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today-only-happens-once · 7 years ago

Text

Fault Line

Title: Fault Line

Word count: 6477

Summary: When Patton had asked if being safe was enough, Virgil had agreed. But the truth and its consequences weigh heavy on everyone. Sequel to Fight or Flight. Platonic or pre-romantic Prinxiety, Platonic LAMP/CALM.

Warnings: angst and suffering abounds, so do feelings of guilt, brief cursing, nightmares, monsters, (repeated) description and discussion of major injury/trauma and intense pain, borderline overworking, panicking and panic attacks, Roman is insecure and has self-deprecating thoughts, nausea mention, Virgil is tense, Logan gives the expository speeches (and I love him for it), food mention, let me know if I forgot anything

A/N: The fic that never seemed ready to end. Yikes. This got way darker (and longer) than I thought it would? Everyone is suffering. Headcanons abound, Logan is long-winded, POV is played with, longest SS fic yet and I didn’t even cover absolutely everything? I think I like it but at this point idek, this might just be a hot mess. Edited by yours truly, so all mistakes are mine. *covers my eyes before posting, then hides*

Confused? Read Fight or Flight here!

Tags: @creativenostalgiastuff (Extra props for her help in brainstorming/problem solving with me for this fic), @helloisthisusernametaken, @ren-allen, @lizaelsparrow @princelogical, @random-pianist, @ravenclawicecream, @erlenmeyertrash, @milomeepit, @at-least-seven-pretty-potatoes, @rileyfirstname, @pinkeasteregg, @sassy-in-glasses, @vigilantvirgil, @generalfandomfabulousness, @lacrimosathedark, @lesbian-velociraptor (since you said you were interested!) @thepoolofthedead (only tagging you because its a continuation of that one fic you inspired.) Let me know if anyone ever wants to be tagged!

…

Virgil jolts awake with the taste of a shout dying on his tongue.

The memory of Roman’s pained scream still reverberates violently in his head against the abrupt silence of his room. His chest heaves with shuddering gasps. His purple t-shirt is soaked through with sweat, his bangs sticking to his forehead. He presses trembling hands against his eyes.

He breathes in for four seconds.

His barely-contained gasps.

He tries again. He breathes in for four seconds.

His shredded red sash.

He breathes in for—

The bloodstains on his white suit.

He breathes—

Roman crying out in pain.

Virgil kicks the blanket off of his legs and tumbles ungracefully out of the bed. He can hear his heartbeat thudding in his ears but it is still not enough to drown out the memories. The nightmares. A part of Virgil is begging him to run but he doesn’t know where because it’s inside of him, because you can’t out-run the memories inside your head.

Nevertheless, the urge to go somewhere anywhere anywhere but here is strong and before he’s even completely aware of what he’s doing, Virgil sinks out of his room.

When he rises back up, he’s got his eyes squeezed shut against the images flashing through his mind.

“Virgil?”

The Anxious Side’s breaths are still coming too quickly as he opens his eyes. French doors are left open so that a breeze blows through the white curtains and he realizes suddenly that he’s left his hoodie in his own room. He is open and exposed and this was a bad idea. Bad idea, bad idea, bad—

“Whoa. Virge.” The bed squeaks, followed by hurried footsteps against the hardwood.

Virgil feels hands on his shoulders and finally, slowly, looks up. Bare feet, red pajama pants, a thin white t-shirt. Loose strands of hair fall into wide, concerned eyes. Roman.

Safe. He’s safe. He’s okay.

Virgil sags a little in relief. He feels the grip tighten on his shoulders.

“Is something wrong?”

Virgil looks for a second into the Prince’s dark eyes, then down at the soft rise and fall of his (healed, he was healed) chest. The white t-shirt hugs his ribcage in a way that seems to Virgil such a stark contrast to the image of the bleeding slashes through his skin that was seared behind his eyes.

“N-no,” Virgil says, finding his voice just as Roman opens his mouth to speak again. “I’m sorry. I-I just…” He’s okay, he’s okay, he’s okay. Virgil runs a hand over his eyes. “Just had a bad dream. I don’t… know why I came here. Sorry.”

Roman had been sleeping. God knows he needed the rest after the quest, after fighting the monster and nearly… Virgil shouldn’t have bothered him, really. It had just been a dream. A memory at the most. A memory that has since passed. Didn’t matter now. Arbitrary, as Logan might call it.

“Virgil, wait—“

He sinks out before Roman can finish.

…

When Roman walks into the kitchen the following morning, Patton is surprisingly the only one there.

“Good morning, Padrè,” Roman says, not quite able to muster the usual sing-song flair he had most mornings. Virgil’s pale face and wide eyes the previous night were still ingrained on his mind.

“Morning, kiddo,” Patton greets with a warm smile. “How’d you sleep?” He hands a cup of coffee—already including Roman’s preferred ratio of cream and sugar—to the Prince.

Roman accepts it with a distracted but appreciative smile. “Virgil came to my room last night,” he says in lieu of answering Patton’s routine question. He takes a sip of coffee.

A crease appears between Patton’s eyebrows. “Was he okay?”

“I…” Roman pauses, looking down into his coffee mug. The knot in his stomach tightens a little. Virgil had seemed pretty torn up. Afraid. And though Roman was Creativity, it didn’t take much imagination to guess what exactly had been wrong. “He said he’d had a bad dream.”

“And you think it was about… what happened?”

What happened. Through the past couple of days since Roman and Virgil had returned, that was exactly how they’d all been talking about it. Or not talking about it, as the case may be. Roman remembers every moment of it all in startling high-definition, and from the Anxious Side’s constantly terrified gaze, he knew Virgil could as well. But talking about it…

What had happened was his fault. Roman knows this. It’s his fault that Virgil’s having nightmares that he won’t talk about. His fault that Patton hovers with questions pressing against his tongue. His fault that Logan had been hiding in his room ever since. His own fault that when he lies awake at night he can feel a ghostly whisper of the pain shred through his chest…

“Yeah, Pat,” Roman says, his voice unusually subdued. “I do.”

Patton is quiet for a moment, then sets his own mug on the counter with a quiet click. “How are you holding up?”

“Me? Totally Gucci.”

The Moral Side has a gentle, knowing look behind his glasses. “How are you really?”

The Prince swallows and averts his gaze. “I’m fine, Patton.”

“Well, I don’t believe that for a second.”

His jaw jumps. What does Patton expect him to say? Roman had been in danger before on quests, but not like that. He’d never… lost control of the mindscape, if that’s even what had happened. He’d never… almost…

And with Virgil there. He’d put Virgil in danger. He’d risked his life and Virgil’s and for what?

Listen to me. I don’t know about this. Virgil had been practically begging him to turn back. How had he responded? This is what I do, Virgil.

Though the coffee is saturated with cream and sugar, the Creative Side has a bitter taste in his mouth.

“Roman?”

The Prince shakes his head and forces a smile. “I’m just a bit tired. It’s nothing to worry about.” He clears his throat. Patton takes in a breath to reply, but Roman cuts him off. “Where’s our Microsoft Nerd?”

Patton gives him a quiet look at the less-than-subtle change in topic, but lets it slide. “I think Logan’s in his room again.” He looks at the stack of pancakes on the table. Roman hadn’t even noticed them when he’d walked in. “He should probably eat something.”

…

Virgil takes in a deep breath before rapping his knuckles lightly against Logan’s door. He shoves his hands into his pockets as he waits.

“Uh, come in,” Logan’s voice calls, distant and distracted. Virgil quietly opens the door and steps into the room, closing it behind him.

Logan’s bedroom is covered in a broad sea of open books. They lay open across his bed, his desk, the floor; nearly any flat surface of his room has either an open book or a stack of closed ones. Sticky-Notes and dog-eared pages mark the pages along with penciled notes scribbled in the margins of about half of them. Logan is sitting in a chair, his feet propped up on the desk with a pencil tucked behind his ear and another in his hand. A thick, leather-bound volume is open in his lap.

“Logan?”

The Logical Side glances up. His hair is a little mussed, and his blue tie is pulled slightly loose from his neck.

“Virgil,” he says with a note of surprise. He pulls his legs off the desk, his chair swiveling to face the Anxious Side more fully. “What can I do for you?”

Virgil scratches the back of his neck. “What, um, what are you working on?”

Logan glances around his room. “I am searching for information that may explain some of the… unusual events that have unfolded these past few days.”

Oh, Virgil thinks. He hesitates, unsure if knowing more would help him or just make everything worse. What was it that Logan had told Thomas once? If you’re afraid of being hurt, then seek knowledge. And Logan’s explanations usually did have a quite calming effect on Virgil. At least… most of the time.

“What have you found?” Virgil asks.

“Well,” Logan begins, nodding for Virgil to take a seat on the small space on his bed that wasn’t covered by books, “As we know, occupying space in any of our respective parts of Thomas’s mindscape can have unintended consequences on our processes, particularly if that space is not one in which we are accustomed to occupying.”

Virgil sits, watching as Logan marks the page open in his lap before closing the book and turning to grab another. “Uh…”

“Take, for example,” Logan continues, “When Roman, Patton, Thomas, and I all came to your room when you had elected to leave. Over a relatively short amount of time, Roman, Patton, and I began to feel the effects of your room with the outcome being increased sense of insecurity, emotionality, and urgency respectively.”

Virgil nods. “Okay…”

Logan thumbs through a smaller book as he keeps talking. “Similarly, the sense of nostalgia and emotionality of Patton’s room led to various effects on all of us. Frustration on my part, romanticization—forgive the pun—from Roman, and your stress increased from the sense of where Thomas might otherwise be in his life. Correct?”

Virgil offers a wry, humorless smile at the memory. It had been an important thing for them all to do, but a part of it had certainly been rough for Virgil. “You could say that.”

Logan nods, not looking up as his eyes scanned the pages of the text open in his hands. “Therefore, it stood to reason that I develop the hypothesis that Roman’s corner of the mindscape might also affect our processes.” Logan glances quickly at him through the lenses of his glasses. “Especially prolonged exposure, and particularly in your case.”

Virgil frowns. “Why particularly me?”

Logan quickly flips through a few more pages as he responds. “Granted, I don’t know anything for sure. This is all pure speculation based on what data I had available and the research I was able to accrue over the past few days.”

“Uh—“

“But,” Logan continues, oblivious to the skeptical eyebrow Virgil raises, “Virgil, though your processes are more complex than this mere overgeneralization, you largely are the manifestation of Thomas’ anxiety and fears. Correct?” Logan’s voice is patient and measured. Calming in a way.

“Yeah…” Virgil says slowly.

Logan looks up then, his brown eyes both curious and calculating as he locks gazes with Virgil. “May I ask you another question?”

Virgil nods his agreement, gesturing for Logan to continue.

“Would you say that your level of distress increased throughout the five days you spent in Roman’s realm?”

“I…” Virgil trails off as he thinks about it. Logan is right. His anxiety had gotten a lot worse throughout the journey. The process had been gradual and steady for the most part, and the Anxious Side had largely attributed it to just… who he was. But by the time he and Roman had reached the stairwell, every fiber of him was begging for them both to turn the other way and never look back.

“Yeah,” Virgil says after a moment. “It… it was definitely getting worse.”

Logan nods as if the information confirmed something for him. “Creativity, as an energy, can often have adverse effects on the fight-or-flight response. Such influence may, for example, lead to increased cognitive distortions regarding the perception of threats in particular. In doing so, the cycle of impact becomes self-perpetuating.”

Virgil tugs at the sleeve of his hoodie as he turns over Logan’s words in his head. “What does that mean?”

Logan closes the book and looks carefully at the other Side. “In simple terms, your anxiety was heightened because the Creative energy that saturates Roman’s corner of the mindscape encouraged you to perceive increasingly worse threats, increasing your fight or flight response, which therefore worsen the perception of the threat, and so on.”

Virgil nods thoughtfully. So Creativity is what made his anxiety so much worse. That makes sense. “Okay, so that’s why I was more… on edge than normal. But there’s still something I don’t quite understand.”

Logan arches an eyebrow in piqued interest. “Hm?”

Virgil shakes his head, keeping his eyes on the hem of his sleeve as he pinches and pulls it between his fingertips. “Roman’s mindscape was rough on me. That’s fine. But it doesn’t exactly explain… what happened. Why would he…” He swallows, his voice dying in his throat.

A crease appears between Logan’s brows. “Why would he what, Virgil?”

Virgil sighs, shoving his hands back into his pockets again. “I…” Virgil can hear the hisses and shrieks of the monster whispering in his ear and fights back a shudder. He swallows hard. “Roman still has control over his realm, right? Everything in it… he created?”

What did it mean that Roman created the monster that nearly killed him? Did he think it would be some kind of sick joke? Did his ego just get the best of him that he finally created something bigger and stronger than he was? Why would he let it get so out of hand?

“Well,” Logan says slowly, “I think it may be more complicated than that.”

“What?”

The Logical Side snaps the book in his hands closed and sets it aside. He adjusts the frame of his glasses. “I arrived at the self-perpetuation hypothesis the night after your return. The rest of my research has been seeking to address the very question you’ve just posed.”

“And?”

Logan purses his lips, casting a furtive glance at Virgil. “I may have a theory, but I am lacking some… data sets that would be pertinent in either proving or disproving my current hypothesis.”

Virgil’s eyes flash up to meet his. “You want me to tell you what happened.”

“It… would be helpful, Virgil,” Logan says, his voice a bit softer. “And I think it might be beneficial for you as well.”

The impossibly-strong shadow. It’s hisses in Virgil’s ears as it wrestles for the sword. Roman screaming as its talons shred—

“No,” Virgil says.

“Virge—,” Logan tries, but Virgil is already on his feet.

“I said no, Logan,” he snaps. “Besides, what happened doesn’t matter. It’s over.”

“I—“

Virgil sinks out of the room.

…

Roman stands on the balcony overlooking the broad landscape of his realm. The wide expanse of sky is a flat gray, with darker clouds looming on the horizon. The rolling hills in the distance cast long shadows. The usually light breeze has sharpened to a harsh wind that tugs ominously at his red sash and the strands of his hair. Before, Roman could stand on this balcony overlooking his corner of the mindscape and feel that excited thrill rush through his stomach at all of the adventures yet to be embarked on, all the foes to yet vanquish, the performances yet to be acted.

But now…

Roman sighs and hangs his head, his hands beginning to shake slightly before he tightens his grip around the iron railing.

Now the thought of venturing any further than this balcony leaves him with a dizzying sense of paralyzing fear and faint nausea. Roman still isn’t entirely clear on what exactly happened, but somehow he’d… lost control of the mindscape. The one place where he was definitely supposed to have it. He didn’t always win every battle, but even when he didn’t, he had never almost… died, as a result.

Thunder rumbles in the distance.

He should have listened to Virgil. How could you be so stupid?

But Virgil had been watching him so closely the entire quest. And on occasion, when Roman bested a small beast or found a solution to a problem along the way, he’d see the way Virgil’s eyes would widen slightly, the corner of his mouth turned upwards a fraction. And Roman—with a warmth swelling in his chest—felt for once like maybe someone could be proud of him.

But Roman always had to push it too far, didn’t he? Always had to be Too Much, couldn’t stand to just be Enough.

So when Virgil urged Roman to turn back, the Prince refused. The Prince was no coward—the Prince couldn’t stand to think someone might think of him that way. Not when he’d seen the look he could convince himself was pride in Virgil’s eyes.

This is what I do, Virgil, he’d said. Roman sees lightning streak brightly across the sky as he realizes with a sickening sort of clarity that there was still a truth to the words.

Because that it is what he does, isn’t it? He dives recklessly headfirst into fights, consequences be damned. Except in this case, ‘consequences’ really meant Virgil. Roman had fought and lost and it was Virgil who saved him. When Virgil had rammed into it, tearing it off of him despite its impossible strength, Roman knew he would never again see that pride and trust that Virgil had placed in him so carefully.

Roman stays standing on the balcony even as the rain pours down hard and heavy around him.

…

“Kiddo?”

Virgil is sitting in small nook by the window in the mindscape commons with his hood pulled up, but he pulls the earbuds out of his ears when he hears Patton’s voice. The Moral Side is giving him a soft inquisitive smile, holding two mugs in his hands. Patton hands one to him. It’s tea.

“Mind if I join ya?” Patton asks.

“Uh, sure,” Virgil says, pulling his knees up closer as he accepts the drink. Patton sits across from him, taking a quiet sip.

For a moment, the two sit in companionable silence. Virgil inhales the scent of the tea—lavender and cinnamon, he notices—and feels, for the first time in a very long time, the tight knots in his stomach loosen just a little. The mindscape is unusually quiet. Although, Virgil figures that had probably been true for the past few days. He doesn’t know for sure. He’d been spending a lot of time alone, not wanting to bother any of the other Sides.

“I’ve missed this,” Patton says softly, as if reading Virgil’s thoughts. Startled, Virgil looks up. Patton’s smile is soft, but there’s a sadness in his eyes that makes Virgil’s heart sink.

“Pat, I…”

Patton shakes his head. “I didn’t say it to make you feel bad, kiddo.” He takes another sip of tea. “A Dad just worries about his kids.”

Virgil averts his gaze, opting instead to swallow some of the warm drink. “I… I’m sorry.”

“You did nothing wrong, Virgil,” Patton tells him gently.

Virgil stares at the tea bag floating in his cup. There’s a beat of silence between them.

He hears Patton take in a deep and not wholly-steady breath. When he looks up, the smile the Moral Side offers doesn’t reach his eyes. Patton lifts a shoulder. “It was scary, though. When you both came back.”

Virgil’s grip tightens around his mug. The lump in his throat hardens slightly.

Patton’s soft, quiet voice floats in the air between them. “You were both hurt. You were bleeding a little, but I don’t think you even noticed. Roman was… very seriously injured. I’ll never forget the look in your eyes, Virge. I’ll never forget the look in Roman’s either. Both of you were terrified out of your minds.”

The edges of Virgil’s vision starts to blur with tears. He blinks a few times, but doesn’t lift his gaze from the steam curling up from his mug.

“You were both trying so hard to stay calm for each other, but I saw—could feel—how afraid you both were. When I asked you if it was enough that you were both safe, you told me it was. But… I don’t think that’s true, kiddo. Not really.”

Yes, it is. It’s enough. It’s all in the past. Virgil takes in a breath to argue exactly that, but the air trembles and catches in his lungs.

“Virgil, honey, look at me,” Patton requests softly and gently. It takes Virgil a long moment before he lets his brown eyes flicker up to Patton’s.

“It’s okay if it’s not enough,” Patton tells him as he reaches a hand and brushes Virgil’s bangs slightly out of his eyes. “But take it from someone who has a lot of experience in it when I tell you that you can’t keep bottling it up. You can’t, Virgil. We aren’t supposed to hold pain so closely.”

Virgil feels his vision blur again and he quickly brushes the sleeve of his hoodie across his eyes. He struggles to find words in the torrent sea of thoughts that press in the back of his mind. “I…” His voice catches but he forces the words out in a whisper. “I can’t.”

“Why not, Virge?”

“Because… because…” Virgil clenches his jaw for a moment. “It’s too much, Patton. It’s… It’s all my fault. I feel like it’s all my fault, and I don’t know what to do.”

“Oh, kiddo,” Patton says with a sad smile. “You’re not the only one. But you don’t have to do anything. Just talk to one of us.”

“I don’t…” Want to burden you.

Patton seems to read his thoughts. “This is something we shoulder together. I’m not going to force you to talk about it right now, kiddo, but please talk to someone soon. I’m always around, any time day or night. So is Logan. So is Roman.”

When he glances up, he sees the warm sincerity and tinge of concern in Patton’s dark eyes. Virgil swallows and nods. “Okay.”

…

Roman stands at the door to Logan’s room. He sighs as he runs a hand through his hair. It’s some ungodly hour at night—Roman hadn’t bothered to check the clock—and it’s more likely than not that Logan is asleep. It’s hardly like this is urgent. Roman doesn’t even know why he found himself padding quietly through the mindscape to stop at the Logical Side’s door.

He shakes his head, and is about turn away when he hears a quiet thud and Logan’s unmistakable, muttered cursing.

At least he’s already awake, right? Roman tells himself, before knocking quietly.

“Hm? Come in,” Logan’s voice replies. Roman cracks the door open before entering the room fully and letting the door close behind him. Logan is leaning down to pick a book up as the Creative Side steps into the room. “Roman. I must admit, you were not who I was expecting.”

Roman forces a smile. “Sorry to disappoint you, Specs.”

Logan’s gaze narrows almost imperceptibly. “Quite the contrary. I merely meant to convey surprise.” He straightens up with the book in his hands.

Roman glances around the room. There are more books and scribbled notes visible than there is carpet or bedding. “What’s all this for?”

Logan sets the book in his hands on top of a stack of them at the corner of his desk. “Research.” He glances quickly at the Creative Side. “I don’t mean to make you feel unwelcome, Roman, but did you come here with a specific purpose in mind?”

Roman doesn’t answer right away. How is he supposed to explain to Logan that he’d been lying in his canopy bed, staring at the ceiling, and feeling the echo of a brilliant and intense pain slice through his chest before deciding he just couldn’t take it anymore?

He lifts a shoulder. “A Prince can’t check on his subjects once in a while?”

Logan looks unconvinced. “Roman, it is nearly 3 in the morning. Most are sleeping at this hour.”

“You’re awake too, you know.”

“Doing research,” Logan rejoins simply. “I have stated my purpose. Besides, you are still recovering. Substantial rest is optimal for healing.”

“I’m fine, Logan.”

“Falsehood.” Logan levels a steady, unflinching gaze at the Prince.

Roman averts his gaze. “I just couldn’t sleep, okay? And I thought Patton’s room would probably be the wrong choice, and Virgil is having enough problems sleeping without me waking him up, and I noticed you were already awake, so I just… I thought…” What? Roman doesn’t even know what he was thinking, really.

Logan looks at him thoughtfully for a moment. “Have you frequently been having trouble falling asleep?” He moves towards his bed, marking the open pages before folding the books closed and stacking them on top of one another on the bookshelf beside his bed.

“I…” Roman blinks hard for a moment. “I guess,” he admits quietly.

“When did it start?”

“After.”

“I think—” Logan turns to face him, his words careful and measured—“it would be beneficial for you to name it and talk about it.”

The Creative Side shakes his head adamantly, feeling a flash of frustration heat his face. The words spill out of his mouth before he can think to stop them. “Why? Why does talking about it matter so much? I already spend every waking moment thinking about it, Logan, so why do I have to speak it aloud. It’s already too–,” Painful. Roman snaps his jaw shut, but he has already said too much.

As good as Logan is at keeping his expression neutral the majority of the time, the surprise is evident on his face. “You feel guilty?”

Roman scoffs, throwing his hands up. “Of course I do! How could I not?” He points a finger towards Logan’s door. “Patton hasn’t had a real smile in days because of me. You’ve been drowning yourself in research because of me. Virgil has nightmares every night because of me.”

“Roman—,”

“I lost control of my own corner of the mindscape, Logan,” Roman continues. The edges of his vision start to blur and he blinks hard to clear it. “I’ve never not known what was in the mindscape when I embark on quests, but this time…” His hands ball into fists at his side. “I lost control of it. What does that say about me, huh? Can’t even contain my own creations. I put Virgil in danger. I…”

Logan’s brows pull together. “Wait. What do you mean you ‘lost control of the mindscape’?”

Roman sighs. “I… Virgil and I got locked in a cave and there was this… shadow beast. I didn’t create it, Logan. I… had no idea what it was.” But he remembers it vividly. Its not-quite humanness, the way it shrieked and hissed and moved impossibly fast. It’s raw strength squeezing at his throat. Throwing him through the air without even touching him. Shredding through his chest with a searing, blinding pain—

Logan frowns. “That seems… improbable.”

“I know what I s–!”

“No, you misunderstand,” Logan says quickly, holding up a hand. “I didn’t mean to accuse you of fabricating a falsehood. Merely that this is new information. What you just described is… odd. I assume that this ‘shadow beast’, as you called it, is the perpetrator of the injuries you sustained?”

Roman swallows and nods hollowly. “Yeah.”

Logan hums thoughtfully before grabbing a notebook off of the desk and pulling the pencil from behind his ear. “So somehow, something that you did not create existed within your realm, interacted with you directly, with the ability and intention to cause tremendous trauma.” As he speaks, Logan scrawls messily on the page.

“Uh, yes. I-I guess you could phrase it that way.”

“And this has never happened before?”

Roman peers closer at the page, taking a step towards the Logical Side. Logan’s handwriting is too messy and the Prince is too tired to decipher it upside down. “That would be correct.”

“Then what is the variable here?” Logan mutters, mostly to himself. “Thomas is in perfect health, so that isn’t it…” His gaze flies back up to Roman. “Would you say that there was anything unusual about this particular quest? Anything out of the ordinary?”

The Creative Side scratches the back of his head, confused about Logan’s sudden change of demeanor. “Nothing comes to mind. Well, aside from Virgil’s accompaniment, of course.”

Logan stares at him for a moment. “Of course,” he says softly. Something alights in his eyes. “Of course! How did I not see it before?” He spins around suddenly and starts shifting books his desk around before grabbing a notebook—different than the one he had in his hands—and thumbing through the notes.

“Um, Logan?”

“The self-perpetuation hypothesis. The relationship of reciprocity is vastly more complicated that I’d first thought.”

“In English?”

The corner of Logan’s mouth quirks up in a small self-assured smile. His bright eyes rise and lock onto Roman. “Virgil was the variable.”

…

Virgil pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. The light leaking out from under Logan’s door meant the Logical Side was probably already awake, right? Virgil’s heart is still thudding in his chest with the nightmare-induced adrenaline that he can’t seem to shake out of his system. The Anxious Side pulls the sleeves of his hoodie over his palms. He knocks softly, then hears voices on the other side.

“—ination of the conflicting processes, combined with the creation-driven tendencies of your realm, resulted in the corporeal form.” Logan.

“Wait.” Roman. Virgil is almost certain. “So Virgil was influencing the mindscape? That’s why that… thing showed up?”

“Perhaps an oversimplification, but yes, precisely.” Logan’s voice, getting louder as he—presumably—crosses the room towards the door.

Virgil’s stomach hits the floor.

He’d known it was his fault, of course, but there is still something faintly sickening at hearing the very person he’d failed to protect and the literal Voice of Reason confirm his guilt. He had been influencing the mindscape. Roman’s realm.

Roman hadn’t created that thing. Virgil had.

That corporeal shadow that had sunk it’s talons into Roman’s chest and ripped through his skin had been because of him.

The memory of Roman’s scream floods his mind. You did that to him.

Virgil can’t breathe.

The door opens, but Virgil’s mind is swimming—drowning, really—in the repeated mantra he can’t shake. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault.

“Virgil?”

“Shit. Virge, it’s okay—“

It’s not it’s not it’s not

He bolts.

…

Roman shoulders his way past the Logical Side as Virgil runs down the hallway back towards his room. “Virgil!” But the Anxious Side is gone already. Roman rakes a hand through his hair and blows out a breath. He spins around to face Logan, his eyes wide.

Logan’s eyes are unusually solemn. He nods in the direction that Virgil had gone.

Roman wastes no time, rushing down the hall after the Anxious Side. His strides are long and hurried, and he nearly crashes into Patton as the Moral Side steps out of his own room in his cat onesie.

“Whoa there, kiddo,” Patton says, grabbing the Prince’s shoulders to steady him as he stumbles to a halt. “Where are you off to in such a rush at this hour?”

Roman’s gaze is focused over Patton’s head. “Virgil,” he says, shrugging out of his grip.

“Wait. Roman, slow down,” Patton says, frowning, “What’s wrong with Virge?”

Roman barely hears the question. Logan speaks up for him. “I believe Virgil overheard Roman and I discussing the events of the past few days and now feels responsible for what transpired.”

“I have to—,” Roman tries, but Patton interrupts him.

“What did you say?”

“I don’t know how much he heard,” Logan replies, his voice subdued in the dark. “But given his reaction, I’m almost certain he did not hear all of it. I was merely explaining to Roman that the energy produced by his realm entered in a relationship of reciprocity that worsened exponentially until conflating into something corporeal due to the particular tendencies of Roman’s—”

“Another time, Logan,” Roman snaps before he can think. Virgil’s huge eyes and faintly nauseous look is all he can think about.

Patton sighs. “I’ll talk to him.”

“No,” Roman says suddenly, tearing his gaze away from down the hall to settle squarely on the paternal Side. “I… Thank you, Patton, but I think this is something I have to do.”

…

Virgil’s breaths are coming short and quick. He yanks the hood up over his head and tugs on the drawstrings as he paces in his room. Your fault, your fault, your fault. Virgil feels like screaming. If only he could find his voice.

He hears the quiet whoosh behind him and his heart constricts in alarm. He clenches his jaw. He doesn’t need to turn around to tell who it is. “Roman, what are you doing?” he demands. “It’s not safe for you in here.”

“I just—“

“Get out,” he grits behind clenched teeth.

“Virgil, just talk to me—“

Virgil scoffs and shakes his head. “Damn it, Roman—”

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Virge.”

Virgil whirls on him. “Didn’t do anything wrong? Didn’t do anything wrong?! I’m supposed to protect you! That’s my job, Roman! And I-I-I…” Virgil’s voice shakes. His chest heaves. “Not only did I fail, but I put you in danger. I nearly killed you! That’s on me.”

“No, hey.” Roman grabs his hand and presses it firmly in the center of his chest. Virgil tries to pull it away like it burns him but Roman holds it steady. Virgil can feel his heartbeat thudding hard and fast against his palm. “You feel that? That’s because of you. Because you saved me.”

“Roman—“

“Listen to me, Virgil,” Roman implores. The desperate earnestness in his voice makes Virgil look up. His protests die on his tongue at the tears pressing against the Prince’s eyes. “I shouldn’t have brought you into my realm in the first place, and I absolutely should have listened to you when you wanted to turn back. You were right, Virgil. And you were doing everything you could to protect me. And I am so sorry that I couldn’t see that.”

Virgil shakes his head, opening his mouth only to find no words forming.

Roman squeezes Virgil’s hand to his chest a little harder. “I… that monster was the manifestation of your anxiety at its worst. Every nightmare and fear you’d ever had, staring you in the face. And when you were confronted with fight or flight, you chose the first one. At great risk to yourself. For me. You found the strength to overcome it, to fight back, to… I…” His voice catches. He shakes his head, blinking a few times as a tear or two spill over. “You are so brave, Virgil.”

Virgil’s hand fists in Roman’s shirt against his chest. “But… I… it wouldn’t have even been necessary if I hadn’t—“

“This,” Roman cuts in, squeezing his hand against his heartbeat, “is the only thing you should feel responsible for.”

Virgil can feel a sob fighting up his throat as his vision blurs, and he does his best to swallow it down. He squeezes his eyes shut, sending a few of the pooling tears down his cheeks.

“I’m so sorry, Virge. Pulling you into my realm… it caused you tremendous distress. Bad enough to actually take a physical form due to the creation tendencies of my realm. That’s…” The Prince’s voice catches slightly. “I can’t ever forgive myself for putting you through that.”

Virgil shakes his head quickly. He looks up into the other Side’s soft, pained gaze. “No, I… Roman, you didn’t know. Nobody did. And you told me I could turn back whenever I wanted to. You can’t blame yourself for that.”

“You said it yourself, Virge,” Roman says. “You’re the protector. So long as I was going to press on, so were you. I should have known that. I should have listened to you, in the very least.”

Virgil wipes at his eyes, ignoring the way the makeup smeared across his fingers. “Why didn’t you?” he asks quietly.

Roman averts his gaze, then closes his eyes. “I…” He sighs, then shrugs helplessly. “I just… I didn’t want you to think I was a coward.”

Virgil feels something deflate inside his chest. “Did you think I was a coward for wanting to turn back?”

“Of course not!” Roman argues vehemently, his eyes flying back to Virgil’s. “That’s not what I meant. I just…”

“Then what?”

“I wanted to feel like you were proud of me!”

From the way the Prince’s eyes widen, he hadn’t meant to say it. His eyes flicker over Virgil’s face, and the Anxious Side isn’t sure what his expression is. He doesn’t know what Roman finds in his face, but the Creative Side squeezes his eyes shut a moment later. Virgil watches a few tears spill down his cheeks.

“For once,” the Prince whispers, “I just… wanted to make someone proud.”

“Roman…” Virgil says, his heart constricting at the look on Roman’s face even as confusion knits his eyebrows together, “I’ve always been proud of you.”

“I… what?” Roman’s eyes open suddenly, locking squarely onto the Anxious Side.

“I’ve always been proud of you,” Virgil repeats with conviction. “I mean, geez, Roman, you’re Thomas’s hopes and dreams. His creativity. Without you, I…. I don’t know where we’d be.”

Roman is shaking his head. Virgil presses on. “All of the obstacles we’ve overcome… you’re a big part of that. I may point out what the obstacles are, but you’re what pushes Thomas to work to overcome them regardless. You give so much of yourself every time Thomas makes new content. You thrust yourself into the spotlight again and again. I couldn’t do that, ever. Of course I’m proud of you, Sir Sing-a-Lot. We all are.”

Roman laughs, but it sounds a lot more like a sob. “I’m sorry.”

Virgil shakes his head. His voice catches in his throat. He coughs and tries again. “So am I.”

The faintest hint of a smile tugs at the corner of Roman’s mouth. “We’re both a bit of a mess, huh?”

Virgil barks out a laugh, even as he feels Roman brush a tear with the pad of his thumb. “Yeah, we kind of are.”

“I just…” Roman brushes at his own eyes. “I just wish I could fix it. I wish I knew how.”

He looks up at the Prince in front of him, stripped of his normal attire, looking abruptly vulnerable and exposed in just red pajama pants and a white t-shirt. His eyes are dark, the beginnings of eyeshadow only emphasizing the fact. He’s exhausted, and scared, and it makes Virgil equally aware of his own mutual feelings of tiredness and fear.

Virgil focuses for just a moment on the thudding rhythm against his hands.

“Y’know,” he says slowly, “a Prince once said the only direction to go is forward, one step at a time.”

Roman’s chest expands under Virgil’s hand with a deep, steadying breath. The Anxious Side breathes with him.

“I think,” Virgil continues softly, “that’s a good place to start.”

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blarfkey · 3 years ago

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Writing Tag Game

I've been tagged by like ten people for this so thank you everyone who tagged me! @redinkofshame, @cartadwarfwithaheartofgold, @kunstpause Consider yourself tagged if you see it and like it.

How many works do you have on Ao3?

38!

What's your total Ao3 wordcount?

702,253. I would love for it to be more but I am a slow writer lol

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

1. Woodstock 83 --3480 Kudos

Xmen fic set after Apocalypse where Peter keeps getting these golden opportunities to tell Magneto/Erik that he's his son, and keeps chickening out at the last minute.

I know I wasn't the only one who walked out of that movie theater pissed that Peter came so close to admitting this secret since the previous movie and never did, so I wrote a fix it.

2. The Sun Will Shine When Morning Comes -- 2567 Kudos

The sequel to Woodstock 83, told in Magneto's POV where he's coming to terms with being a father while he cares for his sick son. This is probably my fav X-Men fic I've ever written because I loved having these two figure out what their father/son relationship would be like long after Peter has grown up and how Erik has wanted a child again but doesn't know how to process having one.

3. Jail Break -- 2488 kudos

The first Peter & Magneto fic I ever wrote and the first fic I ever published! This takes place post Days of Future Past and it shows how Magneto could have found out that Peter was his son and build that reluctant connection. Peter has a lot of freaking out about whether or not he wants to accept a supervillain as his father.

4. Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right -- 2396 Kudos

The third part of the series Jail Break Started. For some reason this is the most popular one shot in the series. In it, Peter has a huge fight with Magneto and then gets kidnapped by The Bad Guys and doesn't think his dad will come bail him out. But of course he does! And murders everyone in the compound to do it.

5. Two Lonely Souls in a Fish Bowl -- 2361 Kudos

The direct sequel to Jail Break where Magneto keeps showing up in the dead of night to visit Peter as they both figure out how they want this weird parent relationship to be.

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Always! Even if it takes me a while. I love the interaction and I want people to feel noticed and appreciated.

What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

Um, i don't really like angst. I think it would be Spark Me Up for Xmen. Professor X/Magneto angst with my first ever written smut. It was a remix of another person's fic for an exchange and they had an angsty ending so I kept it.

What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending?

The last installment in the Jail Break/Come Together Series -- Shine On You Crazy Diamond. In it, Peter's little sister Wanda comes into her powers and they go through a lot of pain before she settles into them. It ends with Peter's mom coming to stay with them and her, Peter, Wanda, Erik, and Charles becoming one big family. I've had several people tell me it made them cry lol.

Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the craziest one you've written?

I'll write something like a set of characters from one fandom in the set up/premise of another fandom/piece of media. Like Dear Fen'harel is a crossover of Dragon Age with an old book called Dear Daddy Long Legs. But I don't combine different universes of different fandoms, it's too weird for me and I can't buy into it.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

took over and finished. We have an AU in our plans but so many other fics keep getting in the way! Sort of? I wrote the first part of a Solas/Maria/Varric series that@cartadwarfwithaheartofgold

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

I did receive a weird, angry message on one of my Xmen fics because they didn't like a fight that had happened between two characters but didn't read till the end to see it resolved so the bitched at me for the fact that the fight was mean? Which made no sense. But other than that, nope.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Yes! Though it's not as much as my non-smut. I didn't write smut for so many years because I didn't think I knew how. I tried to write some out a few years ago and kept it to myself until one of my tumblr friends read it and said it was really good! So shout out to @salexectria, you're the reason why I write and publish smut!

I write all kinds of smut, from dub con to vanilla, from f/f, m/m, and ace spectrum characters. Its all about the characters and what would fit them/the situation more than it is about a specific type of sex.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

If I have, I don't know about it.

What's your all time favourite ship?

Ummmmmm, that's hard. I don't think I have an all time favorite. I will say that Charles/Erik (Professor X/Magneto) was my first ever "otp" that I got completely obsessed with. Actually, I have never been that obsessed with another pairing. I write pairings that I enjoy or that I want to see a certain dynamic from, but that doesn't make them my favorite above all others.

I do really love Solas/Cadash and I prefer Solas rare pairs like Solas/Dorian, Solas/Cassandra, and Solas/Josephine over Solavellan.

What's a WIP you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

I will never not finish a WIP. I hate it when it happens, even though I know IRL gets in the way, but it's so frustrating for me as a reader. So I will finish all my fics. However, I am very slow and very busy so it may take a while.

What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue and character voice. I also am really good at developing friendships and platonic bonds or the slow burn get-to-know-you part of a romance. Apparently I write good smut, though its very hard for me lol.

What are your writing weaknesses?

Descriptions and transitions and pacing.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

The only thing that bothers me is if they never put in a translations somewhere and you have to just kind of guess. I don't care about reading something in another language and having a footnote or a note at the end of the chapter. I do it all the time in DF. I do think that putting "said in {insert language here}" is a bit of a cop out.

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

The first ever fandom I wrote for and never published was Harry Potter at 13. I wrote a story about a muggle neighbor who had to emergency babysit the baby Weasleys and was shocked by the magic. But I tried to submit it to a website that only published fic by application and it didn't get in and I was like "whatever, I'll just read fic" and then didn't touch fanfic again until I was . . .24 or 25 lol. I mostly focused on my original fiction.

What's your favourite fic you've written?

I can't possibly have one favorite. I do really love my Peter fics, especially The Sun Will Shine When Morning Comes. I love my ACO fic with Apollo!Alkibiades. I love my Solas/Cassandra friendship fic Time Does Not Bring Relief. And I love Dear Fen'harel, of course, because it has so many things I wanted to change for Solavellan or didn't find, as well as a good analysis of myself and how I deal with anger and sorrow and homesickness, ect. through Ellana.

#asks #fanfic #writing #dear fenharel

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evangelene · 5 years ago

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Despite What You Are (4)

Summary: Vampires don’t feed on blood, they feed on fear. So, why is yours so potent? Why were you saved by the most dangerous of all vampires–Kim Namjoon?

Based on this request:

“Can i ask for a ff where namjoon is a vampire mafia boss and has a spft spot for you. And you get into trouble woth a rival gang and he goes crazy? Fluffy and angsty 🌹”

Part One / Part Two/ Part Three / Part Five

“So, what do you think?”

Seokjin stood proud, as if he had just made the discovery of a lifetime. In reality, all he had really done was walk outside to find a shed that looked far less like a livable plot of land and more like a busted maid’s quarters from the expired centuries past. Once more, you were infinitely curious as to what sort of complex this place had been before the War of 2048.

It didn’t help that the shed/hillbilly-cannibal prep station was surrounded by a thick grove of trees that shouldn’t be there but were anyways.

Kind of like you.

Funny how one could relate to some moss, bark and leaves.

Despite the lackluster appearance of your soon-to-be hospital, you couldn’t really complain (much). After all, you were finally allowed to go outside! How great!

It would have been nicer if you didn’t have to have a guard within arm’s reach of you at all times. Oh, and you definitely weren’t allowed within twenty feet of the story and half tall fences—despite them being stronger than a vampire and capped with barbed wire.

Apparently, one of Jisung’s gang (clan? You guessed it was a clan now?) had the ability to teleport.

They wouldn’t tell you what Jisung’s ability was though…probably because he didn’t have one before he walked out and became clan leader.

“It’s just a small clan. They will be crushed easily.”

The boys had tried to persuade you, but there was something entirely unsettling about how absolutely quiet Namjoon had been in the corner, his eyes lost in space somewhere out the window.

Comforting, especially to a human who jumped when the wind rustled the leaves in the trees a bit too rough for her liking.

“Y/N.”

You jolted your attention back to Seokjin, giving him the weakest yeahtotallywasn’tscaredatall smile you could manage. “It’s great.”

With a deep sigh and a roll of his eyes, he yanked open the door to the shed; it look like it required muscle—even for a vampire (you blamed it on the fact that nature looked like it had tried to glue it shut with some unholy substance). “Just take a look inside, would you?”

So…the inside was even worse than the outside, which was saying a lot since the roof looked like it was about to slide off the structure entirely. As you stepped up, you were surprised to find that your foot didn’t immediately crack through the rotting wood; however, that didn’t prevent you from having to hopscotch around already existing holes, rat shit, and poisonous smelling black mold. The place itself was dusty and unkempt to the point that it screamed “disease.” But, you know, you were fine with it.

As far as you were concerned, it was far enough away from the main complex building and it wouldn’t allow any vampires to access any of the fear you may exude. Another plus: it had a sink so Seokjin could like…you know…sanitize things? You didn’t really know much about medical shit, which was probably why you were on your deathbed months ago.

Yay for you being a helpful and self-sufficient human being.

“I mean, we can make it good.”

Seokjin chuckled. “Of course I will make it acceptable. I am aware of how easily humans fall ill—I won’t allow it to be anything but sterile.” You sent a look over your shoulder that had Seokjin frowning. “Are you doubting my abilities now, of all times?”

“I’ve seen you heal, not clean. Besides, what are you going to do? Vacuum the spores from the air?”

“It will need to be aired out for a bit anyways—speaking of that, you should probably get out of there for now.”

You were on the same level as a feline and therefore gave no fucks for the vampire who could easily yank you out by your pinkie if he so chose to. Instead, you used the sleeve of your sweatshirt to dust off the one and only table in the shed; surprisingly, the furniture itself wasn’t nearly as compromised as the actual foundation of the building.

“Y/N. Out.”

“Woof.” You glared at him from your musty seclusion, slowly parkouring your way back out the door and onto semi-solid grass.

He seemed to age in that moment, even though vampires really…don’t…they just kinda die looking hot and young and shit. How nice. You blamed it on the poor man having to deal with your constant bullshit.

But, then again, if you had to listen to his puns then he had to put up with your tantrums.

“So it’s just going to sit there for a week or whatever while you guys go off and do your dangerous top secret mission?”

“Pretty much.”

“You know, I really hate secrets.”

He let out a bark of a laugh, his hand placed between your shoulderblades in order to guide you forward—well aware that you’d already taken a spill once already (stupid tree root) and had a 99.9 percent chance of repeating your mistakes. “You’re one to talk with the one you’re keeping.”

“He keeps far more than I do. It’s not fair.” You frowned at the ground, keeping your gaze cast down in order to prevent a sequel to the greatest fall of the century. “I prefer transparency; I’ve had enough secrecy in my life.”

“You are still useful, Y/N.”

A shudder ran its way up your spine.

“He has reasons for keeping things from you. You are not ready to see him feed; you are not ready to learn what he does when he’s away from you. The missions he does--the business he conducts--you are far more fragile than we are.”

“I’m not a fucking flower.”

“Physically, you may be able to handle more than we suspect; but, do remember, you had just jumped out of your skin due to naturally occurring wind. Would you be able to hold yourself back at the visual of a human being tortured in front of you?”

You pressed your lips into a line.

The tip of the tree hung down from his chest, broken by the impact of his body crashing backwards into it—despite the thick material of his vest and jacket. Human bodies contained so much blood, why didn’t you ever realize that before?

“So?” You dug your nails into your palms. “If it concerns me, then why can’t I know these things? You all are no better than humans.”

“You’re insulting yourself.”

“I’m good at self-deprecating humor.” You sighed, dropping your defense mechanism for the moment—but only the singular moment. “You know what I mean.”

“I do. Sometimes, your own species can be your worst enemy.”

There was a prolonged pause between the two of you, both of you walking in tandem but somehow still so far away from the other that you could have been on different planets.

“Part of me hopes that you’ll fail.” You murmured. “Part of me would rather go out like that—no pain and put under anesthesia. It’s easy. And then I wouldn’t have to…I wouldn’t…”

“There are bigger secrets you’re keeping from him than this one.” Seokjin didn’t word it as a question, as if he already knew everything swimming around the stagnant pool of thought in your head—he probably did. You briefly remember someone mentioning that he grew up with humans.

It wouldn’t surprise you if his emotions developed in a similar fashion to your own.

“I started to become more human being surrounded by vampires. Is that weird?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a rhetorical question you asshole, let me finish.” But he was repressing his laughter and you were huffing on a smirk as you cleared the trees. “I don’t want to feel those things anymore—I don’t want to remember what it’s like to be human, not when nothing good can come of it; not when there’s a chance I could lose it.” You paused at the door to the compound, soaking in the rays of sunlight while you still could. “Promise me you’ll bring him back safe.”

“He’s stronger than any enemy we could face out there, Y/N.” But he didn’t promise you, and that alone was enough for your stomach to constrict in the most unpleasant way. You could feel Seokjin’s gaze on the side of your face as you closed your eyes and faced the sun. Part of you hoped that the sun would smite you where you stood so you could escape everything—however, while you were fearful of living, you were even more terrified of death. “You love him, don’t you?”

“Denied.” You murmured without a second though, the metaphorical doors to your heart slamming shut so quickly it almost felt like you were shot point-blank in the chest. “I refuse to love something that can’t love me back. I can’t lose anything more in this life. I can’t lose him, and I can’t tell him that I can’t lose him. I can’t love him, and I can’t tell him that I can’t love him.”

“You are overcomplicating things, Y/N.”

You opened your eyes, squinting through the sun to meet Seokjin’s gaze. “I think that’s the one thing I’m truly good at.”

~.~

Namjoon refused to explain any part of his “mission” to you. And yes you totally put air-quotes and a stupid face to the word mission. To you, it seemed like bullshit; to you, it seemed like he was out doing the very same things that the human hunters did. To you, it seemed like he was keeping secrets and pulling strings behind your back.

To make matters worse for your worried and easily annoyed heart, he had to take all of the six with him.

Well, originally he had planned on leaving Taehyung, Hoseok, or even Seokjin with you—but, upon your inquiry of just how damn dangerous his stupid idea was, you forced him to have his entire crew by his side. You remembered how quickly his expression had darkened, the impassivity to his gaze that had you wishing that you could read his mind like he could read yours.

Idiot.

Then again, he probably just called you a bunch of terrible names in his mind just like you did in reference to him.

Despite your energy and your lack of understanding, you tried to be that™ person; you tried to be that™ supportive girl that stood by her loved person, waving them off with a handkerchief and tears glistening beautifully in her eyes. First off, you were never graceful in anything you did, and the old movies would never be you; that™ person would never be you.

You were too much of a salty, bitter hag. Salty because he wouldn’t tell you what he was going to do, nevertheless where he was going to do this mystery action; even saltier still because whatever incredibly dangerous thing he was going to do could be the end of him and, even in your anger, you wouldn’t be able to take not knowing where he went or what happened to him.

So, like the woman you were, you resorted to pursing your lips at him from the corner of the room as he gathered his things. Part of you wanted to see his face in case you forgot it, but the stronger part of you said that your actions were out of spite rather than anything else. You damn well wanted him to know just how pissed you were. Subtlety? You don’t know her.

“I can still leave Taehyung here with you—I…I don’t trust the others here with you.”

“Jiwoo’s here. I’m fine.” You grunted, arms tightly crossed over your chest.

“She doesn’t have any abilities. Taehyung could at least—“

“Namjoon.” There was something exhilarating about the power you had over him when you simply said his name—it was almost enough to dissolve your anger…almost. “Yoongi and I spoke about this when I said I wanted them all with you—he agrees that she has a hell of a survival instinct and an even greater protective streak. I will be fine; I’m locked up to holy hell in here anyways.”

Honestly, you remembered how quickly that conversation had went—Yoongi had offered her to you without a hint of hesitation. It was almost as if he didn’t care that his mate could possibly die for you if the situation arose. And here you were, with a mate who didn’t trust you with a fucking spoon.

You were sure your face was going to gain permanent wrinkles from frowning so intensely.

“You’re angry, why?”

Leave it to the vampire to be blunt.

“I’m not.” Yeah, Y/N. Good job. Continue to sulk like an absolute child because, of course, maturity is for LoSErS.

“Sure, but if I accept your words at face value then you will only become more angry. I am not stupid to you at this point. You’ve been here for over a half a year now.” He sighed, pulling on his jacket. “What is wrong?”

You cast your gaze to the floor, if only because he was now openly staring at you and your pride won over your anger—you couldn’t let him see you turning red at such an inopportune moment.

“Why can’t you just tell me what you’re doing? Or where you’re going?”

Part of you wanted him to be like human men, you wanted him to hold your face in your hands and kiss you and make you feel something other than this icy distance between the two of you. Maybe then you could take not knowing.

But that wasn’t the case, and you were infinitely reminded that this wasn’t a human man in front of you.

“This is what clan leaders do—they go out and stake their claim, mark their territory and make sure it is still theirs. You have no business here.”

Anger boiled under your skin and, god, did you really just want to smack him. But with the sheer amount of muscle in the monster man, you knew you’d hurt yourself more than you’d hurt him. “You’re not going out there to stake your fucking claim, Namjoon. I’m not stupid. I know you’re not telling me the truth.”

You could feel his stare burn into the side of your face, but you refused to meet it just to satisfy your petty rebellion. “I want you to be safe in all senses of the word. Can’t you be satisfied with that?”

“No.” You snorted. “I can’t.” Your hands were balling into fists, lips pressing into a line so thin you swore they might burst and disappear entirely. “I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask for your protection—I didn’t ask for you to be a clan leader, I didn’t ask for you to sacrifice your life for mine. What I asked for was your honesty.”

He paused for a second, clearly thinking out his words so that you wouldn’t continue to be mad at him. But, for a vampire still learning the complexities of the human mind, you were both well aware that he didn’t have the right toolkit to attack this problem.

“There’s a lot you can’t give me, and I’m learning to accept that. But like hell will I put aside the truth and accept your lies. What are you really going to go and do?”

It was your last lifeline, your last chance for him to grab the rope and tug him back into your good graces.

At first, it seemed like he was taking grasp of it with both hands, stepping closer towards you with intent--like he maybe was going to hold your hand, like he maybe was going to brush your hair off your neck and kiss your cheek. But, of course, he did none of those things.

Instead, he slipped past you entirely. “I promise we will return as soon as we can.”

By the time you calmed yourself enough to turn around, he was gone.

~.~

Jiwoo was a heaven-sent existence—despite being the very thing that fed on fear, you were convinced that she was an angel. It was her personal mission to make sure that you never felt alone, and that you were able to sort out all your feelings and complaints, allowing you to throw them all onto one vessel.

With her sweet smile and her unvampirely crave for contact; she was everything you needed in the wake of being pissed off at Kim Namjoon.

It was hard not to laugh as she grumbled to herself while setting up her side of the bed for the night. “I know he’s my leader, but he’s a prick.” She huffed, fluffing her pillow with slight violence only to freeze and stare at the door when there was a particular loud noise a floor below you two. There was a moment where she had offered to lay out a sleeping bag for herself on the floor, but when you offered to let her next to you, her eyes lit up and part of you wondered if maybe she could be your mate instead.

She understood your human needs far better than grumpypants.

“He wouldn’t let me visit with you as much as I would like, so I’m going to soak up every opportunity I can get.” She threw herself on the bed next to you, those bright eyes of hers boring into yours. “Maybe it’s a female thing, but I feel I can understand your thoughts a bit better than those dumb boys.”

“Maybe.” You chuckled. She was probably the exact opposite of Yoongi—far too bright, bubbly and touchy-feely for the man who recoiled at breathing the same air as another being. You paused for a second, wetting your dry lips with your tongue. “Can I ask you something?”

“No question is too strange for me.” She giggled. “Yoongi says that I ask too many weird ones that anything anyone could ask of me would seem normal in comparison.”

Somehow, you could see it. The girl radiated a personality that only existed in characters from outer space.

“Why are you so fascinated with me? I mean, I’m not really special—just your average human.”

She shrugged, moving to adjust herself into a comfortable sitting position. “Well, I liked what I saw when I first met you. And, well, I don’t really feed from humans because I pity them. I prefer the fear from my own kind—and Yoongi’s really good about making sure I can get fed enough from that alone.” She paused for a moment to ruminate on her words. “Humans…Well…I feel bad for hurting something so innocent for my own gain. They can’t even properly fight back.”

“Some do.”

“Even then, it depends on the human and their deeds—but it’s not like I’m really clued into those too well. Vampires…well, we’re often terrible beings. Maybe more so than humans.” She sighed. “But you, man, when you stood up to Jisung I swear I’ve never seen our leader more whipped for a being in his life. I wanted to know more about you because of that, too.”

Was it possible for a vampire to be vegetarian? Well, the vampire equivalent of the term. Was that cannibalism?

Honestly, you could have probably busted your last three braincells pondering a stupid label.

“Are there more vampires like you?”

Her eyes sparkled. “Probably. But they may all be dead. You and I, we are a rare breed—with mates powerful enough to ensure that we both survive.”

As you withdrew inside of yourself to contemplate the heft to her words, her hand reached out to grab your own, as if on instinct. “Humans are soft.” She murmured. “I like physical contact with them.”

“You are so weird.”

She only grinned wider at that.

For a moment you considered spilling everything to her—everything you couldn’t say to your mate, to humans, to anyone. You contemplated telling her your whole life story if only because there was a being there in front of you who looked so willing to eat it all in and learn everything there was to know about you.

This person was a vampire, and that was enough to stop you.

“There is something on your mind.” She hummed.

“Yeah.”

She cocked her head to the side. “Do you not trust me?”

You put your free hand up. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, Woo, I just…I don’t…I don’t think that you can understand me if I told you.”

“Okay.” She murmured. “I probably won’t, but its okay to tell me. My job in the clan is to not ask questions and make sure that things run smoothly. I am a glorified secretary; if there are things I am not supposed to know then I will not seek them out nor will I lose my trust if those secrets come into the light. I am supposed to tell my clan leader everything.” Her eyes scanned yours. “So it concerns him, does it not?”

“What in my world doesn’t concern him anymore?”

She chuckled, her grin faltering for a moment. “Y/N, I never said I was good at my job. Yoongi and I…we were a pairing mated by genes and not by choice—not that I mind, as I’m terrible with making decisions.” She licked her lips in the dry air. “I understand that feeling of wanting more.”

“You…” Your furrowed your brows, trying to find the right words even though the synapses weren’t fully connecting the loose ends to the equation displayed before you. “You don’t love Yoongi, do you?”

She pursed her lips, her eyes lost somewhere over your shoulder. “What Yoongi and I are certainly is not the same kind of bond that you humans call love. So if what you are worried about is how our clan leader cares for you, then I’ll have you know that I have never seen a vampire care for his mate to such extremes before. I’m jealous.”

Something that must have been akin to fear flashed through you quick as lightning, because Jiwoo’s eyes burst red for a second, narrowing in on you before dulling back to their neutral color. “I don’t want Namjoon, Y/N; don’t be afraid of that. I’m envious of the bond between you two, not what you hold—that connection, it seems so special.”

“Have you told Yoongi any of this?”

“No. I don’t see him enough to warrant it.” Her eyes softened. “Perhaps that’s why I enjoy your company, being with you annoys him enough for him to seek me out.”

Your eyes scanned her face, searching for hidden feelings and answers that she was slowly bringing to the surface. It was nice to feel a little bit less alone in a sea of people that made you feel like an anomaly. “We’re similar, aren’t we?”

Her gaze met yours. “We are.”

You tucked your lips between your teeth, trying to make yourself say the words. Trying to will yourself to let it out to her—if you could let it out to anyone, it would be her.

After all, she just indirectly told you her own personal traumas—why couldn’t you say the one thing that was always running through your head ever since you realized it enough to deny it whole-heartedly?

“I…I…”

“You love Namjoon.” She murmured, her irises bloodying to an intense crimson as you inhaled through your nose. When you said nothing, she only squeezed your hand. “Well, I can’t say that I was unaware of that, but maybe one day we’ll get you to say it out loud, huh?” She chuckled. “Then again, isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black, as you humans would say?”

~.~

Jiwoo did not have the luxury that the other vampires around you had—she had not been trained for years to accommodate human nature into her life. She was not one who was ready to easily adapt to a human friend and, therefore, she was unable to maneuver you through the compound with the grace that Namjoon and his six had.

AKA, every horror hid from you was unfolded in a searing burst of white-hot fear.

This was, after all, a place for vampires—not humans.

The blood, the bodies, the strewn bits and pieces of lives tortured and lost were not things that startled her.

You, on the other hand, were a different story.

Turning to vomit up your entire lunch into the nearest receptacle—because why would vampires have trash cans every four feet like humans?—you nearly didn’t make it and therefore missed the bright red flash of Jiwoo’s eyes as she furrowed her brow on you in concern.

“Y/N! What happened? Are you alright?” Her worry was a palpable presence in the air, smothering you much like she was doing. Contrary to the vampires you had met thus far, she seemed to think that contact was the salve to every ailment.

You screwed your eyes shut, desperately trying to erase the images of bruised and beaten bodies, parts of humans too mangled to identify. Corpses yet to be disposed of, personal belongings dropped and bloodied in the shuffle, remnants of humans like yourself.

That could have been you. The woman in the corner with a bloody cleave from her neck to chest, she could have been you if you didn’t meet Namjoon. The man on the floor with his spine half pulled out of his back could have been you if you weren’t saved. The child—

There wasn’t anything left to vomit, but your stomach was sure as hell going to give it a go anyways.

“I--” You wanted to straighten your spine, you wanted to stand up tall and meet her in the eyes like loss of life didn’t bother you—like you weren’t terrified of the shadows of ‘what ifs’ that hung heavy above your head. You had to get used to this; that was the saddest part of it all. You, by all means, should be accustomed to death, to the lingering monsters that manifested themselves into your reality. Namjoon fed off of people like you.

He probably fed off of the people at your feet.

However, your stomach jolted into another hefty, dry heave.

“I will be okay.” You whispered, Jiwoo’s hands on your shoulders. “I’m…not all humans are accustomed to these sights.”

She took a glance around, and you could feel the apologetic sympathy roll off of her aura in waves around you without her ever uttering a word.

“I’m stupid.” She murmured. “I’m sorry, Y/N.”

“It’s not your fault.” You laughed, hands tightening around the trashcan. “Humans….”

“—Humans have too much empathy for things, especially for their own kind. I read that in a book somewhere.”

“Perhaps.” You snorted. “I think humans have too much empathy for all things, living or not. We are often pointless creatures.”

“I don’t believe in pointlessness. Everything has a reason.” She rubbed soothing circles between your shoulderblades, and, you think that she probably learned this from watching a mother soothe a child once.

You can’t help but catch a bit of dried blood out of the corner of your eye, the resembling of human flesh beside it. “When does Namjoon feed?”

She paused. “Not as often since you’ve arrived—besides prepping for their mission, I can’t remember the last time he was down here. I don’t think he wants you to see that side of him.”

“Are any of these…are any of these his?”

Jiwoo didn’t get up right away, she instead studied your expression as if to make sure that this was something that you really wanted to do—something that you felt you needed to see. She must have found her answer, because she then pushed up to her feet, leaving you huddled over the trashcan. You watched her every move with close precision if only because, if you looked away from her, you’d see more than you wanted to.

When she stopped and looked back at you, you wordlessly got to your feet and stepped carefully around the haphazard mess around you. Despite every aspect of your being trying desperately not to show fear, your palms still sweat and Jiwoo’s eyes still glowed a hazy red.

Her hand found yours as you stared down at the body before you. It was a hunter, that was evident by the uniform, though she was remarkably intact.

Something told you vampires didn’t often keep their victims looking so clean.

He made sure he could hear your screams; he wanted to drag this out—suck out every last bit of your energy and fear until death finally took you. He wanted you to suffer.

Her neck was snapped, her hair curtaining her expression that was stricken in horror. Though her eyes were closed—something else told you that Namjoon had done that when he was finished.

Some sick part of you wanted to touch her, to empathize with the body. You wanted to see yourself in that girl, you wanted to see some remnant of care you had for humanity. However, the second the Hunters Association’s uniform was involved, that fear--that horror--was dampened immensely.

You squeezed Jiwoo’s hand. “I’m okay.” You murmured. “This, I’ve seen bodies before—at least, bodies in this garb.” You bent down, recalling times where you were ordered to strip the bodies, salvage what equipment you could, and let some other sad soul dump the bodies into the incinerators. You had rarely been assigned that task because you were slow and threw up too much for their liking. Though it did become the ultimate punishment for when you mouthed off just a little bit too much.

You murmured a soft apology to the dead woman as you shifted her, your eyes latching onto the embroidered holster buckled around her hips. Numbly, and in a trance to keep yourself from losing what little stomach contents you had left, you unclasped your prize and slipped it free from Namjoon’s meal.

Brushing off the dust and debris, you fumbled with the zipper to slide open that pack and peer at the contents inside.

The bullets that lay inside the embroidered pockets sewn next to the holster shone like a beacon of light and hope in a dark and damp place.

You shifted them, ducking your head to sniff the contents. They obviously had been down here for a while; their garlic scent had significantly decreased from the potency standards that the Hunter’s Association usually had. However, they weren’t useless.

“Can I take this?”

She shrugged as you slung the holster over your shoulder. “What you carry is no concern of mine; I think it wise that you have something to protect yourself from my own kind. I know that not all of us are to be trusted, especially not with you.” She paused, cocking her head at the body of a vampire. “Besides, if their mission is as dangerous as they make it out to be, then the consequences of it may meet up with us here at the compound at some point. If everything goes to shit, I would rather you have something. Vampiric guards are not perfect protection.”

“Jiwoo, I love you.”

She chuckled. “I’m learning to understand the sentiment.”

~.~

Jiwoo attempted to cook—not because you didn’t offer to do so, but because she was adamant that she wanted to try it herself. To give her credit, it smelled good; to make yourself feel better, you hadn’t once stopped looking over her shoulder. The only vampire you trusted to make you food was the one that had lived with humans as a child.

And that vampire was most definitely not Jiwoo based purely on the way she held a spoon.

“The big part goes in the pot.”

“That’s not a handle?”

You pursed your lips, stifling the urge to laugh and cry in hopelessness at the same time. “No.”

However, both of you quickly became distracted when the outside world burst into noise. Jiwoo met your gaze before nodding. “They’re back.” That statement, though it rang true through your bones, did not allow your feet to move. Instead, you only watched as Jiwoo temporarily put the pot aside to go towards the window.

Staring out the blinds, her shoulders visibly relaxed at the sight before her. “He looks okay.” You knew how she felt in that moment because, on some deep, repressed level, you could understand her sentiment.

Yoongi was okay.

How is he? How is Namjoon?

It was almost as if, for a moment, the woman could read your mind: “Namjoon is alright.” She grinned at you as if that could make you feel better about all of your troubles. “Namjoon is alright.”

“That’s good.” You mumbled to the stew on the stove, mindlessly stirring it with the wooden spoon.

“He’s looking up here.”

You frowned at the pot, refusing to move if only because you were stubborn. Out of your peripherals, you could see her gently waving, shaking her head.

“He’s concerned for you.”

“That’s nice of him to be concerned for his human pet.”

Jiwoo sighed. “You know you mean much more to him than that.”

Instead of garnering her a proper response, you curled your free hand into the countertop to stop yourself from giving into your urge to run and make sure he was as fine with your own eyes. “Is he really okay?”You hated the way your voice cracked as her gaze seared the flesh of your cheeks.

“Are you?”

~.~

By the time Namjoon made it upstairs and into the kitchen, your food was done and you were at the table, enjoying your meal with a magazine Jiwoo had found outside the compound. Once her clan leader reared his face, Jiwoo quietly excused herself but not before you could thank her. She had done so much for you that even an awkward situation between you and her leader wouldn’t allow you to just let her slip away so easily.

Even if you didn’t even want to speak in front of your asshat “mate.”

Once you were left along with Namjoon, you could immediately feel the tension in the room rise to the point that you were sure that your blood was frozen in your veins. You could feel his stare on the side of your face, but you forced yourself to eat and focus solely on the magazine before you.

He sighed, but it did nothing to encourage your speech.

Swallowing his pride after several moments of rising silence, he gave in first. “Is there a reason you are ignoring me?”

You frowned at your magazine, fork poised by your mouth. “What did you do on your mission?”

He let out another weighted sigh. “Y/N—I can’t—it’s too danger—“

“Fine.” You cut him off, finally lifting your gaze to his, even if only for a brief moment to nail your point into the ground. “Then don’t expect me to talk.”

He sighed once more, running his fingers through his hair almost as if he wished to rip the strands out at the root. You could feel his gaze on you, feel the heat of his stare as if he could make you look at him, talk to him—as if you could actually hear his thoughts like he could hear yours.

“If you had the power to, would you go backwards? Would you change things? Would you change me?”

You frown only increased in depth, positively fucking up your features for aging later on—if you lived that long.

What in the absolute hell are you talking about?

“Would you find a human mate? If you could be rid of me, would you?”

You sighed, tilting your head up to the ceiling, staring at it as if it could have the answers to all of life’s questions. “Nothing in my life has been by choice, even if I went backwards, nothing would change.” You shifted, thinking about what a human partner would look like for you, thinking about your life without Namjoon.

It would be dark, lonely. You’d be back at the Hunter’s camp; you’d be dead—if not physically then emotionally; there was nothing to look forward to in your old life.

You imagined waking up to a world without Namjoon, without his straightforward nature, his indirect care. You imagined a world without his conversation, his small smiles, and his occasional laughter.

“Would you change me?” It was too loud for the silence of the room, and you found yourself holding your breath for his reply.

Silence encompassed the room, your heart dropping deep into the depths of your stomach the longer it stretched on—but maybe that was your brain screaming from the lack of oxygen.

Vampires find mates solely for optimal offspring, not necessarily a human’s definition of “pairing.”

Vampires are creatures of instinct; they run based on efficiency rather than emotions.

Your hands curled into the magazine, your legs poised to shove the chair out, to run and escape this conversation. You wanted to disappear, curl up into the comforter, crawl into a closet and never return. Anywhere that wasn’t that fucking kitchen would have been a better option for you in that moment.

“I would change me.” It was so quiet you almost didn’t hear it past the slow sound of your heart crashing uncomfortably in your chest. When you didn’t say anything, he continued. “Not you.”

Somehow, that didn’t make your heart lift from its newfound home on the roof of your stomach.

“Why?”

His gaze was no longer on you; rather it was downcast to the floor, focusing on the tile as he carefully chose his words. “I would make myself human.”

“You’d be dead.” You said stupidly, staring at him in confusion to words spilling from your mouth so quickly and so surely you were amazed that you were able to translate all of the jumbled thoughts careening in your head. “We’d both be, I wouldn’t have met you—the hunter’s association wouldn’t have kept me around. So you saying that you would change yourself would mean that you would ultimately change me.” You pushed your chair out from the counter. “We can’t go back, we can’t change what is, only what will be. Why the hell are we even talking about this? What are you so afraid of? Why is it so hard to tell me where you were? What you were doing?”

“If another clan found out about you, if you had information to give, they would never stop hunting you. They would torture you until you begged for death—and then they wouldn’t give it to you, they’d wait until they fed every last drop of information and fear from you before finally letting you decimate yourself.”

“I thought you said you wouldn’t let any of that happen.”

“I can’t make promises, Y/N, this world isn’t—“

“Okay.” You pushed yourself to your feet, leaving your half eaten food and your magazine on the table.

“Y/N—“

“I think…I think I’m going to go to bed now.”

He made it seem like he was almost going to reach out and grab you, but he retracted his hand at the last second.

He only ever touched you because he thought you wanted it, not because he did.

“Good night.” You threw the words over your shoulder, because you didn’t want him to see you cry. He’d seen you cry enough. Crying was weakness, and god were you already pathetic enough as a human being to even think, for a moment, that maybe you weren’t alone in your denied feelings.

Maybe he was right. Maybe it would have been easier if he was human and you two never met. Maybe it would be better if you weren’t in his life.

But would your life be better without him in it?

~.~

You had slept like the dead, cliché phrase you know, but sobbing into a pillow until your eyes were puffed to the point that you couldn’t see made you sleep like you hadn’t in months.

Yeah, you probably could have been six feet under with your lack of response to the world around you. You didn’t wake up when Namjoon entered—you sure as hell didn’t wake up when he came in to wrap you up all nice and tight (you only assumed that he did it based on the fact that you were one-hundred percent sure that you fell face first into the plush bed). You definitely didn’t wake when Jiwoo came in to check on you, nor when Namjoon came and went for the second time. Oh, and you sure as hell didn’t even fucking stir when someone booked it down the hall past your bedroom.

You couldn’t even talk about the building shaking with the force of an explosion outside.

What did finally wake you up was whatever internal alarm built within your genetic code that screamed danger when Taehyung burst into the bedroom at full speed.

Groggily, with your eyelids screaming out in pain and horror, you forced yourself into a sitting position.

You know, you made it sound all fancy, but any normal person would have woken up to the explosion—you just woke up to a dude running in your room with his body language screaming “trouble,” screaming “danger.” And, though you hated to admit to your tendencies to actually give a flying fuck about the man, it scared the barely conscious you to think that this incident involved the vampire closest to you.

Taehyung, luckily or unluckily for you, didn’t regard you at first, and you used that time to fully wake up and orient yourself to the situation before you. As if drugged, you wiped the drool from the corner of your mouth and lazily watched Taehyung slam the door behind him, reaching for a chair to tuck up under the handle—like that was going to do anything against whatever was causing him to panic.

The instant awake button was found when Taehyung turned around and you got a damn good look at his split lip—accompanied by the bruising underneath his eye. The cherry on top of his injury cake was the gashes that you could see through the fresh holes in his shirt when he spun around, blood dribbling down to the waistband of his jeans.

“What’s going on?” Your voice came out as a hiss that sounded more like a gunshot on the tense silence of the room.

His breath came in fast gasps as he turned towards you, his gaze landing anywhere but you—looking for exits, danger, weapons—

“Taehyung!”

He nodded, eyes finally meeting yours. “No windows. Good.”

It didn’t answer your question, but you were pretty sure that he didn’t hear it anyways.

Sitting back into your hips, you ran your fingers through your hair to gather it into a ponytail. “I don’t give a shit about windows; Taehyung, what’s happening?” And then, like the desperate spiral of a worried human being you were, you didn’t even give him time to answer. “It’s Namjoon isn’t it? Where is he? Is he alright?”

He held his hands up to take the brunt of your verbal assault, breath heaving in his chest. “He’s…he’ll be fine.”

“Bullshit.” You detangled yourself from the sheets, adjusting your shirt. “I want to see him.”

“I have orders to make sure you don’t leave this room.”

You froze, frowning at the beaten man before you. “Taehyung—orders or not—you are not going to stop me from going out there.”

“Y/N.” His voice was dark and strained in a way that you most definitely didn’t like. “I have orders; I have to protect you.”

What would your life be like without Namjoon?

You two stared at each other, that same tense silence falling between you.

And then, like the idiot you were, you burst out of the bed and towards the bedroom door.

Naturally, as a fucking vampire, Taehyung was faster than you. His arms wrapped around your waist hard—too hard, but he obviously wasn’t used to handling humans in a way that was gentle; especially when panicked—spinning you around to fling you back onto the bed.

However, you were dumb, and that meant you didn’t know when to give up. In an instant you were back on your feet, bolting towards the door once more. If he had any hope of being delicate with you, it was out the metaphorical window with your second attempt at escape. You crashed to the ground with all the grace of a whale beaching itself, skidding back towards the bed post.

“Please stop.” Taehyung pleaded, body poised to block you. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

You rolled to your hands and knees, hissing in pain. “Then just let help, let me out of here.”

“Y/N! They will kill you, don’t you see that? You see what they did to me—what the hell do you think will happen to you?” He was desperate, all but screaming at you in a way that would have scared you were your heart not slamming itself against your ribs.

If he looks like this, what does Namjoon look like? Where is Namjoon?

You threw a glance at the bed, at the space between the mattress and the box spring—the space where you stashed your hidden prize. Without thinking of anything else but the way Namjoon’s hand felt around yours, you shoved your hand underneath the mattress, fingers wrapping around the handle of the gun as you whipped it out at Taehyung. A shaky breath slipped past your lips as you switched off the safety, staring down the barrel at your unfortunate target. With a furrowed brow and a steeled resolve, you nodded to the door, one hand slowly leaving the gun in order to fasten the holster around your waist. “Taehyung, open it.”

“You’d shoot me?” His voice was so sad, so concerned and weak that it broke your heart to do this to him.

But I have no choice.

You remembered Namjoon’s face as he held you, the furrow to his brow as he watched a romantic comedy just to try and understand you better.

He didn’t, but he tried.

“If it means that there’s even a small chance that I can keep him from losing his life—from getting hurt—then, yeah, I would.”

He let out a sigh from deep inside his chest, holding his hands up in surrender. “You know that, if he loses you, this whole thing—everything he’s worked for—it’s all over.”

“But is the outcome really that much better if I lose him?” You jerked your chin to the door once more. “Open it.”

As your gun remained trained on his back, loaded with faded but still garlic laden bullets, Taehyung removed the chair and pulled the door open. Satisfied that he wasn’t going to do anything further to stop you, you thumbed the safety back on and ran down the hall full speed. Skidding across the tile like a madwoman, you swung yourself into the kitchen—the fried synapses of your brain lighting up with an idea. A horrible idea, but an idea nonetheless.

The bullet pouch slammed against a forming bruise on your thigh as you hurriedly threw open the cabinet doors in your squirrel search for the pasta jar you had panicked about so long ago.

“What are you doing?” Taehyung murmured, defeated twice in one day—once by vampires and once by a human scared of a leaf.

“The garlic in these bullets won’t be enough. Bullets lose their soaked properties by half in a month, three-quarters in two. They’re going to need to be refreshed.” You grinned with the jar in your hand, wiggling it within his view.

“Yah! Y/N!” He was only able to let out an exhausted shout as you remembered your self-imposed mission and burst past him, Taehyung hot on your heels.

All playfulness was zapped from you the moment you threw open the doors to the compound.

The difference between the quiet chaos instead the building and the cacophony of the world outside almost gave you whiplash.

The sky was overcast, but only within the vicinity of the area around the compound—in the distance, you could see places where the sun beat down on the ruined earth. All you could hear and see were bursts of bright flashes, sounds of lightning and screaming that seemed to echo even in the open space reverberated through your core. It was as if titans walked the earth and were crashing into each other, bodies slamming against one another. The fencing was dented in, but not broken, bodies strewn just outside and particularly dense around the gates.

Someone was trying to get in—but like, nO ShIT Y/n.

For a moment, you were stunned; for a moment your resolve and your footsteps stuttered.

You wondered if you had as much blood as your partner, strewn up on the tree. You wondered if you, too, would lose your insides to the ground, if the vampire with its hand around your neck would gut you until you were a shell.

Until there was no more blood.

Namjoon slowly overlapped your past self, images of him in a vampire’s hold—images of him strewn up on a tree, him dangling from a grasp until his intestines were on the ground.

Without thinking any further, without dwelling on the fact that this would probably get you killed, you ran towards the fence. Taehyung called out your name behind you, but it sounded garbled as if he was miles away—you were far too focused on not losing the one person that irritated you most.

Your free hand looped through the chain-link, your eyes scanning the haphazard mess of fighting until you finally saw that shock of hair and that shoulder-shape that you would (don’t fucking read into it, you’re still in denial) recognize anywhere.

Your heart leapt into your throat despite all efforts to stamp it down, despite all efforts to continue to pretend that you didn’t give a shit.

He was hurt.

Blood dribbled into his eyes, some running down to his grimace of pain as he used his good hand—the one not broken at an inhuman angle—to utilize his demonic vampire abilities that had every species in the country cowering in fear.

However, what concerned you the most was that you saw Jisung standing there with a wicked grin, as if he was the only one who wasn’t afraid.

That fact alone concerned you as to what kind of abilities he had—he was a clan leader now, wasn’t he? The gold flash to his eyes told you that your gut instinct was true. He wasn’t afraid. He wasn’t fucking afraid?

That made you even more so—but not for yourself. In that moment, you couldn’t give less of a shit about yourself.

Jisung was still, standing between guards but laughing, close to insanity as Jimin’s body jolted and his head snapped back, a cast of purple sliding over them. Jimin grabbed his face, turning towards Namjoon only to lash out at his own leader.

And, just like that, you realized why Jisung wasn’t afraid.

How could you be afraid of someone when you could turn the people your enemy cared about against them?

You unscrewed the cap to the sauce, fishing out a bullet from the holster to dip it in the substance before loading it into your gun. Hunter’s guns were designed for wet ammo—bullets had to be soaked one way or another, often times they weren’t entirely dry when used. It should still work. Though, it probably would have been smart to test the damn thing before this very moment.

Biting your lip in concentration, you fired at Jisung without any further hesitation.

There wasn’t panic this time, your hands didn’t shake—so the shot took, though not quite where you wanted it—his bicep wasn’t the most fatal place to be hit, but it would do.

The cast left Jimin’s eyes as Jisung’s attention travelled elsewhere…along with the attention of everyone else on the street.

All gazes snapped upright, Namjoon’s eyes meeting with yours at the exact same time Jisung found the source of his new injury.

All it took was one look at Namjoon and you could practically hear his voice in your head—you could feel his anger, his worry, and his own fear radiate through the ground towards you as if it was a lightning strike.

So, because you were smart and because you obviously didn’t give a rat’s ass about Namjoon’s worry for you, you dipped a bullet and fired another shot at Jisung.

Okay so maybe smart wasn’t the word for you.

“Y/N!” The shout came from all angles, from Taehyung still scrambling to chase after you from behind, from Seokjin who was trying to wrestle a very confused Jimin away from Jisung’s radius, from Namjoon who turned to tear after Jisung with renewed vigor because he knew that was the only way to save you.

After all, you’d forgotten that one of Jisung’s gang could teleport.

Suddenly, as if you had an epiphany, you remembered why you weren’t supposed to get close to the fence—but in reality it was because you were now face to face with the ugliest man (vampire or human, didn’t fucking matter if you had a mullet and a slight overbite) you’ve ever seen. Like this was some damn superhero movie, he flashed through the fence, his hands enclosing around your wrists.

He’s got freckles. Was your last stupid thought before you were launched into another reality, another fucking dimension that was far too fast and all too confusing for you to comprehend.

Luckily for you, you were still holding onto the pasta sauce jar—even when you suddenly found yourself outside of the safety of the compound and on the asphalt. You didn’t really think too much of it because you were too busy trying to unfurl the ball of nausea in your gut.

You barely had time to look up and see your mate only a few feet away--his eyes wide as he desperately and quickly tried to dive for you—before you were slammed back into that disorienting world that was both reality and not at the same time.

Freckles twisted with you, his laughter tickling the shell of your ear though it seemed to echo all around you in the foreign space.

Somehow, you knew what was up and what was down enough to come to the realization that you were now beneath him.

Shit shit shit.

You wondered if Namjoon could still hear your thoughts in this world. If so, you were probably scaring him more than yourself.

But like, you were pretty damned scared so maybe not; you could die.

You would die, at least if Freckles had you hit the ground first, at least if Freckles used his weight to slam you underneath him; vampires were strong after all.

You could hear people yelling your name through the thin fabric of time and space; your mate’s panic wrapped around Jisung’s laugh and was sprinkled by never ending shouts of your name. However, with every second in this false world, they were getting further and further away from you.

You could feel Freckles trying to manifest you back into your normal realm of existence, your body tilting backwards as the world shifted around you. In a last second panic as you careened head first, you swung the jar in your hand, slamming it into the side of Freckles’ face as hard as you could manage.

You had to give yourself some props at least, the glass shattered in a spray of spiced garlic and tomatoes, the world snapping into clarity around you as he let go, leaving to you clatter to the ground in a mess of limbs.

Freckles manifested behind you, clutching at his sizzling face in agony as you gathered yourself onto your knees, prepping yourself for the next blow to come. In the distance, about a block and a half away, you could see Namjoon.

Oh yeah, even from this distance you could tell he was pissed with a capital P.

“Fucking bitch!” Freckles howled, his glare one that shot a spike of fear straight through your chest as he towered over you.

You reached for your gun, only to realize that you must have dropped it back inside the compound when this asshole first appeared—leaving you defenseless as he grabbed you by your neck. For whatever reason, it seemed that vampires seemed to favor that as a point of grip. It probably was because it immobilized any human seeing as they could die if they didn’t struggle or if they struggled too hard.

Either way, it would be nice to face a vampire that didn’t aim for your jugular.

You kicked and flailed, gritting your teeth against the pain and the disgusting slough of skin that had become the right side of Freckles’ face. You had been lucky enough to see garlic wounds only through projector screens until now—they looked much worse in person. You would have vomited were you not suspended by your fucking throat.

Out of the corner of your eye, you caught the tail end of a flash of that warm, bright light that could only have come from Namjoon. You heard Seokjin shouting something, but everything was getting blurrier and blurrier the longer Freckles’ hand was holding you.

“Do all of the six have abilities?”

Jiwoo rested her face on her hands, staring at the board game before the two of you as you finished your turn. “Technically yes, but I haven’t seen all of them. I don’t go on missions much—at least not with them.” She reached to grab the dice in the middle of the board. “Why do you ask?”

You shrugged. “I don’t know, it just…it seems like Namjoon regards them all so highly and, well—at least at the Hunter’s association—I thought that the vampire hierarchy is based on abilities.”

She chuckled, the dice thudding on the hard board. “It is, normally. Namjoon, however, is not particularly a normal clan leader.”

You kicked with whatever strength you could manage, black spots dancing at the corners of your vision.

“So Seokjin is second in command because of age then?”

She made a face, moving her piece five spaces. “Partly, but that is the one case where abilities do play some sort of factor. Namjoon’s hierarchy is based on trust—the reason the six are as high up as they are is based on loyalty and proof that they have earned his trust. Seokjin…Seokjin showed this trust with his abilities.”

When you only stared at her in confusion she laughed.

“I suppose you wouldn’t know, apologize for me assuming that you did—after all, it seems that, aside from Namjoon, you are closest with him.” She sent you a wink that had you frowning at her. “Seokjin is a nullifier—which is a huge ability in a world of clan leaders. He could take over the clan if he so chose to.”

“But he doesn’t—he chooses to follow Namjoon?”

She nodded. “He trusts his leader as much as his leader trusts him.”

Suddenly, there was a force that knocked into Freckles’ back—hard enough to send both of you careening to the side only to slam into the ground far too hard for your liking.

Everything moved lethargically around you, your body stuck to the ground as your mind reeled to catch up with the sudden intake of oxygen. When you finally managed to get yourself to a sitting position you saw Seokjin wrestling with Freckles, his teeth grit in an animalistic snarl as he desperately tried to get your attention.

He was yelling something at you, but in the fog of your brain it was hard to hear.

However, you were pretty decent at reading lips.

“Run.”

You didn’t need a second glance to make sure that you heard right, you didn’t need to be told twice to do the one thing your busted fight or flight response was good at. You hauled your sore ass up off the ground and took off running.

Well, at first you pitched toward the side, hit the ground and then had to haul yourself up again—but you know, you had to cut yourself a break because you were just getting your oxygen back.

However, running, for whatever reason helped—it helped clear the fog and bring back your hyper-focus, it helped bring back the whole reason you found yourself outside the compound: the vampire not focused enough on the enemy he was fighting; the man who stared at you as if you held his life within your chest.

Whatever fear had been there dissipated the moment you saw how injured he managed to get himself in the moments that you had been fighting with Freckles’. All those cuts and bruises and gashes—even with his vampiric healing it would still take him over two weeks to get rid of those injuries entirely.

So what does the concerned human with bleeding pasta sauce hands and absolutely nothing else decide to do when her mate is in need? Call in reinforcements? Figure out where she dropped the Vampire Hunter gun? Well…no, it’s you—what do you expect?

After all, you were not and you would never be a vampire hunter.

So, like the rabid koala you always wanted to be (not really) you latched onto Jisung’s back, your garlic soaked fingers digging into the skin of his face—his mouth, his eyes, whatever place you could find to debilitate him. Namjoon stared at you over Jisung’s shoulder, his face gritting with renewed anger as he slammed the heel of his palm into Jisung’s jugular.

It was going well until your added weight on Jisung’s back caused the both of you to topple backwards, the enemy vampire slamming on top of you hard enough to knock the wind out of you. Jisung screeched in pain, his hands gripping your wrists in a vice, threatening to crush the bones. Namjoon, in a fit of anger that terrified you (even though it wasn’t directed at you)—even knowing that you were the person that he would never intentionally injure. He grabbed Jisung by the jacket, picking him up with a grunt and a growl of anger only to throw him over you. You shouldn’t have been surprised by how far the enemy vampire flew, but then again, Namjoon wasn’t the most infamous clan leader in the entire continent for nothing.

You leaned your head back, watching Jisung clamor to his feet.

“Hwi! Fall back!” He shouted in pain, Freckles responding to the name by ripping free from Seokjin’s grasp. The teleporter ran full speed at his clan leader, vanishing into thin air the moment his hand met Jisung’s shoulder.

Both you and Namjoon held your breath, watching as the remainder of Jisung’s clan ran back into the ruined city and away from the compound.

It was only when he was satisfied that they were not going to spontaneously reappear that Namjoon finally addressed you, still lying on the ground like an upside down starfish. You, on the other hand, refused to meet his gaze because you were positive that it was a look of pure anger and frustration at your lack of give-a-shit to his instructions.

“Back up.” You murmured to the sky. “I’ve got garlic on me and you’ve got open wounds.”

He frowned, but you could tell that he only moved maybe a centimeter further away from you as he gathered whatever coherency he could manage from the renegade thoughts in his head. “You…why don’t you listen? Why don’t you ever listen? You were told not to come out here.”

His anger should have scared you, but this kind didn’t—you just didn’t want to see it. “I had to make sure.” Your chest tightened painfully. You wanted to blame it on the weight of Jisung slamming into you, blame it on being manhandled like a rag doll by Freckles.

But you couldn’t. Not anymore.

Not when you were out here despite yourself being afraid of everything that this outside world meant.

“I had to make sure that you survived. I...I—“

I think I love you. Was what you were going to think, but all thoughts of confession were ripped from your mind the second your body lit aflame with one single strain of thought.

Garlic.

The smell was far too strong for it to be the pasta sauce on your hand, and you couldn’t get yourself to your feet in time to beat the sound of the shot echoing through the streets.

You watched in horror as a puff of blood burst from Namjoon, a scream of agony ripping from his throat as he crashed backwards to the ground.

You couldn’t hear yourself, but you knew you were screaming his name, jolting towards him only to be stopped by the sudden pressure of a wire lasso tightening around your midsection.

As you were ripped backwards off your feet, past the blood rushing in your ears and the sounds of Namjoon’s screams, you could make out the telltale buzz of a two-way radio far too close for comfort.

We’ve got her trapped. Target down.

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kaisooficrec · 6 years ago

Note

Hi mods, thanks for opening up the Ask box! It's my first time doing this :/ hope I do it right… Can I ask for recs of long fics (say more than 50k? can be chaptered/one-shot) that the mods like but think are underrated? They can be any genre, and they can be from any writers (even some of the older ones who wrote more before 2017?) Thank you!!

Hi lovely anon! You rang the right bell because we have TONS of long fics to rec!! There are old fics but also a lot of recent ones, many different AUs and they’re all above 50k! ! we also made sure to rec fics that are underrated and need more recognition. It will probably take a long time to read all of those so TAKE YOUR TIME AND ENJOY

Amuse-Bouche - hehe this was recced not too long ago but its place on this list still stands! Chefs AU, very unique fic and extremely realistic! a true gem. (139k words)

Legends: The Chosen Twelve - this is an oldie! it was recced back in 2014 but still is pretty underrated and such an amazing fic! it’s ot12, MAMA AU. enjoy ^^ (151k words)

All is Said and Done - another oldie! BFFs!kaisoo that fall in love. it’s angsty c: (70k words)

Common Ground - also from 2014, this is a fantasy/ghost AU that doesn’t disappoint! (84k words)

Start Over - High School AU, lots of drama :’) originally posted in 2012, deserves so much more recognition! (65k words)

Lapis Lazuli - Fantasy + (School of) Magic AU, originally written for the exordium fest in 2015! ot12 although Kaisoo are one of the main pairings. There are adventures and action, it’s very entertaining, a good read c: (55k words)

If Only for Tonight - College AU, pretty angsty (warnings: violence, character death). Police officer Kyungsoo meets gangster jongin :-) (56k words)

French Lilac - Artist AU, jongin loves kyungsoo’s voice, but he’s already married. angst + smut. (50k words)

Trust You The Most - Cat Hybrids AU!! we need more of those . Soo ran a shelter for hybrids and he ends up (accidentally) keeping one for himself. (52k words)

Dear You - Kyungsoo really, really tries to get over Jongin. It’s not that easy. (sorry for all the angst o/) (59k words)

EXODUS - Supernatural AU, Kyungsoo meets a creature that makes him feel safe and cherished (55k words)

Beautiful Butterfly - CEO!Jongin and HS student!Soo, nini tries dealing with all the confessions thrown his way. Read on AFF. (63k words)

hearts and bones - High School AU, swimmer!jongin and photographer!soo meet, and the unexpected happens. (68k words)

Mixed Feelings - College AU, soo has a crush on his straight roommate jongin. pretty fluffy (50k words)

Fly With Me - Fantasy and Fae AU, jongin wanted an escape from reality but he didn’t intend to meet a bunch of men with wings on their backs. (warnings: slight gore, character death) (50k words)

Moon-Child - Fantasy AU, Kaisoo find themselves caught in a fairy tale. (warnings: character death). smutty too (51k words)

Save Yourself - Fantasy & Magic AU, Hybrids AU, War AU. Jongin is a cat hybrid and Kyungsoo’s just trying to make the spell that could save them all work. (68k)

The Stars, Our Saviour - Space AU (+ Royalty AU) + Bounty Hunter AU. Very impressive and unique fic! also smutty ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) (77k words)

Close To Home - a kai-centric fic, kaixeveryone but mainly/endgame kaisoo. Soulmates AU + Aliens AU. very smutty. (warnings: alien dicks?? alien sex, tentacles and knotting) (53k words)

Across - Assasins + Hitman AU, dark themes. (WARNINGS!: mental illness, mental instability, blood, violence, gore, murder, unhealthy relationship, mental and physical abuse.) Jongin has a crush on hitman!soo. Things don’t turn out as he planned. If you like freaky stuff, this is for you. (69k words)

Ghost of You - Future + Robots AU. Robots VS Humans. Kaisoo. A love story. (59k words)

Monster - VAMPIRE AU YES!!!! I can’t believe this isn’t as popular as it should be! one of my absolute favorites, it’s vampires VS vampire hunters, a fic where jongin realizes vampires aren’t all bad (especially kyungsoo). OT12 and definitely underrated. (115k words) (warnings: unhealthy to healthy relationships, blood (obviously), murder, psychopath killer, attempted rape)

Bugs and Space Elves - LOVE LOVE LOVE! !! this was originally posted for the happyendingexo fest, but the author decided to rewrite some old parts and continue with the story and i’ve never been more thankful. IT’S SO UNIQUE AND WELL WRITTEN AND MINDBLOWING! i really love this. Fantasy, Sci-Fi and Space AU, human kyungsoo helps elf jongin on his quest to save the universe! worth the read, i promise. (96k words)

The Gates of Horn and Ivory - married!kaisoo are taken into a world of darkness that they probably should’ve avoided. Dark fairy tale elements. (135k words)

The Boy Next Door - kyungsoo finds out his neighbour is a pornstar ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) very funny, fluffy and smutty. PERFECT TRIO! (53k words)

The War. (226k words) + The One After Ten Years. (149k words, on-going) (sequel) - WHERE DO I EVEN START? these are MONSTER fics! OT12, High School AU and Slice of Life AU in the sequel, but also includes their powers from MAMA era. Kaisoo is one of the two main pairings and honestly, these two fics gave me so much feels. It’s not underrated per se but has been only recced once on the blog and i wanted to fix this!

Kim Jongin’s Must Kiss List - College AU, kyungsoo embarrassed himself in front of nini a few years back and he’s still bitter and hateful about it, but jongin won’t stop running after him. (66k words)

2088 - Sci-Fi + Dystopia AU, kyungsoo has a mission to find a mutant boy after the war, but he realizes too late that they’re all just pawns part of a bigger plan. THIS IS HIGHLY UNDERRATED! (122k words)

I Feel Awake (This Time) - Hotel manager jongin and detective kyungsoo : truly a concept! the story of how jongin did his best to win the love of do kyungsoo. THIS FIC DESERVES SO MUCH LOVE! (57k words)

Being Brave - Non AU + Slice of Life AU. cute and smutty stories of kaisoo :-) (95k words)

Perfection - College AU, ballet dancer!jongin is going through a rough time. will singer!kyungsoo be able to save him and give him hope? (53k words)

Through Fire and Ashes - this was originally posted for the exoggedon fest but deserves so much more recognition!! Post-apocalyptic AU + Zombies AU. Basically humans VS zombies, established!kaisoo are ready to help defend their town. (warnings: blood, gore, side character death, PTSD) - ALSO MY FAVE - J

BITE - Vampire + Werewolf AU, both species are rivals (kind of like a twilight parody). Kaisoo and Chanbaek are both the main pairings, Baeksoo are vampires who find their soulmates in werewolves Chankai. Very interesting story! ! worth a shot :D (50k words, on-going)

Admin Macaroon at your service 💜

Mirrors - Youtuber AU, College AU, 132k and ongoing!!! kyungsoo makes covers a popular songs on yt and his fans get into a fight with fans of an idol named kai. it’s minty-pixie whew!

Horizon - 63k. one of the less known works of jongnugget imo! they have soo many fics over 50k wow :’) jongin is a new student at his hs and meets boy that changes his life

Kiss and Cry - 93k, figure skating au. jongnugget did it again

Enamoured - 96k. age gap with teacher soo and bad boy jongin, who is a lot younger than soo. soo always helps him and jongin likes him but they can’t be together for many reasons obvi. happy ending!

Bus Rides & Sleepy Misses - 133k, ot12 with main kaisoo ;) both meet on a bus ride and immediately catch each other’s attention! soft and fluffy :)

Two Sugars / AO3 - 57k, ongoing jfjsjf this is so good ;) a lot of smut, fluff, comfort a bit drama whew! fashion editor soo falls in love with a cute barista by day, sexy dancer by night jongin and when they are together it’s very…cute and sexy :p

Lackadaisical Blue + White Night of Silence- 53k and 61k, kingsman au, with spy exo, also ofc there’s kaisoo too, and this is absolutely well-written!!! if you know And the Rose Said to Me, you’ll understand the quality of these stories!!

Growing Seasons: A Universe of Us - Farmer AU, farmer jongin finds an unknown bloodied man passed out in his cabbage field and decides to take care of him, not knowing this man will change his life forever. (warnings: blood, PTSD, mentions of murder) (77k words) - Adm. Ginger

- Admin J

#kaisoo #kadi #fic request #admin macaroon #j #r:longfic

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chirrutbaze · 7 years ago

Text

The Postmodern Jedi

As of January 7, 2018. Written after two viewings of The Last Jedi.

(word count: 2700 words)

PART I. What Does "Postmodern” Even Mean?

Simply put, post-modernism is a formal way of saying “edginess”. This Reddit post does a fair job of explaining the movement, but it’s pretty long. To summarize, post-modern authors and artists maintain that morality is entirely relative and grey, and that post-modernism is about defying expectations and tropes and playing beyond the standard ball court.

For example, A Song of Ice And Fire (Game of Thrones), with its extreme violence, squiggly morality, and unhappy endings, is post-modern fantasy when compared to The Lord of the Rings, which represents traditional fantasy with its happy endings and clearly defined morality.

Or: That guy over there in the fedora, scrolling through Reddit in front of his shelf of Alan Moore comics, fancy bongs, and vinyl discs? He probably thinks he’s better than you because he’s been enlightened by post-modernism.

But post-modernism can also be fun, tongue-in-cheek stuff -- like Shrek, which mocks its genre and defies expectations at every turn. So it’s not all dark, gritty, angsty dudebro-fodder.

PART II. Rian Johnson Killed Star Wars and Lucasfilm is Rewarding Him For It

(Continued below the cut.)

“Where does Star Wars fit into all of this?” is a great question, but I’d first like to give a couple more examples of post-modernism.

Remember when Batman got a makeover and the critics and audience went gaga for it?

And then we got a major influx of this...

...until the final, crown jewel,

(No offense, BvS. You were a fun movie. :))

Alan Moore (and Dave Gibbons) had started it with Watchmen, a graphic novel that presents superheroes as flawed, broken people with overblown egos. The comic takes the medium’s traditional bright colors and warps them into extreme violence and disturbing imagery. The ending (spoiler alert) is not a happy one, leaving the reader with a moral dilemma and a headache. It is all VERY postmodern.

Unfortunately, a lot of the above nuances disappear in “gritty reboots” and become more like White Murder Boy Is Now Sympathetic or How Many People To Dress In Black Until Edgy?? These movies are watered down versions of postmodernism.

Still, it had all eventually become too exhausting for the casual movie-goer, and now the film subgenre of “gritty reboot” is mocked to no end. (Ex: “WHY DID YOU SAY THAT NAME??”) People would rather play it safe with Marvel’s recycled storyline and Wonder Woman’s bright colors and cheerful message.

But back to Star Wars.

Star Wars has always fallen in The Lord of the Rings’ nook as traditional fantasy. Luke Skywalker, the Good Guy, needs to save the galaxy from Darth Vader, the Bad Guy. There's no blurred lines. Luke may be tempted by the Dark, and Darth Vader may be brought to the Light, but in the end there's only a Good-Evil binary.

The prequels -- though “grittier” in the sense that the protagonist, Anakin, turns evil -- are restricted to the same binary. Obi Wan is Good, Palpatine is Bad, and Anakin goes from Good to Bad. Anakin’s motive may have started as well-meant (wanting to save his loved ones), but even that gets twisted into, “From my point of view, the Jedi are evil!” He isn’t afforded any greyspace. As soon as he chooses Bad, he commits atrocities (killing the younglings and murdering the Separatist leaders) and loses trust in Padmé and Obi Wan, his concrete links to the Light side. The audience can no longer afford him any sympathy.

Star Wars has always maintained that there can only be Good or Bad, and that there is no in between. The Force Awakens continued this trend: the First Order has very clear fascist parallels, and Han Solo and the Resistance are seen as heroic forces.

Rian Johnson wanted to break free of this constrained morality. He gives the heroes obvious flaws to the point that they have disastrous consequences. He acts sympathetically toward the villains. He shatters the audience’s rose-tinted glasses.

But he did it without the gritty, grey filter or gore or ‘moral dilemma’ that characterize films like Snow White and the Huntsman and Batman v Superman. There’s a sense of edginess without any of the background recycled gloominess. Johnson even ends his story on a high, hopeful note -- “That’s how we’re gonna win. Not fighting what we hate, but saving what we love.”

So, in the end, Lucasfilm and Disney got an edgy, “refreshing” blockbuster that’s guaranteed to bring in box office sales and excellent critic reception, because all good critics love an edgy story. It’s a win-win situation for them.

PART III. What Exactly Did Rian Johnson Do?

Listicle time!

1. Johnson made a Marvel movie disguised as a Star Wars episode.

This isn’t really evident of postmodernism, but it’s something that adds to TLJ’s “sell-able” nature. The quips left and right, the over the top action scenes, the bright colors, the quick pace, a villain that’s essentially just the evil version of the protagonist -- welcome to the MCU. And The Last Jedi.

The jokes were fun at first, but Star Wars has never been one for throwaway humor. Yet the movie is chock-full of jokes that more take the audience out of the “zone” than add to the film. Weird moments like Shirtless Kylo Ren and Luke’s Green Milk have become memes, Luke and Rey’s serious exchange was severely reduced by the Jakku joke, and Luke tickles Rey with the grass when she’s supposed to be training. Compared to the previous films, none of it feels organic.

The action scenes, too, have changed. The original series with Luke and Vader was very limited by the effects of its times, and then the prequels overcompensated. The sequel trilogy promised to be better than its predecessors, with an amazing fight scene between Rey and Kylo Ren on Starkiller Base that looked like it could’ve been choreographed by Donnie Yen himself. But The Last Jedi’s fight between Luke and Kylo Ren regresses back to something out of the prequel trilogy. Was the slow-motion really necessary, Rian Johnson? And Kylo Ren and Rey’s fight in the throne room is over the top and busy, simply showing off how many “cool moves” Lucasfilm could think of to stuff in one scene.

The cluttered action clashes with movie's bright colors and quick pacing. Still, the latter characteristics are not so much of a problem with Johnson’s Star Wars as they are characteristics of most blockbusters these days. It’s forgivable.

But Johnson does have a problem in that he simply reduces his villain to the evil version of his protagonist. He kills off Snoke and establishes “Supreme Leader Ren” as the new big antagonist. Kylo Ren, however, is just what Rey would be if she goes dark. This is evidenced when Luke comments, “I’ve seen this raw strength only once before. It didn’t scare me enough then, but it does now.” He’s talking about Kylo Ren (Ben Solo).

Kylo Ren rejects the idea of family while Rey craves it. Kylo Ren is tempted by the Dark side and is absorbed into it while Rey is tempted and rejects it. Kylo Ren wants to destroy his past while Rey chases after hers. They’re explicit inverses, seen especially when Rey calls his lightsaber to her in Snoke’s throne room and then the two fight back to back. Even on the movie poster, they're in ying-yang positions.

Of course, this Marvel-esque approach is great for Disney. It works for the MCU, after all. All of their films have been box office successes, and the hype for Infinity War is massive.

2. Johnson gave his heroes flaws and his villains reasons.

This is the postmodern (“edgy”, “gritty reboot”) aspect of TLJ: Johnson introduces grey morality into the Star Wars universe not by proposing a moral dilemma (hello, Joker from The Dark Knight) but by giving his characters crippling flaws.

→ Finn’s flaws were explored in the first movie -- he prefers running away from his problems instead of facing them, and his compassion for his friends (Rey, Poe) outweighs his loyalty to a cause (prioritizing saving Rey over a real plan to take down Starkiller). This is not a bad thing. And it’s only been a couple of days (or hours?) since the fall of Starkiller Base; Finn can’t be expected to overcome his previous motivations in that time. Johnson was not out of line for continuing Finn’s moral arc (trying to leave the Resistance to look for Rey at the start of TLJ).

However, he also adds a strange element of aggression to Finn’s character. Suddenly, he’s done with trying to run away and throws himself into sudden action when he tries to take out the First Order’s battering cannon. It’s never really explained (with all the Canto Bight sequences mostly focusing on Rose’s reactions) but it’s the only true action with impact on the narrative that Finn takes.

→ Rey’s TFA flaws are also taken into TLJ. She’s very trusting -- too trusting. Rey waits for her parents to return to Jakku, even though they likely never will; she immediately takes to Finn when he fibs that he’s in the Resistance; and she immediately warms up to Han Solo, a known smuggler. (Admittedly, it’s a strange characteristic for a scavenger living on the unforgiving Jakku, but that’s another argument entirely.) Her naivety has no consequences in TFA, but it does in TLJ.

By trusting too easily and going to Kylo Ren, she's played into exactly what he wants. He uses her to defeat Snoke and the Praetorian Guards so that he can instate himself as the new Supreme Leader. Her going to Kylo Ren does more bad than good.

→ Poe is a small character in TFA, but he’s given more personality in TLJ. We now see him as a brash pilot who, although intelligent and capable, is too quick to take action.

Ultimately, his unwillingness to step in line with his superiors -- who are also at fault for withholding vital information -- leads to the crumbling of the Resistance.

→ Luke Skywalker’s flaws were the most difficult for the fanbase to accept. It’s not like he’s ever been perfect -- his entire journey in the original series is his bildungsroman, or his coming of age. He matures from an impatient farmboy to a competent Jedi knight, though he still maintains his compassion and will to do good from the start. But Johnson introduces a new Achilles heel: Luke is like Finn in that he wants to avoid rather than confront.

Luke’s absence allows the First Order to rise to power more easily. Instead of trying to make amends with Kylo Ren, he retreats to a remote island planet. Luke recognizes the problem -- his own hubris, another main fault of his -- but he doesn't try to make reparations. He's chosen the easy route instead of the right one.

→ Kylo Ren was the character who got the most attention this film. While he’s a pretty flat character in TFA -- his main actions include killing people and looking scary -- he also appears to be torn between the Light side and the Dark side. Until he commits patricide, that is.

Johnson takes this dark, helmeted figure and gives him a 'tragic backstory’. We know that Snoke has been messing with him since a young age in TFA, but now we see Snoke use abusive, humiliating language against him in TLJ. (This ultimately turns Kylo Ren against Snoke instead of keeping him under his heel.) However, it seems that Luke briefly considering killing Ben Solo was the cataclysm for Kylo Ren’s existence. All of this works to explain Kylo Ren’s actions -- and it allows the audience some sympathy.

3. Johnson created DJ the Codebreaker. Oh, yeah, and Canto Bight.

Remember Benicio del Toro's character? His name's DJ. Do you know what DJ stands for?

Don't Join.

Rian Johnson couldn't be more obvious if he put up a billboard with neon lights and a stereo blaring “The Imperial March”. He wants the audience to get his “edgy” message -- that maybe the good guys and bad guys are both the problem.

DJ works for neither the Resistance nor the First Order. He’s found on Canto Bight, a place that fuels the intergalactic war (Star Wars) by continuously selling weapons to both sides. Furthermore, DJ first promises to help the Resistance (Rose and Finn) before betraying them to the First Order to save himself. He plays both sides of the field and therefore neither.

Johnson also hints at his “grey” view of the Star Wars universe through Luke, who declares that “the Jedi must come to an end”. Luke acknowledges the arrogance of the Jedi Council (which is better explored in Dave Filoni’s Star Wars: The Clone Wars series than in the prequel trilogy) and of himself, lamenting how it'd blinded him and his forefathers.

Frankly put, Johnson had a goal -- to show that Star Wars’ heroes are no longer infallible, and that their universe (and the Force) isn't black and white.

PART IV. Why Fandom Refuses to Accept TLJ

I’ll be brief: Rian Johnson is not a good writer.

For example, let's go back to Kylo Ren. He's not really supposed to be a Sympathetic White Murder Boy. By the end of the film, it’s explicit that he's more unstable and irredeemable than ever. And yet there's still this prevalent delusion that he's going to pull a Darth Vader and/or end up with Rey, returning to “Ben Solo”. His terrible actions towards Rey are completely ignored. If you take a look at that linked post, all of the bullet points listed should have been concretely evident in the film, but weren’t. It took an analytical post on the Internet to get there.

Was that weird enough? Nope. Let’s go weirder.

There were, strangely enough, two articles released about how terrible of a character Poe was by Buzzfeed and Vanity Fair because he was a “mansplainer” who refused to listen to a woman in command. For this, TLJ was praised as a “feminist” film.

However, the woman in command should be held at fault. Vice Admiral Holdo purposely withholds critical information from the other Resistance fighters, expecting blind faith in her desperate gamble of a plan. Kaydel Ko Connix (portrayed by Billie Lourd) is seen to be working on the bridge with Holdo, yet she joins Poe’s mutiny because even she, working right there with Holdo, has no idea of what’s to come.

So why is only Poe being held accountable for the fall of the Resistance? Because he never gets a redemptive moment. Sure, he calls his fighters back on Crait, but it’s so small and almost seems to carry a sense of regret. Finn and Rose’s moment, only seconds later, easily outweighs it. On the other hand, Holdo lightspeeds straight through Snoke’s flagship in some of the best special effects to grace the big screen.

Let’s talk about Rose Tico, too. A lot of fans were really excited about her character, especially Kelly Marie Tran, the actress herself. But her role in Canto Bight was originally supposed to be that of Poe Dameron’s. It would’ve been more in line with what we’ve seen so far of Poe Dameron. Even though he had a small role in TFA, his character is much more fleshed out in the comics. This small excerpt already proves him to not be the hot-headed pilot Rian Johnson has made him out to be. Having Poe expose Finn to Canto Bight would’ve been a great way to rectify Poe’s character, in a sense.

Rose herself comes off as flat. The film claims that she has a deep bond with her sister, but they never interact and it’s not concretely shown, just assumed. Rose has no development over the course of the film. She just exists to better Finn (as evidenced by the comicbook article) -- and while Finn is a fantastic character who was severely undervalued in TLJ, that’s still a dangerous position for a female character to be allocated to.

This is all evidence of not-that-great writing. There’s a reason why the audience’s Rotten Tomatoes score is at 50% and the critics’ score is at 90%. I doubt the bots were the only reason why the audience score is pulled so low.

In addition, grey morality within the Star Wars universe has been explored before in their television shows (Dave Filoni’s The Clone Wars and Rebels) and in Rogue One (“We’ve all done terrible things on behalf of the Rebellion”), so it’s actually… not revolutionary.

And these works have still stayed true to Star Wars in a way that The Last Jedi falls short of.

#tlj #tlj critical #the last jedi #swtlj #anti rian johnson #my posts #sorry i got really tired at the end so the conclusion is kinda lazy

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raendown · 7 years ago

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Madara/Tobirama

This section organized alphabetically by title, excepting where a sequel is placed 163directly beneath its predecessor regardless of title.

A Comedy Of Errors (And Idiot Brothers) - Rated T+ Word count: 15,662 Summary: Everyone in the world has two soulmates, platonic and romantic. Only your platonic soulmate can find your romantic soulmate for you. Hashirama should have known who Madara was the moment they met. Tobirama did know who Mito was as soon as they met. Everything would be so much easier if they were able to just say something about it to each other but since when does the universe like making things easy?

A Moment Frozen - Rated G Word count: 1227 Summary: He really thought Madara would complain more about caring for him until the paralytic wore off.

A Written Invitation - Rated T+ Word count: 1062 Summary: It had to be some kind of prank. Had to.

Contractual Reevaluations [Sequel to A Written Invitation] - Rated M Word count: 4585 Summary: The arrangement they agreed to is great, don’t get them wrong, but it’s just not enough anymore.

After The Smoke Clears - Rated T+ Word count: 5000 Summary: Upon discovering a hidden habit Tobirama uses to relieve the stress of his very busy life, Madara’s first instinct is to keep poking the beast. Things don’t turn out well - until suddenly they do.

After The Smoke Clears [Russian Translation] Translation by: @mailitt

Afternoon Nap - Rated G Word count: 881 Summary: If the walls of their house could talk they would tell tales of fluff and love.

Angsty Assassin Drabble - Rated T+ Word count: 410 Summary: Both of them are assassins but they both made the same mistake.

Behind Enemy Lines - Rated T+ Word count: 9427 Summary: Madara and Tobirama both wake up in very different places from where they went to sleep. The reason for the switch does not make them any calmer.

Blind Observations - Rated T+ Word count: 3223 Summary: Madara has a habit of looking without properly seeing - although he does really like what he’s seeing.

Blood Bender Drabble Part 1 - Rated T+ Word count: 1102 Summary: Tobirama is rather more protective of his older brother than most people would have expected. Madara notices.

Blood Bender Drabble Part 2 - Rated G Word count: 669 Summary: Madara rather enjoyed watching Tobirama and Hashirama noticed his enjoyment. His approval is conditional. - Rated G

Blood Bender Drabble Part 3 - Rated G Word count: 673 Summary: If the violence had happened before peace was made.

Blood Bender Drabble Part 4 - Rated T+ Word count: 1897 Summary: Set after Part 2, Madara makes an effort to woo Tobirama and the Uchiha clan quickly learn to fear him even more.

Bound By The Law - Rated E Word count: 6272 Summary: Madara picks him up after class and that’s kind of nice, promises him a date and that’s nice too, then fucks him across the hood of his police cruiser and that’s, well, that’s something better than nice.

But Broken Live On - Rated E Word count: Ongoing Summary: Shattered by those they trusted, Madara and Tobirama bring the jagged pieces of themselves together in the practice of kintsugi. What once was broken is brought back to life with an unexpected appeal.

Butt Touching Drabble - Rated T+ Word count: 402 Summary: Madara gets a little bold.

Can’t Fool Me With The Truth - Rated M Word count: 5649 Summary: Five times Madara does not see Tobirama pouting - and then one time that he does.

Chance Meeting - Rated G Word count: 1010 Summary: Too exhausted to sense ahead of himself, Tobirama runs in to Madara in the forest - literally.

Dinner With Izuna Drabble - Rated T+ Word count: 847 Summary: Izuna invites Madara over to dinner to talk about Tobirama.

Domestic Fluff Drabble - Rated T+ Word count: 799 Summary: Domestic discussions about child rearing and responsibility.

Eternity’s End - Rated T+ Word count: 1815 Summary: Tobirama has been haunted by an ancient legend for most of his life and only when he is well in to adulthood does he decide to chase its origins. Maybe if he finally understands where the legend began then he might understand why it fascinates him so.

Fade To Bright - Rated T+ Word count: 2001 Summary: He’s known this was coming since he was a boy just old enough to understand what the word ‘sacrifice’ meant.

Fear of Beards - Rated G Word count: 817 Summary: Everyone is afraid of something. Tobirama’s biggest fear just happens to be more unusual than others.

Fear of Beards Part 2 - Rated G Word count: 663 Summary: Madara did indeed convince Izuna to grow a beard. His plan has mixed results for the two of them.

Fields Of Spring - Rated T+ Word count: 11339 Summary: Every year the centaur herds gather at the mating grounds in spring. Madara hasn’t made the trip in years and he has low hopes of finding a match his first time back until he encounters a stallion that captures his interest at first sight.

Fingers In The Honeypot - Rated T+ Word count: 2385 Summary: Madara didn’t believe Tobirama could seduce anyone until he witnessed it happening - and found himself seduced in the process as well.

Follow Me To Reward Or Ruin - Rated T+ Word count: 1782 Summary: Tobirama’s plans to keep Madara in the village are obvious yet unexpected. Everyone sees it but no one believes it.

Fool Me Once And A Half - Rated T+ Word count: 5054 Summary: The first time they met Madara’s world lit up with color - but Tobirama’s didn’t. Born blind, Tobirama would never get to experience color. And after all these years he still doesn’t believe in Madara’s claims that the two of them are soulmates.

For Want Of Reason And Mercy - Rated T+ Word count: 5393 Summary: He knows what he has done. He’s known that they would come for him.

Forward - Rated M Word count: 7024 Summary: All that Madara thought he was doing today was watching a bit of sports with a friend. He didn’t expect his past to come running back to him - especially not in such a literal way.

Good Morning (After) - Rated T+ Word count: 1847 Summary: Just your good old ‘morning after’ trope.

Heartfelt Hairdos - Rated T+ Word count: 1997 Summary: Tobirama likes to play with his brother’s hair and Madara was never sure why that bothered him until now.

Hogwarts Professors AU - Rated T+ Word count: 1028 Summary: Madara’s not sure what disaster Tobirama is trying to cause, breaking in to his rooms like this, but he’s damn sure it’s all Kagami’s fault.

I Hate You (But Thank You, Thank You) - Rated M Word count: 1516 Summary: “What on earth are you wearing?"

I Made A Blanket Of Your Heart - Rated T+ Word count: 1708 Summary: Everyone loves a good fireside nap on a cold winter evening.

I’ll Breathe You A Garden - Rated T+ Word count: 4485 Summary: Hanahaki disease is a condition which causes the victim of unrequited love to grow flowers in their lungs, ending in death when the roots grow too deep and eventually suffocating them if the feelings are never returned.For Tobirama it begins with a single petal.

In Memory Of - Rated E Word count: 27584 Summary: After falling in to a coma and losing his memory, Madara’s mind fills in the blanks in any way it can - such as causing him to believe he is married to Tobirama. Hashirama convinces his brother to go along with it for now because really, what’s the worst that can happen? As it turns out, a lot can happen. The charade only last for a few months but the effects of that time will change the rest of their lives.

Indemnity - Rated G Word count: 1276 Summary: For the damage done, an apology is owed. It takes about six months.

It’s A Wonderful Lie - Rated T+ Word count: 7991 Summary: That Madara made up a pretend boyfriend is funny. That he’s been using this pretend boyfriend as an excuse to get out of social engagements all year is hilarious. That he asks Tobirama to stand in and pretend to be his fake boyfriend for a work party ends up being less amusing.

Kitten Kisses - Rated T+ Word count: 995 Summary: Tobirama finds Madara in his living room with cat ears and a cat’s mind. He is both horrified and so very weak to the purring.

Lap Sitting Drabble - Rated G Word count: 438 Summary: Madara tries to follow Hashirama’s example with mixed results.

Less Is More - Rated T+ Word count: 1384 Summary: One quick change to his usual attire and it was like everyone else had lost their ability to be normal. Tobirama hated being confused.

Less Is More Part 2 - Rated T+ Word count: 1015 Summary: After the doctor’s examination Tobirama asks for a little clarification on what happened. Madara is mortified.

Less Is More Part 3 - Rated G Word count: 307 Summary: The origin story of how the crop top came to be.

Take One For The Team [Sequel to Less Is More Part 2] - Rated E Word count: 3625 Summary: Madara wins a contest and receives a prize, complete with delightful wrappings.

Let’s Hurt Tonight - Rated T+ Word count: 13367 Summary: In a world where soulmates can remember the past lives they lived together, Madara cannot get passed the fact that his own soulmate was the one to kill his brother in their last life. When Tobirama leaves town without explanation he thinks “good riddance” and tries hard to put the man entirely from his mind. Now it’s five years later in another town and Tobirama is on stage singing - and Madara’s world is turning upside down.

Lightweight Tobirama - Rated T+ Word count: 558 Summary: Tobirama always thinks he can drink Madara under the table and Madara is always happy to prove him wrong.

Little White Lies - Rated M Word count: 1395 Summary: A shinobi’s life is full of lies and Tobirama tells himself a lot of them. His methods for coping with his rising attraction aren’t the most sophisticated but they get the job done, as it were.

Love Done Right - Rated T+ Word count: 9883 Summary: After having his eyes opened in a sudden - and violent - manner, Madara immediately begins his wooing of one Senju Tobirama.

It turns out, however, that Uchiha courting rituals are rather…unique.

Madara would say it’s going well. Tobirama would say something entirely different.

Love Potion No. 999 - Rated T+ Word count: 1809 Summary: Just because he’s not supposed to doesn’t mean he’s not going to. With results like these, how could he resist?

Madara Like Glasses Drabble - Rated T+ Word count: 711 Summary: Touka get’s caught alone while weakened and signals her cousin for help. Turns out Tobirama helps more by being distracting than with violence.

Marks Of Affection [Sequel to Soulmate Collection Ch 43] - Rated E Word count: 7982 Summary: It takes some time and a bit of tiptoeing, but two soulmate finally come together.

Midnight Glistening - Rated G Word count: 1745 Summary: And thus was born yet another tradition for ringing in the new year.

Miles To Go - Rated M Word count: 9886 Summary: How much madness could three idiots pack in to one road trip, anyway?

Not As We - Rated T+ Word count: In progress Summary: When Tobirama is exiled from the Senju clan without warning, without even the chance to plead his case, it feels like his life is over. What does he have to live for now without his older brother to believe in him? Captured by the Uchiha in his moment of weakness, Tobirama slowly learns to live again with the last people on earth he would have ever expected to care for - or to fall in love with.

Oblivious Until Proven Stupid - Rated T+ Word count: 3513 Summary: Tobirama’s latest experiment wouldn’t exactly pass any peer reviews. Not that he’s showing these notes to anyone ever again.

Obviously Hidden - Rated M Word count: 3100 Summary: As shinobi they are masters of hiding in plain sight - even when they don’t actually mean to.

Overprotective and Unapologetic - Rated T+ Word count: 1521 Summary: Madara isn’t too impressed with the young hooligan their son brought home to dinner.

Picky - Rated T+ Word count: 1855 Summary: Madara enjoys learning new things about Tobirama, if only so that he has something new to tease him with.

Pray The Devil Will Save My Soul - Rated T+ Word count: 10929 Summary: “Take your protections with you when you leave the village and never go looking for the Other Folk. If they find you…god rest your soul my son.”

Prototellar - Rated E Word count: 46,467 Summary: Protostellar - the earliest phase in the evolution of a new star. It begins with self collapse. And it ends by exploding outward in to light, a new beginning.

Quietly In To That Good Night - Rated G Word count: 829 Summary: Tobirama is dying. Well, according to him, at least.

Rabbit Tobirama Drabble - Rated T+ Word count: 1673 Summary: A drunken Madara compared Tobirama to a white rabbit and Tobirama does not take such comparisons gracefully.

Rapture On The Lonely Shore - Rated M Word count: 4121 Summary: Madara isn’t sure what he thinks about being given a third chance at life. He’s glad that he has his brother and Hashirama with him, although he’s pretty sure he could live without Tobirama being there as well. What really makes things things interesting is all this new technology. He particularly enjoys his new ‘cellphone’.

Re-Sleeping - Rated T+ Word count: 1616 Summary: Rather than dragging his best friend out of bed Madara finds himself dragged back in to bed by his best friend’s little brother.

Second First Look - Rated G Word count: 1329 Summary: Madara sees something new and takes a second first look. Tobirama does the same. Hashirama shakes his head.

Eyes On Me [Sequel To Second First Look] - Rated E Word count: 2981 Summary: A sequel which picks up directly after “Second First Look” because it was such an easy excuse for shameless smut. Madara just really likes the way Tobirama looks in those glasses. Tobirama feels sort of the same about Madara in a ponytail.

Seduction By Slumber - Rated T+ Word count: 1391 Summary: Sometimes it works to his benefit to speak without filters. Although Tobirama doesn’t seem to have any objections to his sleep-deprived demands, Hashirama obviously disapproves.

Should Have Seen It Coming - Rated T+ Word count: 4261 Summary: He’s pretty sure Senju Tobirama is just arrogant and that’s all there is to it. Turns out he’s wrong but what else is new.

Small Spaces - Rated T+ Word count: 1671 Summary: Oh would you look at that; there’s only one bed. I guess they’ll just have to share.

Something Wicked This Way Comes - Rated T+ Word count: 2566 Summary: Every Halloween it’s the same damn thing. This year he wants answers.

Speak Softly And Carry A Pomeranian - Rated M Word count: 38404 Summary: Accidents happen, right? But not usually for Tobirama. When an experiment goes awry, he is left taking care of Madara in a new furry form. As the small dog works his way into his heart, Tobirama finds himself reluctant to turn him back.

Speaking From The Heart - Rated T+ Word count: 4817 Summary: We all want someone who will stop and listen to us, however we decide to make ourselves heard. (aka that story where Tobirama is mute and it changes some things but not others)

Subtext - Rated T+ Word count: 1572 Summary: Written for following prompt: "Kakashi, after becoming hokage, discovers that an erotic novel infamous for its beautiful and salacious sex scenes that is considered a work of art and one of the kinkiest things ever put to pen (and that is practically Kakashi’s bible)? Written anonymously by Tobirama Senju. He needed to get out all that sexual tension with Madara in some constructive way. (Madara read it years later after a Zetsu found it. He found the style familiar, but dismissed the thought.” - Rated T+

The Autocorrect Way To Say It [Part 1 of The Autocorrect Series] - Rated T+ Word count: 585 Summary: Madara and Tobirama fight over text. Autocorrect makes an effort to help.

The Capitulation of Uchiha Madara [Part 2 of The Autocorrect Series] Word count: 4685 Summary: Madara benefits from Tobirama’s typo. - Rated E

Reasonable and Adult™ [Part 3 of The Autocorrect Series] - Rated T+ Word count: 3144 Summary: A discovery is made but not by them.

The Adoption Drabble - Rated G Word count: 673 Summary: Tobirama and Madara discuss making certain things official

The Gift Of Subtlety - Rated E Word count: 1138 Summary: Just your good old “single person hates Valentine’s Day” trope.

The Lack Thereof - Rated M Word count: 1642 Summary: “I think you’ll be happy to know that I’m not wearing any underwear.”

The Leading Generation - Rated G Word count: 1888 Summary: In which Tobirama and Izuna are the older two and Tobirama has a crush on his friend’s younger brother.

The More We Get Together - Rated M Word count: 43720 Summary: Madara used to be a man feared even by those of his own clan. Life’s really changed since the village was built. Among those changes is his relationship with one Senju Tobirama - and apparently everyone else knew about this even before he did.

The Ways In Which We Say - Rated G Word count: 772 Summary: Although their styles of communication are very different, both Madara and Tobirama always understand what the other is saying.

The Witching Moon - Rated T+ Word count: 3546 Summary: Jealous of the power held by the Heavenly Bodies, the human Kaguya traps one of them in an attempt to steal that power for herself. She should have known better than to challenge those she views as gods.

To The Sea, To The Sea - Rated T+ Word count: 3793 Summary: Searching for a brother kidnapped by slavers, Madara certainly never expected to accidentally summon what appears to be a water spirit. And he certainly never expected the spirit to help him.

Under The Surface (Dig Deep Till It Bleeds) - Rated T+ Word count: 1914 Summary: In which Tobirama and Madara were born in opposite clans and the Uchiha curse of hatred gets a bit too literal.

Vicarious Happiness - Rated T+ Word count: 1790 Summary: It’s their first date but they appear to have a tag-a-long.

Virginity Drabble - Rated M Word count: 1055 Summary: They’re both virgins until Tobirama isn’t - and Madara wants to know how.

We Wish You A Happy Something - Rated G Word count: 4013 Summary: Madara has detested Christmas since he was fairly young, just not for any reason that he cares to broadcast. This year something special happens that just might endear him to the season a little more.

What I’m Selling Ain’t Cheap (Context Is Everything) [Part 1 of The University Chronicles] - Rated T+ Word count: 4547 Summary: Madara and Hashirama go up to visit Tobirama while he’s away at university but every time they ask someone for help trying to find him they keep getting very odd reactions. It’s almost like these people know something about Tobirama that they don’t.

Free Student To Good Home (Not House Trained) [Part 2 of The University Chronicles] - Rated T+ Word count: Ongoing Summary: Now attending the university here in their hometown as he begins his Master’s, Tobirama develops a problem with falling asleep in the strangest of places. Madara, poor innocent never-deserved-any-of-this Madara, gets mistaken for a mattress one too many times. All he wanted to do was focus on his career but instead he finds himself forcibly tasked with herding his secret crush towards better sleep habits. It’s driving him up the wall.

When Talking Just Won’t Cut It - Rated E Word count: 4415 Summary: He’s been flirting with Tobirama for months now but the idiot just doesn’t seem to get it. Frustrated, Madara takes things in to his own hands. Literally.

Wounded Lips and Salted Cheeks - Rated T+ Word count: 3392 Summary: Ten years is a long time to be gone. It’s amazing how much has changed - and how much hasn’t.

Applicable chapters of the Soulmate Collection: Chapter 2 Chapter 13 Chapter 33 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 52 Chapter 66 Chapter 69 Chapter 77 Chapter 89 Chapter 98 Chapter 121 Chapter 125 Chapter 128 Chapter 142 Chapter 152 Chapter 153 Chapter 154 Chapter 157 Chapter 160 Chapter 161 Chapter 163 Chapter 166 Chapter 174 Chapter 178

#rae writes #madatobi #for anyone confused #the rating system used is the one from AO3

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imsfire2 · 7 years ago

Text

WIP meme

Do This: List all the things you’re currently working on in as much or as little detail as you’d like, then tag some friends to see what they’re working on: writing, art, gifsets, whatever.

I was tagged by @thenewleeland - thank you very much!

And, ahem, you asked for it...

(I will add a read-more after a bit, since there is rather a lot of this. Don’t panic...).

Fan fic – all Rogue One at the present time

In a dark time, the eye begins to see

AU in which Cassian is an artist and Jyn is sent by Saw Gerrera to model for him as a cover to get into the Imperial Archives on Corellia. Angst, feels, smut, action and drama. WIP – currently writing chapter 38 in draft, with the published text on AO3 now up to chapter 35.

Keeping faith

AU in which Cassian and Jyn survived Scarif and are still with the Alliance, but are separated during the battle of Hoth. Jyn is taken prisoner and then discovers she is pregnant, and angst and many feels ensue. WIP – currently on just over 9,000 words in draft with the published text on AO3 standing at just over 6,000.

Hot and wet

Rebelcaptain one-shot that won’t behave; primarily feels, not as smutty as the title suggests!

In your eyes

Rebelcaptain one-shot, a follow-up to A little more information (which was itself a follow-up to one of the Paths of hurt and darkness stories, On attachment elsewhere). Cassian is hospitalised following a suicide attempt, post-battle of Endor. Serious angst and feels.

The Hope of Lyonesse

Only just got started on this, basically it’s still at the planning stage, and it may be a monster as there’s a lot of material to work with. Rogue One/Arthurian legend/other Celtic legends mash-up AU. Cassian is Tristan, Jyn is Isolde, Draven is Mark of Cornwall, Chirrut and Baze are the last two acolytes of the Order of Merlin, Bodhi Rook is a character who fuses the roles of Bedwyr and Brangäne. Mon Mothma is King Arthur, and is a rather more active figure than usual. The Rebel Alliance is the seven Celtic nations, Albion, Cornwall, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, Lyonesse and Galicia; they have a system of loose alliances and treaties cemented by dynastic marriages, and are trying to work together to fight off invasion on two fronts. The Empire is an unholy alliance between the Saxon invaders coming from the east and the magic-wielding Formorians of Hy-Braseal invading by sea from the west. Tarkin and Krennic are Saxons, Vader is the Lord of the Isle of the Torrent. Other SW characters being slotted in gradually. Warning: Do not expect a happy ending.

Captain Andor lives for a day

Only just got started on this, too! Total contrast to the above. A Rogue One/Miss Pettigrew AU. Late 1930’s setting, with jazz music, cocktails and romance for all. Expect fluff and feels with just an undertone of angst (because some of the protagonists are not stupid and are aware of politics).

Original fiction

The Bargain of Liberty (working title)

Just got started on this, so don’t look for it anytime soon! Especially as, being original fic, it won’t be going on AO3.

Historical fantasy set in a sixteenth century AU in which the Spanish did not succeed in conquering the native kingdoms of Central and South America. Consequently the balance of power across the world is totally different. In London, Dr John Dee has worked a great act of magic, the eponymous Bargain of Liberty, to ensure the freedom of his beloved sovereign, Elizabeth of England, and her people, and to enable her to marry her true love, her cousin Mary Stewart, Queen of Scots. A work of magic which has had unexpected ramifications. As our story begins, two British spies, Emilia Tanqueray and Kit Marlowe, and a mestizo Aztec sleeper agent, Javián Cuauhtémoc Sanchez, set out together to thwart the plans of the Inquisition. The Inquisition’s goals are to overthrow the Emperor Axayacatl the second of Mexico, and to send an Armada to invade the island of Britain…

Also sitting in my Dropbox, Pt 1: Uncompleted original fiction

The taker of daughters

This is a rewrite and expansion of an earlier Hansel and Gretel: Witch-hunters fan-fic. Significant character changes and hefty filling-in of background. A steampunk historical fantasy using characters from various ballet versions of folk tales, set in the aftermath of a great war between the High and Low Kingdoms of Faerie and the Middle World of Humankind. Main character is now Klara Stahlbaum (from The Nutcracker), other characters are her brother, who I’ve named Anton because I don’t like the name Fritz, a Firebird, an OFC who is a human/Firebird mongrel, the Lilac Fairy, and a pregnant giantess. The main antagonist, the Taker of Daughters, is Kostschei the Terrible. Currently at just over 77.000 words. I’m not sure if this is working, though. I’m having what I can only call tonal problems and struggling to find a balance between the darker and the less-dark elements of the story. So it may end up being abandoned altogether.

The Smiling Assassin

This was a NaNoWriMo project from 2014; a thriller about a retired MI6 agent working for a small London charity, who gets pulled back into his old world when a friend from the past asks him for a favour. It backfired at around 36,000 words when I realised the plot was not only derivative as all hell but also really sucked!

Fortitude

A Sci-Fi story about first contact with a telepathic alien species; needs re-writing a lot, but the basic storyline is still good.

A dream of death

My “no-zombies zombie apocalypse” story. Yeah, that.

Midnight in the Café Tana

An urban fantasy about a local government employee who is a practising witch, and her attempts to help her ex who has fallen victim to a psychic vampire.

Nohomer

A Sci-Fi piece mixing a love story inspired by Pelleas et Melisande with a background of social conflict between rich and poor in a far-off future of Rampant Intergalactic Capitalism.

The war is over

A Sci-Fi story inspired by the core ideas from my very first ever fan-fic, which was a sequel to Return of the Jedi written when I was a teenager. Key plot points are A) the Emperor is dead and the beleaguered Evil Empire is on the verge of losing the galactic civil war, looking for ways to fight back and sabotage their enemies, and B) any Emperor worth his salt is bound to have a son-and-heir tucked away somewhere.

Also sitting in my Dropbox, Pt 2: Completed original fiction

The Healers

A magic realist historical fantasy Western; a faith healer who really can heal rescues a member of the Jesse James gang from certain death and hires him to ride shotgun with her. They travel through 1880’s Missouri having assorted adventures, healing various people and one another and trying not to get killed by various other people who want to bring him to justice, while falling in love. Features lots of gritty local colour, dirt, violence, whores, blood, sex, angst and feels. I had a ball writing this and it’s probably my best piece of full-length original fic so far.

The Secret Country

Urban fantasy with people who have real magical powers/superpowers trying desperately not to get found out and caught by a government agency determined to make use of them as weapons. Flawed as a piece of writing, but quite an exciting read if you can get past a few sticky patches.

The eternal love of Gabriel Yeats

A slightly bonkers magic realist historical fantasy, featuring time travel, reincarnation, doomed romance and a lot of major character death. Very fond of this one too though it has its issues as a piece of novel writing – it’s much too episodic and has a big structural flaw which I never managed to solve successfully.

Ramundi’s sisters

A historical romance about an artist and his three sisters in early C20th rural Sicily. Very angsty and feels-y, with thwarted love and lots of unhappiness for everyone. This was my first full-length novel and although I think I’ve improved a lot since as a writer then I’m still fond of it because I remember the thrill of writing it and having it flow.

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syrupwit · 8 years ago

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Letter for Chocolate Box 2017

Hello! Thank you for considering making something for me. I am not that great at letters, so please contact the mods or send an anonymous ask message if anything is unclear. Also! I’m probably not as picky as I sound.

In general, I like:

Femslash, slash, and gen (most of these prompts are f/f or m/m but I also like gen a lot!)

Pretty girls wearing pretty clothes

Supernatural creatures looking rad

Cool monsters

Humor and crack!fic

Supernatural horror, especially ghost stories and cosmic horror

Isolated or "outsider" characters finding true friends

Powerful people/beings who are unusually loyal and attached to less powerful people/beings

Pining

Sexuality angst, whether it concludes with gay/bi characters being hopeful or determined and more comfortable with themselves or getting further entrenched in self-destructive spirals

Women being really important to other women, whether their relationship is overall positive or negative or conflicted or whatever

Unconventionally attractive characters/couples

Domestic slice-of-life with a slightly weird twist

In general, I do not like:

Het as the main romantic pairing (unless it’s for Katanagatari)

BDSM (unless specified in a prompt)

M/f femsub. I know this is implied to be a DNW by the bullet points above, but this is a hard squick for me so I want to make sure that's made clear!

Romances where one character becomes a ghost over the course of the story (it's OK if they start out a ghost)

Issuefic

Onscreen rape/noncon (unless it’s Korse/Party Poison i guess)

Onscreen child abuse

Fandoms I requested:

Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys

“The Hound” (H. P. Lovecraft)

Katanagatari

Original Work

Revolutionary Girl Utena/Shoujo Kakumei Utena

Prompts/DNWs for Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys

The only pairing I’ve requested is:

Korse/Party Poison -- Hero/villain! Post-apocalyptic dystopia! Mind control! Do Killjoys really never die? Has Korse ever captured Party Poison pre-music video canon? Is post-comics Korse imprisoned by B/L/I/N/D and does he then meet a brainwashed Party Poison? Or perhaps the characters have another past together, one that either or both have forgotten? (If you have a messed-up idea, please feel FREE to run with it for this canon.)

DNW: Child abuse. Also, although I am well familiar with the variety of ways that bandom and Killjoys canon have been integrated over the years, I would prefer it if the characters of Party Poison and Korse were kept separate from their bandom counterparts for any fills or treats made for me in this challenge.

Prompts/DNWs for "The Hound” by H. P. Lovecraft

("The Hound" can be read in its entirety here.)

Narrator/St. John -- When they're not busy stealing cursed amulets, examining the treasures in their underground collection of sacred objects treated disrespectfully as Goth memorabilia, or discussing the finer aesthetic points of their mutual ennui, what sorts of activities do these graverobbing hipsters get up to in that big empty house on the moor?

DNW: Necrophilia, guro, het (m/f).

Prompts/DNWs for Katanagatari

I fucking love this anime, occasional fanservicey shots of Togame and all. If you aren’t familiar with it, and you like or at least don’t mind anime, backgrounds that have more definition than characters(’ noses), borderline-supernatural fiction set in historical Japan, and outlandishly dressed people having slow, lengthy, at times philosophical conversations while ostensibly doing sword things at each other, then I recommend that you try it out!

In any case, here are my pairing-specific prompts:

Togame/Yasuri Shichika -- Togame and Shichika being happy and enjoying time together ;__;

Hitei-Hime/Yasuri Shichika -- Post-canon, Hitei-Hime and Shichika are set upon by bandits and must dispatch them. These bandits don’t know what hit them!

Togame/Yasuri Nanami -- AU where Nanami, not Shichika, accompanies Togame on her quest.

Hitei-Hime/Togame -- Hitei-Hime and Togame matching wits pre-canon.

I also just think Hitei-Hime is super super pretty, and I love her character design. So... If you feel inspired to draw even a small or sketchy picture of her? I’d totally be pleased.

DO NOT WANT: Hitei-Hime/Togame/Shichika that posits Shichika as the focal point of the triad.

Prompts/DNWs for Original Work

My likes and DNWs are well specified at the beginning of the letter, so here are just prompts for the pairings listed:

Female Non-Humanoid Robot/Female Humanoid Robot -- Uh. Anything, honestly! What do they do? How did they meet? How did they fall in love? ...Robot sex?

Female Cryptid/Female Human -- Female Human gets lost in the woods and is rescued by Female Cryptid.

Barista/Vampire -- Hardworking Barista just wants to take out the trash so they can go home and wash the scalded milk smell from their clothes, but then they are attacked on the way to the dumpster. Who to the rescue but that slightly creepy customer who orders their own weight in coffee and sits in the darkest corner of the shop all day? (Why were they loitering in that alley anyway?)

Necromancer & Demon Summoner -- What is the relationship between these two? Are they friends? Friendly acquaintances? Professional rivals? Do they set up shop in different suites in the same aged, sparsely populated office building, and gradually come to realize that they work in similar fields? Do they totally fight a monster or some aspect of city bureaucracy together? Is there a regrettable incident where a ghoul called by the demon summoner wanders off and consumes some of the necromancer's employees? Or do they just trade professional anecdotes over a cup of tea?

Female Demon/Female Human -- A female graduate student, lonely and bored with being single, accidentally summons a succubus. But it works out!

Female Alien/Female Human -- Female Human is exploring some strange ruins when she encounters Female Alien. (If you wanted to make Female Alien a more Lovecraftian sort of alien, tentacles or gelatinous shapeshifting abilities or POWER TO INSPIRE INDESCRIBABLE FEAR or no, that would be awesome.)

Prompts/DNWs for Revolutionary Girl Utena

I love Utena! What a great show and character. I love the movie too, and could happily expound on why I think it functions as a sequel to the anime series more than an AU, but this is not the time or place for that.

Some general likes for RGU fic and fanart:

Surreal tone

Absurdist humor

Roses

Beautiful uniforms and dresses /o\

RGU-specific dislikes/DNWs:

Explicit sexual content -- not for this fandom please. Implied is welcome!

Works focused specifically on how characters recover from abuse and trauma

Noncanonical character death

Juri or Utena paired with male characters romantically (though one-sided crushes are fine)

Prompts for each pairing listed:

Anthy/Utena -- Utena is an enthusiastic but inept barista; Anthy is her favorite customer.

Anthy/Utena -- Anthy, Utena, and Chu-Chu have a nice time at the beach. Or anywhere, really.

Akio/Touga -- Akio reveals to Touga that he is dead.

Anthy/Kanae -- Angst! I requested this pairing because of this fan theory about Kanae being a former winning duelist who chose to become Akio's princess, and Anthy having bitterness towards her because of that: http://rosepetalrevolution.tumblr.com/post/152521898992/ You don’t have to go along with the fan theory -- anything angsty with Anthy and Kanae would be great.

Juri/Shiori/Ruka -- (Please no Juri-->Ruka or Juri reciprocating Ruka's feelings.) Shiori cottons on to Ruka's feelings for Juri and suggests they all do an activity together, hoping to shame both of them with her knowledge. Things do not go as planned.

Nanami & Tsuwabaki -- Nanami rents a house for summer vacation. Tsuwabuki accompanies her. It turns out the house is haunted... or is it?!

Utena/Wakaba -- Wakaba gave Utena chocolate for Valentine's Day. What does Utena give her for White Day?

Touga/Saionji -- Touga is a ghost, and everyone has forgotten him. Then Saionji starts having strange dreams...

#chocolate box 2017 #optional detailed letters for exchanges tag

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furederiko · 8 years ago

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Tis the Ides of March, and thus a Random-News-Digest is on hand...

Disney Live Action

To be frank, the idea of Tim Burton doing a "Dumbo" live action adaptation, is enough to make people scratch their heads and well, probably question their sanity. But it gets even more weirder. Thanks to the first two actors who are being courted for the movie.

Ever since he put a pause in his partnership with Johnny Depp and ex-wife Helena Bonham-Carter, there is one actress that Burtons continuously runs to. Eva Green! Yep, after their collaborations in "Dark Shadows", and "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children", Burton wants Green for "Dumbo". She is currently in talks to play Colette, a French trapeze artist who works for Vandemere. Who is Vandemere? Was he in the original animated movie too? I believe said character hasn't been cast yet. But apparently, he's an evil big top circus villain, who loves to take over smaller circus. One of said 'smaller circus' owner is Medici. And guess who's being approached to play Medici? Burton's previous collaborator in "Batman Returns", the iconic Penguin himself, Danny DeVito.

As I said, the thought of Burton doing "Dumbo" alone already sounds surreal. I can't even imagine how it would look, considering the director has penchants for the weird and whimsical. And now it will have "Penny Dreadful" very own Vanessa Ives and a former Batman villain as the possible leads. Do let those sink slowly into your brains...

DC Films

With negative rumors swirling around the movie's post production, and the bad press already looming on it thanks to its two previous titles, it's safe to say the concerns for "Wonder Woman" aren't so baseless. It seems Warner Bros might have realized this as well, as they have taken a different approach to ensure that this movie will not repeat the same mistake(s). That's probably (yes, subjectively speaking) the reason why they have invited several members of the press to check out some parts of the movie beforehand.

According to Birth.Movies.Death, they were given accomodations and privilege to see around 20 minutes of the movie in London. The footage that were shown were not continuous, and were taken from various moments of the movies itself. Director Patty Jenkins was also present to share her thoughts on the matter. You can read detailed description of all three scenes on B.M.D, but I have to warn you that it might be a little spoilery. So read it on your own risk. This friendly warning goes for the site's follow-up editorial as well, that talked about the overall plot and movie's antagonist. But of course... if you're perfectly fine with being a little or completely spoiled, then do go ahead and enjoy the fun read.

The important thing about the viewing was, Jenkins managed to assure the press that her Wonder Woman would be... simply speaking, 'special'. She will HAVE personalities, unlike the blank one that everyone oddly praised on "Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice". She will have chemistry with Chris Pine's Steve Trevor, so not just a random eyecandy moving around from one place to another, like the one on... yes "Bvs", a.k.a this year's Razzie Awards winner (for "Worst Sequel", "Screenplay", and "Screen Combo"). But more importantly, "She CAN’T be dark and nasty", Jenkins promised. Why? Because Gal Gadot's Diana Prince will be "the HERO the world’s been waiting for". Of course, she didn't say them with CAP-SLOCK on, that's just my way of emphasizing the context. But seriously, if you ask me, those words alone are enough to serve as a harsh wake-up slap towards fellow DC Films directors who have only painted the DC heroes in a truly bad light. Dark and gritty, my as*! LOL.

So much is riding on Jenkins' shoulder, to be honest. This will be WB's first female-led superhero movie. Not to mention, one that comes after a long period of absence due to really bad ones in form of WB's own "Catwoman" or FOX's "Elektra". This movie is directed by a female director, whose presence in Hollywood is still being looked down and can even be counted with human fingers. And unlike the well-oiled-machine that is Marvel Studios, DC Films hasn't had a 'great' movie so far. All divisive, and disappointing in their own ways. Thus everyone, especially real DC Fans are counting on this one to be at least 'good', making up for the disasters that came before it. The good news is, Jenkins showed the exact enthusiasm, confidence, and respect for her character that both critics and audience are seeking. The positive side effect is already shown, as many of the press members invited have already begun comparing her movie to Richard Donner's iconic "Superman". You know, the one that doesn't turn Clark Kent into a mopey bastard? So yeah, looks like WB might FINALLY have a DC Film title that is worth-watching for after all! At least until Zack Snyder and his "Justice League" arrive to ruin it all over again, right? I'm kidding! Ahahaha. Or am I? Hmmmm... *sigh*.

Admittedly, I'm personally NOT feeling any of the movie's trailers so far. And that includes the latest one that debuted on this year's Kids Choice Awards. It's unclear whether that's because it's exactly a mirror reflection of what to expect from the movie, or simply because the marketing department has seriously been failing me so far. The chance of me seeing this directly on theatre is very slim. Close to zero, in fact! Not even that new poster that everyone seems to be praising for is able to convince me otherwise (really, I think it's just 'okay'). After all, WB might always release an Extended/Ultimate version for the home video, right? They did exactly that not once, but TWICE already with their previous releases. So why even bother seeing this on the theatre when you can spend a bit more dollars to get the FULL and generally better version?

Regardless of that, it would be a shameful crime for me to shun and curse the movie, hoping it will fail miserably. Please don't ever associate me with those so-called 'devoted DC fans' who continue to wish Marvel movies to fail, with a stupid 'just because' as its foundation. Yes, there was a time when Jenkins praised "Suicide Squad" by calling that movie 'GREAT' (wait, seriously?!), eventhough that's hardly the case. Making many including yours truly questions her ability to deliver something that would be A LOT better. But let's not let that cloud our judgement, shall we? Let's pay attention towards the bigger picture. As I've said before, the success of "Wonder Woman" will have consequences and after effects for others that follow. Not just for WB itself, but for other studios, and the specific genre in particular. In that regards, I obviously want it to at least be good, pleasing both critically and financially, but also enjoyable enough to please its fans and general audience. I'm not and never will be a fan to Wonder Woman, but I would love to see other studios getting their confidence to create a female-led superhero movies thanks to this. That's the long-term target I'm counting on this movie to live up to.

And seriously, the future is not set in stone. "Wonder Woman" can end up becoming a much better origin story than "Man of Steel". Hmm... what did you say? That Superman movie was already okay? Well, I totally beg to differ. I mean, even WB seems to think they've made a mistake with it. If not, why on earth would they bother themselves to approach Matthew Vaughn to reboot the character? Yes, that's the recent development buzzing around the planned sequel right now. Although, it's not even clear if he'll take the offer or not. But before you argue that Vaughn's work so far has been bloody R-rated movies, do remember one solid fact. Despite being very gruesome in nature, both "Kick-Ass" and "Kingsman" had very likeable and charming lead characters (played by the equally charming Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Taron Egerton respectively). Characters that actually felt like real people, not some cold-blooded killers disguised under the mantle of superheroes. Vaughn seems to have the correct point of view about Superman too! So at the very least, I'm sure his version won't be worse than Snyder's angsty sociopath mother-complex alien...

X-Men Universe

Yes, "Logan" is still going strong despite the rampage of an overperforming "Kong: Skull Island", making it the highest grossing movie of the year so far. But should we even be surprised, when critics are loving it, and giving glowing reviews? If you ask me, it's the other X-Men movie that's making the bigger news.

Via his personal Twitter account, Ryan Reynolds himself has unveiled the actress who would be playing the mutant mercenary Domino in the tentatively titled "Deadpool 2". This began when he tweeted a rather cryptic image of domino cards that immediately made the internet buzzing. Why? Because it didn't take long before keen-eyed fans noticed that the dots were forming a particular name: Zazie Beets. Beets is an actress who gains popularity thanks to being a breakout in Donald Glover's critically acclaimed hit comedy series "Atlanta". Mind you, I haven't seen it yet (don't even ask me the reason why), so I can't really say I'm familiar with her. Nor whether she's the right actress for the role, since I'm not even that much familiar with the character Domino. But people seems to be singing praises for this casting decision, including Deadpool's creator himself. So that's like a solid seal of approval, right?

Considering Beets is African-American, that means we will be getting a racebent Domino, because as far as I recall, she's a white caucassian female in the comics. Apparently, FOX were consciously testing for Black or Latina actress for the role. Looks like the studio is joining the 'racebending bandwagon' with this, after Marvel Studios and DC Films did the same with Valkyrie and Iris West. Not that it really matters though. What's more important is ghzg she's the right actress for the role, am I right?

Jurassic Park

Sequel to the successful bombastic abomination "Jurassic World" has begun production since February 23rd, 2017. The tentatively called "Jurassic World 2" (perhaps it's going to be renamed into "Jurassic Universe"? LOL) has moved forward with J.A. Bayona to direct. Universal had set a release date for it on June 22nd, 2018. Lead actors Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, alongside B.D. Wong are returning, while the new cast consists of Toby Jones, Rafe Spall, Justice Smith, Daniella Pineda, Ted Levine, James Cromwell, and Geraldine Chapline. But it's producer Frank Marshall that gave us the first taste of the sequel, confirming that it IS in production. Yes, he did so via an unexpected tweet last week. But did that tweet confirmed which new species we might see on the sequel? Because frankly, aside from the kid, those are just fossils and not actual dinosaurs! Oh well, I'm sure we'll hear more about this movie pretty soon...

Marvel Studios

I almost always have this category in every R-N-D. Yet there are two future titles that are often absent: "Ant-Man and the Wasp" and "Captain Marvel". That shouldn't be a surprise, considering they won't come out until at least July 2018. And my attention is pretty occupied with the 2017 to early 2018 releases instead, especially the massive title that is "Avengers: Infinity War". You know what it is, right? The highly anticipated movie that might have Terry Notary confirmed as a mysterious new character, and might be filming on a 1000 years old landmark in Durham, England.

So let's talk briefly about them now. And why is that? Because Production Weekly (via MCU Exchange) has revealed that the sequel to "Ant-Man" will begin pre-production this very month in Atlanta. Official photography itself will then commence on July 6, which is precisely a year prior to its release on July 6th, 2018. All three of the main cast, Paul Rudd's Scott Lang, Evangeline Lilly's Hope van Dyne, and Michael Douglas' Hank Pym, have all been confirmed to return. Michael Pena's scene-stealing Luis will be in it too. The other cast has yet to be confirmed for the time being, but I'm sure we'll know about that in the coming months.

The working title for the movie is called "Cherry Blue", which might or might not works as a nod to a particular story arc. It's currently unclear what the story this sequel will have, aside from the confirmation from director Peyton Reed that it will be stand-alone, just like the first one. Perhaps it will focus on Hank's attempt to locate his missing wife Janet van Dyne in the Quantum Realm? That's certainly the highest possibility so far. The biggest question on my head about it though, is HOW Scott will be able to freely operate as Ant-Man, considering his fate at the end of "Captain America: Civil War". Lest we forget, this sequel arrives just 2 months after "Infinity War". Surely that movie will have additional ripple effects for Scott. Could he still be serving as a rogue vigilante when the time comes? And how will Hank and Hope even respond to said development. Could Hope take the mantle of the Wasp, in order to take over his place, then? So many questions, so little answers. But one thing for sure, we won't be seeing the Pym Tech Building anymore.

"Captain Marvel" will then arrive following a looong 8 months gap after that. According to My Entertainment World (via MCU Exchange as well), the current plan is for the production to begin in January 2018. With a release date of March 8th, 2019, that frankly makes a whole lot of sense, since most Marvel Studios' production took around 1 year to produce (similar case to "Ant-Man and the Wasp"). As of writing, only lead actress Brie Larson is confirmed for the movie. Marvel Studios has yet to announce the director for the job (although I suspect they already have one. Perhaps Niki Caro after she completes "Mulan"?), and casting for supporting characters will not take place until close to production. So apart from an official concept art (costumed action pose!) shown on Disney's regular shareholder meeting, which we might not see until this year's San Diego Comic Con or Disney's D23, this is the best news we get for the Studios' first completely female-led movie. Still crossing my fingers that the movie will include several other superheroines though! Perhaps, Monica Rambeau, or even better, Jessica Drew's Spider Woman. After all, the movie needs some diversity, right?

Now let's get back to 2017, with a title only months away from release! Entertainment Weekly debuted official images from "Thor: Ragnarok" last week, and obviously, it easily took the world by storm. Aside from spotlighting the Son of Odin himself to grace the upcoming edition's cover, we got to see the first official and also closeup looks for Cate Blanchett's Hela, Tessa Thompson's Valkyrie, Mark Ruffalo's returning character Bruce Banner, and more importantly Jeff Goldblum's The Grandmaster. Karl Urban's Skurge is the only new character absent on it.

Thor has a haircut as rumored!!! Which might, or might not be inspired by the character's particular story arc in the comics. Lead actor Chris Hemsworth felt more comfortable with this change, as it didn't require him to sit on the makeup chair before filming now. If you're a fan of the punching chemistry between Hulk and Thor in "The Avengers", then that reunion image between Thor and Ruffalo's Banner would make one grins with joy. After all, Banner was missing in action following the aftermath of "Avengers: Age of Ultron", so it's great seeing him in good shape. And rather well-groomed! Meanwhile, The Grandmaster's appearance seems to be inline with Benicio del Toro's The Collector. Which makes a lot of sense since he has been depicted as Taneleer Tivan's older brother in recent Marvel animated shows. He looks original, but still rocking all the familiar signatures of his comic book counterpart (the gray weird-shaped hair, color-tone of his costume). Also worth noted, is the exciting bright and vibrant COLORS that easily stand out in those images. It's as if, we're seeing another "Guardians of the Galaxy" of the year. Who knows, perhaps that IS indeed the case.

Some plot points were also openly shared by the cast and creators to the magazine. Blanchett revealed that there's a valid reason why her Hela hasn't shown up in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. "She’s been locked away for millennia getting more and more cross, and then, with a mistake, she gets unleashed and she ain’t getting back in that box", she said. This is all made possible due to the careless reign of Tom Hiddleston's Loki, who has been spoofing as Anthony Hopkins' Odin since the ending of "Thor: The Dark World". Thanks to this grudge, Thor will get to see Hela's bad side, and well, gets sent away without his powers to a galactic wasteland, which is the Planet Sakaar. But that's where he will meet Valkyrie, who is an elite warrior in the Grandmaster's world. Confirming that she will have a reimagined backstory in the MCU. It seems this new character might be poised to take over Jane Foster's position as romantic interest (since Natalie Portman isn't involved in the movie), but even that's still everyone's question. Not just Valkyrie, Thor will also encounter 'old friend' Hulk once again, who for some unknown reason has ended up in the planet as a Gladiator. This will set off the two Avengers on a cosmic road-trip, as has been promised in the synopsis. Meaning, probably not so much of Stephen Strange despite fans' speculations.

Despite the rather serious Asgardian 'doomsday' storyline (that might play a heavylifting role towards "Infinity War") however, the appointing of Taika Waititi as the director also brought many questions to practically everyone. Considering he's a director best known for comedic chops, as proven by the irresistibly charming but also powerfully endearing "Hunt for the Wilderpeople". In form of Marvel-style, that mockumentary "Team THOR" that could be seen online and as part of the "Doctor Strange" Bluray is an easy example to 'his style'. Hemsworth revealed, that with Waititi as the lead, "all the characters and the tone of the whole story to head in a new direction". As in, having more FUN that they should have, properly utilizing Hemsworth's natural talent for comedy. Even Hiddleston has confirmed that the director WILL leave his signature fingerprints on it, with Blanchett supporting the same idea. If you're already taken aback by the amount of comedy in the second movie, then you might want to be worried to hear this. But if you're like me, who never saw that as a problem, then you'll rest assured that it will be vastly entertaining. Even Waititi himself added with confidence, "We want people to care what happens and care that the hero succeeds. I think tonally it’s like a slight shift. I don’t feel nervous — I feel good about it". Fair point! Once again, his "Hunt of the Wilderpeople" is a solid proof of his talent to balance heart, comedy, and action just fine. Mark your date, "Hunt of the Wilder-Avengers" is definitely going to be an intriguing title when it opens on November 3rd, 2017.

With "Spider-Man: Homecoming" going on regular official reshoot, "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" releasing new trailer while tracking to a massive opening weekend, and "Infinity War" expanding its antagonistic cast, things are moving along smoothly for Disney's Marvel properties. Fans of Marvel Studios and the MCU in general can rest at ease that their favorite Cinematic Universe isn't going anywhere soon. At least, not until 2019...

Netflix

Unfortunately, things aren't shining bright in the other medium. Critics have been given the opportunity to screen the first 6 episodes of Marvel's "Iron Fist", and they have begun posting their thoughts online. How did it go? It pains me a bit to say this, because I've been looking forward to it the most, but the response... is mostly NOT good. Although critics' opinions obviously don't necessarily reflect audience's reception when it comes out (with Marvel's "Luke Cage" being a good example), this is a bit disheartening to hear (and/or read). Many of what have been said as the show's problems, are surprisingly in sync with the concerns lingering on my head for a good while now. Especially after showrunner Scott Buck's discouraging statement regarding the lack of costume for the titular character. Looks like the Marvel-Netflix 'grounded' approach has taken its toll this time, because many are saying that "Iron Fist" feels more like repeating previous series, something 'more of the same'. But unfortunately, in a relatively lower value, which simply means... NOT in a good way.

Allow me to use the first two reviews I read as the example. Mind you, neither are talking about how Iron Fist should be played by Asian actor, so they aren't giving bad rep because of said issue. CNET called this a 'misstep' because it focuses more on corporate intrigue, rather than martial arts. While Finn Jones does show a naive swagger, he shows 'awkwardness' in physical movements which shouldn't be the case for a kung fu master. In fact, it's easily Jessica Henwick's Colleen Wing who's stealing the show during this first half. The site did however, point out that things are moving in the right direction toward the end. As in probably a better second half, even if they likened the show to be taking the story "a little too seriously". FanBoy Nation called this the weakest collaboration between Marvel and Netflix so far. Even called it "a bland rehash of the weakest parts of Daredevil", and "a show without its own identity". The site pointed out that the Marvel-Netflix series pacing issue, have reached a breaking point here. But the important thing I quickly noticed in their review, is the bland and weak characterization and writing. Eventhough the actors tried their best to give more despite the weak material, it's still apparent. THAT sounds seriously concerning, because that means the fault comes from the creators, and NOT the choice of actors.

So yeah. The general consensus is that this show (for the first 6 episodes, at least) just couldn't live up to the 'greatness' of previous shows, whether in story nor action sequences. So far, it feels like a 'Been There Done That' situation. How it falls victim to the Marvel-Netflix formula of taking itself too seriously, thus losing all the wuxia fantasy and mysticism that should've naturally come with the package. Heck, when it can't even compare to "Doctor Strange" that embraced its weirdness effectively while still kicking plenty of mystic fanatics' behind in a thrilling way... that's saying much. Not to mention, it once again repeats, or worse, enhances the major issue that the Netflix shows had often been called out before: awkward pacing. Yes, arguably speaking, 13 episodes have been proven to be too long for these shows. And such negative sentiment seems even more visible in this one. It falls victim to excessive running time and episode obligations, that it's hard for it to not resort to obvious filler plots. A complete opposite to Marvel TV's claim, that this show will have more episodical villains. Is it probable, that Marvel TV might have rushed this just to clear the way for Marvel's "The Defenders", hence the trepid receptions? Fulfilling obligations for its promised fourth member? That COULD be the case, although it's pure speculatory from my part.

I can't help but wonder if having a flashy suit instead of delaying one for 13 episodes, would've given the show a better boost? Hmmm... Or perhaps, we're going to get some surprise in the later episodes after all? Yep, speaking of that, I can't help but also wonder if Marvel TV is deliberately saving all the good parts for the second half. I mean, if we pay attention to previous series, this does seem to be the likeliest scenario. "Luke Cage" and the second season of Marvel's "Daredevil" are the quick examples I can point out, because they seem to have a dual arc that is separated halfway through. Cage was initially focused on Cottonmouth, but in the second half, changed shift towards a more personal-intentioned Diamondback. While Daredevil spent the first half with The Punisher, and migrated towards The Hand in the latter half. Will "Iron Fist" be treated the same way? Personally, I don't think 'saving the best for last' is a WISE decision when it comes to TV shows. Because forcing anyone to sit through 6 hours of 'intro' to get to the good part, is like one really bad marketing strategy. Sure, it's still better than having the show fizzles out halfway through its run (like "Luke Cage"?). But really, who can even assure the creators that audience would NOT drop the show early on out of boredom? Which was precisely the problem with Netflix's own "Sense8", by the way. Yes, slow-burn storytelling style have often works, but that format teases great things from the very beginning. Not filling them with fillers!

Personal ranting aside, if we take Jones and Henwick's interview with Yahoo UK as any indications, then YES, the real story for their show might at least get more interesting (if not stronger) from episode 7 onwards. Why? According to them, "There are two characters who come into the second half of Iron Fist season one who hasn't been announced yet". TWO? I wonder who it is, and could it be, the mysterious character that Ramon Rodriguez is playing? What about David Sakurai? His character has been mysteriously noted 'to-be-confirmed' as well. Popular opinion easily points towards two particular characters: Davos the Steel Serpent, and Shang-Chi the Master of Kung Fu. We know that Davos' symbol has been hinted since the first "Daredevil", so he's the surest bet. Shang-Chi? He has been reported as a rumor by several sites before, eventhough Jeph Loeb seemed to have shot that down. This character could be whom Henwick was referring to as "a comic book character who’s not been seen before and at the end of Iron Fist they set him up in a really interesting way".

It's unclear which actor will portray who. IMO, Sakurai would be a perfect actor for Davos, even if Rodriguez is currently the one being speculated as one. But what if, and this is just another fan speculation, that the second character is instead Hector Ayala the White Tiger, and not Shang-Chi? Some fans have brought up his name, and well, it does ring a bell. It would make a lot of sense for Rodriguez to play him, since he's a Latino. Not to mention, his niece Angela del Toro has been namedropped in Marvel's "Jessica Jones" before, and Netfix had indeed expressed interest for a series with Mexican/Hispanic lead. That can't be a coincidence, right? For the Marvel uninformed, White Tiger is also a superpowered character that gained his power thanks to mysticism. And one related to Iron Fist! This is definitely an intriguing possiblity. One that leaves us to a more important question: Could this two characters shake up the show and change critics' current perception of the series? Hmmmmmm...

Of course, the bigger problem is... the building concern for "Iron Fist" doesn't stays on one spot, because it leads towards another big one. Buck, is also serving as the showrunner of Marvel's "The Inhumans"! Which is the reason why I'm putting the Marvel TV category below this one, rather than the opposite like I always do. "Iron Fist" is just a few days away from release, and it is then that we can finally judge with our very own eyes, whether it is as bad as the critics' said, or becomes a truly powerful dragon-conqueror in the second half as many expected. But really, if Buck couldn't even do justice with Iron Fist, a character that should have been practically easy and outlandish enough to explore, CAN he do better with Inhumans? I honestly doubt it.

Marvel TV

Eventhough my hype for Marvel's "The Inhumans" is still high, I really can't ignore the concern of having Scott Buck as the showrunner. Seriously, I wonder why or how Marvel TV was able to trust him for two projects at the same time? It's a different scenario with "The Defenders" showrunners. Because not only they were involved with the first season, they were appointed to do "The Defenders" AFTER the positive response of "Daredevil" Season 2. So it's speaking out of success, right?

But the show must go on, and that's precisely what's happening. Filming continues in Hawaii, and every public sighting is continuously reported by Reel News Hawaii via Twitter. One of their early report, confirmed that the production took place in Diamond Head crater. Since I haven't been fortunate enough to visit Hawaii, I have no clue what place that is. Apparently, it's a volcanic crater with tunnels, and a pretty massive one too in terms of scale. Could it represent the halls of Attilan then? Hmmm.

More intriguingly, the filming takes place in city area that literally has "Oahu Service" on its taxi. Does this mean Attilan will be located on Earth, in Hawaii, rather than on the Moon? In the comics, there were stories that depicted the Inhuman City to take place in the Himalayan, and even the Atlantic Ocean. But my issue is, shouldn't this be a problem, then? I mean, those who are watching Marvel's "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." should be aware by now that they are tracking down Inhumans, and registrating them with the Sokovia Accords. How could a city this massive in scale escape the knowledge of governments around the world, then? It could easily be visible through satelitte's tracking, and all. It's enough that people are questioning why the Avengers never appear in the show, and vice versa. Doesn't having Attilan and the Royal Family on Earth only makes it a more strenuous affair?

This is where it gets more interesting. MCU Exchange reached out to Reel News Hawaii about the scene that featured Anson Mount's Black Bolt and Lockjaw. Turns out, it was filmed as some sort of "grand entrance for Black Bolt to the public eye". Apparently, Bolt's arrival caused a commotion, as local Honolulu (confirming it DOES take place in actual Hawaii) enforcement arrive on the scene, and public begins taking photos with their smartphones. Once again, cue the S.H.I.E.L.D. connection concern, because a huge event like this would be too big NOT to be noticed by governments. As for why Bolt is on Earth, the site speculated that the Inhuman King is having an urgent matter, forcing him to visit Earth for the first time (noted by his poor knowledge of technology).

Rest assured though, Reel News Hawaii also revealed that Attilan itself will consist of non-human looking citizens. Which is the way it should be, since unlike mutants, Inhumans come in different size, shapes, and forms. In addition to that, the Statue of Saint Damien of Molokai at the Hawaii State Capitol, has been replaced by a giant black-colored Monolith. Fans of "AoS" should be very familiar with this, as it was the exact macguffin that became the focus in Season 2. I could've sworn it has a different symbols compared to the ones messing around with Phil Coulson's head though. Which might be intentional, because that was in fact the symbol to a deserted ancient Inhumans city that accidentally caused Daisy Johnson to gain her natural power. Spotted on the same location, was actress Isabelle Cornish in costume as Crystal. Complete with her signature comic book style. Does this mean, the State Capitol is being used as the Inhumans Palace? Thus far, we have seen how Black Bolt, and Crystal look. I wonder how soon we'll see the rest of the cast too? Hmmm...

Kamen Rider

TOEI has officially released the trailer for the much anticipated 2nd season of "Kamen Rider Amazons". This successful web-series took the tokusatsu fanbase by storm when it was released last year. Eventhough I didn't enjoy it as much as everyone else, I'm still curious to see what they are going to pull off with the new season. Which by the way, will begin streaming on April 7th, 2017, ONLY via Amazon Prime Video. Turns out, and much to the surprise of many, the season will star a new Protagonist! Well... not really a shocking thing when you see it storytelling-wise, due to how the first season ended. After all, Tom Fujita's Haruka Misuzawa (Amazon Omega), and Masashi Taniguchi's Jin Takayama (Amazon Alpha) were left in rather... conclusive condition/situation.

Fear not though, those two characters, alongside many others (whom you could see flashing here and there in the trailer) have been confirmed to return. They will cannonically be involved in the drama between You Maejima's Chihiro, and Ayana Shiramoto's Iyu. Chihiro is our new protagonist, who will transform into Kamen Rider Amazon Neo (using the new Driver, Neo Amazons Driver), while Iyu is the Crow Amazon, who has been killed by the Amazons. Why the focus on this pair? Because the theme of this season is rather startling! This time, it's going to be about 'boys and girls'. HUH? Yeah, try to digest that new information slowly, okay!

Persona

Wow, it has been a while since I talk about "Persona 5", huh? Admittedly, my enthusiasm for the game has dropped as soon as the Japan version was released. That, alongside the repetitive delay for the English-language version, had basically made me forget about it. No kidding, life happens.

Anyways, the English version will be released very soon, precisely on April 4th, 2017. Pre-orders will include additional bonus materials, such as DLCs, themes, and avatars. In an attempt to remind fans that they aren't delaying this game any futher (Duh? The video is titled "The Phantom Thieves Are Ready to Roll on April 4"!), Atlus US has released a new 'Sizzle Reel Trailer' that showcased characters, gameplays, and a general plot of the game. If you prefer a more Velvet-y Room one, you could also see the introduction video for Caroline and Justine.

The King of Fighters

The first out of three (yeah, looks like there's only three characters instead of four) new paid DLC characters for "The King of Fighters XIV" has been announced. And it's not members of the Orochi clan as I predicted. This one's even better though, because it's Whip! Her inclusion as DLC didn't completely feel like a surprise, considering she does appear in the Team Endings for "Team K'" and "Team IKARI". Doing what she's good at too, bickering with Ralf Jones! LOL. Whoops? Is that, spoiler alert? Then again, even I had been wondering why she was left out from the original roster. I mean, with her unique fighting style and that famous whip attacks, she'd make a fine character that would stand out on her own. Look no more for the proof, but her official reveal trailer.

Of course, the big question now is, whether these 3 new characters form a Team, instead of being individual fighters. Speculation gets a little, difficult if they are. After all, in the past, Whip has been associated with the two major teams I've mentioned above. So the other possible character who might pair up with him would logically be Heidern, who is Leona's father / Commander and only showed up in "The King of Fighters 94". Problem is, the other silhouettes (since Whip is the one crouching on the left) don't look like Heidern. The middle one looks like a person wearing jacket, or a cape. Perhaps it is Adelheid Bernstein, who debuted on "The King of Fighter 2003"? Or Ash Crimson, judging from the hairstyle. But it could also be Blue Mary, who shows up in the ending for "Team Women Fighters". The right one, looks like a tall guy hunching, so obviously he reminds me of... Ryuji Yamazaki. This is just speculation though, because any of the others could simply be a totally new character.

Wait a sec! This is probably just me, but I'm STILL seeing 4 people in the silhouette. If you simply count the number of legs, ignoring the crouching Whip, then there are 5 feet visible! Have these reports that boldly state 'Three Characters' been mistaken, then? Or I'm just getting caught by optical illusion? Whip will be released on April 5th, 2017 for $4.99. That's pretty soon, so I guess we only need to wait a little longer to see how this turns out...

Final Fantasy

Lastly, or should I say, finally... we have brief news for "Final Fantasy XV". Official trailer for the first DLC episode has been released, and a release date has been announced as well. "Episode Gladiolus" is set to be released on March 28th, 2017, and will reported take two or three hours to complete. Under the guidance of Cor Leonis, looks like Gladioulus Amicitia will need to deal with Gilgamesh in order to gain stronger. That's the climax, I guess. For now, you can watch a gameplay video of the first 11 minutes, courtesy of Famitsu.

I happen to catch the full story cutscenes for the game over the weekend (thanks to a Youtube user, who else?), and I just realized that it had a rather... shall I say, somber conclusion. Which apparently is confusing if not disappointing many fans? Well, I thought that despite being super poignant, it was quite well done. Beside, this IS a "Final Fantasy" game, so why should one even expect a completely 'happy ending'? I just hope Square Enix won't disrupt this melancholic ending with unnecessary sequels. You know, like what they did with "Final Fantasy XIII"? Anyway, having seen the cutscenes, I now have a strong hint on when these DLCs will take place. My common sense is, they will take place during the 10 years gap/time jump, precisely between Chapter 13 - "Redemption", and 14 - "Homecoming". That means right before Noctis' long awaited return (as a Jesus Christ-esque figure?) to reclaim the throne in the final battle.

Since I haven't played the game myself, I'm curious if this is the Chapter 13 that many people have been complaining about. Also, I wonder if these DLCs are initially meant to be part of the game, but was scrapped to focus on Noctis' adventure? Hmmmm. Nevertheless, fans of Gladio will have the opportunity to play him as a main character, and not just an arguably passive support. Episodes that will feature Ignis Scientia and Prompto Argentum will then arrive one by one after this. So far both don't have a fixed release date, but we can expect them to arrive this year.

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