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writeyouin · 11 months ago

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Lucifer (Hazbin Hotel) X Fem-Reader - Sinless Sinners - Chapter 3

Chapter 3 - Learning To Get Along

A/N – So, a user on A03 suggested the snake servants’ new names. It was a stroke of genius on their behalf, and I can only thank them for it.

Warnings – None.

Rating – T

MALE VERSION HERE

GN VERSION HERE

Tag-List: @xx-all-purpose-nerd-xx @sseleniaa @randomgurl2326 @22carolina08 @astrxwitch @yu-87 @clover-1767 @lil-bexie @thesimpybitch

Do you think you can manage that? Lucifer’s words hung in the air, creating an icy barrier between you.

So, Lucifer thought himself too good for low-life Sinners such as yourself. That wasn’t fair. Sinners might be in Hell for a reason, but sometimes such reasons were just fucking stupid. Heaven ought to base their entry requirements on a person’s character or strength of heart, not just their actions. You had met plenty of Sinners who were in Hell because of the most trivial shit.

There were those who liked to sleep around, but if sex positivity was a problem, then how did Heaven explain Angels like Adam, whom Charlie had told you about in excruciating detail. Lust shouldn’t have ever been considered a Sin, as long as all participants in any such carnal act were above age and consenting.

Then, there were a few murderers you knew. Granted, murder made the lines blurry, but some Sinners killed in self-defence, or only targeted others such as themselves, protecting the innocent in a very gruesome Dexter-like fashion. Were they really to be condemned? And who the fuck gave a damn about Sloth. So, some people were just bone idle, who gave a shit? Heaven apparently.

And now, the ruler of Hell was condemning those around him as well. He was supposed to care for his people, good or bad. Not to mention those who were solely created for or born in Hell, such as Imps, Hell-Hounds, or the Deadly Sins themselves; they hadn’t committed any crimes to get sent here originally – it was their home.

Your eyebrows furrowed, creating an annoyed crease along your forehead.

“No,” You told Lucifer, who stared at you incredulously.

No? Didn’t you understand the situation? He was Lucifer. King of Hell. He could destroy you with no effort spared, leaving no trace that you ever existed, and you were telling him no? He wasn’t an unreasonable guy, but how could you possibly think that being around him was a good idea? Did you respect Charlie more than you feared him? Granted, he didn’t go out much so few knew how powerful he was, but no other Sinner would dare deny him his wishes.

You saw the look he was giving you and decided to explain yourself.

“Look, I’m only here ‘cos Charlie thought it was a good idea, and if you genuinely hate me, I’ll go and you’ll never have to see me again, but you’re not even trying right now. You haven’t spoken to me. You don’t know anything about me, and frankly, I think Charlie’s right, you do need someone to talk to.”

“I don’t-” Lucifer started.

“You don’t even know why I’m down here,” You interrupted angrily, though you refrained from raising your voice. “And you don’t want to know, right? ‘Cos all of us filthy Sinners must be the same. Ooh, we squandered your gift of Free Will and now we deserve to suffer for eternity, do we? Grow up!”

Lucifer stared at you in astonishment, and you sighed, apparently not finished in your tirade, “I’m going to my room tonight, but tomorrow, I expect that you’ll at least try to tolerate me. Who knows? We might even find some common ground. We both love Charlie, don’t we?”

Lucifer didn’t know what to say to that. He certainly loved his daughter, more than anything else in the universe, but you? He still suspected that you had some kind of ulterior motive… everyone in Hell did. Yet, you had a point. He would do this for her, even if it meant he had to tolerate you.

Who were you, really?

He looked at you closely for the first time, trying to pick out some detail of who you might have been. It was even more disturbing than he previously thought. Before, he only saw a human. Now, he examined your clothes. There was little to say about the style, but your apparel was reminiscent of a Holy Animal. With the ruffled cuffs of your jacket, the way the back peaked to create the image of feathers, and the yellow ribbon that lined the white material, you looked like a dove.

Yet… Despite living in the Hazbin Hotel, Charlie had insisted that you didn’t seek redemption. Why go through the farce of dressing like an Angel then… unless? No, you couldn’t be. No Angel would dare stray from Heaven unless they were ordered to.

Lucifer held back a glower, trying to keep his emotions in check so you wouldn’t sense his thoughts. There was a possibility, though small that you had been sent by the likes of Adam to spy on Lucifer and his kin, ensuring that none of Charlie’s patrons ever found a way to the Pearly Gates.

Well, it wouldn’t take long to uncover your ruse. Lucifer had ways of telling an Angel from a Demon, and once you were asleep, he would know.

“Yeah,” Lucifer said evenly. “I love my Charlie.”

“So, you’ll try then.”

Lucifer nodded his head in consent.

“Okay, I’ll see you in the morning. Good night.”

The sentiment went unreturned as your King returned to his chambers, biding his time until you slept.

When you returned to your room, you got ready for bed. The day had been long and unusual. Honestly, you didn’t feel that you had a place in the manor, and you longed for your room in the Hotel, even if it was smaller, had a large stain on the carpet (which Nifty had named Vivienne) and an unruly infestation of roaches.

In the short time you had spent there, it had become home.

You would miss the arguing inhabitants, the energetic wake-up call from Charlie, the feeling of safety that Vaggie instilled, and the sound of Alastor’s morning and evening radio broadcasts. Yet, you hoped you might find something equally valuable in return if only Lucifer would open himself up to the possibility that you didn’t want anything from him.

After glancing out of your window, which had a balcony you could step out to if you so wished, you took in the whole of the Magne District which was the heart of Pentagram City. If you strained your eyes, you could just see the flashing neon of the Hazbin Hotel, and if you turned your gaze up… There was Heaven, out of reach yet always in sight, taunting most Sinners, yet emboldening a brave few who dared to wonder What If? What if they could change and gain admittance to a better life?

You sighed and dared not ponder further when you needed to get some sleep.

Throwing yourself on the plush bed, you got comfortable, arranging yourself how you liked, then leaning over to your bedside table, you blew out the cherry candle you had previously lit.

You rested your head atop the satin pillows, then frowned, feeling a lump beneath it. You reached under and pulled out a rubber duck, painted to look like a Hellhound-Duck hybrid. Assuming it was one of Charlie’s childhood toys, you placed it carefully atop the table; it would keep you company on your first night in a strange new place.

Lucifer waited till the late twilight hours before leaving his workshop. He transformed himself into a snake, slithering silently through the Hallways, ensuring that you wouldn’t hear him coming.

Before being cast out of Heaven, detecting an Angel would have been a simple task. He would just know, the way he now knew how to read a Demon. Yet, with you giving off little sign of Demonic energy, he now had to test if you were of Angelic origin. There were two ways he could do so. The first was by spilling your blood. Those who were born in or sent to Heaven had golden ichor instead of the oozing red or black goop of Hell-spawn and Sinners.

However, not wishing to alert you to his presence, Lucifer decided to opt for the other method.

Once he was inside your room and certain that you were in a deep slumber, he reverted to his original form, standing over you, his pupils turning to slits at the thought of a traitor in his house. If you were what he thought you to be, he would kill you immediately.

He pulled a small yellow twenty-sided stone from his pocket and baring his fangs in anger, he pressed it lightly against your skin.

Nothing happened.

Lucifer’s expression changed from one of deep-seated loathing to confusion. You weren’t from Heaven. If you were, the stone would have glowed a brilliant shade of Gold. Instead, it remained its original dull yellow.

Very well.

He would keep his word and… Tolerate you.

He left your room as quietly as he had entered it. Tomorrow, things would be different.

Lucifer didn’t sleep that night; the idea of change was terrifying.

The next morning, when Lucifer finally resigned himself to the fact that he was going to have to face you eventually, he headed downstairs, assuming that was where you were.

“JUST TRY IT!” He heard you yell. “TRY! OPEN YOUR MOUTH, DAMN IT!”

“Uh…” Was all he could think to say as he entered the kitchen and found you clinging to one of the snake cleaners he had created the previous night, in a rodeo-like fashion. The creature was trying to buck you off, with a somewhat derpy expression, probably stupidly assuming it was a game; Lucifer hadn’t bothered to instil them with much intelligence since he didn’t need them for anything more than cleaning.

“ARGH!” You grunted as you were dislodged from its back.

“What- What is this?” Lucifer asked, confused.

“Oh shit!” You cursed, embarrassed to have been caught in a less-than-dignified position. You attempted to regain a little composure by standing up, then held up a handful of wadded-up pancake.

“Do they eat?” You demanded, referring to the reptilian cleaners, “’Cos they’ve been in a picture frame their whole lives, and they must be hungry by now.”

Of all the stupid things you could have done, Lucifer couldn’t help but crack a smile, though he had the decency to hide his laugh behind a clenched fist and pass it off as a cough.

“They don’t need to.”

“Okay, but can they?”

“If they wanted to, I suppose so.”

You glared at the mushed-up pancake, “I fucking knew it. Spick, Span, eat your fucking breakfast!”

“I’m sorry, who now?” Lucifer asked.

“Well, they clean, don’t they? Spick and Span seem to fit unless you have something better to name them.”

Lucifer chuckled, a half-short-lived chuckle, but one all the same. You were more chaotic than he expected.

“Fine, if you want them to eat, you’ve got to cook in style.”

He waved his hands energetically, his outfit transforming from his usual suit to one befitting a flashy Michelin Chef. He was comfortable in the role of an entertainer as he made a dazzling display of cooking up eggs. With the flash-bang of indoor fireworks, the island counter gained a conveyor belt to transport several dishes, all perfectly presentable and giving off a delectable aroma of herbs and spices.

Eggs-benedict, frittatas, and shakshuka shot by you, closely followed by a hungry Span, though his twin was busy writhing on the conveyer belt, trying to get to his feather duster, yet doomed to chase it since he didn’t think to travel in the opposite direction so it would meet him in the middle.

The sight was memorable to say the least, even when Spick knocked the food onto the floor and his brother was left stupidly sucking on the corner of the countertop where his seemingly new favourite dish had splattered.

You couldn’t help laughing.

“See?” You struggled to get the words out, “I knew they’d like food. I’m just a shite cook.”

Lucifer gazed at his dishes proudly, even though they were no longer fit for either of your consumption.

“Hah,” You said, feeling somewhat awkward now that the moment had passed and Lucifer’s gaze was upon you, trying to figure you out. “I’ll uh, clean this up.”

“No need, leave it to Flim and Flam,” Lucifer said nonchalantly.

“You know that’s not their names.”

“Whatever. So… we’ve met, there was breakfast with a show. We done for today?”

The smile fell from your face as you realised that all of this was just another of Lucifer’s acts. Granted, he might have actually had fun with it, but it was all just in the name of claiming he had tried to be around you, and just wanted to leave as soon as possible.

“I don’t know. I was going to go into the City if you wanted to come.”

“I can’t. I have… plans.”

Lucifer’s mood soured as he thought about visiting Heaven’s embassy to set up the meeting for Charlie. He hated everything about that building. The décor was just a cruel reminder of everything Heaven had banished him from. Moreover, while the Angels had to respect his power, they didn’t respect him; their cruel words and thinly veiled insults always cut him the deepest. Not to mention how bitter he was that the balance of power was uneven. Sure, Heaven had an embassy in Hell, but there was no such building in Heaven where Demons could work to arrange meetings between Angels and him.

It would always be Lucifer going to their building, on their terms, usually at their behest.

“Plans? So, you’re setting up Charlie’s meeting today?” You guessed astutely. “You know, I’m walking that way too.”

Lucifer guessed at your game. You probably hadn’t been going in that direction at all, but this was all in the name of ‘trying’. One way or another, he would have to learn to get along with you.

“Fine. Let’s go,” He said, flicking his hand back blasély, even though he found the idea of walking the streets of Hell daunting.

It would be better if he could teleport there, but at least, by the end of the day, you would have something positive to report back to Charlie.

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theculturedmarxist · 1 year ago

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As with the South African case, according to court procedure the Israeli case was introduced on Friday by their “agent”, permanently accredited to the court, Tal Becker of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He opened with the standard formula “it is an honour to appear before you again on behalf of the state of Israel”, managing to imply purely through phrasing and tone of voice that the honour lay in representing Israel, not in appearing before the judges.

Becker opened by going straight to the Holocaust, saying that nobody knew more than Israel why the Genocide Convention existed. Six million Jewish people had been killed. The Convention was not to be used to cover the normal brutality of war.

The South African case aimed at the delegitimisation of the state of Israel, he said. On Oct. 7 Hamas had committed massacre, mutilation, rape and abduction. 1,200 had been killed and 5,500 maimed. He related several hideous individual atrocity stories and played a recording he stated to be a Hamas fighter boasting on WhatsApp to his parents about committing mass murder, rape and mutilation.

The only genocide in this case was being committed against Israel. Hamas continued to attack Israel, and for the court to take provisional measures would be to deny Israel the right to self-defence.

Provisional measures should rather be taken against South Africa and its attempt by legal means to further genocide by its relationship with Hamas. Gaza was not under occupation: Israel had left it with great potential to be a political and economic success. Instead Hamas had chosen to make it a terrorist base.

Hamas was embedded in the civilian population and therefore responsible for the civilian deaths. Hamas had tunnels under schools, hospitals, mosques and U.N. facilities and tunnel entrances within them. It commandeered medical vehicles for military use.

South Africa had talked of civilian buildings destroyed, but did not tell you they had been destroyed by Hamas booby traps and Hamas missile misfires.

The casualty figures South Africa gave were from Hamas sources and not reliable. They did not say how many were fighters? How many of the children were child soldiers? The application by South Africa was ill-founded and ill-motivated. It was a libel.

This certainly was a hardline and uncompromising start. The judges appeared to be paying very close attention when he opened with the Oct. 7 self-defence argument, but very definitely some of them started to fidget and become uncomfortable when he talked of Hamas operating from ambulances and U.N. facilities. In short, he went too far and I believe he lost his audience at that point.

Next up was Professor Malcolm Shaw KC. Shaw is regarded as an authority on the procedure of international law and is editor of the standard tome on the subject. This is an interesting facet of the legal profession, where standard reference books on particular topics are regularly updated to include key extracts from recent judges, and passages added or amended to explain the impact of these judgments. Being an editor in this field provides a route to prominence for the plodding and pedantic.

I had come across Shaw in his capacity as a co-founder of the Centre for Human Rights at Essex University. I had given a couple of talks there some twenty years ago on the attacks on human rights of the “War on Terror” and my own whistleblower experience over torture and extraordinary rendition. For an alleged human rights expert, Shaw seemed extraordinarily prone to support the national security interests of the state over individual liberty.

I do not pretend I gave it a great deal of thought. I did not know at that time of Shaw’s commitment as an extreme Zionist and in particular his long term interest in suppressing the rights of the Palestinian people.

After 139 states have recognised Palestine as a state, Shaw led for Israel the legal opposition to Palestine’s membership of international institutions, including the International Criminal Court. Shaw’s rather uninspired reliance on the Montevideo Convention of 1933 is hardly a legal tour de force, and it didn’t work.

Every criminal deserves a defence, and nobody should hold it against a barrister that they defend a murderer or rapist, as it is important that guilt or innocence is tested by a court. But I think it is fair to state that defence lawyers do not in general defend those accused of murder because they agree with murder and want a murderer to go on murdering.

That however is the case here: Malcolm Shaw speaks for Israel because he actually wants Israel to be able to continue killing Palestinian women and children to improve the security of Israel, in his view.

That is the difference between this and other cases, including at the ICJ. Generally the lead lawyers would happily swap sides, if the other side had hired them first. But this is entirely different.

Here the lawyers (with the possible exception of Christopher Straker KC, an other attorney who represented Israel on Friday) believe profoundly in the case they are supporting and would never appear for the other side. That is just one more way that this is such an extraordinary case, with so much drama and such vital consequences, not least for the future of international law.

For the reason I have just explained, Shaw’s role here is not that of a simple barrister plying his trade. His attempt to extend the killing should see him viewed as a pariah by decent people everywhere, for the rest of his doubtless highly-paid existence.

Shaw opened up by saying that the South African case continually spoke of context. They talked of the 75 years of the existence of the state of Israel. Why stop there? Why not go back to the Balfour Declaration or the British Mandate over Palestine?

No, the context of these events was the massacre of Oct. 7, and Israel’s subsequent right of self-defence. He produced and read a long quote from mid-October by European Commission President Ursula von Der Leyen, stating that Israel had suffered a terrorist atrocity and had the right of self-defence.

The truth is that this is not genocide but armed conflict, which state has existed since Oct. 7, he said. That was brutal, and urban warfare always involved terrible civilian casualties, but it was not genocide.

He then turned to the question of genocide. He argued that South Africa could not bring this case and the ICJ had no jurisdiction, because there was no dispute between Israel and South Africa on which the ICJ could rule, at the time the case was filed.

South Africa had communicated its views to Israel, but Israel had given no substantial reply. Therefore a dispute did not yet exist at time of filing. A dispute must involve interaction between parties and the argument had been on one side only.

This very much interested the judges. As I noted on day one, this got them more active than anything else when Professor John Dugard addressed the same point for South Africa. As I reported:

“The judges particularly enjoyed Dugard’s points, enthusiastically rustling through documents and underlining things. Dealing with thousands of dead children was a bit difficult for them, but give them a nice jurisdictional point and they were in their element.”

They were even more excited when Shaw tackled the same point. This gave them a way out! The case could be technically invalid, and then they would neither have to upset the major Western powers nor make fools of themselves by pretending that a genocide the whole world had seen was not happening. For a while, they looked visibly relieved.

Shaw should have given up while he was ahead, but he ploughed on for an hour, with some relief when he continually muddled his notes. A senior KC with zero ability to extemporise and recover was an interesting sight, as he kept stopping and shuffling paper.

Shaw argued that the bar for judging whether South Africa had a prima facie case must be significantly higher because of the high military and political cost to Israel if the court adopted provisional measures.

It was also necessary to show genocidal intent even at this stage. Otherwise the genocide was a “car without an engine”. If any illegal actions had taken place within Israel’s carefully targeted military action, Israel’s own military courts would investigate and act on them.

Random Israeli ministers and officials making emotional statements was not important. Official policy to protect civilians would be found in the minutes of the Israeli war cabinet and national security council. Israel’s strenuous attempts to move civilians out of harm’s way was an accepted measure in international human law and should not be viewed as mass displacement.

It was South Africa which was guilty of complicity in genocide in cooperation with Hamas. South Africa’s allegations against Israel “verge on the outrageous”.

Israel’s next lawyer was a lady called Galit Raguan from the Israeli Ministry of Justice. She said the reality on the ground was that Israel had done everything possible to minimise civilian deaths and to aid humanitarian relief. Urban warfare always resulted in civilian deaths. It was Hamas who were responsible for destruction of buildings and infrastructure.

There was overwhelming evidence of Hamas’ military use of hospitals. In every single hospital in Gaza the IDF had evidence of military use by Hamas. Mass evacuation of civilians was a humanitarian and legal measure. Israel had supplied food, water and medicine into Gaza but supplies had come under Hamas fire. Hamas steals the aid for its fighters.

Next up was lawyer Omri Sender. He stated that more food trucks per day now entered Gaza than before Oct. 7. The number had increased from 70 food trucks to 109 food trucks per day. Fuel, gas and electricity were all being supplied and Israel had repaired the sewage systems.

At this stage Israel had again lost the judges. One or two were looking at this man in a highly quizzical manner. A couple had definitely fallen asleep – there are only so many lies you can absorb, I suppose. Nobody was making notes about this guff.

The judges may find a way not to condemn Israel, but could not be expected to go along with this extraordinary nonsense. Sender continued that the scope and intensity of the fighting was now decreasing as the operation entered a new phase.

Perhaps noting that nobody believed him, Sender stated that the court could not institute provisional measures but rather was obliged to accept the word of Israel on its good intentions because of the Law of the Unilateral Declarations of States.

Now I have to confess that was a bit of international law I did not know existed. But it does, specifically in relation to ICJ proceedings. On first reading, it makes a unilateral declaration of intent to the ICJ binding on the state that makes it.

I cannot see that it forces the ICJ to accept it as sufficient or to believe in its sincerity. It seems rather a reach, and I wondered if Israel was running out of things to say.

That appeared to be true, because the next speaker, Christopher Straker, now took the floor and just ran through all the same Hamas stuff yet again, only with added theatrical indignation. Straker is the lawyer I suspect would happily have appeared for either side, because he was plainly just acting anyway. And not very well.

Straker said that it was astounding this case could be brought. It was intended to stop Israel from defending itself while Israel would still be subject to Hamas attacks. Hamas has said it will continue attacks.

If you look at the operation as a whole including relief efforts, it was plain there was no genocidal intent. Israel was in incredible danger. The proposed provisional measures were out of proportion to their effect.

Can you imagine if in the Second World War, a court had ordered the Allies to stop fighting because of civilian deaths, and allowed the Axis powers to keep on killing?

The final speaker was Gilad Noam, Israel’s deputy attorney-general. He said that the bulk of the proposed provisional measures should be refused because they exposed Israel to further Hamas attack. Three more should be refused because they referred to Palestine outside Gaza.

There was no genocidal intent in Israel. Ministerial and official statements made in the heat of the moment were rather examples of the tradition of democracy and freedom of speech. Prosecutions for incitement to genocide were under consideration.

The court must not conflate genocide and self-defence. The South African case devalues genocide and encourages terrorism. The Holocaust illustrated why Israel was always under existential threat. It was Hamas who were committing genocide.

And that was it. Israel had in the end not been allowed to show its contentious atrocity video, and it felt like their presentation had become repetitive and was padded to fill the time.

It is important to realise this. Israel is hoping to win on their procedural points about existence of dispute, unilateral assurances and jurisdiction. The obvious nonsense they spoke about the damage to homes and infrastructure being caused by Hamas, trucks entering Gaza and casualty figures, was not serious. They did not expect the judges to believe any of this. The procedural points were for the court. The rest was mass propaganda for the media.

In the U.K., the BBC and Sky both ran almost all the Israeli case live, having not run any of the South African case live. I believe something similar was true in the USA, Australia and Germany too.

While the court was in session, Germany has announced it will intervene in the substantial case to support Israel. They argue explicitly that, as the world’s greatest perpetrator of genocide, they are uniquely placed to judge. It is in effect a copyright claim. They are protecting Germany’s intellectual property in the art of genocide. Perhaps they might in future license genocide, or allow Israel to continue genocide on a franchise basis.

I am sure the judges want to get out of this and they may go for the procedural points. But there is a real problem with Israel’s “no dispute” argument. If accepted, it would mean that a country committing genocide can simply not reply to a challenge, and then legal action will not be possible because no reply means “no dispute”. I hope that absurdity is obvious to the judges. But they may of course wish not to notice it…

What do I think will happen? Some sort of “compromise”. The judges will issue provisional measures different to South Africa’s request, asking Israel to continue to take measures to protect the civilian population, or some such guff. Doubtless the State Department have drafted something like this for the president of the court, the American Joan Donoghue already.

I hope I am wrong. I would hate to give up on international law. One thing I do know for certain. These two days in The Hague were absolutely crucial for deciding if there is any meaning left in notions of international law and human rights.

I still believe action by the court could cause the U.S. and U.K. to back off and provide some measure of relief. For now, let us all pray or wish, each in our way, for the children of Gaza.

Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. His coverage is entirely dependent on reader support. Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.

#craig murray #the hague #international court of justice #israel #south africa #genocide #israel palestine conflict #gaza #consortium news

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nescaveckwriter · 6 months ago

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Bundles, Broken, Maybe Healed? (Part Three)

Prompt: Bundled up in blankets - will be in bold,😱

A/N: YAY! My third one for @badthingshappenbingo 🤭, Okay y'all, this chapter is intense, I'm not kidding.. we find more out about Meredith's past and its traumatic okay... So good luck...😱💓❤️

Warnings: 18+ Only! Some language, blood and gore, normal Criminal Minds stuff, going into depth off crime scenes etc, drug use,torture, anything else I missed let me know💕

Characters: Aaron Hotchner, Dr. Spencer Reid, Penelope Garcia, Derek Morgan, JJ, Emily Prentiss, Meredith Lang.

Cover: Created by me. Also images from Pinterest and Canva.

Words:3000ish 😅

Chapter Name: Bundled, Broken, Maybe Healed? (Part One) (Part Two) (Part Three)

Today was our last in hospital session, she’d go too stay with her parents, I’m thankful Jason Gideon took her under his wing, and she said she was ready, and I did sign off, but in my professional opinion, she’s in danger, of her own build up emotions bursting one day, but I will still see her every week for the time being, until then I hug my own kids a little tighter. Signed Olivia Walters.

He sat there, feeling like he’d cross a line if he ever caught ‘the collector’, he wouldn’t send him to prison, now… he’ll, he’ll kill him. The knocking on the door tore him away from his thoughts, his voice lower, rougher than normal “WHAT?” she stood there with a smile on her face, her forest green eyes piercing his “I’m sorry about earlier!” clearing her throat “you took me a little off guard, and uhm” she stayed silent “agh nevermind, the point is, it's inappropriate of me, to punch you and…” he stopped her mid sentence “okay I get it, close the door behind you” and without saying another word she left his office. Running a hand over his face, he knew that was unquestioned for, but he didn’t want to deal with that right now, hell he wasn’t even sure how’d he look her in the eye after reading through her file, but he started reading over it again…

She did the missed years of school in one year, studying hard, taking various self defence classes, even more advance martial arts classes, Jason Gideon became a second father to her, training her, guiding her, she did everything she could to become part of the FBI, coming through various obstacles, one of those her parents, but she pushed herself, her drive, her motivation ‘Finding Hope’ and despite everything she did, but before they could send her in the field it was time for her psych eval, she passed with flying colours, but we’ll soon learn, she had a bit problem with authority, someone tugging or grabbing her, she’ll punch first, apologise later, Hotch left out a chuckle, he knows how that feels. She is really impulsive, she’s not concerned about her own safety, she’ll get into any situation, as long as someone doesn’t need to go through it. But she’s a damn great profiler, so Jason Gideon was happy about the progress. She was one of the most skilled agents he’s ever seen, he was proud.

She flourished, she loved her job, she and her family were close again, but one night she called me, I could hear it in her voice, ‘Gideon he’s gone, some weak bastard shot him’ I was shocked but more worried about her, he had a significant role in life. ‘I relapsed’ she said ‘I bought ecstasy, the spiders are back’ I realised she was high as she spoke to me, so I made my way over to her apartment, by now I cared about her like she was my own daughter, I found her sitting on the floor, tear stained cheeks, her service weapon in hand, loaded, high out of her mind, ‘I’ve been doing this job for what 3-4 years? And I still haven’t found Hope or the collector and now Gideon is gone’ I saw it etched on her face, the look in her eyes, she was ready to leave everything behind.

It’s been a few months, she threw herself back into her work, but she seems to be doing better now. I saw her again today, she looked good. But she’s a complex person, not that I blame her with the trauma she’s gone through.

Hotch sat back in his chair, thinking about all the red flags she’s got, yet he was intrigued by her strength, she doesn’t carry around the whole victim badge, he couldn’t help to think maybe she healed. But at the back of his mind he knew, deep down in this 30 year old woman, that 16 year old girl is still stuck inside her. With one click, he closed the file, almost a silent wish, that he’d never started reading it in the first place.

She walked into her apartment, exhausted of the day, still pretty sore, she kicked off her shoes, poured herself a glass of wine, moved the box ‘childhood memories’ over to her bedroom, opening her closet starting to unpack the box, placing the evidence against the doors, over these 13 years she gathered so much of the bone collector, she could never catch him so far, and as she pinned the pencil sketch, of him, that she sketched over and over, remembering every detail, she sat against the bed, knees drawn to her chest, chin resting on her kneecaps, muttering “I’ll get you, and when I do, you’d wish you never abducted me that day” it was a ritual by now. Almost a sort of mantra and she meant every word. She’ll never speak off all the things he did to them, but she’ll never forget it, NEVER!.

#bad things happen bingo #finding hope #nescaveckwriter #criminal minds fic #ssa aaron hotchner #jason gideon #Spotify

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some-of-us-watch-the-sunset-too · 1 year ago

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🦷

6 with Steve 😈

A/N: This is really bad i’m sorry- it deleted itself and i have no motivation to write but i still needed to get something out: i thought it was funny to have Y/N and Steve kill bob rather than pony and johnny. just for fun why not. it’s only a short little piece but like i said i have no motivation. not sure if it’s no motivation for the boys or just none in general. i hope it’s the latter tbh-

Tags: angst, Steve x y/n (platonic or romantic not mentioned)

Warnings: blood, death, fighting (same as usual. also i swear y/n didn’t get stabbed this time-)

“Y/N what the hell!” i stared at the body that lay on the ground as if i was in a trance. i watched the crimson pool beneath him slowly grow. of course i heard steve, but it sounded like he was extremely far away. “Yknow we could be killed for this right Y/N! we gotta do something, we get out of here!” I felt his hand grab my shoulder. “don’t touch me.” i whispered as i hit his hand away. i didn’t want to be looking at the face of the boy i just killed, but i just couldn’t look away. “stop it man! we need to leave! if they catch us they won’t believe it was self defence! we killed a soc!” i felt him grab my arm again. this time i spun around and put my already blood covered blade against his throat. “i said. don’t touch me.” The fear in Steve’s eyes pulled me instantly back to reality. i stumbled backward. my head was spinning and i felt like i couldn’t breathe. “we killed him. oh my god.. they could give us the chair for that!” Steve didn’t dare step any closer. i looked back to the body. the pool of blood was staining the concrete a red colour. “i’m a monster.. we gotta- we gotta go oh my god!” I put my blade in my pocket and got up. “we need to go to dally, he’s been in this mess before in new york. he’ll know what to do.” i looked back to the body once more before we took off for dally’s place.

#the outsiders #ponyboy curtis #dallas winston #darry curtis #sodapop curtis #johnny cade #steve randle #two-bit mathews #dallas winston x reader #ponyboy x reader #johnny cade x reader #steve randle x reader #darry curtis x reader #sodapop x reader #two bit x reader #darry x reader #sodapop curtis x reader

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lecinea · 1 year ago

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I now have seen several people claim that the "morally grey Wei Wuxian" crowd thinks that no one can really be objectively right or wrong when to me it seems the opposite is true?

Like, I think torture is wrong. End of sentence. So it doesn't matter if it's unnamed demonic cultivators, Wen Chao & co or a collection of random innocents who happen to be related to an asshole. All of it is morally wrong. So Wei Wuxian was doing something morally corrupt. Do I understand why he did it? Absolutely, but that doesn't make it the good and just thing to do.

Same goes for the mass murder. I think there is never a good and moral reason for a massacre. Which means I think it was wrong to kill the Wens, it was wrong to kill the Jiang and it was wrong to kill the various cultivators at nightless city. And because I can already hear the shouts of 'self defence!', once the body count hits the triple digits I don't think self defence is still a valid excuse.

To even target Wei Wuxian more, I think the desecration of corpses is wrong. I think what Wen Qing and Wei Wuxian did to Wen Ning is honestly quite horrifying and that the only reason we as a fandom don't talke more about how sad it is that Wen Ning's soul is pretty much trapped in a dead and decaying vessal until resentful energy can no longer keep it together is that there is this idea that any way of being 'alive' is better than being dead. From a daoist view, Wen Ning and other fierce corpses are being kept from the cycle of reincarnation. That's bad! That's not good or moral in any way. Again, I completely understand why Wen Qing wanted her brother back and why Wei Wuxian actually did. But that doesn't make it right.

This doesn't mean that Wei Wuxian isn't a hero, he absolutely is. Most of his actions were done with good intentions and came from a place of wanting to protect people and fix things. But that doesn't suddenly make all of his actions good and moral. And that's okay, that makes things interesting! It creates space for nuanced discussion.

I don't pick and choose what I think is good or bad. I think some actions are inherently bad, no matter the motivations. But in fiction, where there are no actual victims, it's interesting to look at those motivations and try to understand why an action was taken. In a work like mdzs it is quite pointless to try to look for actual moral purity, because pretty much every character has at the very least murdered someone and most have done worse. So why would I weigh Jiang Cheng's torture of demonic cultivators of unknown guilt heavier than Wei Wuxian's torture of Wen Chao and Wang Lingjiao? What if those demonic cultivators were worse? If they gleefully killed babies and made their tiny corpses dance in front of their crying parents, would Jiang Cheng's torture of them then be justified and good? Would that change things? I don't know. To me, action of torture would still be wrong.

So in conclusion; because I have strong morals and do think that some things can be objectively right or wrong, I think Wei Wuxian is a morally grey character.

#mdzs meta #discussions about morality in mdzs are my fav and I have thought a lot about this #of course I am always open to different views #but don't come to me with 'mxtx said that' because it's quite simple if she really thinks all of wwx's actions are good then i disagree #and again just to clarify I love Wei Wuxian and I understand why he does all the things he does #but that doesnt mean i think what he does is always the right thing #Wei Wuxian #mdzs #the untamed

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percontaion-points · 4 months ago

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TBWSIMBW chapter 21

Today's review might be difficult for some; reader discretion is advised

Click to see the rest of the snark & image descriptions

Click here for the rest of the series!

Chapter 21

“I’m not going anywhere! I won’t let you do this, either of you. You can’t beat the crap out of him, you’ll get in trouble. You’re being freaking stupid!” she shouted. Tears rolled down her face as she spoke.

I hate to be the devil’s advocate right now, but Amber’s right. Punching the shit out of the man is only likely to lead to assault charges for Jake (and Liam if he participates). I’m sorry for saying this, but they probably do need to wait until he tries to hurt Johnny, Ruby, or Matt. (Or possibly Amber again.) This way, it’ll be a justified defence of others, of which I’m like 75% certain that no jury would actually convict.

“I love you too. If you get sent to jail for murder then I’ll wait for you,” she stated with no emotion in her voice at all. It wasn’t a joke; she really thought I was going to jail.

Honestly, do you blame her for thinking that? They’re going out of their way to lure the guy to their house for the express purpose of hurting him.

“Do you understand me? You need to leave town. Now. There’s nothing left here for you now. Ruby doesn’t want you either, no one wants you,” he spat.

I’m here once again to say that it’s good that they helped Ruby to leave. But as soon as she was out of the house, she should have contacted a good lawyer. Probably started drafting up a restraining order. (I think that they might be able to get an emergency restraining order.)

Yes, it’s only been two days, but still. Being slapped with divorce papers probably would have helped.

“This is all your fucking fault! You and Amber had to open your filthy mouths and tell Johnny about what happened.”

I ain’t even sorry for saying this, but if you didn’t want your former victims to tell the world what happened… Maybe you shouldn’t have beat them and tried to molest your own daughter.

Also, maybe don’t beat up your new family, too. That sure didn’t help Johnny and Ruby decide that they should leave.

He turned to look at me, hate clear across his face. “Fuck you! She’s my daughter,” he shouted, yanking her roughly closer to him. She turned and tried to push him away. His face turned hard. I lunged forward at the same time he slapped her hard across the face.

I grabbed his shirt and punched him full in the face, enjoying the satisfying crack his nose made as my fist connected with it.

Once again acting in the role of devil’s advocate here, but I think Amber did the correct thing in letting the man who tried to rape her grab her like this. Again, it goes back to how harshly that this would be charged.

Maybe I could just go over and be another witness, then that way when he starts something first I could say it was self-defence too. Another witness would definitely help their case.

I figured that Amber’s motives weren’t half as smart as I was giving her credit for. The fact that it happened to line up with the way that I’d defend the children was nothing but coincidence.

(Note: I am not a lawyer. None of this is legal advice.)

This was going ruin everything; he wouldn’t want me now that I’d killed our baby.

Honestly, if Liam leaves because Stephan hit Amber so hard that she miscarried, Amber seriously dodged a major bullet.

“Hey, Angel,” I murmured, stroking her face lightly, it was sore looking and was already starting to bruise where he’d slapped her.

So um… while you’re at the hospital, why don’t you get pictures of that lovely bruise and start pressing charges?

Edit after doing some research: I’m pretty sure the violent feticide charge would be pretty heavy. 38 US states classify it as homicide.

That asshole is pressing charges?

Chapter 21 summary: Amber gets into a huge fight with both Liam and Jake about how they’re luring Stephan over to the house for the purpose of beating him up. But she does leave. Liam then waits around with Jake until Stephan shows up.

When he gets there, he says a lot of truly awful things. It mainly boils down to how he doesn’t seem to view other people (re: his wife and kids) as actual people, only things that belong to him. And he’s angry that his oldest son would have dared to tell his step-son about all of this, which obviously led to Ruby and Johnny leaving with Matt. (Again, he’s blaming Ruby and Johnny for wanting to get out of the abusive situation.)

Amber shows up right as the boys are about to start beating Stephan. Stephan grabs Amber and starts hurting her. This makes Liam see red, and he starts beating the shit out of Stephan. But then Liam realises that Amber is lying on the ground and crying. When he goes to her, he realises that there’s blood coming from her crotch.

They call for an ambulance, where the EMT confirms that Amber is having a miscarriage. The doctors take her into a room to do a D&C. While she’s in there, Liam basically mopes in the waiting area while bemoaning how this is all his fault. When the doctor comes out, Liam goes in to be with Amber.

Later, police show up to arrest Liam.

#The Boy Who Sneaks in my Bedroom Window #bookblr #book review #romance novel #new adult

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d2kvirus · 11 months ago

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Dickheads of the Month: January 2024

As it seems that there are people who say or do things that are remarkably dickheaded yet somehow people try to make excuses for them or pretend it never happened, here is a collection of some of the dickheaded actions we saw in the month of January 2024 to make sure that they are never forgotten.

Ultra-relatable nice guy Rishi Sunak forgot to have any sort of parliamentary vote before joining Joe Biden in bombing Yemen in "self defence" which is an odd comment given how many thousand miles away it is from the UK or US and hasn't actually attacked those countries, but as some container ships are taking a bit longer to arrive that means they need bombing ASAP - a move which Keir Starmer supported without question, because of course he did

...and the justification which Keir Starmer gave for his support, even though it directly contradicted his stance of taking no military action? Deciding to change the definition of "military action" so it only means boots on the ground and not air strikes

...while man of a thousand pseudonyms Grant Schapps insisted that the situation in the Red Sea has nothing to do with what Israel is doing in Gaza as Yemen is over 2600 miles away - which begs the question why the UK is bombing Yemen (but not deploying troops, that's military action!) considering the Red Sea is over 4000 miles from the UK so clearly that has nothing to do with the UK

Once again Mark Regev was caught using terms such as "done properly" and "finished in the right way" in regards to Israel's definitely-not-a-genocide in Gaza, and as per usual Kay Burley neglected to interject any follow-up questions to ask him to define what those terms mean in the context he uses them in

...meanwhile the always-charming Tzipi Hotevely appeared on LBC to thunder how every school, mosque and second house in Gaza is a target for Israel, which definitely doesn't sound like the genocidal rantings of a war crime apologist in the slightest

...and then Nissim Vaturi decided to make his motives particularly unclear when saying that the people of Gaza must be burned as he has no pity for them, which absolutely nobody could consider to be coded genocidal language if they forgot to code the language

...meanwhile, attempted actress Tracy Ann Oberman decided that the best course of action was to make up a story of how so many of the Israeli hostages are pregnant due to all the multiple rapes they have endured, though when asked to provide a source for this claim her response was to obfuscate for a bit before saying the person asking for a source was not a real Israeli ally

...during all of this the Israeli Defence Force were getting so casual with their casual killing of civilians that they turned an ITV new broadcast into a snuff movie when and IDF sniper shot somebody waving a white flag in the head moments after he had finished being interviewed yet the cameras were still rolling

...but when the ICJ passed their ruling Itamar Ben-Gvir responded with the most pathetic, childish response to a country ever being officially accused of genocide: "Hague schmague"

...which all somehow culminated in Joe Biden cutting all US funding to the UNRWA, while Rishi Sunak merely suspended all funding, all because Israel made totally unfounded allegations of the UNRWA being involved on October 7th which they had never made before yet suddenly found plenty of evidence they weren't going to share with anyone else within a few hours of the ICJ passing judgment saying Israel could be investigated for genocide based of UNRWA findings

...while doing her bit for peace was Mayim Bialik tweeting a video of her cackling along to a Dan Ahdoot routine which boiled down to "Yeah, we're murdering civilians on an industrial scale, isn't that hilarious?" while showing just how brave she is by turning off the replies, which made her look both sociopathic and cowardly while also underlining that being on The Big Bang Theory can cause some fatal damage to what you think funny actually is

So nice to see ultra-relatable nice guy Rishi Sunak and nominative determinism debunker James Cleverly put their heads together to tackle the issue of the asylum backlog, and the solution they came up with was...trying to change the definition of what the asylum backlog actually is and then claim it to have been sorted, in spite thousands of ongoing cases from that very specific timeframe

Good start to the year from billionaire manchild Elon Musk and his love of FREEZE PEACH when there was a mass purge of left-leaning journalists on Twitter (left-leaning journalists who just so happened to criticise Israel...) without warning nor any reason for their bans being given...sorry, make that another mass purge of left-leaning journalists on Twitter without warning or any reasons for their bans being given, as that's happened once before yet for some strange reason doesn't seem to happen to Fox News' loudest screamers - and only reinstated them after Jackson Hinkle asked him to

...and then it emerged that Bill Ackman is the latest person who is unaware of how the Streisand Effect works as it emerged that he handed billionaire manchild Elon Musk lists of people who reported that his name was on the Epstein List (which is what happens to people whose name appears on the Epstein List, funnily enough) and Musk dutifully banned the lot of them under the belief that, a.) Him banning people at Ackman's behest would not come out, and b.) Even more people would be aware of Ackman being on the Epstein List when it came out

...but then billionaire manchild Elon Musk decided that he hadn't acted like an antisemitic twunt for five minutes, so he went to Auschwitz and after his visit he addressed a conference where he said that if Twitter existed during the Holocaust it would have saved lived, before treating people with eyes and ears to his marvelous take that the difference between Auschwitz and a tesla factory is that minorities were willingly allowed into Auschwitz

...yet by the end of the month billionaire manchild Elon Musk was reduced to sulking that his $56bn was clearly too much, howling that people should never do business in Delaware - which he could have avoided altogether if he founded Tesla, but because he didn't all he can do is let that sink in

Remember when Suella Braverman was Home Secretary and tried to ban pro-Palestine marches, going as far as to call them "hate marches"? That would be the same Suella Braverman who attended the Board of Deputies' pro-genocide Israel march and was interviewed while at said march, apparently because "that's different"

Good to see that Keir Starmer's Labour Party are taking the allegations that Rosie Duffield is transphobic to the point that, in Germany, they would be guilty of Holocaust denial due to her statement that the Nazis did not exterminate the trans community seriously, as an internal review ignored the testimony of former staffers and the footage of her appearing on GB fucking News to repeat her statements that would have her convicted of Holocaust denial in Germany and decide there's no case to answer

...and a week later Laura Pascal saw her suspension overturned for numerous transphobic tweets so Keir Starmer's Labour Party could reinstate her to the ballot Hackney council elections, with Pascal showing just how sorry she was with the full "I'm sorry you were offended" act in her nonpology - though Hadley Freeman was appalled that Pascal was made to quote-unquote apologise for liking and posting transphobic material, because of course TERFs are the real victims in this - and then, mere hours after posting her nonpology, Pascal's Twitter feed went right back to the exact behaviour she was suspended for in the first place - which looked really, really clever when she lost the council election in what was previously a Labour safe seat

Superb bit of whataboutism from Alan Dershowitz when being interviewed on Fox News after his name came out on the Epstein list: demand to know how many of the people criticising him for being a sexual predator have criticised Hamas

Unifying force Keir Starmer harrumphed that voter apathy would let the Tories win the next election, apparently forgetting the reason for such apathy is Keir Starmer telling hundreds of thousands of potential Labour voters to stick their votes where the sun doesn't shine as their not welcome in Keir Starmer's Labour Party

...soon followed by unifying force Keir Starmer saying that he isn't Jeremy Corbyn, which is something he has done approximately every six months since becoming leader of Keir Starmer's Labour Party as it players better to the Murdoch press than having actual policies

...and then unifying force Keir Starmer demonstrated the sort of decisive and visionary man who should be leading the UK that he so clearly is when asked about Peter Mandelson's name being on the Epstein list and his response was little more than "I dunno..."

Looks like Aaron Rodgers may be in a spot of bother after he said that Jimmy Kimmell's name was on the Epstein list, to which Kimmell informed him it might be a good idea to lawyer up - though that does let Pat McAfee off the hook somewhat as it was on McAfee's show that Rodgers said this with no pushback whatsoever at the time while on the next edition all he offered was the "It was just a joke!" defence which is definitely going to stand up in court

Amateur snuff photographer Logan Paul is once again blaming "bad actors" for his CryptoZoo scam pyramid scheme game being exposed as a scam as if he went into the obvious scam which he co-founded and put his name and face to promoting with innocent and honest intentions and literally everyone else involved was a crook, which I'm sure he isn't saying as he's having to pay people back a fraction of the money they lost as long as they don't pursue legal action a good six months after he said he would, which of course is not motivated by the lawsuit against him for scamming people out of their money with CryptoZoo

Totally normal behaviour from Julia Hartley-Brewer when she totally lost the plot during an interview with Dr Mustafa Barghouti by shouting over him to try and steer the conversation away from suggesting Israel are not The Good Guys and then capped it off by inferring that Barghouti was sexist as he didn't like women talking which was an obvious dogwhistle, and a few days later followed that up with the definitely not utterly fucking insane question about whether ethnic cleansing is a viable solution as long as you don't kill people when doing so

Looks like somebody needs to tell Bill O'Reilly the issue about hanging around with members of the Leopards Eating My face Party, as his bemoaning how the state of Florida has banned a couple of his books looks like he needs somebody to clue him in with what's happening

Militant TERF JK Rowling unleashed more of her badly-written fiction into the world as she once again bleated about women's rights being erased because that scans better than saying "I'm a bigot who doesn't care about women, hence my complete silence when Rose vs Wade was expunged"

This month it was Shaun Bailey being handed the missive from Tufton Street to bang on about Carol Vorderman, with him appearing on GB News to say she should not participate in political debate as she has an Instagram account or...something. Just a reminder: Shaun Bailey was one of the people habitually attending lockdown-breaking pissups, which apparently means he is perfectly suited for a role in the House of Lords

...and then Shaun Bailey went on TV to address his comments about Carol Vorderman after quite unexpectedly receiving quite some backlash for them, and how did Bailey address this backlash? By doubling down and accused Vorderman of being a bully

Mayor of Amity Island Ron DeSantis showed just how well his campaign to become the Republican nominee was going when he blurted out that getting the Covid vaccine is the cause for Covid cases, clearly trying to capture the antivaxxer vote - which worked so well he announced he was dropping out of the race within days

So it turns out that Vince McMahon is not only the vile piece of shit that it was long assumed that he was, but it turns out that he was even worse than people realised as on top of sexual assault allegations which are already out there there's now sex trafficking and torture on the list of allegations

...so what did Paul Levesque do when the subject came up in the post-Royal Rumble press conference a couple of days later? Claim he hadn't read the list of allegations while taking lame potshots at AEW that unintentionally insulted the new president of New Japan Pro Wrestling, because why stop at insulting people's intelligence when you can fatally undermine WWE fans' insistence that WWE never talks about AEW?

Not only did BrewDog decide that the living wage applies to other companies and not their new hires who will be paid below that as company policy, but if you happened to venture an opinion on Twitter about how this might be shit BrewDog CEO James Watt would be in your replies to lecture you about how this isn't his company being shit to their new staff - which makes it look like he spends more time searching Twitter for mention of BrewDog than he does listening to advice about maybe not opening multiple large pubs in places with high rents in a short space of time

It appears that Joey Barton has committed himself to get in the right wing grift at this point, as after last month's meltdown about Mary Earps he started January by ranting about Lucy Ward and Eni Aluko being pundits for an FA Cup match in a totally sane way by comparing them to Fred & Rose West, and by the end of that week declared he was part of the Gender Critical movement because nothing says "protecting women" like a convicted domestic abuser

Perfectly normal broadcasting from GB News where they had Charles Manson bought off Wish Neil Oliver blathering on about the latest disease which antivaxxers' have invented, "turbo cancer", because apparently vaccines don't give blood clots anymore but an entirely new type of cancer which not a single health authority has identified. I'm sure that Ofcom will do something about this...

According to Andrea Leadsom three year old children have teeth which they began growing four and a half years ago. I'm sure that we'll be hearing people making jokes about her mathematic abilities for years to come off the back of this...

...although Christian Wakeford decided he should get in on the act by claiming 25,000 people attended the pro-Israel rally in Trafalgar Square, when all footage suggests that it would be generous to say that they had 5% of that quote figure in attendance

...but that didn't rule out Therese Coffey attempting to show solidarity when she thought it was a good idea to browbeat Yvette Cooper in Commons for getting her facts wrong when Cooper said that Kigali is the capital of Rwanda. In other words, the Hansard will have a permanent record of Therese Coffey not knowing that Kigali is, in fact, the capital of Rwanda

Apparently the only person surprised that Laurence Fox lost on all three counts when his libel case came to trial was Laurence Fox, as his immediate response was to try and claim that Nicola Fox somehow "lost" because she is "racist" - which is an interesting claim given Fox's attempt at claiming that his saying that he hates black people would not be racist in the context of being habitually gangraped in a Ugandan jail

I'm going to suggest that Alena Habba is not very smart if she tries to delay Trump's many, may trials for a week or so by pretending to have Covid - only to be pictured at a Trump rally, which somehow got the bloke who took selfies with her bundled out by security as if the Streisand Effect doesn't exist and the story wouldn't blow up

I'm sure that James Bikelover thought he was being noble posting a video of him yelling at somebody holding their train ticket in their hand calling them a fare dodger, but in reality he looked a lot like a gammony prick looking for an excuse to yell at brown people and then post the footage of him yelling at brown people online

And finally, we heard registered sex offender Donald Trump give a rare moment of clarity instead of his incoherent rambling where he showed just the sort of the grace and decorum expected of him by responding to the Perry High School shooting by saying "Get over it", sentiments which I am sure was appreciated by the parents of Ahmir Jolliff, the sixth grader who was killed during the spree. But it didn't last, as his response to having to pay over $80m to E Jean Grey because he couldn't shut the fuck up about her after being ordered to pay her $8m was to go right back to ranting and raving about her like a stable genius would

#dickheads of the month

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panthera-dei · 2 years ago

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I relate to your good is good and evil is evil

If a person supports self-defence. They're saying self-defence is justified

Most people can see the merit in self-defence

If they support revenge killings. They're saying revenge killings are justified — and here is where the problem lies

A racist might want revenge for something I see as not a big deal. This hypothetical society, in this ask, in which revenge killing is okay. They might think I want revenge because this person bumped into me and therefore I will kill them

Then the argument might extend to, but what if we are only allowed revenge in some situations — the problem is in who gets to decide

Then the argument might extend to, but what if we vote on what revenge is justifiable and what isn't? — child marriage is legal in some parts of the USA, conversion "therapy" is legal in some parts of the USA. Things that many see as morally wrong are legal in some parts of the US. So you can have a vote of the people, but the people you don't want winning the vote might win the vote

The vote of the people doesn't always lead to moral solutions

Not everything can be seen in moral absolutes. Some things are on a case by case basis, but sometimes it's safer to make things a clear cut NO. No you cannot be a vigilante instead of well you can be a vigilante "but" — because who decides the reasoning followed by the but?

Revenge also doesn't give a net benefit to society

It is proven that revenge has long term worse psychological effect on the person who did the revenge

The aggressor can be stopped by being put in prison. So revenge psychologically damages the person doing revenge unnecessarily, because they can stop that person through imprisonment

Killing the aggressor may bring reassurance to the victim, but it won't cure any PTSD they have, if they survived

In most cases, there is no significant net benefit to revenge

Dick Roman is a unique case. While everybody was motivated partially by revenge [ for Sam & Dean it was Bobby and for Crowley it's because Dick was being a Dick ] Dick being a powerful supernatural and intelligent creature with many loyal minions, makes prison not an option for him. The only way to get the net benefit of Dick not killing millions of people was to kill him

Just like the above example I can see circumstances in which revenge has a significant net benefit [ saving millions of lives ]

But the starting point should be "revenge is wrong"

- Someone takes revenge

- Okay let's look at context here and evaluate

If the "revenge is wrong" is our starting point, then maybe the person will try and think of solutions to stop the person that isn't vigilantism. Therefore if they did take revenge we have to ask why?

For example maybe in this hypothetical we think of imprisoning Dick Roman, because we don't want revenge to be our go to. But then we find out that because of his social, supernatural and political power, we realize murder is the best option. Revenge was a last resort if our starting point is revenge is wrong

We don't want to say "revenge is ALWAYS wrong" because that ignores context but nor do we want to say "revenge is ok if"

If our starting point is "revenge is okay if " then maybe someone who wants revenge will talk themselves into why their revenge is okay

<nod nod!!> I see what you mean and I agree!

It reminds me of something C. S. Lewis wrote about. I couldn't find the exact quote again, but it was from a collection of essays called Present Concerns, and he essentially said something very similar, that since humans are generally untrustworthy and mess things up, we have to make rules and compromises that may go against what we'd think to be right in order to make sure that we don't destroy each other.

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britcision · 8 months ago

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(Thank you so much I am OBSESSED with that smug lil smile it killed me)

Tbh I think the smile comes from a number of places; first being simply that it’s fun to physically exert yourself a little, and feels good to wipe a full room of fools without breaking a sweat

I dunno if he actually has any kind of desire to be good at it, but you don’t need to want to be good at something to enjoy being really good at it and getting to prove how good you are

His only desire is demon-murder, and to do that he has to be good enough at fighting to commit said murder, so it’s definitely a strong motivation, but there are two main reasons why I think he’s always been a fucked up little teleporter:

1) his perfect death record; he was never once killed in a dungeon pre-series, and if he joined the Canaries around the same age Pattadol did (early/mid 80s, officially adults for elves) he was a Canary for 60 years before becoming a dungeon lord

By comparison, Fleki dies at least twice in the Island’s dungeon, IF she didn’t go down again in the final fight

Flamela has specifically been kept away from every single dangerous dungeon and STILL died at least once pre-series

Only Milsiril can match his record, so whatever he was doing pre-dungeon lord, he was fucking incredible at it… or it was a variant on his instant-kill teleporting nonsense, which does not have a viable defence other than not letting him touch you

If it wasn’t his teleport-nonsense, he’s abandoned something he was ridiculously good at and never done it again even when face to face with the demon

2) it says in his timeline that he “dedicated himself to recovery” in 480, 20 years before he got back to work (which happened the instant he was fit to fight, elsewhere in his entry)

However, we do see what he looked like in 499, the year Utaya fell, when Milsiril comes to him to tell him what happened in Utaya… and he does not look like he’s been training and improving for 19 years

Per Milsiril’s words, he’s no different from a lifeless corpse

Which means he got from bedridden to fighting fit in a single year, which just plain isn’t long enough to invent an entirely new fighting style AND master it perfectly enough to remain unkilled for another 14 years as the World’s Most Self Destructive Canary

He DEFINITELY got way more fucked up with it after the dungeon, which is why I think that’s when he started putting objects in bodies, but he just plain didn’t have time to abandon his old specialty and make a new one, especially if it involved mastering a new branch of magic

(Secret Third Reason: smug little shit Mithrun would 1000% LOVE inventing an entirely new way of fighting just to prove how much better he is not only than his brother, but than everyone else

What kind of pleb needs a weapon when the wall is right there?

He didn’t want to be a Canary, but he desperately wanted everyone else to acknowledge him as the best and specifically better than his brother, and applying magic in a new and weird way that makes him damn near unstoppable is an excellent way to do that

With his blazing inferiority complex and jealousy issues (evidenced in his dungeon building, same comic), he couldn’t have let himself be ignorable when he has the option to be smug)

do you think mithrun had learned teleportation magic before he became dungeon lord, because it's difficult and he had wanted to be an advanced magic user (the -best- one in school) OR he learned it after his recovery because it's extremely dangerous and he decided that it's the only effective way to fight the demon (and he dgaf about safety anymore)?

#dungeon meshi #delicious in dungeon #dungeon meshi spoilers #delicious in dungeon spoilers #captain mithrun #mithrun #i eat lore for breakfast and also crime i spend a lot of time with the timelines 😅#drives me NUTS that it doesn’t include when he first joined

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writeyouin · 11 months ago

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Lucifer (Hazbin Hotel) X Male-Reader - Sinless Sinners - Chapter 3

Chapter 3 - Learning To Get Along

A/N – So, a user on A03 suggested the snake servants’ new names. It was a stroke of genius on their behalf, and I can only thank them for it.

Warnings – None.

Rating – T

FEMALE VERSION HERE

GN VERSION HERE

Do you think you can manage that? Lucifer’s words hung in the air, creating an icy barrier between you.

Your eyebrows furrowed, creating an annoyed crease along your forehead.

“No,” You told Lucifer, who stared at you incredulously.

You saw the look he was giving you and decided to explain yourself.

“I don’t-” Lucifer started.

Who were you, really?

Well, it wouldn’t take long to uncover your ruse. Lucifer had ways of telling an Angel from a Demon, and once you were asleep, he would know.

“Yeah,” Lucifer said evenly. “I love my Charlie.”

“So, you’ll try then.”

Lucifer nodded his head in consent.

“Okay, I’ll see you in the morning. Good night.”

The sentiment went unreturned as your King returned to his chambers, biding his time until you slept.

In the short time you had spent there, it had become home.

You sighed and dared not ponder further when you needed to get some sleep.

Throwing yourself on the plush bed, you got comfortable, arranging yourself how you liked, then leaning over to your bedside table, you blew out the cherry candle you had previously lit.

Lucifer waited till the late twilight hours before leaving his workshop. He transformed himself into a snake, slithering silently through the Hallways, ensuring that you wouldn’t hear him coming.

However, not wishing to alert you to his presence, Lucifer decided to opt for the other method.

He pulled a small yellow twenty-sided stone from his pocket and baring his fangs in anger, he pressed it lightly against your skin.

Nothing happened.

Very well.

He would keep his word and… Tolerate you.

He left your room as quietly as he had entered it. Tomorrow, things would be different.

Lucifer didn’t sleep that night; the idea of change was terrifying.

The next morning, when Lucifer finally resigned himself to the fact that he was going to have to face you eventually, he headed downstairs, assuming that was where you were.

“JUST TRY IT!” He heard you yell. “TRY! OPEN YOUR MOUTH, DAMN IT!”

“ARGH!” You grunted as you were dislodged from its back.

“What- What is this?” Lucifer asked, confused.

“Oh shit!” You cursed, embarrassed to have been caught in a less-than-dignified position. You attempted to regain a little composure by standing up, then held up a handful of wadded-up pancake.

“Do they eat?” You demanded, referring to the reptilian cleaners, “’Cos they’ve been in a picture frame their whole lives, and they must be hungry by now.”

Of all the stupid things you could have done, Lucifer couldn’t help but crack a smile, though he had the decency to hide his laugh behind a clenched fist and pass it off as a cough.

“They don’t need to.”

“Okay, but can they?”

“If they wanted to, I suppose so.”

You glared at the mushed-up pancake, “I fucking knew it. Spick, Span, eat your fucking breakfast!”

“I’m sorry, who now?” Lucifer asked.

“Well, they clean, don’t they? Spick and Span seem to fit unless you have something better to name them.”

Lucifer chuckled, a half-short-lived chuckle, but one all the same. You were more chaotic than he expected.

“Fine, if you want them to eat, you’ve got to cook in style.”

You couldn’t help laughing.

“See?” You struggled to get the words out, “I knew they’d like food. I’m just a shite cook.”

Lucifer gazed at his dishes proudly, even though they were no longer fit for either of your consumption.

“Hah,” You said, feeling somewhat awkward now that the moment had passed and Lucifer’s gaze was upon you, trying to figure you out. “I’ll uh, clean this up.”

“No need, leave it to Flim and Flam,” Lucifer said nonchalantly.

“You know that’s not their names.”

“Whatever. So… we’ve met, there was breakfast with a show. We done for today?”

“I don’t know. I was going to go into the City if you wanted to come.”

“I can’t. I have… plans.”

It would always be Lucifer going to their building, on their terms, usually at their behest.

“Plans? So, you’re setting up Charlie’s meeting today?” You guessed astutely. “You know, I’m walking that way too.”

“Fine. Let’s go,” He said, flicking his hand back blasély, even though he found the idea of walking the streets of Hell daunting.

It would be better if he could teleport there, but at least, by the end of the day, you would have something positive to report back to Charlie.

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litsetaure · 3 years ago

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youtube

I need to talk about this scene. Initially, I thought that Gellert just slipped up and blew his cover; he got caught up in what was happening that he forgot himself. You can almost sense it; the Aurors are thinking ‘wait, what?’ Mind you, if this is the point where the MACUSA (and, for that matter, Newt) realised that something was not right, I have some serious questions about what exactly actual Percival Graves was like! It really does say a lot about Graves that the first time they realized that Graves probably wasn't Graves until that speech that basically overturns what they thought he believed on the Statute of Secrecy. Not to mention that sentencing Newt and Tina to that creepy as fuck death penalty didn’t raise any alarms at all!

But then, I thought about the context. If I recall rightly, this scene is directly after Credence has apparently been killed. Obviously, come the second film, we know that’s not true, but as yet, no one else does. And I started to wonder - did Gellert actually slip up? Or did he intend to reveal himself? Had he just had enough and decided to tell ‘his’ colleagues the truth?

I mean, if you listen to him speaking - initially, he doesn’t really sound just angry. Maybe a little bit, but to me, he sounds more sad and frustrated. Especially at the start with the line ‘Madam President…I ask all of you. Who does this law protect?’ It might be his accent, but to me, he sounds like he’s on the verge of tears. His cause is something very important to him and he just witnessed what he thought was a murder of a boy who had a condition that was in no way his own fault. And that would strike a chord within him. Because he’s seen it before with Ariana Dumbledore. A young person suffering from a condition that was in no way her fault, but which kept her trapped and hidden away because of a law that would see her taken and locked away by a draconian Ministry, under the guise of keeping the wizarding community safe and secret.

And it frustrates and hurts Gellert. He doesn’t blow his cover here because he got sloppy. He effectively revealed himself, because he’s had enough of hiding. He wants these people to understand what’s at stake. To see that the law they value so much is only hurting them and others like them. And why is it their obligation to hide? They’re not shameful. They’ve done nothing wrong. Are they really to be condemned to live in secret and fear because of something they can’t control and to protect people who lash out at what they don’t understand?

Yeah. He’s not really angry, or not just angry. He’s just done. Done with all of this bullshit. He knows the damage the statute can do. It denied Percival Dumbledore the right to tell his side of the story (out of fear for his daughter) and ripped him away from the family who needed him. It destroyed Albus’ chance for a future. It also ultimately cost Kendra and Ariana their lives.

And even if he hasn’t initially given away enough to tell everyone who he is, he’s told enough to make it clear which side he’s on. He’s not stupid. He had to know that some people there may have suspected who he was, or at the very least a follower of Gellert’s, and he just turns his back on them after that speech that basically confirms which side of this conflict he's on, if nothing else. And he just turns his back and walks away (in disgust), like it's no big thing. Like there aren't AT LEAST 30 Aurors and President Picquery at his back, and also Newt Scamander and his trunk full of creatures (and Dumbledore's man). That is one hell of a bold power move. He’s saying ‘I know what I’m revealing to you here and I don’t give a shit what you think. I’m done hiding away. I’m not going to tolerate this law that condemns and harms us. I’m going to fight it with everything I have. If you want to attack me and fight me, that’s fine. I’m up for it. I’m not giving up. Do your worst.’

Also, if you watch the fight, it’s pretty typical of what we know of Gellert in a fight. He’s got virtually the entire MACUSA ready to take him down (and he also does not look remotely worried by this, rather he’s thinking ‘okay, fair enough. Do your worst’) but, when they’re firing at him, it looks as though he never casts a single attacking spell. He only appears to be using shielding charms. Damn powerful ones, yes, but shield charms nonetheless. And that’s very similar to what we see and hear of how he fights. He never attacks first. The threeway duel? Aberforth drew his wand first. The fight at the rally? The Auror attacked first, killing the red-haired witch. And here - he knows the Aurors intend to take him down. In such a situation, you have the right to protect yourself - which he does, with the shield charm. But, again, he doesn’t appear to attack them.

And yet, with only shielding charms, he more than holds his own until Newt sends out the bird. That is INCREDIBLY impressive in and of itself. But it’s even more impressive because of one small detail.

The wand he’s using is not the Elder Wand. It’s (I assume) Percival Graves’ wand. Which means Gellert is doing all this badassery with a wand that is not actually his own, either simply because it didn’t choose him in the first place (which it obviously didn’t), or because, not only did it not choose him, but he also didn’t win it/become that wand’s Master. We don’t know what happened between him and Graves (though I’ve seen somewhere that JKR has confirmed Graves is still alive…can’t for the life of me remember where though!), but damn…that’s really impressive.

(Side note, but it’s really interesting to note that, if Gellert did leave Graves alive, it’s not the first time he’s left someone alive when someone else might have killed them. He did the same with Gregorovitch when he stole the Elder Wand. He got the wand, but left Gregorovitch alive. I’ve wondered about that before, since surely the last thing he should do is leave any sort of trail, especially when looking for a powerful artefact like the Elder Wand. And leaving Gregorovitch alive does, ultimately, come back to bite him in the arse when Voldy comes calling. It’s possible that he simply does not take pleasure in killing, and really only does it in self-defence, which says quite a bit about him, in all honesty…)

But this final point about the wand(s) leads to another issue. If Gellert is master of the elder wand and does all that impressive shit with Graves’ wand that isn’t his…how does he lose to Albus?? He’s shaping up to be immensely powerful, intelligent and magically gifted (and also, in terms of his ideas and motives, ABSOLUTELY RIGHT) and yet…Albus beats him? I’m not saying Albus isn’t powerful as fuck and a damn good duellist (he certainly is), but I feel like Gellert is more than a match for him - and they both know it. And yet…Albus wins the duel, and the Elder Wand. It seems suspicious to me. As though…actually, yes. I’m going to say it. I’m now 1000% convinced that Gellert might not have outright surrendered, but he was absolutely holding back against Albus and, in the end, for reasons currently unknown, he threw the duel.

#grindeldore #gellert grindelwald #fantastic beasts and where to find them #percival graves #Grindel!graves #MACUSA #Youtube #the elder wand #discourse #theory

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st-just · 4 years ago

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A Setting: The City of Sethennai

Because I’ve spent long enough tinkering on this that I might as well share it with a population of more than a half-dozen potential players. Also it could almost certainly use an editing pass, and I don’t want to lose it all next time my computer dies.

So, a collection of densely packed plot hooks in the shape of a city

City History

The City of Sethennai is quite possibly the oldest city in the world, or at least the oldest still inhabited. When the first Dwarfs and Goliaths fled the Titans for the coast, they found ziggurats already rising from the water and tunnels dug beneath their feet, ruined by some already ancient cataclysm. Supported by fertile soil and full waters, they built their own city over it, and welcomed their own gods to it, a center of resistance to the Titanomarchy that became an empire in its own right.

Centuries passed and power drifted inland, to the mountain palaces of the Titans’ Giant heirs and the divinely appointed heroes who sometimes overthrew them. The City was rich, but peaceful, its soldiers only raised when one princess or another took it as a capital during a civil war. Such was the case when the first ships appeared from the East.

The adventurers from the League of Free Cities had been spurred across the sea by visions of fortune and glory, overwhelming the defenders with armies of goblin slaves and the ability to evoke demons far beyond what they could deal with. Their leader Sethennai proclaimed himself Emperor and renamed the city in his honour, taking it as his capital. After his assassination some years later the ‘empire’ fell into an anarchy it has never quite recovered from, but the name has stuck, and for the two hundred years since wonders and riches have flowed across the eastern ocean while mercenaries and adventurers have poured west in ever greater numbers.

The city’s ruler for the last fifteen years has been Prince Cael, an adventurer universally believed to be supported by the League’s political rivals back East. If so, they got what they paid for – experts and financiers have been imported and sponsored, and trade opened to anyone capable of paying the reasonable import duties.

Until two years ago, he had been the picture of brutal decadence, rousing himself from luxurious hedonism only to brutally deal with any threats to his power. Recently though, he changed – sponsoring vast expeditions into the ancient palaces of the interior and the ruins buried on the city’s outskirts, and installing a self-proclaimed Hierophant whose heresies had earned her a death warrant back East in the city’s grandest temples (violently banishing the cults which had held them since the Conquest in the process).

One week ago, at exactly noon, the sun vanished from the sky for one minute, and the entire city was filled with a deafening scream. Since then, the Prince’s grand palace has been sealed tight, with ingeniously horrifying magical defences ensuring that anyone who tries to force a door or window isn’t around to try again. Everything’s very rapidly falling apart, and the city’s traditional power brokers are reacting like so many rabid weasels in too small a cage.

It is, then, a perfect opportunity for people with the will to seize it.

Districts

The Palantine

If Sethennai is the oldest continually inhabited city in the world, the vast palace complex which crowns its central hill is probably likewise the oldest building still in use. Its foundation is burrowed deep into the hill on which it stands, to the point that some delvers and historians have theorized that it was once a truly massive pyramid now mostly buried by the ages. Rising out of it are two great peaks - impressive ziggurats in their own right - of obvious dwarven make, fashioned to house their ancient Ancestors-Kings and gods in suitable splendor, and since renovated and built over to house the city’s rulers and most favored priesthoods. Surrounding them are a dozen smaller peaks, each the estate of one of the city’s foremost patrician families, teeming with retainers and servants. The land around them is pristine and perfectly manicured, full of wondrous botanical gardens and menageries for the amusement of Sethennai’s greatest citizens.

Location of Interest: The Throne

A palace built on the ruins of a palace built on the ruins of a palace. The grand ziggurat which the city’s rulers have called home since time immemorial is built into and sits at the peak of its highest hill, the highest point in the sky for dozens of miles in every direction. Its labyrinthine apartments, kitchens, vaults, galleries and corridors house the Prince and his family, dozens of favorites and notables, and hundreds of guards, servants, retainers and entertainers.

Or, well, housed.

One week ago, the sun vanished from the sky, and a scream echoed through the city. Since then, the palace complex has proven impenetrable. Every door and window is closed, and attempts to open them by force have fared...poorly. In a ‘never going to walk again’ sort of way. Scrying and other means of magical surveillance so far attempted have simply failed. No one has tried to escape, and no noises have been heard - the whole complex is simply silent.

Of course, that means that all its secrets and riches are there for the taking. Or that’s the growing consensus - at least three separate groups have camped out near various gates and major entrances, each preparing their own scheme to break in and seize everything within. There’s no fighting between them. Yet.

Faction of Note: The Hierophant

Yri Cenred is many things. A self-proclaimed ‘experimental theologian’. One of shockingly few mortal humans to piss off the Illyrin clergy enough to be specifically declared Anathema. A member of the Commonwealth’s very exclusive list of ‘Enemies of Reason’. Empirically immune to thunderbolts from cloudless skies and most other signs of divine disfavor. Easily one of the most powerful mages in the city. And, for most of the last two years, its High Priestess and Hierophant.

No one knows quite how her first meeting with Prince Cael went, and whether she was responsible for her change in personality or if he sought her out because of it. All anyone knows is that shortly after she arrived in the city a few days ahead of Imperial Witch-Hunters looking for her head on a pike, Cael forcibly expelled the Khasali cults which had occupied the Palantine’s grand temples since the Conquest, and installed her in their place with the newly minted title of Hierophant for the city. Since then she and her growing coterie of acolytes (bright-eyed, motivated and young, though you can flip a coin as to whether their hands are stained with ink or blood) have been extremely busy, though no one can say exactly what with. Certainly they haven’t held any public rituals or services. Despite the costs - both political and monetary - in protecting and sponsoring her, Cael never seemed to question whether it was worthwhile.

The general opinion on the streets is that she’s probably to blame for anything and everything worth complaining about. The only real divide is between those who think she bewitched the Prince and turned him into her puppet, those who think she’s the one who killed him, and the moderates who think the correct answer is probably ‘both’.

Foundrytown

The New World is absolutely full of exotic reagents, fuel sources, and materials to craft and invent with. It is also absolutely full of people who will pay in your currency of choice for finished goods, armor, weaponry, and whatever nasty alchemical tricks you can keep from blowing up in their face until they want them to. Foundrytown is the sprawling mass of smokestacks, workshops, factories and markets that has spilled to the north of Sethennai’s walls, exploiting both opportunities to the fullest while limiting the chance that some idiot will burn half the city down (again). Robber barons, militant workers, loose fraternities of tinkerers and half-trainer artificers, and the occasional rogue clockwork or alchemical monstrosity all jostle for space and control of the beating heart of Sethennai’s economy.

Faction of Note: The Grand Bazaar

Official Imperial theology accords true dragons a place of honour - the Princes of the Earth, entrusted by Heaven with containing the fury of the elements within themselves so as to render the world peaceful enough for cultivation by the younger races - and forbids very few things to wyrms willing to play the part. (Principally, do not become undead, a god in your own right, or an archdemon of the elements. Though some justification can usually be found for how any sufficiently problematic dragon is actually doing one of those).

And Tyramara the Magnificent, the Fire of the Deeps has not technically done any of those things. Still, the ancient wyrm has little interest in allowing the wasting disease which has crippled her continue to spread, and her solution is unorthodox enough that she thought it prudent to abandon her palace-lair in Imir and relocate to the New World, six treasure galleons worth of her hoard in tow.

One of the city’s wealthiest residents from the moment she landed, she has bought a plaza in Foundrytown and offered her sponsorship to nearly every tinker and engineer who cares to set up shop there, provided they help sustain and improve the mechanical and hydraulic prosthetics that supplement and replace her dying organs. She has promised a full half of her hoard to any who can permanently deal with her condition, a fortune men have killed for in the past, and certainly will again.

Faction of Note: The Hellworks

They’re not officially called the Hellworks - there are, in fact, absolutely no devils involved. Still, between the billowing clouds of soot and steam pouring from their chimneys at all hours of the day, the severe architecture, and the bound spirits who keep the looms running at all hours of the day and eagerly take any opportunity to leave anyone who gets too close crippled or maimed to vent their anger - well, the name stuck.

One of the most obvious consequences of Prince Cael’s turn towards the esoteric these last years, the ' ‘Royal Sethennai Weaver’s Trust” is the brainchild and absolute domain of the Lady Binder Katerine sol Dalme sol Telrin ir’Paimon. An Illyrin magister with heterodox opinions on the proper uses of magic, popular opinion is divided on whether it’s more accurate to say Cael invited her to reside in the city, or just offered her asylum before her elders had a chance to properly condemn her.

Regardless, after six months of operation she - and her half-dozen strictly bound and extremely unhappy ifrit, and several hundred eminently replaceable more mundane workers - are already well on their way to supplying all the clothing and textiles Sethennai’s teeming masses require single-handedly, produced at a scale and speed far beyond what any traditional artisans guild could hope to compete with.

Crossroads

Dominating the Old City - synonymous with it, really - that the district is called the ‘Crossroads’ is often considered something of a cruel joke by new arrivals. The ‘Labyrinth’ is usually offered instead. Ancient stone tenements and storehouses are basic facts of geography, surviving through conquest and fire, and over and around and through them are generations of newer building - mansions of imported oak and marble, shantytowns of cannibalized carts and derelict ships built on rooftops, and nondescript inns and stores conveniently built on top of trap doors and tunnels leading to much more exciting locales. Natives of a neighborhood who know all the secret passages and blind alleys can quickly get to anywhere they like. New arrivals are strongly advised to pay well for a reliable guide.

Faction of Note: The Dreamers

There’s something under the harbor. There always has been. There probably always will be. Most people can go their whole lives without noticing it, but a certain few find living in the Old City a haunting experience, their nights spent dreaming of drowned palaces and impossible angles, their days spent lost in alleys and markets that have never existed. Inevitably, they come out of a daze and find themselves perched on the waters edge, staring into the filthy, polluted depths with an intense sense of longing.

Called the Dreamers, they’re an eclectic and informal fraternity, living in makeshift houseboats or the cheapest tenements that press against the water. Quite a few simply sleep on the streets. They’re something like a religion, and something like a guild - the most personable and talkative are merchants, selling the fish that others catch, the strange relics and minor treasures that their divers retrieve from the harbor, and the often beautiful - if always uncanny - art they produce. They take care of each other and, though no one has ever seen a dreamer raise a hand in anger, every attempt by syndicates or rival cults to extort or expel them has ended with their opponents going mad, screaming and clawing at their flesh in the middle of the night, or found poised in some elaborate and improbable suicide. After the third time, everyone more or less got the idea.

No one knows who leads them - if anyone does. Insofar as they have a public face, Zoe Alvane is it - a street urchin who ‘found the sea’ before she had hit puberty, for the last few years she has been the one who spends seemingly every hour of the day ensuring her ‘aunts’ and ‘uncles’ have food and shelter, and looking after the other beggars and poor in the neighborhood while she can as well. She’s also the one outsiders deal with when they come looking to buy information - it’s a disquieting fact of life in Sethennai that the Dreamers’ know almost everything there is to know about almost everyone. They are generally content to be left alone, and Zoe is very sympathetic and willing to offer personal advice and play the part of fortune teller to anyone desperate and willing to trade or do a favor - but it’s generally agreed that trying to force information from them is a bad idea.

Faction of Note: Ironfang Mercenary Company

When Prince Cael seized the throne, he didn’t do so single handedly. He needed trained, disciplined soldiers to seize the Palantine and coastal forts, ensure no one escaped the palace, and keep order on the streets while the messy business of extinguishing the previous dynasty was carried out. For all this and more, he relied on the professional expertise of the Ironfang Company.

Formed around a core of hardened hobgoblin veterans of various border wars and colonial filibusters in the Free Cities, the Company has for the last fifteen years been the Prince’s favorite tool for securing his interests, keeping order, and bloodily making examples of any threats to his rule. For their trouble, they’ve grown fat and happy - a steady paycheck and yearly bonuses have left every officer with a townhouse, and most common soldiers with coin for families and apartments for them to live in.

Despite the lack of real combat - and the need to take on locals as new recruits, as more and more soldiers retire or die over the years - Captain Azaersi is a leathery old warehouse who has never let her troops grow soft. Even week the grand parade ground in Crossroads echoes with screaming drill sergeants and the crack of muskets, and it’s an open secret that the Prince paid to import stocks of grenades and munitions from Quepta for her arsenal. No one knows quite how she plans to deal with the sudden disappearance of her patron and employer, but for the moment the Ironfang seem content to keep order in the corner of Crossroads around the arsenal and parade ground that they call home.

The Ruins

The ruins are not, legally, part of Sethanni, and absolutely no one with anything resembling sense would ever actually choose to live there. No one actually knows where the eponymous ruins come from - or at least, no one can agree which section is from where. Shantytowns of the most despised and desperate and built on top of their predecessors, which are built on top of battered and broken pre-Conquest ziggurats and homes, which are built on top of - well, some of it is just a natural cave system, and no one is sure about the rest. Or ever found just how deep it goes. Aside from the casualties of the Prince’s attempts to map it, the Ruins are inhabited exclusively by those that would be strung up or burned alive if they tried to live anywhere else, or those sufficiently dedicated to their greed or ambition that they’re absolutely certain they alone can unlock the secrets and find whatever wonders are buried beneath all the traps and monsters. Not great company, either way.

Faction of Note: The Weavers’ Masquerade

Sethennai never really followed its ‘sister cities’ in the League in religion, with a sort of tolerant anarchy of different gods and sects almost always predominating over the gleefully blasphemously sublime demon-cults that the conquerors originally brought with them. But the small cultists that did exist at least enjoyed a luxurious, privileged irrelevance, with sanctums in the city’s grand temple. That finally changed when Cael seized the temples for his new Hierophant - and every relic and sacred text in them, as bloodily as necessary. Which with demon worshippers meant a massacre - letting one escape and beseech their patron for aid in crafting some horrible vengeance being generally agreed to be a terrible idea.

Not that that actually worked, of course. One acolyte managed to escape - no one’s quite sure how, but then, probably best not to ask unless you’ve got a particularly strong stomach. Well, that’s one of her stories, anyway - she goes by Maia Dayal, Beloved of the Architect, Wearer of Ten Thousand Faces, and sometimes she prefers to say she’s a recently arrived priestess from Celmy, or a street urchin who found enlightenment entirely on her own. As might be expected by the self-proclaimed title, she also changes her face (and build, age, species…) about as often as everyone else bathes.

While she has shown no interest in actually taking bloody revenge on the Prince, Dayal has done plenty to earn the price on her head. The Masquerade that has grown around her is a carnival of wonders and horrors, where all manner of temptations are offered to the truly desperate, debauched and vile. Skinweavers and facetakers always need raw material, and secrets and deaths can both be easily bought for the right price - though in keeping with their patron, the Masquerade is hardly a safe or stable place to do business, and offending the wrong cultist can easily lead to a shift from ‘visitor’ to ‘canvas for artistic expression’.

Faction of Note: The Keendream Expedition

Over the last two centuries, the actual facts about the pre-Conquest city has (with few exceptions) been buried under the weight of legends, rumors and (when necessary) several tons of rock. Despite this (or because of it) whenever things get bad (...worse) for the original population of goliaths and dwarves who can trace their lineage back to that time, stories about some hidden savior or buried relic that will free them spread like wildfire. This is just such a time.

Ilidak Keendream Kathu-Viano is an explorer from a family with some grounds for its claim of being pre-conquest nobility. For the last year he has worked on commission for the Prince, leading a large and incredibly well-armed expedition into the ruins across the water from the Old City, digging into them in search of..something. No one who knows the goal has been willing to talk, but certainly it has involved hiring every historian and scholar with anything like knowledge of the city before it was Sethennai (not to mention half the charlatans and rumor mongers who might know something).

Once news of the Prince’s disappearance reached Kathu-Viano, work shifted from its previous sedate pace to something much more determined. Certain paranoid minds have said it’s almost like he was waiting for this. Other, moderately less paranoid ones have pointed out it’s a bit odd that the government-sponsored expedition is so short on patricians and city notables and so high on mercenaries form the interior and goliath clans with far more reason to listen to Kathu-Viano than the Prince, should some conflict break out.

The Stacks

Museums, exhibitions, satellite campuses, mystical archives, storehouses of eldritch knowledge, and one actual wizard tower - if the faint taste of ozone in the air doesn’t warn you what you’re getting in for leaving the city’s eastern gates, then the architecture certainly will. Wedged between variously reputable bookstores and inquisitives, different formalized and longstanding campuses are dedicated to the arts of conjuration, enchantment, sparkcraft, and practical cosmology. Competition for new discoveries and to fully unlock ancient secrets are good natured and nonviolent - at least, that’s all you can get out of anyone left standing once the smoke clears.

Faction of Note: The Bookhounds

The Bookhounds aren’t any sort of formal organization - and at least half of them would roll their eyes at the name - but rather a loose network of gutter mages, disreputable academics, private inquisitives and researchers for hire, and people with a little talent or cash to burn and far too much curiosity for their own good. They act as a sort of volunteer police force in the Stacks, passing each other clues and leads and doing each other favors to track down stolen (or escaped) relics and curses, stop idiots from unleashing anything really dramatic, and generally help people and save the day. Not to mention accumulate really impressive bags of tricks and rare books themselves in the process.

While they don’t have anything like a real leader, the group’s beating heart is Nikos Roth, an Esheri academic who arrived in the city as a fresh-faced student on a three month expedition a decade back and who never intends to leave. Running a small, incredibly ramshackle-looking secondhand book store wedged between two tenements, he nonetheless has one of the more impressive collections of occult lore in the city, and is more than happy to trade for more of it, or connect anyone in need with a specialist who can help them. As more than one would-be thief has discovered, he’s also a fairly talented mage, and for all that being entirely self-taught has left him with some obvious holes in his training, it’s also left him with some tricks that basically no one comes prepared to counter.

Redgate

Once, Redgate Prison stood alone, a fearsome warning of the Prince’s power to anyone looking south from the city center. Eighty-some years of steady urban sprawl later, most of its inmates would probably just need a running start from the prison walls to land back home. Filled mostly with those whose dreams of a new world fell flat, but with too little cash or too many enemies to get home, the slums of Redgate are a natural habitat for street gangs, drug peddlers, flesh traders, and everyone else looking to take advantage of the desperate and vulnerable. The prison itself - and its infamous and heavily armed wardens - has stumbled into being the center of law writ large, dealing out summary justice for criminals that are (correctly) assumed to be beneath the Prince’s notice.

Faction of Note: Regate Prison

Sitting on a steep hill across the water from the Old City, Redgate prison was at one point a fortress, but for generations has been put to use housing the city’s worst, most dangerous, and most profitable criminals. Given the sprawling, crime-ridden slums that now surround it, its wardens also work as a sort of brutal police force, keeping the pretence of order on the street and preserving the Prince’s Peace. Usually.

The problems with discipline start at the top, really. The Prison’s infamously brutal First Warden is also its oldest and most dangerous prisoner. Before the Conquest, Vrocdruk was one of the city’s lesser gods, enthroned in one of the Palantine’s grand temples. When Sethennai - the man - defeated him, he chose to pull his demons away before they could tear the god into so much bloody aether. Instead he was crippled, lessened, and bound to a new home in the fortress and a new purpose; defending the city and its rulers. Later, less skillful, princes altered the binding, making him responsible for most crime and punishment and hoping that his sacred nature would make the native dwarves and goliaths more obedient.

Vrocdruk is still crippled, still bound to the prison, still forced to obey the orders of the city’s acclaimed ruler, and still extremely unhappy about it. He takes any excuse to work out his unhappiness on criminals or troublemakers with the incredible bad luck to catch his direct attention. His wardens largely follow his example, often acting less like agents of justice and more like a particularly well armed gang - to the point of semi-officially collecting fees for ‘security’ from nearby businesses, supplementing the cash extorted from prisoners and their families for both necessities and luxuries while incarcerated.

Sootcliff

Trailing south of Foundrytown, on and under the steep slope beneath the city’s western walls, the densely packed tenements of Sootcliff are certainly stained grey enough to earn the name. Existing primarily as a source of blood and sweat to feed into the ever-hungry foundries and assembly lines to the north, The buildings are cheap, massive, and constructed at the lowest possible cost, with all the consequences you would expect from that. With easy access to weapons and alchemical supplies from Foundrytown and (literally) beneath the notice of the Old City, Sootcliff is famous as the home of militant bands, revolutionary conspiracies, disgraced artificers, and generally anyone who has a dream for a new world and a plan that will require a lot of explosions to get there.

Faction of Note: The Painted Doctors

Less a single organization and more an extraordinarily loose confederation of - often feuding - crimelords, the Painted Doctors are a fraternity of (largely half- or self-) taught alchemists who have over the last year grown to be the dominant criminal guild in Sootcliff. The name sometimes refers to the incredibly distinctive tattoos each ‘Doctor’ has covering much of their body, universally agreed to be somehow enchanted or cursed. Otherwise it refers to the incredibly alien and vibrant skin tones that their test subjects and muscle develop after repeatedly ingesting their ‘miraculous’ potions and tonics.

While possessing remarkably little actual magical talent among them, the Doctors have perfected the recipes for several extremely useful potions - several incredibly addictive drugs, a half dozen forms of acids and grenades, and a dizzying variety of enhancing tonics to improve themselves and distribute to their thugs - and have managed to keep both the recipes and their sources for the necessary reagents entirely secret. This has left them in the enviable position of being able to promise anyone signing on with them that they’ll be able to more or less become a regenerating ogre for an hour whenever they need to fight, while their opposition has had to settle with advising their men to stock up on fire and acid.

The leading light of the Doctors is one ‘Dr’ Fadre - almost certainly not his real name - an alchemical savant whose ‘miracle cures’ are bought and resold across the city. A flashy and well dressed sort whose patronage has turned several of Sootcliff’s most prominent dens of vice into something close to palaces for those who can afford it, he’s said to be far less interested in the nuts and bolts of running a criminal empire than enjoying its fruits and indulging his passion for the Sciences. It doesn’t hurt his reputation that he doesn’t look a day over thirty, and has for as long as anyone has known him.

Chance

Facing Oldport from across the river’s mouth, the docks of Chance are significantly new, cheaper, and altogether more ramshackle. Not really a part of any conscious design, Chance grew organically as the city sprawled beyond its original walls, essentially smuggling docks so successful it was easier to legitimize and start taxing them than it was to hang everyone involved. They now provide the city with a constant infusion of nerdowells and fortune seekers, and the district around them takes great pride in fleecing new arrivals of every penny to their name by the end of their first night on land. Hostels and boarding houses are usually safe, traditional vice dealers less so, and anyone selling treasure maps or magical amulets not at all. Still, they’re probably more harmless than the various mercenary recruiters and ‘exiled princes’ promising to give new arrivals exactly the thrill and fortune they came searching for.

Faction of Note: The Red Ocean Trading Company

What is now the Red Ocean Trading Company has gone through several dramatic changes over it’s eighty years of existence. First a privateer fleet hired by the Free City of Celmy during the First Armada War. Then eventually growing strong enough to seize several islands as an independent pirate state, before being crushed by the Esheri Navy during the Second Armada War. It’s remnants learned a bit of humility from that, and it is now seemingly content with its existence as either (depending on who you ask) a obscenely profitable shipping firm, or one of the most widespread criminal syndicates in the world.

The Company’s significant interests in Sethennai - nearly half the docks in Chance, guides and guards for anyone heading into the Interior, and fingers in quite a few less legitimate pies as well - are ably represented by Captain Arun Prem, a(n in)famous adventurer and scoundrel in his own right, apparently enjoying his semi-retirement behind a desk by getting outrageously drunk with his favorite mercenaries and criminals every night and swapping incredible (and implausible) old war stories.

There’s plenty of rumors, of course - that he’s here in de facto exile after angering the Company’s mysterious senior leadership. That he’s a thousand-year-old vampire and is the Company’s mysterious senior leadership. That he ate a kraken’s heart, and is immortal as long as he doesn’t lose sight of the water. That he’s biding his time to prepare an army before heading inland to carve a new kingdom for himself. That he’s only in the city for as long as it takes to carry out some truly spectacular heist. That he killed Prince Cael in a secret duel and trapped his soul in the pocketwatch he wears at all times. And so on. Of course, other rumours say that he started all of those himself to preserve his mystique as he grows fat in his old age.

Oldport

Facing out to the harbour but safely ensconced within the city walls, Oldpot is, as the name implies, one of the oldest ports in the new world - and certainly one of the busiest. Fully loaded merchant ships arrive daily, their cargoes emptied and replaced with the plunder of the New World almost overnight so they can return home on the next turn of the wind. Beyond the grand ports themselves, this district is home to all the most respectable shipping companies, merchant banks, hotels, and townhouses and apartments, as well as all the official consulates and embassies that Sethennai plays host to.

Faction of Note: First Bank of Sethennai

Despite only being as old as Prince Cael’s reign, the Bank already feels like an eternal and irreplaceable part of Sethennai. This isn’t something people are necessarily happy about, but its leadership had done a truly amazing job at keeping dissent to grumbling and resentment of the inevitable, and not actual resistance. They’re good at that sort of thing, even when they used Prince Cael’s (and, thus, the City’s) massive debts to his foreign benefactors as justification for taking control of the city’s tariffs and tolls, and began rigorously enforcing them, possibly for the first time ever.

Combined with a legal monopoly on the ability to mint coins, this has of course made the Bank incredibly wealthy. But not to the degree that might be assumed - the riches collected are to a large degree shipped back east to foreign creditors. Of the remaining, quite a bit is invested with as much an eye for politics as strict profit.

Executive Director Salman Ticaret, like most of his staff, is a Sethennai native who sought education in the Commonwealth (like most, he took a new name on gaining citizenship). Along with modern accounting and investing techniques, he came home with a firm grasp of political economy - and so for the last decade and a half has been more than happy to offer favorable rates to well positioned patrician and merchant houses, in exchange for their own favors and consideration in turn. The result is that the bank’s marble halls and adamant vaults house information as much as money. And Ticaret is perfectly willing to invest both, if the opportunity is promising enough.

Foreign Interests

The League of Free Cities

The League of Free Cities is not so much a single power as a collection of fiercely independent deomcratic city-states held together by the intertwined private empires of their leading citizens, deep and interdependent trading relationships, and a common religion that the rest of the world calls demon-worship - they view this as deeply offensive. Also they’ve been doing it for hundreds of years and they’re not all dead yet, so clearly everyone else is just doing demonology wrong. Politics are a mess of knives in the dark and openly bribing the voting populace with feasts and spectacles, with glory and riches to anyone who can hold the mob’s favor for long.

Demonic evocation - and the arts learned as a result of it, like fleshweaving, orienomarchy , breaking reality down into elemental chaos and shaping it to your whims, and so on - are in the rest of the world generally met with very thorough execution, making the freethinkers of the League the world’s bleeding edge in magical innovation. The entire culture of the League is also nearly custom-made to produce bold idiots willing to do what it takes to get rich or die trying, and the various Free City’s Adventurers Guilds are (in)famous the world over.

Until recently, the Free Cities considered Sethennai, if not one of them, then at least a younger sibling or benevolent dependency. Prince Cael’s coup has been taken as something of a wound, and the merchant interests who have lost out as he opened trade have made sure that in the decades since his name has become synonymous with bloody-handed tyranny. The first broadsheets celebrating his death will sell out in moments, and the acclaimed merchant adventurer Vyas Asraya, said to be en route to the city, is said to be very optimistic about future trading opportunities.

Holy Illyric Empire

Technically speaking a vast and sprawling feudal state unified only in the person of the Sovereign (Empress of Illyrin, Queen of Belthaya, Defender of the Hierophant of Imir, Grand Duchess of Abhari, etc, and so on, and so forth), the Empire dominates the better part of two continents, and in terms of size and prestige is unquestionably the foremost state on the globe. It is also a bureaucrat’s nightmare, its aristocracy distracted from their internal feuds only when they need to defend their ancestral rights from central overreach.

Ancient controls and long established relationships make Imperial binders the most fearsome conjurers and thaumaturges in the known world, a process not at all hurt by the wholesale incorporation of any powerful spirits or terrestrial god who will sign on the dotted line into the official pantheon. Illyrin Paladins are also easily the most storied heavy cavalry the world has ever seen, and Abharic necromancers are generally held to be the heirs (or direct pupils) of the inventors of the craft.

Illyric interests have prospered under Prince Cael’s reign, but the last years have seen Sethennai become a haven for heretical priests and radical binders, something Ambassador Konrad Reingard has been rumored to be increasingly frustrated with, though no one heard a word from his Oldport estate since the chaos began.

The Sublime Esheri Commonwealth

A thoroughly modern and enlightened state, the Commonwealth is history’s gift to the cartographer, an empire with firmly delineated borders and clear, rationally determined administrative divisions. Governed by a Janissary Corps educated and conditioned from childhood to put principle above self interest and the good of the Commonwealth above friends or (nonexistent) family, the Esheri control far less land than the Illyrin Empire, but has been able to fight it to a standstill and even force it to abandon certain far flung dependencies over a series of wars across the last century.

Beyond a ruthlessly efficient system for taxation and conscription, the Commonwealth’s military might is credited to two sources - on the one hand, its marines are the finest and most disciplined line infantry anyone is likely to ever see, experts in the use of gas and artillery and famously cool under fire. One the other, their heavy automata are an answer to any conjured devil or bound beast, enlightened clockwork providing enough force to cleave through scales and enchanted plate without missing a beat. But the Janissaries are as happy as their enemies to admit that they prefer unfair fights - though they credit their infamous spy network to the fruits of their scientific studies of society and history, while their enemies instead blame the corrupting effects of gold, blackmail, and a complete indifference to the morals of those they work with.

While the Commonwealth does have an embassy in the city, it mostly exists as an appendage of the First Sethennai Bank, the private institution responsible for printing and guarding the solvency of the city’s currency, its entire upper rung staffed by experts trained in the Commonwealth and generally considered Prince Cael’s way of paying back their support for his coup. More recently, it has been rumored that the Secretariat has taken an interest in the struggles in the interior. Coincidentally, an ‘Academic’ has been seen floating around various less than reputable bars in Chance, ostensibly as part of a project to record the city’s myths and folklore.

The Warlord States

For the last two hundred years, the interior has been an evershifting patchwork of successor kingdoms, native revolts, monstrous empires, released horrors, and stranger things besides, the unending tide of weapons and adventurers ensuring that no single player was ever able to secure dominance (and the various rulers of Sethennai have certainly played their part in keeping things that way). At the moment the foremost powers are a giantblooded kingdom led by a messaniac priest-king claiming to be the reincarnation of a Titan, a personal union enforced at sword point between a Khasli pirate queen and a goliath ‘emperor’, a red dragon who has claimed an old giant palace and forced the dwarves living in the mountains around it to provide tribute and worship, and several dozen more minor principalities. It should go without saying that war is the natural state of being, and soldiers are sucked up like ships in a whirlpool.

Adventurers are the lifeblood of Sethennai, and they don’t only flow one way. A constant stream of veterans - either enriched or embittered - skulk, limp or run back once they’ve had their fill of the wonders of the new world, usually missing something important or carrying something priceless - sometimes both. The courts and inner circles of every powerful warlord are composed exclusively of this sort of hard, tricky and generally insufferable type of rogue, and they’re often the only agents trusted enough to be dispatched on delicate missions. The line between warlord and criminal kingpin or pirate magnate is also extremely thin - sometimes nonexistent - as smuggling, sabotage and assassinations are simply basic tools of statecraft in the ruthless arena of the interior. More than once, an ambitious Prince of Sethennai has attempted to recreate their ancestor’s short lived empire, only to be found butchered in their bed but the agents of one warlord or another.

The Warlord States view Sethennai as a vital artery for supplies and funding, and for manpower to refill their armies with disposable bodies for their constant border wars. On a grander scale, those with ambition view it as either a crown jewel and future capital, or a bleeding ulcer on the land which needs to be razed to its foundations. In either case, few are interested in a strong, stable government for it. Regardless of their opinions, sending emissaries and embassies to the city is the first (and often only) diplomatic initiative of every new warlord state - though in truth their role is often closer to mercenary recruiter and fundraiser.

#this is theoretically a writing blog #D&D #abhari #well D&Dified but mostly #worlbuilding

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jadelotusflower · 4 years ago

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Robin Hood Rewatch: 1x13 A Clue: No

“Previously on” recaps can be annoying, but there is an art to it and I love a good one. This is a very, very good one, summarising the last episode with ramping tension as the music builds, then cuts to a different take of the last scene as the theme song starts, and we’re into the opening credits.

This is a long one, so it’s going under the cut:

Guy estimates that the “inner circle” of Robin’s gang is “a dozen at the most” and I find it very funny that neither he nor Vaisey have twigged that it’s always the same five people around him. What’s more annoying than funny is that they don’t know how many are in the “outer circle” because that really should have been A Thing in the show (Forrest and Hanton should have come back to guest star! I will never let this go!) After all, we see Little John with more men in the first episode, there are other outlaws in the forest/across the shire that are either working with Robin, or pose a risk to them, and I wish this had been explored.

Djaq manhandling and holding her sword to Pitts’s throat - I love Djaq.

The first arrow Robin shoots is intended for Vaisey, but one of the guards inconveniently walks in front and gets it in the chest. The second arrow is intended for Vaisey as well but he ducks (”my tooth!”) so we can’t fault the writing for a credible attempt at Why Doesn’t Robin Just Kill The Sheriff, because in this scene at least, he tries.

Bye Pitts. You certainly were.

I actually really love this scene (which probably seemed odd given the high body count), but Robin drawing his sword and charging, with Much, Djaq, and John backing him up to avenge Marian’s apparent death/make a final stand, as the music shifts from the jaunty Rescue Theme to Marian’s Theme, just gets me every time.

Although thanks to the cast commentary, I can’t unsee Djaq flipping that guy over her head twice, but hey, it’s a badass move. Clearly they didn’t shoot enough coverage of this fight, because we get the same action from several different angles.

Other than the flashback in episode 8, I think this is the only time we see Robin in Crusader mode, and just how lethal he (and the gang) can be when unleashed and with nothing to lose. Even when the enemy retreats Robin remains kind of wild-eyed with rage unsated, and it takes a beat for him to snap out of it. It’s symbolism time - he sticks his sword in the ground and leaves it there, and we don’t see it again this episode (or much in season 2).

There’s some nice acting going on from everyone in this scene - just utter exhaustion, Allan and Will oblivious to why the rest are so distraught, Much taking it upon himself to tell them but can’t say the words, and Robin with the finality of “she’s dead.” Their faces!

Djaq is still holding two swords as she enters the cave, which is a nice character beat - no doubt the fight also brought back unpleasant memories/triggers for her, and she remains on edge, for the moment unwilling to give up her defences even when the threat is gone.

I really love this scene too (the gang mourning Marian) and I think it’s quite deftly written - Djaq’s immediate reaction being the importance of a quick burial (as per Islamic tradition), Robin trying to keep it together, attempting to ask John/Will to build a coffin but unable to, so deflecting to ask Djaq to prepare Marian’s body, before trying twice again; John soothing him and taking charge. Will’s single tear and speaking of Marian’s goodness. Much responding with “Good? Oh, she was... She was...” looking to Robin because of course his thoughts are for Robin’s grief before his own, and also that his own relationship with Marian was complex. Allan: “She was alright...yeah” that says so much, and of course John’s “Her, we liked.” Again, some fine acting, kudos everyone.

“I loved her and I never told her” is ironic because Robin still won’t tell her until halfway through the next season, and if he had in the aftermath of her apparent death he could have spared himself a lot of the angst of the rest of the episode. But of course he doesn’t tell her, doesn’t learn from this moment, because emotions are hard, and sometimes we make the same mistakes over and over again.

I really love that it’s Allan that notices that Marian is alive, and his little “told ya” flourish.

Score note: while Marian is “dead” her Theme is strings, when she opens her eyes, it’s back to the guitar.

Guy’s guilt in finding out his impending marriage to Marian is based on false pretenses - would he still have forced the marriage if he’d known that from the start?

Djaq still has her two swords as they take Marian back to Knighton.

Guy, if your first instinct when told Marian is not at home is that she’s run away rather than marry you...maybe take a hint? “She cannot run from me” is a big yikes, and this confuses me as to Guy’s motivation in this scene. Did he intend to tell Marian the truth, but then convince himself otherwise (because “the excitement of the wedding” =/= “the wedding excites her”), but then why so angry when he thinks shes run? The difference between getting someone go/being left, I suppose.

Illness is a perfectly plausible explanation for delaying the wedding that no one seems to think of.

Edward is actually pretty bang on in this scene with Robin from a father’s perspective, telling him to let Marian go if he cannot stop it, and do the right thing. On the other hand...

“I am sick of doing the right thing” is why Robin is such a compelling character for me - because it is hard to always be good, to be held to that higher standard, and make the unselfish choice. I enjoy narratives that explore that, and this show is surprisingly unflinching about it, exemplified by:

The next scene, which is one of the most emotionally brutal/hard to watch of the entire show, in which Robin lashes out and does everything to drive Much away, including calling him “a pox” and a “small man” until Much’s heart visibly breaks.

Now I don’t want to excuse Robin here, because he is objectively awful to someone who doesn’t deserve it, who is trying to give him support but also telling him some much needed hard truths (even if it is slightly self-serving, which is what what seems to set Robin off). But at the end of the day, if he loves Marian he needs to accept that it is her choice to marry Guy, to “do the right thing” to (she thinks) protect her father - and later of he does just that. For now Edward and Much are both right, it is more important for him to try and protect the king from Vaisey, because if he is ousted and Richard back on the throne so many lives would be improved, including the people of Locksley. But Robin has been pushed to breaking point all season, and has now snapped and can’t see reason, but is stuck in his own grief/rage.

But unlike previously, when Robin said regrettable things in the heat of the moment and then immediately took them back, this is a calculated attack designed to hurt Much the most, because he loves Robin so much that it takes A Lot to push him away. It’s a bold move to make your hero so unlikable in such a moment, because Robin really is unforgivably cruel here, and trust the audience to understand why. I mean, I don’t want to bang on about the PTSD, but it’s (partly) the PTSD, based on a triggering, precipitating event causing a self-destructive spiral. Robin needs some Ye Olde Therapy.

For all the talk about Robin getting his title and lands back, nothing is said about what happens to Gisborne once he does, other than that they can’t prove he was the one who tried to assassinate Richard. Because really, Richard probably would believe Robin even though the tattoo was burned away, and Guy’s certainly committed other crimes that could be testified to just like they’re intending for Vaisey - and let’s be real, it’s not like a king needs evidence to order someone’s death (hello, season 2 finale). Boom - Guy executed, marriage to Marian annulled, problem solved!

So, the scene between Marian and Guy, in which Marian is more concerned with whether or not Guy tried to kill the king than the fact that he stabbed her. But its understandable, because Marian thinks there’s no way out that doesn’t risk her father’s life, and it’s easier to convince herself that maybe Guy didn’t do it to make the best of things. I think she does have some kind of feelings for him, or is at least moved by his feelings for her, and believes if nothing else she can influence him/continue working from the inside; giving up the mantle of the Nightwatchman but doing the same work (in a different way) as Lady Gisborne.

And then it’s Robin/Marian angst, round 3, and it’s a far cry from their interaction in the cave milliseconds away from “I love yous” - in both tone and body language they’re back in defensive positions talking past one another. The tension, it be thick.

Marian is making her best rationalisation with “deprived of love” and Robin not at all buying the Woobification 101. Once she tells him her decision to marry Guy, he accepts it, but it’s Marian’s reaction that’s telling, she’s surprised that he doesn’t argue, deep down she wants him to fight for her, to say that the real reason she shouldn’t marry Guy is because he loves her. It’s quite a contrast from the previous scene where Guy was very open about how he feels about her, while Robin deflects, but while she was conflicted about Guy trying to kiss her, she’s frustrated, disappointed, and angry when Robin leaves.

But really, this is rather unfair of Marian, because Robin did already declare himself in the cave (”we should be together”) without her reciprocation, so expecting him to take the first step again without any encouragement is a bit much.

Would a depressed person sit slumped against a tree all night?

“But by taking Marian in holy wedlock, I will wash away those crimes. Her pure heart will cleanse mine.” Yeah...not going to touch that one. I appreciate that there’s a lot going on with Guy and many, many people find it compelling, but I’m afraid it’s not really a narrative that interests me.

Speaking of pure hearts: Much. Faced with the same choice he was counseling Robin on, but with the additional wrinkle of knowing the king’s an imposter, he still decides to stop the wedding. “Her heart belongs to another” is A Moment and I don’t know exactly why but I find his very soft pleas following this and calling her “my lady” very affecting.

She’s beauty and she’s grace, she punched Guy in the face.

“A trap. I knew it.” I haaaaate this line. NO YOU DIDN’T KNOW IT ROBIN YOU KNEW NOTHING OF THE KIND IF YOU HAD KNOWN YOU WOULD BE EVEN MORE OF A DICK FOR LEAVING UGGGHHHH.

“We can’t be seen together” Right in front of my salad two guards on front gate duty, who get front row tickets to the kiss. Look at them! They’re right there! This show drives me absolutely bonkers sometimes.

I do love this dress though.

“An audience with the king has been suspended!” Going out on one last pun.

Regardless, I really love this episode. Despite the lack of fallout from the emotional wringer they all went through, I can’t help but smile when the gang does their silly little jump for joy at the end.

#robin hood bbc #robin hood rewatch #1x13 a clue: no #long post

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jungshookz · 4 years ago

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CHAPTER THREE; The investigation.

chapter one; chapter two

Player has chosen: [B] Stay together!

“okay, if you’re not scared, then you’re okay with us splitting up to find the rest of the gang, right?” taehyung tilts his head before raising a brow

you swallow thickly and take a couple of seconds to think it through

if you split up, there would be four people exploring four different parts of the house, which would be pretty efficient

but sticking together would be a much safer option and this house does give you the heebie-jeebies after all...

“i’m…” you trail off before shaking your head gently, “i’m not scared, but i don’t think it’s a good idea to split up. this house is huge and we could lose each other again, which means we’d waste even more time.”

taehyung immediately lets out a quiet groan and tilts his head back, “ugh. you guys are so lame.”

wha-

you’re not lame!!

you’re just,.,. you’re being safe!!

and safety isn’t lame!!

“okay, what about if we split off in groups of two?” you suggest, raising a brow, “that way we’re not entirely alone, and we have two teams searching the house instead of just one big one…”

“okay… i guess i can get on board with that…”

“and this can be our meeting spot!” you perk up, “how about… twenty minutes? in twenty minutes, no matter what, you have to come back here for a team update.”

��this is exciting!” jimin grins, clasping his hands together in anticipation, “it kinda feels like we’re ghost-hunting.”

taehyung snorts, “well, yoongi is as pale as a ghost, so i guess there’s some truth in that-”

“alright! so, jungkook and i will take floors one to three, and you guys can take floors four to six-“

“woah, woah, woah-“ taehyung interrupts you, waving both his hands to stop you, “hold on just a second- why do you get to take jungkook?”

you frown lightly, “what do you mean?”

“if you take jungkook, you get the flashlight and the baseball bat. that’s so not fair!”

“i thought you morons weren’t scared of this dusty old house.” you mock, using the bat to gesture around the large room

“we’re not scared-!” taehyung argues, “but anyone would feel a little better having at least one helpful tool.”

you suppose he’s right

it’s only fair that their team gets a tool

you roll your eyes before nudging jungkook with your elbow, “jungkook, give him your flashlight-”

jungkook immediately gawks and holds his precious flashlight to his chest, “what? no way! i’m not giving up the flashlight! you give him your bat!”

and now it’s youR turn to gawk

“what?? i’m not giving him my bat! i’m the weakest one here, i actually need the weapon if we get into any kind of trouble-”

“you know…” taehyung whistles lowly, “for two people who claim they aren’t a pair of scaredy-cats, you sure are acting like it now-”

“okay, what about this?” you use your bat to point towards jimin, “i’ll take jimin, and you can take jungkook-”

“i don’t wanna pair up with taehyung!” jungkook speaks up, shaking his head furiously, “no friggin’ way!”

oh jesus

at this rate you’re going to be here all night just arguing about who’s going to go with whO

the others would be better off finding you guys instead of you guys finding them

“and why not?”

“because he’s an asshole- and what if he tries scaring me again? this place already gives me the creeps, and i don’t need taehyung whispering about how this place could’ve been, like, a mental hospital or something and the deranged patients are still somewhere in here-”

“oh my god, jungkook-!” you cut him off, partly to get him to shut up and partly to get him to stOp talking about deranged mental patients because the idea of that is just plain terrifying, “okay, i will take taehyung, and you can take jimin. is everyone happy??”

a good five seconds of silence ticks by and you take that as a yes

finally

thank GOD

“ooh, you know what we should do?” taehyung gasps as he makes his way over to you, “why don’t we turn this into a game? whichever team comes back with more people in twenty minutes is the winner!”

“what kind of prize are we talking about?” jungkook perks up, his competitive streak suddenly kicking in, “i like games if there are prizes to win.”

you like playing games too

and you like winning prizes

plus, it’ll motivate you to find everyone faster!

“i have a starbucks coupon in my wallet?” you offer, “there’s like, six bucks left on it, but it’s better than nothing-“

“i have a strawberry flavoured condom in mine!” jimin chirps

everyone looks over at him

“what?” he shrugs, “strawberry is tastier than plain ol’ latex.”

“okay, well-” taehyung claps his hands together to effectively bring this flavoured condom conversation to an end, “the winning team gets a six dollar starbucks coupon, a strawberry flavoured condom, and the title of best team ever- so we’re all in, then? are we doing this?”

“mhm.”

“yep!”

“uh-huh.”

“remember, twenty minutes!” you call out as jimin and jungkook head back towards the staircase to go up to the third floor, “twenty minutes and we meet back here- aaand no one’s listening to me. wonderful.”

the sound of their footsteps fade into the distance and soon enough, it’s just you and taehyung

you turn around to look at him, “alright, superstar. there’s no way in hell i’m giving up my starbucks coupon, so we’d better get a move-on.”

“i say we tackle the kitchen first,” taehyung nods enthusiastically, “i could use a snack.”

“you- you think you’re going to get a snack here?” you snort, the two of you heading towards what seems to be the swinging double-doors to a kitchen, “unless you’re in the mood for, like, dead cockroaches and dust bunnies, i doubt you’re going to find anything yummy here.”

“hm.” tae frowns, “good point. you don’t think they have any canned goods here? like, canned peaches or… i don’t know, i’ll even take tuna-“

“tae- give up all hope of finding something edible here. after we find everyone, we’ll get out of here and go to mcdonalds! i’d kill for a big mac right now-”

“okay, you need to stop talking about food because i’m actually starving right now-“ taehyung looks down and places a hand over his tummy before patting it, “let’s talk about something else. who are we finding first?”

the two of you step into the kitchen, the door gently swinging back and forth behind you

for a house that’s seemingly been abandoned, this kitchen is pretty neat

you expected it to be overrun by rats and covered in weeds and all that

it’s still pretty dusty in here, though

“well, i don’t think we can plan to find someone first, tae.” you raise a brow as you swipe a finger over the gritty kitchen island, “we find whoever we find.”

you rub the grime in between your fingers before wiping your hand off on the back of your jeans

“touché.” taehyung mutters as he walks alongside you, “say you were mr. kim namjoon himself, where do you think you would be?”

“hm. do i think i’m in trouble or am i just passed out?” you ask absentmindedly as you open up the drawers in search for anything useful

unfortunately, all you’re able to find are boring old utensils

you’re not sure how useful forks and spoons are as self-defence weapons

unless you scooped someone’s eyes out with the spoons

that could work!

that sounds like it requires technique, though… so maybe you’ll have to go with a different approach

“um… just passed out.” taehyung coughs before waving his hand in front of his face, “jesus, it’s dusty in here-”

you let out a gasp when you end up finding a box of matches - there are only three matchsticks left, but that’s definitely better than no matchsticks at all!

light!!

“well, see, that’s not fair, because then it’s free game-” you spin around and hold the box of matches up before shaking it gently, “if i was a passed out namjoon, i could be anywhere in this damn house- also, see if you can find any candles or anything-”

“you know, these types of games aren’t fun when you overanalyse and think about it like that-” taehyung flat out ignores you before bending over so he can lean against the kitchen island, “i change my answer. say you were a mr. kim namjoon who thought someone was chasing you- what would you do and where would you hide?”

you wait for two seconds to see if taehyung will make a move to get up and actually help you

and....

nope

god

you have to do everything around here

“okay, fine. if i was a namjoon who thought i was in trouble…” you let out a sigh as you spin back around before reaching up to open up the cupboards, “i would probably leave a clue somewhere for my friends to find me…”

a large speck of dust floats past your eyes and you’re about to wave it away when you suddenly remember the dust that you saw earlier at the top of the staircase

…

you follow it with your eyes, watching carefully as it drifts past you and begins lowering to the ground

“like a hansel and gretel situation?” taehyung asks, “with the crumbs of bread and stuff?”

“exactly…” you murmur, watching curiously as the speck of dust never actually floats to the ground but appears to float down the hall

“what would namjoon use in place of bread? probably, like, those caramel candies he’s always sucking on-” taehyung snorts and moves to the side when you shut the cupboards and lean over to keep an eye on the floating dust, “what are you looking at?” he asks, standing up straight to look at what you’re looking at

which is...

nothing?

“nothing, nothing-” you shake your head, quickly springing into action when you nearly lose sight of it, “here, take the bat-”

you don’t know why but you feel like you have to follow it

or maybe you’re just crazy and it’s just an innocent speck of dust because this house really IS super old and musty after all

there’s nothing left to explore in the kitchen so you have to move on to other rooms anyway

taehyung takes the bat from you and props it up so he’s holding it over his shoulder, “what’s going on?”

you fumble with the little cardboard carton before pulling a matchstick out and quickly striking it against the side of the box, a little ball of flame suddenly coming to life and flickering before your eyes

the corridor is pitch black so you can’t see very far ahead, but it’s better than fumbling around in the dark

you swallow your nerves before venturing forward, tucking the carton into your pocket for safe-keeping

“hey, wait- where are you going??” taehyung stammers, quickly trailing behind you as you leave the kitchen

“i just have a feeling…” you murmur, watching the flame carefully and slowing your pace down a little when it trembles a little too violently for your liking

if this thing blows out halfway through and leaves you in the complete dark.,,. you’re 100% going to piss yourself

the two of you round the corner and start to walk down what feels like a longer, narrower corridor

your tiny little torch is proving to be very useful right now!

“you know, we’re supposed to be a team.” taehyung hisses, “you can’t just start walking and not tell me where you’re going-”

your sneakers squeak against the floor when you suddenly come to a stop, tae letting out a grunt as he bumps into your back, ““jesus, the architecture of this place literally doesn’t make any sense at all.”

“what are you talking about?” taehyung asks, glancing over his back towards the safety of the kitchen

it’s brighter in the kitchen so he can still see a patch of light, but it seems like it’s a million miles away

“i mean… what is this?” you gesture in front of you

the corridor splits off into three different paths

the middle one just continues on into the darkness

but the others split off into two different… rooms? for some reason

kind of like the letter ‘y’ with a gap in the middle

the doors to the rooms have glass panels in the centre and you take a step closer to peer into the left one, and then right one

and from that point onward, things just keep getting weirder and weirder

in the left room, there’s a staircase spiralling down, and in the right room, there’s a staircase spiralling up

you wouldn’t be surprised if the staircases led to more corridors with even more staircases

“i don’t know about this.” taehyung mutters, “i don’t… i mean, i really don’t think anyone would be here… i think we should go back to the kitchen, y/n. i’m, like, a little scared right now-”

“okay, yeah.” you mutter, “my match is about to die, so-”

as soon as you turn around to start heading down the hall, you suddenly feel a little thump from underneath your feet

you jump in surprise and reach out to grab the back of tae’s arm, “did you- did you feel that?”

“did i feel what?”

“the… i swear i felt something. i heard something too- like- like if someone was, like… like if someone smacked their fist against the wall or something-”

“what? well, i would’ve heard it too but i didn’t hear anything…” taehyung mutters uneasily, attempting to start walking again only for you to pull him back

he lets out a sigh before turning to look over at you, “okay, fine. where did the sound come from?”

you swallow thickly as you turn to look over your shoulder, “…the door on the left.”

“...okay, well, there’s no way i’m going in there, so i’m gonna head back to the kitchen-”

you feel taehyung’s arm slip away from your hand right as your match burns out and you open your eyes as wide as they can possibly go as if doing so will give you night-vision or something

“taehyung, hold on-” you fumble for the box of matches in your pocket, “just gimme a second to-”

as soon as you light another match, you’re more than surprised to see that the structure of the corridor has changed because now you’re standing in front of a wall

you turn around quickly to see that the three paths are still there

what??

where did the-

where did the kitchen go??

where did the corridor go???

your hand starts to tremble, the little flame starting to shake as well

you feel your heart beginning to pound a little harder in your chest and you whimper quietly when you hear another thump

what do you want to do?

> [A] Don’t go into the room! You don’t know what’s down there!

> [B] Go into the room! …Once again, you don’t know what’s down there... And what if it’s one of the others?

Place your vote here.

You have one hour.

Good luck.

#choh2020 #choh2020 drabbles

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book-dragon-etcetera · 3 years ago

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Why Mantis and Loki should be a thing; fight me (please don’t I swear I’m nice).

What makes a good relationship subplot? Actually, scratch that – this is the MCU, we don’t go for mediocrity – what makes the best relationship subplots? It can vary, but my favourites, the ones that keep me digging and digging, coming back every time I think of a new angle (you’re in the fandom tags, you know what I’m talking about) always tie into the wider story. They feed character growth; allow new concepts to be explored; fit in with and in some cases represent the greater themes of a story.

In case you haven’t guessed, I’m going to be arguing that Loki and Mantis could be something along those lines. Something great. One of the best, most interesting relationships of modern screenwriting. I know, okay!! I know, it feels weird as anything – it’s taken me a while, too. But bear with me, and worst-case scenario, you’ll have a new take on a fascinating pair of characters.

Before I put the two together though, I feel like I need to do a little character study for Mantis. So far, she has had little to no clear development and without serious thought of your own, she seems entirely one-dimensional; two at best. In case you have not plugged hours and hours of thought into a character with barely ten minutes of screen-time, here are some of my thoughts, free of charge 😊. Incidentally, the interpretation I take to enhance my viewing experience (and add suitably crippling levels of angst :D ) ties her in perfectly with Loki’s story and character.

More Than Just a Bug: A Minor Study

What we know: Mantis has spent her whole life in servitude to Ego a massively powerful being, intent on taking over the universe, who sees all other life as inferior, insect-like (hence the name ‘Mantis’ – happenstance in the comics, derogatory in the films). Whether she has ever met anyone else is unclear, and until we actually see her talk about it, we’ll never know. Going by her comfort in talking to the Guardians, and also the fact that she anticipates the result of Ego’s meeting with Peter, I’m going to assume she has, but more specifically, that they were Ego’s other children.

Imagine this, if you will. Mantis, since her childhood, has been intermittently exposed to Ego’s offspring. They appear, are doted on for a few days, and then vanish as suddenly as they came. Not having been delayed by the Ravagers that collected them (as Peter was), they are all young children, with strong but changeable emotions. As such, they fit Ego’s narrative of universe full of mindless beasts, unthinking and impermanent. If Mantis were not an empath, able to feel their distress and confusion at the kidnapping, they would have no impact on her at all. As it is, they give her no epiphany, but rather a slow sense of unease that grows over time, as child after child is reduced to a pile of bones in a cave.

Her uncertainty must of course be hidden from Ego, who may be too narcissistic to imagine she could ever turn against him, but would certainly kill her if he saw her doubts, so she separates herself from the feeling. Her outer self remains uncomplicated and pliant, still attempting to please her adoptive father-figure, while her inner self languishes in steadily deepening turmoil. She dissociates to survive, until she almost believes it herself.

Now let’s try looking at her scene with Drax, where she touches his arm by the flower-filled lakes, through this new lens.

BEWARE. THIS SCENE WILL BECOME SIGNIFICANTLY MORE PAINFUL IF YOU ASSIMILATE THIS INTERPRETATION.

To recap: Mantis has spent her life in a state of slowly growing unease over the pain, suffering and subsequent deaths of Ego’s many children. Her only comfort has been his assurances that all other life is meaningless, and as such their suffering weightless. By Mantis’s own design, this inner struggle has been buried deep, totally inaccessible. Therefore, she goes into this scene entirely intending to allow Ego to kill the Guardians, and if Peter is successful, the universe.

Alright, here goes:

So, Mantis seems normal (normal??) for the first section. She reacts suitably when Drax calls her ugly, and then when he argues that it’s a good thing. When he mentions his lost daughter, she makes a joke (incidentally the sort of play-a-crooked-thing-straight joke that Loki might enjoy), but then Drax compares his daughter to Mantis, calling them both ‘innocent’, and she makes this face when he isn’t looking at her.

This is not a naïve look, and I don’t think it’s meant to be. The tiniest edge of that inner guilt, her natural empathy for the terrible fates of Ego’s children, is bleeding through against her will, brought to the surface by a father mourning the loss of his daughter. Wanting to understand, and partly in fear of what she might find there, she reaches for his arm.

When she feels his grief, she is physically affected, taking large gasps of air with glittering eyes. It’s easy to forget, but in some ways, Drax is the most emotionally developed of the Guardians. He had a wife, and daughter, and a home. He’s lived through what most of us would determine a normal life, and reached middle age. Quill, Gamora, Groot – they’re all younger than him, and therefore less emotionally developed. (I have no idea what age Rocket is, but at least by maturity he can certainly be added to the list.) This level of experience is where Drax’s moments of unexpected wisdom come from. He is a fully realised person with all the complexities and regrets that come with age, something Mantis has never felt in anyone except Ego. And he is mourning his daughter.

When she touches his arm, Mantis is feeling one of the worst losses, the deepest hurts that a person can ever experience, even dulled by years: the loss of a child. But for her, it’s even more than that. It’s personal. She realises in that moment that on the other end of every one of Ego’s children was someone like Drax, feeling what he felt. That they were still out there in the universe, mourning the sons and daughters that Mantis had met. It tilts her world on its axis, and we get a close-up to watch it:

This is her guilt, her worst fears validated. She can no longer use the ‘we’re just insects anyway’ justification to excuse the cavern of bones. Every tiny doubt she has ever had now has an explanation, and it means she has grown up complicit to atrocities she couldn’t even recognise. Upset, and guilty that he still believes her innocent, she turns immediately to Drax, knowing she can no longer stand by do nothing. They are interrupted by Gamora before Mantis can explain, so later that night, knowing she cannot bear being complicit yet again to murder, Mantis wakes Drax and betrays Ego, despite her fear and love for someone who has been (literally) her whole world.

Go watch the scene thinking about Mantis's guilt, I dare you. I did, and it hurt me.

By the end of GotG2, we have a Mantis still conditioned to serve the father she has now killed. His teachings have left her with crippling self-doubt, and a sense of personal inferiority that as of yet we have not seen her question, despite a truly incredible level of power (subduing first Ego – an actual planet – and then Thanos; I’ll go into her frightening Gamora later), and her own heroism. She is incapable of being righteously angry at Ego, because righteously implies right, something it does not occur to her that she might have. And she hides it all, because over the years she has built an unconscious self-defence mechanism which allows her to control people’s actions towards her by seeming harmless and sweet. The ultimate deflector of aggression.

What her motives and feelings might be now she has found her freedom, I also have some thoughts on, but that is a topic for another day (possibly a Loki including day, hmm?). I feel like it’s important to mention that, although this is a dark interpretation, that doesn’t mean I think Mantis is a dark character. There is inherent darkness in the horror of her past, but some of the best and brightest people in the world are people who have been to hell and back, and come back kinder for it. One day, when she has learnt some self-worth, and ditched the clothes that she wore as a slave to a monster, I think she could be one of the best, most impressive, and nuanced heroes we have ever seen.

#marvel #marvel mcu #character study #mantis #loki laufeyson #gotg vol 2 #gotg 2 #fanfic #ao3 author #expand your horizons #short essay #pom klementieff #drax the destroyer #angst #empaths #headcannons

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