelets.”

It startles a laugh out of him. There's their wanderer. Ready to get in the thick of it with a sword or a spell. That's the man that'll succeed him. That's the man he has the luck to meet. And teach.

“Interesting question. It sounds like something we should test in a safe environment.”

And he jumps to the side, avoiding the fangs aiming for his buttocks. So predictable!

“Oh dear, he's gone feral!” he croons, clicking his heels to activate the pegasus boots. “No two ways about it, time to book it.”

“Wait, what?” Hyrule, the poor man, has no time to register the turn of events that Legend grabs him by the sleeves and starts to drag him away from a barking wolf.

“By the way, have I told you about that time I escaped from a pair of lynels on top of Death Mountain?”

“No!” Hyrule shouts, wide-eyed with both awe and a little fear. “Is that really the time?”

He skids to a halt just in time to avoid a blitzing Twilight bursting out of a bush. The barking rings to his ears. His heartbeat has picked up from the thrill, and he knows he will win this.

“Feels nostalgic for some reason!”

“Talk away then! Oh, and jump!”

Hyrule's hand pulls him upward, makes him weightless as if he'd done his magic cape. They launch into the air, and scramble up on the higher branches of a large oak tree. He's chuckling, a little awed by Hyrule's arsenal of spells.

And then Twilight lands on the branch next to them, hackles raised and honestly a little scary. The wood winces ominously, shakes, but holds.

“Wolves can't do that!” he yells.

“I don't think he cares, Legend!” Hyrule hops to the next tree.

And Legend stops thinking about his next move. He follows, he lets his instinct and experience guide him into this impromptu chase game. Marvels at Hyrule's tricks sometimes, preens when his gets Twilight to crash into a boar that only mildly appreciated the tackle and gets to tell the entire story on the way back to camp.

He's got a skip to his steps. He won. They both know he won this time and nothing will change that.

But, just in case, Legend will sleep with one eye open. He's seen Time's and Wild's pranks so far. And in that chain of Heroes, Twilight is both the apprentice and the master. There's no way Twilight isn't capable of their very worst.

#Linked Universe #Linkeduniverse #LU Twilight #LU Legend #LU Wolfie

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narhinafan · 4 years ago

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Debunking Haters Arguments

NaruHina only happend and Hinata made the heroine was cause she was popular.

This is actually wrong there are a total of 7 character polls and extra 1 in the third databook.

Now if you look at the results of the polls Hinata while she stays one of the more popular characters, actually loses out to Sakura in popularity more times then not.

However her popularity has always increased after she is put in the spotlight you would expect for a heroine to have. This means that Hinata didn’t become the heroine cause she was popular, but that she became popular cause she was put in the role of the heroine.

Character Poll 1 Chapter 60

1st poll Sakura is ranked 5th while Hinata 10th now this is to be expected as Hinata along with the rest of the Konoha 12 weren’t introduced till chapter 39 only 20 or so chapters till the 1st character poll voting period ended.

However however you can tell Hinata is one of the more popular characters and the reason for this is clearly cause Hinata introduction puts her in the role of the heroine, she likes Naruto the protagonist, wants to help him pass the test even though she could get in trouble while showing she cares about him. We also got her Dojutsu the Byakugan introduced.

Character Poll 2 Chapter 107

In the 2nd poll Hinata ranks 6 while Sakura 14th.

Now this poll’s voting period is during the preliminaries and Chunin exams where Hinata is further put into the role that you would expect a heroine to have.

First you have her cheering for Naruto during the Kiba fight where it reveals she has been watching and admiring Naruto for a long time. She understands him better then the other characters knowing how he was treated and that he was alone. Then when the fight is over she gives Naruto some ointment.

Now you have the Neji and Hinata fight where she is getting attacked emotionally by her evil cousin who is using her trauma against. We find out she was emotionally abused by her family and having gone through similar circumstances as Naruto being hated for treated as a failure for somthing that wasn’t her fault.

Then Naruto cheers her on inspiring her. Hinata stood up with the same determination and guts Naruto has always shown and even sharing his nindo. She fights till she starts coughing up blood and even almost dies not giving up till the end just like our boy Naruto.

She loses and the hero is one of the first to rush to her side and is shown to care about her quite a bit. Not willing to let Neji insult her efforts Naruto swears a blood oath to beat him for Hinata.

Next we have the proud failure speech, this is the first time Naruto has shown us his weak side and it is not to his team or Iruka, but Hinata who he opened up to. He opens up to her in a way he has never done before and she shows just how much she understands him and restores his confidence just like how watching Naruto always did for her Hinata returns the favour.

Feeling touched Naruto leaves saying he likes girls like her and goes on to beat Neji fulfilling his promise reforming Neji and the rest of Hinata’s family in process and wonders if Hinata was watching.

Now thinking about we have her cheering him on and understanding him better then anyone else, her getting cheered on and inspired by him, him swearing to avenge her, she restores his lost confidence and then goes on to keep his oath and beat the bad guy reforming him.

No matter how you look at it the whole the whole interaction between Naruto and Hinata during this voting period screams she is the heroine. It is no wonder she ranked so high when she is basically Naruto’s motivation to beat his current rival/ antagonist during these arcs and perfectly fills the role of a heroine.

Character Poll 3 Chapter 151

3rd poll Hinata keeps her position at 6th place and Sakura goes to 9th place. Neither of which really show up in much during this voting period.

Character Poll 4 Chapter 199

4th poll Hinata’s drops to 12 place while Sakura moves up to 10th, with Sakura taking back the lead. Though this is to be expected as Hinata shows up like once during this voting period and doesn’t do much. As where Sakura is looking after Sasuke, crying for him not to leave and makes Naruto promise to bring him back.

Character Poll 5 Chapter 245

5th poll voting period ends at the start of part 2. Hinata is in 9th place while Sakura 8th both of them not having any real scenes or doing anything besides Sakura asking Tsunade to teach her and Hinata seeing Naruto off.

Character Poll 6 Chapter 292

6th poll Sakura and Hinata are still close to each other 12th and 13th place. During this voting period Sakura gets many more moments along with some new competition as new characters are introduced.

Databook 3 Character Poll chapters 245 to 402

The databook poll Sakura is 6th, while Hinata is maintain 11th this isn’t much surprise as for the last few voting periods Hinata hasn’t had many scenes or did much while Sakura has.

Character Poll 7 Chapter chapter 531

Now for the last and 7th poll Hinata once again surpasses Sakura taking 10th place while Sakura is in 12th place.

Now as you can see this voting period includes the Pain invasion arc where Hinata is once more thrust into the role of heroine where she tries to save Naruto who is about to be captured and facing certain doom as well as confesses to him.

This leads to Naruto breaking the nine tails seal, but despite him going berserk Hinata who was at ground zero is perfectly fine as Naruto avoids her and even has a moment where he looks at her in his enraged state before going to fight Pain. Once he comes to his senses he also cries tears and clutches his heart when he finds out Hinata is alright.

This is once more classic heroine moments, the hero is in danger, said heroine goes to save him, confesses to him gets hurt resulting in the hero powering up while losing his reasoning. Despite that the heroine is completely unharmed by the hero. Like seriously we have common cliches that are used for heroines here so it is no wonder Hinata’s popularity raises when she is put into the the role of the heroine.

Conclusion

Hinata didn’t become the heroine nor ended up with Naruto cause she was popular, but that she became popular cause she was put into the heroine role.

Out of the 8 polls we had during the series Sakura beats Hinata 5 times, while Hinata only beats Sakura 3 times. Now when you look at what happens and what arcs are in the voting period you can clearly see that Hinata’s popularity raises during these polls cause she is fulfilling the heroine roll in them.

Sakura ranks higher then Hinata in most of the polls so it makes no sense to say that NaruHina only happend cause Hinata was popular when the reason she became popular was cause she was given the heroine spotlight. This means popularity didn’t affect Kishimoto putting Hinata in the heroine role or getting her with Naruto otherwise by popularity Sakura should have gotten with Naruto.

#pro naruhina #naruto analysis #naruto character polls #Anti Anti NaruHina

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twentiethcenturymoviesandtv · 4 years ago

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A Creepy Christmas Cultural Conundrum: The Lasting Legacy of The Nightmare Before Christmas

A request by @lcvcdbyhim.

If you traveled back in time to the year 1993 and told someone that Tim Burton’s new stop-motion animated film, The Nightmare Before Christmas, was going to be the biggest holiday movie in for the next twenty years, they wouldn’t believe me. They just wouldn’t.

Of all of the holiday films of the 90s, Christmas or Halloween, nothing comes close to the cultural giant that is The Nightmare Before Christmas. Even family favorites like The Santa Clause or Home Alone don’t get nearly the attention and praise that this film has. Every year, from Halloween through Christmas, stores are packed with shirts, wallets, keychains, sneakers, backpacks, banks, toys, clocks, jewelry, decorations and more, all covered with images of Jack Skellington, Sally, Oogie Boogie, Zero, and other characters and images from the film. Even outside of the holiday months, the more merchandise-driven stores still dedicate an entire section to The Nightmare Before Christmas, putting it on the same level as franchises like Star Wars or the various superhero films.

The question is, why?

Why has The Nightmare Before Christmas’s imagery become nearly as recognizable as images of classic monsters like Dracula and the Frankenstein monster? How is this oddball little movie fast approaching How The Grinch Stole Christmas and other classic Christmas specials in terms of popularity?

There has to be a larger reason that simply being available to be marketed for two holidays instead of one.

Today, we’re going to be taking a look at The Nightmare Before Christmas in an attempt to figure out where all the hype came from, and more specifically, why it’s still so popular.

But first, we need a little background.

When The Nightmare Before Christmas was first released in 1993, it received modest critical acclaim and a decent opening. Right in the middle of Disney’s Renaissance period, a throwback to stop-motion wasn’t really thought of as being quite on the same level as animated films like Aladdin and The Lion King. As a result, the movie did okay, but just….okay.

So what happened?

Very simply, The Nightmare Before Christmas gained a cult following. Very quickly.

In the years that followed, The Nightmare Before Christmas started being praised as one of the greats in the animated film category. People started watching it for part of their holiday tradition, around both Halloween and Christmas, and the further we are away from that mediocre opening, it seems the more people laud it as a work of art. Stores like Hot Topic started selling so much Nightmare merchandise that now the imagery from The Nightmare Before Christmas seems to be the face of a new goth/emo trend. In fact, since the film’s release, the movie has been put on a rather bizarre pedestal, with some fans lavishing enormous amounts of praise on this movie. In a way, it seems like disliking it is unheard of.

To return to our earlier question, why? It doesn’t seem like anything special. There have been other ‘weird’ stop-motion films, such as Corpse Bride or Coraline. The characters and story are simplistic, almost childish at times. The music is good, sure, but with all the hype around it, the movie can very much seem….overrated.

Once again: Why?

It all boils down to uniqueness.

In 1993, Tim Burton was still relatively new to audiences. Directing since 1985, his biggest hits had been the likes of horror-comedy Beetlejuice, superhero blockbuster Batman, and drama flick Edward Scissorhands. In other words, the world was still being introduced to the styles that we are currently familiar with: use of Johnny Depp, score by Danny Elfman, stripes, German Expressionism, and pale-skinned, dark haired, sunken-eyed outcast protagonists. Thanks to the sheer number of Signature Style Burton-esque films, The Nightmare Before Christmas no longer seems like anything all that special in terms of style of film, but at the time, it was something very new, distinct, and different.

The same goes for the stop-motion aspect.

The stop-motion ‘weird’ films that we are the most familiar with: (Corpse Bride, James and the Giant Peach, Frankenweenie, ParaNorman) have all come after The Nightmare Before Christmas. Before Nightmare, stop-motion’s biggest claim to fame were the Rankin/Bass Christmas specials. The Nightmare Before Christmas revolutionized and reawakened the style of filmmaking and started a new form of animation that is being used since. Once again, it all comes down to that uniqueness of the time, especially when it applies to the story.

The story of The Nightmare Before Christmas, despite its aforementioned simplicity, is a rather unique one. The idea came to Burton while watching Halloween decorations come down at the same time Christmas decorations were being put up, and the movie is really all about the juxtaposition between the holidays. Jack Skellington, the king of Halloweentown, is dissatisfied with the ‘same old thing’ and decides to try something new. The ‘new thing’ that captivates his interest turns out to be another huge holiday: Christmas. Full of excitement at this strange new holiday, Jack decides to get the person in charge of Christmas out of the way (Santa Claus) and take Christmas for himself, assigning the denizens of Halloweentown the tasks necessary to bring about the festive holiday.

Being from Halloweentown, of course, Jack doesn’t fully understand Christmas, despite his frantic attempts to do so, and in the end, Christmas is a disaster, thanks to his botched interpretation of what makes the holiday. In the end, Jack learns not to meddle with things he doesn’t understand, and the movie ends at around 75 minutes.

As basic as it is, the idea of one holiday trying to do another is pretty creative, as is the way it is done. The concept of holiday worlds, based on the special day is extremely interesting, and it’s executed well. In fact, when looking at the film for what and when it was, The Nightmare Before Christmas was actually very creative in everything, characters, the visual look, the way it was done, story, even the music by Danny Elfman is very fitting to the story and characters, and it’s all very catchy.

When contextualized into the time period it was made in, The Nightmare Before Christmas, for all it may seem stale and overdone now, was fresh and unique, noteworthy for being something audiences haven’t seen before.

There’s more to the intense popularity of this film than quirkiness, though.

What I said earlier about the film being basic? That is actually a point in its favor.

One of the remarkable things about The Nightmare Before Christmas is that, for having a reasonably complex concept, it’s execution is very simple. The story never makes itself more complicated than it has to be. It’s very straightforward, with no plot twists or surprises for the audience. The direction the story takes is predictable, but that’s by no means bad. Not only is the story uncomplicated, but the meaning is as well.

It isn’t hard for people to understand Jack’s predicament, nor is it difficult for even the youngest kid to know that his endeavors to make Christmas are doomed to failure, because they pick up that Jack does not understand what he is trying to do. He has the feeling right, but he has no constructive direction to take it, and with a lack of understanding, ends up creating a mess.

Jack’s enthusiasm is for the holiday spirit, and it’s contagious, no matter which holiday you consider. By never trying to ‘explain’ the good feelings of the holidays and just letting them be, The Nightmare Before Christmas actually continues a trend that one wouldn’t think it has much to do with at all.

In my opinion, the hype behind The Nightmare Before Christmas, especially in the up-and-coming generations, is much the same reason that Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer is still talked about by the older generations. The holiday feeling.

Jack experiences the joy of Christmas without knowing why. Despite his best efforts, he cannot decipher the whys and wherefores of it, he just accepts that ‘just because I cannot see it doesn’t mean I can’t believe it!’. This tone, this viewpoint towards the holiday of simply enjoying it, is reminiscent of Christmas specials like How the Grinch Stole Christmas or the Rankin/Bass stop-motion productions. It evokes nostalgic feelings for the holiday. The Nightmare Before Christmas is to the post 90s generation what the other animated Christmas specials were to the ones before it: the traditional, good-feelings, familiar celebration of the holiday.

Most importantly though, it’s a film that people enjoy watching.

With a unique concept, design, and execution, nostalgic feelings and holiday warmth, and it just being a generally fun, charming movie, it’s not really a true wonder why The Nightmare Before Christmas got as popular as it did.

Is it overhyped? Yes.

Does that make the movie itself any worse? No. It just means that audience expectations are affected by the culture around it, some for the better, some for the worse.

Of course, it’s not a movie for everybody. Some will like it more than others. Some might love it, some might hate it, and some might just be okay with it. But that goes for any film.

The Nightmare Before Christmas is a cultural juggernaut, that’s for certain, and I doubt we’ll be seeing any fewer Oogie Boogie coin banks in the near future, but that’s more a reflection on the commercialism of film since 1977 (Thanks, George Lucas!) and how much people are willing to buy to reflect their tastes in film. My point is, the movie is still popular enough that people buy stuff connected to it because they like it.

And that’s not a bad thing. It’s a good movie, remarkably simple, but smart enough to hold up years later and continue to emotionally resonate with audiences. It was something that no one had ever seen before at the time, and is packed full of enough distinctive style and imagery that it is still instantly recognizable as being from The Nightmare Before Christmas. It’s an immensely popular film for a reason, and it’s not going away anytime soon.

Thank you all so much for reading! If you have any thoughts, questions, comments, suggestions, or just want to say hi, feel free to leave them in the ask box, I’d love to hear from you. I hope you guys enjoyed this article, and I hope to see you in the next one.

#Movies #Film #Request #90s #1993 #The Nightmare Before Christmas #The Nightmare Before Christmas 1993

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megumis-lashes · 4 years ago

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Love Bites

Vampire! Han Jisung x Reader Part 2

**Contains**: mentions of blood/blood drinking, parental abuse, bullying, fighting, slight swearing, emotional abuse, friends to lovers, werewolf Hyunjin, western high school standards, female reader

Flashback =

> Hello

Spending the weekend with Jisung was awkward to say the least. I knew it was in no way his fault. It was mine. I hadn’t had ‘friends’ in years and practically forgot how to act around other people. Thankfully his bubbly personality seemed to make up for everything I lacked. Following the weekend I knew I had to attend school. As much as I hated it, I knew that skipping would only spell more disaster for me in the future. I arrived to school with Jisung, looking somewhat put together despite my rough situation.

I never knew how knowing and interacting with certain people could gain. So. Much. Attention. I forgot just how popular Jisung really was. He wasn’t the most popular, but the majority of students could easily recognize him in a croud. Much to my dismay, people began to spread rumors about the situation. The biggest one was in regard to why I arrived with someone like him, or even talked to him for that matter. We had never talked outside of school before this. This reminded me of a similar situation. My parents being the way they are had signed me up for the school tutor program. Much to my dismay I had been assigned the school’s pretty boy, Hwang Hyunjin,as my student. Despite his constant attempts at becoming my friend, Hyunjin and I’s relationship was purely professional. I helped him out on school work and I would get more points for college. This didn’t stop the rumors though. Many jealous ‘fangirls’ spread rumors about us dating, which I didn’t appreciate. I would constantly get hate notes delivered to my locker.

I quickly dismissed Jisung and began my day. Today was pretty standard. I had two quizzes and some homework due, but nothing too bad. The only thing that scared me was what my lunch schedule held. Hyunjin had a huge unit test in chemistry today and he requested my help during lunch period. I hadn’t really given him an answer, but he said that if I showed up he could pay me. Right now I really needed the money so I was willing to accept a few more hate notes than usual. After my morning classes I showed up to lunch and sat by Hyunjin’s group of friends, surprising them in the process.

“Wow Hyunjin is this your girlfriend? I’ve seen you with her before.” One of the boys questioned. I think his name was Felix.

“No, no this is my tutor, name. She’s here to help me study for my chemistry unit test, I’m just surprised she showed up is all.” He chided as he rubbed his neck nervously. I could tell he was in no way ready for this test.

“Don’t worry the study session should be quick. I’ll make sure you’re prepared before the end of lunch. You should still have some time.” I explained as I shuffled through my backpack. I handed Hyunjin a small study guide I prepared for him.

“Here’s something I threw together. Read that over and tell me what you don’t understand. I’ll be over there when you’re done.” I smiled subtly as I walked over to the next table. Despite his popularity he was still a normal teenager.

As I had expected, helping Hyunjin during lunch drew some attention to me, especially from the ‘popular girls’ or whatever they like to be called. I never really minded their existence, but I could always feel their eyes burning into me whenever I hung around their ‘love interest’. Before lunch ended collected my payment from Hyunjin and went to use the restroom. I was fixing my hair in the mirror when those girls walked in.

“Oh if it isn’t name! That’s funny we were just looking to talk to you!” I sighed in annoyance. I was in no mood to talk with them for whatever reason. I never had many interactions with them, but they still managed to put me on edge. Their small group consisted of two juniors and one sophomore. Their leader ‘Mia’ was a relatively tall girl with long black hair who typically wore bright red lipstick. She was by far the worst out of them. Along with her was her close friend, Jiuen. She had bleach blond hair that she often styled in curls. The last girl was rather mysterious. I honestly couldn’t remember her name. She wasn’t one to stand out in a crowd and I don’t think she was a part of the group by choice. She had dark brown hair, styled in pig tails, and wore chunky blue glasses.

“Did you need something?” I sighed. I would have to leave for class soon.

“Ah yes!” Mia answered. “We’re here to make a deal with you!” I scrunched my eyebrows in confusion.

“What about?” I questioned

“So you see you’ve been hanging out with some popular people lately, and I guess you could say that I’m a bit jealous.” She giggled. “I hate to be that person but could you do me a favor and leave them alone? I need all the chances I can get in getting a boyfriend!” She explained.

I sighed. “Are you serious? If you’re talking about Hyunjin there’s nothing going on between us at all. Same with Jisung. We’re simply acquaintances who help each other out from time to time. I don’t see how it’s a problem.”

“Well I’m afraid that’s not convincing me. There’s no way I know anything about your relationships so you could be lying for all I know. I simply cannot trust your word on this!” She huffed. I rubbed my temples in annoyance.

“Look I swear I’m telling the truth. What would I even gain from lying? Plus there’s no way I can fully avoid Hyunjin as I am his assigned tutor.”

“Just request a change in students it’s not that difficult. I don’t see why you can’t just help me out this one time.” She groaned dramatically.

“Well what’s in it for me? You’re practically rewriting my life for your benefit only. I’m sorry but I’m not changing my entire schedule just so you can have a better ‘chance’!” I was getting sick of this conversation. I wanted to leave.

“Fine then you leave me no choice! I can easily destroy you.” She snickered.

“What do you mean?” She was making me anxious. She barely tried to convince me and she’s already pulling out her greatest asset?

“Well if you somehow managed to forget, I am the principals daughter. I could easily pull some strings. Maybe I could say you cheated! Yeah that’s a great idea! All the grades you worked so hard on would turn to dust! Then you’d be suspended for breaking school law! Oh and I’m sure your parents wouldn’t be so happy about that now would they?” She chuckled as she pulled out her phone.

“You can’t be serious Mia. This isn’t that deep.” I tried to stop myself from shaking.

“Oh I’m serious! It only takes a press of my finger to ruin you! If I send a report to my dad about you cheating, I know he’d believe me! You’re best option is to just agree to my conditions! There’s no way your parents would be happy with you being expelled!”

I was on the verge of tears. There was nothing I could do in this situation. She was right. There was no way I would be let of the hook for being expelled. This combined with all the stress I had been feeling in the past week led me closer and closer to breaking.

“Fine.” I stammered “You win. I won’t talk to either of them and I’ll ask to tutor someone else. Just please don’t mess with my grades. You know how much they mean to me.” I pleaded.

She giggled. “Finally you gave in! Alright then that’s a deal! I won’t ruin you, or at least not until later!” She exclaimed. I gritted my teeth, still trying to keep my composure.

“Come on girls let’s go!” She led the girls from the bathroom. Upon leaving she slammed into my shoulder, effectively pushing me into the wall. That hurt like hell.

“Haha so sorry! I must’ve not see you there!” She chuckled again and walked away with her group.

I cringed in pain as I felt the warm tears I had worked hard to withhold cascade down my cheeks. Wasn’t this an eventful week.

For the rest of the day I made it my duty to avoid the two boys at all costs. I could in no way afford that level of failure going on my record. I would be doomed for all eternity. Avoiding them wasn’t too difficult during classes. I was in much higher classes than Hyunjin and only shared a few classes with Jisung. Thankfully I had all my shared classes in the morning. At the end of the school day, I requested a new student to tutor. I claimed our timing didn’t work out and left a small note to Hyunjin explaining it was for personal reasons. I continued through my day as unaffected as I possibly could act. I attended volleyball practice until 6, then took a different route back to Jisung’s house in hopes of avoiding him completely. I managed to sneak in through his back door (AN: no pun intended) since he had given me a key. I only saw him once that night for a brief moment. He questioned why he didn’t see me and I explained that I had volleyball and homework to do. I also warned him that he probably wouldn’t see me much after school so that he wouldn’t worry. The next morning I left before he woke up.

Over the course of the next few weeks I was successful in avoiding both Hyunjin and Jisung. Jisung did seem a little suspicious of seeing me extremely rarely, but he didn’t push his questions since I helped with chores and even payed him a portion of the money Hyunjin had given me. Hyunjin on the other hand was extremely bothered over my sudden change in schedule. He would constantly try to approach me at lunch or during class and as much as it pained me, I would force myself to ignore him or walk away giving him some dumb excuse. I knew he didn’t believe anything I said. The most persistent thing he did was leave me letters. I read the letters but I never replied. He would often describe his day and somehow always end up on the topic of tutoring. He explained how he was assigned a new tutor, except it was a girl that was a year under him. Despite how advanced she was in classes, she knew little of the junior material and was even more confused than Hyunjin. With his constant begging for me to come back I constantly felt terrible about my decision. As much as I appreciated his efforts at keeping in contact with me, there was one small issue. He. Was. Extremely. Obvious. Practically the entire school knew he left envelopes in my locker, many of them believed the notes to be love letters.

Today was no different. I was returning to my locker at the end of the school day only to find another note. Upon first look it was easy to understand why people thought the notes to be out of love. Hyunjin wasn’t exactly great at portraying his emotions and could be rather dense at times. He used a baby pink envelope and decorative stationary that I could only assume belonged to a female in his family. In today’s note he described how desperate he was to have me as a tutor again. His current tutor recently passed out from what Hyunjin had described as ‘confusion’ and had been too embarrassed to show up to tutor sessions the past couple sessions. When Hyunjin attempted to ask for a new tutor, the teachers refused as he had changed tutors once that month already. I chuckled. I could tell he was panicking while he wrote the letter. His messy handwriting was a stark contrast to the beautiful card. He could be dense at times but I knew he was a smart kid, he could manage without me for a while. What I failed to notice at the time were the burning stares drilling into my back.

“Hi name! It’s a nice day today isn’t it! You wouldn’t mind going on a small walk with us would you?” My small smile quickly faded. That voice, I could recognize it anywhere. It was Mia and by the overly ‘happy’ tone of her voice I could tell she wasn’t too happy with me. As much as my gut pleaded me not to follow her I couldn’t risk anything.

“Sure.” I murmured. I quickly finished packing my backpack and shut my locker, following the three girls. The girls stopped at a small shady spot at the back of the school. They weren’t lying it was nice out. It was a clear fall day, the sun shining beautifully in the sky. Despite all this I couldn’t bring myself to enjoy it. I was scared shitless of what they were going to say. Mia quickly faced me.

“So what do you have to say for yourself? Liar.” I creased my brows in confusion.

“What do you mean? I haven’t broken our agreement?” I really hoped they withheld their part of the deal.

“Well name you aren’t very subtle. I thought with how smart you are you would know better!” She scoffed.

“I’m still confused as to what to what you mean?” I was seriously starting to panic at this point.

“Just give up already. You don’t have to play dumb for me anymore. I know you broke our agreement. Your little relationship with Hyunjin is pretty obvious if you ask me. Sure you may have stopped tutoring him but I see how he leaves letters for you. You read every single one and you even chuckled while reading today’s ‘love letter’. You’re not a sly as you think!” She exclaimed. I knew she was mad now.

“No, no, no you’ve got it all wrong! I’m in no secret relationship with Hyunjin and I never reply to his letters! He’s just struggling in class and wants me to tutor him again but I’ve told him I can’t-“ Time seemed to freeze at that moment. What woke me from my trance was a sharp pain to my left cheek.

She slapped me.

I was frozen out of pure shock. As I blinked out of it I could feel warm drops of blood stream from a small cut on my check. I definitely didn’t expect her to get physical.

“That’s what you deserve you deserve you bitch! How dare you! I went easy on you! I made an agreement and you just had to ruin everything! That’s it! Two can play at this little game of yours! By Friday I’ll make sure to ruin you and make sure the whole school hears your embarrassing little sob story as well!” She screamed as I collapsed to the ground. My shaking legs had finally given out a look of shock still painted on my face. She began to walk away. I stumbled forwards towards her.

“Wait! No! No! No! You can’t do this to me! What did I ever do to you! I never did anything-“ She cut me off by yanking my hair. I sobbed out of fear and despair.

“Shut up. YOU ruined my chances. YOU broke the deal! Think of this as ALL. YOUR. FAULT!” She finished her argument by slamming her hand bag in my face. I cringed in pain as the metal clasps made contact with my skin. That was sure to bruise later. Following their leaders departure, Jiuen walked over to my slumped form. She shuffled in her bag and pulled out a small carton of milk. She quickly tore open the carton and dumped it over my head. I sobbed and coughed in disgust. The third girl did absolutely nothing besides stand there and look down at me in pity. She quickly ran after the other girls.

“Why me?”

I sat there for what felt like hours but was probably along the lines of 15 minutes. I felt disgusting to say the least. I had never wanted to shower this much in my life. I took of my bag, thankful it was still clean, and began to dig around. I quickly found an old gym shirt and used that to somewhat clean my face.

The walk home was humiliating. I could feel the stares of students and teachers alike burn into my back. I kept my head low. The walk itself felt like torture. I was exhausted, both mentally, emotionally and physically. I was also still in pain. I could feel blood ooze from the cuts on my face and the bruises begin to form. I’d probably have to buy some concealer to hide the bruising. Upon arriving to the house I quickly stumbled inside. Once I reached the living room I realized my mistake. Jisung was home and was staring right at me.

“What the fuck happened to you?” He questioned almost flying off the sofa. He must’ve been playing games before my arrival.

“Oh, uhh nothing really. I just uhh... tripped is all. Don’t worry I’ll go take care of it.” I knew it was probably the worst excuse of the decade but I really didn’t have the energy to make a better one.

“Bullshit! You have bruises and scratches almost exclusively on your face! Plus I can tell you’ve been avoiding me!” He exclaimed as he approached me “Name you don’t have to act strong all the time. I can tell you’re not ok. Please tell me what happened... if you can.”

It didn’t take another word from Jisung for me to breakdown in a mess of tears. It was about time. The amount of stress I had been experiencing was extremely unhealthy. Combined with the fact that I wasn’t allowed to express emotions at home, the pressure was too much.

“I-I got into a f-fight.” I sobbed. “I really don’t know what I did wrong! They had to blackm-mail me for what? Having friends?” I buried my head in my hands. I was broken. “They got mad at me for being by you and Hyunjin! They, they threatened to ruin me! All my hard work! My hours of unhealthy studies! All to make my parents happy! But they just had to destroy it all out of spite!” I coughed as I felt the salty tears slip onto my lips. My sobs were cut off when I felt strong arms wrap around my middle.Jisung had hugged me. I couldn’t remember the last time someone had given me a hug. As happy as I should of been, the physical contact simply made me sob harder.

“Slow down, slow down! I know you’re upset and I’m here for you! Just go at your own pace. I’m not gonna go anywhere until you’re done.” He patted my back. I tried to calm my breathing and began to explain. Explain everything, from when I had been kicked out to when the girls had first blackmailed me to when they attacked me for Hyunjin’s notes. It was exhausting to just remember those events. Then I explained everything about my parents. How difficult they were. Nothing mattered besides numbers and results.

“They could care less about my existence as a person, or their daughter. “ I explained. We were now seated on his large sofa, his hand holding mine out of comfort. The whole time I explained my situation I could tell he was listening. He started at me attentively with a kind look in his eyes.

“I never knew we were so similar.” He chuckled as he scratched his neck.

“What do you mean.” I questioned, drying the tears from my face.

“The whole parent thing I mean. My parents are incredibly hard on me as well. I’m the next in blood line per say, and because of my familial ranking I take an important family position once my parents die. They aren’t necessarily that focused on grades like your parents are but they care a lot about field performance. That doesn’t mean I can slack in school though.” He sighed. “Other than that they barely pay any attention to me. They let me figure out everything on my own. By the age of 12 I practically lived alone. I’ve been an adult for almost the entirety of what should’ve been my childhood.” He sighed. “Anyway thank you for explaining it to me I know it’s been difficult for you. As much as you dislike them, let’s make a deal.”

“About what?” I blinked myself awake. I was starting to get really tired.

“No more secrets. Don’t keep this sorta stuff to yourself from now on ok? It does more harm than good. I’m always here to listen!” He smiled. I could feel my checks warm at his smile. It was cute.

“Alright then.” I smiled bashfully. “Pinky promise?”

“Pinky promise!” He confirmed, quickly wrapping his pinky around mine.

“Now I hate to be rude but you should really take a shower.” He scratched his neck as he chuckled.

“Hey! I went through a lot today!” I chided

“I know, I know. How about you go shower and then we can watch a movie! Maybe it’ll help you feel better!”

“Actually... that sounds really nice. But what about my homework? And my grades?” I completely forgot that school existed.

“Ahh don’t worry about it! I’ll do your homework for you when you shower! I already did mine so it’s fine! About your grades, just leave it to me! I’ll talk to them tomorrow ok!” He exclaimed.

“Are you sure?” I questioned. I’d feel guilty if he did all that for me.

“I’m sure! Now go!”

I started to walk to my room to go shower when I stopped.

“Hey Jisung?”

“Yeah? What’s up?”

“Thank you.”

I smiled. My first true smile in a while.

#skz #skz fanfic #kpop #kpop fanfic #kpop writing #straykids x reader #straykids #han jisung x reader #han x reader #han jisung #hwang hyunjin #hyunjin #writers

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dalekofchaos · 5 years ago

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The Fireflies’ vaccine wouldn’t have worked or why Joel did the right thing

In the last part of The Last of Us, Joel kills all the fireflies and saves Ellie but by doing so he may have doomed humanity by ending the possibility of a cure being made, making the ending bittersweet and morally ambiguous. The thing is, Joel didn't really do anything wrong, and saving Ellie was the right choice, here are my reasons:

The doctors would remove Ellie's brain to try to create a vaccine, but that's not how vaccines works, a vaccine is a tamed version of a pathogen that "teaches" your body to defend against it, to do a vaccine you need to use the pathogen in small quantities or a modified version of it, Ellie is immune to it, you don't create vaccines from the immune system, that's called a serum, and it works differently, a serum is used when someone comes in contact with a disease and it contains a series of antibodies that fight the infection, but it doesn't make anyone immune. So what they were trying to do was pointless;

Even if the doctors know what they were doing, it was a wild shot a with no guarantee that it would work;

Even if a vaccine was successfully made they wouldn't save the world, the world was destroyed 20 years ago, society collapsed and was rebuilt again on a new way, and everyone already new how to deal with it, also the greatest threat were not even the cordyceps fungus anymore, it was the infected (that the vaccine couldn't do nothing about) and the crooked humans that walked the earth. Besides that, the fireflies had no way to distribute the vaccine worldwide, not even in a national level.

If you listen to the tapes in the Colorado segment, it pretty much confirms that Ellie is not unique and they wouldn’t be able to make a vaccine anyway. The doctor has practically lost his mind and Ellie is just his white whale. Ellie was not the first subject and she most likely wouldn’t have been the last.

The doctor pretty much went against the common ethical code of all medical practitioners just for a CHANCE at a vaccine/cure.

And wouldn't it take a lot of time to study her? A day to do all the tests is outright impossible. Just look at the corona vaccine. With all the tech the world has the biotechnologists are going to take more than a year to make a vac.

Vaccines for Fungal infections are nearly impossible and are a logistical nightmare.Even in today’s world,they can only be treated with antibiotics and anti-fungal medicine. They didn’t even bother with thoroughly researching Ellie’s blood and trying to extract the fungal specimen without killing her. The tests were blood samples and samples from the area where she was bit and then only cutting her brain open as THE LAST POSSIBLE USE for her, then when their step 1 was "lol just kill this incredibly rare specimen" I was shocked.

BTW, PS4 version actually removed a piece of paper that's available in all the other forms of the game. What is this piece of paper? Just the one that describes how they've tried this process dozens of times before and how they've NEVER gotten any useful info.

The Fireflies are terrorists. The Fireflies are terrorists, and not even competent ones. Here we go. We first hear of the Fireflies in credits, where they are taking credit for attacking the Federal Disaster Response Agency. Not a good start.The next time we start to see hints of them is through graffiti in the quarantine zone. What does this graffiti say? Fireflies will take it all back. That sounds great! Burn it all down. ...oh. That’s, uh, a little less great. Fucking die, pig. Um… Uh, that’s uh, not a great look here guys.And that goes on and on. The graffiti does not exactly inspire. All it does is get angry.Next time we see them, it’s when they literally bomb a checkpoint and supply truck, then begin firing wildly all over the place. This is straight terrorism. They don’t care if there is collateral damage, in fact, Joel gets injured in this scene.Then we meet Marlene, the so-called Queen Firefly. Injured and on the run, the military is slowly wiping them out. This leads to a line of dialogue that is absolutely hilarious. Marlene starts to preach about “We’ve been quiet. Been planning on leaving the city, but they need a scapegoat. They’ve been trying to rile us up. We’re trying to defend ourselves”Those are big words from someone who just bombed a checkpoint.This clearly shows us that Marlene cannot be trusted as a narrator. She has an agenda and is lying to Joel and possibly herself. And that despite how effective guerrilla tactics usually are, her group is still managing to get absolutely devastated. They are failing so badly that they have to recruit smugglers just to try to get Ellie out of the city.So begins the trek showing dead Fireflies at every turn. Downtown subway station? Dead Fireflies. The Capitol building? Dead Fireflies. Pittsburgh? Oh, let’s talk about Pittsburgh.Pittsburgh is a monument to Firefly failure. Pittsburgh was originally another Quarantine zone held together by FEDRA. So what happened here? Well, times got hard, and the Fireflies instigated a civil war or insurrection. This fighting lasted for months, with Fireflies lynching soldiers that they caught alone, burning soldiers alive after dousing them in gasoline, and FEDRA retaliating by executing Fireflies. FEDRA finally gave up and retreated from Pittsburgh, putting the Fireflies in control- and then it all fell apart. The people of Pittsburgh discover that the Fireflies had planned to move right into the space FEDRA had previously occupied. And so, after this was discovered, the Fireflies were driven out just like FEDRA had been. Only much faster, and with less fight. And now Pittsburgh is nothing but anarchy. People gunned down in the streets for nothing. Rooms full of bodies, clothes and shoes. Almost looks like after images of Dachau. Bravo, Fireflies. Excellent revolution.Next up, we meet Tommy, Joel’s brother, and disenfranchised Firefly. He worked for them for years, going all the way to Colorado for them. Somewhere along the way, he lost faith in them and left their cause. He doesn’t specify exactly why, but it seems he might have lost faith in their methods.Then we come to the University. This is where we really discover how incompetent the Fireflies actually are. One of the first notes you see at University is about a guy who is angry he got yelled at for falling asleep on guard duty. Real professionals. This same note indicates that while they’re still getting some supplies, it’s not enough for what’s needed, with gasoline being particularly short. The next note comes from a recording, telling us that they’re losing more guards, with the doctor clearly concerned about how much equipment and data will be lost if they have to move. The doctor even calls the Fireflies incompetent in this note. And then we have this genius.. That’s right. Bitten by his own lab monkey. Because he just had to set it free, rather than putting it down humanely. Brilliant work sir. Brilliant. He kills himself before turning though, but not before informing us that they hadn’t accomplished anything for over five years. And even that small breakthrough was ultimately a failure. And now the entire lab is compromised, and abandoned.And then there’s a long break from Fireflies until Salt Lake. Ellie, having just gone underwater, isn’t breathing. Joel attempts to perform CPR on her when our hero Firefly shows up, and knocks Joel unconscious. Ah, violence. The first solution. Willing to forgive it, since it strongly mirrors the scene with Sarah, only the Firefly is in the soldier’s shoes this time. But still. Military was gentler.And now for the hospital. The final failure of the Fireflies. This is where so many people are convinced that Joel screws the world by preventing a vaccine. But somehow, I just don’t think so. This is one last desperate bid by the Fireflies for control. How do they intend to do this? Comprehensive bloodwork? No. Vigorous testing with laboratory animals, like, oh, maybe monkeys? No, someone let all their monkeys go. Crack open her head and hope for the best? Hell yeah! Does the fact that they’ve lost their biologist concern them? Nah, it’ll be fine! Does the fact that this is the only time they’ve seen immunity to this degree even give them pause? Pfft, crack her open! Does the fact that there has never been a successful vaccine against fungus give them pause? PASS THAT SCALPEL! No need to think this over, let’s blow our whole load on this once in a lifetime lucky strike as fast as possible. No, I’ve never heard the story about the goose who laid the golden eggs, tell it to me after I finish butchering surgery. Even if we make this vaccine, how will we deploy it? You're thinking too hard, hand me the saw!This is just bad science. Done by bad scientists. Cheered on by fools. Fools who wanted to murder Joel after he made that long trip.And for people who insist on government and democracy, it’s funny how they didn’t risk telling Ellie their “plan” and just sedated her and rushed her to the table.

Even by SOME MIRACLE they managed to make a vaccine, the world ain't gonna automatically return to what it was. It's a dog eat dog world and that is the new normal. Infected, cannibals, more psychos like David and raiders are still there and it ain't going away soon or maybe ever. On top of that, mass production and distribution of a vaccine is an absolute logistical nightmare in a post apocalyptic world- they simply don't have enough resources for that. And who's to say The Fireflies wouldn't use it to as a bargaining tool to put everyone, willing or not, under their new rule? And even given all that, they debated killing Joel after he delivered Ellie. He did the job and the payment he received was getting knocked out and being marched outside of the safe zone AT GUNPOINT WITHOUT HIS WEAPONS AND SUPPLIES! The Fireflies broke their deal and fucked Joel over. Joel had ever right to kill them and save Ellie.

So I believe what Joel did in the end was the right thing, the fireflies was an extremist group that was willing to do anything not to save the world, but to prove their point, even kill an innocent girl under a delusional precept.

#The Last Of Us #Joel Miller #Ellie Williams #The Fireflies #Marlene #Jerry Anderson

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onebadwinter · 4 years ago

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The Joker Tropes

Taken from Here

0% Approval Rating: Apart from Harley (and even then, only when their on-off relationship is "on"), Gaggy and Punchline, no one likes or supports the Joker. In any way, whatsoever. Damn near every other member of Batman's Rogues Gallery hates his guts, mostly because not only is he completely sociopathic and unpredictable, but also they are all scared shitless by him. The only reason why he's even allowed in teams such as the Legion of Doom is because of that fear: if they exclude him from the lineup, then chances are that dead bodies will be lining the streets in their name. Trickster spells it out in "Underworld Unleashed." Trickster: Great going, Neron, bring in the one guy no one wants to be in the same room with. When super-villains want to scare each other, they tell Joker stories.

Abusive Parents: One common tactic for the Joker to garner sympathy is claiming he was ill-treated by his parents. Given his propensity to spew out different and sometimes contradictory backstories, nobody knows if they're true.Harley Quinn: Joker told me things, secret things he never told anyone... Batman: What did he tell you, Harley? Was it the line about the abusive father, or the one about the alcoholic mom? Of course, the runaway orphan story is particularly moving, too. He's gained a lot of sympathy with that one. What was it he told that one parole officer? Oh, yes... 'There was only one time I ever saw dad really happy. He took me to the ice show when I was seven...' Harley: (crying) Circus... He told me it was the circus. Batman: He's got a million of them, Harley.

Acquired Poison Immunity: In many continuities, he's immune to his trademark Joker Venom/Smilex. In a crossover comic with Captain America, he also proves to be immune to Red Skull's "Dust of Death", as their trademark poisons are too similar to each other.

Ambiguous Disorder: He's undeniably insane and Ax-Crazy, but has no official diagnosis. If anything, he can just be diagnosed with "Being the Joker". However, it’s possible he’s perfectly sane and just The Sociopath, and is using his manipulation abilities to continue his reign of terror.

Ambiguous Start of Darkness: Related to his Multiple-Choice Past; the only thing consistent is that he was a low-level crook who got dunked in chemicals to become the Joker. C While some origins (most notably The Killing Joke) have him being forced into crime, others have him as already a sinister criminal beforehand. Batman (1989) and Batman: The Animated Series choose the Evil All Along interpretation.

Appropriated Appellation:

Arch-Enemy: A classic example to the Batman, and not just in the comics - they are pretty much the iconic gold standard when it comes to this trope. The two of them are the page image for a reason.

Attention Whore: A big part of his motivation in various continuities. He even admits as such at one point, while denying he's not behind one particular crime.Joker: Do you really think I would stir up so much trouble and not make sure you knew it was me?

Ax-Crazy: One of his main characteristics is his willingness to psycho on anyone, including his own henchmen.

Bad Boss: Willing to casually kill his own henchmen for any reason, be it part of a plan, for amusement, or simply on a whim.

Bad People Abuse Animals: Defied by The Joker in at least one story (Emperor Joker). Evil Jimmy Olson kills Superman, who has been turned into a dog, by crushing him underneath a fire hydrant. The Joker is simply annoyed, because he doesn't know how to make something as pointless as beating a dumb animal funny. Jimmy Olson is then beaten to death by two giant robots who appear out of nowhere.

Believing Their Own Lies: He sometimes believes his Multiple-Choice Past, Depending on the Writer of course. One issue of the Robin Series had the Joker actually in tears as he told the psychiatrist of his abusive childhood, only for the psychiatrist to coldly point out that it's the seventh story he's told now.

Berserk Button:

Black Comedy: This is one of Joker’s specialties. To normal people, killing would be a terrible thing, but to Joker, it’s hilarious, especially if he does it in a way that amuses him.

Bond Villain Stupidity: In a "Detective Comics" story written by Paul Dini, the Joker (while impersonating a stage magician he had previously murdered) shot Zatanna in the throat so she couldn't recite a spell to save herself, then locked her in a tank of water while strapping Batman in an electric chair. He didn't shoot her in the head because he wanted Batman to watch helplessly as she died. This didn't go so well because first, he's BATMAN! and second, Zatanna was able to write a healing incantation on the lid of the tank using her own blood, which made the spell even more powerful.

Boring Insult: While the Joker has used it a few times on others, he mostly does it to hear the sound of his own voice as the people he usually slings this insult at don't really care whether or not they're boring. On the other hand, this is Joker's Berserk Button when others use it against him. Most notably, he reacts poorly when Terry deliberately exploits this flaw with glee and even rubs it in his face in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker. After all, the natural enemy of a comedian is The Heckler.

Breakout Villain: The Trope Codifier for comics. DC's initial intention was to kill him off in his second appearance. Fortunately, editor Whitney Ellsworth convinced DC to spare him, a panel was hastily added to show that he'd survived, and the Joker rapidly became not only Batman's Arch-Enemy, but arguably the most iconic example of an Arch-Enemy in all of fiction.

Break the Comedian: A sure way to determined if things have gotten real, even for the Joker, is if he isn't laughing or joking. A famous example involved the Joker being frightened during the events of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing run, when he was horrified by Arcane's actions.

Clear My Name: The Brave and the Bold has him framed for several murders and he must use Batman's help.

Collective Identity: As revealed in Darkseid War and DC Rebirth, the Joker has been used by three people, though Batman: Three Jokers clarified it as this: The Criminal (the original "Golden Age" Joker from the character's debut in Batman #1), The Clown (the "Silver Age" Joker, strongly implied to be the one who killed Jason Todd), and The Comedian (the current "Modern Age" Joker, who kidnapped and tormented Jim Gordon).

Combat Pragmatist : While his fighting prowess varies from remarkably proficient to extremely weak Depending on the Writer, the Joker is a consistently dirty fighter, striking enemies when and where they are most vulnerable. Besides his myriad of gag gadgets, he often carries concealed weapons, gases and acids on his person, and won't hesitate to brandish a wrench or smash a chair over your head in a pinch. He is usually adept with knives and, unlike Batman, rarely has any reservations about firearms. He has no qualms kicking an opponent when they're down, and will employ deception, feigning surrender or defeat to get Batman to lower his guard.

Comic-Book Fantasy Casting:

Confusion Fu: This is often his last line of defense when Batman corners him, especially in the animated television shows. Effectiveness varies.

Cop Killer: Sometimes police officers are among the Joker's victims:

Create Your Own Villain: Most stories posit he was chased by Batman through a factory with No OSHA Compliance, which caused him to be exposed to acid, discoloring his skin and hair and driving him insane when he sees his reflection. Often he claims Batman is responsible for turning him into The Joker.

Creepy High-Pitched Voice: In voiced roles, he usually has a high-pitched voice to contrast Batman's Badass Baritone.

Crossover Villain-in-Chief: In DC's Crisis Crossover events that involve a lot of villains, like Salvation Run and Forever Evil, The Joker usually fills this role along with Lex Luthor.

Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Insanity aside, sometimes the Joker's plans and methods are so out there they just seem stupid. Despite appearances, he's usually very cunning, and always very dangerous. In fact, part and parcel of what makes the Joker's plans devastating is that he knows how to hide the punchline for lack of a better word. The plans are so innocuous, so disheveled and so utterly random that they usually have no sane MO, which makes it hard to see the bigger picture of the plan unless Batman pieces it together quickly.

Critical Psychoanalysis Failure: Happens frequently, though this may be an indication of the competence of the staff at Arkham. One such time was with Dr. Harleen Quinzel, who bought his story hook, line and sinker and declared him sane, then broke him out of Arkham and started dating him (of course, her exact analysis was that he was utilizing Obfuscating Insanity and it's implied that she was actually right, so perhaps she was the only good doctor at Arkham after all...)

Deadly Prank: He generally considers murdering someone for a joke to be morally no different than putting a whoopie cushion on their chair.

Depending on the Artist: His depiction varies a lot between eras and between different artists in the same period. Major differences are whether he can form facial expressions other than a grin, and whether he is average-sized or freakishly tall and thin.

Depending on the Writer: There are many huge variations, the most common and glaring being:

Depraved Homosexual: Not above invoking this deliberately to get under Batman's skin. Whether he means all his flirting and feel-copping varies slightly Depending on the Writer and heavily depending on one's own interpretation.

Diplomatic Impunity: In A Death in the Family, Ayatollah Khomeini appoints him the UN ambassador to Iran, giving him diplomatic immunity. This was later retconned to the fictional Syraq due to reasons of taste.

Dirty Coward: There is a common misconception that Joker has no regard for his own life and doesn't care if he dies or not. In actuality he does care, and the reason he keeps taunting morally good characters into killing him is because he's confident that they don't have the guts to off him. When he comes across someone who is willing to kill him, he shows his true colors as a sniveling little coward where he starts pleading for his life.The Punisher: I got all the therapy you need right here, comedian.The Joker: You're really going to do it.

Disproportionate Retribution: Has been known to try to kill people for minor slights, such as welshing on a bet on a sporting event for trivial stakes.

Domestic Abuse: This characterizes his relationship with his "henchwench" Harley Quinn to a T. Joker frequently yells at her, puts her down, humiliates her, and exposes her to all manner of violence ranging from "merely" slapping or punching her to outright trying to murder her. Such is her Mad Love that she ignored his abuse for most of her existence in comic history, with the two only separating in the late 2010s.

The Dreaded: Easily one of the most feared villains in the entire DC universe. Other villains are afraid of him; it's been said that when criminals want to scare each other, they tell Joker stories.

Driven to Madness: Doing this to others has become part of his MO. What triggered his own insanity and belief in nihilism remains unknown.

Early Installment Weirdness: Just take a gander at his earliest appearances:

Electric Joybuzzer: One of his signature weapons, a lethal variation, most memorably used in Batman (1989). He ended up Hoist by His Own Petard when trying to use it on Static.Static: That was fun. Let me try! (BZZZZT!) (Batman approves.)

Enemy Mine:

Even Evil Has Standards: Oddly enough, this trope does occasionally apply to him.

Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Completely averted with Harley. He physically and emotionally abuses her and tried to kill her on numerous occasions. They eventually break up in the New 52 continuity.

Evil All Along: Some versions, such as the DC Animated Universe and Batman (1989), go with the interpretation that the Joker was evil, if not outright Ax-Crazy, even before his fateful transformation, with the chemicals just making him worse.

Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: The Joker is Nihilism Incarnate: he believes that life is pointless and insane, and the only thing anyone can do is give into the madness. Life is a joke, and once he got the joke he never stopped laughing at it. One of the reasons he's obsessed with Batman is because Batman is The Anti-Nihilist: Batman also thinks, to some degree at least, that life is meaningless. But rather than embrace the madness, Batman fights against it, trying to bring order to chaos through his heroic actions. So Batman got the joke too, but he's not laughing, and the Joker doesn't understand why.

Evil Genius: Though rarely the focus of his character, Joker is usually an extremely gifted chemist, constantly creating new and better versions of his signature laughing gas. He's also (unsurprisingly) a skilled planner on par with Batman himself, in addition to being extremely charismatic and manipulative when he wants to be.

Evil Is Petty: Joker truly sees no difference between throwing cream pies, robbing a museum, and brutal, torturous mass-murder. To him, it's all just part of the joke.

Evil Sounds Deep: Jack Nicholson in Batman (1989) and Kevin Michael Richardson in The Batman both give the Joker a deep, sinister voice, contrasting his usual higher-pitched depictions in other works.

Facial Horror: His iconic "perma-clown" appearance (the green hair, chalk-white skin, and most of the time, red lips) is the result of being submerged in a tank of chemicals. However, there was times this has gotten worse.

Fame Through Infamy: He's practically built a career on crimes designed more to spread his infamy than anything else. Perhaps his true illness is that he is an Attention Whore through and through...

Faux Affably Evil: Often addresses others in a polite and friendly way before he unleashes merry hell on them.

Flanderization: Over the years, his actions have become almost exclusively focused on causing as much carnage and chaos as possible or harassing Batman and his allies rather than performing any non-lethal mischief or practical crime.

Foe Romance Subtext: Sometimes will mess with Batman's mind by calling him by pet names or using innuendo. Or outright groping him. According to later writers, Joker regards their hero/villain dynamic as a very special relationship, and resents anyone or thing that gets in the way of it (like all those family members Bruce enjoys hanging out with), which is disturbingly like a jealous lover.

Foil: To Batman in several ways. If the origin offered in Killing Joke is to be believed, both Batman and Joker had one bad day that put them on very different paths.

For the Evulz: The usual motives of the Joker. Many of his crimes always involve sowing chaos and the schadenfreude of other people's misery.

Freudian Excuse: Even he isn't sure of his own history and will crop up multiple reasons for his insanity. The most accepted version is that he was a thug named the Red Hood who gets disfigured falling into a vat while trying to escape Batman. His backstory still remains a mystery.

Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Best displayed in The Killing Joke: Joker's "one bad day" is just an excuse, as he neither knows nor cares if it actually happened that way, and Batman confronts him on how his attempt to similarly break Commissioner Gordon failed.Batman: Despite all your sick, vicious little games, he's as sane as he ever was! So maybe ordinary people don't always crack. Maybe there isn't any need to crawl under a rock with all the other slimey things when trouble hits. Maybe it was just you, all the time!

The Friend Nobody Likes: Often plays this role among villain team-ups. It's implied that the only reason the other DC villains ever invite him to things is because they're terrified of what he'll do to them if he's not. Alexander Luthor Jr.'s death at the end of Infinite Crisis is brought about because, as Lex Luthor puts it:Luthor: You made one big mistake. You didn't let the Joker play.

From Nobody to Nightmare: The key thing about his Multiple-Choice Past is that nobody really knows who he was before he put on the Red Hood and fell into a vat of acid. As such, Joker was literally a nobody... who turned into the DC Universe's scariest villain, and who at times has upstaged even Brainiac or Darkseid.

Frozen Face: Most depictions have his face as such, with his massive rictus grin being something he can't really stop doing.

Gadgeteer Genius: While he seems to be a chemist first and foremost, the Joker has no trouble coming up with a range of tools and weapons of his own design and is easily as smart as Batman in this area. Other stories show that he has a solid enough understanding of such varied fields as engineering, computers and even robotics that he can at least hijack the sophisticated inventions of others and use them for his own ends with no difficulty whatsoever, and he is generally implied (though rarely outright stated) to have had a scientific background prior to becoming the Clown Prince of Crime.

Glasgow Grin: Heath Ledger's portrayal features very noticeable scarring from such wounds and tells two conflicting stories of how he got them. Sometimes, Depending on the Artist, the Joker has one in the comics, usually in out-of-continuity stories.

Gonk: Depending on the Artist, he varies from "disfigured, but still fairly handsome" to "barely passes for human", the latter cases usually feature him with a really long and narrow nose and a huge, exaggerated mouth with a permanent Slasher Smile.

Guest Fighter: After making appearances in the previous crossover and being a major player in NetherRealm's other big series, Joker shows up in Mortal Kombat 11 all on his own, freed from the restrictions of a Teen rating and able to showcase the true depths of his depraved bloodlust.

Handshake of Doom: Often kills unsuspecting victims by offering a handshake. When the other person grabs his hand, their palm is pricked by a device that resembles a joy buzzer, which injects deadly venom into their blood stream.

Hate Sink: Posthumously, his Injustice-verse incarnation is the primary target for audience scorn and gets saddled with this role by everyone in the game, its sequel, and the tie-in comics — the version from the Injustice-verse itself, at least. This is because he tricked Superman into killing his own wife Lois Lane and nuking Metropolis, then pulling a Strike Me Down with All of Your Hatred on the poor guy who that set him on the path to becoming a tyrant, all for the sake of doing it, and because he was tired of losing to Batman, so he decided to go after an easier target. His role as The Corrupter to Harley is explained to make her redemption feel more plausible, as even she has come to despise him for his actions. In particular, while Superman does terrible things, he is portrayed as a Tragic Villain due to the losses he suffered before becoming a bad guy, and as such, his killing of the Joker is always played for maximum pathos. Even villains as despicable as Brainiac, Darkseid and Gorilla Grodd openly despise him. This even continues into his Guest Fighter appearance in Mortal Kombat 11note , where even the likes of Kano, Shang Tsung and Shao Kahn can't stand him.

Human Head on the Wall: There's a rather famous piece of comic book artwork◊ drawn by Brian Bolland featuring The Joker lounging in a chair in front of a trophy wall mounted with the decapitated heads of various DC heroes and villains, all of them painted white and their faces distorted into a smile like the Joker himself. It's even been parodied a bunch of times with other comic supervillains sitting in Joker's place.

Iconic Outfit:

I'm a Humanitarian: There have been a few times when the Joker engaged in cannibalism, such as an issue of Grant Morrison's JLAnote after Day Of Judgment, where upon the reveal that the Martian Manhunter took the League and the now Hal Jordan hosted-Spectre into the Joker's head, the Joker lamented eating a man's tongue raw. Additionally, an infamous bit in Emperor Joker has the Joker eat all of China while he had Mr. Mxyzptlk's powers.

Insane No More: Is cured by Batman forcing unknown pills down his throat in the non-canon Batman: White Knight, causing him go back to his real name, Jack Napier, make a Heel–Face Turn and accuse Batman of being part of the problem (he's also considerably better than the usual Joker, being closer to the earlier trickster personality).

I've Come Too Far: At the end of The Killing Joke, Batman tries to reason with the Joker, insisting that they've got to stop before one of them kills the other and offering to help rehabilitate him. Joker briefly considers the offer before solemnly turning it down.Joker: No. I'm sorry, but... no. It's too late for that. Far too late.

It Amused Me: His raison d'etre. Why kill people in horrific ways, ruin their lives, and generally make the entire universe a worse place than he left it? Because it's funny.

Jekyll & Hyde: Inverted in the case of Batman: White Knight, where taking pills cures Joker of his insanity and brings back his original Jack Napier persona. However, if he fails to take the pills, the Joker resurfaces, which is exactly what happens in Batman: Curse of the White Knight, and he's much worse than before.

Jerkass: Though that is a total understatement, Joker still more or less counts as one. When he isn't killing or torturing people for his own amusement, he's taunting them and trying get under other people's skin.

Joker Immunity: The trope namer. He was originally conceived as a one-off villain but proved too interesting a character to be killed off so quickly, and a last-minute edit had him survive instead. He's so famous for this that most works that kill him off, the audience doesn't buy it, and it serves as an effective twist the rare times when he is Killed Off for Real. But even those rare occasions may continue to feature him in flashbacks or hallucinations as a Posthumous Character.

Knife Nut: In many appearances, knives are his Weapon of Choice, either to disfigure his victims or kill his foes. Often both.The Joker: Do you want to know why I use a knife? Guns are too... quick. You can't savor all the little emotions. You see, in their last moments, people show you who you really are.

Large Ham: Holy shit, yes. He has an enormous sense of showmanship and is seen cracking Black Comedy jokes every minute, and it's a nigh-guarantee that whoever is portraying him will be munching the scenery to the very structure. Most especially the case if it happens to be Mark Hamill.

Laser-Guided Broadcast: In comic books as well in most of the media, when The Joker takes the control of TV and makes one of his menaces to threat and/or destroy Gotham City, good part of his message goes directly to Batman by tempting him to stop his plans, where usually destroy the city is just a secondary plan, getting/trapping/killing Batman as his real main plan.

Legacy Character: The idea of multiple Jokers is used in Gotham. There are two Jokers - Jerome Valeska, and his twin brother Jeremiah Valeska. The former is a deranged mass murderer who spread madness through Gotham. The latter is the actual Joker who becomes Batman's Arch-Enemy, and is even more dangerous than his predecessor.

Lethal Joke Character: In-Universe. Those unfamiliar with him tend to write him off as just some fool dressed as a clown, only to realize very quickly why they should keep their guard up around him. He's still one of the most dangerous characters in the DC Universe, despite existing in a world filled with super-humans and gods.

Master of Disguise: A talent he possesses even in his earliest stories. Joker is an expert with make-up, costumes and impersonations and has posed as everything from police officers to doctors to even Batman himself. He can go to extremely elaborate lengths to pull off his deceptions too, fabricating entire backstories and staying in-character for months at a time to see his plans through.

Mirthless Laughter: The Joker's constantly laughing, either at the pain and misery of others, the pain and misery he inflicts on others, or even his own pain. However, as describe by many and offered by the reader based on his scenes and what he does, there is NEVER any joy in his laughter. Never any real happiness. Just cruelty and mockery of pain and sorrow. If he does indeed have a tragic backstory that caused his madness, then this makes sense as he has chosen to laugh instead of cry. His statement about how the universe should end "so there won't be anymore people like me" during the Emperor Joker storyline lends weight to him being a Sad Clown.

Misanthrope Supreme: While it's not evident given Joker's Laughing Mad demeanor and his penchant for macabre jokes usually at the life and limb expense of someone else, Joker is actually absolutely full of hatred and spite towards basically everyone and the entire world. Several stories have gone into this and it's implied that the Joker finds it so easy to kill everyone around him, not because he feels nothing for them, but in fact because he loathes everyone aside from his twisted relationship with Batman.

Moment of Lucidity: There've been a few times when outside forces have sent him into a fit of temporary sanity over the years.

Monster Clown: One of the classic examples.

Multiple-Choice Past: Practically the poster child and possible trope namer. Even he isn't sure of his own history. The most accepted version introduced in Detective Comic #168 (1951) has him as a thug named the Red Hood who jumps into a vat of chemicals to escape Batman, disfiguring him and inspiring him to adopt the name Joker. Why he went by the name the Red Hood has changed over the years: The Killing Joke claims he was a failed comedian pressured into becoming a criminal to support his pregnant wife. The trauma of his disfigurement from jumping in the acid and his wife's earlier accidental death drove him insane. However, even this backstory is questionable, as the Joker himself calls it "multiple choice".

My God, What Have I Done?: Whenever he is made temporarily sane, most notably by a Lazarus pit after Ra's Al Ghul killed him after a Villain Team-Up and in JLA #15 during the Rock of Ages storyline, Joker usually expresses deep remorse for his crimes. Unfortunately it never lasts.

The Nicknamer: He's prone to giving nicknames to allies and enemies alike. Sometimes affectionate, sometimes snarky, but always undesired. Calling Batman "Batsy" or "Bats" and Robin "boy blunder" are probably his most iconic.

No Celebrities Were Harmed: Some of the Joker's victims fall into this.

No Name Given: The Joker is the only Batman villain who doesn't have an official real identity. However, there are three occasions where names have been used. The Jack Nicholson version used the name "Jack Napier", which was briefly mentioned in the Animated Series episode "Dreams In Darkness" since the series was partially based on the movie, albeit the doctors list it as one of his aliases. The Gotham version played by Cameron Monaghan gives him the name Jeremiah Valeska. The Joaquin Phoenix version used the name "Arthur Fleck", though the movie raises the question that he doesn't know who his father is, so 'Fleck' might not even be his surname. The Telltale series plays with this by 'naming' him 'John Doe' - which is just a stand-in name police/hospitals use when they don't know someone's identity. While he still has no official name to this day, it's general fan consensus that it's either Jack Napier or just Jack.

Not a Mask: Sometimes he pretends to wear makeup, but it ain't makeup. Jack Nicholson's version wore flesh-tone makeup over his pale skin several times after his transformation. Though, this is Depending on the Writer, as Heath Ledger's depiction does wear makeup. It's unclear if this is the case for Caesar Romero's depiction, as Romero's mustache is visible at times (he refused to shave for the part).

Not Me This Time: Though he certainly wouldn't mind committing them, he's been framed for murders he didn't commit several times, such as by James Gordon Jr.

Obfuscating Insanity: Zig Zagged Trope / Depending on the Writer. Some stories claims The Joker is actually sane, but pretends to be otherwise to avoid the death penalty. Others says he is genuinely crazy. It must be noted that Joker, like other Batman villains, was only identified as insane from the 70s onwards by various writers.note

Offscreen Villain Dark Matter: Despite the Joker's infamous reputation and violent instability he never has any issues finding new henchmen for his schemes nor does he ever has any issues finding the resources needed to pull off his often convoluted plans and he's often able to do it all without attracting the attention of Batman or the authorities until he's ready for them.

OOC Is Serious Business: A general rule of thumb: If the Joker isn't smiling, something very bad is about to happen.

The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Pretty much sums up his feelings towards Batman. He often flies into a rage whenever someone else attempts to kill Batman when in his company, and whenever Batman (seemingly) dies he has a tendency to completely snap and turn sane. This actually goes the other direction as well: the Joker feels that Batman is the only one allowed to defeat him, and it's shown he's terrified of someone else doing him in in some continuities.

Outside-Context Problem: A recurring theme of Joker's "first appearance" stories in various adaptations is that nobody in Gotham is prepared for a guy who's only in it For the Evulz. Also, the Joker himself likes to find these, and exploit them.

Phrase Catcher: Back in his prankster phase during the Silver Age, whenever one of Joker's capers got foiled, someone would inevitably trot out the line "The joke's on you, Joker!" For obvious reasons, his current Monster Clown incarnation doesn't get this nearly as often.

Pimp Duds: He sometimes accessorizes his purple suit with a very wide-brimmed hat, which makes the ensemble look like a stereotypical pimp costume. Jared Leto's turn in Suicide Squad (2016) runs with this in his dynamic with Harley Quinn.

Pre-Insanity Reveal: The Joker, depending on the version, may have been an ordinary comedian before he went crazy and became a super-villain.

Purple Is Powerful: Purple is one of Joker's three colors (along with white and green) and he is powerful.

Psychopathic Manchild: For starters, when Batman is telling Joker to stay away from the Gordons after he apparently hurt Gordon's wife (it was actually his son, Gordon Jr. who did the deed), Joker commented that he didn't do anything to "the old bitch", and starts commenting to Batman that he misses the old Batman, and commented that he "doesn't want to go to bed yet" and that he "wants to play."

Redemption Rejection: In The Killing Joke, Batman defeats the Joker once again and then desparately pleads with him to accept help recovering from his madness before they eventually kill each other. In one of his rare, completely serious moments, the Joker sincerely apologizes and tells Batman that it's far too late for that.

The Resenter: Joker has often shown resentment towards people in many ways in different stories. The best example is him being resentful of anyone who garners more attention from Batman than him and anyone he sees as "stealing his act", i.e. being a laughing mad, jokey maniac cramping his style (The Creeper in Batman TAS). Regardless, many of his crimes and attitudes often carry an undercurrent or resentment be it towards to Bat-family because he resents sharing Batman with anyone or normal people for living their mundane lives free of care. Given how much spite seems to fuel his rampages, Joker's probably got a mountain of resentment inside of him.

Restoration of Sanity: On occasion, Joker's sanity will suddenly return to him, usually in stories where Batman retires or is believed to have died. His reactions tend to vary - sometimes we don't see how he reacts to what he did, but other times he actually shows genuine regret for his actions. Of course, these never tend to stick.

The Reveal: When Batman sat in Metron's chair in Darkseid War, one of the questions he asked was who the Joker was and the answer freaked him out. In DC Rebirth, it's revealed why: The Joker is a Legacy Character: the Joker responsible for Death of the Family and Batman: Endgame is not the same man who crippled Barbara Gordon—and neither of them are the original Joker.

Riddle for the Ages: Being the Trope Namer for Multiple-Choice Past, it's unknown who he was before falling into an acid tank and whether he was nuts even before being dunked. He even believes his origins, Depending on the Writer of course.Joker: They throw me out, and I had a wife and an unborn child… or it was two cows and a goat? Sometimes it's so confusing…

Rule of Funny: One of his primary themes (alongside insanity), as explained in Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?: "Kid. I'm the Joker. I don't just randomly kill people. I kill people when it's funny. What would conceivably be funny about killing you?"

Secret Identity Apathy: In most continuities, he simply doesn't care about Batman's Secret Identity, understanding that Batman is the true face and not the man behind the mask. It's shown sometimes that the Joker will actually be upset if someone outs Batman's identity to him, usually because it spoils their dynamic in some way. When Scarecrow pulls off Bruce's mask in Harley Quinn, it practically triggers a Villainous Breakdown.Joker: Half the fun of our relationship was the mystery! Now I know Batman is just some boring, rich asshole with parental issues!

Self-Made Orphan: In The Brave and the Bold #31, Atom reads his mind and sees The Joker burning his parents alive after they catch him killing animals.

Slasher Smile: He wears one almost by default. Reportedly, it was inspired by this photo◊ of Conrad Veidt in character as Gwynplaine (a man with a disfigured face, causing him to have a perpetual grin) in The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo.

The Sociopath: A skilled and gleeful manipulator, a vicious butcher who brutally tortures and murders others simply because he thinks it’s funny, extraordinarily impulsive given that he’s prone to turning his murderous urges on his own men on a whim or because one upset him in some way, shape or form, and has not even the vaguest notion of empathy, neither for his men or his victims.

The Spook: His backstory is an eternal Riddle for the Ages. DC Comics refuses to take an official stance on this.

Start of Darkness: Detective Comics #168 posits he was a laboratory worker who becomes the Red Hood in order to steal a million dollars from his employers and retire. In The Killing Joke he quits his job to become a comedian, but fails and is coerced by mobsters to commit a robbery, becoming the Red Hood. His disfigurement and (in The Killing Joke) his wife's death earlier in the story destroy what little was left of his sanity and he becomes The Joker. Maybe.

Stealing the Handicapped Spot: He doesn't do this. Rather, he hates it when other people do it and finds it hilarious to horrifically cripple them so they can legitimately park in handicapped spots.

Straw Nihilist: Provides the trope image and is the poster child for this. He claims that everything in life is just "one big joke" and death is the ultimate punchline. Joker also believes that "a bad day" is more than enough for anyone to turn out like him. This is shown notably in Injustice: Gods Among Us, The Killing Joke, and The Dark Knight. The Red Lantern Atrocitus even wonders what drove Joker to nihilism during an intro banter with the clown in Injustice 2.

Strong as They Need to Be: His fighting skills fluctuate wildly. Sometimes, Joker is an excellent fighter who can actually defeat Batman in a straight-up fight, whereas most writers prefer to present him as so weak that he can be knocked out cold with one punch.

Stupid Evil: Depending on the writer, The Joker can sometimes fall under this, where his cruelty and sadism tend to lead to his own death at the hands of all the people he's wronged.

To Create a Playground for Evil: His motivation in stories like Emperor Joker.

Too Kinky to Torture: The Joker has shown a proclivity for this over the years. At one point, the Joker berated a man who'd captured him for only hitting him in the face and The Dark Knight similarly sees the Joker berate Batman during the the latter's beating of him. He also enjoyed his and Bruce's final fight in The Dark Knight Returns. Salvation Run had established the Joker's been in constant pain since he took his fateful dive into the vat of chemicals that altered his appearance and not only had gotten used to it, but grew to enjoy it. This quote from The Dark Knight sums it up perfectly: Stephens: I can tell the difference between punks who need a little lesson in manners, and the freaks like you who would just enjoy it.

Tombstone Teeth: He is often drawn with too many too-long teeth as part of his trademark rictus grin, highlighting his nature as a psychotic and sadistic killer.

Troll: Most incarnations of the Joker dress themselves as being a lethal one of these. The best example is his DC Animated Universe version, who tailored each of his schemes as a joke or a prank, and sometimes even lectured his underlings on the importance of proper buildup and delivery when telling a joke. Batman in particular is the Joker's preferred victim, and many a Joker has refused to kill or unmask a Batman dead to rights, simply because it would spoil the fun of trolling him. But when others upstage or taunt him, he really goes nuts, as it's one of his Berserk Buttons.

Unreliable Narrator: Even he isn't sure of his own history, so anything he claims is suspect at best.

Villain Has a Point: Given his devotion to Rule of Funny, he's quite knowledgeable on what makes successful comedy, as seen with the featured image on Don't Explain the Joke.

Villain Song: There's no other villain who has belted out as many memorable music moments, not even the Music Meister. Three of them incidentally were sung by Mark Hamill behind the mic:

Villainous Aromantic Asexual: He is shown to be more interested in his schemes and mayhem rather than sex. He has had sex with Harley, but it is implied that it's more for her rather than his own enjoyment. He has actively ignored her when he simply wants to work on his schemes, even when she's in the translucent red night dress.

Villainous Friendship: No matter how bad things turned out last time, Lex Luthor and Joker will always work together again. Played With, as it isn’t just because of friendship. As Luthor himself notes in the ending of Infinite Crisis, you always "let the Joker play," lest he come after you for revenge later on for leaving him out.

Villainous Harlequin: He was this during the Silver Age. He is also this in Batman (1966) and Batman: The Brave and the Bold.

Villainous Rescue: In Dark Nights: Metal, The Joker pulls this off by teaming up with Batman to defeat the Batman Who Laughs, Batman knowing that a jokerized Batman would have the upper hand teams up with the Joker. It is so unexpected that the Batman Who Laughs, who is still prepared for anything Batman would conceivably think of, is unable to counter it let alone even consider it a possibility.

Villain Protagonist: He was the star of his own nine issue self-titled series from 1975 to 1976. In order to adhere to the Comics Code Authority, The Bad Guy Wins was never in effect - while he usually managed to get one over on other villains, each issue would end the Joker being apprehended for his crimes. He also got his own movie in which Batman didn't even exist yet, delving deep into what someone would have to go through to become the Joker.

Weapon of Choice: The acid-spitting flower, Smilex/Joker Venom... and simple crowbars, established by how he killed Jason Todd.

You Gotta Have Blue Hair: He has neon green hair caused by the chemicals he fell into.

#TheJokerInformation

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princesssarisa · 5 years ago

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The feminism of “Wuthering Heights”

Not long ago on Quora, I answered the question of “Is Wuthering Heights a feminist text?” I thought I may as well share it here too, since my similar post on the feminism of Romeo and Juliet has been so popular.

Is Wuthering Heights a feminist text? It’s debatable.

It’s certainly not a work of modern feminism, and just because Emily Brontë was a woman doesn’t mean she lacked internalized misogyny, per se.

From a certain perspective, it can be read as a fairly sexist story. It revolves around a brooding, violent male anti-hero, Heathcliff, who emotionally and physically abuses women (among many other dark deeds), yet whom the reader is still clearly meant to feel some sympathy for. His descent into villainy is at least partly blamed on his beloved Cathy, because she rejected him for a wealthier man. As for Cathy herself, she’s a wild, fiery figure who defies society’s ideals of sweet, passive femininity and wields the chief power in both of her romantic relationships, and yet she’s portrayed as a vain, arrogant, vicious-tempered narcissist, prone to manipulation and hysterics, who emotionally betrays both men. Ultimately she’s “punished” with anguish-induced madness, sickness and death (and implied twenty years of wandering as a miserable waif of a ghost), and from then on she serves to fuel Heathcliff’s “manpain,” with his endless grief being used to stir up pity for him despite all his cruelty. Nor is Heathcliff’s abuse of women the only male-on-female violence to be found. In one scene Hareton Earnshaw slaps the younger Catherine when she insults him (to the approval of narrator Lockwood, who overhears it and thinks her “sauciness” deserved the punishment), yet he’s still portrayed as having a heart of gold under his gruff facade and is given a happy ending where he and Catherine fall in love and become engaged.

And yet…

It’s a story told mostly from a woman’s perspective. The chapters narrated by Lockwood are more of a framing device than anything else – the bulk of the story is narrated by Nelly Dean. And her focus is really more on the young women she serves than on Heathcliff, who sometimes disappears from her narrative for months or years at a time. Heathcliff might be the driving force of the plot as a whole, but it can be argued that the two Catherines are the real protagonists, with Heathcliff as the love interest to the first and the antagonist to the second.

Furthermore, all four principle females are three-dimensional characters. The two Catherines, Nelly Dean and Isabella Linton each have distinct, multilayered personalities and none can be reduced to stereotypes of womanhood. None of them are objectified or sexualized the way even the most “feminist” male author’s female characters tend to be. Nor are any of them meek or passive; in different ways, each one is feisty, sharp-tongued and rebellious. All of them are flawed too (putting women on a pedestal is almost as anti-feminist as vilifying them) yet with the possible exception of the elder Cathy, none of them are treated by the narrative as bad people. At the very least, they’re no worse than the men around them, and even though they suffer for their mistakes, none are portrayed (again, with the possible exception of the elder Cathy) as deserving the bad things that happen to them. Young Catherine and Nelly both receive happy endings, while Isabella’s ending is bittersweet, and none of them need to conform to a societal ideal of womanhood to escape from tragedy.

It’s too bad that most adaptations cut the second half of the book, because without the younger Catherine, the elder Cathy’s portrayal might create the sense that Brontë was condemning high spirits and willfulness in women. But young Catherine, who is portrayed sympathetically and gets a happy ending, is very much like her mother: lively, strong-willed, adventurous, temperamental, and sometimes too proud for her own good. In her ultimate romance with Hareton, as she “civilizes” him and teaches him to read, she arguably takes almost the same dominant role her mother did over Heathcliff in their childhood, though unlike her mother she is willing to listen to him and compromise with him. The fact that during his reading lessons she gives him “smart slaps” when his attention wanders and playfully threatens to pull his hair for his mistakes helps to compensate for the one slap he gave her back when they were “enemies.” (It seems unlikely that their marriage bed will be a tame place.) She earns her hopeful future not by being more passive or ladylike than her mother was, but just by being a kinder, more compassionate person and more willing to recognize her mistakes and grow past them. Hareton contrasts with Heathcliff in much the same way.

Nor, contrary to popular belief, is Heathcliff ever romanticized. His horrific deeds are never excused away and he’s not portrayed as a desirable romantic partner for anyone but the equally fierce Cathy. The very notion that he’s a romantic hero is brutally deconstructed by Isabella’s storyline, as she naively idealizes him and thinks she’s in love with him, but is horribly abused after she marries him and quickly comes to despise him. Brontë might ask us to understand him and pity him, but she never tries to make us love him. He’s a tragic monster.

Nor, unlike in the Hays Code-compliant 1939 film, is Isabella trapped for decades in her miserable marriage. She leaves Heathcliff, escapes to London, and builds a new life for herself and her son Linton. True, she still dies young, but she dies free.

Without being heavy-handed about it, the book also condemns the era’s patriarchal laws and customs that made women powerless. The laws that let husbands abuse their wives (Heathcliff and Isabella), that let fathers-in-law lord over and abuse their daughters-in-law (Heathcliff and Catherine), that prevented daughters from inheriting their fathers’ property in favor of the male next-of-kin (Thrushcross Grange going to Linton Heathcliff instead of to Catherine), that gave unfit fathers custody of their children against the mother’s will (Heathcliff and Linton), and that forced women to depend on marriage to raise their own fortunes and to escape from a toxic family (Cathy).

Yet it’s what little power the women do have within these confines – emotional power – that leads to the hopeful ending. Catherine, with help from Nelly, overcomes her own bitterness and reaches out to Hareton, finally freeing him from Heathcliff’s degrading influence with her friendship and later love. This, combined with the dead Cathy’s ongoing hold over Heathcliff’s psyche, is what makes Heathcliff finally give up on life, with his death bringing peace both to himself and to everyone he terrorized.

Last but not least, let’s discuss Cathy. No, she’s not portrayed as a good person, and yes, her sins are “punished” with brain fever and death. But still, it’s gratifying from a woman’s perspective to see the object of an imposing Byronic anti-hero’s love not be a delicate ingenue whom he controls, but an iron-willed firebrand whose passion equals his own and whom he gladly lets dominate him. And any claim that she’s worse than Heathcliff (as bad as, maybe, but worse?) or that she deserves no sympathy whatsoever smacks of misogyny. Her struggles are very relatable for women who feel torn between rebellion and conformity. This quote sums it up well: “I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free”.

As a child she was fully herself: wild, androgynous, barely distinguishable from Heathcliff. But it came at the price of disapproval from her stern father and servant caregivers, and later from her tyrannical brother, who viciously abused Heathcliff and tried to separate them. Then she discovered the world of the Lintons: wealth, status, beautiful clothes, good manners, kindness, affection. It’s so easy to condemn her as a “shallow gold-digger” for giving in to the lure of that world and choosing to marry Edgar instead of Heathcliff. But one glance over her great speeches should reveal that regardless of her other flaws, she’s not a shallow person. With her family and all of society holding up the Lintons and their lifestyle as superior, and when the only alternatives she sees are either staying under Hindley’s brutal thumb (again, remember: for a girl, marriage was the only escape) or starving in poverty as Heathcliff’s wife, it’s understandable that she should give in, even though it means betraying her true self, donning the mask of a proper lady, and rejecting her soul mate. Yet she always knows she really belongs with Heathcliff, not with Edgar, and she tries to have them both by maintaining her “friendship” with Heathcliff while married; before Heathcliff runs away and makes his own fortune, she even plans to help him by sharing Edgar’s wealth with him. But eventually and inevitably, the two men clash and her double life shatters. It’s not just the stress of the love triangle that causes her breakdown, but what it represents: her yearning for freedom while trapped in the confines of upper-class womanhood and knowing what she would loose if she were to choose one over the other. What woman hasn’t struggled with society’s demands of “proper” womanhood and felt torn between wanting to rebel and wanting the benefits of conforming? I don’t think any character who embodies that struggle as powerfully as Cathy can be labeled an anti-feminist character, no matter how deeply flawed she is or how tragically her story ends. The fact that it’s not her failure to be a proper lady that dooms her, but her choice to become one and deny her authentic, wild and androgynous self, can be seen as a particularly feminist statement.

Also, I respectfully disagree with the claim I’ve read that the only purpose of Cathy’s strong will and free spirit is to intoxicate Heathcliff. They’re essential to her entire personal character arc. None of the characters in this complex book are only written to serve another character’s development, male or female.

Is the book feminist in every way by modern standards? No. But does it still have many feminist qualities and themes? Does it speak powerfully to women and empower them in subtle ways? I think it absolutely does.

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