#especially when people at my own fucking school think I should be exterminated for being aro/ace

[tanoraqui]

Dungeon Meshi Liveblog: Mermaids, Kraken, Namari Hours!! & Frogs!

the corpse retrievers' scumminess is clearer in the manga. Kabru's party wasn't even fully dead, just unconscious and paralyzed (@Laios & co did you not notice this? Marcille especially, who laid them out?) but the retrievers still claim a full revival fee, instead of some sort of discount. (I do think they deserve some fee, bc "unconscious and paralyzed" is a great way to BECOME dead in a dungeon.)

Ooh, sorry my mistake: They knock a whole 100gp off the 3,600 revival fee, for the party! Sooo generous.

Ooh the fishmen are deliberately waiting by the mermaids so they can ambush adventurers who plug their ears, making them immune to mermaid song but vulnerable to sneak attack! *furiously jotting down notes for my own D&D games*

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He's so happy! This man doesn't need a kingdom; he needs his sister and a significant yearly grant to support his continuous research into the anatomy, behavior, and edibility of monsters.

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When Marcille's school flashback starts, "Dear Old Shiz" from Wicked starts playing in my head.

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Ok the Marcille vs Undine fight was DEFINITELY cooler in the show, when there was, y'know, movement and color and soundtrack.

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Fuck yeah, Namari hours! Look at her, she's so cool. She could kick my ass. She could kick anyone's ass.

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I like this so much because if Namari is accustomed to being found annoying when she lectures about weapons, that suggests to me that she and Laios have at least once passed a happy amount of time trading infodumps about weapons and monsters respectively, both sitting there thinking, This person is kinda weird but they're giving me useful dungeon-delving advice and trying to help. This is friendship!

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Laios: Really, shoutout to Namari for being so good with a crossbow! One-hit kill, wow!

Namari: Actually, that's the first time I've ever used one.

Laois: [Oh My God I Could Have Died.]

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I really like how Chilchuck and Laios are very similar in tendency and ability to observe a situation, piece together elements of it and find an answer or solution. We've been having some good Chilchuck time recently - I'm on the frogs now, when he figures out how to use the traps to stop them, and before there was him putting together about eggs in the fish people's hair. He's clever! And it reminds me of Laios figuring out monsters' weaknesses on the fly in battle, as seen with the living armor!

I really miss color in this section, too, though. The vines and frogs were so vivid.

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Chilchuck is a guy who would complain that all mosquitos should be exterminated worldwide because they annoy him personally, and I love him for that. (Senshi and Laios would, of course, immediately explain how mosquitos are actually a key species in many ecosystems...)

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[gestures emotionally] they're a TEAM! They lean on each others' skills in combat, including Laios's weirdo encyclopedic knowledge of monster traits

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I need either these combined or just the first panel as a meme template, I really do.

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She was absolutely persuaded not by his argument, but by how hard he was trying to make it. Also, she wasn't persuaded by that either; the second panel is just Marcille mentally chanting, "For Falin. For Falin. For Falin..."

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IT'S JUST SO FUNNY. My favorite is Chilchuck in the scraps, but there's Senshi's complete roundness and beard that cannot be beardtained in any bearntainer... Laios's frog-eyes making him look weirdly like a bear... Marcille's ears... Impeccable, all of it. This is the photo I would put on their party fantasy!Christmas card, without a doubt.

[disasterbisexual-moved]

What did you figure out about www-wlw

they appear to be neutral but exclusionist-leaning, which doesn’t really surprise me.

though, after asking them directly, they stressed that the whole block evasion situation was tumblr being fucky about blocked sideblogs and unblocked mains/vice versa, which also wouldn’t surprise me. and like. obviously only they (and maybe the people who felt block evaded) know the truth about what happened, so I don’t feel qualified to speak on that.

but yeah, long story short, they’re not super invested in the outcome of ace discourse (if asexuality/aromanticism are unanimously seen as inherently LGBT+ or not), and they’ve said outright that they don’t believe exclusionism is inherently aphobic, which I really disagree with.

[ghostiewriter]

AJSKDJLES you’re so nice!!! I was 100% using my birthday to manipulate you into giving us more headcanons lol but I wasn’t expecting you to actually get to it today! 🥺🥺🥰 take your time and no pressure but I definitely wouldn’t say no to hearing more about them making wild melodramatic accusations to make each other laugh in public because I can 100% see it. And I can totally see it starting on the surf trip because no one knows them so they’d just like try and embarrass the other? Amazing.

Sorry it’s a day late but I hope you had a great birthday bestie and enjoy the chaos of this wee blurb😂tbh I love this headcanon for them because it’s something they would totally do! But happy late birthday and I hope it was an enjoyable one!!❤️

Word Count: 1.6K

It started of a silly little game.

Keeping true to their word, the second they had graduated from high school and had those diplomas in their hands, JJ and Kiara wasted little time in planning the logistics of their surf trip around the world. So many places to go, waves to surf, sights to see—it was impossible to choose a place to start. However, thanks to Pope and his intense need to create a plan so his two best friends wouldn’t be thrown into the world as they “go with the flow”, he had organised a proper scheme.

JJ didn’t think it was necessary, and Kiara knew they wouldn’t stick to it. But they let Pope continue with it regardless.

Against their better judgement, his route and itinerary around Europe was insanely helpful for the couple as they ventured through the countries, excited to see places they could only dream about. Especially for JJ, it felt absolutely surreal that he was leaving the island, let alone travelling the world with the love of his life at his side. It was something he would never fully believe, but cherish in fear that he would wake up from this perfect dream and return to a shitty life in reality.

But as he turned to look at Kiara, her hair swept back by the breeze and her eyes watching the glittering city below in awe as they stood at the top of the Eiffel Tower, JJ knew that no matter how many times he pinched himself that this was his reality.

“If you’re about to make some cheesy joke about how the view is pretty but you’re prettier, I will throw you off this tower.”

JJ only grinned in response, shaking his head as he finally shifted his attention to the city view. They had just witnessed the sunset and it was one of the most breath-taking views either of them had seen, without a fucking doubt.

“Well now that you’ve stole my thunder and ruined it…” He trailed off with a sigh, but his smile only widened when he heard the soft giggle that escaped her lips.

“Whatever.” She muttered, her features softening as she leaned against the railing and took in the sounds of the streets of Paris.

“I can understand why so many people propose up here, it’s beautiful.” He admitted after a few moments.

Kiara only scoffed.

JJ turned to her, eyebrows raised. “You don’t agree?”

“Because there is nothing more romantic than having a bunch of other tourists watching one of the most intimate moments of your life whilst horns are beeping down below and the wind is blowing hair into your lip gloss.” She deadpanned.

Kiara was a romantic person when she wanted to be, but some gestures were even too much for her.

“Well when you put it like that, it’s no fun.” JJ muttered with a small chuckle, though he could see her point. “Does this mean I should keep the ring in my pocket and scrap the proposal?” He asked with a grin on his face.

Kiara rolled her eyes but she smiled. “Sorry to break your heart, babe, but if you got down on one knee right now, I would have no shame embarrassing you in front of all these people.” She said with a brief glance at the other tourists standing up here with them.

But JJ’s eyes gleamed at the sight of the challenge.

She didn’t have time to question him when he slipped one of the rings off, holding it in his palm before he cleared his throat and got down on one knee.

Her eyes widened as she looked down at him in confusion. “Jay, what are you doing—”

“Barbra Gertie Stonehend,” He started in a loud, boisterous voice to (successfully) catch the attention of the other tourists. “We have spent years together, helping each other through many hardships. I have been there for you since your bed wetting days when you were twelve, I have been there for you since you got your braces stuck in the railing at the zoo, and I have been there for you since your pet piggy was tragically knocked down by a bike. But now I ask that you do me the honour of being there with me at the end of the aisle by the alter?”

He finished his obscene speech, now holding his ring between his fingers and looking up at her with a faux hopeful expression. She pressed her lips together to hold in her snickers as she glanced around, seeing all eyes on them as they awaited her answer. And when her gaze returned to JJ, there was something quite smug shining in his eyes.

JJ had always been the best liar from them all, the way he would so easily be able to spout out nonsense at the drop of a hat. But she was just as competitive and determined as the blond, and willing to challenge him at his own game.

“Oh Bernie…” She sighed, hand placed on her chest as she looked down at him. “How could I ever marry a monster like you! Marge told me everything, I cannot believe you would expect me to marry you after you were the one that killed my pig!”

A few gasps could be heard from the crowd around them.

JJ urged himself not too laugh, though his eyebrows were raised in silent appreciation.

“Boo-Bear, it’s not what it seems! I didn’t mean to kill Vincent!” He urged, reaching out to hold her hands in his own. “I am more than a cold blooded pig murderer, please give me a chance!”

“I love you, my snookums, but I cannot!”

“Please, honey-bunch, don’t listen to Marge!” He cried out as she ripped her hands from his. “She is just jealous of what we have!”

“Then why are you having a child with her?!”

Kiara could’ve sworn she heard someone utter ‘holy shit’ under their breath but urged her face to remain neutral.

“It’s not mine!”

“Then who’s is it?” Kiara demanded, her hand clutching her imaginary pearls.

“My twin brother’s!”

“No!” Kiara gasped, feigning utter shock as she took a few steps back. “It cannot be Bobby’s…because he is the father of my child!”

Another series of gasps echoed amongst the landing.

“You…you were cheating on me with my twin brother?” JJ asked, finally standing up as he looked at her with a look of betrayal.

“I’m sorry, Bernie…” She whispered but JJ dramatically turned away.

“I can’t believe this,” He muttered before heading towards the exit. “I’m taking the dog and going home!”

“BERNIE, NO—”

“Goodbye, Barbra, enjoy your life with Bobby and his stupid exterminating company!”

Whispers murmured around the group and Kiara urged herself to keep a straight face as she waited a few moments before following him down. Once they reached the bottom, it took one glance at each other before they burst out laughing, tears streaming down their faces as they clung onto each other and walked back to their flat.

It was the start of an odd game they played for the rest of their trip. In the most random places they would play out insane scenarios, the aim to be as dramatic as they possibly could until one of them had to physically leave the scene before they burst out laughing. It was just a wee game to spice things up when they were out in public, plus it helped knowing they would never see any of these people again.

The word ‘Eiffel’ just had to be said and the game would begin.

And boy, was it entertaining.

There was the time they were in Austria visiting a vineyard, when suddenly Roberto was just sick and tired of holding back his secret affair he had been hiding behind his wife’s back. Little did he know his wife, Carla, had been sleeping with his secretary too.

Or the time they pretended to be spies on a mission whilst walking through a museum in Australia, pretending to mutter things to one another and even went to the extent of buying walkie talkies so they could suspiciously communicate from opposite sides of the room. That one kind of backfired because they did end up being thrown out by security.

Or the time they were in a small village in Turkey when it was suddenly revealed that Topanga would be leaving her fiancé, Johnny, for a prince that promised her wealth in power. However much to her shock, the prince she had been talking to was actually Johnny catfishing her.

Or there was the time they decided to re-enact the whole plot of Mamma Mia in Greece to see how long it would take people to notice how familiar the whole situation felt. It turned out it took people a tragically long time.

It was a stupid game that they adored and it followed them through the extent of the surf trip and even sometimes when they would returned home. Not to the same extent as they did in the past with fake identifies, but sometimes just odd scenarios to really fuck with their friends’ heads and keep them on their toes.

There was just something so satisfying about turning to each other, matching grins on their faces as they sat at the kegger and listened to some random touron talk about how nothing interesting ever happened on this island whenever she would visit her grandmother.

Ideas racing in their minds and all the possibilities of how they can make this night one to remember were jumping at the possibility to put on a show. With his eyebrows raised, JJ turned to his girl.

“Eiffel?”

“Eiffel.”

“HOW COULD YOU?! THAT GOLDFISH PIZZA MEANT EVERYTHING TO ME AND YOU JUST ATE IT AFTER EVERYTHING WE’VE BEEN THROUGH?”

After all, it started as a silly little but it always ensured chaos.

[ianthe-is-a-bitch-and-i-love-her]

On Family

An excerpt from Memoirs of a Flesh Eater, never published

Previous Excerpt

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One question that I see asked in the news a lot is why there are still any ghouls left. We have a distinctive, high-impact feeding habit that requires us to stay within human society, where we are both outnumbered and outgunned. This has essentially been the case since the development of automatic firearms, and you’ve continued to develop more and more effective methods of killing us since then. How are we not extinct?

The talking heads always have lurid theories to propose. My personal favorite one, which comes up every couple of years or so, is that the government is secretly breeding us so that they have an excuse to send secret police out into the general populace for nefarious purposes pretending to be exterminators. As if they’d need the excuse {Editing Note: I’ve gotta keep my political views out of this except where they directly pertain to ghouls. No unnecessarily alienating people}. The most commonly accepted one seems to be that we just have a lot of children to compensate for our high mortality rate. Spatha calls that an R strategy, I think. Scarlet calls it the Rabbit Theory. Whatever you call it, it’s wrong. Our species has survived off the strength and compassion of our families.

Contrary to popular impressions, our “nuclear” families are pretty small. My understanding is that 1-4 children is the typical range. I’m the only confirmed only child in my friend group. Scarlet’s the youngest of three, Scorpio’s a middle child, Spatha avoids talking about her home life, and Kestrel doesn’t know her biological parents. There’s a couple of pressures that keep our family sizes small. First, it’s challenging to feed too many ghouls at once, especially ghoul children, who we don’t want worrying about where they’re going to get their meals. Second, the majority of ghoul parents are going to end up as single parents before their kids are fully grown. Either one of them is going to get killed, or they’re going to have to separate to go on the run from the exterminators; and, of course, we do still break up and get divorced sometimes.

These pressures are exaggerated by our general lack of an extended family. It’s not that all of our aunts and uncles get hunted down - even if they did, we’d still have cousins - but it’s not safe for us to have traceable extended families. When exterminators identify a ghoul, the first thing they do is put out a bulletin for all known blood relatives. The most common tactic to avoid this is, when multiple siblings make it to adulthood, at least one of them changes their identity and moves away. This isn’t always done, but it’s done often enough that document forging is a widespread and well-respected profession in the Society. It’s useful for dodging exterminators in other circumstances too. My mom and I changed our names and moved cities after exterminators killed my dad when I was 4.

Between that and the sheer number of out-and-out orphans in our Society, it should come as no surprise that we’ve developed a new family structure to fill in the gaps. The terminology we use for this structure is variable, but the term I’ve always used is “household”. A household is a sort of adopted extended family, typically formed by and centered around one particularly resourceful ghoul called a patron. The patron takes whichever ghouls they choose under their wing, introduces them to each other, and helps them coordinate their talents and resources so that they all have everything they need. Most obviously, this means making sure they all have a supply of flesh, but there are numerous other kinds of support a household can provide. I doubt I need to emphasize again how valuable a reliable source of companionship and safety is, but patrons typically have access to connections and contacts that can help the other members of the household accomplish their goals.

My household, for example, was founded by our patron Yaga. It consists of her, her adopted daughter Kestrel, my mom and I, my friends Scarlet and Scorpio and their immediate families, and four other older ghouls. There’s also Spatha, who has been reluctant to fully join the household but acts like a member in most contexts. Three of our members have reliable flesh sources, and Yaga coordinates with other ghouls to find supplementary sources to ensure that she always has a surplus on hand. This keeps all of us well-fed and lets her distribute the rest to those in need in exchange for favors and cachet that the rest of us can use for our own advancement. In turn, the rest of us pitch in for odd jobs here and there, mostly on flesh-gathering jobs of one kind or another, and we look out for each other. I’ve done a bit of babysitting with Kestrel, for example, and Yaga was able to get me and Scarlet summer jobs to save up for college.

Babysitting, by the way, is one of the most valuable services a household can provide to a ghoul parent. Given our mortality rate, it probably isn’t a surprise that there’s a good bit of cultural pressure to have children, and have them quick. Ghoul children are… a lot. When we’re newborn, we’re pretty much like human babies. Ghoul babies can nurse from ghoul mothers for awhile, which is a relief. They need to switch to flesh before their teeth come in, though, so that means flesh slurry, which is more complicated to make than you might think. For best results, you want a mix of blood, muscle tissue, organ tissue, and bone, especially marrow. We get better at pulling all our nutrients from just flesh as we mature, but babies aren’t as developed. Getting those varied tissues is a little more complicated than just getting flesh. Bone especially is challenging - more mature ghouls have no need for it, and it’s honestly kinda gross. You just have to hope that whoever you’re getting flesh from can start holding some bones for you. Not every source has easy access to bones. 

{Editing Note: I think I wrote bone too many times - it looks fake now. Bone. Bone.}

We get our ghoul teeth at the same time as our baby teeth. Our ghoul teeth fall out and are replaced too, but we keep growing new ones our whole lives, kinda like sharks. Funnily enough, I don’t think we grow extra human teeth, which seems like a strange way for evolution to take us, but what do I know, I’m not a biologist. At that point we can start eating regular flesh, and parents have the unenviable task of explaining to toddlers that they can’t just slide their teeth out whenever they want. Our other features come in a bit later - claws between 4 and 6, eyes with puberty. Let me tell you, the claws hurt coming in. I couldn’t hold a pencil for a month. My mom told the elementary school that I was deathly sick so she could keep me home, but I think Scarlet just pretended he’d broken both his hands and went in splints. I don’t envy him - stretching my claws did a lot to relieve the pain.

I’ll admit freely that, by our standards, I had a pretty charmed childhood. I fit into human society pretty easily, I had a mom who loved me and could provide for me, a patron and household to help pick up the slack, and ghoul friends my own age. I had the discipline to keep my true nature hidden from my human peers, and I don’t think I was even particularly traumatized by the pressure of performing humanity that much. I can safely attribute that to the fact that I had safe spaces throughout my life to let the charade drop. Most ghouls at least have that. Most, but not all.

Our integration into human society also means that we inevitably become entangled in human society. We become invested in the lives of our human peers, we befriend them, care about them. Sometimes we fall in love with them. Eating people seems like kind of a big secret to keep from a potential romantic partner - I certainly couldn’t manage it - but some ghouls form romantic relationships with humans nonetheless. Maybe some of these human partners eventually discover the truth and are willing to overlook it for the person they love, but I doubt it happens often. I’ve certainly never heard of it. I’ve heard of it going the other way, though, a human partner discovering the truth and reacting poorly. Someone always dies when that happens. I personally know a few ghouls who’ve dated humans, or are seriously involved with them. Frankly, it scares the hell out of me. I get that the heart wants what it wants, but some wants aren’t worth the risk.

{Editing Note: That last line feels… tense. Emotionally charged. Why? And should I change it?}

In my opinion, the gravest of these risks is what happens when a human and a ghoul decide they want to build a life together, but kids are already in the equation. The human-ghoul mixed family is probably the most toxic environment that a ghoul child could be raised in and conceivably survive. All that pressure of hiding your true nature from your peers as you grow up? That feeling of isolation that follows you everywhere you go among humans? All of the most crushing emotional turmoil I’ve described in this book so far? Imagine if there was no relief for that even at home with your family. I frankly have no idea how ghoul parents manage to feed themselves and their children without being caught, or how they manage to perform humanity so flawlessly and constantly that their literal immediate family never catches on. I don’t know how those children manage to survive to adulthood, but I imagine they have some seriously fucked up mental health problems by the time they do. Factor in the suspicion that they would inevitably face from our Society when they finally are able to join it properly - after all, who more likely to become a Judas or be Lost than a ghoul raised by humans? - and I’d be willing to bet most of them don’t make it out of their twenties.

Before we move on entirely from families in general and mixed families in particular, I’d like to take a quick aside to talk about “half-ghouls”. You hear about them in horror media fairly often, the biological child of a human and a ghoul. Authors love to ascribe all sorts of traits to these hypothetical creatures - greater and more monstrous than the sum of their parts, supernaturally strong and vicious, impossible to detect within human society, sometimes with traits that are blatantly impossible, like telepathy or mind control or just plain magic. All of that is obviously untrue, but it’s something of a point of contention as to whether or not a “half-ghoul” is even possible. None of the ghouls I’ve talked to seem to agree about whether it can happen, and a search of human medical literature was similarly inconclusive. Humans, at least, seem to think that it might be theoretically possible, but have never been able to verify it by observation or by medical experiment. Of the ghouls I know that have been romantically involved with humans, none of them have ever gotten a kid out of it. It’s one of those things where we just don’t know. If it were possible, I’m not even sure what the implications would be.

[unordinaryquotes]

UnOrdinary Chapter 203 Review

- “She’s only killed about 6 people. Don’t worry” I’m joking, but the fact that Arlo sees Valerie as an easy to talk to person makes me happy for their relationship

- HE CALLS HER AUNT VAL WTF!?!?

- That is literally the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen him do. Look at his posture too, so relaxed around her.

- So he has nicknames for two people, Pinkie for Remi and Val for his aunt. That’s really sweet. But only one of them’s a good person

- STEP ON ME MAMASITA

- I don’t care if she killed Rei anymore, girl is fucking hot. This is a woman who could wear a trash bag and still look like she’s on the cover of Vogue.

- WTF HE��S SMILING SO PURELY. I CANT BELIEVE MY EYES!

- Arlo being capable of genuine happiness has me shell shocked. He really does like his aunt. Oh god UrU WHY!?!? Take Sera’s mom, not her! Why can’t Arlo have good things in his life?

- Remember guys, we must protect this smile. Arlo Defense Force rise up

- These boys are so fucking tall it makes Remi look like a child. This makes Arlo’s midget height during his first year even funnier. I wonder if he had a major complex about it? Rei would definitely tease him about it

- Um...I’m gonna save this for future use. Y’all don’t need to know what type of use.

- Not gonna lie, this was not what I expected her to say. I thought Valerie was gonna be the kind, upbeat, supportive aunt but I guess she’s a lot more serious then I thought. I guess we know now why Arlo has his disposition. He gets it from his aunt. The two seem to be the type of people who are stone faced and hard towards most people, but go soft for those they care for.

- OH FUCK REMI KNOWS

- UrU was being so unsubtle that Remi picked up on the narrative clues in story. Valerie being Volcan is gonna fuck up so much shit. Especially since we just saw that Arlo likes her a lot.

- Valerie knows she knows. I like the fact that Valerie can keep such a straight face even though she’s facing someone she almost killed (who’s also a friend of her nephew). I wonder how much training she’s had, to be able to kill so efficiently and give no tells that she’s lying.

- Can we talk about how sweet it is that Arlo immediately went to defend Rei in his own way. I swear if I see another person talking about how Arlo doesn’t care about Rei I’m gonna sic Volcan on em.

- Oh god, oh no. This is what I was afraid of. Valerie seems so nice to Arlo but the moment he defended Rei, her mood changed. She probably thinks Remi and co are going to taint her boy and might speed up the exterminate process. I swear if we get a line like “I’m doing this to save you!” from Valerie I’m gonna cry. Also UrU, I beg of you, can Valerie actually be really caring? It’s just something I desire.

- She’s kinda acting like a conservative parent who sent their child off to college and learned they hang out with someone who smokes weed.

- Yuppers, you’re facing your brother’s killer with no mask. And to make it worse, she’s related to Arlo. Hope you have fun with that shitshow Remi.

- Man, forget Rei for a moment. You’re not gonna talk about the fact that she’s related to Arlo?! Like, your friend’s related to a murderer. This is gonna be some rough shit when it’s revealed, and I’ll hope you’ll be there for him when it happens.

- Arlo immediately sensed there was something more wrong with Remi. Considering he was able to pick out that John was a high tier with a few limited interactions, his intuition is really great. That makes Valerie’s bold face lying even more impressive to me. He doesn’t question her once cause she gives no signs that something is wrong.

- “Being a vigilante is dangerous. I should know, I’ve killed like eight of them.”  -Though she’s right that it’s very dangerous. Blyke almost lost his life last time, and many others have died. There has to be an established way to protect vigilantes, and working with the cops would be a better way to protect them (if they weren’t the ones killing them)

- Again, she’s right. Even if they solve one issue, another will just pop up in it’s place. Just fighting the bad guys won’t help, this isn’t some novel, there’s work to be done. Luckily the Safe House is a good step towards this, but we’ll need it on a larger scale otherwise the low tiers will stay oppressed.

- Arlo’s very protective of his aunt and that scares me. He’s definitely not gonna believe it if Remi or someone else tries to tell him that his aunt is a murderer. He thinks so highly of her and her position; he thinks she’s truly trying to help and that what makes the inevitable reveal sad. He’ll be crushed and I’d expect him to be out of commission (either not going to school or kidnapped for a while) due to his depression.

- Arlo protecting his aunt caused him to insult his friends. I see this more as him idolizing his aunt so much than him not caring for Remi and Rei.

- This is something a bit new from Arlo. This isn’t a simple “I respect her” this is something more. I swear if my theory about her being the mother figure in his life is real I’m changing professions to oracle.

- And Valerie and Volcan have two different abilities. Now I’m guessing, Ember’s found a way to be able to transfer abilities between people. Looking at the Ember report we got a while back, it said that they were going to acquire Arlo and Sera’s ability so maybe they take their victims abilities and give it to their workers. I’d like to see what type of barrier ability she has though since Arlo says it’s a variation.

Valerie is so cool and boss and scary that I want to run and hug her at the same time. Arlo is being soft and precious for the first time and I cried. Remi found her brother’s killer, it’s time to pull an Inigo Montoya

[jennadrawsandgames]

Don’t Go Alone - A Creepypasta OC Story

Before I get into the story, I want to tell you all that this is an original character I created. A story told in a different person’s perspective. Other than that, I hope you enjoy.

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I’ve never expected that this town was the heart of missing people. Just the other day, a report of three middle school children went missing. I was fazzing out whenever the news reports talked about the children, and their names. I mean, they didn’t matter. I’m not some type of investigator or police officer. I’m just an average teacher at the prep school downtown that opened just months ago. If I needed to know the children’s names, then I would care. Besides, their just about to become high schoolers. They can take care of themselves.

“Mr. Johnson, the principal was hoping to see you.” Katie, my TA told me as she dropped the class phone, snapping me out of a minor transition.

“Oh, okay. Thank you Katie.” I replied to the high schooler.

She looked kinda disappointed in me when I was just leaving the empty classroom. It’s like she’s missing something. I brushed it off so I can focus on what’s coming to me now.

The empty halls filled with lost papers of homework, little doodles, and missing papers of students. Just having the feeling I’m missing something myself. It must’ve been the coffee from this morning.

I managed to get into the office to meet with the principal, but everyone seemed to be depressed over something. It’s just washing over everyone. I just see the man waiting for me in the doorway like always.

“Good morning Johnson.”

“G-good morning sir.” I just felt so hesitant when the words came out of my mouth.

“Come in. I need to chat with you for a moment.”

He let me into the office. It was just filled with many papers of bills and missing papers of students and some teachers over the last few months. You can’t even see his desk with all of these papers from worried parents and government officials and complaints of how unsafe the school can be from the amount of people going missing.

“You must be wondering why I wanted you in my office.” William Woodrow gave me a grin hoping for the response I’ll give back.

“I was sir. You called me while I was preparing for my English classes with my TA when you called.” I replied back still feeling worried on where this conversation is going.

“Look, we’re not getting a good reputation with all these complaints of missing children and one of our own students going on a homiside just in October. I also looked into your resimay and your were in the army. Aren’t I correct Johnson?”

“Whoa-wait. What does being part of the military 4 years ago have to deal with being a teacher?”

“We need your help to find those missing children. I hate the school getting a bad reputation because the parents are coming to me instead of the government about their children.”

“Sir, I don’t want to look back into my military past. I never wanted to speak about it ever again. Please just let me be the thing I wanted to be-.”

“That’s why I’m not giving you an option. You do what you’re told to do, and you’ll do it.”

I went silent when he stated that to me.

“That’s what a thought. You and some other teachers will begin the search tonight, 7 pm. You’re the only one who knows how to use a gun, so you’ll be leading the group. I hope to see good results from you like always.”

I started to leave the room since that was the only thing he needed me for. My question is why Principal Woodrow making me and other teachers be a search party? Most of these children could be faking of going missing just to make is an excuse to not do school. I only signed up to become a teacher after leaving my past life behind. The tactics they’re teaching in the Army were very sketchy like we’re going for war against each other. I’m just a black individual trying to live a better life, not make it worse for myself.

The day continued on like how it should be, but I can’t get that thought out of my head. The principal has now gone insane. I just had to accept this offer. I need this job. If I lose the job, I lose everything. I wish it didn’t have to be this way.

It’s about 6:30 pm when some other teachers started to arrive at the meeting point. Most of them will back out of it and lie about the search. They eventually left at 7:00 out of the fact there’s no use to it. I went into the entrance of the woods all by myself. It sucked to not have others around me for support.

“Pussies. They pretend to be something they aren’t. Just man up and we’ll find out the truth.” I told myself since nobody was around.

The entrance to the woods is gone even from not making that much progress in. It gave me the chills to see only trees and freshly made foot prints from last night. This must’ve been where those children went.

It’s been getting darker, almost pitch-black. It feels like forever since I last entered in. Especially how I still found nothing. I was at the point of giving up when I found a stench coming from around the area. It smelled like flesh being cut opened just recently. I stepped onto a log, but it felt so squishy? The stench grew stronger the more I stepped onto these logs.

I looked down to see exactly what I was stepping on and was shocked. These weren’t logs at all. These were the children that went missing last night. I was so shocked that I couldn’t move at all. Fear just swallowed me up whole.

“You know, it’s funny to say for a man like you to be a fucking wimp and stand up for yourself.” A voice giggled around me.

“Who-who’s there? I got a gun and I’m not afraid to use it!”

“Andrew Johnson. English teacher at Pacific Prep. A private educational school for middle schoolers and high schoolers. It sucks how shady the government is to use students from that school as extermination weapons.”

“The fuck you’re talking about and how do you know my name?”

“That’s a secret for another day, if you can last. Everyone knows not to enter into my woods alone, or at least my father’s woods.”

I shine my phone’s flashlight around, hoping to find where the voice is coming from. This has to be a student prank.

“Show me your fucking face you bitch!”

“Aw.. You called me a bitch. Such an insult from a ‘holy man’ like you. You can say I’ve known you for a while now. Just hiding behind a mask.”

I managed to finally find some movement of a girl wearing one of the school’s uniforms? Half her face was covered with a mask that’s covered in blood. The worst part was how bloody the uniform was. I can see her holding a pistol of some kind. It was a custom made pistol.

“Uh oh.. You found me~.”

“G-get away you monster!”

She jumped down from the trees cocking the pistol up. I felt so defenseless when I met eye-to-eye.

“Who are you?”

“You can say I died in October, but never did. You can say the one who helped the government kill protesters that were fighting for their rights. You can also say I’m the girl who was falsely accused for many fights I’ve never started before getting suspended for breaking a bitches’ nose.”

“Evelyn Brooks? Holy shit. How are you alive?”

“I never died. I only escape. They thought I was the mouse, but I was really the cat with the mouse in my hands. Well bummer that you now know a lot. I could keep you alive, but that would never be fun.”

She didn’t answer my question. Well she did, but why like that? I just realized I still have my gun fully loaded, so I can get back alive. I quickly aimed at her arm and tried to shoot her, but she was already gone.

“Oh now we’re playing. Only one gets out alive.” Her voice rings inside my head as my hands gripped right onto the gun barrel. That’s when I felt a sharp object hit my back. I turned around to see nothing, but it happened again.

Shit, she’s too fast. I don’t even know where she is anymore. I need to think to get out alive. I’m already losing a lot of blood were also too deep in for anyone to hear a person. I just grabbed the gun and shot around the area hoping to hit the girl.

I ran out of ammo just at my second turning. This became bad, to worse. From at top, I see the girl firing shots at me. She was only grazed by some of the bullets, but nothing else. I was in complete shock how this girl survived that without being badly hurt. She definitely knows what she’s doing which makes it the worst part of it. She shot 5 times and all of the bullets hit me in my arms and legs. It just hurts to move anymore and dropped to the ground on top of the dead children’s bodies.

“You know, that wasn’t a bad fight you put up. The first one to manage a hit onto me. And I don’t go by ‘Evelyn Brooks.’ I go by Eve.” She says as she shoots the final bullet into my head and rips the knives out of my back. My body lies there as everything goes black.

-

“This is the daily news for today. This morning police officers found 4 bodies known to be the 3 children that went missing and the fourth one being the man of Andrew Johnson. A teacher for Pacific Prep. Before he was found dead, some teachers saw him enter into the woods near the town around 7:00 pm. He was the only teacher that fully consented to search for the missing children which the school funded a search party to find the students. Police also found a pistol that was there at the crime scene and looked into the gun and saw something they would never expected. Engraved within the gun, ‘Project EVE.’ Were theorizing that this gun to the owner was responsible for the murders of all of those peaceful protesters from October, to December.”

“We also heard about another student that goes to Pacific Prep, Skylar Evans, was considered dead by the government. Before she went missing last month, she was last spotted walking from a small cafe before heading to the school. They claimed to find her dead in the woods as well during the search party that happened earlier this morning. We’re not sure this is true, so we’ll keep the investigation ongoing. That’s all of the news for today.”

The television turns off with people surrounding the area.

“It’s nice to know you’re back from keeping the people away from our territory.”

“I did find someone hiding that was eating some flesh while I was on my way back. Her name, Skylar Evans, but she would be preferred to be called ‘Patient Ø.’”

“Thank you for the information Eve. We’ll have you get her to us tonight, so we can meet her.”

[aurorawest]

Title: not really sure how to feel about it, something in the way you move Author: @aurorawest​ Rating: T Characters: Stephen Strange, Loki Relationships: Loki & Stephen Strange Word Count: 5,888

Wrote this for the no excuses writing meme, askbox version - @mareebird sent me POV and I (of course) got extremely carried away. Please find below chapter 3 of Sleight of Hand from Stephen Strange’s POV.

How was it possible that he got so much mail? He wasn’t exactly giving this address out—if anything, he’d kind of fallen off the grid. But somehow, they still found him. Exterminators (huh, if only they knew), his alma mater asking for money (not even the med school; what was this, the liberal arts school? Christ), an offer to renew the extended warranty on the car he’d wrecked along the banks of the Hudson (had he even had an extended warranty?).

Stephen Strange flipped through envelope after envelope as he stood in the Sanctum’s foyer. How many trees had died just for him to toss this stuff in the trash?

There was a sound upstairs, distant enough that it wasn’t coming from the second or third floors. That meant it was coming from the attic. Stephen grimaced. Only one possible source, then, since Wong wouldn’t go up there. Hard to blame him, considering who had been living up there for three months.

He stood there for a second, listening as footsteps drew closer, and then he went back to flipping through the mail. Their houseguest would be there in three, two, one…

“Oh good, it’s you,” Loki of Asgard sneered from the stairs. Stephen glanced up at him. “You know, I don’t think your lackey is relaying my complaints to you.”

Feeling a muscle twitch somewhere in the region of his temple, Stephen looked back to the mail. He guessed Loki of Asgard maybe wasn’t appropriate anymore, what with Asgard being vaporized and New Asgard being off limits. “It might be because you keep referring to him as my ‘lackey’—which is apparently one of the nicer things you’ve called him.”

‘Goat’s arse,’ ‘feeble-minded cretin,’ and ‘tedious shepherd of a pile of musty, worthless tomes’ were among the epithets that Wong had relayed to him. “So you two aren’t friends yet,” Stephen had said. Wong had given him a flat look and walked away. There was a certain art to Loki’s venom, Stephen had to admit, but it took a masochistic streak to enjoy being the subject of his bile.

Of course, Wong had also mentioned that Loki had sneeringly referred to him as ‘Beyoncé,’ which had given Stephen pause, and not in a particularly good way. He didn’t like to think of Loki and him being anything alike.

A sneer still on his face, Loki said, “Your hurt feelings aren’t any of my concern.”

“Uh huh. You’ve made that pretty clear.” There was nothing worthwhile in this pile of mail. He tossed it on the table. Loki was obviously spoiling for a fight and Stephen didn’t really want to have it here in the foyer. There was too much furniture in here and some of it was probably valuable.

Instead, he gathered a bundle of the Sanctum’s magic to teleport them to the study and twisted it—

—Only to come up against a solid, hard barrier, like a pane of glass. It felt like someone had punched him in the gut and he tried not to stumble. Loki was staring at him, a blazing look on his face. So. Loki didn’t care for that method of transportation, and he’d come up with a way to stop it. “I was wondering how long it would take you to figure out how to do that,” Stephen said, trying to smile a little.

“Don’t patronize me,” Loki snapped back.

Stephen held up his hands. Christ. Never a quiet moment. Loki looked like he was going to kill someone. Probably worthwhile to calm him down. “Okay,” Stephen said. “Let’s talk. But do you mind if we do it in the study? I need to sit down with a cup of tea; I’m exhausted. Interdimensional squid monsters don’t just defeat themselves.”

When Loki didn’t object to this, Stephen summoned a cup of tea for himself, only half full, because otherwise the cup would shake and he’d spill hot tea all over his fingers. Burn scars on top of the surgery scars; what a look. No wonder he couldn’t get a date. Tea in hand, he asked, “Want one?”

There was a tense moment, and then Loki nodded. Another cup materialized on the table where Stephen had tossed the mail. He was half convinced Loki wouldn’t lower himself to going to get it, but he did, and the two of them went into the study.

While Stephen made his way to a chair, Loki lingered in the doorway, his fingers wrapped tightly around his cup of tea. His expression was the kind of closed-off anger that Stephen had always thought was easy to read and easy to deal with. Angry people were boring.

Loki, though, wasn’t boring.

“Have a seat,” Stephen said, gesturing at the other armchair as he sank down into his favorite one. Loki didn’t. He remained on his feet, looking stiff and out-of-place.

No. Wrong phrase. He didn’t look out-of-place in the Sanctum. He never had. At first it had really bothered Stephen. Now, he just tried not to think about it. There were a lot of implications to Loki looking like he belonged at the Sanctum that were better left untouched.

Maybe the right word was unwelcome. Loki looked like he felt unwelcome.

“Did you have a good day?” Stephen asked, taking a sip of his tea. The question was probably unnecessarily sarcastic. But something was kicking at his chest, agitating him, making him irritable. It wasn’t Loki’s mood. He could handle Loki’s foul mood—hadn’t be been doing it for three months? Granted, he tried to stay out of Loki’s way as much as possible, and the feeling was mutual.

Sometimes he’d catch himself looking up the stairs towards the attic, wondering what Loki was doing up there. What did a god do to keep himself from getting bored? Besides insult Wong? What did Loki do to keep himself from getting bored? The answer seemed obvious: get into mischief. But there’d been a distinct lack of mischief. Stephen didn’t know if he was thankful or worried that he just hadn’t noticed it yet.

Clearly, Loki had picked up on the sarcasm. Not a surprise. Not much got past Loki, especially if he thought you were insulting him—and he seemed to usually think you were insulting him. “Oh, yes,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “An absolute peach of a day.” When Stephen shrugged, anger flashed through Loki’s eyes like knives. His voice tight, he snapped, “I’m sick and tired of being locked up here, wizard. I’m sick and tired of being in that room, wasting time. I’m sick and tired of you telling me that it’s for the good of the universe for me to rot in this house.”

Stephen had been watching Loki’s fingers clench more and more tightly around the cup during this speech, which was the most he’d heard Loki talk since that day he’d arrived outside the Sanctum, falling on the sidewalk, Tesseract in hand. She, Stephen guessed. Loki had been a woman at the time. To this day, Stephen didn’t really know why, but he’d recognized her immediately. No question in his mind that he had been looking at Loki.

He waited for Loki to go on, but he just gulped down his tea, wincing. The cup vanished once the tea was gone.

There was silence. Then, Stephen asked, “Are you done?”

“Did you want to hear more?” Loki asked.

It almost made Stephen smile. But he wasn’t supposed to smile at Loki. Loki was the guy who had attacked New York in 2012. He was a threat. He wasn’t a good guy.

That was oversimplifying everything, and Stephen hated it when people oversimplified things. At Stark’s funeral, Stephen had approached Thor, because…well, he didn’t really know anyone else there, except the Guardians, and he’d pretty much exhausted all the conversational possibilities with them within five minutes. And there was the Parker kid, he guessed, but he could do better than chatting with a high schooler.

Saying he ‘knew’ Thor was kind of overstating it, but at least they’d had more than a two second conversation. But he knew he’d made a mistake right away. Thor had been drunk and definitely hadn’t wanted to talk; after attempting to make conversation for a minute, Stephen had given up and walked away.

He’d almost stepped on Rocket Raccoon, who was on his way to Thor and who had glared at him and muttered something that had definitely begun, “Fucking wizard…” under his breath.

Stephen had bitten back the urge to tell him how many raccoons he’d hit over the years. “What’s with Thor?” he’d asked. The weight, the hair, the beard, the booze, the crushing defeat slung around his shoulders—it wasn’t really a ‘what’s with him’ kind of question, but Stephen was hoping Rocket would give him the short and surly answer.

Rocket had rolled his eyes. “Gee, I dunno, where should I start? Dead mom? Dead dad? Dead sister? Dead brother? Blown up planet?”

Which was when Stephen had known. Loki was dead. Banner’s story about Thanos attacking the Asgardian refugee ship hadn’t included the fates of the Sons of Odin. But this had clinched it. No one had told him what had happened and he wasn’t about to ask Thor or his friend, the woman with the sword who had glared at anyone who had looked sideways at Thor. But Stephen had gotten the feeling that Loki had gone down fighting, that whatever had happened between the guy charging him with a couple of knives and Loki’s death, that him and Thor had made up.

It also made everything he’d seen make a shit ton more sense.

When he’d looked at those fourteen million, six hundred and five futures and found the one where Thanos was defeated, he’d looked further ahead. Of course he’d looked further ahead. How did he know there wasn’t something worse coming right after Thanos? He had to be sure he was choosing the right one. So what had he seen? Death. So much death. His own, over and over and over and over again. His own and everyone else’s. In the end, Natasha Romanoff’s and Tony Stark’s. Steve Rogers’s, too, in a way.

He’d seen Thor, an absolute wreck of a man who needed to find something on his own before he could find the thing he really needed, which was his brother. Yeah, the dead brother. Because Stephen had seen Loki, too. Loki, living at the Sanctum, Loki befriending Jane Foster, Loki and Thor together, Loki—

Well. The point was, he’d seen Loki.

There were actually a lot of reasons he didn’t want to smile at anything Loki said, and to blame it on him being ‘the bad guy’ was disingenuous.

Carefully, Stephen set his cup of tea down on the table next to his chair. Did he want to hear more? That was an open question, and he wished it wasn’t. “I think I get the general idea,” he said. “You know you’re not confined to that room, right? You’re free to go anywhere in the house.”

Not that anyone had ever actually come out and told Loki this, because the fact was, there kind of were places that Stephen and Wong didn’t want him going. Once or twice, Stephen had caught Loki slipping like a shadow through the house, trying not to make eye contact with the Sanctum’s other occupants, but staring longingly into the library. Stephen had almost told him he should go in and read whatever he wanted. But something had stopped him. Maybe that had been wrong.

Loki snorted. “And trip one of your booby traps? I don’t think so.”

Stephen took a fortifying breath. “Don’t get into anything you’re not supposed to, and you won’t.”

Loki’s face twisted. “And how, pray tell, am I supposed to know what I’m allowed to touch and what I’m not?” he snarled.

“You’re a wizard, aren’t you?” Stephen asked, unable to stop himself from throwing Loki’s preferred slight back in his face.

“Master of Magic,” Loki shot back, his eyes narrowed dangerously.

“Right.” This was going nowhere. Antagonizing each other wasn’t going to solve anything. Loki was stuck here and they both knew it. “Look, we’ve been over this. I’m sorry about keeping you here, but this is the way it has to be.”

Clenching his fists, Loki said, “It has to be this way, does it? I know you can look into the future, so tell me why, exactly, the universe’s fate hinges on me being stuck in this house. It seems just a bit unlikely.”

No argument there. Fourteen million futures unlikely. But Loki didn’t know what. Steepling his fingers in his lap, Stephen said, “If you’re referring to the fact that I used the Time Stone to see if we could beat Thanos, yeah. I looked past that moment to make sure there wasn’t some kind of world-ending, Avengers-level event coming right after it. I saw possibilities.”

They’d had this conversation several times already. That part usually went okay. It was the next part that pissed Loki off. Narrowing his eyes, Stephen went on, “What I saw was that it’s better for the universe for you to be here. I wouldn’t presume to tell you the fate of everything rests on you crashing in the attic room. But I can’t let you leave. There’s too much probability that millions of lives are at stake.”

There was devastation on Loki’s face. Stephen didn’t relish it. He didn’t like causing this man pain. Man? God, he guessed. But he knew Loki didn’t see it that way. He knew Loki thought he got off on being a prick.

Well, maybe he had, at one point in his life. Not so much anymore. At least, not to Loki, who, three months into this unwilling roommate situation, was pretty clearly very damaged, hurting badly, and profoundly lost. And goddammit, Stephen knew that feeling so, so well.

“What do I care for millions of lives when my brother—” Loki paused and seemed to gather himself. “—when my brother needs a kick in the arse, preferably from me?”

Then again, Loki didn’t always make it easy to not be a prick.

And it was better if he pushed Loki away. It didn’t necessarily seem smart to make the God of Mischief hate him, but it ultimately seemed preferable.

“That’s sweet,” Stephen said. “I hope he can feel the love, even if he thinks it’s coming from beyond the grave.”

Anger twisted Loki’s face. “I didn’t ask for this,” he snarled. “I was ready to die. You lot are the ones that messed up the fabric of space and time. The only reason I’m here at all is because someone let a group of rank amateurs loose in something they knew nothing about and couldn’t possibly hope to understand the ramifications of. So if my presence here is such a problem, such a wrench in the continued existence of the universe, blame them. I’d tell you to take it up with your counterpart in the other timeline, but—oh yes, I had to erase it from existence, so I suppose you’ll never know why he was so adamant that I be sent here, to you, in this particular year.”

Another big speech from Loki. Stephen had noticed that when he got upset, when he got agitated, he talked more, his words spilling over each other like rocks tumbling along the riverbed in a swift current. His anger didn’t make him less eloquent. There was something admirable about that. To be honest, there was something mesmerizing about watching Loki get more and more angry. His fury was something to behold—like something wild, like a storm, like something that no one would ever be able to control. There was something kind of beautiful about that.

And, nope. Better for Loki to hate him.

Keeping his face impassive, Stephen asked, “Is there more you’d like to say?” When Loki remained coldly silent, he went on, “You know, I couldn’t keep you here if you really wanted to leave. You stay because you think what I’ve told you is true.”

Harsh laughter tore itself out of Loki. “What can I do but assume it’s true? Do you know what I’ve been through?”

“Only what you’ve told me. I’m sure it hasn’t been easy.”

“Your sympathy means so much.”

Stephen knew he was pushing every button Loki had. It wasn’t that hard. He had an unfair advantage, after all. He’d seen the future. But even if he hadn’t, he still thought it would be easy. There was something about Loki that was easy to understand, when he should have been impossible. And Stephen really, really didn’t want Loki to be easy to understand. Not for him. Definitely not for him.

Meeting Loki’s eyes, Stephen said, “Loki. I’m not keeping you here because I have some sort of vendetta against you.” Loki just glared at him, so Stephen sighed. “Your brother has things to do and he needs to do them without you. You can’t help him right now. That’s what I’ve seen. There are a lot of possible outcomes, but in most of them, you staying out of Thor’s life right now is best for everyone.”

Stephen had known this wasn’t the right thing to say. But he had to admit, even he hadn’t guessed just how wrong it was.

Something…happened. Magic screamed out of Loki, blasting into everything in the room. It slammed into Stephen, a shockwave that passed through his skin and lungs and bones, roaring through him, invading him, and for what felt like forever, he couldn’t breathe.

This was the sort of thing he’d trained for, though. This was what made him a Master of the Mystic Arts. This was what made him Guardian of the New York Sanctum. As glass and wood shattered around him, he called a spell to his hands and cast it, magic flowing from his hands. Everything in the room stopped, suspended in midair, a tableau of frozen destruction. The only two things moving in the room were Loki and Stephen.

Stephen flicked a hand and everything settled back to where it was supposed to be. This was the first time he’d really seen what Loki could do—it was the first time Loki had unleashed his magic. And unleashed was the word. Loki’s chest was heaving. His eyes were bright with rage and his face was open in a way that Stephen had never seen, even if it was only open enough to be twisted with fury and pain.

He was…magnificent. Incandescent. He looked every inch a god.

And Stephen Strange did not want to think so.

So he waited a moment. Steeled himself. And then, he said dryly, “Looks like I hit a sore spot.”

The other thing, that hadn’t been meant to wound. This definitely had been.

Knives appeared in Loki’s hands. “Shut. Up.” His voice was shaking. An attack would be easy to stop, but Stephen didn’t want to have to do that. His shoulders still heaving, Loki said, “I would rather be trapped in your pocket universe, falling into infinite blackness, then have to look at your insufferable face and listen to your smug, sanctimonious, pedantic explanations about why I’m here for one—more—SECOND.”

How hard did he want to push? How much did he want to make Loki hate him? Stephen had to look away from him. Watching Loki, enraged, threatening him, radiating anger, was a little too much like looking at the sun. “That can be arranged,” Stephen said, folding his hands in his lap.

Loki stepped forward, holding his dagger up, leveling it between Stephen’s eyes. “You’ve wanted to since day one. Put your money where your mouth is, sorcerer.”

At this, Stephen looked back up to Loki, meeting his eyes and holding his gaze. He could see Loki thinking about it, those blue eyes of his cracking with anger, with dislike, maybe even with hate. Hell, if their positions were reversed, Stephen would probably be tempted to stick a knife in his own chest to shut himself up.

This was too much. There were good reasons for Stephen to antagonize Loki; good reasons for them not to be friends, or even friendly. But this didn’t sit right. He couldn’t keep doing this.

Loki lowered his arm, sagging, as his fingers loosened around his dagger. Stephen’s eyebrows drew together. What was happening? Why was Loki giving up? That seemed unlike him. In the encounters they’d had, Loki had always snarled a vicious parting shot before stalking away. Nothing seemed to cow him.

That wasn’t right though, was it? Loki was cowed. Thor and Loki were like mirror images of each other. One wore his pain and brokenness on the outside, the other stuffed it down and papered over it with rage. But at the end of the day, it was the exact same pain.

Sounding defeated, Loki said, “Do it, Strange. I promise I’ll only blame you a little bit.”

Christ. Seriously? Did Loki really think Stephen was going to trap him in a void, falling forever, or until Stephen felt like freeing him? Well, to be fair, he guessed he’d done it before. But those had been extenuating circumstances.

Extenuating circumstances. Right. His whole life was a series of extenuating circumstances, now. He had an Asgardian prince living in his house and he hadn’t informed anyone—except people he trusted at Kamar-Taj—that Loki was here at all. Extenuating circumstances: if he was right about what he’d seen in this future, then Loki would never be a threat to Earth again.

Stephen’s list certainly didn’t think so. A few days after Loki’s arrival, his name had disappeared from it. Stephen had thought something might be wrong with it and he’d checked it, a pit of ice forming in his stomach. But of course nothing was wrong with the list. He already knew Loki wasn’t a threat. Every time things played out exactly the way he’d seen them play out with the Time Stone, he felt a little more sick. Most of it was fine; most of it was great, but he’d caught a glimpse—there was a future that he didn’t want, and if he could nudge things just a little off course—well, it would be better for everyone.

Watching the anger flicker out of Loki’s eyes was like watching a storm recede. No pocket dimension for him. Anyway, he’d find his way out of it before long. “Yeah,” Stephen said, “I’m not going to, but your permission’s noted.”

They couldn’t keep going like this. Stephen was pretty arrogant, but even he wasn’t cocky enough to think he could break Loki. But something—stupidity, sentimentality, shortsightedness, all of the above?—made him realize that he didn’t even want Loki thinking he was trying to break him. That wasn’t who he wanted to be, not for himself, and not for Loki, either.

All of the above, definitely. With a really large helping of stupidity. Taking a breath and tilting his head to disguise his own swirling thoughts, he said, “You know…you might have a point. Not about the pocket universe. But about being cooped up. It’s probably bad luck or something to keep a god under house arrest, even here.”

The daggers vanished. “I’m listening,” Loki said warily.

Stephen got to his feet, mainly so Loki wouldn’t be able to see his face. Up until this point, he’d been a mainly passive observer in the events he’d seen. He’d give up the Time Stone to Thanos, but other than that, he’d set nothing in motion. His job was to be part of all of it, not to guide it. But there were certain things that he’d glimpsed, things that he didn’t understand how they could come to pass without him initiating it. The problem was, he didn’t know when any of it was supposed to happen. A year from now? Four months? Next week? Today? There was no way to know. The Time Stone didn’t subtitle dates at the bottom of its visions.

Which left him to use his own judgement. There was a time when just about the only person’s judgement he’d trusted was his own. The bizarre vicissitudes of his life had taught him better. Humility made him hesitate. How did he know this was the right time? If he set things in motion now, he couldn’t stop them. What if he acted and it wasn’t time? What if he had it all wrong?

He cast spell after spell to clean up the room, feeling Loki’s presence at his back. As the last lampshade fit itself back into place, a realization hit him like a train. Humility? He thought he’d learned humility? He was still the same arrogant son of a bitch he’d always been. This wasn’t about him. It had never been about him.

He recognized the pain Loki was in. This was about Loki.

There was no way for him to know the right time to set events in motion. But it didn’t matter. Loki needed this now, whether it was the right time or not.

Stephen hesitated for another second. Once he spoke, he couldn’t take it back. He couldn’t undo it.

He turned around to face Loki, who looked like a caged animal, desperate to run but with nowhere to go, his rage barely subsided, simmering just under the surface. And Stephen spoke. “I shouldn’t even be telling you this. I’m breaking every patient confidentiality law on the books.”

Surprise flickered across Loki’s face, though he immediately wiped it away. “Then please don’t feel compelled to.”

Stephen ignored him. “I was at the hospital today—”

“Why?” Loki interrupted. With a pointed look at Stephen’s hands, clearly meant to be cruel, he added, “Don’t tell me they’re letting you cut people open?”

He deserved that. But it still rankled. He thought he actually preferred the knives. “I thought you said you were listening,” Stephen said. Loki backed down, holding up his hands. The expression on his face had returned to wariness. “I was visiting a friend,” Stephen went on. “While I was there, I walked by a room that listed the occupant as Jane Foster.”

This was…not exactly a lie. Stephen had been by Metro-General recently—not today, but within the week—and he had seen Christine while he was there, but he’d gone for the express purpose of seeing if Jane Foster had taken up residence there. The little ball of ice in his stomach had grown a bit more when he’d seen her name on the door.

Loki started at the name and immediately scowled.

“Someone you know?” Stephen asked, knowing the answer perfectly well.

“An acquaintance,” Loki replied, raising one eyebrow.

This shouldn’t have charmed Stephen, but against his will, it did. Something in the arch of that eyebrow, the glint in Loki’s eyes, which wasn’t quite mischief but was sharp and pointed and keen as those daggers he carried around on his arms. God knew Loki had never tried to be charming in his time at the Sanctum. Somehow, that made the flashes of his natural charm way more genuine and likable.

“Uh huh,” Stephen said. “Friend of Thor’s, right?” Loki shrugged and Stephen grew serious. “I looked at her records. Another broken rule, by the way. Same Jane Foster. She’s dying.”

“Of course she’s dying,” Loki said, shrugging again. “You humans are in a perpetual state of mortality. It’s just what you do.”

Less charming. Stephen felt his lips thin. “She’s terminally ill. She has weeks. Maybe a couple months, if she gets really lucky.”

This seemed to hit some kind of nerve. Or maybe Loki just realized he was being an asshole. Finally, he said, “I see. And?”

“And nothing.” There was still a shattered vase in the corner. Stephen magically repaired it and it settled back into place on the table that held it. He tried not to take a deep breath and make it obvious how much he was bullshitting his way through this conversation. This was it. “Unless you want to go see her,” he said.

If this had been a movie, the music would have swelled and then abruptly dropped away at this point. The audience had to be clued in that this was a Big Moment. But of course, only Stephen knew that. Loki had no idea. His eyes narrowed and he asked, “Why would I want to go see her? I barely know the woman. My brother was the one who couldn’t stop mooning over her.” Something seemed to occur to him and he quickly added, “He dumped her, by the way.”

To be totally honest, Stephen didn’t care about the love lives of the Asgardian royal family, or lack thereof. But there was something kind of sweet about Loki insisting on this point, which told Stephen that it absolutely wasn’t true, and Jane had definitely dumped Thor’s ass.

“I was under the impression you wanted to do something nice for your brother,” Stephen said.

Loki made a series of spluttering noises, then finally managed, “This wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”

“You don’t say,” Stephen said, his tone deadpan. When Loki glared at him, he added, “Why don’t you think about it?”

“Why don’t you let me go tell my brother that I’m not dead?”

Point to Loki. Probably. Stephen had kind of lost track. He’d felt like this was a game he was going to lose from the moment Loki had appeared on the sidewalk outside, anyway. He sighed, less at Loki; more at the situation. “Do you really want to do this again today? I just got done cleaning up.” This drew an unwilling snort of laughter from Loki, and Stephen felt a tendril of an emotion that he wasn’t willing to name unfurl ever-so-slightly within him.

“By the way,” Stephen said, to distract both of them from the fact that he had just made Loki laugh, “Thor isn’t even on Earth right now.”

Picking at the armor on his hands, Loki said, “I know.”

Stephen felt his brow furrow in surprise. Loki looked at him, taking this in. “You do?” Stephen asked.

“I heard you and Wong talking about it.” Loki looked almost guilty. He cleared his throat and said, “Something about some people calling themselves the Guardians.”

Huh. Well. What else had Loki heard?

“You have good hearing,” Stephen finally said.

With a faint smile, Loki replied, “I’m very good at overhearing things that people don’t want me to.”

Good to know. Stephen wished he’d known it three months ago. He’d have to comb through his memories to figure out if Wong and he had talked about anything sensitive within Loki’s impressive earshot.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Stephen said.

Exiting a conversation at the right time was a skill Stephen had always prided himself on, and he knew this one had run its course. Something momentous had happened here, though Loki didn’t know the half of it. Stephen didn’t know if he felt like a puppet master or a puppet himself, a marionette whose strings were being jerked around by the universe the same as everyone else’s. He just happened to know about it.

Loki seemed like the kind of guy who you could have really in-depth philosophical discussions with. Get him started on a conversation about free will, and Stephen had a feeling he’d be fascinating. Stephen had heard him invoke the Norns, and as soon as that particular argument had ended, he’d pulled out his phone to google the word.

The Fates. Urðr, Verðandi, and Skuld, the most important of them. They wove mortals’ fates, pulled at the threads, followed them, tangled them, untangled them. Stephen had no idea what Loki thought about free will, but he had a feeling it was complicated.

Another thing Stephen was good at? Leaving a difficult conversation on top. He held out a hand and Loki stared at it. His open confusion was kind of satisfying. “Oh, sorry,” Stephen said. “The cup you vanished. I’ll take that back. They’re antique. I’m trying to keep the set together.”

Total bullshit. They were from the thrift store a few blocks over, and before that, probably Kmart, and there were already several pieces missing.

But Loki didn’t know any better. Stephen didn’t even know why he was messing with him. Maybe just to see if he could. There was, after all, the aforementioned feeling that he’d lost this game before it had even started. Anything to get the upper hand, no matter how temporary it was.

Smirking, Loki twitched his fingers, and the cup appeared out of thin air, dropping into Stephen’s palm. Without another word, Loki turned to leave. But then, in the doorway, he stopped and turned around. “How do I get to this hospital?” he asked. “In case I do decide to go see Miss Foster.”

Check. Did the Norns play chess? Whatever. Stephen wasn’t sure he believed in them.

Then again, he hadn’t believed in magic either, had he?

With a small smile, Stephen said, “We’ll get you a Metro Card.” He couldn’t read Loki’s face. Probably he didn’t know what a Metro Card was. Lucky guy. In all seriousness, though, Loki was, what, a thousand something years old? But he didn’t know much about Earth. Given an opportunity, he’d probably learn everything he could about it. And that reminded him. The library. Giving Loki free rein in there was something he should have done a long time ago. Wong would hate it, but…Stephen would pick up his tuna melts for a month or two and he’d get over it. “And Loki? I think you’ll find that the library has a number of books that might interest you.”

There was an impossibly long silence while Loki stared at him. Would he accept this? As peace offerings went, it was pretty paltry. Peace offering? Stephen kept his face still, but inside, he snorted at himself. He guessed so. For the past three months, he’d either outright ignored or tried to alienate Loki. Something momentous had happened here without him knowing, too. This relationship had changed. Stephen had Seen Things, but he didn’t have a roadmap. He didn’t know where this was going. He didn’t know what to expect.

The knot of ice was still in his stomach, but it seemed to thaw a little. Maybe he wasn’t entirely a toy of the Norns.

Finally, Loki inclined his head, a graceful, courtly gesture that reminded Stephen forcibly and viscerally that this was a prince. It wasn’t something that he cared about, per se. He was a person first and foremost. And last, when it came down to it. But somewhere in the middle, he was a prince, a god, a onetime villain. And he was also a brother, a son, and—

Definitely not a friend. Not to Stephen, at least.

“Thank you,” Loki said. Stephen nodded to him, and Loki turned and walked away, his footsteps quiet on the wood floor.

No, not a friend. But maybe, just maybe, not an enemy, either.

[silenthillmutual]

Wait how is it nazi propaaganda

This is far from being new discourse about the series. I only got up to episode six of season one or something but for my personal issues with it:

Building A Wall To Keep The Titans Out  - anyone here remember Trump’s Big Campaign Promise that high-key appealed to racists was?

The fact that Titans Are Actually Humans That Can Turn Into Massive Brutal, Stupid, Cannibalistic Monsters  - again, anyone wanna remind me how imperialism and white supremacy work?

The fact that it’s a ~ horror reveal ~ that the main character is One Of Them

Taking a side note to the fact that we get to watch a graphic scene where a thirty year old man beats the shit out of a fifteen year-old for this and the whole fandom thought it was Cool And Fun And Sexy To Ship Them and the fandom loves this guy for whatever reason

One of the Good Guys likes to keep Titans restrained to experiment on them and is depicted as being Fun and Goofy and Quirky

The entire aesthetic of it is Aryan for whatever goddamn reason, including the first OP starting in German

As far as I got up to, it was heavy on the glorification of the military

Not fascist-related but it’s also guilty of the Bury Your Gays trope since I seem to remember it being confirmed somewhere - off screen because god forbid you let people know For Real - 

Things that I was informed of by friends who were fans of it and that took me less than five minutes to find on my own:

Starting off I actually wanna say that the articles I found that were pro-AOT claiming that it’s “actually anti-fascism” just described things that made it worse for me

Also “it’s just a narrative device!” is not a good fucking excuse, especially when you’re drawing illusions to atrocities that you were not the victim of. 

Dot Pixis is literally modeled after a fucking war criminal that the mangaka admires

(his name was Akiyama Yoshifuru, the article I read about this is here but it’s been brought up several times; here’s a fan talking about it)

And Mikasa Ackerman is named after a war boat

Couldn’t find the screenshots anymore but Back In The Day there was something about the mangaka expressing that he thinks Koreans aren’t really human and Japanese Imperialism was a Good Thing

This Polygon article is pretty thorough about it.

And here’s an article about putting AOT in context.

And another article about why its recurring themes are problematic.

Here’s a short article about the parallels between the Titans and Jewish people.

and if that wasn’t enough to convince you for whatever reason, here is a literal side-by-side comparison of the Titan “race” in human “form” before the start of the story and a WWII-era Jewish person:

So you have a bunch of characters who have German sounding last names in a German-aesthetic setting dehumanizing and graphically slaughtering characters who are based on WWII-era Jewish people.

Here are a couple of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that you should be aware of even outside of your association with AOT: the hoax that most modern anti-Semitic bullshit is based on, every right-wingers favorite theory, a masterlist of these conspiracy theories, and the White Supremacist Dogwhislte Masterlist.

If this whole thing does eventually turn out to be ~ anti-fascist ~, then: 1, why was it necessary to show an allegory of Jewish people as literal monsters, literally another race, cannibalizing other titans and humans on screen, and being slaughtered, kept in captivity and experimented on only to turn around as a sorta “GOTCHA!” at the fans, and2. I think that three or however many seasons it has / will have plus a movie, the entire manga and chibified cutesy Middle School AU is taking a little long to get to the point. “Dehumanizing and systematically exterminating human beings is wrong” is not something that you should have to be told in the first place, let alone for as long as AOT has been going on. Shockingly enough, Orson Scott Card - notorious homophobe and author of Ender’s Game - managed to get that point across in one YA book. At this point it just feels like torture porn, and he’s certainly profiting nicely off of it.  

But Google is your friend here, like I said earlier: this is not new discourse so you could have looked literally any of this up yourself. If you don’t see it, that is your problem, not mine. But don’t interact if you support that shit.

[imagine-a-killingharmony]

Opposite Talent S/O! (V3 Boys)

I just had another random thought. How would the v3 boys be with a fem s/o that has the opposite talent of them. ( example shuichi with ultimate criminal. Or gonta with a s/o that is a exterminator *poor gonta*) might have to do this myself aswell. Please and thank you.

Thinking of... opposite talents took a while, especially for Kiibo, let me tell you I tried to not sound robophobic I swear... but there’s not a way to make most of these completely opposite so I just did my best ideas I had...

Actually... how do you get the opposite of an Astronaut? Or Antropologist? What I did? Well ehe... I literally gave Kaito a underground (opposite of up up above) S/O while making Korekiyo’s S/O study future trends, considering he studies culture.

(Gives each talent an opposite personality straight in return, oh shucks.)

Kiibo (Ultimate Lucky Student)

Your talent? Easy. You had nothing about you that had been interesting at all, you had gained an letter nothing more... such an average person like you had somehow gained the heart of the most abnormal student in your class somehow... “The Ultimate Robot”.

It was... weird, you both hadn’t any “real” talents to discuss anything over, yet he stood above you because of how he was born, while you only gained an advantage recently because... because of pure luck...

Kiibo was... gentle though, even if you were untalented, he had no restounsing features besides the ones built into him, so it was almost impossible to feel beneath him, it helped that Kiibo was a sweetheart who was new to romance just like you...

You made a perfect couple despite that one difference between the two of you, talking about whatever came to mind, no need to worry about who you were or what you currently are...

Kiibo especially enjoyed not feeling rushed with your relationship, despite Kaede’s optimism, Shuichi’s empathy towards him, Miu’s close bond with him with sharing such a closeness to him talent-wise...

He chose you, he admits it proudly that he’d do it a million times over again.

Shuichi Saihara (Ultimate Escape Artist)

Your talent? Heh! Ultimate Escape Artist, you’ve broken out of many sticky situations, picked many locks, it’s impossible to catch you since you’ve currently been on the run your entire life, until Hope’s Peak accepted you... so you didn’t have to stay in jail, somehow you gained the eye of what should be your rival: “The Ultimate Detective”.

You picked your way into his heart, Shuichi couldn’t help it he had fallen in love with you despite how... your title caused such a... crack in most of his beliefs.

Of course... don’t think he’s letting you go free, whenever he catches you do something bad, which is a lot he stops you almost immediately after a second of hestitation.

It’s terrible, you’ve been on a losing streak ever since dating him, he’s always so kind of you when you act all nice and good but whenever you do “one” bad thing he’s all up on your case telling you to try to not do it again...!

Guess his sense of righteousness triumphs over your love, but he always reminds you that he’ll visit you each day after your academy days are over in your jail-cell till the day of your release, that he’ll catch criminals that make you look like a knock-off!

How romantic~...!

Ryoma Hoshi (Ultimate Student Counsil President)

Your the Ultimate Student Counsil President, it’s your duty to keep the school in tip-top shape ever since joining and you’ve done it with passion and vigor! It’s uh- too bad the “Ultimate Tennis Player” refused to join, so you... got close to him in attempt to instill moral justice...

You both fell in love, your talents aren’t anything close to eachother, quite the opposite really considering you place justice and studies above all else while he’s... been arrested, using his brawn.

He tells you he doesn’t deserve you, especially with how enthuastic you are about bringing the class together, a guy like him wants nothing to do with most people, you being an special... exception... who’d refuses to leave...

So... you bring him closer with the rest of your classmates much to his dismay, he doesn’t like it but you force him to get along with everybody so you can have what should be the best damn year of your lives... You even make sure he keeps up on his studies, it’s a real hassle having someone so organized take up on your life.

... he won’t admit it, but he appreciates it.

Kaito Momota (Ultimate Miner)

As the Ultimate Miner you dig deep underground, all there is to it you really don’t care about your talent. It’s tiresome as it is but somehow the “Ultimate Astronaut” thought it be a good idea to boast to you about his talent to you, “both of you were explorerers of different frontiers!”

Yeah right. He got too close, it was stupid. You somehow fell for an idiot who say’d he travel new brand new heights, including you.

He doesn’t know anything about being a miner but it’s not like you ever get to gaze at the stars often yourself, so he usually tells you about how “amazing” it is, thousands of glittering speckles up in the sky that one day he’ll be able to cup thousands of those stars in his fuckin’ fist.

You used to think it was stupid, yet looking at the passion in his eyes, brighter- more beautiful than striking gold...

It paces in your chest, what should be a charred-black coal heart.

Rantaro Amami (Ultimate NEET)

As the Ultimate NEET you’ve... gained your talent from Hope’s Peak really wanting to complete it’s set of Ultimate’s, you hated it too considering your parental figure made you go but you never hated anything more than a blasted “Ultimate” who didn’t remember his own talent who insisted you become his buddy and open up.

As if, until he actually, made you open up, fuck- why did he have to be so suave and cool- wahhh- as Tsumugi would say- damned normie step on a landmind and die!!

You hated it, but he would bring you out daily to make sure you had gotten exercise, even tried to make it so you ate better for your own sake as chips and soda aren’t proper nutrients to substain living.

Going on the longest hikes, the longest boat rides which had you walk around so much as he complimented you for doing your best in the end of it all... it was terrible! Awful even...

So why do you keep doing it...? God knows, but whenever Rantaro smiles at you your heart flutters so... fuck he’s used his playboy magic on your heart!

Gonta Gokuhara (Ultimate Exterminator)

Your the Ultimate Exterminator... you live a fucking lie now, you met the Ultimate “Entomologist” who literally asked if you liked bugs the first time meeting him, you were about to answer but then before you could answer he said he “dislikes bug-haters!” with the most horrifying expression you’ve ever seen... so to keep your kneecaps you lied...

To your now-boyfriend who still doesn’t know the absolute truth, so now you live each day in paranoia at your title- and Kokichi-fucking-Ouma snapping and telling him the truth.

Gonta loves bug- you hate them with a burning passion, that’s the whole reason you got the job, most of them crawl on your skin and- it’s disgusting- but he loves them so you go along with him...!

Gonta is... kind... you don’t want to lose that, not ever, not now, not anytime... but your bound to when he figures it out... so you just try your best to find the perfect time to unveil the news...

Especially with the fact you unconsciously stepped on a few bug-friends he had in his lab, which made you grimace.

Kokichi Ouma (Ultimate Friend)

Your the Ultimate Friend! Ah but you could use the word buddy or pal or chum too, whatever works, you’ve made a whole bunch of friends with your entire school and have gained a weird fan base but all of you are equal, “The Ultimate Supreme Leader” calls you the most gullible thing he’s ever laid his eyes on...

Whatever that means, heehee... he asked you out and your dating now, for some odd odd reason he’s asking for tips on how to easily gain the trust of others which you don’t get... like at all?

But he said in return he teach you how to lie... but you don’t wanna lie, but you didn’t want to hurt his feelings either so you said okay! All you told him was you just be super duper nice to them... promise your loyalty for ever! Like... BFFS!!!

Kokichi squinted at you after you said that, you still don’t understand why he asked you out of all people but... he just tsked as he put on that super-cool cape of his that he kept lying around.

“... It’s fine, I’ll just control your already growing fan base behind the scenes sweetie, mwah.” Kokichi presses a light peck against your cheek, you embrace him tightly and lovingly in return.

Korekiyo Shinguuji (Ultimate Trendsetter)

As the Ultimate Trendsetter it was a basic goal to spread the word upon the newest dads and trends, but there was a certain somebody not quite getting the memo... a “Ultimate Anthropologist” who wore an mysteries mask yet... oddly old clothes...

He needed a gentle push in the right direction! Despite how he told you how his attire was quite “fine” you told him that couldn’t be the case, darling- weird mysterious vibes are sooo last month!

With you by his side he was sure to rock this entire school to it’s core! (He doesn’t want to do that S/O.) it’ll be a guarantee everyone will have his eyes locked on him! (S/O please.)

It’s quite difficult to pay attention to the folklore stories that he tells you but it gives you ideas for the newest fads that might be coming along, kimonos were quite cute- shit let’s bring those back in town-!

Korekiyo... always wondered if sister would find your behavior to be... model or just... unacceptable, he’ll need to pay her a call soon...

[armageddon-generation]

Making an arc out of series 11 (and other fixes)

I DON’T MEAN TO HATE - I genuinely really liked this TARDIS team, Jodie has completely won me over and the episodes not written by Chibnall were great - but this series does have several frustrating Issues.

One recurring problem I see people having is that the finale didn't feel climactic because there was little build up.

A few ways to fix this :

The Woman Who Fell to Earth

Just improve Tim Shaw - alter his design so he’s not just a black robot-man - take the tooth idea and do something like the Sycorax?

Change the ball of electricity into an actual creature - then establish Tim Shaw’s abusive relationship with it, taking out his viciousness on this helpless slave, because he’s a coward

This mster/beasty relationship would give Tim more character and make him easier to hate

It also establishes the running theme of the Stenza altering/controlling other creatures - it gives them a distinctive ‘gimmick’ like Dalek extermination and Cyberman conversion, which we can expand on in The Ghost Monument, The Tsuranga Conundrum and The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos

The Ghost Monument

Establish the threat of the Stenza - ravaged worlds better (show us the flesh eating water instead of telling us about it and have more time with the Remnants instead of those boring robots)

Do this by giving Desolation (which is out of orbit) short, irregular days (5 hours, 3 hours) so the threat of the Remnants is always there - build tension and character at day (the “Mum told me to jump” speech) and have scary chase sequences during the two night sections

The Stenza using Desolation to create weapons of mass destruction reminds the Doctor of the Time Lords' tactics in the Time War, (that's why she's so interested in the planet) and establish that Yaz wants to know what happened to the Doctor's people/family

One of the racers should've had their planet stolen, not just enslaved, to establish the mystery of the planets Tim Shaw is stealing

Show their desperation by having the racers actually compete and fight with each other, with Team TARDIS stuck in the middle. Both characters believe they deserve the prize because they've suffered and lost more.

Yaz separates them, directly paralleling her intro scene in episode 1 - from parking disputes to this.

GIVE 13 HER BIG MOMENT because I waited until literally the last line of the series to understand where she's coming from. 13 is the joyous explorer, she doesn't have time for wallowing in angst, there's too much universe out there to see.

Something like: "It's not about what you've lost, that doesn't make you better than him! All that matters now is what's ahead. What are you going to do if you win, where will it take you? Have you even thought about it? Because maybe, just maybe, if you stopped pitying yourself you could make something good from this. Yes, you're family is gone and I'm sorry. But just because they're dead doesn't mean your life should stop too. Move forward."

This helps Chibnall's 'Fresh Start' mandate because it establishes 13 as completely different from RTD and Moffat's Doctors (especially 10 and 12) who felt a sense of superiority because of their past pain. It also ties into Ryan and Graham letting go of Grace.

The TARDIS went to Desolation in the first place because it wanted to help the planet (remember she has personality) - 13 realises this once they reunite.

We've previously established the TARDIS can change the weather, and it's had thousands of years on Desolation to prepare calculations etc, so have a sequence at the end where they show off to the new conpanions and terraform the planet, reversing the Stenza's damage

Post - credits scene / stinger - while the companions explore the TARDIS, show 13 viewing the footage the TARDIS collected over thousands of years of the Stenza violating the planet - she doesn't look happy, but then Yaz calls her for a tour and she puts on the bright smile again.

Yaz

I think Team TARDIS in series 11 was meant to be split between the familial relationship between Ryan and Graham, with the standard swept-off-her-feet almost-romance between the Doctor and Yaz in the background. They didn't focus on Thasmin much because I think Chibnall assumed 'oh, we've seen this before'

SHOW THE GROWTH OF YAZ AND THE DOCTOR'S RELATIONSHIP. IT SHOULDN'T BE ROMANTIC (YET) BUT JUSTIFY THEIR DEVOTION TO EACH OTHER

Because Yaz is a police officer have her 'investigate' the Doctor's past - especially her family, as that's an important part of her character and theme in the series as a whole. Since Chibnall loves Classic they could mention Susan

This makes 13 telling Yaz about her Granny in It Takes You Away an important milestone in their relationship

Yaz to Ryan about the Doctor's family:

Thirteen's character

People complaining Jodie isn't unique enough kind of have a point, but the seeds are there:

I like the idea of 13 being easily distracted and careless ("I'm almost going to miss you." / "Hi Yaz, forgot you were there."). Her being slow to trust contrasts nicely with Jodie's infectious enthusiasm. Have Yaz's role be keeping 13 focused, grounded and on-track when she needs to be.

Also! I've seen the idea thrown around 13 is only acting all bright and chipper. It'd be really interesting if she prioritises Team TARDIS' emotional wellbeing over her own

This way we have parallel arcs - Yaz gets the Doctor to open up as Ryan gets closer to Graham

13 and her Sonic

13 is meant to be a tinkerer, but we don’t see much evidence of this outside building the Sonic

So she wears a tool belt

The belt is TARDIS-like (bigger on the inside) and 13 pulls things out of it like Mary Poppins’ carpet bag

13 pulls bits of scrap out of the belt and cobbles things together when she’s excited / nervous / talking (pipe cleaner helicopters! Catapults! Wind-up mice!)

This distinguishes her from 11, who also did a lot of hand-flapping and is already superficially similar personality-wise

More floofy/fly-away haired 13! It makes her seem more energetic, constantly in motion, which really suits her.

The popular headcanon is that the Sonic works randomly (one episode it can do things, the next it can’t) because over the years the Doctor has added so many features they’ve overloaded it. So now she’s got a new Sonic, 13 is constantly fiddling with it/adding new features

Address the NuWho Doctors’ over-reliance on the Sonic - 13 keeps expecting the Sonic to do things but because it’s new hardware, it can’t, and she has to solve problems on her own

A running gag where 13 goes ‘watch this, gang’ and the Sonic does something completely opposite what she wanted and now they have to improvise

In the finale the Sonic finally works properly and 13 uses it to beat Tim Shaw

Occasionally (in an episode opening) 13 makes weird machines without knowing what the fuck they do:

13: [holding up a small device] Does this look familiar? Do you know what it is? Neither do I. I made it last night in my sleep. Apparently I used Gindrogac. Highly unstable.

Yaz: Doctor…

13 : I put at button on it. Yes. I want to press it, but I’m not sure what will happen if I do.

Ryan: [runs for cover]

13 and Graham

In Series 11, 13 always seemed annoyed by Graham (“Don’t kill the vibe”) and never seemed to grow past it.

Suggest 13 is living vicariously by helping Graham reconnect with Ryan – the Doctor first started travelling in the TARDIS to connect with their grandchild, so this is 13 coming full-circle

13 notices how good and Granddad Graham is trying to be for Ryan, and as he grows braver she comes to really respect him.

Graham becomes her confidant – he’s the only one 13 shows her age to, and she helps Graham begin again: They talk about how the Doctor has had to reinvent and regenerate themselves again and again because the universe needs them – much as Ryan needs Graham. 13 has lots of experience moving past loss, and they support each other through the pressure of being responsible (for Ryan and Yaz respectively)

Ryan

Have the Doctor and Ryan's relationship develop - in The Woman Who Fell to Earth they suggested 13 would take a nurturing parental role for him ("That's the kind of thing Grace would've said") but it's not really built on. All the pieces are there (him being immature and using weapons in the beginning)

Ryan and 13 have a sibling-like relationship - she teaches him about life and the universe - have 13′s use of slang (skillz with a z) come from Ryan having fun teaching slang to a socially inept alien

also maybe a reccuring joke about Ryan going for a fist-bump and 13 patting his fist, that pays off by the finale

Does anyone remember Ryan and Yaz went to Primary school together? Capitalise on that. When Ryan talks about how his Dad left him in Tsuranga and It Takes You Away, make it explicit that she understands because she saw Ryan go through it as a kid, and remembers what it did to him emotionally

A common complaint about Ryan is that he rarely actually does anything - he just stands there and says "they're gone!" or "it's a spaceship!". So have this be part of his character. In the early episodes have Yaz be the most active companion (allowing her to develop!), with Ryan (nervous about his dyspraxia) in the background, and have him become more and more active and competent as the series goes on.

Episode Order

For this to work I suggest shuffling the episodes - 1, 2, 8, 4, 6, 5, 7, 3, 9, 10

10 60-minute episodes to fit the new stuff in and give the large cast more room. The Woman Who Fell to Earth (60 minutes) was Chibnall's best script.

This way series 11 gets the same screen time as the 12 episode Capaldi series

Instead of 2 trailers for the next episode (one pre and one post credits) insert a post-credits stinger hinting at arcy things

The Witchfinders (We’re Going on a Witch-Hunt)

Swap Rosa and The Witchfinders around. We can get the 'female discrimination' thing out of the way faster (it felt weird they didn't explicitly address it until episode 8). Yaz and 13 can bond over their shared oppression (this is the first time the Doctor realises what history is like for her female companions - for the first time, they are of equal status and must work as a team).

Also have Yaz, the POLICE OFFICER, be personally offended by the miscarriage of Justice in the Witch Trials, and defend the victims - relate it to her experience on the job (maybe touch on domestic abuse?) instead of the cliche bullying story

The villains being escaped convicts from a prison also links to Yaz's character and job - contrast her applying police protocol to the Morax (she never had a case this big at home!) with 13's "fuck it, time to wave the glowy science stick' attitude - Yaz forces 13 to be disciplined, 13 forces Yaz to think outside the box and bend the rules

Arachnids in the UK (Spiders in Sheffield)

Still episode 4 - this needs a complete rewrite IMO, but for starters make the Trump parallel less explicit and cringey

Address Yaz has left her job as a police officer behind - she goes into work (with 13 as her ‘consultant’) and learns about people disappearing - we meet the spider expert at the Police Station, (because Yaz’s  neighbour being the only victim AND working in that spider lab was too big a coincidence) 

The expert is being ignored because the disappearances are higher priority, so low-ranking Yaz gets stuck with her

The spiders have spread all over Sheffield, not just the one flat and all around Yaz’s building

Have Ryan, Yaz and the Doctor go to meet Yaz’s mum at the hotel while Graham is mourning Grace in their nearby flat

When the spreading spiders reach Yaz’s family, Graham goes to help them, showing how brave 13 has helped him become.

We now have two tension-filled scenarios:

A home invasion subplot where Graham helps Yaz’s family keep the spiders out of their flat. Use this to flesh out and make her sister and Dad likeable - Graham comforts them when they’re scared, calling back to Grace's last line "promise you won't be scared without me" - 13 has helped him!

13 and Co being chased around the hotel (PROPERLY chased - the spiders use webs to cut off corridors and herd them around like rats in a maze)

YAZ GETS TAKEN BY THE SPIDERS - this is the moment 13 realises how attached she is to her new friends. She and Mrs Kahn work together to go and save Yaz from the Spiders’ nest (eliminating that annoying Jackie Tyler “you’re endangering my kid” trope) while Ryan uses his music to draw the spiders away

13 gets to see Mrs Kahn’s maternal affection and we see her desire for family. Ryan’s music draws the Spiders back and saves Graham and Yaz’s family

When Ryan and Graham reunite it’s very emotional - Ryan saved Graham’s life - ‘looking out for each other’

Finally have the Doctor save the Spiders by using the TARDIS as an Ark, instead of leaving them to die - call back to Planet of the Spiders and drop them off there

Since she's at home, once they’ve saved everyone have Yaz do girly things with the Doctor (because they haven't been able to rest since episode 1) - maybe nail painting? Only 13 starts using the varnish as finger paint. Also! I like the idea of them choosing 13's earring together bc 13 has no clue about jewelry

Demons of the Punjab

This should be episode 5, because it's connected to 4 by Yaz's family and together they provide a nice rounding-off of the half of the series more focused on her

The Thijarians have had their planet stolen, not just destroyed (it would still kill everyone)

That way when we see the hologram of what happened to their planet we establish the threat of what will happen to the Earth if Tim Shaw wins in the finale

(the powder they have can still be the stuff left over afterwards)

Also it's weird that Yaz goes to see her Grandmother, who she discovers remarried, and Ryan doesn't react at all.

Ryan has nothing to do in this episode, and because we're putting Punjab earlier in the series, Grace's loss is fresher. Give him a moral dilemma: He wants to go back and see her when she was young (and with her first husband - implicitly rejecting Graham) like Yaz is seeing her Gran

After seeing what happens to Yaz's family, and seeing Graham's caring reaction to Prem, he follows 13's advice and gives up on seeing Grace again - he's content with Graham

He bonds with Yaz over the episode and warns her not to take family for granted. At the end Yaz takes him to meet her Gran in the present day ("I was lucky enough to know yours")

The Tsuranga Conundrum (The Good Doctors)

Have the medical ship be a war ambulance helping victims of the Stenza's conquest

The general on board has fought the Stenza

Cut her brother and the 2nd nurse, they're unnecessary - have the ship be understaffed because of the strain the Stenza are putting on the medical service, give the engineering role to 13

The asteroid field they have to fly through (which we should ACTUALLY SEE) is not just an asteroid field but the wreckage left behind by another missing planet.

Replace the P'ting. It may be cute but the vast majority of people thought it was ridiculous. Instead have it be a Stenza weapon left over as the ship is flying through an old battleground - it can still be small and destroy the ship from the inside out, but its design can be more threatening and it can be more sympathetic (it was experimented on/created to kill, it isn't evil)

13 tries to pilot the ship first but can't because she's wounded. She has to rely on Team TARDIS and delegate the usual ‘Doctor’ roles. She faces off against the tactical P’ting, trying to fix the ship as fast as it disassembles it, while Yaz runs around trying to catch the thing, and Ryan and Graham take care of the passengers

The sonic STAYS BROKEN so 13 has to do this all by hand

Once 13 is told the Stenza are still out there hurting people, introduce a subplot over the next 3 episodes before the finale where she's sneaking off at night to go and help fight them (without the others knowing, because they're too emotionally biased)

The next episodes (Kerblam!, Rosa) gradually shift the focus onto Ryan's growth as he becomes more active

It Takes You Away

Add 13 and Graham - now close friends - talking about grandkids, and put more emphasis on 13′s reaction to the abandoned girl

This sets up the Solitract turning into Susan, the Doctor’s granddaughter, instead of the frog at the end

You don’t require previous NuWho knowledge to know about Susan - she has barely been mentioned.

Have her be played by the actress from An Adventure in Space and Time, like David Bradley as the First Doctor 

This way we directly address the theme of grandchildren and family

The Solitract is a link to 13's childhood and family. It's also another omnipotent consciousness she can relate to (think 9 and Bad Wolf - "That's what I feel, all the time!"). Finding that and immediately letting it go must be traumatising

Have a quick scene of Yaz catching 13 crying, but she quickly covers up because Graham just saw Grace and he's distraught

Finale (Battle Phantoms)

When they arrive on the battlefield 13 accidentally reveals she's been helping fight the Stenza offscreen (which is how she knows about this battle - one of the ones she was too late for)

This lie infuriates Graham - she's been blocking his revenge for ages

BIG EMOTIONAL MOMENT

13: Maybe I am a liar, and I promised I wouldn't be, but that's because I know what it's like, Graham. To want to hurt the people who hurt you. How that anger burns like fire, like a supernova. And it took me so long to get over it, so long to move on. Whole lifetimes wasted hurting and hating. I didn't want that to happen to you. No one deserves to be broken twice.

This gives Graham a legitimate reason to go against 13 without announcing his intention to kill Tim Shaw like an idiot. It also plays up 13's hypocrisy, which was touched on in the original script

What was the point of 9 distress calls if they're all in the same place?? Use this pportunity to split team TARDIS up and showcase how they've grown as individuals before bringing them back together (Ryan and Graham, Yaz and 13) for the 3rd Act

Graham being on his own drives up the tension over whether he'll kill Tim Shaw - Ryan gets there just in time

Explicitly call back to the moment in The Ghost Monument when Ryan used a gun - highlight how far he's come because of 13, talking Graham down

Get rid of the robots, because they weren't in The Ghost Monument now, and they turned the intimate story into an action movie.

Over the series we've established the Stenza genetically engineer other creatures into weapons (the Remnants, the P'ting, the cable ball in The Woman Who Fell to Earth). Replace the robots with scary leftovers from the Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos (because that title was irrelevant to the original episode) - Think the Hand Mines from The Magician's Apprentice

Have each of the missing planets throughout the series be named - that way when we discover the stolen planets in the finale there is emotional impact because their being stolen has caused so much suffering.

This way not only are the Stenza a lot more threatening because they are present throughout the series, there is more build up to seeing Tim Shaw again

Also, the subplot about returning the planets is more emotionally impactful - the Doctor is retroactively providing closure to lots of the side characters from the series

Finally the threat to Earth is much greater - the companions have seen what losing your planet does to a person emotionally, and they fear that

WHEN THE EARTH IS THREATENED CALL BACK TO YAZ'S FAMILY SO WE FEEL SOMETHING

Also the continuing thread of missing /lost planets could link to Galifrey, raising 13's emotional stakes

Multiple people have complained the plot thread about the planet attacking you psychically and erasing your memories went nowhere - when 13 and Yaz take those devices off they get slight headaches

Instead have the planet actually attack them - 13 and Yaz have to remind each other of their memories and their families - exposing Yaz to a rare snapshot of the Doctor’s lonely childhood on Galifrey

This gives Jodie the opportunity to do some SERIOUS DRAMATIC ACTING, and finally opening up about Galifrey to the whole TARDIS team at the end gives an emotional climax to her relationship with them, as well as the relationship between Ryan and Graham

The Fam line is cute, but we need ACTION to evidence this growth - this way throughout the series we’ve established how much family means to 13, how much she wants that, and Yaz saying “I’ve always liked fam” means so much because it means she understands 13 as a person

Resolution

Change how the Dalek got split.

Medieval humans killing a Dalek on their own is ridiculous and makes itr less threatening. Instead, have the Dalek be a scout from the Time War, looking to attack Earth to distract the War Doctor. The Doctor, furious, rushes over and helps the human armies divide it, to stop the Time War spreading to his second home.

We’re told this legend by the archaeologists, positioning the Doctor as a vengeful wizard. We can get a flashback with the War Doctor as a dark silhouette on a hill or something.

This makes the “it’s personal” stuff even truer

Use the archaeologists and dig site to expand on the Dalek race’s impact on humanity, because they’ve visited Earth dozens of times. I’m thinking wall paintings depicting the Dalek Shell as a Divine war chariot, and the mutant as a Cthulhu-like God

This way we’re really throwing Team TARDIS in the deep end - they are immediately aware of the number of times the Doctor has fought the Daleks, which is completely different to the rest of series 11, where 13 was encountering everything for the first time

Change the junkyard Dalek shell.

The Scout goes to a storage facility where pieces of its shell are stored. Now this place is owned by the modern incarnation of the cult we’ve set up who worshipped the Dalek in ancient times (their logo is the same symbol found on the wall paintings)

Instead of killing the gay (AGAIN), have the company staff welcome and exult the Dalek - only for it to turn around and kill them all, establishing its racial superiority complex. (This is something Chibnall glossed over - his Dalek wanted to conquer like anyone else, not exterminate)

The company has collected the remains of dozens of different Dalek models from invasions across the show’s history (we still have the parallel to 13 making her Screwdriver)

The Dalek reassembles itself not using Earth metal, but into a Frankenstein’s monster welded together from different Dalek designs (classic 60s, Imperial, Special Weapons, Time War, Supreme, Progenitor)

When the Dalek and 13 face each other this one Scout now represents the entire Dalek race, every type the Doctor has ever fought. The idea of it stitching itself together is also a nice parallel to Regeneration

Destroy the Dalek by separating all the different sections - use Ryan’s dad’s technical skills but don’t have all of Team TARDIS rush the Dalek without getting killed - them pushing it around immediately removed any threat.

Emotional Impact

Seeing the remains of all the Daleks the Doctor has killed at the storage facility and hearing the stories of the War Doctor makes Team TARDIS reconsider 13

Police officer Yaz realises she is devoted to a murderer, and considers whether she wants to get closer to such a person

To make the Dalek more impactful to both Team TARDIS and the new audience that has only watched Series 11, when Graham asks why it’s so dangerous have 13 say something along the lines of “the Daleks are my Stenza”

Graham realises why 13 stopped him killing Tim Shaw in series 11, and (considering his Dad must’ve fought in WW2) gains a new level of respect for her

Don’t have Ryan immediately forgive his Dad and declare that he loves him - set up that he’s willing to give his Dad a second chance as an arc for series 12 - the push and pull between Graham and Ryan reconnecting with his Dad

The Scout is trying to complete its original mission, bringing the Tile War to Earth - 13 has to  literally defend her freinds from the ghost of the War and finally let go of her violent past (personified by the War Doctor). She’s also letting go of the deified, Messiah-like version of herself (represented by the wall paintings of the Doctor’s battle with the Dalek) that RTD and Moffat loved

13’s arc is worrying learning about the Daleks and their toxic relationship will change the way her friends look at her, because she’s been trying to protect them from this side of her life (it’s revealed she’s been deliberately avoiding places she’s been before because she’s looking for a fresh start)

By now Ryan and Graham are getting along fine, they’ve avenged Grace’s murder and Ryan is now talking to his Dad. 13 worries everyone has outgrown her, and they’ll leave

Have a scene at the end where Yaz comforts 13 and assures her she won’t abandon her - 13 doesn’t need to save their lives for them to want to travel with her - it’s their job to save her. They are here because they care about her. 

This way we get a new emotional climax of 13′s emotional arc and reaffirm the status-quo for Series 12

Improving Matt Smith’s era here

[workingonit-currently]

(Title Pending)

Part 2 (Start!)

In this words everyone has one thing in common, a Spark.

It's the number one thing you're judged on. Sparks are special abilities but also give the person they belong to other side abilities that relate or compliment their Spark's main ability.

But sometimes Sparks are what hold you back.

Boze wasn't one to turn down an assignment but with her Spark, eternal youth, she feels she could be doing more with her job than invading a stupid school. Though this was her first assignment since transferring to Shīru city's police station and they'd read her previous jobs and seen her abilities they still decided to assigne her this job.

The task was to invade the local school, Monogatari High School, and report any suspicious activity, the Shīru police having had a tip-off from a local that something is going down there.

Boze was the only officer known who could convincingly get into a school, looking young enough thanks to her Spark, but Boze wanted a juicy assignment, not just some stupid job like this. She couldn't understand why she was saddled with an assignment like this when Officer Corn and Sohin', the two goof-balls of the station, got to go to multiple bomb sights and mess around! It was so unfair!

Fair enough that Officer Corn's Spark is more chaotic than most and Officer Sohin' couldn't be more off in the clouds and neither could pass for convincing teenagers but despite all odds Boze's mind still found a way to convince her that they could do it instead.

She wouldn't dare bring it up to Chief Takahashi though, to afraid of losing both her badge and her life. The Cheif was about as tough as they came, survived time in The War of Vallies, braved the heats of Ghosts with nothing but a cup of milk as sustinence and most recently fought against the great Domination Extermination Force Fighting You. The station myths even say her hair is purple because it's dyed everyday with deadly poison from a giant snake that she keeps, all so that when she finally meets death they'll be running from her.

Despite this Boze still hates the fact that she has to pretend to be a hormonal teenager and spend her day learning in school. She finished school for a reason!

That's partly why she can't believe she's actually standing at the corner of the street she lives at with a backpack, waiting for the Monogatari High School bus, but she is.

Sighing and gripping the light purple strap of her backpack around her left shoulder Boze thinks of her days in school, not thinking this will be that hard. Breath

She was wrong.

As soon as she stepped on the bus she knew she was wrong. The scent of body odor and the sound of teenagers screaming and shouting brings Boze back to her school days and she struggles to find a seat, each person she passes side-eyeing her and sneering as if they have a personal vendeta against her or her bloodline.

Eventually she does sit down, at the back of the bus to avoid the glares and sneers, her face already feeling inadequate and ugly. Trying to take time to ready herself for the day Boze finds it extremely difficult, wild thought of what she must look like or how she must smell distract her mind and suddenly the thirty minute bus ride from her home to the school seems like hours.

.

She gets out of the bus just as school starts, following the crowd into the main hall and sitting down, trying to blend in. The crowd of teenagers are like snakes, tightly crushing her but she still moves, ready for anything at this point and her seat in the hall is not much different, she's wedged between a skinny and boney boy and a slightly buff girl.

A very official looking woman steps infront of everyone and brings a speaker to her mouth, Boze assumes she's the head. She stands up on a platform infront of everyones seats and has a flowey suit-dress thing so it only makes sense that she owns the school or is high in status here and you don't get much higher than the head.

This is correct as Boze finds out when the woman announces she is the head.

"Good morning all of you and welcome to your second year at Monogatari High School, I also welcome the new additions that have only come this year. Welcome all!" The lady starts with and Boze now remembers why she hated school, the teachers all seemed condisending to her and they don't seem to have changed now.

"For those who are new please let me make you aware of some things, firstly I must ask you to call me Miss Rose, secondly please make sure you know your place as there are five ranks and Leader is the top so try not to cause any trouble before being assigned your rank, thirdly can we all please try to finally put and end to CB, it is not funny anymore and students have got hurt." Miss Rose, the head, asks with a slight hint of frustration on that last one but she takes a deep breath and continues, "That is all. Thank you and have a good day!"

Boze takes out her notebook and pen before scribbling down her fimdings, 'CB is something to watch out for'. As she writes she feels a pair of eyes on her notes and swiftly turns her head to meet them.

"Oh! Umm...sorry. I was just curious!" The skinny boy next to her stutters and Boze rolls her eyes, not lowering her guard around this guy as he could be a suspect.

Bringing the notepad to her chest Boze casually struts out of the hall and towards a classroom of sorts that every other child is heading to. She takes this time to inspect those around her, knowing extreme Spark usage of immense power would give off physical signs such as discolouration of hair into an unnatural colour.

Her eyes meet only one, a tall silver boy that the crowd seems to avoid subconsiously.  Interesting.

.

Boze sits far away from the teacher, planning to be undisturbed and alone to note suspicious activity but as she pulls out her pen the same skinny boy she sat next to sits by her and smiles, avoiding her death-glare.

“Hi. My name’s Logan, nice to meet you.” He introduces and sticks out his hand for Boze to shake, the morning light bouncing off his glasses and making Boze unable to see his eyes.

"Nice to meet you to. Boze." Boze responds with, using a more sour tone than the boy and shaking his hand slowly. Boze hates this boy already, so she can't understand why he would keep almost trying to make her hate him more.

For example all throughout the lesson whenever Boze would answer right Logan would grab her hand a hogh five it, shouting loudly "yes!". Or maybe whenever Boze took notes Logan copied those note but in smarter language. In all ways of the word, Logan was getting on Boze's nerves.

It also didn't help that when the bell rung for lunch and the teachers obligation to care ended a quater of the class stayed behind to glare at Boze and Logan, narrowing their eyes at Logan's new 'friend'.

"Oh why hello hot-cakes, I didn't see you last year. Are you new baby?" One calls, a girl with black hair covering one eye.

Boze chooses to nod to this, Logan shaking in his boots as she casually packs her bag. She's use to sexual name calling and next to nothing intimidates her anymore, especially not this overly-sexual teenager.

"Also looks like you're one of little Lo's friends. Any statements?" The same black haired girl spits this time and Boze cringes, disgusted by the girl. Boze observes that the girl is the only one actually speaking, probably meaning the group around her would fall to pieces and give up if Boze were to take her down.

"Fuck. Off." Boze states with her middle finger up, finally having packed her bag and slinging it onto her back. Logan of course shakes more and goes pale, eyes darting between the black haired girl and Boze, muttering under his breath.

"Oh you're going to pay!" The girl shouts, trying to intimidate Boze as she cracks her knuckles and glares at her. Boze casually walks towards her and punches her in the face, not having the actual time or energy to draw the fight out any longer than it has to be.

After Boze's first punch the girl topples down, blood pouring from her nose. (And not the good kind.)

Boze simply grabs Logan by the arm and walks away. She may not exactly like him but if he's getting bullied she mighy as well stick by him.

"That was awsome!" Logan finally says and punches the air, Boze slightly smiling at the compliment.

"We should get lunch though." Logan muses before turning the tables and dragging Boze forward.

.

As Boze and Logan walk with their trays full of food, remembering to sneak a quick glance as they pass the black haired girl who is now looking less than peachy, they wander.

Of course they can't wander anywhere they want, Logan could since he's a Leader but he says he's never abandon his new friend. Boze appreciates this but asks anout Leaders.

"What are they?"

"Well, it pretty much means we can go anywhere anytime and people HAVE to treat us with respect." Logan tries to explain but Boze rolls her eyes teasingly.

"That black haired girl I punched didn't seem to be treating you with a lot of respect." She comments and Logan awkwardly laughs, looking away from her.

"Yeah, that's the sad thing about being a Leader, you can't exactly lose per-say at...anything!" Logan starts and chuckles nervously, "If you do lose at something they strip you off your title and give it to the person who beat you. I guess it's meant to make you train harder and be better but I can't handle all the pressure but need the actual title for my oen project I'm working on and I couldn't afford to lost the title so I just let Grace, that's the girl by the way, keep beating on me with the promise she's never tell anyone. My projects actually interesting though and, in my opinion, worth it. It's this sph-"

Boze interupts Logans ramble by placing her hand over his mouth, her eyes glued to the same silver haired person she saw while walking to the classroom. He's just as tall as Boze imagined, now that she could actually see all of him. He is also very muscular which is saying something since most people here are physically fit.

"Oh. That's Wes." Logan noted as he saw where Boze was looking, he pushed his glasses up his nose, "Don't talk to him."

"Why?" Boze asks, already suspicious of this Wes boy, firstly his hair is unnaturally silver and then Logan tells her not to talk to him. This is just a recipe for disaster and Boze wants in.

"Let's just say he's a last resort." Logan tries to explain, giving Boze chills when he talks about Wes. What kind of power does he hold if he's deemed a last resort? What kind of person is he?

"But...Why are those people talking to him then?" Despite this feeling of impending doom Boze enquires more and Logan sighs, covering his face as he notices the blonde haired girl and glasses-wearing boy talking to Wes.

"Those people are Joven and Courtney, both Leaders, and they usually talk to, and hang out with Wes. They're probably disscussing 'buissness'." Logan explains simply, putting air quotes around buissness and making Boze more curious.

"Buissness?" She asks Logan, eyeing the trio of suspicious trouble-makers and already getting ready to report this to base. I bet Officer Corn and Sohin' don't see anything this interesting ever.

"Yeah, those three are all kind-of, most of the time, seen together and most people here think they're in a group despite being from different clicks. Joven claims that he's telling Wes off most of the time and Courtney claims Wes just messes with her personally a lot but I think it's because they're all Leaders." Logan explains and nervously laughs, awkwardly waving as the trio finally notice them.

"Wes isn't a leader though?" Boze finds the flaw in Logans words and wonders if he's trustworthy.

"Only because he doesn't want to be, he could probably take down everyone in the school right now." Logan explains, quieting his voice as the trio approach but Boze still hears.

"Really? So do you know any more? Any way to...I don't know..take him down if he snaps? Wes I mean. A teacher maybe or the Head or-" Boze asks and Logan cuts her off quickly.

"Shut up for a second and don't tell anyone I told you this but no one can take Wes down, that's why he's the last resort..." Logan explains and goes to run off to avoid the trio approaching but Boze grabs his tie and stares at him. She stares deep into his eyes, seeing them wide with fear as she smiles.

"There's something you're not telling me..." Boze hisses quietly as Wes passes, Courtney and Joven heading off in seperate ways away from Wes.

"N-no! Really! There's no one in this school who can take down Wes..." Logan insists but Boze doesn't loosen her grip on his tie, still not believing him.

"Okay! Maybe Damien but...-" Logan starts and Boze growls, growing impatient with Logan. He lied to her!?

"Where is he!? I thought you said no one in this school could take down him?" Boze hisses and grits her teeth, not caring about making a scene. Mari wanted her to invade this school and gain info, this is how she gains info!

"Damien is probably in the club house. That's technically not in school, just on school grounds" Logan explains casually with a smirk before running away but calling back, "Good luck getting him to help you though!"

.

Boze enters what she thinks is the Clubhouse as it's stationed near small wooden houses and she instantly smells cinnamon. Crinkling her nose aand looking around Boze finds no one in the clubhouse, just the evening sun shining through the five small glass windows.

Boze doubts Logan, wondering if he was lying, when a sneeze disturbs her from her thoughts and her attention is brought to a single soft chair with someone sitting diagonally across it.

Readying her fists as she approaches, Boze moves towards to front of the seat to look at the person who just sneezed. Just as she manages to sneak around to the side of the seat and black hair becomes visable the voice of the person casually comments.

"What's taking you so long? I thought you'd be quicker."

"Huh?"

"Oh, so you're here now? What do you want?" He asks, dissinterested and casually leaning back in his seat.

"You are Damien, correct?" Boze asks, trying not to get thrown off by Damiens casual and lazy facade. If he truely is as powerful as Wes or even more powerful she can't let her guard down, he wouldn't be this casual so it must be an act.

"Yeah. And you're Boze." Damien answers, waving his hand in a 'speed-up' movement and catching Boze off-guard in the fact he knows her name., "Now that we're finished with introductions can we please get back to what the hell you want New-Girl?"

"Umm...okay? Well I need to know something first-" Boze starts but Damien cut her off, picking at his nails and consentrating very little on the coversation or her.

"Yes, I am as strong as Wes. No, I will not fight him. Why? I like him, he's useful to me and we need him as a last resort." Damien quickly explains and answers all of Boze's questions, silencing Boze momenteraly.

Damien takes this chance to stretch and sigh, placing a hand at the back of his neck and lying his head back, trying to relax. He is very much acting like the owner of this whole place, ignoring Boze when he feels like it and not taking anything seriously.

It's getting on Boze's nerves.

"So...Why do you need him? Why is he a last resort? For what!?" Boze suddenly finds her voice and rambles, the volume of her being not to Damiens liking and he can feel his rage rising. When Boze gets annoyed she rambles and that annoys Damien, can you see the problem.

Damien closes his eyes and grits his teeth, feeling the heat rise in him and bubble like lava, "Boze, shut up!"

Boze takes a break to look at him, staring at him and his rude words before continuing, "Now what's up with you? Are they experimeting on you? Would you be willing to file a report? Anything you know about this Wes guy? He's shady right?"

"Please...stop..." Damien pleades slightly, gripping the back of his head as the feelings inside him rise but Boze continues, ignoring him.

"I mean what is going on! I'm new here so could you explain literally anything!? Like more about Leaders! What is under Leaders! There are like five statuses in school but all I've heared about is Leaders!? Why!?" Boze rambles and her volume increases.

Damien can't take it anymore and sits up, opening his eyes suddenly and grits his teeth, trying to stop himself from barking at the rambling gurl.

"Listen! I-" Damien shouts at her but is cut off by the school bell, freezing them both and silencing them.

As Boze looks back at Damien she finds him having regained his seemingly natural lazy and aloof attatude, leaning back in the chair and closing his eyes, a smirk on his face as he feel Boze's eyes on him.

"Looks like you were saved by the bell. Come back here tomorrow morning before lessons and we'll talk more okay?" Damien explains and sighs, his breath calm and relaxed. He has a smirk on his face and if Boze wasn't told any better she would think he was just some random aloof idiot.

"Just try to not get yourself killed first aye?" Damien teases and Boze feels heating gathering around her cheeks so she turns her head to try to hide it.

Boze nods hurridly to herself, agreeing with Damiens plan, and looks back at Damien only to find him having dissapeared into thin air.

"Huh? He's gone?" Boze asks herself and pokes the air around and on the chair, checking for Damien.

[to-future-self]

This is very long and unplanned

Well, hello

So, I diverge from my parents. Like most adolescents, I do, yes, disagree with my parents. I know, I know, shocker.

I find it to be very scary, really. Suddenly, those who always had the answer don't have it anymore. And, once again, the fact that there is no certainty in life slaps me in the face again and again and again. Sometimes I worry I'll never get used to it, to life. I feel as if no one really does, but I don't think this is the uplifting mantra I want to carry throughout my existence. "No one will ever understand what we are supposed to do, because we aren't supposed to do anything!" Living isn't supposed to be meaningful, not by default. But I do know that the only one who can attribute meaning to life is the individual living it.

The fact that we are all individuals is the reason there will never be true peace. No, we're too different, all of us, in so many ways. This doesn't mean we can't coexist with those differences, but I don't believe there's any plausible scenario (and by that I mean, no thought reforming BS or total human annihilation) where everyone is quiet and happy. This is one beautiful and terrifying thing about humans, we're bound to noise, never to silence.

A community, whether we like it or not, is not homogeneous. It's a bunch of individuals that are scrunched together and not mixing, no matter how hard some try. Every single one of us is just weirdly unique, with our own objectives, likes, dislikes, good and not so good facts and beliefs. We're all just existing, and we all have the right to since we all have value. To exist is, supposedly, very valuable in itself.

I'll get to the value of a human being and MY OWN VALUE as a human being eventually, don't worry. I looove rambling in tiresome texts.

But let's get to the point, at least the initial one: Should all people be allowed to exist? Or, at least, should people be able to experience freedom or is it more secure to tame it in some capacity?

Now, what do I mean about that?

My parents are not anti-racists, they also are quite careless when it comes to cute 2020 surprise, Corona, and my dad is quite unfond of concepts such as feminism. Ok, they do sound like idiots, and that worries me because they're not. And it kills me that I can't love them less for it.

I came to the conclusion that one can't end an idea. Ideas are created and exist, immortal, but not undiscussable. Therefore, racism or sexism or any bad-ism will never end, as long as there's someone out there that truly believes it, or some kind of registration, either being through manuscripts and historical papers of some sort or just through the impact the past makes in the present and future (as a 16-year-old, my conclusions are not mind-blowing, they're mostly stupid and lame and not original).

And those bad-isms exist because of the conflict we, humans, will never get rid of. Bad-isms exist because some believe that others, different from them, shouldn't exist, or are not correct, or are inferior to them for some reason. Basically, you shouldn't exist, because you're not like me. And to disagree with those is plausible, right? Everybody should have the right to exist, even if harmony is unachievable. RIght?

That's when you get movement, revolution, opposition, which is great. Not easy nor pretty, even though some think so (yes, I'm looking at you, miss ˜I-Like-Romanticising-History". Did you enjoy Hamilton?) Those people who were massively mistreated through the course of human existence are screaming, and the world starts to notice their voice. And it's just so fucking amazing, even if things aren't fixed, and most likely never will. Things are slowly getting better. Hurray!

Hurray?

Now, I'm no expert in social sciences. Actually, I'm no expert in anything, I'm sixteen. But it is bizarre to see how people have a hard time looking past their own nose. Me included, obviously, but let's talk about that later. Ok, things got better, but they're not good. It's not very difficult to find some numbers stating how many black people die every day because of cop violence, or how many women are being abused every day in any social sphere they're inserted in, or how many trans people are beaten to death every day because of their identity. And that's me not remembering many, many other examples of how things are not alright. We're not walking on sunshine. However, to those who do not really experience any of it, or care to know about it, this is very foreign. Those are people who look at the past, think "Yikes. Good thing the world is not like that anymore!", and go live their lives carelessly. They don't see anything wrong with the now, now is good, and they don't understand how there are people who are still complaining! Hello-o, you got your rights, shut up already!

That, gentleladies and gentlemen and gentlenon-binary, is my father.

And that same father feels like he has no right to be wrong, or of disagreeing with people. He's terrified of the idea of limitation of freedom, he thinks it will lead to some kind of new dictatorship, and "they" are already working on it - "They" being the masterminds behind a to-be controlled world of some sort. Therefore, according to my dad, we can't get someone arrested for thinking the most absurd or saying the most absurd, because 1. They haven't done anything tangible yet, 2. Even if they're complete and utterly disgusting, they have the right of believing and saying whatever they want.

I feel as if this is the main ideological conflict we have nowadays (I'm not sure, I don't know way too much about the world to have an opinion, but we'll go back to that too). We have people who want to diminish, control, or even exterminate others, but, if they don't effectively do anything, should they be punished? As someone who isn't affected by many of the violence in the world today, I don't know.

Because I know there's nothing I can do to stop it from happening, bad-isms are always going to be there, but we need to keep trying to make them almost nonexistent. But then, you can't convince people, or explain to them, the damages of something through violence. This type of change can't happen through force, because it won't clarify anything to those who don't know or don't care. This doesn't mean passivity, but it means effective dialogue and loads of patience and, honestly, that's really hard too. I don't think there will be many people willing to persist in a (most likely) one-sided conversation with their abusers. And that's to say that all people can be convinced, which is not the case at all! People are stubborn, especially when they're talking about something they feel deeply about, such as their moral compass or their beliefs.

I'm afraid I advocate for different types of resistance or social change because I don't know what it feels like. Because I don't understand suffering. I understand anger, sadness, and guilt, but not suffering. Not truly. And then, I must not forget that I have been raised by my parents, who believe that yes, anyone can be proven wrong, and yes, you should be able to think freely, no matter how disgusting what you think about is. And I thought I agreed with that too until the day I realized I'm terrified of judgment, and again the day of the racist episode in my school happened.

Some guys had a Whatsapp group. I have no idea what they talked about usually, but I, and the entirety of my city (and the internet, obviously), got to see bits of a terrifying conversation. They were talking about what girls they would rape, but then they got to one in particular. Since she was black, she was worth less than a piece of gum, raping her was disgusting, she would smell awful and they would prefer to sell her on the internet. You know, like a slave. LOL.

People can be inhuman sometimes. Later, I would discuss this episode with my parents. It was sort of inevitable since it was all over the news, but it made me feel awful. Because "Hell, they're kids! Stupid kids, but they didn't do anything. Everything could be racism then, you know? Who is to judge what is and isn't? What will they do next, invade our privacy? Check if we are or aren't conforming to what 'they' believe is right? People say stupid shit all the time! What will 'they' do, arrest everyone?" Holy shit, the way they diminished the situation, the way they made it about something else! I know they don't agree with the kids, but what the fuck, no empathy at all? "The girl must hear that every day, she's fine" FUCK, WHAT ABOUT THAT IS FINE??

And then, well, I realized I'm not my parents. And then I realized I still love them. A lot. And that scares me. I hope I'm not a victim of unconditional love, it makes you accept the unacceptable. But I love my parents, and it will take more than them ignoring human suffering for me to stop. Like, my dad voted (and seems to be in love with) for a guy who thinks "people like me" should be beaten as a child to "take the gay out of them", and I still love him. It is fucking terrifying.

Then, I get to one of my greatest self-doubts. Am I critical of violent methods of action because, deep down, I believe there should be no action? People should just exist? What is the best next step to coexisting? Should voices be shut by the voiceless? Are voiceless shutting anyone up? Should people care or not? If we don't care, there's eternal apathy, but if we do, there's just a great war of interest. What is right? Who determines what is right? Can people be wrong if being wrong means suffering? Am I scared of knowing things because then I'll have to acknowledge I'm really, truly horrible and have been doing everything wrong? Am I that scared of disagreeing with what I believe is true? Of what people I respect and want to like me believe is true?

Unanswered. I think. I don't know.

Hi, I'm someone highly dependent on others' opinions about me. Not so long ago, I noticed that I lie. All the time. To the point I don't remember things I said, or can't keep up with them. 'Cause I need to be liked. I need so much to be liked I don't think I have opinions I haven't borrowed from other people. I can't act by myself, I feel the need of having someone tell me what to do, what is right, what is wrong, how to live. Shit, I ruined my friendship with the only people I talked to in 5 years because I projected all my insecurities and a sense of right and wrong on them and then blamed them for it. And now, while I'm trying to stop some of my bad habits, such as lying, I am so lost. So, so lost. And I don't know if that's because I lost my sense of identity once those who told me how to be are not there anymore or because this is me. Actually me. And I hate it. I feel as if anyone I knew before now was just meeting a facade.

I don't like what I used to like anymore. I don't read, don't draw, don't write, only sing when at the verge of tears, almost never listen to music, don't dance alone at 3 A.M., don't make pancakes, can't stand my birds, haven't changed clothes in almost a month, don't seem to find the most hilarious shit funny. I'm giving cooking a try, it's been very fun when I'm alone. That's another thing: being alone sucks, but it's how I want to be 99% of the time.

I always struggled with feeling good about myself. Because the bits that I knew were entirely me never seemed appealing to most people. Sometimes I can't stand myself so much that I make myself stop thinking, fearing that someone might think my thoughts are uninteresting. I never felt so uninteresting in my life. My biggest thrill recently has been planning how to organize the notes in my binder, and I'm not even good at it. If I could, I would shut up forever, because I never know what to say. I'm terrible at it, convos. Recently, I had this breakdown because I was searching "How to talk to people" on Youtube. I never felt so pathetic, so useless… So I cried for about 3 hours.

Actually, I always feel as if I am wrong. Nothing I do is ever right. It's very fun, this constant feeling that everybody hates you and is just keeping up with your bullshit since they're too polite to just say "You suck". It's so weird that I'm constantly telling myself that if people knew the truth about me, I would be completely alone. So I'm constantly telling myself how I should just cut everyone out of my life so they don't have to waste so much on me. And it's all in my head but if I don't talk to anyone, it'll come true, but if I do talk, people will just realize how much of a piece of shit and nothing I am.

My therapist once told me that I'm not obliged to be entertaining all the time and that I can be boring, but the truth is that I don't know anything. I am very much filled with just air and, if I don't make things up, people will be just stuck there with absolutely nothing. And then leave. And it will be all my fault, as it usually is.

I think the most pathetic recent thing I've done is to become possessive of this pillow I have. I use it to feel less lonely at night, sometimes I like to pretend it is my boyfriend and just hold it real tight (not really because then "I would be crushing him"). God, I've cried so much against this pillow and slept with it so much to the point I can't sleep unless I'm hugging something. And, sometimes, when my sister lies in the bed with me, I don't let her lie on top of it. Do you know when children have those clothes they get really attached to? I feel like that. Memory Boy, if you're reading this, I'm sorry if it's creepy. But it is the truth.

By the way, I'm so sorry if I talk too much and don't give you the chance to talk. Or if I'm never talking to you. This seems contradictory, but I miss you so fucking much and I really love you. I'm really sorry I'm not present, I'm just not myself enough or interesting and I really don't want you to see me like this.

My family is not really respecting the quarantine, and they convinced me to go out with them a few times. And I hate it. So much. I become paranoid that I'm part of the problem and I'll kill someone or that people will know that I'm out and scream with me and hate me and judge me and hate me. And my fucking dad thinks everything is fine and dandy and if he goes out without a mask he won't infect anyone and if he gets infected and dies it's fine because life goes on without him and this whole thing will be over in no time he can show you the fucking numbers because only 100 people are dying per day in this state, isn't this great? People are still dying, my dad doesn't seem to care because "you do you. If there are some idiots who don't care, let them die. Why does it concern you?" as if this isn't a situation where your actions affect the people around you and as if I shouldn't care if people die and as if I shouldn't care if my own fucking father dies because "they chose to do so to themselves". Fucking amazing. Thanks, Dad, I'm so less worried now.

And, when I refuse to go out, my family blames me for being no fun at all or "having a phobia of the outside.", since I have absolutely no reason not to go, everything is fine and dandy now, shopping malls are reopening and there's no way a second wave could happen, no sir. And, when I do go out, I try to wear things I would never wear and avoid phones so there's no proof I was outside. And, when I come back, I start searching for pictures of me between those pictures taken of people outside and feeling guilty, so guilty for going because if I didn't want to go, I could have not gone. And then I'll feel terrible and hate myself and cry and want to hurt myself, even though I won't. And just feel bad for it forever because it's my fault that I went outside and I could have just stayed, why didn't I stay, now everyone will hate me so much and I'll have contributed to the death statistics in my country and people will call me out for it and hate and never talk to me again and I'll have killed someone and made their family miserable and it will be all my fucking fault as usual because I could keep my ass home.

And oh my god, I'm so great. I'm so completely fine, I have nothing to worry about and I keep creating problems when I could just shut up. Sometimes I feel as if my feelings are wrong and far too much so I try to pretend they don't exist because, well, they shouldn't. I have no real reason to feel as sad or angry as I do all the time, especially when there are people with real problems out there and I'm just shoving the fucking great life I have against their faces and pretending as if it is the worst. When, actually, I make up all my problems and I should just stop whining and just be fucking happy already because I have no reason to feel sad and angry. I just wrote down some things that are on my mind but they're so fine and not a problem at all. I just really hate being too much.

Honestly, I usually re-read my letters to correct it and make it coherent, but I won't this time. I seriously blacked out while writing this and just am not willing to revisit right now. I've been writing this for three days now and, most of it I did in a row. Spent two days in the beginning and then an entire day just vomiting words nonstop. I'm sorry if it was long.

[knightofbalance-13]

Welcome to Reality

http://dudeblade.tumblr.com/post/165307951521/is-remnant-stupid

How many times are we gonna go over this?

First, let’s do the big stuff.

Almost all of which will bite you in the ass.

All abusers should not exist. They shouldn’t exist in the real world, but the reason they shouldn’t exist in Remnant is because abuse breeds resentment, fear, sadness, and hurt. Emotions that we are told would attract grimm. Why would an abuser do this if the risk of a giant murder bird coming in to eat you is likely?

Because Grimm would hunt down the people being abused and the abusers are psychopaths so they aren’t a target. Likewise, why should they abuse someone when they could get killed in their sleep? because human beings and our reality isn’t rational so why should Remannt be any more rational than our world?

Racism shouldn’t exist. Much like abusers, it really shouldn’t exist in the real world, but in this world, racism would breed resentment, fear, sadness, envy, and hatred. Why do that if doing that to an entire minority race would cause a giant armored gorilla to come by and rip you in half Mortal Kombat style?

Why would you devalue someone because of their skin color in real life? Because you’re irrational and things like that don’t apply to irrational people.

Shrinks should be more valued than Hunters. I mean, it would be better to PREVENT the grimm from coming in the first place with some good psychology rather than having a bunch of glorified exterminators kill them off? What, do these guys not understand what attracts grimm? I’d rather have my emotional issues be solved rather than have it build up so that a two-headed snake can try to digest me.

Because Grimm are only ATTRACTED to negative emotions and they’ll still attack people. Not to mention Shrinks don’t always work and people won’t always admit to having problems or needing a shrink despite the emotional problems this will cause because PEOPLE ARE NOT RATIONAL, especially the people you are explaining.

Now for the little stuff.

Which will bit you the ass even moreso. Yes, it is possible.

Cardin would have been morally right if he had just outed Jaune from the beginning. Jaune’s lack of experience and competence is not only putting himself in danger, but his whole team as well. I don’t give a shit if he’s a “Good Tactician™” or whatever, but Jaune’s lack of combat abilities would get him and his team killed sooner rather than later. Instead, Cardin bullies Jaune, which leads me back to my rant on how this would breed resentment yadda yadda yadda You know the drill by now

Of course: Everyone not Jaune right, Jaune wrong. Excluding the fact that the same can be said for Ruby and her reckelssness and her immaturity and her lack of experience and amplified by her sister Yang being around as well as her uncle and especially her father constantly worrying about them being killed like SUmmer but I don’t hear you saying that at any point.

Jaune is in the wrong for melting that stuff down to upgrade himself. Instead of going to my usual tirade though, I have a screenshot of how I perceived Jaune’s actions that’s from another post of mine here.

I also have a post I cvan reference (http://dudeblade.tumblr.com/post/163800343229/i-hate-jaune) proving any opinion you have on Jaune is disbarred due to bias against him personally and any opinion on any male characters disbarred due to sexism.

Follow-up Question: Why does nobody think about Pyrrha’s parents?

Because if they are so stupid to have lost all of their daughter’s stuff while she was gone, so selfish they sold it or so blind they didn’t think to keep anything then they don’t really deserve it.

Qrow calls his own niece either “a Liar, Crazy, or both” when she was tricked into kneecapping Mercury. Real Uncle of the year material there, Qrow. What’s next? - You use your other niece as bait for a deadly agent of Salem - Oh wait that actually happened. Why are the adults all assholes in this world?

A. He was stating teh proof that was there and there is no otehr rational explanation.

AndB. He clearly didn’t know about Tyrian. Although has a dick so it should be obvious you would try to portray as bad.

Ironwood doesn’t take Weiss into child custody. He’s seen what pressure Weiss is under in her own home. Winter has surely told him about what Jacques does to them to keep the family under his thumb. Why doesn’t he take action? - He has two seats on the council, it shouldn’t take that long, and considering that child abuse might breed negative emotions… Well, you saw my comments about abuse earlier in this post.

Except Jacques is the richest man in Mistral and there is nothing saying that Ironwood has authority over child services and if he failed, Weiss’ abuse gets worse. Also, how does Ironwood know? He has never been in the same room as when Weiss and Jacques talk, Jacques is subtly abusive in public and people don’t exactly talk upfront about this.

Ozluminati sends the drunkard whose semblance is BAD LUCK to guard a person of importance. Was Ozpin TRYING to get Amber killed? I mean, you can’t have a person with super speed to guard Amber so that if she gets in trouble, the guard can rush in to save them? You can’t have a sniper keep watch from a distance, and pick off opponents who would kill her? Why the drunkard whose semblance is the causation of bad luck to those around him?

A. Because Glynda is teaching in one of the most, Ozpin is running a school, Ironwood is running a school AND a miltary and Leo is runn9ing a school. Qrow literally has the most time.

B. Who is this person with super speed? Can they be trusted? Are they stronger than Qrow? Can a sniper be trusted and would a sniper be effective due to Aura? See, you don’t answer YOUR questions.

C. Wow Dudeblade, I thought you were critical bt you’ll take Qrow haing bad luck at face value when any evidence for this is cirtcumstantial at best? ALmost like you only do it to bitch about it.

Winter should have taken Weiss away from Jacques. Winter knows full well what her father can and will do to Weiss. Why doesn’t SHE take Weiss away from Jacques? She’s got the power to do so! She’s a legal adult, she has a high rank in the military, she can afford Weiss’ living expenses! Why can’t Winter help out her sister? Is she selfish or something?

Because Jacques is richer, more powerful in a legal systemn, could manipulate Winter since he also abused her and Winter has nio proof. You know, like how child abuse works in real life.

Why didn’t Ilia just pass “Color Change” as her semblance? - It probably wouldn’t have been that hard,and she could have offhandedly mentioned that maybe, a faunus once saved her life once when she was younger so that she could have an excuse to sympathize with them? - This makes no sense at all as to why she couldn’t have kept her cover better. For a chameleon, she does an awful job of blending in.

No, you just don’t pay attention: You cannot accidentally activate a Semblence and Illa’s color change is inherent in CHAMELOENS as a sign of EMOTION: This shit isn’t a Quirk, stop acting like it is.

Why do Raven and Qrow play the Pronoun Game? All Qrow had to say was either “Yes” or “No” to Raven’s question,and she would have answered his. But no. Mr. “I’m using my niece as bait” has to try to take the moral high ground over Raven and lecture her about ‘family’ and crap. While, y’know, USING RUBY AS BAIT!

A. You’re lying and trying to paint a MASS MURDERER as a good guy.

B. Raven was also dancing around teh subject and used her own daughter as leverage and unlike you, I can provide proof in the fact that Raven never visits Yang, outright spat in her face and only pressed Yang when she could be used to control Qrow.

C. So...why aren’t you criticizing Raven for mass murdering people and abusing her daughter? Let me guess: She has a vagina and thus your sexist ass ignores her.

RNJR doesn’t take any kind of transport to Mistral because of reasons. Despite the fact that they’re trying to get to Mistral ASAP to warn them. And since Ren and Nora decided to NOT say something like “Hey, this place is dangerous, we should find a different way around or get through as quick as we can.” Then they waste a bunch of minutes against the Nucklevee. With his stupid noodle arms, and ability to make buildings and other structures relocate themselves. Maybe that’s how it killed other, more experienced hunters. Whenever one of them found cover, Nucky would use it’s structure relocation powers and make that cover disappear.

A. https://youtu.be/IZKpkzPIRlw?t=16m42s

B. Trama nor is it shown that the Nucklevee was near by until it was heading towards Kuroyuri and they were informed about the Nucklevee.

C. ANy proof it can do that? Becuase not only is this a baseless accusation, this has no point in what you are saying. Of course, peopel could give you teh benefit of the doubt...but between your apparent sexism and you’re lying: It’s safe to assume you said this because the writer’s are male and you wanna put in Ad Hominin.

Salem only sends one goon after the dreaded “Silver-Eyed Warrior.” She has a guy who gave her a tough time when all he was doing was stalling, a person who can alter one’s perception, a bunch of other fighters, and an army of grimm at her beck and call. Goddamn villain stupidity.

A. Gee, not like they killed those so called “dreaded” warriors before...

https://youtu.be/IZKpkzPIRlw?t=3m45s

Huh, almost like you ignore facts to suit your narrative.

B.  What other fighters? Mercury and Emerald would be fucked against RNJR due to their new abilities, everyone else is doing their own work: What “fighters” are you referring to? And the Grimm? Why not wlak up to Ozpin and his allies and say “HERE”S THE TRHEAT I’M TRYING TO ELIMINATE”?

C. Yeah...this is just like getting a hold of the world’s most powerful warrior, having her in the palm of your hand and the  not doing anything Oh wait, Korra did that. ALl the fucking time. And I do believe that in Storm Hawks, Piper has let t5he main villianess go due to their bonds before.Yeah, almost like youy are setting an unaturally high bar for RWBY.

Darwin. Award.

Every single person in Remnant is gunning for a Darwin Award. Like, only our ‘main’ protagonists are somewhat smart, and even then, Blake thinks that just putting on a disguise is going to distract from the fact that she shares the same last name as a previous WF leader.

Everyone on Remnant is an idiot.

Just like our world where the examples you pull exist here. And whil;e you can point at Grimm, I can point at Dust and Aura and the three would counterbalance each other. So Remnant is no more unrealistic than our world with the same flaws and the same actions. ALmost like humans can’t remove themselves from their own experiences and being is the ENTIRE POINT OF A SHOW.

God, no wonder you suck at writing: You’re too obsessed with faulty logic.

Either that, or the writers are making this up as they go along. But that would be insulting the original writers. And we can’t be critical of people who are ‘trying.’

Yeah, lying and being sexist and being bias and setting unnatural high standards and ignoring facts is not being critical. My proof: This entire post.

[putris-et-mulier]

Deadpool & Rogue are going to be the next "it" couple

Since the beginning of Uncanny Avengers people speculated that Deadpool and Rogue were going to fall in love and so far they've just become good friends but now is a pretty good opportunity to turn that into a romantic relationship.

I've never made it is secret that I love Rogue and that when she isn't with Gambit my heart is broken. Unless it's bad writing I'm okay with seeing them get together with other people because they have an open relationship and if anyone could do polyamory, they could.

So Uncanny Avengers begins and I'm very suspicious of Rogue being on a team with Deadpool because they didn't seem like a good combination. They can certainly relate, they have a lot of common trauma and similar issues but Deadpool relies on humor to deal with it and Rogue doesn't laugh much, she shoves all her pain down and uses it to fuel her determination while fighting on the front lines and she's always fighting on the front lines.

Another thing I wondered about was Rogue being the team leader. Rogue isn't exactly a leader. Storm is a natural leader, she can handle the burden of being a huge population's only hope, she can command an audience of militants, and there's just something about her that demands respect and loyalty. 

Rogue just really likes getting in and getting the job done, politics is not her thing.

And she works really well when someone like Storm is calling the shots

Awesome.

and Rogue hates the Avengers. She likes individuals that are and have been members but she was one of the very first mutants to ever fight them and she has lived through every one of their attempts to aid the genocide of mutants

but Deadpool is super excited!

Rogue and Deadpool have never really met but they have run into each other in passing so Rogue does what everyone does and judges Deadpool on his reputation. Meanwhile, she secretly has been poisoned with the Terrigen Mist so her body is slowly becoming deformed while she slowly dies from a terminal disease

That's something Deadpool has lots of experience with so you know from the get go that they are going to at least commiserate

Like I said, Rogue works well as a tank or free agent but she has hard time leading. On their very first mission everyone but Deadpool ignored her orders and went off to do their own thing.

Deadpool seems to be one of the few people who understood and cared that Rogue being leader or even on the Avengers at all came with a lot of subsequent dangers because of racism

Deadpool also isn't a natural leader, like Rogue he works best when you just tell him where to go and let him do his thing. But he's loyal and even though it seems impossible he is more upset about casual racism toward her than she is.

Cable shows up with bad news from the future as he is want to do and he is a leader, a leader both Rogue and Deadpool have worked with. He's also someone that Deadpool loves and respects immensely. Rogue isn't opposed to Cable taking over but before she entrusts him with her teammates lives she wants to know what his objectives are and surprisingly Deadpool agrees with her

It's no surprise that the team is a mess. Captain America stuck a bunch of people of different races together, some pulled from segregated communities, to sell diversity to the media but as always he doesn't exactly understand racism and the team fractures. Cable, Rogue, and Deadpool stick together and actually work behind Captain America's back (which is huge for Deadpool) to find a cure for this poison that was exterminating mutants and stop the Red Skull who had taken the deceased Charles Xavier's brain and was using it to take over the world.

Rogue and Deadpool are actually really good teammates, Deadpool even does things to remind Rogue of home and her family (the X-Men)

(that's a signature X-Men finishing move Colossus and Wolverine use when they are tag teaming)

they even make their own signature move

and they are badass

Rogue puts her faith in Deadpool that he will have her back but still remained wary because he was still Deadpool and she still has all of her baggage and trust issues but suddenly the whole world changes.

Everyone is human, can't remember ever being superheroes, and the world runs like a 50s sitcom. Everyone but Rogue is happy. She's never lived in a world where at least one person wasn't constantly trying to abuse or kill her so even though she doesn't know what's going on she's suspicious of peace

No one knows Rogue's real name so if someone isn't calling her Rogue they usually just call her a few names that sound like it fits and for some reason Rogue has always been fine with that but in this instance it's supposed to be weird

All the X-Men and the kids at their schools have extensive training in blocking psychic/telekinetic/mind control etc. so they can keep their privacy in all of the mutant compounds despite the fact that the biggest gossips are always psychic. Also so shit like this doesn't happen. Rogue arguably has the most training in this for someone who has no psychic powers and through her safeguards she makes herself remember everything and now she has to go find everyone else that is supposed to be on her/their team.

Luckily one of them, Johnny Storm, lives next door so she reminds him that he can control fire by lighting him on fire. Also, he thought his name was Chet

Rogue doesn't give a fuck

Everyone is rounded up pretty quickly and Rogue wakes people up her own way

(Ms. Marvel isn't on her team but she was bicycling by so Rogue snagged her)

No one knows where Deadpool is so Cable, and this is hilarious, has been on so many adventures with him he knows he just has to present an opportunity and Deadpool will appear so he calls 911 and Deadpool immediately shows up in a fire truck 

but he doesn't look like himself

Every time Deadpool gets changed into his ideal body he looks like a 70s porn*

So Wade Wilson lives in this pseudo-universe as a "handsome" able-bodied man who is everyone's hero, a firefighter. It's kind of extremely sad and Rogue takes special care with him, much to Johnny's chagrin

I think it's notable that Rogue just has to tell him something is going on and he immediately remembers who he is. Besides he and Rogue, it seems hard for everyone to accept that this picturesque life isn't real. The both of them grew up experiencing the worst of humanity (we don't really know about Rogue's childhood but she was raised into early adulthood by her mother's, so it still couldn't have been super easy considering they were all mutants and also a queer family in the 70s) they are both also very isolated in their own way, a peaceful happy world is so beyond their comprehension so it's artifice would be easy to deconstruct.

You don't see how Cable comes to but I'm pretty sure he immediately was like "not this shit again"

The current mutant genocide is getting worse and Captain America tries to use how much Deadpool admires and loves him to be his informant but Deadpool remained loyal to Rogue and Cable

Captain America wants them to trust the government to save their race to which they said "LOL" and he and Cable fight but Rogue gets fed up

Deadpool tries to explain to Captain America that he had no choice but to side with the X-Men because his daughter is a mutant and is going to die 

Deadpool takes the dressing down but Rogue defense him

They are both fired but they still stick together to discuss what they should do and Rogue suggest… Well, she suggests that they go rogue

Rogue isn't a great leader but she's really great at heading side missions or defecting to get the job done with the more hands-on approach. This is up Deadpool's alley so they take off for adventure.

And one protecting the other has become my fetish

We just recently got the conclusion of Rogue, Deadpool, and Cable's team up objective. The Red Skull is using Charles Xavier's brain to infiltrate everyone's brain 

and eventually he finds a way to break into to Rogue's mind while she sleeps

and they made a clubhouse with stuff they took from the Avengers

So finally the Red Skull has to be confronted for the final battle and it relies on Rogue and Deadpool. No one has the ability to infiltrate Deadpool's mind because his psyche is so shattered so he's immune and Rogue has training to protect her mind and is one of the few people who can actually take him down so they get to it and call in any support they can get

Cute highlights:

When the tide turns in the battle Rogue is overtaken by the powers of Charles Xavier's brain and the Red Skull has complete control over her, so he uses her as his personal weapon

God, I love her

Thankfully Deadpool is used to things failing so he had a plan. Rogue kills Deadpool as much as she can, the Red Skull gets overconfident and let's guard down, then Deadpool sticks an old helmet of Magneto's on Rogue's head. Seems like that should have been the first thing they should have done but Deadpool getting himself kill over and over got her close enough and in a position where she could take the Red Skull down while he was unaware

But Deadpool had intended to be the one to kill the Red Skull once Rogue incapacitated him but she had hurt him too much

Deadpool is worried that Rogue is going to take it upon herself to kill the red skull as much as she doesn't want any more blood on her hands but the guy has Charles Xavier's brain inside of him so she goes home and the X-Men play operation

That's it! That's their whole story so far. So, should they get together?

I'm biased but don't they make the best brOTP? I love their friendship so so much and it's great to see it slowly develop instead of the writers just miraculously having them get along because it's easier for the story.

Do I think they should date?

Hell yes I do.

It is nice to have genuine friendships in comic books, especially between people of different genders, but this is just too good. Because their friendship was such a slow build the sexual tension feels really organic and that's almost impossible to get in a medium like this. They haven't been friends forever and just because it was convenient they didn't suddenly hook up to further the plot. They are significant characters with significant back stories and the relationship doesn't contradict either of those things. They haven't been almost getting together and getting torn apart like you would have to sit through if story of the relationship was just about their romance.

I'm fine if they remain friends but (unpopular opinion) it would be an amazing relationship with a lot of potential between them; a lot of good and a lot of bad potential which makes the best stories. Unfortunately I don't think they will ever get this opportunity for a "slow build" in other books so how long it will remain interesting would depend on the writer. 

And the time schedule.

And whether you guys would buy those issues or not.

Let me know what you think. If you totally hate them together that's cool, I want to hear your perspective. What would you like to happen between them?

[brinker-hadley]

Purge Chapter 4

“Damn. There’s some prime beefcake in this lineup.” Whatever Vegeta thought would be her first words to them, those were not it.

“If I had known Earth men were so fine, I probably wouldn’t have turned your planet into space dandruff.”

The earthlings cringed at the flippant reference to the extermination of their race but could make no retort.

“I’m Kali but you can call me Your Majesty, Your Eminence, Your Most Beautiful Radiant One… or just Lady Kali if your boring.”

She stepped down off of the dais, reaching a hand out to one of the burley guards who flanked her, carefully placing one heeled foot on each step.

“Just in case General Jaeko hasn’t filled you in yet, my brother and I are the big bosses around here,” she smiled, weaving her way through the line of prostrated warriors. “Mal couldn’t be here to meet you in person. He’s busy tinkering with his gadgets. To be honest, he’s kind of an agoraphobic weirdo so you won’t see much of him.”

“Stand,” she ordered absently and they obeyed without hesitation. She looked them over, taking her time to eye each one from head to toe.

“I have to admit, I was kind of peeved when I found out our dragon ball hunt had been canceled, but at least the trip wasn’t a total loss. I heard a few of you are like, wicked strong. At least compared to the rest of the pissants that work for me,” she looked scathingly to the guards that flanked her throne. “You’re going to make exceptional additions to my purge squads.”

“No.”

Every eye in the room turned to the source of the trembling voice.

“What was that?” Kali asked, as if to verify that, yes, she had in fact just been contradicted.

“No,” Gohan repeated, his voice cracking. “We won’t, we can’t kill people. I know we don’t have a choice about being soldiers. We’ll work for you. But… we can’t purge planets.”

“What’s your name kid?” Kali sauntered up to him and Gohan kept his eyes on the floor.

“Gohan.”

“Gohan, do you know how long it’s been since someone said no to me?” she asked, a small smile lighting up her face. “Honestly, it’s kind of refreshing.” Gohan straightened his posture but still avoided eye contact.

“I’m impressed. Standing up to someone like me takes guts,” she said earnestly, placing a red tipped finger under the boy’s chin and raising his face to hers. “It kind of makes me want to spill them on the floor and play with them.”

Gohan audibly gulped and squeezed his eyes shut, preparing for her to make good on her gruesome proposal. Instead, she dropped his chin and turned her eyes to the back of the room.

“Jaeko, is it really too much to expect for you to break in new soldiers before you send them to me? Honestly, what other parts of your job should I be doing for you?”

The color immediately drained from Jaeko’s face leaving him a pastel shade of pink. “Your Majesty, I beg your forgiveness. These soldiers have been particularly difficult.”

“Well duh. Your face looks like you shoved it in a meat grinder.” The empress seemed amused by the observation. “You’ve always been such a softy with new recruits. If they’re too much for you to handle, maybe I should thin the heard a little bit.”

“That won’t be necessary, Lady Kali. I assure you, I will have them ready for duty in a few week’s time. They will be valuable additions to the Empire.”

“What about these two?” Kali pointed to Bulma and Chiaotzu. Both Tien and Vegeta visibly tensed and held their breath as the empress’ attention turned to the weakest members of their group.

“You, little guy. Aren’t you just the cutest… creepiest little thing I ever did see,” she ambled up to Chiaotzu and crouched down to his level. “Why shouldn’t I kill you. Sell me on it.”

“I… I… I’m a student of the Crane School of martial arts. I can fight.”

Kali snorted and patted his head condescendingly. “You might have been able to hold your own, out in butt fuck nowhere, but here,” she motioned to the empty space around her, “you wouldn’t last five minutes. So, try again. Why do you deserve to live?”

“I have psychic abilities. I can move things with my mind. I can influence people. I can… hurt them if I have to.”

“Interesting,” she raised herself back up to standing and turned to Jaeko. “I might be able to use him as an interrogator. Maybe we can pair him with that Guaiwu you picked up last month. What’s his name again?”

“Zrak, My Lady.”

“That’s right. Zrak. You met him, right?” she asked the group collectively. “He doesn’t talk much but he’s a hoot at parties. That fingers in the brain thing cracks me up every time.” When she was done chuckling to herself, Kali’s attention turned to Bulma.

“How about you, princess?” she said, moving to stand toe to toe with the other woman.

Bulma responded confidently while still keeping her head bowed. “I’m a scientist. I am… was well known on Earth. I graduated with duel doctorates before my sixteenth birthday. My family owned a multi-billion zeni corporation that manufactured capsules. They can store massive amounts of cargo in containers that fit into the palm of your hand.”

“Boring. Mal had that figured out years ago.”

Shit. She’d thought capsule science would be her trump card. Molecular compression was ground breaking on Earth but it made sense it would be old hat to a civilization so technically advanced.

“I know machines. I can build anything, fix anything...”

“I have enough mechanics,” Kali said, examining her nails, obviously unimpressed with Bulma’s skill set.

“… I’m good with computers,” she was grasping at straws here. She’d never had to prove to anyone that she was smart. She was used to people falling over themselves to tell her how intelligent and talented she was.

She glanced over at Vegeta and saw that his face was beet red and the vein on his forehead was pulsing.

“Anything else?”

Bulma started to sweat. What else did she have? She was a genius, that was her shtick. Except now she was starting to think maybe she wasn’t as brilliant as she’d always thought. She had been a big fish in a small pond but she knew nothing of the awe inspiring alien technology she’d seen in the last few hours. What could she possibly offer to keep herself alive? But she had to live. She couldn’t die now, not when Trunks was still counting on her.

“My son,” she murmured, finally raising her head to the god like woman before her. “He was taken from me on the ship. He needs me. Please, I’ll do anything you ask. Just…”

“Shh shh shh. Don’t worry momma bear. The cubs are safe… for now,” Kali said soothingly as she stroked Bulma’s hair. “We have big plans for them.”

Bulma didn’t know whether to let out a sigh of relief at Kali’s assurance or double over and vomit at her feet.

“But that still doesn’t answer the question of what I should do with you,” Kali set one manicured hand gently on Bulma’s clavicle. She applied no pressure but all she had to do was tighten her fingers and Bulma’s neck would snap like dry kindling.

“If I may, Your Majesty,” Jaeko interjected. “This one was able to bring down the barrier shield to the brig’s holding cell from the inside. If she is capable of that, I have no doubt the science division could find a use for her.”

Kali seemed to mull the idea over for a moment before releasing Bulma. “Sure. Fine. Whatever. Just make sure she doesn’t get into any more shenanigans.”

“Of course, Lady Kali. I have no doubt she will behave herself going forward.” Jaeko narrowed his eyes at Bulma in silent warning of what was in store for her should she make him into a liar.

Vegeta let himself breath once it was clear Bulma’s head was off the chopping block. He wasn’t sure what he would have done if the woman had made a move against his mate but he was positive it would have ended in his own very gruesome death. His heartbeat had almost settled back into his chest after pounding out of control in his throat when the beast’s attention turned to him.

“So this is the Prince of all Saiyans, huh. Not quite as imposing as I thought you’d be.”

He knew what she was doing. She was testing him. Pressing to see how far she would have to go to get a reaction out of him, an excuse to divvy out ‘punishment’. He’d played this game with Frieza and, after twenty-five years serving that putrid purple fuck, he was a master. If she thought petty cracks about his height were enough to get a rise out of him, she would be disappointed.

“How many Saiyans is all exactly?” she taunted. “Not counting halvsies.”

“One.” He looked her square in her steely grey eyes, refusing to be the first to blink.

“What a shame. Frieza always was such a hot head. Wiping out the Saiyans was not one of his better decisions.”

“And just what is your relationship to Frieza?”

Kali’s eyes widened and her neck tilted in such a way that Vegeta could see the gears turning in her head. She was deciding whether she should allow him to live after daring to ask such a question.

“… Your Majesty,” Vegeta tossed out, hoping the belated addition of her royal title would be enough to sooth her rage. It usually worked on himself and, fortunately, it seemed to take the homicidal edge off of her as well.

“Frieza took Mal and I in as children after our planet was destroyed by an asteroid,” she said, her tone indicating that she knew the accidental destruction of her planet was anything but accidental. “What a coincidence that planets with populations strong enough to challenge the Ice-jin always seemed to be in the direct path of space debris.”

She considered the Saiyan for a moment and, for a fraction of a second, her expression softened. “You didn’t think you were the only one, did you?”

Actually, he did. It never occurred to Vegeta there were other races Frieza feared and despised as thoroughly as the Saiyans. He’d never considered the possibility that anyone other than a Saiyan was capable of destroying his former master. But the galaxy was wide and Frieza’s empire had been even wider. It should come as no surprise to him, especially after everything he’d experienced on Earth. No matter how strong he believed himself to be, there was always someone or something out there willing and able to knock him back into the dirt.

“You know, you weren’t the Saiyan I was originally after but you’ll due in a pinch. I wanted the other one. The one that thought he could kill Frieza and not even leave a grave behind for me to dance on.”

Vegeta wasn’t sure if she was referring to Kakarot or Future Trunks but it didn’t matter either way. He knew what she meant. Maybe, in another life, he could have felt something resembling empathy for this woman. They had both been raised by the same sadistic monster. They were both remnants of a dead race. But most importantly, they had both been denied their right to vengeance. He wondered if it still ate away at her like it did him. Did she still lie awake at night, imagining what it would have been like to tear that ugly lizard limb from limb and bathe herself in his blood? Maybe not. She had managed to consolidate power and place herself on the empty Ice throne while he had been too busy throwing himself into a bottomless pit of rage and chasing Kakarot’s coattails. He’d often thought about what his life could have been had he not returned to Earth and, instead, made himself emperor of the known universe. Looking at the twisted vision before him, he was glad it hadn’t been him.

Kali seamlessly drew herself out of the brief moment of introspection and commiseration with the Saiyan and addressed the general standing sentry behind them.

“I’m done with them. Get them out of my sight.”

“Of course, My Lady,” Jaeko swiftly herded them out of the throne room and visibly relaxed once the doors were closed behind him, relieved as the rest of them to have survived the empress.

“I’ll lead you to your barracks,” he said as he swept past them. There was no need. They all knew the way but no one told him so. Jaeko was nearly sprinting down the halls, attempting to put as much space between himself and the throne room as possible. The rest of them kept a healthy distance behind him, except for Vegeta, who took the opportunity to exchange a few words with his commanding officer.

“Why did you do it?” Vegeta demanded, keeping step just behind him.

“Do what?”

“Speak up for Bulma. You saved her. I want to know why.”

“I didn’t save anyone. It’s my duty to ensure the Empire’s resources are used efficiently. It would have been a waste of her abilities if…”

“You’re full of shit. I want to know what your angle is. What do you want?”

Jaeko stopped his march down the hallway and took Vegeta by the scruff of his training suit.

“What I want is for you and your merry band of fuckups to keep your mouths shut, do your work, and not get me killed. I shouldn’t have to tell you how things work around here. You’re under my command which means I am responsible for your actions. When you do something as moronic and suicidal as bring up Kali’s childhood, your putting my ass in the sling right next to yours. I have no idea how you survived the last five minutes. If anyone else had asked about Frieza in her presence, their innards would be decorating the throne room walls right now.”

Vegeta removed himself from the man’s grasp and snarled, “You didn’t answer my question.”

“That’s as good of an answer as you’re going to get,” Jaeko huffed past him down the barracks hall and lingered outside the door to their new ‘home’.

Their dormitory was spartan, to say the least. Eight bunk style beds were built into the walls, four on the right, four on the left. There was a door leading to a communal bathroom and storage consisted of one small closet. It was a tight squeeze but they all managed to shuffle in. Jaeko waited for them to settle before he addressed them.

“You’re to report to Training Facility B at 0700. That’s in five hours. Get some sleep… or don’t. I don’t give a shit.” The man looked drained as he hauled himself from the doorway, sliding it closed behind him.

They stood there, crammed together, shifting clumsily. “… Now what?” Yamcha pondered, finally breaking the awkward silence.

They were hesitant to speak. During their captivity, they had become accustomed to analyzing every morsel of information that escaped their lips and how it could be used against them by their abductors.

“Search the place,” Bulma ordered. “There could be surveillance bugs anywhere.”

They tore the room apart. No crevice or corner went unchecked. What few items of furniture they had been allotted were upturned. Mattresses were flipped and stuffing pulled out of pillows. Even the light fixtures in the ceiling were pulled down and taken apart. When they were satisfied they were truly alone, they slumped against walls, tables and unmade beds, any place that would support an exhausted body.

“Fuck,” Krillin swore quietly.

“I second that,” Tien added. He and a few of the others looked to Vegeta and waited, as if expecting his input on the profanity. “What are we going to do?”

“How the hell should I know?” Vegeta was done serving as de facto leader just because he was the only one among them, his mate excluded, with two brain cells to rub together. If he had his way, it would be just Bulma, Trunks and himself he would be dragging through this cluster fuck alive. The rest of them would have perished back on the Capsule Corp roof. Of course, if he had his way, he wouldn’t have found himself back in the PTO in the first place.

“You’ve done this before. You were in this army,” Eighteen said, clearly expecting a better response from him.

“And I spent twenty-five years trying to get out!” he reminded her.

“Well we can’t stay here. You heard what Kali said. She wants us to purge planets. We can’t do that.” Gohan’s eyes went glassy and he looked like he might be sick. “I won’t do that.”

Sure, he wouldn’t, Vegeta thought to himself. That’s what every conscripted soldier said before they were sent on their first purge mission. They couldn’t possibly bring themselves to kill so many in cold blood. Even hardened warriors would rail against the dishonor of murdering women, children, and the elderly. But they all did, every time, without fail. The whelp may think he was higher minded, that he would be willing to accept the consequences of disobedience when the time came, but Vegeta knew better. Under all the moralistic bullshit he’d inherited from his idiot father, Gohan was just as eager to save his own skin as the rest of them.

“You will if you don’t have any other choice.”

“Who says we don’t have a choice?” Yamcha, for his part, still seemed optimistic. “We have Bulma, don’t we? You can get these chips out, right B?”

“Oh sure. I’ll just crack your noggin open like a watermelon and dig it out of your cerebellum with my fingers.”

It took Yamcha a moment too long to catch on to the dark sarcasm before his face fell, still trying to interpret exactly how it was she intended to save them. “Wait, what?”

“No, I can’t get them out!” Bulma was equally fed up with everyone looking to her for answers. She was just as out of her element as the rest of them. “Do you have any idea how complex the human brain is? I still haven’t figured out how they got the chips in without turning us into breathing potatoes! And even if I could remove the chips, then what? They still have Trunks and Goten. We’re not going anywhere until we find them.” It seemed to Bulma that everyone, except for her, had forgotten there were two little boys lost in the middle of all this.

Yamcha, now drained of his earlier confidence, slid down the wall he was leaning on to sit on the floor. “I know. Of course, we’ll find them but… shouldn’t we have a plan for when we do? We’re not just giving up, are we?

Morale was dissipating fast and Bulma knew this was her moment to float the plan she’d been mulling over since Earth’s destruction.

“We’re not giving up. We can still go home again. I’ve been thinking,” Bulma watched as ears perked up and the mood shifted again. “New Namek. If we can find a way to get there, we can use their dragon balls to…”

“Gods damn it, Bulma!” Piccolo shouted before she could finish her sentence. Bulma nearly jumped out of her skin at the outburst. She was not yet used to this more assertive version of the Namekian and she certainly wasn’t expecting that assertiveness to be directed at her.

“What is it with you and the fucking dragon balls?!”

“Excuse me?” She was trying to formulate a plan. She knew there were holes but she expected that he, of all people, would know the dragon balls were their only salvation.

“First of all, none of us, myself included, has any idea how to get to New Namek.” Piccolo’s revelation sucked the fragile sense of optimism Bulma had just built right out of the room. “I shouldn’t have to explain to a self-proclaimed genius just how big a place the universe is and how impossible it would be to find one planet in endless space.”

Her thoughts were racing, trying to find some flaw in his logic, some thread she could grasp onto before it unraveled.

“But let’s suspend rational thought for a moment and suppose we were able to find New Namek and get there without our heads exploding. How long do you think it would take for Kali to figure out where we’d gone and why we went there? Do you have any idea how dangerous the dragon balls would be in her hands?”

“There are risks. I get it but…”

“No, you don’t get it!” He was pissed now and he wasn’t holding back. Bulma looked to her friends for backup but they all refused to make eye contact with her, the cowards. Even Vegeta just stood there with his arms crossed, making no move to come to her defense.

“Kali blew up the earth because she had a bad day. How many people do you think she would kill, how many planets would she destroy if she got her wish? You would doom the whole universe just to get your own home back,” Piccolo reprimanded.

“No, I wouldn’t.” Of course, she would but she wasn’t going to admit it now that he’d made her out to be such a selfish bitch.

“The dragon balls are not your own personal deus ex machina. Evil exists in the world and you can’t always undo it.”

How fucking dare Piccolo lecture her. The only reason he was even standing here, able to spout his preachy bullshit, was because she had decided to abuse the power of the Namekian dragon balls by wishing him back to life. She wasn’t going to allow him to rob them of hope, no matter how far fetched. Piccolo didn’t know her very well. She was going to teach him why the rest of the Z Warriors knew not to piss her off. She wasn’t afraid to hit below the belt.

“Is that what you’re going to tell Goten when you find him? ‘Sorry kid. Your planet is gone and just about everyone you know and love is dead. Shit happens.’”

“I don’t know Bulma. What are you going to tell him? That his parents are waiting at home for him with cupcakes and a new puppy?“

“What is that supposed to mean?” She didn’t really need to ask. She remembers the look of disgust he gave her back in that prison cell, when she’d done all she could to comfort a devastated Goten and Gohan. But she wanted to hear it from his mouth. She wanted to hear him actually scold her for consoling two children who just lost their mother.

“Their mother died. They should have been allowed to grieve. You had no right…”

“And what gives you the right, exactly? You’re not their father, as much as you like to pretend to be.”

She knew she’d gone too far when she saw the devastation on his face that he tried to pass off as anger. Gohan too had turned away from her with a look of betrayal in his eyes. It was no secret that Piccolo was the closest thing to a living breathing father as the Son boys would ever have. He had helped raise Gohan from the time he was Trunks’ age and Goten practically from birth. Goten had even taken to calling Piccolo ‘Papa’ for a time until Chichi, rather cruelly in her opinion, had insisted they start correcting him. She felt instant remorse for disparaging his role in their lives. She’d only said it to hurt him and she’d succeeded.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” Piccolo still wouldn’t look at her but, encouragingly, didn’t tell her to go fuck herself. “I know you’re just as invested as I am in getting the boys back and getting them somewhere safe.”

“And we can’t do that if we’re all dead,” Piccolo bellowed.

“I know.” She had no intention of conceding any other points but she hoped this one overlapping goal would be enough to serve as a very flimsy olive branch.

“Look,” Krillin spoke up, finally breaking the tension to everyone’s relief, “this isn’t a situation we’re going to get ourselves out of tonight. We’re getting nowhere fighting about it. We all need to calm down and get some sleep. We’ll figure it out in the morning.”

It only took the suggestion of sleep for them to begin claiming bunks. The beds were hardly wide enough to accommodate one bulky muscled body but Eighteen and Krillin clambered into one of the top bunks together, pulling the perfunctory privacy curtain closed behind them. The rest of the men threw themselves onto the closest bed, tossing and turning until they found a comfortable position on the flimsy military issue mattress. They were all snoring before Bulma could even turn off the lights.

Bulma was beyond exhausted. She hadn’t gotten more than a few hours of restless, nightmare disrupted sleep in over a week. She felt guilty allowing herself to relax when Trunks was still missing. It didn’t help that the sound of her planet exploding was playing on a constant loop in her subconscious, jolting her awake whenever she found herself finally able to doze off. She could feel her body and mind starting to deteriorate after days without respite. She couldn’t go on like this much longer. The thought of lying down on a real bed after spending so many nights curled up on a cold tile floor was enough to give her hope that she might be able to keep her eyes closed for more than a few minutes tonight. Maybe when she woke up, she would find herself in her own bed with Vegeta wrapped around her and Trunks banging on the door demanding breakfast.

Bulma toed her shoes off and reached under her shirt to discretely unhook her bra before joining Vegeta in his bottom bunk.

“Move over,” she nudged, attempting to squeeze into the bed next to him. It was a far cry from the oversized king they shared at home but they would both fit if they slept on their sides.

“There’s no room. Take the top bunk.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes, I’m serious.”

He wouldn’t really make her sleep by herself. They hadn’t slept in separate beds in years.

“I can’t sleep unless you’re next to me.”

“Try.”

She thought about shoving him over and forcing herself under the covers but she knew that was petulant. She hovered at the side of the bed for a moment, hoping he would change his mind but he ignored her and rolled over to face the wall.

She knew she shouldn’t take his rebuff personally. Vegeta was… Vegeta. She’d learned long ago that relying on him to recognize when she was emotionally fragile was a recipe for constant disappointment. He had the capacity to be tender and attentive but it was always on his terms. If he didn’t want her in his space, she couldn’t push her way in.

She heaved herself up the ladder into the bunk above his and pulled the threadbare blanket up to her chin. The pillow was hard and not very comfortable but, if she held it against her body, she could pretend she wasn’t alone. She felt tears stinging the back of her eyes but she refused to cry herself to sleep. Her muscles relaxed, her eyes fluttered closed, and she fell into another night of fitful slumber.

Two little bodies huddled together in a dark room on a concrete floor. They held tightly to one another, shivering both from cold and desperate fear. Neither of them could remember how they’d come to be in that dark room, or how long they’d been there, but it felt like a long time.

“Trunks?”

“What?”

“I’m really scared.”

“You can’t be scared. Saiyans fear nothing.” He didn’t want to tell Goten that he was just as terrified.

They heard footsteps coming towards them from the other side of the wall and the sound of the lock turning on the door. A bright shaft of light streamed into the room causing the boys to cover their eyes and squint after being so long in the dark.

A man entered. He was tall and thin with black hair and dark cloths but they couldn’t see his face in the shadows. Goten held onto his friend even tighter but Trunks pushed him off, rose to his feet, and held his small fists in front of his face.

“You don’t need to be frightened, Trunks. I’m not going to hurt you.”

“I’m not afraid of you!” He was lying.

“You’re a brave little boy.”

“You’re just a weakling. I could beat you up if I wanted.” Trunks had just started learning to sense ki. He wasn’t very good at it yet but he knew he was much stronger than this man. That didn’t make him feel any less afraid.

“Maybe you could if you didn’t have that collar on.” Trunks gripped the metal band around his neck. He and Goten had both been wearing one since before they got lost. He didn’t know what it was but he knew he didn’t like it.

“If you come with me, I can take it off for you.”

“I don’t want to go anywhere with you. I want my mommy and daddy,” his voice broke as he tried to hold back tears. His father would be disappointed if he cried.

“Your mommy and daddy are gone.”

“I don’t believe you! Who are you?!” A few tears escaped and Trunks angrily wiped them away with the back of his hand.

“My name is Mal. I’m going to take care of you from now on.”