#he's being dragged kicking and screaming into character growth
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A shirtless Syri by request of a friend in the New Summit server Was considering trying out something a little different for his clothes and dithering over it
#dungeons and dragons#original character#my art#my characters#elf#pretty boy#artists on tumblr#my boy#just a silly little man#i love him dearly#he's being dragged kicking and screaming into character growth#loving every second of it
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Et tu, Brute?
Pairing: Emperor Geta x Reader x Lucius
Summary: You went by many different names: "Rome's Delight", "The Woman with the Golden Mouth", "Geta's Favorite Whore", and "Julia". None of these were your true name; all used just to dehumanize you as nothing more than a slave. When the General Acacius returns from conquering Numidia, and you meet one of the slaves that was brought from the bloodshed, you hope to reclaim not just your freedom...but power along with it.
Part 1 of 2 (Masterlist)
Warning(s): Depictions of rape and SA [not shown], slavery, cannon typical violence, minor Stockholm Syndrome, major character deaths, historical inacuracy [but I tried my best to make it somewhat accurate] and Spoilers for Gladiator II
I saw this movie once, watched Game of Thrones at the same time, and cranked out a story where you, the reader, know how to play "The Game" (but also not because let's keep it kinda realistic) I'm gonna be honest, this might be a hot mess, and I used a script I found online (but Idk how accurate it is). Also, this first part is just mainly story based with the events of the film the SECOND part will focus on reader and Lucius' relationship (including smut, you sluts {I am also slut, don't worry}.
I do want to say though that the depictions of SA are in no attempt to romanticize them. I also decided not to write out the specific scenes because I myself am a survivor, and wanted to focus more on the protagonist's growth. The trauma still affects her story, but I do not want to write rape scenes merely for shock purposes.
Also, if you name is actually "Julia"...no it's not :)
Word Count: 16.1k
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It was your own fault, that was what they tried to make you believe.
How dare you not wish to participate in the public baths, how dare you desire to bathe in the place you felt most safe.
Foolish, foolish girl. You were not even safe on your own porch in the house you grew up in.
Your father hadn’t been the wealthiest of merchants, but before he passed into the Elysian Fields after his death that year, he had made a fortune; so much as to buy a bathtub for your house.
If anything, you had bathed at night when you believed no one could see you not for your own modesty, but to prevent anyone from stealing it.
Yet, one particular night, a man had spotted you.
The Emperor Geta of Rome had watched your naked form glisten in the moonlight as you washed the most intimate areas of your body; sighing at the feeling of being clean after the day, only for your soul to feel tainted once morning broken.
Guards had nearly broken the hinges off the front door to your house, and dragged you to the palace. You had lived in that house for your entire life, the same neighbors beside you, yet as you kicked and screamed…none helped.
You had grown tired once in the palace, and the eldest of the twin emperors stood before you. He cupped your chin.
“What is your name, girl?”
You answered him, attempting to speak with venom, but the quaking of your voice betrayed anxiety.
He hummed, repeating your name. “Why are you all alone?”
You huffed. “My mother died in the battle that is childbirth, and my father was lost to an ailment in his loins.”
“You have no brothers?” Geta questioned, his eyes running down your form. “No husband?”
“They called my father strange for leaving me his possessions.”
“He mustn’t have passed on so long ago.”
“Why does the death of my father concern you if you only seek my body?” You questioned.
A smile twisted upon his lips. “Perhaps I like to know my fruit before I devour it.”
And he kissed you.
You had been kissed before, but this was the first time you hadn’t wanted to be. You hadn't expected him to be serious about devouring you. His teeth sank into your chin, then your cheeks, until they were finally upon your lips.
It was the first time, in all your life, you felt your body grow cold and freeze despite his hands wandering over you, pulling at the thin fabric of clothing that covered you.
You fell to the floor, clinging to it desperately as he tried to lead you to his chambers. You had expected him to order one of his men to kill you, or have them carry you…
Instead, he took you right there. He simply lifted his own robes then yours and stole what wasn’t his to take.
All you remembered of that was counting how many pillars were in the room.
You were one of his several concubines. Yet, despite being the newest, you were his favorite.
“Julia,” he whispered to you in the night a month after he had made you his. A month after he had decided to call you by his mother’s name instead of your own. “are you awake?”
You mewled, sitting up. “I am now, my love. What is it?”
Geta smiled, holding out a stack of parchment. “Look at what some of the men found in Carthago.”
You rubbed your eyes as the lamps in his room brightened before looking down at the crudely written words. Geta looked at you in earnest.
“Can you read them?”
A few days prior at him and his brother Caracalla’s birthday festivities, it was revealed that you spoke five languages: Latin, Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek. Your father had taught you every single one of them to fend for yourself amongst all kind of people.
Now, it was nothing more than a shameless trick Geta used to his amusement.
“Rome’s Cleopatra,” he deemed you in front of the crowd. “the Woman with a Golden Mouth”.
Everyone in that room and all of Rome knew that your ability to speak so many dialects was not the only reason he gave you that title.
Still, as you lay in his bed with crumbling parchment in hands, you forced a tender smile. “Yes, I know what it says. Would you like to know?”
He laid his head in your lap without another word.
Months passed, and he had grown kinder…only when it was night, and even so, that was only when the moon was full.
There wasn’t a day where your body hadn’t ached from the turmoil he put you through. It was hard to discern when he would want you to be small and subservient to him, or confident and commanding in matters of the bed.
The handmaids that were blessed to not be in bed with him would bathe and coddle you as best as they could, for even through your suffering, you tried your best to treat them with kindness.
You didn’t even know who you were after the fourth month of being Geta’s slave.
Gone was the girl who had a peaceful life; there was now the Emperor’s Pet.
General Marcus Acacius returned to Rome after overtaking the kingdom Numidia in the emperors’ names, and it was the first time you were in his presence. It was certainly a surprise that Geta would string you alongside him on personal matters that had nothing to do with sex.
The general would glance at you every so often, and his look of pity felt more violating that any of the times Geta, or his brother, or anyone else in all of Rome had looked at you.
Upon the general’s return, a series of games at the Colosseum were to be hosted, among parties that would last for the remaining week.
The first was at Senator Thraex's home.
“My little Julia,” Geta caressed your cheek as you sat upon his lap in the makeshift throne. “might you fetch me another cup of wine?”
You nodded, taking his cup and kissing his hair. “I shall, my love.”
He ran his fingers down your neck as you got off of him and made your way to the barrels. Yet, as you passed an open door, something caught your eye. Peeking around the somewhat crack in the door, you saw a few men sat in the room, chains around their ankles and their wrists.
One of them, more muscular than the others with brown curls, held his head low. His skin wasn’t as dark as other men from Africa Propria, but not as pale as the Germanic lands.
When his eyes met yours, you saw a pale blueness only seen in the sky on a summer’s day.
Gasping, you hid behind the door for only a moment before looking again. His gaze was still on you. Deciding to end the strangeness of the situation, you spoke.
“I’m sorry.” You apologized.
He said nothing; you tried again.
“I’m sorry.” You said in Greek.
The look in his eyes changed to confusion, but he said nothing.
“Hebrew?” You questioned. “Aramaic? Phoenician?”
“You speak Phoenician?” He asked as if he hadn’t heard it in forever.
You nodded. “I speak five languages.”
“Ah,” he answered in your native tongue to your surprise. “Rome’s Cleopatra.”
Your nose scrunched as if you smelt something rotten. “You understood me the first time?”
“I did.”
“So why not say anything?”
“What am I to say to your pity?”
You hummed. “I do not pity you, I was showing respect.”
He scoffed. “Respect? Am I a man that looks as if I deserve respect?”
“I believe every man deserves respect so as long he is kind.” You glared at him.
The man shook his head, sighing. “You are a foolish child if you believe that men can be kind.”
“I haven’t for quite a while.” you stated. “I pray that it is the hope that kills me.”
He questioned. “And not one of the emperors?”
“What is your name, slave?” You crossed your arms.
He huffed, drawing his eyes away from you and clenching his fists before relaxing them. “Hanno.”
You nodded. “They call me ‘Julia’.”
“But that is not your name.”
It was blistering hot that particular day, but you felt your body run cold; the same cold you felt when Geta…when he first…
“Who says it is not my name?” You challenged.
“You are merely a concubine,” he said. “you are not a part of his lineage, and therefore, your name is not ‘Julia’.”
You do not know why you seethed with so much rage from his words. You did not even spit on him; you merely stomped away from that door, filled up the emperor’s cup, and went back to Geta.
“It took you nearly a millennium to come back, my sweet.” He scoffed yet kissed your bare shoulder. “I was beginning to worry.”
You shook your head, leaning against him as you sat on the arm of the throne. “You mustn’t over me, my love.”
“You seem distressed.” Caracalla teased beside you. “This is a festivity; you should be merry!”
All you did was smile and nod. It was a pleasant change from the parties you were forced to attend in the past; you weren’t the center of attention, and this was the first time Geta dressed you in the bright colors everyone else wore instead of white.
You could pretend you were royalty for a day.
Not so long after you came back, both Thraex and Macrinus, a stable master who traveled far and wide for new gladiators, approached with their own champions to fight.
You were not even at the Colosseum, and yet, violence still had to be played for everyone’s amusement.
Hanno entered from the door you had previously been at, and another man entered from the opposite side of the room. Both were given swords.
“Brother,” Hanno began. “let us not kill each other for their amusement-.”
The other man struck him without hesitation. You had seen fights before, but none like this. It was ruthless, quick yet drawn out. Hanno lost his sword in the middle of it all, leading to him smashing a flowerpot over his opponent’s head.
The fight was still not done, he rose up on his feet and took his sword from the ground, raising it high above him. Hanno, against all odds, knocked him back onto the ground and took the sword just as they both sood, stabbing his opponent in the chest.
A chorus of cheers and groans echoed in the room. Geta arose from his seat, laughing and applauding as you sat there, eyes as wide as they could be at the bloodied sight before you.
“Remarkable! Gladiator, which part of the Empire do you hail from?” He questioned Hanno. Hanno stood stoically, glaring at the emperors before him. Geta tutted, turning to you. “Julia, open your golden mouth and-.”
“-The gates of hell are open night and day.” Hanno interrupted in the common language. “Smooth the descent, and easy is the way: But to return, and view the cheerful skies, in this the task and mighty labor lies.”
Geta smiled. “Ah…a poet!”
The rest of the world fell away as you could not tear your gaze away from the man laying on the floor. If he hadn’t died from his wounds, he would’ve from choking on his own blood.
“-You understand, don’t you?” Geta asked.
You sat in your own personal chambers that night for the first time in a while. You were never overjoyed to be in his bed, but being sent to your own perplexed you.
Then, he simply told you that you were to be General Acacius’ for the night.
“He’s sacrificed so much, my little Julia.” Geta combed his fingers through your hair to soothe you. “I refused him once already; I cannot do so again. Do you understand?”
The emperor had never shared you with anyone. He wasn’t delicate with you, but at least you knew what to expect.
He clenched your jaw. “I do not care to ask you a third time, girl.”
“Yes,” you squeaked. “I understand, Geta.”
Nodding, he softened his hold, leaning his head against yours. “You are still mine alone; I promise, it will only be us after tonight.”
You swallowed thickly. “Okay.”
“There she is.” He kissed your lips before pulling away and standing. “He will be in right away. Do not fret, I told him to be gentle with you.”
Geta left through your chamber doors without another word. There you were, sitting on your bed, draped in silks you should have known were given to you out of lust and not out of kindness. Your eyes trailed to the empty vase on a table beside your bed.
You didn’t know what possessed you that night, but you yanked it off the table, and smashed it on your bed. The handle of the door began to rattle. Quickly pushing the shattered pieces under your bed, you hid a shard behind your back and sat at the head of the bed.
In came General Marcus Acacius, wearing only a thin overshirt that went down to his knees. You’d done this game of seduction many times with Geta, how different could it be for him? Grabbing the bottom of your night dress, you raised it until it bunched up your thighs, revealing your bare center to him.
He took a hitched breath. “My lady-.”
“-What troubles you, general?” You asked then smiled with gritted teeth. You felt your hand begin to ache as you squeezed the vase shard.
Marcus furrowed his brow, and as if he already knew, he said. “Cover yourself and show me what is behind your back.”
Your eyes dropped along with your heart. Still, as his face turned into a scowl, you cooperated. Handing him the shard and quickly pulling your dress back down, you spoke with intensity.
“If you will not stab me before you rape my corpse, then I shall throw myself from the nearest window and allow the people of Rome to defile me. I will not lie on my back and take it anymore.”
He took a deep breath, holding the sorry excuse for a weapon in his hand. “It is unwise to tell the enemy your plans.”
…What?
“It would serve you greatly to control the faces you make before harming a man as well. Yet, above all,” He held the shard out to you. “your enemy is not afraid to kill you; you should feel the same.”
“Why do you tell me this?” You asked, still not believing it.
Marcus sat up. “I believe we can help each other, my little dove.”
“How?”
He lowered his voice. “You have heard of the gladiator Maximus, his dream of a free Rome, yes?”
“Yes.”
“A dream that cannot be obtained from the rule of two emperors.” He lamented. “My wife and I, along with several others, plan…to fulfill our shared dream.”
They were going to overthrow Geta and Caracalla.
“What gives you reason to believe I won’t say a word of this to them?” You asked.
He smiled for the first time since you’d seen him. “That freedom belongs to you.”
“I…I’m still lost. How will I be of any use?”
“Emperor Geta favors you considerably. He is a man, and not a cunning one at that. There are ways to wear foolish men down.”
You nodded, beginning to understand. “There’s always a woman.”
“There’s always a woman.” He solidified. “Gain the trust of the public; make them love you, and they will not see the emperor’s whore but a woman of the people.”
“And how will that dethrone them?
He smiled. “My wife and I will meet with the counsel tomorrow night. I will send for you.”
You scoffed. “Geta said that after tonight I am just his alone.”
“Then I’ll refuse to give him Persia and India.”
“He’ll have your head.” You berated. “Besides, I don’t think he’d believe my cunt would be worth two countries.”
Marcus shrugged. “Considering he only wants you to himself, I have no doubt that it is worth that much. But I am unable to confirm it.”
You sighed. “Even if he’ll allow it, he’ll send a guard with me.”
“I am not one to invite a third into the bedroom.”
“Then where shall-?”
“-Little dove,” he interrupted. “the city was not built in a day, therefore it cannot be emancipated in one.”
Gods help and forgive you for being impatient on wanting to be free. Still, you composed yourself. “Alright.”
He nodded, standing up. “I will be seeing you on the morrow, one way or another.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
“For what, child?”
You swallowed thickly, avoiding his gaze. “Not forcing yourself upon me.”
Marcus’ face softened, and he lowered himself to your height as you sat on the bed. He took your face into his hands, and you immediately tensed when his face drew closer to yours.
“Don’t be afraid,” he whispered. “it’s not that kind of a kiss.”
With a tenderness that reminded you of your father, he placed his lips on your forehead and pulled away. Giving you one last knowing nod, he promptly left your chambers.
You wanted to do nothing more than shed tears of happiness, yet for no reason at all, you could not cry.
Your father had only taken you to the Colosseum to watch mock animal hunting. Even when your friends invited you to watch gladiator fights or other public executions, he had found ways of making you stay far away from them.
There was a strange humor in sitting in the best chair for your very first gladiator duel. That being in the front as Emperor Geta ran his hand up and down your back.
In utter honestly, you tried to stray your attention away from the fights, speaking more with Caracalla of all people. He was more erratic than Geta by far, and it was more difficult to tell when he would be kind one moment, then out for blood the next.
Yet at least he was open about being cruel, unlike his brother.
When you would watch the fights…a familiar face seemed to catch both you and the general’s wife’s, Lucilla, eye.
The man with light skin yet hailed from Numidia…Hanno.
You hadn’t recognized him at first, for it wasn’t his mere presence that drew you to finally look at the event before you. No, it was the way he fought.
Most men previously had attacked with brute force; just stabbing the beast and hoping it would die. Hanno fought with wit. Simply using the sand beneath his feet as an advantage, blinding and tricking the rhinoceros to run directly into the wall.
He was cunning…he commanded the men beside him as if it weren’t the first time he’d done so in his life.
Then, when it came to deciding his fate when all seemed lost…Geta turned to you.
“My love,” he played with a strand of your hair. “shall I show the poet mercy, or bloodshed for your entertainment?”
Even if it weren’t Hanno, your answer would have been the same. “Mercy.”
As a hush fell over the crow, Geta rose his thumb up, sparing him. As cheers erupted, Hanno shook his head.
“No, no mercy.”
Geta furrowed his brow. “Gladiator, we have spared your life. No one refuses-.”
“-I would sooner face your blade than accept Roman mercy!”
Thus, the fight continued. An act of defiance…Peculiar…Quite peculiar.
Both you and Marcus were correct about the night; Geta did indeed allow you to go to the general’s house, but only if you were escorted by a trusted guard. When you arrived, Marcus immediately draped you in a cloak, practically covering your face and had excused as not wanting the staff to tell his wife of who he was bringing into their house.
Marcus led you into his chambers, and there you saw two people. Apparently, they weren’t even apart of the counsel; simply paid to pretend to be both you and the general as the guard would listen outside, assume it was the two of you fucking.
He had certainly thought through every little detail.
Marcus pushed on a stone in his chambers, revealing a hidden door. You had only heard of these within stories, and as he led you down the darkened passage with only a torch in one hand, and the other holding yours, you had never felt more alive since your past life had been stolen.
You were welcomed to a room filled with dozens of the senate you had passed by in the palace. How strange it was to see them all huddled into a dimly lit room, plotting the demise of the men they initially swore to serve.
An arm looped through yours, and it was Lucilla. She whispered into your ear.
“Whatever you have to say, speak it to me, and I shall speak to them.”
You turned. “Why must I not speak for myself?”
“I only allowed you to be here if Marcus agreed to not let your voice be heard.”
“What?”
“I will explain more to you soon after, I vow it.”
Thus the meeting began. In all truthfulness, you were only able to understand the bare minimum: In a few days’ time, Marcus would lead five-thousand men into Rome to overtake the thrones of the empire, and thus destroy them, restoring the Roman Republic.
When the conversation turned to you, you were merely referred to as an informant who had the closest relationship to the emperor.
It still perplexed you as to why you needed to remain anonymous; there was an excellent chance they would know you as ‘Geta’s Favorite Whore’.
Yet, you did your best to inform the counsel of a plan you had simply created on the spot (they did not need to know the latter part of it).
You would gain more favor from the public, while at the same time, putting Geta’s worries to rest about any uprising or dislike from the majority of the empire.
How you would do that…it was fortunate that they didn’t ask you to give specifics.
Once the meeting ended, you were taken back up from the secret passage, yet instead of going back to the chambers, you felt Lucilla take your hand and lead you down another path.
You couldn’t even get a sound out before she said. “It is alright; he knows I want to speak with you in private. We will not take long.”
She led you up into the bath area of the house. It was quite beautiful; the tub wasn’t made of porphyry, but that did not make it any less exquisite. There was something about it being lesser of the baths you’ve had in the palace. It wasn’t entirely reminiscent of the one you had at home…
But you felt safer.
Lucilla had been gentle in pulling off your robes, and never once did it feel wrong. You were a woman and so was she. She never pulled or scratched your skin, and you knew that she only felt sorrow when she gazed upon the bruises and wounds you had received from Geta.
“How long have you been at the palace?” She questioned as she carded herbs through your hair.
You glanced at her, sighing. “I’ve stopped counting…months, I know.”
“Were you forced to leave any family? Brothers, sisters, children?”
“No. My mother died birthing me, and my father was taken half a year ago to an ailment emperor Caracalla also suffers from.”
She hummed. “Have you ever been in love?”
You laughed the most genuine laugh ever since you became a slave. “Why on earth would you ask that?!”
“I am merely curious!” She teased. “You are truly beautiful, and there is no doubt that men would throw themselves off cliffs for you; but it matters most of who you would choose.”
Her question scraped your mind. There had been times you were fond of, even lusted over, men both your age and older…but love? The only one you experienced would be storge; perhaps philia…but eros? Agape?
“I don’t think I have been.” You answered. “Have you?”
She nodded, a forlorn look in her eyes, but smile upon her mouth. “Twice.”
“Twice?” You couldn’t help the nervous giggle that left your throat. “It can happen twice?”
“It’s possible, yes.”
“And who have you willingly fell captive to?”
“Marcus is the most recent, though there are days I do not understand what he sees in me. Then…the father of my child.”
Lucilla poured water upon your head to wash out the soap in your hair, and a silence fell over both of you. One that was broken when you spoke a name.
“Lucius…”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“He-he had gone missing all those years ago, hadn’t he?”
“He had.” She ran the bar of soap over the top half of your body. “I believe he must’ve been around your age when he ran away.”
“And there hasn’t been any sign of him since?”
“No.” She answered right away.
You curled into yourself. “I apologize if I upset you my lady-.”
“-No. I…I love talking about him.”
You managed a gentle smile to soothe her. “What was he like?”
“Headstrong.” She chuckled. “Wanted to become a gladiator more than anything in the world. Yet, he was gentle, and kind as well. He…I believe he would’ve adored you.”
You shook your head. “Maybe when we were children, but I don’t think so now.”
“It’s hard to judge.”
Whilst the air between you turned into more intimate topics, the question that had weighed on your mind was brought to light. “Why did you not allow me to speak or show my face tonight?”
Lucilla stopped her ministrations. You looked up at her, and the look she wore bore an exhaustion that you had felt recently.
“I know too well the cruelties of men.” She began softly. “My brother had done everything to keep me from ever resisting him…he had done everything. I had only wished for someone to be there with me at every moment when I faced his abuse.”
Words; simple words that meant everything to you was what made you weep.
There was no warning at all. Once she was finished, tears sprang to your eyes, and you felt your sinus clog up. Even as you tried to tear yourself away from her comfort, she merely wrapped her arms around you in an embrace from a mother you had never felt.
“I don’t want to go back.” You begged. “Please don’t let me.”
She kissed your hair. “I’m so sorry.”
“No!” You sobbed. “I-I don’t want to! Please, please, you can’t make me. I-I-I-!”
Lucilla shushed you, rocking you back and forth. “Do not weep. You will be free beside all of Rome, and the past months of your life will be nothing more than a distant, horrible dream.”
You pulled away just enough to look at her. “You-you must promise me something.”
“My child-.”
“-Promise me and I shall help you overthrow them until my last dying breath!”
She stared for a moment before nodding. “Yes. What is it?”
Your lip quivered. “When I die, you must bind my legs with chains or ropes when you bury me. I have,” you whimpered. “I have been told of men who dig up the bodies of girls and…”
Lucilla kissed your forehead before holding you once more. “I vow I will honor your wishes.”
All you could do was believe her.
There were more times than not the Emperor Geta would talk about filling you with his seed as he bedded you. You never were able to discern if he was serious about wanting to give you a child (they would be his, not yours).
It all became too real when you didn’t bleed that month.
Yet, you also did not feel sick in the morning, and your breasts hadn’t swelled. You still had urinated on wheat seeds for several weeks, but they had not sprouted.
You weren’t with child…yet there was nothing stopping you from convincing Rome you were. It would certainly be a risk; for there was no telling how Geta would react. But that was a risk you were willing to take.
Once a week, you were allowed to go outside the palace during the day, and you had chosen then to venture out into the numerous markets. It was nice to speak with the merchants you knew from your childhood. Some were elders who would watch over you when your father was busy, others were friends who had grown up with you.
“Now what would a little empress want with commoner’s food?” A man’s low timbre voice asked behind you.
Turning your head, you saw Macrinus standing before you with a curious grin. You mirrored it. “That’s not an appropriate title for me.”
“Ah, you are correct.” He nodded. “My apologies, ‘Lady with The Golden Mouth’. Or do you prefer ‘Rome’s Delight?’.”
“You may call me whatever you wish if you’d like.” You forced a laugh and turned back to the merchant you had known since you were a babe. “I’ll take a sack of wheat and small bag of garlic, Gaius.”
“Of course, lady Julia.”
Not even a childhood friend could say your real name. A tight smile formed upon your lips when he turned to sack the wheat before you. Macrinus spoke again.
“You still didn’t answer me about why you’re exactly here.”
“I am not an empress.” You turned to him. “I am not a queen from another realm, I am not even a lady. I am a lowly whore that was fortunate enough to be chosen by the emperor. I like to keep my own schedule from before, so I am aloud to bake my own bread.”
He hummed. “Is that so?”
“Yes.”
Gaius handed you the sack of wheat and garlic, and you held out three silver coins. He shook his head. “No, just a copper-.”
“-Please.” Was all you said.
He hesitated, then took them from you, smiling. “May Fortuna rain a thousand blessings upon your head.”
“And unto you as well.” You curtsied and turned on your heel to leave.
Macrinus walked beside you. “How generous you are.”
“I try to be.” You decided to change the topic. “You are in charge of Hanno, are you not?”
“I certainly am, why do you ask?”
“Just out of interest.” You shrugged. “There is talk of him being similar to the one Maximus from years ago. Many admire him already and it has only been a day.”
Macrinus laughed. “It is my duty to entertain the people. I noticed though that you are more prudish of the games.”
“I must admit, I am not used to the violence.”
“A sheltered girl?”
“Ashamedly so.”
“There is no shame at all. So, it is the Numidian that has captured your affection?” He teased. “How scandalous for the young empress to fall for a slave.”
You chuckled. “Nothing of the sort, I just find him amusing.”
“Oh, I am more than happy to let you see him alone if you ever so desire. You don’t need to wander upon him at another party.”
Your carefree air fell once he asked that. “I don’t know what you-.”
“-It’s alright.” He interrupted. “There’s nothing wrong with being curious, I am only concerned for your own safety.”
You stood taller, a shy smile upon your lips. “I am capable of taking care of myself, sir.”
“Of course my lady, why else would you be out here in the streets of commoners without a chaperone?”
Purposefully, you turned onto one of the crowded piazzas where the music and laughter was the loudest. You grinned from ear to ear.
“Oh please, don’t tell me you volunteered yourself to keep me safe.”
He laughed. “No, just wanted to say hello.”
You didn’t have time to respond, as one of the performers had recognized you. Ah, a girl that lived in the house across from yours when you were children! You still remembered her name, and after you passed your belongings to Macrinus, she pulled you into the circle of performers, dancing with you.
You laughed the most you had that year; in fact, you swore your bruised your ribs just from the sheer joy you felt. You don’t know how long you danced and sang with those who were your neighbors and friends, but just as you felt your feet begin to give out, Macrinus put his hand on your shoulder.
“I believe you should go back to the palace and rest.”
Nodding, you said farewell to your companions and took the bag of wheat and garlic back from him. “You are right, thank you so much.”
He grinned. “Let me escort you back.”
“No,” you walked ahead of him. “I wish not to bother you anymore. Good day, Macrinus!”
You lost yourself in the crowd, purposefully making it harder for him to follow. Once you were in the palace, you rushed into the kitchen, holding the sack of wheat behind your back, you greeted the cooks and snuck into the small pantry. You set the sack down on a shelf and pocketed two single reeds, along with an onion.
That night, Geta had called you into his chambers. Before going, you had cut the onion and brought it to hover around your eyes. You were crying by the time you were at his door. Immediately, he took notice of your reddened eyes and tear-stained cheeks.
“What is it, what’s wrong?”
You shook your head, only crying more. It was less because of the onion now, and just everything coming down crashing onto your shoulders once more. Geta pulled you into his chambers by your shoulders, sitting you on the bed.
“Tell me now what is bothering you.” He commanded.
You shook your head. “I-I can’t-.”
“-Now, Julia!”
Taking a deep breath, you reached into the pocket of your breast, taking out the two reeds and setting it in his hand. He furrowed his brows.
“I do not understand.”
You took a deep breath. “The handmaids have given me wheat and barley seeds ever since I have arrived. If they grow, then that means…that means I am with child.”
The look on his face spoke it all. You were certain you were dead.
“I-I didn’t know how you would feel, and-and so I-.”
He crushed you in an embrace, attaching his lips to your jaw. “Jupiter has blessed me.”
It was the first time you felt happiness in his presence. Of course, not because of him, but still joy. You returned his embrace, sighing in relief. “You are happy?”
“Happy?” He pulled away, holding your face in his hands. “There is nothing in this world that could sadden me right now. I will have an heir.”
As long as it was a boy (if it were real at all).
You feigned your smile and leaned into his touch. “I am fortunate to give you one.”
“And I am most fortunate to have you.” He laid down and brought you with him.
Perhaps, in another life, he was kind to you and didn’t only value you until you gave him a child. Perhaps you would be in love with him, and he would make you empress
But you weren’t fortunate to be born into that fantasy.
You wished nothing more than to sit with Marcus and Lucilla as you made your way into the emperor’s booth of the Colosseum. The three of you had managed to speak to one another, but only about meaningless things. Still, you just enjoyed their company.
It would be more exciting that day. A naval battle, the Naumachia. The arena was filled with water and sea creatures you could never even possibly imagine. It was a wonder in and of itself how all the ships managed to fit themselves in the arena.
“Caracalla,” you said to the brother beside you as you were about to take your seat. He looked up upon hearing his name. You handed him the bag filled with garlic. “I finally found some for you.”
He grinned from ear to ear. “And you say that if I mix this with myrrh, I shall be cured?”
“It should treat the lesions on your skin.” You corrected. “This is what I did for my father.”
He died of the same ailment, but Caracalla didn’t ask; simply smiled. “Thank you, dear sister.”
You nodded, sitting down on the arm of Geta’s throne that would have put you in the middle of him and his brother. He wrapped his arm around you.
“You’ve been far kinder these days.” Geta pointed out.
“Perhaps that means I’ll be the most agreeable mother.” You jested, kissing his cheek.
He smirked, and as the man on the far end of the Colosseum began to announce the games, Geta stood up and rose his grail.
“I would like to propose a toast!” He yelled. The crowd fell silent, and you felt your skin crawl away from you. Geta continued. “To the health of wives and to mothers. Especially to my lover, Julia, who carries my son the moment as we speak!"
An eruption of applause and cheers filled the stadium. You blushed upon the praise, and genuinely wanted to hide yourself from the gaze of everyone; especially the ones closest to you. You could feel both Marcus and Lucilla’s eyes on you, attempting to hide their shock and perhaps horror. The worst was that of Macrinus.
He knew. Just from the look of him (or perhaps it was your own paranoia), but he had to have known from the moment you bought the wheat.
Still, they all applauded, and ones the excitement of your supposed pregnancy died down, the enthusiasm for the battle was born.
It was perhaps the one event you could stomach. While you could still clearly see men dying, it wasn’t as horribly bloody as the prior. Were you becoming numb to the cruelty of these games because you were pretending…or were you letting the game invade your head?
As several ships collided within the growing chaos, men would either die from their fellow man or would simply fall into the water and be devoured by beasts you had never seen until then. Your eyes had been following Hanno the whole time, whether purposefully or not.
Words could not describe the terror that had been brought upon you as you saw him aim his crossbow at the booth you sat in.
You did not think the arrow would pierce you, but it did. It longed into your right shoulder, and a cry you had no idea you were capable of making tore through your throat.
Tears blinded your vision, but the screams from the whole arena deafened your ears you could not even hear what Geta was saying to you.
You could barely make out Marcus’ in front of you as he snapped the body of the arrow and then hoisted you into his arms. You’d never been carried like this as a woman; only as a child by your father.
The heat of Rome felt hotter that day as the pain in your shoulder only grew tighter and tighter as if your skin was going to stretch away from you. The next thing you knew, you were laid upon a cold, solid surface, and sound returned to your ears.
“It’s alright, you’re alright.” Geta shushed, brushing your hair. “You’ll be okay.”
Someone stuck their fingers into your wounded shoulder, and you could only scream. A tender hand laid itself on your cheek, and just from touch alone, you knew it was Lucilla.
“Do not touch her!” Geta hissed, swatting her away.
“No, no!” You whined, reaching out and holding onto her.
Lucilla dropped to her knees, kissing every part of skin that was available, mumbling. “I know, I know. This too shall pass, you are stronger than you believe, my dear.”
Then, just like that, you felt the arrowhead leave your body. The pain was still excruciating beyond belief, but all that was left was for your arm to be wrapped in cloth, and to rest.
One of the guards in charge of the gladiators approached you when you were finally able to sit up.
“My lady,” he began. “did you happen to get a look at the man who shot you?”
“She’s only starting to recover!” Geta snapped. “How dare you. She carries my child, and-!”
“-It’s alright, Geta.” You soothed.
You could’ve done it. Told him with full confidence that it was Hanno. There would have been your chance of power; to kill the man who had nearly killed you.
Yet…you were vindictive and wanted to do it yourself.
“I have no memory.” You told him. “It happened so fast.”
How horrible it is that Geta would stop forcing you to pleasure him only when you were supposedly with his child and injured. You assumed that if you were suffering from only one of those ailments, than he still would’ve held you down and used you.
You thought nothing else would happen that night. You would simply speak to one another, pretending to be completely enamored by his existence, and then lie down to sleep.
Of course, that would be too peaceful.
You were awoken gently, to your surprise, by Geta shaking you. Humming, you rubbed your eyes. “What is it?”
“The general and his whore wife.” He gritted his teeth. “They planned to kill us.”
You shot right up, forgetting about your injured shoulder, and let out a cry. Geta helped you stand, and that was when you saw Caracalla standing before you, his monkey companion Dundus perching upon his shoulder.
“How-how do we know?” You stammered, not having to feign your terror.
Neither of them answered, and the three of you were led out into the throne room. There before you in their night clothes just as you were, Lucilla and Marcus.
Geta approached them first, seething. “The honor, the dignitas that Rome has bestowed upon you. All this you have forfeited by your treachery. Thanks to the civic virtue of men like Macrinus and Thraex your insurrection has been revealed-.”
“-Torture me if you want,” Marcus shook his head. “but please, don’t lecture me.”
Geta’s face turned almost as red as his hair. “Your name and deeds will be forgotten, lost to history! You are damned to oblivion!”
“You damn me?” He laughed. “I don’t care. Everything is forgotten in time. Empires fall… and so do Emperors.”
Caracalla rose from his seat, reaching for his brother’s sword. “Why wait? I'll gut him right now!”
Geta grabbed onto him. “Brother! Brother! His death must be public.”
“Public, yes. Hang his entrails from the city gates!” He pointed at Lucilla. “Crucify her!”
“No!”
All eyes fell on you after your outburst. Even you froze in place, feeling bile begin to rise up within you. Geta let go of Caracalla. “‘No?’ You say? What would you have me do then?”
Swallowing thickly, it was hard to speak as tears began to fall. You held your stomach. “Crucifixion is…it’s…”
His face dropped into a scowl. “You aren’t saying I should let them live, are you?”
“No-!”
“-Then which is it?!”
Your voice fell silent as your chest constricted, and you could barely breathe. Your mouth would move, but nothing came out; not even strangled noises of desperation.
“If I may, your grace,” Macrinus stepped forward. “I believe she means to bring equal punishments to the crimes committed.”
Geta furrowed his brow. “I do not know what you speak of.”
“Please, let the rest of them out of the room so I might explain more clearly.’
He considered his words, then turned to his guards. “The criminals to the dungeons, my brother to his chambers, and my love-.”
“-I wish to be alone tonight.” You stated.
The emperor scoffed. “What?”
“The babe.” You began. “I-I have helped many women deliver their children, and what has always caused an early birth is stress. I-I cannot take any-anymore of it, or I fear…”
Finally, he took in the sight of your fearful face. Sighing heavily, he said. “Put my lady in her chambers for tonight.”
“Thank you.” You kissed his hand.
You were led into your own chambers, and once the door was shut, you threw yourself onto your bed and wept. You wept until you were wailing into the night, you wept until your eyes were as red as the sun in the morning, you wept until it hurt to continue to do so…
It was unknown how long you had cried, but the opening of your bedroom door is what alarmed you. Snapping your head over in the direction, you were shocked to see Macrinus.
“The general and his wife’s fate has been decided.” He stated.
You held a pillow to your chest, rubbing your reddened nose. “And what is it?”
“The emperor has chosen to let the gods decide, and Acacius will fight against Hanno tomorrow in the arena.”
“You mean you convinced him to.” You glared.
Macrinus approached you. “May I try some of the bread you have baked, my lady?”
You held no confusion when he asked you that. Surprise, yes; but you knew what he asked. You took a deep breath. “I believe I don’t understand.”
“The wheat you bought only days ago.” He reminded. “You said you would bake your own bread. Surely, you didn’t use it as false proof of you carrying the emperor’s heir?”
You didn’t dare look at him. Even when he laid his hand on our back, rubbing circles over your nightdress. “I wish to help you, my child. You must be willing to help me first.”
That was why he also didn’t alert Geta of your betrayal…unless, he had no idea of your alliance with Marcus and Lucilla.
“What is it that you want?” You asked.
“All in time.” He soothed. “I wish to give you the privilege to speak to someone.”
You finally looked at him, your eyes wide. “General Acacius?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I am unable to escort you to the dungeons below the palace. Yet, I can take you to the pit of gladiators.”
“It is easier for you to take me out of the palace than below it?”
“Take you to the man who nearly overthrew the emperors?” He chuckled bitterly. “Not possible. I cannot grant you the gift to say goodbye, but I can allow you to bargain for his life.”
You blinked. “Hanno?”
“Correct.”
“How can I leave the palace at this hour, after what has just happened?”
“You underestimate the silence men will take when it is weighed in gold.” He tutted. “I can only give you ten minutes with him. Will you go or not?”
You were forced to decide quickly…This could be your chance. He had nearly took your life the other day, and the pain in your shoulder was just a growing reminder of that. If he were dead…there was no way you could overtake him.
Yet, you learned that, in a world of men, you didn’t have to be stronger than them: Only smarter, and faster.
“I will go.”
You had hidden a kitchen knife under your bed the moment you had your own chambers. Geta had gifted you several colorful ribbons he loved to see you wear in your hair. He perhaps did not expect you to tie one around your waist under your gown, securing the knife.
Macrinus led you swiftly from the palace to the gladiator pit, which was thankfully not a long walk. You ignored the stares and intrigued calls from the other men as you treaded the halls. You were stopped by a door. Macrinus didn’t even warn Hanno who stood shirtless in his cell, only opened the door and let you enter.
“I’ll rattle the door when it’s time.” That was all he said and left.
Hanno didn’t even seem alarmed. “And what is Rome’s Delight doing here?”
Your blood boiled upon seeing him, yet you remained calm. “I have come to make a bargain; a plea.”
That was when the puzzlement appeared on his face. “And what is that?”
“The man you will fight tomorrow, you must spare him.”
“Why should I?”
Your grief and despair had made itself known to everyone around you for the past few days; yet, in that cell, only with Hanno as your witness, did he see your rage.
“He is the one who saved my life when you meant to steal it!”
The only change you saw in him was his jaw clenching. Other than that, nothing. “The general?”
You only nodded.
He sighed, brushing past you and shaking the door. “Macrinus!”
“What are you doing?” You hissed.
“I will not have you waste your breath on that man.”
“I will give you anything you desire.”
Hanno faced you. “Then you can deliver his head on a platter for me.”
You gawked as he walked away. “What have I ever done to you?”
“What?”
“Do you truly hate me that much?!” You turned back to him, getting closer. “Kill the man that is the reason I am still here?”
The last thing you thought you would hear left his lips: A laugh. No, not a genuine one. One that you yourself have released on multiple occasions when you have been in disbelief.
“You truly believe everything that happens is because of you?” He taunted. “Has the emperor been filling your mind with so many delusions of grandeur, you can no longer conceive a world where you are not the center of it?”
“Is it so difficult for you to answer my question because you are a fool, or because you wish to not admit it?” You hardened your tone.
“What is your question, my empress?”
“Why did you shoot me?!”
“The arrow was not meant for you!”
You felt your shoulders drop upon the confession. Your aggression ceased only because of your bewilderment.
“Then who?” You asked.
He backed away. “The general you so wish to defend.”
“Whatever it is that he has done, it can be solved with-.”
“-He murdered my wife.”
Hanno said it so easily. No pain, no rage, nothing. It was a fact, and that was what he wanted you to know.
And how stupid you had been. No one in all of Rome was pure of heart; including Marcus. He was a war general; how could you think he wouldn’t have committed sins against the innocent?
“Why so silent, my lady?” He asked. “Are you in disbelief that he has enemies?”
“I didn’t know that.” You admitted.
“That the general is too a monster, or that he killed the only thing in my life worth living for?”
“And that is your desire?” You prodded. “Take his life so that he may die knowing his wife will be ravaged by wolves?”
When he charged at you, you barely had enough time to reach in your dress and unsheathe your knife. Hanno stopped himself just in time for the tip to kiss his chest. Nothing to cause any more harm than a scratch.
Even though you were not the one hurt, you breathed as if you were. He stared down at you as you shrunk under his gaze, and the two of you remained frozen. That is, until he grabbed both your wrists, and rose them above your head.
“I am only merciful because the general still breathes.” He spoke so only you could hear. “If your bastard of a lover had put him to the sword this night you chose to visit me, you would be dead before you could scream.”
Your nose was an inch from his, that was how close he stood to you. His breath caressed your skin, and you turned away in disgust. He let go of your empty wrist, yet still held the one with the dagger.
“Did you believe you could kill me tonight?” He asked, yet you said nothing. Hanno then brought the dagger to his breastbone, angling it upward. “Do not stab head on; stab up.”
Silence and an iron gaze was your reply.
He then hovered it to the pulse point of his neck. “If you want a quick death, right here; with a thinner blade, preferably.”
Then, he placed the tip just above his brow. “If you need information out of a rat, and you have the stomach to do so, drag it across. It will make the mightiest of men cry like a child in the night.”
“You are clever and a skilled warrior,” you finally said. “what is it you want me to tell you?”
“That you will leave it up to the gods and to me if your general lives or not.”
“But I cannot.” You dared to dig the blade just a little into his skin, and his breath hitched. “My desire for him to live is stronger than for you to die.”
Hanno finally let go of your wrist, and you immediately retracted the knife from his brow. “So do you wish to try again to kill me?”
“I wish for you to show mercy.”
“Mercy?” He questioned. “Mercy upon the man who pillaged my home and killed my wife? Mercy for the one who has made me a slave?”
“I too am a slave and-.”
“-And?!” He cried. “And there is nothing! You are draped in silks whilst I in chains and are bathed in clear waters while I in blood, yet you say we are the same?!”
You swallowed your anger, knowing it would bring you nowhere. “You entertain the horrid creatures of Rome; I am forced to pleasure the emperor. We perform differently, but we are still slaves.”
“You are with child.” He stated. “Will that child also be a slave though the emperor is quick to claim it is his heir?”
The crackling of the torches in the room only added to the fire th in your soul. If not contained correctly, you would surely burn and take him with you.
“A child…yes.” You relaxed, folding your hands. “A child that I could command to be Geta’s. Perhaps, if I wanted to have the brothers slaughter one another, I could say it belongs to Caracalla. Or, if I despised you anymore than I do at this moment…I could say that it is yours.”
Hanno’s eyes dropped in recognition, saying softly. “You carry an empty womb.”
You nodded. “It is the same as your honor.”
Moments later, the door behind you rattled, and Macrinus spoke even when you didn’t. “The time is up, my little empress.”
You bowed your head to Hanno, curtsying. “Sleep well.”
He said nothing in reply, and you turned on our heel, leaving the cell. You pulled your hood back over your head as Macrinus led you through the darkened streets of the city.
“Did you get what you came for?” He asked.
“No.” Was your immediate reply. “And I do not know truly what I wanted.”
The day was as blistering hot as the others, yet the stare Lucilla gave you as she was being led into the emperor’s viewing box made your blood turn to ice. There was not a hint of wrath upon her face; there was nothing at all.
She already looked as if her soul had been stolen.
“How does your shoulder fair, dear sister?” Caracalla brushed his fingers over your arm.
A watery smile was upon your lips like second nature. “It still aches, but it heals, thank the gods. And your overall health?”
He sighed. “I do not know how much longer I have upon this earth.”
“Do not say such things.” You squeeze his hands. “If the gods will it, you shall live for another hundred years.”
He kissed your hands that held his. “I hope so, my love.”
Your grin fell upon the title, and Geta immediately sat you down on the chair behind him that was beside Lucilla’s. He gave an apologetic look.
“He only grows more confused by the day.” He caressed your cheek. “You are well?”
You were far from it, but you could not say that. “Your son feels better now.”
Geta smiled, lowering his head down to kiss your womb. “He will need all his strength.”
The announcer on the other side of the arena yelled to gain everyone’s attention. “From the vanquished city of Numidia, the victor of three contests in the Colosseum, the barbarian Hanno!”
You watched as he ran up from the pit, sword in hand. On the other side, you watched at they brought in Marcus. You could barely look at his already beaten figure. The announcer continued. “Will challenge General Marcus Acacius for his treason against the lives of the Emperors and the enemy of the State!”
The two approached one another on the sandy field. Even from where you sat, so close to them, you could barely make out the look in their eyes. You assumed their was hatred, but your own eyes must have deceived you, because you swore you saw a hint of regret within Marcus’ own gaze.
You blinked and the battle between the two had begun. It was a different level of insanity at how they fought. Marcus was decades older than Hanno, and yet, there were moments where the Numidian had to keep up with him.
Than, the roles would be reversed.
Blood stained the floor of the Colosseum as they fought. Then, when all feel silent between them, and Marcus could barely stand, his lips moved as he spoke to Hanno, then raised his hand.
He yielded.
The patrons of the arena began to mumble amongst themselves, growing louder and louder. Geta rose to his feet. “Romans! What say you?”
In an instant, choruses begging him to be spared overpowered the few that wanted him to be killed. Geta shut his eyes, raising his hand, and they were silenced.
“The gods have rendered their judgement.”
His thumb pointed downward, and the crowd erupted in dissent. Your heart was forcing itself to beat out of your chest as you could only stare at the sight of Hanno glaring down at the general before him.
He tossed his sword to the side.
You hadn’t even noticed Caracalla stood until you heard him yell. “Kill him, kill him!” Like an angered child.
“Is this how Rome treats its heroes?!” Hanno shouted, staring at the audience all around him and pointing his sword. “If his life has no value, what are yours worth?”
Geta stepped up onto the barrier, balancing between the viewing box and a fifteen-foot drop into the arena. He held his arms out to his side, his sleeves dropping to the ground, and his pale face was red. “The gods have spoken! Kill him!”
From all sides of the stadium, hundreds of archers aimed their bows at the center of the battleground. Yet, none fired. Caracalla jeered.
“In the name of Jupiter, kill him!”
The arrows were released, and they screamed like none other as they fired into the center. As they pierced Marcus’ body, you did not know you had been wailing in fright until Geta had slapped you.
“You mewling cunt!” He cursed. “You wish to weep over the man who nearly had you killed?”
Blood fell upon your tongue from your bruised lip, and you did not dare to look at him nor Lucilla.
“Death will be too good for you!” She cried with all of her heart.
The noise from the crowd died as if the people themselves had done so. Then, just like the confused murmurs when Marcus yielded, the same began to grow and grow into a call of rebellion.
It was all in your ears. Lucilla’s weeping, the curses from the crowd, the panic of the emperors…but you stood absolutely still.
With hooded eyes, they drifted up to see that Geta stood just on the edge of the barrier, his back turned to you. Your gaze fell to the ground below you, and it was only then you realized how high up you truly were.
You do not know who or what willed you to, but you then looked at Hanno still the center, covered in blood. As if he knew what you would do, he shook his head.
“Ah, ah, ah.” Macrinus grabbed your arm roughly when you took one step towards Geta.
The emperors turned to him upon his appearance, and Macrinus loosened his grip on you before saying. “For our safety’s sake, we should leave.”
“Yes.” Geta stepped down, wrapping his arms around you. “We should.”
You never knew there was a safe house in Rome until you were forced into it. Perhaps that was the reason for it being a safe house, so that no one knew of it. Yet, apparently, almost all of the roman citizens found it that night. Or, they were simply rioting wherever a free patch of land was.
The cries played in your ears despite them being behind heavy walls of the safe house, and you dared not to peek out the windows as the several fires would temporarily blind you. In the house was you, Macrinus, Dondus (Caracalla’s pet monkey, although he’d call him his other half), and the twin emperors.
“How is the babe?” Geta asked as you sat with your head hanging low.
Of course he would ask that. You didn’t look at him. “He is in fear for his life.”
“I understand,” he sighed. “but there-.”
“-But what?” You finally looked at him, hissing. “Chaos has fallen upon the city because of your actions.”
“There was nothing else to do.” Geta glared at you. “He and his bitch were plotting to kill us! If I’d let him live-.”
“-Don’t you hear them?” Caracalla cried out from his seat, holding Dondus. “They’re calling for our heads! She is right, you brought this upon us!”
Geta placed his hands on him. “Calm yourself, brother. The Praetorians will put down this crowd like they have others-.” The money upon Caracalla’s shoulder chirped out in anxiousness from the people outside. “Keep the ape still!”
“Beware of how you speak to Dondus!” His brother berated.
“Perhaps,” Macrinus finally intervened. “you should take Dondus and Julia elsewhere. The noise outside is too much for them; you should comfort one another someplace quieter.”
Caracalla nodded, gathering up Dondus and moving to help you stand, but Macrinus reached his hand out first. You took it, and as you stood, he said into your ear.
“I will find you on the right side of the hall.”
This was not the time nor place for riddles, but you could not react in any sort of way. You looped our arm through Caracalla’s and walked out of the room, hoping to find somewhere quieter.
“I’m afraid,” you confided in him, truthfully.
“I am as well.” Was all he could say.
You stopped in the middle of the hall once he found an open door. “I…I need time with my own thoughts. Please.”
He nodded, cradling Dondus closer to his chest before entering the room, shutting the door tightly. Within the minute, you watched as Macrinus approached you from the other side of the hall.
You spat. “What do you want?”
“I know I stole your moment of vengeance, and for that, I apologize.” He stood before you. “But let me make it up to you.”
“How could you possibly?”
From his cloak, he brandished a knife, holding the handle out to you. You took it without hesitation, yet question was still upon your face. “I do it myself?”
“You could,” he shrugged. “or, you could have his own brother do so.”
“Caracalla? He is senile.”
“Then I have a proposition for you.” Macrinus pointed to the door Caracalla was behind. “Convince him that Geta will destroy all of you if he is not disposed of. Convince him that, as the new emperor of Rome, he will need more trusting subjects. I shall be his second in command, and you shall be free.”
You furrowed your brow. “Who shall be first?”
“The monkey.” He smirked. “Do you believe he would put me above him?”
It sounded so simple; too simple. Yet, as the crowd began to die down, and you could no longer hear their protests from outside, the quietness brought to you what you had always known: You would never be your own person again so long as Geta breathed.
You held the dagger to your heart, saluting him. “I shall do my duty.”
He nodded. “May the gods be with you when you do, Brutus.”
An insult to most, and while it shocked you, you took it in stride as you stood outside the door. You made yourself look smaller, more afraid, and hid the dagger within your cloak as you entered the room.
There, sitting upon the floor, was Caracalla and Dondus. Like a scared child, he held the monkey close to him, grooming one another as if it was the only thing to bring comfort.
“Caracalla?” You whispered.
He stared up at you, and you noticed he had been crying. Immediately, you sat before him, bringing him into your arms.
“Nothing was ever mine.” He cried, embracing you. “Everything was ‘ours’, always. Even in the womb, he gripped the umbilicus in his tiny fist to deprive me of air.”
“He did?”
“Certainly, one cannot forget.”
You pulled away only to hold his face tenderly in your hands. “You must listen to me, for what I tell you is dire. Your brother wishes to blame you before the Senate; for what happened, for the chaos in the streets-.”
“-That is a lie!” He tore himself from you. “I didn’t do it!”
“I know that, but they don’t. No testimony is more damning than that of a brother against another.”
“He lies! He always lies!” He sobbed.
“He’s very persuasive.”
“What will they do to me?”
“I don’t dare imagine, but…gods above, I don’t wish to know what they will do to Dondus.”
His jaw quivered with the rest of his body. “What-what shall we do?"
You sighed. “I…I have a proposition, but it is most outrageous and-.”
“-Julia,” he begged, grabbing your hands. “dear, sweet sister, please tell me.”
Breath shuttering, you reached into your cloak and held the blade out to him. “Slay your brother tonight. You shall be crowned the sole emperor of Rome when morning comes, and Dondus, the child I carry, and I will be safe.'
He took it, yet still had that look of terror. “This…It has always been he who led everything. I do not know who to trust or-or who to command.”
“Then let me-.” You stopped yourself, eyeing the monkey that lay at his legs. You held your hand out to him, and Dondus climbed into your arms. “Let us help you. Claim Dondus as your first in command, and I your second.”
You wished the same as Lucilla and Marcus; to have Rome be a free empire. Yet, you would have to free Lucilla yourself before that happened.
Caracalla nodded yet said. “You-you are with child. You will become delirious as time progresses.”
And he was the epitome of having a clear mind.
“I will need a third.” He settled.
You shook your head. “That has never been done before-.”
“-I will be emperor!” He screamed. “If it is to be done, it shall be done!”
Raising your hands in surrender, you pleaded. “It shall, it shall! For a third…Macrinus. He has been loyal and informed us of the general’s betrayal.”
“Yes, yes Macrinus will do.” He grabbed your face and pressed his lips against yours. It didn’t even truly feel like a kiss, yet it shocked you nonetheless. “You are the wisest woman I have ever met, dear sister.”
You nodded, forcing a smile. With that, he stood on his feet and left the room. IT would have been easy to stay in there and wait for his return…
Yet, you wanted to be the last thing Emperor Geta saw.
No fear toiled within your body as you approached the throne room, not even when you hear the cries that you knew belonged to Geta. You walked through the doors, watching as Geta held his hands up in fear, begging his brother to spare his life as he was forced onto his knees, trying to stop the knife in Caracalla’s hand.
“I love you!” Geta squealed, staring up at him through tears “You are my brother, I love you!”
You moved to stand behind the younger twin, glaring at the man before you. Geta’s eyes dropped in relief.
“My love, my love, please help me!”
There was nothing uncertain about how you grabbed Caracalla’s hand that held the dagger. With eyes unblinking, you guided the blade into Geta’s throat, pushing it further and further as blood drained from his mouth.
The emperor was dead, and you would sleep like a child once more that night.
There was something inside of you when you awoke that morning. Not the child you had lied to all of Rome about; it felt like a parasite. You threw up an hour after you woke up, but when you checked with the healers, they said that there was nothing ailing you.
Was it…guilt? No, no it could not be.
Was it possible to feel guilt for the act of killing someone, but not feeling it for who was killed?
You had no time to debate these issues as if you were a philosopher.
Dressed in your finest silks, you made way into the room where the hundreds of senators met, carrying a hefty sack beside you. You sat in a chair next to Macrinus.
“You have done well.” He said softly.
You smiled. “Only because of you.”
Your gaze turned to Caracalla, who sat in one of the two thrones that were there for him and Geta. He looked like the worst you had ever seen him be. A blood rag had been placed at his feet.
“Now I am the only one.” He began, voice low. “I was the true us, and he was the false me. We were always ‘we,’ all our lives, but now I am only I, me, alone.”
The senators look at one another in silent terror. The only ones to not feel fear were you and Macrinus.
Caracalla continued. “My hand held the blade, but my father’s hand guided mine. I was the puppet, dancing on his string. As Emperor, I have convened the Senate to appoint my First Consul and bestow upon him the power to administer the military and civic functions of the Empire.”
He tossed his hand to the second thrown, revealing his fury companion. “I name Citizen Dondus!”
Where the senators were beyond terrified, they were now confused. Macrinus was the first to rise, applauding. “Hail Dondus!”
You repeated his sentiment, clapping with vigor. Caracalla and the rest of the mortified senators applauded all repeating ‘Hail Dondus!’.
Once the excitement died down, Caracalla resumed. “As is custom, I am naming a Second Consul to advise the First and to assure his integrity. Though you will find that Dondus is incorruptible! As Second Consul, I name…”
Macrinus took one step forward.
“The mother of the future heir to the throne, Julia!”
All eyes fell upon you, standing taller than you ever had done in your life. How strange it was though, that the same reaction to a monkey being assigned first in command, was to you, a woman.
Utter silence, until Caracalla applauded enthusiastically. Like sheep, the senators followed; all but Macrinus.
“Yet, as mother to the heir,” the emperor said after finishing. “it is apparent she shall be incompetent for majority of her advising. So, for the first time in the history of Rome, I name Citizen Macrinus as my third!”
Even with this third twist in a counsel, the senators seemed more so relieved at the decision. Macrinus did not smile or even acknowledge the honor, simply stared ahead. Caracalla gathered Dondus in his arms.
“There will be a triumphal parade to celebrate. There will be games and mass executions! Long live the Empire!”
“Long live the Emperor!” You and the senators all yelled.
The Emperor Caracalla carried the First Consul Dondus sweepingly out of the hall, to the Senate’s terrified silence. You picked up the sack that had been beside you this whole time, then making your way to the center of the room.
You opened the sack, and out fell Geta’s decapitated head. The Senate gasped and gagged at the sight of the former emperor’s head. You almost felt sorry for the horror they felt that whole time. Yet, there horror is what would bring you fortune.
“This is what befell your emperor.” You pointed to the head at your feet. “He was slaughtered by the one who shared a womb with him. Tell me, senators, is this who we must trust to maintain the greatness of the Roman Empire?”
They did not glance at one another in uncertainty; no, no they were listening to you.
You continued, your heart stammering. “I am not the one who will stand with you for the rest of my days, it is the son I carry within me. And if it is my son who will become emperor, then there must still be an empire for him once he is born. Hysteria has poisoned the streets for decades now, it is time to put an end to it!”
Murmurs and nods of approval began to echo amongst the counsel.
“Every single one of Rome’s children matters; from the beggars to the emperor himself. If one falls, so shall the rest of the Empire. I have walked beside the lay people of the city, and they feel betrayed by the former emperor for the murder of their beloved general. To right this wrong, I call for the release of Lucilla, daughter of Marcus Aurelias.”
Not one of the hundreds of senators made a sound. Deep within you, you knew that there wouldn’t be much rejoicing over Lucilla’s freedom, but you still had to try.
“The people adored her for far longer than they adored the general!” You pleaded. “If we kill her only for the amusement of the elites, then the children of Rome-!”
“-Shall live.”
You turned to Macrinus, who finally stepped all the way forward.
“Forgive me,” He bowed mockingly. “my lady, but for a woman complimented to have a golden mouth, you have no idea what you are saying.”
A few of the senators chuckled.
“You wish to free the woman who mean to have you, and the emperors killed?” He questioned.
You refuted. “I wish to show the world that Rome is capable of forgiveness.”
“A desire so foolish, only the emperor’s favorite whore could have it.”
“Another word of slander out of your mouth, and I will have your tongue removed!” You stood toe-to-toe with him.
He grinned like the devil, and just from your outburst alone, no matter how warranted it had been, he had you. Macrinus stepped away, looking around at the senators.
“Me thinks the little girl believes she is Marcus Aurelius himself born again.” He straightened his tone. “What say you, senators? All in favor of releasing a traitor to the Empire, speak.”
Not one of them said ‘aye’. If you weren’t under a sheer amount of duress, you would’ve seen perhaps a few faces of inner turmoil, debating on calling for Lucilla’s release.
Yet, no one said a word because they shared the one thing that will contribute to the death of humanity: Cowardice.
Macrinus tutted. “Now, dear Julia and I happen to have, through good fortune and not a little skill, the remaining emperor’s ear. We can speak reason in it and tame the madness in the street. Yet, I will leave the domestic work of calming the emperor to his second in command. As for myself, to restore order to Rome, I will need power over the affairs of the state. Including command of the Praetorian Guard. The decision is in your hands. Ballot or hand?”
One hand rose immediately. Another followed, then ten, then thirty, and then, all of them. He provided no evidence for his cause…yet there was a unanimous decision.
Macrinus held his hand out to you, and you could only stare up at him in question.
“I believe we shall take the seats that are rightfully ours.” He said lowly.
Carefully, you slipped your hand into his, and he led you up the stairs to sit upon the chair that belonged to Geta, while he took Caracalla’s.
This would be the first and the last time a woman ever sat upon the emperor’s throne.
After being embarrassed that morning, you paced around your chambers. Perhaps you could have found Caracalla and gave him the same reasonings the senate did not listen to. Perhaps he could somehow see to the logic that would be in setting Lucilla free.
No, of course he wouldn’t. Even if his mind was sound, he still knew she was apart of the coup to try and have him dethroned; killed in his mind’s eye.
As your mind grew heavy with existential possibilities towards the future, the door to your chambers opened. Stopping where you stood, you watched as Macrinus entered.
“Now, try to make me understand this," he shook his head. "I let you have your vengeance on the man who used you as a slave, I promised you freedom, and yet you wasted it.”
You clenched your jaw. "How dare you-."
“-How dare I?” He tensed his voice. “How dare I keep silent about your lie? How dare I give you the privilege to take your revenge? I have saved you more than you believe I have harmed you, lady Julia."
The name had always bothered you, but with one emperor dead and the other incapacitated, you assumed it would stop.
Now, it only enraged you more; or perhaps that was just because it was Macrinus saying it.
You glared. “It was your own mistake to believe you were the only one who desired power.”
He took a deep breath, then moving to sit on your bed. “Sit beside me, Rome’s Delight; I have a story to tell you.”
“I am not a child, you may tell me in short.”
“You are not the only slave wishing to be free.” He pulled back the collar of his clothing, revealing a branded ‘M.A’ “You are lucky enough to not carry your master’s mark, but were a slave nonetheless. Marcus Aurelius spoke of peace while still using violence against those who served him.”
Swallowing your pride thickly, you said. “I’m sorry.”
“You have learned now, that is all that matters.”
“But Lucilla will still be dead.” You tried to keep your voice steady. “She wanted the emperors to be gone as much as you, but she will-."
“-Her father enslaved me.”
“Her father is dead; and if taking his empire wasn’t enough, than killing his last child will satisfy you?"
Macrinus clutched your arm, fingers tightening with every word. “I would be careful with how you speak to me. I wish to offer you one last ounce of kindness before I regret it. Now tell me, Brutus, will you accept me as Rome’s new emperor?”
You had all the right to say it was Caracalla, but you thought better of it. So, with the softening of your entire person, you nodded. “I accept you.”
He dropped your arm. “I’ll let you say goodbye this time.”
Macrinus led you down into the dungeons of the palace, and he was right; somehow it was more heavily guarded than the gladiator pit. Even when the worst of the worst prisoners sneered or jeered at you, your sorrow and anger could not stir your fear.
The door to one of the cells was open, and you ran in just as Lucilla turned to see you.
“Five minutes.” Was all Macrinus said before locking the door and leaving.
You embraced one another when he left. Neither of you said anything, just clung to each other as if the world itself would tear you apart.
“Forgive me, mother Lucilla.” You choked up.
Lucilla pulled away, taking your face into her hands. “Sweet child, there is nothing to forgive.”
“I failed you.” The tears finally came. “I was right there in the senate’s room, I-I told them the chaos that would befell Rome if-.”
“-You were in the senate’s room?” She sounded as if her breath had been stolen.
You nodded. “Yes, but they wouldn’t listen!”
“My dear girl,” she smiled. “if you were able to even get half a sentence in, than they listened! My father but sixteen years ago said that it was a shame I had been born a women, for I would have been a magnificent emperor. Yet, here you stand; you who had been once a slave, rose above into having a sear in the senate council.”
Still, no matter how much pride she held, your own shame outweighed it. “I still have failed you.”
“I have already accepted my fate.” She whispered. “I must take care of those who matter to me before I leave this earth.”
“Do not say such things!” You cried. “I’ll still find a way to save you.”
“Hanno is my son.”
You expected her to deny your attempts at rescuing her, you even expected her to coddle you, curse you…but this?
“What?” You uttered.
“He is Lucius Verus Aurulius,” she said gently. “second of his name, but the first son of Maximus Decimus Meridius.”
“The-the gladiator?” Was somehow the first question you asked.
“Yes.” She nodded. “Lucius didn’t run away, I sent him. With him as heir to the empire, I know many would not rest until he was dead. How was he to fight for a claim he knew nothing about? Now, he is here; and I am no longer frightened of dying.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to!”
She shushed you, combing her fingers through your hair. “I can speak to you until the earth is burnt by the sun of how I have made peace, but I know that will not work. So, I have two final requests for you.”
“Anything.”
Lucilla walked to the small desk she had in her cell, then picking up a scroll loosely wrapped in twine. She handed it to you. “My first is to give this to my son before tomorrow. It…explains a great deal of things I do not have the time to say to him.”
You took it, holding it to your heart. “And the second?”
She smiled, wrapping her arms around you and kissing the side of your head. “To take care of him as I intend him to take care of you.”
It was not the first time that day your eyes had grown. “He despises me.”
“If the gods are merciful, then I truly believe you will both come to see eye to eye as the only two who remain.”
“I nearly killed him.” You admitted. “The night before his duel with Acacius, I brought a knife with me and stabbed him; well…not enough to harm him.”
Lucilla shook her head, giggling. “He will need someone who disagrees with him.”
You found yourself laughing along with her, even through your sobs. She pulled away from you, wiping your tears. “He is a good man. He may deny it but believe me when I tell you.”
“I trust you.” You nodded.
She took a deep breath. “I will be with you, even when I’m gone.”
“I…I know.”
“Now go before I beg you to stay.”
You forced yourself away from her before you could change your mind. You could not even look at her as you left her cell and went up the hall. Just in time, you remembered to hide the scroll as Macrinus approached you.
“Leaving so soon?” He asked.
Sighing, you said. “She’s…inconsolable. I couldn’t bear another moment with her.”
Macrinus nodded. “You should rest for the remainder of the day. It has been quite exhausting.”
“Yes,” you agreed. “it certainly has.”
It was the first time that night you were forced to sneak out of the palace on your own. Fortunately, you remembered the route you took to the Gladiator pit and managed to dodge any of the guards on patrol that night.
The pit proved to be more difficult as the overseers of it had less space to watch over, yet you still somehow managed to maneuver them.
Perhaps the gods were on your side.
“Hanno.” You whispered once you found his cell.
The man turned over his shoulder once he heard your voice and approached with a scowl. “What are you doing here?”
You wasted no time, holding out the scroll. “Your mother told me to give you this.”
He paused for only half a beat. “My mother died when-.”
“-Your mother is Lucilla, daughter of Marcus Aurelias.” You whispered fiercely. “And you are Lucius, the lost son.”
His eyes didn’t leave yours as he reached down to the latch of the door, and cracked it opened. “Get inside.”
Though you wished to, you didn’t question how he had unlocked it and only walked in. He shut the door tightly, then took the scroll from you. You stood there as he unraveled it to read. His face changed every few seconds, ranging from distress to downright confusion. When he was finished, he looked at you.
“She gave this to you?” You nodded. “Why?”
“I was allowed to say goodbye to her.”
“From Macrinus?” He tested. “Was this before or after you attempted to steal his power?”
“I was cruel to you.” You admitted. “Even after discovering Acacius had pillaged your home and murdered your wife, I expected you to show mercy. I am astounded you did, but as I look back, I wouldn’t have blamed you if you didn’t. My desire for the general to live extends to your mother; if not more. She did not give up my name at any moment despite the fact I too was apart of the coup to try and overthrow the emperors. I cannot simply let her die.”
Lucius stared at you, his gaze intimidating yet at ease. He approached you. “You wish to save her life?”
“More than anything.”
“It is a rumor that Macrinus was the one to puppeteer Caracalla in slaying his brother. But…it wasn’t him, was it?”
Breathing deeply, you looked at the floor. “It was I.”
“Look at me.” He commanded softly, and you did. “Would you kill again if it meant protecting her?”
Your mind said ‘yes’ without a moment’s hesitation, but your heart only sunk into your stomach at the thought. It must have been apparent on your face, for he said.
“There is no shame if you are unable to.”
“I will be with him in the emperor’s box.” You said, determination in your eyes. “I will simply need you to buy me time in the arena. It shall be done.”
Lucius nodded, and released along breath before saying. "I treated you harshly. I...I don't believe I would have survived what you have been put through."
You picked at your fingers. "I think you would have."
"No." He solidified. "I wouldn't."
A silence fell between the two of you. There wasn't a hint of discomfort; as if, for the first time, you felt seen.
“You never told me your name.” Lucius uttered.
You pressed your lips together, shrugging. “It was never important.”
“It has been,” he said. “and it is now. You know my true name, if I am to understand you as how my mother wishes I do, then I must know yours.”
Your mouth parted to speak the first syllable, but even that had felt foreign. You instead lied. “I do not remember it.”
As he looked at you, the steely gaze you always knew began to disappear. “You must remember how it sounded from your mother’s mouth.”
“She died before she could hold me.”
“Then your father.” He walked closer to you, yet you felt no fear. “It does not matter if he was wretched or kind, he spoke your name and your name alone. What did it sound like?”
Like he loved you. Even when he was cross, he never raised his voice. You hated more than ever how tears started to build within your eyes.
“Geta had beaten me until I could no longer use it.” you confessed. “It will feel like poison upon my lips.”
“Then whisper it to me so you will scarcely have to move them.”
You had been lain down on a bed and had every bit of a man touch and invade your body. Even before the emperor, you had lain with people in the past of your choosing…
But none of that amounted to the intimacy you felt in that cell as Lucius stood nearly chest-to-chest with you, hovering his ear over your mouth as you finally (finally) spoke your name aloud.
If the heat of his body lingering over yours did not set your entire being aflame, it was the breath he released once he said.
“It’s a kind name.”
It was all too much for you, so you pulled away from him, drying your eyes. “I…I will pray for your safety.”
He outheld his hand to you. “Strength and honor.”
A saying you had overheard people use as they entered the stadium. You shook his hand. “Strength and honor.”
You didn’t expect to be in the parade Caracalla raved about the day prior. Yet, there you were, draped in the finest and most colorful silks with jewelry in your hair. Inside your sleeve, you’d hidden the same kitchen knife you attempted to stab Lucius with.
You were sat beside Caracalla, who had Dundus upon his shoulder, and who had only grown more delusional since the day prior.
“Where is my brother?” He pulled on your sleeve like a child as you were escorted from the float and into the Colosseum.
A watery smiled pulled upon your lips, and you soothed him. “He feels most unwell today.”
“He should be here.” He sulked as you walked. “He would be happy for me.”
“And he is.” You lied. “You will see him again shortly.”
That managed to ease him, and you both were seated in the emperor’s box with Macrinus. It didn’t escape your vision how hundreds of Praetorians also circled the entire arena. As the time to the match grew closer, you did your best to calm your own nerves. This would be for the good of Rome. Once it was done, you would be able to rest easily again.
It was then you watched as, on one side of the Colosseum, a wagon was rolled out into the center of it. Tied to a pole, dressed up as if she were Venus herself, was Lucilla. All that attempt at soothing yourself was gone once you saw her eyes.
“Must we kill Lucilla?” Caracalla questioned.
You couldn’t even snidely repeat his question to Macrinus you were in such a state of anxiety. Macrinus responded.
“Until she is dead, you will never know peace.”
Thus, the event commenced. The announcer himself even sounded guilt-ridden as he spoke of the crimes Lucilla was being charged with. Treason, betrayal, all of it only anguished the spectators even more to see her being prepared for execution.
“Let it not be said that the Emperor is not merciful!” He yelled. “The queen will be granted a champion to defend her!”
Out from the other side of the arena came Lucius. Half of the Praetorians held their weapons to the man, while the other half faced the civilians as if expecting them to riot. Once again, at the sight of the scene before them, it would not surprise you.
You had been taught one a many myths by your father, mainly belonging to the Greeks. You were Cassandra; blessed by Apollo to speak of prophecies but cursed to not be believed.
When it seemed that hope was gone…Lucius rose his sword, and hundreds of gladiators sprinted from all sides.
The crowd and Caracalla were in an uproar at the excitement. Pandemonium ensued as the gladiators began to climb the barriers and civilians were attempting to enter the arena. The sound of arrows screaming entered your ears; so much so you could not hear what Macrinus was saying to another man, and why Caracalla was screaming.
You simply blinked, and once your eyes were open, you watched as Macrinus dove a needle into the side of Caracalla’s neck, killing him.
Only a gasp tore through your throat, having no ability to scream. Your body soon found reason to move, and you rose to your feet, remembering your duty. Macrinus had acquired a crossbow, aiming it towards Lucilla and Lucius now at the center of the arena.
You rose the knife from your sleeve, charging towards the man. The arrow was fired, and you leapt upon his shoulders.
He moved wildly, trying to force you off of him. You made attempt to slash his throat, but it made contact with his eye instead.
Still…he overpowered you. Flipping you over him, you dropped down into the arena, your head colliding with the ground.
The sky was orange above you when you opened your eyes. Your head had never felt so awful before, and you were surprised you could even sit up. All around you, bodies littered the Colosseum floor. If there was not blood laid before you, there were swords and shields.
Your eyes drifted to the center, and now sunken to the floor, was Lucilla on her wagon. You forced yourself to stand and walk towards her.
When you could see the arrow sticking in her chest, you began to run.
Climbing atop the wagon, you untied the ropes around her hurriedly.
“Mother,” you begged. “mother, can you hear me?”
“I am still here, sweet child.” She whispered weakly.
“Save your energy now.” You managed to free her, and then pulled her to your lap.
“I will be seeing my beloveds now.” She smiled.
“No,” you hissed. “you are going to live.”
She reassured. “It is alright. I have fulfilled everything that was asked of me, and what I wished for.”
“Mother-!”
“-You will look after him, won’t you?”
You wanted to cry; you wished that sadness was the first thing you felt. But no, it was anger. Still, you nodded. “I will, but you will be there to make sure he takes care of me too!”
“He shall.” Was all she said.
“You will live, just please stop talking.”
“I love you.”
“Lucilla…” Your voice broke.
“Tell Lucius I would do this all again for him.”
You opened your mouth, but nothing came out. Lucilla rose her hand to your cheek, brushing it tenderly one last time.
Her eyes were held open as she went limp in your arms. You closed her eyelids, knowing her gaze would haunt you.
You did not move for the first hour, nor did you cry out in despair. It was when the sun was completely gone, and you tore yourself away from her corpse did you collapse into a fit of sobs.
The ugliest sounds were released from your mouth as you could barely stand. You do not know how long you cried, but when you could finally move again, you crawled to the nearest sword, and trailed it behind you before climbing back up onto the wagon.
You tied the rope from her body around her legs, and brought her back into your lap, sword in hand.
There was no rest for you that night. You would nearly drift off into sleep, but you couldn’t bring yourself to give in until you could bury her properly. You also couldn’t bring yourself to bury her at the same time.
When you had lost time altogether, and the sky was purple as twilight broke, a gentle hand shook you.
Raising the sword in surprise, you felt your body relax once you saw Lucius. You should have asked how he survived, what happened to Macrinus, anything else…but all you said was.
“I wouldn’t let anyone touch her.”
He nodded, tears threatening to fall as he gazed upon his dead mother. He took a deep breath. “May I take her?”
You handed her to him, and he took her into his arms. You scooted off the wagon, your eyes reddened and exhausted.
“Where,” you cleared your throat. “Where should she be buried?”
“I…” He heaved. “I know where my father’s grave is.”
“Okay.” Was all you managed.
And you walked by his side, neither of you knowing what your fate would befall in Rome.
Yet…once both slaves, you were now free.
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Alina Starkov - the most inconsistent main character. A tragedy of not wanting to have an identity.
The main character in Shadow and Bone trilogy, a prime example of "she deserved better". A.k.a. soldier, Sun Summoner, Sun Saint. In reality, a false saint and a false hero, who has less personality, goals, spine and consistency than her three love interests. How did this happen? Short answer - bad writing. Long answer? Here we go.
Her character at the beginning - a blank slate.
Physically small and weak, sickly, fragile, with a sour face and sourer attitude. Grew up in an orphanage funded by a Duke, who they were taught to basically worship while looking down on religion and beliefs in saints. Children in the orphanage were beaten if they misbehaved or didn't do chores, but were given education and fine food, which means they were faring better than peasants and farmers. Alina had not many, but several options in her life. She could learn a trade that would not require physical labour, like sewing. Or, she could marry and hope her husband was gracious enough to buy a donkey instead of making her carry heavy sacks of salt on her back, as we see a random man do to his wife. But Alina had no hobbies, interests, aspirations or ambitions in her life. Except her childhood friend Mal. Mal gets a mandatory draft in the First Army, and of course Alina follows, and settles for being a mediocre cartographer. Mal thrives in the army, showing off muscles and hooking up with women, while Alina dutifully waits for him saints know why. She doesn't have other genuine friends, she doesn't like people, she doesn't like anything. This is not a bad start in a sense that there is much room for growth and improvement.
Refusing to belong
Alina discovers she's a long awaited sun summoner, who can vanquish the Fold and unite Ravka. She doesn't want to be special, but not for the reasons you might think. Instead of fearing the burden of such an important task or genuinely becoming paranoid of being assassinated (she gets over those in five minutes), she just...doesn't want the responsibility of actually being useful for something. She'd rather not have powers at all, and go back to being in a constantly sickly state. She'd rather be tailing Mal like a mouse. Which doesn't make any sense for following reasons:
Alina's insecurities in SaB:
Not being pretty and talented
2. Not being as pretty and talented as Grisha
3. Being an orphan, being unwanted.
Being a Grisha actually solves all those problems for her. She gets prettier and healthier once she stops repressing her powers, has a unique cool power, and a community that cares for her. Plus, the support from important figures in Ravka. In time, she could have a family.
Instead, she refuses to acknowledge she's one of them, doesn't train properly, preferring to cling to her prejudices and make digs at Grisha. She'd rather complain that they're prettier, confident and pampered than acknowledge they are serfs, nothing but glorified servants with no basic human rights. Instead of her superstitions and prejudices being shattered when she starts living with them and realizing what Grisha have to go through, becoming rightfully enraged that her people are being treated this way, she still doesn't feel any empathy. In fact, she still doesn't see the General as a HUMAN BEING WHO MIGHT HAVE FEELINGS, even though he makes time in his busy schedule of running an army to make sure she's comfortable, jokes along with her, listens to her fears and reassures her, etc. Why would he go through the trouble if he was heartless? He's the General of the Second Army, by the King's law, she's his soldier. She is obligated to obey him regardless.
The narrative supports her delusions.
I get missing her friend, I get struggling to adjust, but it's more than that. Alina is getting dragged along from a plot point to a plot point kicking and screaming, as if she has anything better to do. She doesn't have a life, why is she so against of getting one? Once she finally somewhat adjusts to her life in the Little Palace, it turns out Darkling has had malicious intents towards her powers all along! Aha, you were right to be prejudiced, Alina! Now abandon your people, your country, and run!
“He … he said that Darklings are born without souls. That only something truly evil could have created the Shadow Fold.”
Imagine telling a person who saved your life that he was a soulless abomination, even though you do not know him, and he is still kind to you and reveals as much about him as he can. There is no grooming and manipulation here, it's just called not being a bitch. Darkling tells Alina he's over 120 years old, Alina is an adult, and the damned kiss was consensual. Of course he didn't tell her everything. Even regular people don't reveal their life-long ambitions and deepest childhood trauma to their crush after several conversations. It took Alina months to stop being in denial about being a Grisha, still didn't like being one, you're telling me if Darkling set her down and explained the complex political situation and his plan to overthrow the corrupt monarchy and bring an end to the war, Alina wouldn't jump out of the window?
Alina running away, not confronting the problem, and straight up deciding Darkling was evil incarnate with no evidence snowballed into Darkling deciding she couldn't be trusted and taking more drastic measures. Liberation of his people was on the line and one pesky girl screwed up a carefully planned coup because she couldn't handle her feelings.
False badassery
Throughout the whole three books, every time Alina makes a decision, it's immediately followed by self-doubt, shame and scorn. But no actual objective criticism. We often see variations of "It was foolish, but I didn't care", "I knew it was reckless but I couldn't bring myself to care", but never her actually analyzing why, or deciding not to do something like that again. Her small victories are immediately followed by thoughts on how would others feel about it, even though the person in question isn't even there and couldn't give less of a shit: "Never is it to be said that Ana Kuya didn't teach us manners", "A cheap trick, but a good one. Nikolai would be proud". Ana Kuya was an abusive mother figure, Nikolai was using Alina's status to get the throne. Sure, it's good that Alina is capable of learning useful things from every kinds of people, but she doesn't think "That was smart of me. I learnt that. I'm proud of myself for an accomplishment". She thinks "Is it good? Would they like it? They like things like that, right?". She attaches herself to people that fit her view of "deserving" and helps them, even though it might not be for the best. Extreme lack of self-worth, combined with entitlement.
When Alina hears a rumour Darkling ordered his heartrenders to sew a traitor's mouth shut, she's horrified. Even though that's hardly the worst punishment for a traitor in an army. But when some pilgrims insult Genya, she orders to have their tongues cut out after they're given only one warning. When Alina commits violence at slightest provocation, it's baddass. But when Darkling commits a controlled necessary military act to stop enemies from overrunning the country, it's madness and is falsely labeled genocide. Look up the definition, genocide is what was happening to Grisha.
The Darkling never kidnapped children and put them in the war zone. He only lied to Alina that he did, a clever strategy with no bloodshed. Meanwhile, Alina let her cult fight for her, whose members were brainwashed children, some only twelve years old.
When Alina faces a dilemma or a tense military situation, her go-to strategy is suicide. That is not martyrdom, nor it is badass.
Darkling became a bad person out of good intentions and desperation, Alina is just a bad selfish person.
Desperate people are the ones capable of the worst acts. Darkling didn't go nearly as crazy as he could, and frankly had a right to on behalf of his people.
"Aleksander had marched south with the king’s soldiers, and when they’d faced the Shu in the field, he’d unleashed darkness upon their opponents, blinding them where they stood. Ravka’s forces had won the day. But when Yevgeni had offered Aleksander his reward, he had refused the king’s gold. “There are others like me, Grisha, living in hiding. Give me leave to offer them sanctuary here and I will build you an army the likes of which the world has never seen.”
It doesn't matter how much genocide, prejudice, abuse and dehumanization the Grisha suffered through for centuries all around the world, Alina never bothers to look at the big picture. Her help is only for those who she deems worthy of it.
She attaches herself to people who fit her narrow-minded view of "worthy". She immediately believes Baghra's rather flimsy expose of Darkling, even though the old woman has been nothing but unhelpful to her, only insulting her and beating her. But Alina associates her with her only mother figure, Ana Kuya, another old hag she had a toxic relationship with. And even though Baghra is an immensely powerful Grisha who refuses to help or even lift a finger, or just spit out vital information, Alina coddles her and provides protection. Instead of telling her to fess up the useful information and save her unhelpful comments, Alina looks up to her as a mentor.
When Genya tells her story, Alina feels bad for her, but not bad enough to see things her perspective. She only becomes protective of Genya once she gets mutilated, out of pity. If it was genuine compassion, she would've forgiven and understood her from the start.
Every Grisha has been hunted and shamed for merely existing, almost every Grisha has lost a loved one to war. But Alina pointedly ignores it, because she doesn't personally know and care for those people. Therefore, she doesn't feel empathetic. Because if she feels empathetic, she might start feeling guilty about how she runs away from her responsibilities at every given opportunity. Just look at this passage:
“You know what he plans to do, Ivan.” “He plans to bring us peace.” “At what price?” I asked desperately. “You know this is madness.” “Did you know I had two brothers?” Ivan asked abruptly. The familiar smirk was gone from his handsome face. “Of course not. They weren’t born Grisha. They were soldiers, and they both died fighting the King’s wars. So did my father. So did my uncle.” “I’m sorry.” “Yes, everyone is sorry. The King is sorry. The Queen is sorry. I’m sorry. But only the Darkling will do something about it.”
The Darkling never wanted power for selfish reasons. He didn't want to take over other countries or lift Grisha above regular people. He wanted his kind to have basic human rights. Centuries of diplomacy and servitude only gave him enough power to make a school for Grisha children and save adults from slavery and getting slaughtered by serving nobles. He wanted to use the Fold as a border, to stop enemies from invading whenever they pleased, so he would have the time to save Ravka from collapsing. What has Alina done? Started a civil war, destroyed the Second army and helped put a morally dubious man with no claim on the throne to continue an outdated absolute monarchy tradition.
Alina Starkov was meant to be the sun, but turned out to be a trick of the light.
Every time it felt like Alina was emerging from her cocoon as a beautiful butterfly, embracing her true self, she went back to the toxic situationship and the toxic mindset. The narrative also always struck her down. Every book begins and ends with her being sickly, fragile, missing an essential part of herself. It would be good if it was written differently and showed themes of being disabled or having a chronic illness accurately, but it's not. It started out well. Alina was removed from an abusive environment, found a purpose in life, started loving her newfound powers, outgrew the stupid crush who she was way too dependent on, but it all went downhill from there. And then some. This constant vicious cycle does not fit the theme of growth and improvement, and neither does the ending, where Alina loses her powers and goes back to the orphanage. Once again, she's frail and strange, servants (who she now employs) don't respect her, sneer and make fun of her, while her now husband Mal turns a blind eye. Everything is back to the way it was: Mal thrives, Alina is...there. The ending is supposed to be bittersweet, a couple who survived a war building a new life together, but I don't see the sweet part.
Trick of the light - definition: something appearing different from what actually is as a result of the quality of light.
Darkling wanted her to be a strong Grisha, his equal and balance. Grisha wanted her to be a capable leader, Bataar twins wanted a living saint they could worship, Nikolai wanted a wife interested in Ravka and politics. Alina tried to be all of that, but never really wanted to be any of those, so she half-assed it. Mal wanted the version of Alina who was small and insignificant, because anything more made him insecure, and he got his wish.
Illusion, mirage, spectre.
No matter how much the author tries to tell us that Alina's every problem is Darkling's fault, her thought process and actions paint a different picture. Alina was never mentally healthy and she never addressed or resolved her problems. Growing up in a controlled and abusive environment affected her more than anyone, including herself, wants to admit. I am not a licensed psychiatrist, so I will refrain from officially diagnosing Alina, even though she's a fictional character. I am NOT saying I know for certain that Alina has these, if any, mental problems, but she does have some alarming symptoms. It seems like depersonalization. While her symptoms don't fit into one particular mental disorder, I am reminded of psychiatric infantilism, but it is not a mental illness with symptoms. Psychiatric infantilism doesn't necessarily mean the person acts outwardly childishly. To explain very roughly and simply, it means the psych is not as developed as it should be (even if the person is very smart and clever). It shows in avoiding responsibility or not feeling it at all, problems with social connections, not seeing the big picture and taking it seriously, etc. When Harshaw tells the story of his brother getting brutally murdered by people who hate Grisha, even brash Zoya is appalled and expresses her condolences. While all Alina thinks about is that Harshaw might base his hope of having a better life on her now.
Alina also might have Dependent Personality Disorder, but it's hard to say, since we are never shown her being on her own long enough to see whether or not she can take actually care of herself. But her relationship with Mal, Darkling and Baghra (after she no longer objectively needs them) is weird, to say the least.
She never gains the sense of self or an identity, she refuses to become something, then delivers an inner monologue of accepting her fate and five minutes later goes back on her words. Her willingness to sacrifice her life is never out of thinking of the greater good and future, justice, or patriotism. She just doesn't want to live, especially without Mal, who has been doing nothing but shitting on her. Her titles are slapped on her, and she peels them off. Her personality never really changes. Everything she went through feels like a really bad exchange program she was in for a year, and from which she has learnt nothing.
P.S. I don't hate Alina's character, I just mourn her lost potential.
If you have made it to the end, I salute you, congratulations and thank you. 😊 🙏 ❤️
#shadow and bone#the darkling#six of crows#grishaverse#grishaverse meta#aleksander morozova#nikolai lantsov#alina starkov#alina starkov deserved better#the grisha series#the grisha trilogy#ya fantasy#bad writing#grisha trilogy#grishanalyticritical#ravka#second army#anti mal oretsev#anti malina#the sun summoner#sun summoner#main character
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Transformers au- I had this idea a bit ago of a bumblebee au it’s essentially all the bumblebees are the same bumblebee it starts with g1 bumblebee dying and waking up in cybertron recently coming from the allspark (either idw or bay verse first ) I thought about making in Optimus….but I feel like having g1 bumblebee slowly relive his life in different universes leaves more room for character growth. As bumblebee is more childish and kind….while the way this would go Optimus would already went through a lot of character growth. by the war for cybertron trilogy he’s just done and wants to stay as far away from the war as possible…what makes this funny is that after idw ,idw star screams ghost follows him between universes and now there’s two starscreams… I just love their dynamic and couldn’t keep it to just idw series and starscream will often make snarky comments about his other selves….mostly prime starscream in season three. He also talks smack about alot of the other Autobots particularly animated Sentinal whom is paying for bayverse Sentinal and idw Sentinal’s actions in the form of a ghost and a mini bot bullying him.
G1 goes pretty much the same , idw is bumblebee trying to figure out what the heck happened while slowly becoming wary of humans (why are these ones so mean?! The ones from my original timeline were nice ) becoming a ghost and being seen by only starscream will be explored more as I feel like in this he will be the first to find out. And unfortunately will still become a ghost :(.
Bayverse is bumblebee waking up in the middle of a war with starscream screaming at him to figure what the heck happened to which when bumblebee learns how to talk as he was just found as a sparkling in some rubble (I love the idea of bayverse Optimus finding Bumblebee in some rubble and adopting him really adorable) just looks at him like “yes I can see you and two this isn’t the first time this happened which just has ghostscream shouting “what do you mean?!” They still friends and the autobots just think bumblebee made an imaginary friend this arc is pretty much just Starscream or now dubbed ghostscream adjusting to being dragged along on bumblebees adventures….even though his best friend is now a sparkling heck he’s in the body of a sparkling. Yeah…the whole voice box either getting ripped out or damaged beyond repair trend has got him screaming out in fear but always to late to warn bumblebee. Magic changes to this is bumblebee being absolutely done.in the second movie he be thinking when Sam tries to convince him to go back to Optimus is ‘no please I don’t want to be dragged back into that shit again.’ He and ghostscream do eventually learn to use sign language in this. Ghostscream be seeing these decepticons just being evil for no reason and is like “atleast we had a reason what the heck?!” Ghostscream also hates the humans and will absolutely shout “Finally! We can show them a thing or to for constantly picking fight with autobots who knew if you pushed hard enough they’d fight back-oh wait I did!”
Animated has the most changes just from bumblebees personality alone. Bumblebee in this would be quiet calm, kind and diplomatic….but also an absolute menace when it comes to Sari. He would be more adept in the boot camp (which I feel in he would be dragged into) and would leave with Bulkhead when he was kicked out of the boot camp. He wouldn’t suspect Wasp for being a Decepticon spy because in IDW he was a part of spec ops. Leaving because he wanted a break from all the drama (which ghostscream wholeheartedly agrees with after the whole Bayverse drama ) only to be screaming in his head when he finds out he’s apart of Optimus’s team he now knows things will end up going to sh*t soon but he decides to enjoy a break while he can. Him being more calm despite his young age changes most of the character dynamics. (I feel like the older bot’s would think something bad happened in his sparklinghood that made him the way he is ) This would also have a heavy hit on the plot as one of the Allspark shards makes ghost scream semi-visible and able to be heard but still not able to be touched. Yea…that will be alot of explaining to do. You know that black stuff that shows Bumblebee didn’t leave his prison dimension fine and dandy that most likely killed Omega Suprime yea that shows up when he’s angry and longarm/shockwave notices that won't be good…
Primverse has ghostscream hating on Megatron even more (he followed his other self to the nemesis only to see Megatron jab a Chrystal into his spark chamber with no care on how it would effect him he is screeching his head off at how unsafe that was to bumblebee later whom started using sign language again. Cue more bullying and Unicon stating something about bumblebees weird death touch thing. I also feel during out of his head Meagtron finds out about Ghost scream. Due to Ghostscream telling him to get out of bee’s f*king head. He then reveals the other being that resides around bumblebee which then in turn allows the rest of the team to figure it out.. The kids end up asking ghostscream a lot of questions and bumblebee would translate for star scream and Raf will translate for bee. Will also cover robt and the games when I come up for ideas for this
The war for cybertron trilogy is just a bunch of misadventurss of bee and ghost scream avoiding the factions and attempting to stay neutral (then the alpha trion protocol happens and bee has another voice in his head telling him to go be Optimus’s friend which is another time of Ghostscream screaming in the background )
Cyber verse is a trip because bee losing his voice but also because wind blade is there. And bumblebee loses his memorys which the first arc of this would be ghostscream desperately trying to find out how to help him. I think it would be funny if Starscream got dragged into bees he's as well during those sections, just for the giggles of wind blades reaction. Starscream would also find out about ghost him hilarity ensues. Bumblebee probably tried a lot for the revolution to still happen but not the war. Cheetor also knows cause he can weirdly sense ghost screams spark
The new movie verse also is. a trip because bumblebees Coma Sector 7 is horrible to Bee and ghost scream knowing his ‘friend’ is alive but in a coma….he likes Charlie because they were kind and weren't like…most of the other humans. Bee has to get used to the name change till he can find a valid way to change it with weird looks on what the heck a bumblebee is. Rotb is a trip due to Mirage ( they aren't used to middle-child Mirage) and Bumblebee dying..again. This universe is going to give Ghostscream a panic attack
Earth spark is just. Bumblebee doesn't care anymore eye just wants to live with his new family in peace so whenever a Decepticon shows up around him it's more of a “you can stay at my place but if you do anything to harm my kids I will end you” :) He’s…… just indifferent at this point There's probably going to be a bit which is just Bee and the kids (and ghoatscream) hiding the Decepticons from Megs and Optimus when asked why he's doing this he just says “I agreed with a lot of the stuff the Decepticons said at the start of the war but a lot of stuff happened and I ended up siding with the Autobots and being on earth has taught me the difference between nice organisations and shady and most likely are evil ones and Ghost isas shady as they come”. He seen how most organizations treat their kind and he sees the signs in ghost. Surprisingly this makes him a lot of new friends and the kids just look at bee and find themselves agreeing with him. They eventually meet ghostscream via science experiments and ghostscream is like “you kids are cool” because he is also indifferent at this point
Might make this story to help get rid of my writers block :)
#transformers#transformers bumblebee#bumblebee#starscream#transformers earthspark#transformers prime#transformers bayverse#transformers cyberverse#*more#This thought has entered my head and refuses to leave#temporary au name is bee of the multiverse but I don't really like it so does anyone have any suggestions?#Bee of the multiverse au
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Trolls/Sonic the Hedgehog Crossover - "The Grey and the Black" AU plot.
So, I have been on a sonic kick since I saw the third trailer, and I haven't posted in a while so I thought I would throw y'all a bone. THe basis premise for this AU, is that Branch dies as a teenager and is reincarnated as Terios the Hedgehog, or the original concept art/character for Shadow the hedgehog. I'm assuming folks had basic knowledge of both fandoms for this au summery. Don't like, don't read.
Let's get into the plot!
We start with a seventeen year old Branch. He's working around the river one day, and is being careful due to a risen chance of a flashfloods from a storm upstream. He finds the snackpack nearby swimming, and is not impressed with their reaction when he warns them about the flood risk. They ignore him as always, however this time his paranoia paid off. A Flash Flood does hit the stream. Almost everyone makes it into the trees in time, except for Creek and Poppy who get stuck on a rock. With the waters rising, Branch leaps in to save them. He gets Poppy to safety no problem, however Creek's caught on debris, Branch manages to free him, but is hit by an unexpected wave and dragged away. Post flood, Poppy gets everyone too look for him. Creek finds Branch's body, drowned and pale, and he's never the same. He tries to put it out of his mind, but he can't. He watched a troll die saving him, he heard Branch's last scream just before he was pulled under. Creek and Poppy eventually find their way into the bunker, and while they are not going to go full survivalist, they still read Branch's journals, and Creek carries a dart with Velvet Bee venom in his hair from then on, since there's no one else left to keep the village safe.
However as much as they try to remember, Branch is forgotten by the rest of the village, as are all the dead.
Now let's jump over to what happened to Branch. All he remembers is choking on water. Then something grabs him, but as they yank him away he feels to light. Something whispers words of comfort but he can't pay attention. He starts chocking for a second time, but the water felt warmer, and the limbs he flails feel unknown, there's a sharp pain in his eye, and his memories start to slip from his mind like fine sand. Branch catches one glimpse of the world before it goes dark, it's an elderly human with a fantastic mustache yelling at someone.
Now on the other side of the Portal, Professor Gerald Robotnik, currently lives in a constant state of anxiety. Between his work and Maria's ever fluctuating condition, he has a lot to worry about, however recently he had made strides in PROJECT SHADOW, two hedgehog/Black arm hybrids had been successfully maturing over the passed year, and the were in the home stretch. After the disaster with the biolizard this is probably the first time he can take a breath. Only for him to walk in on some of the interns freaking out near one of the growth tanks. Specimen 2ERS (Two - Extraterrestrial Roaming Specimen) or Terios as Maria named him, pod malfunctioned, making it appear as if the growing project was flatlining, and in the panic of trying to save their hard work some lab techs somehow accidentally damaged the pod and the ceiling, releasing Terios early, along with a broken electrical wire striking the full grown newborn in the left eye, permanently blinding it. The next few hours Gerald spends trying to stabilize Terios, hooking up the hedgehog to external life-support and treating the eye wound, and firing "incompetent scientists".
When Maria is told what happened, she is terrified. In between medical testes and her education she would spend time in the lab talking to the growing hedgehogs, even naming them. Growing too attached as some of the less friendly scientists would grumble. The moment that Terios isn't being worked on, she demanded to see him. Even if the scientists and even Abe, grumble about it, they can't stop her. Not only is her grandfather the head of the project, but she knows how to play up the part of the sweet angel like child who is cursed with a horrible sickness, she would make any one who tried to stop her feel horribly guilty for it. She spends those first couple days talking to Terios and giving a sleeping Shadow updates on his brother.
By some miracle Terios pulls through. He's weak and barely conscious for a few days, but resilient after nearly a week he's able to breath on his own. Maria and the hedgehog get alone swimmingly, and as Gerald observes their interactions he starts to get worried. Yes, Terios is fully capable of walking and is well on his way to speaking fluently, however, he still is a damaged product. His left eye never regained vision suggesting his healing factor isn't what they were hoping it would be, GUN might not like that kind of defect, and order his termination. Gerald is also disappointed by this fact, a cure for Maria couldn't be found in a being with little healing ablitliy, however he can't terminate Terios. The Hedgehog is functional, and healthy beyond his limited sight. And maria had already grown quite attached to Terios, His granddaughter was already suffering Gerald couldn't bare to make it worse. So, in order to protect his creation he labels Terios as dead from the lab incident, in his reports and altered any other file his coworker make in order to make it seem that way.
Terios meanwhile, wakes up in the lab confused. He feels like he should be some where else but he's not sure where. Maria is the first person he meets and he quickly becomes attached. He can't talk himself for the first few days of consciousness and that kind of worries all the other humans. However, they quickly figure out that his vocal chords are fine he's just shy. The first thing he clearly says is, "Where are we?" And to that Maria goes on this long explanation of the ARK, and while Terios is amazed at this place he can't help but feel like he should be somewhere else. Maria thinks she gets it, she wants to be on the planet below with her family, but Terios's problem isn't like that, he feels as if he shouldn't have been born, but he doesn't voice it. Besides, after telling him all about the ARK, Maria starts telling Terios about his brother.
Shadow is released from his pod a few days later, with only Gerald, Maria and Terios present. The moment that Shadows stumbled out of his pod onto the cold floor, Terios feels attached, something in his mind solidifies and he's not sure what. All he knows is that he's supposed to have a brother, be a brother, and from there the twin ultimate lifeforms adventure begins.
The time spent on the ARK is the most wonderful era in the brothers' lives.
Their education starts, both of them proving to be extremely intelligent. However, while Shadow tends to slack on basic assignments (AKA turning in his homework, but still scoring high on tests), Terios is much more conscious about turning things in. He also appears to have much more anxiety, then Shadow, who yes has issues with his creation and the fact they can't cure Maria yet, Terios is just straight up concerned everything will fall down. He stashes food in small places around the ARK, needs to have everything organized, is constantly asking about how equitment works/emergency procedures, and does not trust anyone beyond his family. This last fact does not mix well with the fact they live in the research facility. Often he would have to be sedated before being handled and he never wakes up from the effects peacefully. Even Gerald get frustrated over this issue, since it makes research into a cure for Maria's NIDs take longer and it makes Terios feel guilty. He tries to explain how being handled by creatures who are larger them him and separated from his family, makes him nervous, and the sedation does not help him calm down, but none of the scientists listen. He starts getting twitchy with his hands after a while, channeling the nerves through clenching and unclenching fists, but everyone write it off since they don't want to believe their weapon is on the spectrum (it was the 50s man).
Though, while there were struggles there were still good moments. During their free time, Maria would drag Shadow and Terios for games and mischief around the ARK. They would have hide and seek tournaments, read story books, and seek into the food pantry to steal Gerald's coffee beans, which both young hedgehogs get hooked on. For her 12th birthday, Maria is gifted a record player, and she eagerly plays it for her brothers. Terios is initially spooked by the device but eventually he warms up to it, and enjoys the music. On her good days Maria tries to teach Shadow and Terios how to dance, but only Shadow really needs the lessons, Terios takes to dancing like a fish to water, and quickly grows to love music. He isn't sure what made him start singing, but he finds he enjoys it even more, though he only does it in private at first. Maria and Shadow first catch him in the act, and they are astonished by how good he sounds. Most of the Scientists don't bother with the talent, they aren't trying to make the Ultimate singer. Gerald just finds it ironic, since the Black Arms, being a telepathic race, have no concept of music. Despite the mixed reaction to his gift, Terios continues to sing for his family, especially Maria when her condition acts up and she's bedridden.
However, good things never last for long, and Terios' peaceful beginning to life ends with the GUN raid on the ARK. The day starts out peacefully enough. Maria was feeling strong, and they had no schedule school, so they fired up the record player and were dancing when the alarms went off. Gerald runs in telling them to get to the escape pods, but they are intercepted on the way. The soldiers are under the impression that only Shadow is abord the ARK, so Terios is a rather big surprise. It's enough to get the drop on the soldiers and makes Terios realize that those "agility tests" were really combat training. Gerald gets separated from them, and they are cornered in the escape pod bay. Maria preps the pods when the soldiers run in. One throws a grenade, and while Shadow gets away and pushed Maria, Terios is hit. He didn't see where the explosion landed due to his eye, and gets thrown across the room. Maria grabs him while disoriented, placing Terios in a pod. Terios watches, as Shadow get forced into his own capsule. Maria presses the launch button and is shot as soon as the count down starts.
For ten horrifying seconds Terios is forced to watch as his sister bleeds out, and his brother beats against his own pod to get to her. His head is ringing and he can't move. In his mind there is the echo of a phantom scream, some part of him feels as if he's failed to protect someone he loves for a second time. The pods are launched, and on the decent, Terios is put in hyper-sleep. However his pod is knocked off course, landing him in the middle of a lake, keeping the capsule intact, keeping him in hyper-sleep. Shadow lands and wakes up only to be re-captured by GUN. By some small miracle, despite what the witnesses claim, there is no record of a second ultimate lifeform on board, so they don't search for Terios.
Gerald snaps after the loss of his Granddaughter and creation. He doesn't tell his captures about Terios, there's no point, he's likely dead. He's legacy can only happen through Shadow, and he will make sure the world knows his pain. Shadow is sealed away with false memories, a promise for revenge and a dead brother.
50 years pass. When Shadow is woken up by Eggman, he has a second reason for taking out prison island. He remembers Terios dying but he doesn't want to believe it. He searches the island and ARK for his brother, but Terios is not there. When Rouge confronts him about not being the true PROJECT SHADOW, he lashes out say even if he isn't the ultimate lifeform, his brother certainly was. Since he could make Maria smile even on her worst days. Rouge presses him about his brother since he was never mentioned in any of the files she found. This just serves to make Shadow more angry, how dare the humans try to erase his brother's memory, he unwittingly tells Rouge Terios' name before stalking off.
After the Biolizard, and Shadow Falling, Rouge would look a the remaining inhibitor ring Sonic gave her, and think of what SHaodw said about Terios. The second ultimate life form was believed to be dead or it never existed, however, Rouge wasn't so sure. The professor lied to shadow about Maria's wish, why not add to the pain by telling him his brother was dead too. She had to find him, if only to tell him that Shadow has been laid to rest. She gets Sonic and Tails involved since, she's not quite ready to go to her employers with this information. It takes a few weeks, and hacking into a GUN satellite, but they find Terios. The pod is a bit banged up, but it kept the hedgehog inside safe. They take him back to the Tails' workshop.
Terios wakes up in an unknown place, with unknown people. A world with out his family. Maria is gone. He watched. Gerald is gone. He was old. Shadow...Terios struggles with his brother's "death" the most. The loss is horrifyingly familiar, but he doesn't know from what. The world around him is beautiful. The forest and sun give him so much peace, but he has to discover it alone. Rouge gives him Shadow's ring, and he wears it on a string around his neck. Later, he joins Rouge on her missions, Popping in and out of Sonic and Tails' lives. No offence to them, but Sonic and Tails reminds him of Shadow and Maria in so many unexpected ways. And the loss is still to fresh.
The Events of "Sonic Heroes" roll around. Terios is with rouge when they find Shadow and Omega. He spends the entire adventure trying to get Shadow to remember him. Shadow doesn't, and it gets pretty ridiculous in Terios opinion. Like he can hear Shadow's heartbeat, his brother is not a robot, and the robots have yellow stripes! Shadow doesn't recognize him until Team Dark camps out, and Terios is unable to sleep, so he tries singing to himself. Shadow sits up and finishes the verse, and there's a small look of recollection in that set of red eyes. It gives Terios hope.
Shadow 05, coming into play now, and the first Black comet invades the earth. Terios does not trust Black Doom in the slightest, freaky eye tells you the time of reckoning has come and do this? Yeah no, you don't trust that. However Shadow is desperate for the rest of his memories, and Terios hasn't been able to jog anything after that camp out. So in search of the past, they follow their bio father, and eventually kill him. The trip is actually really enlightening in some ways, Terios finally getting a reason as to why he felt like he could read his brother's mind, they could! Shadow's memories are restored, but with them is the grief he feels for Maria. Grief that he pushes deep down and away. He doesn't want to think about her cause it hurts. Terios had a similar reaction when he woke up, but he had to face those feelings when helping Shadow with his memory, since the only person he knew could get through to Shadow was Maria, and had to think about what she would do. Also, the whole forget about it mindset bothers him for some reason.
Life goes on. Team Dark gets an apartment, they join up with GUN, Rouge is banned from the kitchen, Abe is old now, and then the planet splits apart. However that's nothing they need to worry about, since there is now a second Black Comet was invading. Yay! The mission is simple at first, nuke the space rock! However it gets a lot more complicated when Shadow comes across, Eclipse the Darkling. The twins biological half sibling. Shadow goes to scout the Black Arm base, while Terios stays with the group, however he knows the moment something is wrong, when Shadow is suddenly panicked and stressed on his side of the mental link. The new leader of the blakc arms, Black Death takes control of Shadow's mind, making them work for their side, however they were unaware of Terios involvement in the mission. Black Doom never considered Terios his despite the mental link, due to his appearance and the blindness in his eye, so Black death never learned of Terios' existence. Once Shadow is freed from the control, Terios demands and explanation and Shadow reluctantly tell him about their youngest sibling. Teri does not react well, after making sure Shadow can handle Black Death, Terios goes after Eclipse. He does the math in his head, Eclipse claiming to have been born after Black Doom's death, meaning at most he was couple months old, and well the whole comet was rigged to blow up. He couldn't let a child, his family die like that.
Black Death loses to shadow, and in his final moments, He sends Eclipse away. Terios following and sneaking aboard the escape shuttle as the comet explodes from the nuke. The dark hedgehog finds Eclipse mourning over the limb dead, eye of Black Death, and immediately feels bad. He knows what it's like to wake up in a world all alone. Comforting is not possible, since Eclipse does not want either Terios or Shadow right now. And a fight breaks out aboard the shuttle, eventually the controls are accidentally smashed and Teri notices they were going to crash on Angel island. The landing is rough, since Eclipse won't listen when Teri tries to warn him about the impending crash, still Teri tries to protect his younger sibling. A piece of rubble gets stuck in Terios side, but Eclipse and Four of the dark arm eggs on board walk away with bumps and scratches. With his slow healing and wounds, Eclipse ties up Teri and keeps him prisoner while taking care of the dark arms. Terios is sending mental signals to Shadow as to where to find them. All through out his imprisonment, he's playing two arguments, trying to convince Shadow not to murder Eclipse on sight, since he's kid, and trying to convince Eclipse that world domination is no longer needed nor is possible. All while his far too slowly healing wound is getting infected. By the end of it, he somehow reangles his younger siblings into a truce from his fucking hospital bed, and Eclipse comes to live underneath his older brothers care due to being a minor.
Maybe Maria is revived as a Hedgehog to make this trio a Quartet, but I'm not sure if it would work in this scenario.
Now let's jump back to the other side of the portal. TBT has rolled around for the trolls, with Creek never betraying his tribe since he managed to escape from Gristle's mouth using the venom dart he always carried around since Branch's death. So he's there when Poppy tells John Dory about his baby brother's demise. It's the news of Branch's death that manages to get Brozone to actually talk and heal, since they don't want to die alone too. Barb is the one who asked, while intoxicated, if they had looked for Branch's reincarnation, since her tribes believe in it if two trolls are born with similar sounding singing voices. This sends the brothers (mostly JD and Floyd) down a rabbit hole trying to find whomever had their brother's soul. Poppy and Creek tag along, Poppy for the adventure, and Creek because he feels bad for how he treated the troll who saved him and wants to apologize. Somehow this search leads to an old funk troll who's a little on the crazy side, zapping the group (brozone, Poppy, Viva, and Creek) into a portal.
When they land on the other side, it's kind of a shock, since they are all suddenly hedgehogs, not that they know what kind of creature they were turned into were called that. They are a lot bigger then they were a couple of minutes ago, and their hair has been swapped out for quills. The forest is unfamiliar and it takes a while for them to get their barring's. Unfortunately the Forces War is in it's fifth month, and they are hit by a brigade of shadow clones. John takes the offense real quick, his machete still in tact from the trip, but the clones, even if a fraction of the real thing's power, are still stronger. Thankfully, just as when the chips appear down, when a scaly creature and darker colored creature like them who was blinded in one eye and covered in scaring, leap into the fray.
Shadow was captured by Eggman not long after Sonic, and Teri and Eclipse had been looking for their brother ever since, teaming up with Tails since they both have the same goal. Find their family, and save anyone who hasn't been evacuated yet, per request of Amy Rose. The group of hedgehogs they save are a little weird, though only Teri notices that these guys don't really act like hedgehogs. Terios is at first a little pushy wanting to get them out of the danger zone so he cna continue the search for Shadow. However, John and Floyd aren't having it, claiming they aren't going anywhere until they find their baby brother. Reluctantly Terios allowed them to join, since well, he's looking for a brother too, though he misinterprets their situations as a kid who got separated during initial evac of the situation. The group meets up with Tails, whose stress repairing Omega, the Fox only wants to know if Teri or Eclipse heard Shadow through the hivemind, since he's hoping Eggman will keep Sonic and Shadow together and finding one would mean both.
From there our group bonds. John kind of sympathizes with Terios, being the eldest sibling with no parents around, even if their situation is very different then from Young Brozone. Bruce is ticked off when he meets Tails, this is an 8-12 year old on his own looking for his teenaged brother with no parents around, like who lets this happen to kids (completely forgets that this was Floyd's situation at one point). Clay is just impressed with how intelligent tails is, and they talk math when they can. Floyd doesn't interact, he wants to find Branch's soul. Eclipse is just chaos incarnate when he gets with Poppy and Viva, the three of them are all high energy and trouble prone. Creek is civil, but Eclipse and Teri unnerve him, they aren't that colorful, but he's trying not to let that get to him, it's hard though when Eclipse mentions the Black Arms used to eat people.
On the side I do think that Poppy is feeling some form of attraction to Teri, like he's dark mysterious, but a total softy when it comes to Eclipse, Tails, and the dark arms. She actually gets him to open up a little about his past, and is promptly horrified, but she recognizes his loyalty and love for his family (minus black doom). Terious is also feeling something with Poppy, though he isn't sure what. The idea of a relationship never crossed his mind, he was too busy taking care of his family, and keeping his sister's promise. Eclipse recognizes the mutual attraction right away, though he's very blunt about it, and doesn't understand having a mate beyond the purpose of having kids, so he says a lot of things that nearly get Terious kill by Viva's hand or makes a bunch of people uncomfortable.
Eventually they run out of ground bases to search for Shadow and Sonic, and look in other options, eventually hacking the Death Egg and finding old security footage of the hedgehog in question. The resistance is down for a mission now that they have the coordinates for the space base. Most the trolls group have gotten close to members of the resistance by this point and are down to help. Everyone but Floyd. He's looked through every member of the resistance, and all the refugee but still hasn't found someone that could be his brother's reincarnation. Branch was a sweet happy and ever loving little brother in blue, and no one here fit the bill. He doesn't want to get wrapped up in the mission stuff, he wants to keep looking even if it meant leaving the safety of the resistance base. Floyd stays behind, with Bruce and Creek there to make sure he doesn't run off.
On the mission, John is on the infiltration team that finds and frees Sonic. The moment he sees the Blue hedgehog with a gleam of happiness in his eyes, he mistakes the hedgehog for Branch's reincarnation. Sonic's a little out of it, dirty and exhausted from his imprisonment, but he's really happy about the save. This John guy is really nice too, even if he's a little clumsy and doesn't know how to curl up for a spin-dash properly.
Poppy and Viva are on the team looking for Shadow, with Terious and Eclipse. Shadow's containment cell was more heavily guarded and the Black Hedgehog was one a constant stream of drugs to keep him docile. Eclipse and Teri are clinging to their brother the moment they can. Eclipse is just focusing on trying to get Shadow to wake up, while Terious is taking note of the IV and the odd energy signature that Shadow is giving off. It's not chaos, no it's more like what the clones are made of. What did they do to his brother.
The two rescue teams meet up on the way out. Sonic is happy to see Teri and the others, though worried about Shadow. He remembers hearing the black hedgehog screaming whenever that new jackal Eggman was working with entered his cell. Terious and Eclipse are horrified, when he mentions this. They needed to get out of there. They meet up with the ground team outside after fighting for their escape, Clay and Tails with them. John tells Clay he thinks Sonic is Branch, and Clay can't help but agree. Blue and perky, that's their Bitty B, they just need to hear him sing to know. Tails is clinging to sonic full trip back to the main resistance base.
The infirmary takes both recently freed hedgehogs immediately. Sonic goes willingly knowing how worried Tails was. Shadow had been out the whole trip back, but had started mentally stirring by the time of there arrival. John and Clay tell the others about their theory and they rush to meet sonic. Floyd runs up to this Blue hedgehog with so much hope, and is severally disappointed when Sonic only stares awkwardly as Floyd slings to him and tries to get Sonic to join in a song. It's in this awkward silence that Shadow wakes up. But between the months of drugs and psychological torture done by the phantom Ruby, he's disoriented and doesn't think anything is real, lashing out at the medical staff and causing a scene. It almost turns deadly but Terios rushes in and pulls a trump card to make Shadow calm down. He doesn't sing unless in private but he needs Shadow to stop panicking.
For Brozone its enough. The voice is deeper then they remember, but Terios isn't a baby, Branch grew up. Still it's that falsetto of gold they were looking for. There brother had been infront of them this whole time.
Shadow calms enough to ask for confirmation that this is real, which Terios asures that it is. Eclipse joins the hug, and Shadow passes back out from exhaustion not long after. The moment Terios takes a step back and lets the doctors work, Floyd is running into him hugging hard, and calling him Branch.
The rest of the plot would be the Brothers coming to terms that Branch is dead, and Terios is his own person. Floyd being the hardest to convince, he still wants to take Teri back to the troll world to build the waterslid in the bunker. John and Bruce come to the realization quicker then the others, they see Teri as his own person since they talked the most before the reveal. Clay is somewhere in the middle, he's angry that even after death Branch still doesn't have peace, to which Terios tells him to shut up, yes his life is hard but it's one he chooses and he isn't alone. Creek gets his closure, by apologizing to Teri even if he says it isn't necessary. Viva was just along for the ride. Poppy finds away to keep in touch with Teri, though I'm not sure how long the relationship would last, as they would both be needed in each other's worlds.
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Well this was dumb! Lol I hope yall enjoyed. Questions are now once more welcome! My gap year is about to start!
#trolls#sonic the hedgehog#crossover au#reincarnation#brozone#trolls branch#terios the hedgehog#shadow the hedgehog#eclipse the darkling#fic summery#fic prompt#crack fic#ark siblings#maria robotnik#Terios is Branch#canon divergent au#creek redemption#there's a lot of words#dreamworks trolls#sonic adventure 2#shadow 05#sonic heroes#trolls movie#trolls au#trolls band together#light angst#i dont even know#The grey and the black au#I don't have time to write thsi but the idea and plot is fair game to anyone who wants too#just give credit for inspiration
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This is definitely a trap. But before the jaws snap shut on us, we have to go tell someone where we're going. Obviously. One does not climb into the van with the stranger without first sending a safety text.
You hiding something from us, boss man? When I wanted to fight the Peacekeepers, you blew your top about "DO YOU KNOW HOW DEVASTATING IT IS TO WATCH YOUR LOVED ONES DIE!?!?!?" so I figure you probably have some sort of related trauma.
Supremely productive in the worst possible way, thank you for asking. I'm either about to blow this case wide open or, more likely, end up in a shallow grave while another volley of torpedos unload on the sub. You should probably excuse yourself to the hotel for the time being.
For someone who blew a gasket when he realized she was with us, you sure are cozying up to Kurumi fast. Is it because you think she's keeping Yuma out of trouble?
Because she's not. At all. In fact, this latest round of shenanigans is yet again her idea. She is not the solution here. She's at least 50% the problem.
Briefly! But it was super cryptic and raised more questions than answers. Main thing it established is that the WDO is entirely complicit in the atrocities I've been committing throughout this city, so that's fun.
You see, Kurumi, in any team of supers, there's typically this one guy with no superpowers whatsoever. He's the one you gotta watch out for. The smartest, most skilled, most badass ultra-leader in all the group who calls all the shots with his genius tactical mind, and commands the respect of all the super-beings he stands among.
Yakou's like a deconstructive take on that. He's that guy, but if he really was just some guy with no special skills or talents of any kind, dragged around kicking and screaming by the super-beings.
I wonder what Yakou's talent was supposed to be. If he was trained by the WDO, that implies he had something that either he or they thought could be cultivated into a Forte.
Fuck Desuhiko, though!
...yeah, felt. I'm with you on that, Yakou. You have good taste in Master Detectives.
I want to defend Vivia but I don't know enough about him yet to do that.
And you should be proud, my guy. You wear it so well. Stand up and strut.
I don't think he's lying but I do think he's not being completely honest. He's pitching this as his sole motivation, but he's been hinting pretty hard about a lost loved one of some kind.
From where I'm sitting, you're still an empty shell. You mainly get dragged into things by the Master Detectives. I haven't seen much character growth or development from you, though the Vivia-centric cavalry charge was a nice touch.
That's a terrible philosophy, Yakou. I did not realize you were a "Suffering builds character" type but I'm not surprised by it.
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Okay so I was thinking about the dash game I posted earlier (the what's peculiar about your soul one). The your soul is bleeding. Almost every time I've done that quiz that's the result he got and I was never sure what to think of it (except maybe the last sentence or two) so I don't think I posted it.
It is bleeding all the time. Sometimes it’s a gentle, almost unnoticeable trickle. Other times, it drips from your display and floods onto the carpet. It frequently needs to be dealt with- wounds that never seem to heal must be resutured and rebandaged.
Bro, like, there is some terrible thing here that won't heal. It's pretty nasty. and also dramatic. I didn't associate this kind of dramatic imagery with Svern, especially not one that revolves around being in so much hurt. Maybe that's a leftover from early on when I wanted him not to have any big dramatic trauma that was the reason he became a villain character, and before I fully worked in all the smaller things that damaged him in other ways.
Actually he is always hurt and in his main verse he never heals.
You are screaming. You are in agony. Every twitch sends another rocket of white hot pain through you.
Again this was difficult for me to associate with him because so much of Svern's deal is that he Doesn't suffer. Not recognisably so. Mentally and physically he can tolerate way more than most people because he doesn't process things the same way as most people. He didn't build this up, it's inbuilt, so considers himself mentally indestructible in a way. Even if he was in agony, would it get such a reaction out of him when his natural state is not reacting?
Nevertheless the source of this apparent resilience is inextricably entwined with and almost the same as the source of the wounds that won't heal.
That aside though, there's another thing that makes me tie this to mainverse specifically. That's the Shadow Crystal. The Shadow Crystal is what wrecks any future chance of Svern experiencing growth or healing because it locks him into a static state of ecstasy. Meaningless ecstasy, and one that only has destructive outcomes, but to someone who was only ever apathetic and who lacks fixed morals that's like. He's totally fine with that.
The problem is that eventually that will give way to agony. By that point it will be long beyond the point of no return and any possible fixes will be a dream in the past. There will just be powerless regret.
You assumed life after death would be painless. You assumed incorrectly.
This result is a bad end Svern description. Part of the reason Svern is able to have a devil may care attitude is because he doesn't care much whether he lives or dies, he's not afraid of dying, because of two reasons. One being his typical lack of fear and the other his inability to find meaning in being alive, the inevitability of death both being something not to be afraid of since it's, y'know inevitable, and to him it's a relief sometime in the future. To put it this way, Svern doesn't feel strongly enough on it that he'd ever be looking to die, but if it happened, he wouldn't be sad about it. Living is a chore to him.
The Shadow Crystal takes this future relief from him (he doesn't know it yet) and in exchange gives him a seemingly inexhaustible source of wonder, joy, feeling. Svern doesn't know! He doesn't know. He's too caught up in the meaningless ecstasy in the present. He gladly wastes his life on it since otherwise he'll just be struggling to continually find things that make living less of a drag anyway.
Problem is that now when he dies he won't get to actually pass on because he's stuck as something tied to the Shadow Crystal (and that underlying the Shadow Crystal). And he'll probably be okay for a while. But eventually even that ecstasy is going to wear off and he'll have to face an indefinite and still empty existence. And that will be agony.
All the unpleasant things he thought he could shed when he kicked the bucket are going to hang over his head because the option of moving on was taken from him (he handed it away thoughtlessly), and he never learned how to heal it because he spent all his existence either ignoring or feeding into it, and so now he just can't. And also, once he has to be aware of it, the stuff he's tied himself to itself can only breed negative emotions, so is only capable of worsening it even more. And it will make it worse, because that's what it does.
I don't know if he will end up screaming about it, but it will be an extremely unpleasant situation, so the result is way more apt than I realised.
#ask to tag#girl What do i tag this as.#boredom is so terrible; it's like a dread disease (headcanon)
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disco elysium: harry was a horrible person. you give him the ability to be better and change from the broken, miserable man he used to be. nobody owes him forgiveness but he owes them all an apology. he hit the lowest point of his life and dragged himself into a better person, kicking and screaming.
you: harry did a bad thing in his past and i feel bad for him and Dora and hate who he was.
people on tumblr: no he's never done anything wrong it's fine he was always how he was in the games. there is no deeper message about change and growth and past failures here. i played the game with my eyes closed and the audio off.
YEAH…I just.
Like aside from just missing the entire damn point of the game it is disappointing because like…fanon woobie Harry is straight up boring. He’s boring as fuck. What’s his development? What’s his story? There’s nothing there. There’s no point of his relationship with Lely or the Deserter when the idea is that Harry is both of these men but that idea gets buried in cutesy feelings.
The game doesn’t mince words about Harry being a bad person, he has a well deserved reputation for brutality and corruption in Jamrock. He beats people. He did war crimes in churches. He held a woman hostage in his apartment. We know so little about him and what we do know is awful.
But he’s sympathetic too. He’s a polio survivor with a bad jaw and a speech impediment. He’s a miserable bisexual guy with massive internalized homophobia. The game is also very frank about how his desire to self harm is incorporated into his sexuality and kinks. He’s rendered painfully vulnerable by his amnesia and is in clear need of medical help that he will almost definitely never get. He’s a sad vicious bastard and Disco Elysium is a really compelling character study of a man on fire and all the ways he can fuck up.
I think people get stuck on the idea of Harry as a good person because they relate to that vulnerability (it’s inherently relatable!) and are uncomfortable with the realities of the character. In general I think fans would get more fulfilling mileage out of Harry, Kim, and Jean by recognizing that they are not good people. And they like. Interacted more with them as villains than trying to shuffle them around a good guy box they don’t fit in?? they are poor little meow meows not…cinnamon rolls
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ASRIEL NAILING HIS COFFIN SHUT SO TRUE. i don't even know what that acronym stands for i'm assuming it's an au but like even in canon. he stays behind next to chara's grave because he can't see a future that he gets to be a part of. even during his resets he was just recreating the same situations over and over because he couldn't get back to that idealized past before everything was ruined.
nhatcb stands for Never Had A Chance To Bloom, my post-pacifist soulless asriel au! it's essentially my thesis on why I think turning back into a goat child would NOT fix asriel and in fact would cause him a myriad of other problems, but also on why I think he really doesn't need a soul to lead a happy life. the whole fic is him getting dragged kicking and screaming into doing shit like "attending therapy" and "admitting that he's not an undead creature incapable of feeling emotions" and "dealing with his trauma." he hates everything and does NOT want to get better and it's GREAT
also YEAH! asriel really, really fucking wants to stay in his sunlit garden. he hasn't conceptualized himself as someone who can grow and change for a long, long time. even after the end, when he's accepted that he can't ever go back and that his memories are more idealized than the reality, he chooses to stay in his coffin. he'd much rather think of himself as dead than accept the terrifying possibility that he CAN live a fulfilling life. it's just far too much for him to consider the pain that growth will require.
the door to the coffin is open, for the first time ever. the underground is free to go. and asriel just says "no thanks," lays back down in his coffin, and nails the door shut. he's a lot more comfortable there. in a lot of ways, he thinks that's where he deserves to be.
that being said, the alarm clock dialogue DOES give me a lot of hope that he'll figure out a way to reintegrate into society. sure, he's still sort of mean and standoffish as flowey, but he's made friends and he's clearly had some character development. he cares a lot more than he lets on. I think he'll eventually find a way to pry that coffin door back open, even if it takes him a long time.
#asks and answers#I LOVE ASRIEL I LOVE HIM SO MUCH#boy of all time. he deserves a happy future so much#u can get out of your idealized repeating memory hell bestie... I believe in you....
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So I’ve seen S2E1 of Ted Lasso like 4 times in a row now and
1) Ted DEFINITELY HAS ADHD! For all the neurotypicals who don’t know what Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria is Ted’s reaction to the therapist is it. He’s not necessarily jealous or threatened by her BUT he feels like her being there is going to make him obsolete, and people will abandon him. Like I love this episode but his discomfort is like making me so uncomfortable because it’s so relatable.
2) I will forever hate Michelle’s therapist for ambushing Ted like that. I’ve had bad therapy sessions before and like 100% that therapist should’ve said hey why don’t you go ahead and see another therapist as a couple, here’s their number. Please feel free to continue therapy with me but I wanna focus on your stuff and since I’ve been your doctor longer I don’t feel it’s appropriate to bring Ted in here to council you together but if you need support to tell him how you feel we can do that but also in tandem with ANOTHER therapist seeing you as a couple.
3) I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THE NEW THERAPIST! Like people who live with dysfunction don’t notice the dysfunction until someone else points it out. (ie me: *me laughing about a traumatic event* so this happened in my childhood pretty funny right??? My husband: *horrified* that’s abuse…) Ted is not mentally healthy and he’s masking it so much and so well, that the people around him sorta ignore it because he’s so friggin “positive” all the time (another thing people with adhd do). But this new therapist walked into the room and clicked the dynamic in two seconds. I fully believe by the end of this arc (maybe not this season, I’ll get to that in a minute) she’ll for lack of a better word “let” him be his silly positive self around her because he won’t be using it to mask his poor mental state.
4) All the ESB references are scaring me especially with Sudeikis saying that this season is their ESB. Let’s recap ESB for a minute: everybody SPLIT UP and went on some side quests to level up, had some character development, C-3PO spends most of the movie in parts, they picked up some more characters, AND THEN Han Solo ends up in Carbonite; Leia, Chewie, and Lando run from the empire, A MAJOR SPOILER ABOUT PARENTAGE IS DROPPED (whoever meta’d about Nora possibly being Rupert’s 👀👀👀), And Luke gets his hand chopped off. Ultimately tho they realized they all needed each other and were better together.
There’s gonna be a ton of growth happening this season but I doubt the season’s end is gonna be completely satisfying and is definitely gonna have some bad stuff happen with some loose ends. But in S3 I bet we get the sense of solid found family only this time they’re all a little better.
5) I think this might be my last thing for now but I think Ted’s comments about John Wingsnight show where he’s at about relationships and he’s in the same place Rebecca was when he made those comments: if a relationship is fine then what is the problem? So thinking Ted is right Rebecca was like okay yeah overthinking this, lemme test nail polishes now (which I’m gonna need a thousand fics of that pls). She was fine until she got the penny drop moment when Roy told her not to settle for fine. But Ted hasn’t yet he still isn’t dealing with his divorce (he ignored the text from Michelle which says a lot because he loves Henry so much) and he was dragged to the conclusion of separation and divorce kicking and screaming.
When he realizes that it’s gonna be a lightening bolt moment for him and Rebecca mark my words.
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BBC America’s The Watch Episode Seven Review: Nowhere in the Multiverse
Episode Review list: one, two, three, four, five, six, eight
Bienvenue Discworld fans! As many of you know, my name is Mortis, and this is my review of BBC America’s The Watch episode seven: Nowhere in the Multiverse. If you’ve made it this far in my reviews, you probably already know the old song and dance that I’ve given new names to the character because, let’s face it, The Watch characters are a corrupted version of their book counterparts. I have not changed any of the nicknames, so no heads-up announcements are needed before we begin. If someone was wondering what happened to the River Watch! section of the post it is because I removed it after seeing that the show producers forgot Ankh-Morpork is a port city and made everything around the city desert. Why they thought putting Ankh-Morpork in the middle of the Sahara is anyone’s guess but from what I can tell we will not be seeing the Ankh river in this show. With that out of the way, lets get into this stupid fucking review for episode seven. ONE MORE LEFT BABY!!! LET’S GOOOOOOOOOO!!!
(Warning: Spoilers for Nowhere in the Multiverse below)
Episode Recap:
The show opens with Raccoon Vimes (Samuel Vimes) releasing Accountant Skimmer (Inigo Skimmer) from prison because he feels that he can no longer protect the ex-assassin anymore. As they part, Accountant Skimmer explains how he lost his finger while pushing a poison pill down the throat of a wizard who was fighting against his death and bit down hard onto Accountant Skimmers finger as a last ditch effort to save himself. He laughs at this memory since he wanted to kill the wizard so badly, he was willing to sacrifice his finger in order to get the job done. Accountant Skimmer then gets uncomfortably close to Raccoon Vimes and asks if he also believes in something like the watch that powerfully where he is willing to sacrifice a part of himself for it to succeed. Raccoon Vimes ignores this and tells him that if he stays in Ankh-Morpork he’s as good as dead, so he suggests he start running. The show then hints at the end of the episode when Accountant Skimmer points to the badge hanging from Raccoon Vimes’s neck and reminds the audience that the badge belonged to King Veltrick (The last king of Ankh-Morpork, founder of the watch, and built Tanty prison) who was wearing it when the Assassins Guild inhumed him centuries ago. So, there’s noble blood on that badge that Raccoon Vimes has. Remember that for later.
The next scene is Raccoon Vimes arguing with Supermodel Sybil (Lady Sybil Ramkin) about releasing Accountant Skimmer from jail. She is upset that he did this without consulting her first and wants to return him to his cell because he is still a criminal who needs to get punished. Raccoon Vimes argues that because Gang Leader Carcer (Carcer Dun) has been to the future, he already knows the watch’s next moves so they shouldn’t take in anymore prisoners now that GL Carcer takes top priority (I mean he’s been top priority the whole time, so I don’t see how that changes anything…). Supermodel Sybil yells that there is always a choice between what you have to do and what you should do but Raccoon Vimes reminds her that her bad decision making in the past almost got Accountant Skimmer killed (which is true, points to him). Agitated, she tells him that she’s going after him and will drag Accountant Skimmer back kicking and screaming if she has to. The captain reminds her of her promise to give up being a vigilante but since Supermodel Sybil has gone through absolutely no character growth during this series, she rejects trying to be a better person for petty revenge and storms off. Raccoon Vimes yells after her that if she leaves, he will have no choice but to come after her and arrest her for possibly attempted murder. She of course doesn’t listen and stomps away in her Chanel boots.
Ok now here’s where the switcharoo occurs. In the last episode, Wizard Wonse (Lupine Wonse) convinced the Observers (The Auditors of Reality) to switch the bodies of this universes’ Vimes (Raccoon Vimes) with the worst possible version of Vimes (Rat Vimes) that exists out in the multiverse. They do this switch so that GL Carcer can come in and convince Rat Vimes to murder the current timeline’s version of Supermodel Sybil in order to stop Raccoon Vimes from stopping his plans to control the dragon. Confusing? Yes. Stupid? Absolutely. Did they need to have a Freaky Friday sequence as the series finishes up? Apparently so! So, while Raccoon Vimes drifts off to sleep at his desk, his consciousness is transported to the timeline where he has been in and out of Tanty prison for the last twenty years.
Raccoon Vimes wakes up in this hideous black and yellow number that looks like it could’ve been worn by a colorblind member of a pop punk boy band from the early 90s and realizes he’s no longer in his office. When he gets up, he notices that he’s locked in a cell with Cellmate Virgin (Alternative timeline Urdo von Pew) who tells him that today is the day they’re getting out. I can only describe Virgin’s mental capacity as having a few ants short of a picnic because his hand, which he has drawn a face on, acts as a secondary character in this episode. Yes, you read that correctly, Virgin’s hand, which I will call Handy for simplicity, is its own character since, for some reason, the show writers wanted him to have a split personality between himself and his hand. This seems like an insult to people with dissociative identity disorder since they treat Cellmate Virgin and his antics like a joke. I’ll talk about this more later on, but episode seven really does feel like it’s mocking those in the prison system who have mental health issues that get exacerbated by staff and their living conditions.
So anyway, Raccoon Vimes is understandably freaking out because he just woke up in another timeline and has no idea what the fuck is going on but is interrupted by an alarm going off signaling morning inspection. Everyone steps outside their cells and are greeted by Nazi Carrot (Alternative timeline Baby Carrot who looks and dresses like a Nazi soldier), who oversees the prisoners of Tanty and keeps them in line. Thinking it’s his version of Carrot, Raccoon Vimes tries greeting him like he normally would but is bludgeon down by Nazi Carrot. He then orders for Raccoon Vimes to be placed in confinement with “The Beast” as punishment for disobedience. When he’s thrown into the hole, or solitary confinement whatever you want to call it, Raccoon Vimes is attacked by alternative universe Detritus that I will now be calling Rocky. Instead of being terrified after being gut punched twice now, Raccoon Vimes is elated to see his old pal alive and well. If it isn’t already obvious, Rocky is “The Beast” and is in charge of beating/killing inmates who are sent into solitary confinement (well technically his cell) as a lesson for bad behavior. Rocky very nearly succeeds in killing Raccoon Vimes when the troll suddenly stops and realizes that this man is not of this timeline. So, he brings Raccoon Vimes over to a wall of rocks and pulls a Granny Weatherwax by communing with the prison that was technically built out of his great-great-great grandmother’s remains. Grandma tells Rocky that this dude definitely doesn’t belong here and that in his timeline Faux Detritus is dead. How does he know this? Well, because the chunk of flesh Tall Cheery took off Faux Detritus’s corpse and kept can still communicate with other rocks/trolls across the multiverse. Feeling sorry for the pathetic raccoon, Rocky agrees to help Vimes escape by kicking out a section of window big enough for Raccoon Vimes to crawl through but not himself.
Side Note! The episode makes mention that trolls are made of stone multiple times and yet despite that fact, Faux Detritus still died after getting pierced in the neck by a crossbow bolt. His skin is literally built-in armor to prevent piercing damage! Why the fuck would one tiny arrow be the thing that takes him out when it takes a literally loaded shotgun to wound, WOUND NOT KILL, Detritus in Men at Arms!? Yes, I’m still salty about this! No, I will not let this go!
Let’s pull back for a moment and talk about how the rest of the cast catches up with the plot on their own time. Baby Carrot (Carrot Ironfounderson) for some fucking reason wakes up on the floor of a backroom in some random dive bar. Why he was there in the first place I have no idea nor is it explained. Standing over him is Psycho Sally (Sally von Humpeding) who creepily starts talking in this weird baby voice about seeing him alone at the bar and wanting him to come over and join a support group for virgins. They make her character so fucking psychotic because one second she’s being nice to Baby Carrot, to then talking like an infant about how she’ll make his bleeding wound feel better, to attacking him, then asking why he’s acting so weird. This whole thing is to get them on the topic of blood and nobility because once Psycho Sally mentions that the only noble blood that still exists in Ankh-Morpork belongs to Supermodel Sybil, Baby Carrot gets it into his head that the third and final artefact they’re looking for is in fact Supermodel Sybil. Before he’s able to retreat, Psycho Sally tries to hypnotize him but for some reason commands Baby Carrot to dance which he does…awkwardly. He eventually breaks out of her spell because she herself is confused why she made him dance and thus ends the weirdest character interaction this show has had up to this point!
Baby Carrot meanders back to the watch house where Tall Cheery (Cheery Littlebottom) is cleaning up Paw Patrol Angua (Angua von Uberwald) after she just got out of another transformation. PP Angua smells Psycho Sally on Baby Carrot which pisses her off since werewolves and vampires have a feud and don’t like being in proximity of one another. Baby Carrot explains that the psychotic vampire may have helped him come up with the idea that the final artefact may allude to Supermodel Sybil’s noble blood, so they have to go and find her. By this point, Rat Vimes (Alternative Reality Vimes), has woken up in the body of Raccoon Vimes and is visibly confused and scared as to where he is. He grabs Raccoon Vimes’s city watch badge and truncheon and tries to sneak his way out of the office without being seen by the merry band of morons. However, he’s terrible at stealth and is noticed by the group, who are sitting right by the only entrance of the place by the way, so he bolts out the door at top speed to get away.
When he gets far enough outside, GL Carcer pops out from behind a vendor stand and starts acting all friendly towards the rat to put him at ease. Rat Vimes immediately recognizes GL Carcer and happily embraces him, which is a bit off putting for GL Carcer since he didn’t expect the rat to know who he is. Either way, GL Carcer informs Rat Vimes that he aided his escape from Tanty prison and if he doesn’t want to end up back there, he has to do everything he says. Thankful for being let out, Rat Vimes agrees to his terms and tells GL Carcer about how Supermodel Sybil may be the third artefact if what he overheard the mystery gang talking about was correct. With this newfound information, GL Carcer thanks him for this insight then tasks Rat Vimes to lead the rest of the watchmen into an awaiting trap within the ruins of the abandoned Tanty prison. Rat Vimes runs back over to Baby Carrot, who has been standing around for him to return, and tells him that Supermodel Sybil is waiting for them at Tanty prison so everyone needs to follow him so they can talk about the next artefact.
Anyway, GL Carcer returns to Wizard Wonse who has created this device that will help them identify the final artefact. Seems a bit late with that invention…would’ve been useful to have SIX FUCKING EPISODES AGO! I digress. Point is, Wizard Wonse has this device that can identify when the final artefact is around because the sensor picks up a deafening silence that apparently octarine is channeled through since magic is older than time and space. …dumb fucking…ANYWAY, GL Carcer is like cool now we just have to wait for Rat Vimes to lead the others into the trap so we can swing back around to pick him up on time to murder Supermodel Sybil. Wizard Wonse brings up a good point that they still need a backup plan if Rat Vimes fails to kill Supermodel Sybil. Like I’ve said before, she’s the brains of the operation because she’s the only one who understands that the Observers will not hesitate to erase them from existence if they do not keep up their end of the bargain.
Incoming Rant- GL Carcer mentions that even if Supermodel Sybil is the third artefact, it’s more important to have Rat Vimes kill her than it is to keep her alive for the ritual. This ideology literally goes against the plans they had in the last episode when they thought Baby Carrot was the final piece for the ritual. The reason they were kidnapping Baby Carrot in the first place was because they wanted to use his possibly noble blood to control the dragon. They were going to keep him alive and on the throne while being the real ones in power since they were planning on slowly draining him of his seemingly magical blood. But here’s the thing, if Supermodel Sybil dies AND she happened to be the third artefact…then they just lost the blood they kept saying they needed to fulfill their plans to destroy the world. I know the whole point of killing her off is to cause a massive ripple effect in the timelines that would prevent all versions of Vimes from rising up and stopping them, but this plan literally would prevent them from completing the ritual since they would lose their blood supply. Cause from what I can infer from their original plan to drain Baby Carrot of his blood, these two dipshits need a constant flow of octarine filled blood, or at least a powerful enough source, to keep hold of the Noble Dragon. Seriously, if the third artefact is a person like everyone thinks (more on that later) then the moment Supermodel Sybil’s cold body hits the floor they’d be up shits creek. No noble blood means no dragon. No dragon means GL Carcer would fail his unseen benefactors for a third time and subsequently be destroyed for his continued incompetence. ARE THEY REALLY THAT FUCKING STUPID!?!?
Speaking of Rat Vimes leading the watchmen into a trap, Rat Vimes leads the watchmen into a trap! While they are walking to Tanty prison, Paw Patrol Angua comments how weird it is that she can’t smell the captain’s usual aftershave that he normally wears. They acknowledge multiple times that something really, really weird is going on with him but they still chose to follow him anyway because…plot? Anyway, the moment they all step through the doors of the prison, Rat Vimes locks the doors behind them and leaves with GL Carcer who had been following their trail. They all start looking for a way out but come up empty handed, so they gather in the prison’s rundown mess hall to come up with a plan of escape. If the prospect of all of them dying in a sealed labyrinth wasn’t already foreboding enough, Bitchy Death (Death) shows up to laugh at their misfortune and even asks who in the group is more likely to cannibalize the others first (I think it’s PP Angua but that’s just my personal opinion…also why he showed up WAY BEFORE they were going to kick the bucket is beyond me). Baby Carrot tries to butter Bitchy Death up by reasoning that he must know a way out because of the special skills he possesses. Taking that compliment and running with it, Bitchy Death enthusiastically explains that he has been composing music and doesn’t wait for their answer to start playing his latest work. This leads Bitchy Death to sing about, well, death, for 37 minutes straight which bored the burgeoning Donner Party into inspiration since they end up asking what his instrument is made out of and Bitchy Death responds that it was made from parts that were laying around. Tall Cheery gets an idea when he mentions this and runs out of the mess hall along with Baby Carrot and Paw Patrol Angua, leaving Bitchy Death behind. She explains while knocking on the prison walls listening for an echo that when she used to live in Tak Mine, she was involved in a mining accident where the shaft collapsed. Using the tools that her and her team had on them, they were able to rig a crank that knocked a hole in the cave wall big enough for them to escape out of. She sends Paw Patrol Angua and Baby Carrot to fetch a bunch of scrap metal parts laying around the place and eventually she’s able to break down the hollow wall in front of them with her makeshift crank. Paw Patrol Angua then picks up the scent of their traitorous captain and they all head off to go find him.
Meanwhile, Rat Vimes and GL Carcer have made it to the Ramkin Estates where the fucker in charge states that the only way the rat can stay is if he kills Supermodel Sybil. Rat Vimes doesn’t really like the idea of killing someone and declares that killing is wrong. GL Carcer is having none of this and tells him that there is no such thing as good or bad, it’s only survival and in order to survive he needs to kill. While they talk about his apprehensions about killing, Wizard Wonse sneaks up to the house with her nifty artefact finding device and holds it up in the direction of where Supermodel Sybil is standing. The machine picks up nothing, confirming that she isn’t the last artefact they’re looking for. But as they are walking in, Wizard Wonse holds the device up to Rat Vimes and much to her confusion the sensor goes off immediately.
Side Note! All three of them just walked into this house which we have been repeatedly told is booby trapped from top to bottom and yet they activate none of the traps? Yeah, I have to call bullshit on that.
Once inside, Rat Vimes thanks GL Carcer for saving his life a second time. He explains that the first time was when he pulled him up from the edge of the Unseen University tower (which isn’t called the Tower of Art for some reason). Rat Vimes then goes into the whole spiel about how they used to run in a gang years ago and his timeline’s Carcer was tasked in freeing his fellow gang members from prison. I’m not going to repeat the whole story again because it’s literally the same fucking backstory we’re reminded of every fucking episode only their roles are reversed. Rat Vimes admits to not having the guts to kill Captain John Keel which resulted in his capture by Watchmen Carcer (Alternative Reality Carcer) during the tower sequence of the story. As Rat Vimes explains how Watchmen Carcer became the captain of the city watch, GL Carcer is having flashbacks of these events in the way it played out for him in the current timeline and realizes that he was the only one to shoot down John Keel in all the timelines. He then hands Rat Vimes the knife, telling him that he needs to keep his promise which sends the rat off to perform his duties. Wizard Wonse finally catches up to GL Carcer to inform him that Supermodel Sybil isn’t the third artefact, but the device reacted to Rat Vimes. GL Carcer is very adamant about Supermodel Sybil getting offed because in his mind it means the end of the watch and the end of them interfering in his plans. She reminds him that the Observers told them that nowhere in the multiverse does any version of Vimes kill Sybil. She even suspects that perhaps because of this notion, he might be noble enough deep down to be the third artefact. However, this angers GL Carcer, and he starts going off about how there is no such thing as good or bad. This is the moment where it finally starts to click in his head that maybe everything he did up until this point makes him a bad person. But of course, self-reflection hurts his brain, so he rejects the notion that his actions truly make him evil (maybe for now, who knows) and they move on.
Cut back to Racoon Vimes who has wandered out from the tunnel system Rocky gave him access to and ends up in what appears to be the prison’s mess hall. He approaches Cellmate Virgin to ask him what he meant by them breaking out of there. Cellmate Virgin explains along with Handy that there is only one way out of the prison, and it can only be opened by the warden’s handprint. Well…not exactly handprint, more like the Warden sticks her hand through an open window for a goblin to high five then pull the mechanism that opens the entrance. With the help of some friends on the outside, Cellmate Virgin was able to procure sharpened scissors that they’ll be using to cut the Warden’s hand off in order to get past the goblin guard. Which seems psychotic because all you need is someone with the same skin tone as Warden Sybil’s because clearly the goblin on duty isn’t looking at the person’s face before opening the door. Also, yes, the warden of Tanty prison is Sybil which isn’t an odd choice the writers made as I will soon explain.
When Raccoon Vimes finally encounters Warden Sybil, he is surprised to see her and starts to doubt if he can go through with cutting off her hand to get out of there. Which is a completely understandable hang up if she wasn’t already BAT SHIT INSANE! The writers use the same mindset Supermodel Sybil has when it comes to “reeducating” criminals, only this time on a much larger scale and on steroids. Warden Sybil talks about how it’s her sworn duty to uphold the wishes of the prisons founder, King Veltrick, who bled for the badge to make the city a better place. She likens Tanty to a place of learning that happens to take extreme measures to instill whatever lesson this psycho is trying to teach her prisoners. We have already seen some of these extreme measures in the form of having prison cells smaller than dog kennels, sending misbehaving inmates to the hole/solitary confinement, and locking people in with Rocky who physically attacks anyone who enters his cage. If I were in any of the inmate’s shoes, I’d wholeheartedly cut Warden Sybil’s arm off for what she’s doing to people.
Incoming Rant- Quick background on DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder), it’s a mental disorder that is brought on through repeated psychological/emotional/physical/sexual trauma to the psyche that causes a person with the disorder to disassociate from themselves into an entirely new identity. I bring this up because the show writers seemed to have inadvertently alluded to Cellmate Virgin’s mental condition being DID or something akin to the disorder by having his hand become its own character. Now, I’m not accusing characters like Warden Sybil and Nazi Carrot of causing Cellmate Virgin’s obvious mental illness, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility to see that their lack of care towards the prisoners of Tanty may have exacerbated Cellmate Virgin’s preexisting traumas. In the previous episodes, we see that Thief Virgin is mentally stable up until GL Carcer attacks and performs a makeshift lobotomy when sending all the magical radiation in episode five directly to Thief Virgin’s brain. This could mean absolutely nothing since the Virgin we are referring to belongs in an entirely different timeline than from the one we’ve seen the last several episodes, but the fact of the matter is at one point Cellmate Virgin does develop a split personality between himself and Handy. Tanty prison, despite Warden Sybil’s insistence the inmates be allowed arts and crafts hour every other day, still implements unethical practices that have been proven to wear down a person’s psyche over time. And seeing that Cellmate Virgin mentions to Raccoon Vimes that Rat Vimes has been in and out of Tanty for the last twenty years, with him being his cellmate for many of those years, it’s safe to assume that all these outlying factors may have contributed to Cellmate Virgin’s mental decline.
Warden Sybil sends Raccoon Vimes and Cellmate Virgin to the Hut to do intensive arts and crafts. This will be their opportunity to switch the sharpened papier-mâché scissors out with the dull ones they are given without arousing suspicion. While they are whispering about the plan, Watchmen Carcer, captain of the city watch, comes in for a bit to talk to Raccoon Vimes and wish him well in his endeavors. This distraction allows Cellmate Virgin to switch out the blades, so they are ready to go on Raccoon Vimes’s signal.
Back in the original timeline, Supermodel Sybil is sharpening her weapons in preparation to hunt down Accountant Skimmer while muttering about how she liked Raccoon Vimes so how dare he make rational decisions that don’t support her erratic behaviors. Ok that was more me talking, but she does try to justify her decision to detach from the watch because for some inexplicable reason she really did like Raccoon Vimes. Enter Rat Vimes with the knife GL Carcer gave him, who shyly explains to Supermodel Sybil that he isn’t here to arrest her like she thinks he is, but instead has to kill her. She, of course, doesn’t take his words seriously (when has Supermodel Sybil ever taken Raccoon Vimes seriously in this series honestly?) and goes on to say that despite their differences, she’s glad that he came back because she missed him. I guess this is the show’s version of Vimes wanting his dramatic look back in Guards! Guards! Anyway, Rat Vimes stares at her in confusion and is like “no…I literally came here to stab you to death,” but Supermodel Sybil quickly shuts him up by kissing him. When they pull away, she somehow knows he’s not the real Raccoon Vimes but before more questions can be asked, an axe zooms past their heads and lodges into the far side of the wall. Well guess what, Accountant Skimmer is back and he’s looking to kill Supermodel Sybil before she had a chance to recapture/kill him. With her death, Accountant Skimmer would be allowed to reenter the Assassins Guild that he was disbarred from after getting caught in a money laundering scheme. Confused as all hell, Rat Vimes picks the knife he dropped on the ground back up and exclaims that he needs to be the one to kill her. Now Supermodel Sybil is in a Mexican standoff between Accountant Skimmer and Rat Vimes and doesn’t know who to attack. The ex-assassin distracts Supermodel Sybil, recounting how several close family friends to the Ramkin’s are the real reason her parents were inhumed, in hopes that Rat Vimes would take the hint and stab her. Unaware that there isn’t much rattling around in Rat Vimes’s old dome, this distraction is for nothing and Supermodel Sybil ends up firing her crossbow into Accountant Skimmer, incapacitating him.
The next couple scenes ping pong between the original and alternative timelines as both Vimes’s go completely feral and start attacking each respective Sybil. Rat Vimes doesn’t want to go back to prison so he starts swinging but Supermodel Sybil is way stronger than him so that goes as well as you’d expect. Meanwhile across the multiverse, Raccoon Vimes and his new cronies ambush the Warden, drag her off to the entrance, and demand that she open the door. Warden Sybil calmly explains that if she does then every prisoner in Tanty will learn from this that violence is the answer to their problems. Which is a meaningless statement when in this universe alone she has allowed her prisoners to be both physically and verbally attacked on a constant basis. Anyway, in the end, both versions of Vimes chickens out of doing any real harm to the Sybil’s because he can’t bring himself to harm/kill another living person. While this is going on, Wizard Wonse finally figures out that the thing making her artefact finding device go off isn’t Vimes but the city watch badge he carries with him. Remember when I said that King Veltrick was killed when wearing that badge? Yeah, the noble blood of the king is still on it, making it the true third artefact they need to summon the dragon. Back to what’s going on with the Vimes’s, by the power of deus ex machina, they switch back into their original timelines and the whole thing is magically resolved. Hurray!
The episode finishes up with Accountant Skimmer asking if Raccoon Vimes noticed the woman who took his badge, quacking, then falling forty stories out of an open window (he’s probably ok…). Supermodel Sybil and Raccoon Vimes then talking briefly about their alternative selves before the goon squad finally catches up and tries arresting the raccoon for aiding a fugitive before Supermodel Sybil stops them. Then it closes with GL Carcer preparing to summon the dragon now that he has everything he needs to officially burn the city to the ground.
Life is a series of choices and clearly, I picked all the wrong ones to get to this point…
Episode Thoughts/Review:
Surprisingly, Nowhere in the Multiverse’s pacing wasn’t as bad as some of the previous episodes I’ve covered. Although, this still isn’t praiseworthy since the episode continued to have the exact same problems as its predecessors through its overuse of backtracking and exposition. It’s like Simon Allen thinks his audience consists of mindless children. Every episode, there’s always a point where a character has a lengthy dialogue about information we’ve known about since the first episode. I get that the story involves time travel which can be confusing to explain to audiences, but what I don’t want is to hear GL Carcer and Raccoon Vimes’s backstory multiple times every fucking episode. We get it! They were in a gang together and the event made them lifelong enemies when GL Carcer fell through time! I don’t need you to remind me forty more times! That’s all the dialogue is anymore, exposition dumps from random characters about information that has been repeated in everyway you can think of. It’s mind numbingly stupid and it makes me want to bang my head into a wall. I can’t wait for this black hole of a show to end.
I also want to bring up how the writers (technically Simon Allen since, as of now, has written every episode but one) perpetuates the stereotype of the violent mentally ill person. Although it is not explicitly stated, Cellmate Virgin clearly shows signs of mental illness since he uses his hand to allow his second personality to communicate. He is also this episode’s comedy relief since many of the “jokes” center around his atypical idiosyncrasies. By the end of the episode, we see him physically attack Warden Sybil and laugh uncontrollably as he watches another prisoner attack Nazi Carrot. People who live with personality disorders deal with being labeled unstable or dangerous in the eyes of society constantly because the only representation people have of what it’s like living with a mental disorder comes from media that portrays it in a negative light. By including scenes in The Watch where a person’s untreated mental condition is seen as something to be mocked, it perpetuates the vicious stereotype that those with personality disorders are unstable and violent people. Again, this wasn’t the angle that the show was going for, but even though the series marketed itself as having a diverse set of characters, the writing still comes off as disingenuous towards people who have disabilities and/or mental illness. Sorry, I’ll get off my soap box now.
Finally, for the best part of the review...
Things in Nowhere in the Multiverse that made me lose brain cells:
Sybil’s low enough standards that she’s willing to risk getting ringworm by kissing Vimes
Me imitating Death’s voice: Let me play you a little ditty, this is I’m a Slave 4 U by Britney Spears
Prisoners having one of two choices: either participate in arts and crafts day or be sent to solitary confinement to be maimed/killed by Alt. Detritus
Alternative Detritus: Not your world, not my Vimes.
Me: Cheers to that! Definitely not MY Vimes! Not my watch either!
Honorable Mentions:
The fact that the show acknowledges its communism = bad allegory is shitty
There is only one brain cell in the entire show and everyone has to share, including the writers!
#the watch reviews#not my watch#discworld#bbc the watch#bbc america the watch#review#bbc#bbc america#mp#no editing we die like men
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Anon finally figured out The Definitive Answer for why so many people worship Bakugo, because there's a blog post by lovecrafts-iranon where, refreshingly, he actually comes right out and SAYS the reason why fandoms worship assholes: he thinks Dudley should have been Harry Potter's protagonist instead of Potter himself, because "good people doing good things are a boring snooze, while cruel and vicious people are entertaining." So he, and others like him, judge morality by "what entertains me".
Wow. I found that Dudley post, and it has SO MANY notes, and NOT EVEN ONE OF THEM IS SOMEONE DISAGREEING. How is that possible?
But I'd like to take a moment to look at this post in more (i.e. WAY TOO MUCH) depth. With pull quotes!
There is so much potential for growth, and at a nice slow pace because he would need to be dragged kicking and screaming every step of the way and have several reversions.
I guess it's true that he'd have to go through a lot more radical change than Harry did. And that would definitely be interesting to see unfurl, in a fashion. But Harry has to learn self-confidence, learn to cope with death (in the sense that he has to process it for the first time), learn to accept the things he can't change... all the things that people in the targeted demographic age of the readership are simultaneously dealing with. Dudley, on the other hand, doesn't have any reason to learn most of that stuff. He's only relatable to readers who are also massive assholes. Dudley's already overconfident - he's full of himself, and him being told that he's basically the Chosen One will only make it much worse. Will he have to cope with death? I mean, maybe someday. But we start with him only caring about himself, so it's unlikely he'd be too terribly affected if someone died in front of him. That would require him to care about someone else. And learning to accept that he can't change everything is something he'd probably struggle with in a semi-interesting fashion, but do you want to watch a spoiled brat who believes he can scream until he gets his way FINALLY start to learn that maybe he should stop screaming and start facing facts? Shit, that just sounds like modern politics. And coping with people who can't face reality is intolerable and infuriating.
Magic, aside from being not real, is a special kind of repulsive evil [to him]. Merely mentioning magic is the only thing that can temporarily revoke his Specialest Boy status.
I think the author is stating that this is a thing that's true of Dudley in the existing novels? Maybe I'm misunderstanding, and this is something that the author of the post wants to introduce into their AU fanfic. If it's the former, however, then I want to point out that there's no evidence that Dudley held any opinions at all on magic before Harry was declared a wizard. His parents sure did, but they never spoke of magic and refused to acknowledge it, so they naturally never said a word to Dudley about it.
So Dudley actually has no reason to be repulsed by the notion of being a wizard. In all likelihood, he'd be overjoyed to be told that he's a super-powered being of importance who everyone in the magical world has heard about. He'd probably want everybody to genuflect when he entered every room from then on. (I am assuming that Dudley must still be the one who has to eventually defeat Voldemort according to prophecy, but I guess he wouldn't be "The Boy Who Lived." His parents were obviously never killed; the fact that they raised him a certain way is what defines his character. He'd need some other kind of legend to cause his fame.)
Harry would never cause problems on purpose, while Dudley would never stop doing so at Hogwarts!
A character who is actively the source of all the trouble they're in isn't remotely sympathetic; I root AGAINST that kind of character. I want LESS of them. I want them to lose.
That's actually part of why I hated the new Snake Eyes movie — every bad thing that happens can logically be laid at Henry "Snake Eyes" Golding's own [probably gorgeous] feet. I'm not rooting for someone like that.
Harry gets to experience friendship and acceptance for the first time, snooze, while Dudley would have to face lack of friendship and rejection for the first time (there is nobody who wouldn't be put off by 'hates magic' even if they were fine with the rest of his personality)! Now that's fascinating!
I still think seeing a lonely boy with no sense of self-worth make his first friends is interesting. But I admit that Dudley facing rejection and lack of friendship for the first time DOES sound fascinating. The author has got me there.
And imagine him going home for Christmas break loudly announcing how happy he is to get away from all those awful wizards only to find out his parents treat him much differently now, their love having been completely conditional all along.
Would it be, though? I guess this is up to the perception of the author, but I kind of imagine Vernon and Petunia taking it as a personal victory if their own spawn is declared the special Chosen One. Their kid being a powerful wizard known around the world, and Lily's kid being no one in particular? They'd visit Lily's grave for the first time ever just so they could dance on it.
I could go on and on. I remember looking to see if there was any Dudley goes to Hogwarts fic as a kid and there was one popular one, but it let Harry go too (boo, the realization there might be something wrong with how his adopted brother is being treated back at home should be a shocking revelation to him), let Dudley become too nice too fast (it should be a long, drawn out process where he never gives an inch he doesn't absolutely have to!) and was too easy on him (characters suffering is good).
Author is assuming that Dudley - now christened a mighty wizard of destiny, the literal Chosen One - would actually perceive of there being something wrong with how his lowly muggle cousin was treated. I'd say: Highly doubtful. He'd just continue to be an asshole about it.
And the longer you drag out an asshole getting redeemed, the more I'm going to feel like "Well I don't fucking care if they get redeemed by this point; they've had every possible chance and every possible piece of evidence thrown at them, and they chose to remain an asshole, so fuck them. They deserve nothing."
At least the author wants Dudley to suffer. Not that I agree with the notion that characters suffering is automatically good, but asshole characters DO often deserve that shit.
BOTTOM LINE: I... just... I guess I shouldn't be surprised that people would actually WANT to focus on horrible assholes? That people want those fuckers to be the heroes instead of actually decent human beings? Because there are so many awful people in the world, so I guess it must be relatable enough for them. But dammit, I'm still surprised.
No, no, no. FUCK no. Being an asshole does not inherently make someone interesting; it just makes them an asshole. They deserve to be punished, not celebrated. They might still be interesting as an antagonist, but I'm sure as hell not going to root for them. And if you're going to insist on spending valuable focus time on these characters, you'd better at least be acknowledging that they are the VILLAIN of the story.
Which is honestly a more logical role for Dudley anyway. If Voldemort told Dudley that he's an exceptional being and that the inferior muggles else should be made to serve at his feet? Dudley would totally go for that. He'd become the whiniest, brattiest Death Eater.
Besides, Dudley is a particularly weird choice for their post, because he's NOT interesting! Not even as an antagonist! Dudley only exists as a one-note plot device. He deserves no attention.
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fanfiction writing challenge
Writing challenge
Cartman redemption because the newest covid special “South Park, Post Covid” shows that Eric can not only grow as a person but improve and that his “friends” ruined him because keeping his friendship with the other three during covid apparently left him a homeless drunk and in the original timeline he became a rabbi had a wife and three kids. He has a terrible naming sense but he does love his family. How you make Eric Cartman a better person is up to you. You can make his mom move away from south park, kill off the other characters, put cartman in foster, or just plain have him be curious and investigate something that leads him on an adventure of personal growth. Remember it took a global pandemic for Cartman to change for the better. So this character will have to be dragged kicking and screaming into being a better person. In other words Eric Cartman will suffer as he grows as person.
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just another long rambling post trying to explain why I, a Bakugou fan, would treasonously want him to lose his quirk
this is something I had originally intended to post about later down the line, after we actually know for sure whether or not Bakugou is going to lose his quirk. but seeing as parts of this post (see: point #5) also indirectly address some issues that people had with the latest chapter (283) as well, I decided I might as well jump the gun.
this is a topic I’ve gotten a lot of asks about, and so I’ve tried to gather all of those various arguments into one single post with my own comments and rebuttals. however, the purpose of this post isn’t really to convince anyone or change anyone’s mind. it’s pretty much just an explanation of why I am so sold on the idea. I think it’s a little defensive at times, and I definitely feel like one of the side effects of getting asks like this...
...is that I feel compelled to explain that yes, as the veritable mountain of Bakuessays on this blog can attest to, I am in fact a Bakugou fan, and have not been standing here this whole time just waiting for the perfect moment to rip off my disguise revealing my secret “#1 Deku Stan!! BAKUGOU CAN SUCK IT” shirt underneath while cackling nefariously. like. just so we’re clear on that here.
I know I’ve said this repeatedly, but it’s precisely because I’m such an adamant fan of Bakugou that I’m excited over the story potential of him possibly becoming quirkless. as for why I keep bringing it up, honestly it’s mostly just because I keep getting the asks, lol. and so my options are basically to either say “ah you know what, you’ve convinced me,” or to keep trying to explain my reasoning at the risk of making everyone increasingly mad and/or bored.
anyway, so there are five arguments which I want to address, and they are as follows:
it’s repetitive/boring/we’ve already had the plotline of a prodigy student losing their quirk.
it cheapens Bakugou’s character development by directly “forcing” him to learn something, instead of him arriving at the conclusion on his own.
losing his quirk would put him on the back-burner, story-wise, and exclude him from further fights and story development.
Bakugou doesn’t need to learn anything more/there isn’t anything important Bakugou could learn by losing his quirk that he couldn’t learn in some other manner.
losing his quirk would mean him falling hopelessly behind Deku, and playing second fiddle to him when he should be Deku’s equal. it would render his whole story and all of his development meaningless.
before I get started, please be advised that this is a very long post. like, tragically long. idk I did my best to rein it in but it just got ramblier and ramblier sob anyways so here’s a cut.
okay!
1. it’s repetitive/boring/we’ve already had the plotline of a prodigy student losing their quirk.
have you ever heard people pose the argument that all of the good stories have already been told? the idea is basically that there’s no such thing as a truly original story anymore, because humankind has been telling stories for thousands of years and we’ve exhausted any and all original ideas by this point. the problem with this, though, is that it assumes that (1) stories must always be 100% completely original in order to be good, and (2) if the basic building blocks of two stories are the same, then those stories must basically be identical. which is very much not the case. classic story structures are classic for a reason. the best stories are based around themes and conflicts and story beats which have been reimagined in a million different ways, and which work precisely because they’re familiar, and because they still resonate with people each and every time. and each and every time, it’s still a different story, because even if the ideas and themes and even some of the emotions are the same, the people are different, and no two people’s stories will ever be exactly the same.
all of which is to say that firstly, just because someone has already lost their quirk doesn’t mean it’s not an interesting enough concept to explore again. but more importantly, Bakugou and Mirio are not the same person. Bakugou is a completely different character than Mirio, with a completely different personality and history, and completely different relationships with the other principal characters. in other words it is absolutely not the same story at all. Bakugou won’t react the same way as Mirio. he’s not a character who can be faded into the background like Mirio unfortunately was. and most importantly, he’s a character whose own personal history with the formerly quirkless main character makes this an extremely personal and compelling character arc which would hit in a vastly different way than Mirio’s. I don’t think it’s repetitive at all, any more than “the heroes fight the villains” is a repetitive plotline. basically this argument, which is subjective to begin with, just doesn’t hold any water to me, I’m sorry.
2. it cheapens Bakugou’s character development by directly “forcing” him to learn something instead of him arriving at the conclusion on his own.
okay there are two counterarguments that I want to make here. the first is that this has always been Bakugou’s character development process since day one. he has never simply just arrived at a zenlike conclusion on his own through stern self-reflection or anything like that. his entire story has been him learning and growing from one humbling experience after another. examples:
he stops bullying Deku after Deku saves his life.
he undergoes a huge shift in attitude after Deku beats him in their training fight on the second day of school. he eats a healthy serving of humble pie and listens to the constructive criticisms that Momo, Aizawa and the rest pile onto him afterwards, and the result is that he becomes less cocky and starts taking his training much more seriously.
he wins-but-loses to Todoroki in the school festival and it serves as a reminder that simply winning isn’t everything. being the best is meaningless if it’s handed to you. as a result his determination is fueled even more.
he is LITERALLY FORCED POINT-BLANK to work together with Deku in order to pass his final exam. he is dragged kicking and screaming. I can’t stress enough how completely unwilling he was to learn this lesson otherwise lmao. it’s abundantly clear that he would never have done this on his own had the lesson not been almost literally beaten into his own head.
his experience at Kamino -- being targeted because he was perceived as villainous, and feeling responsible for All Might’s retirement afterwards -- is perhaps the best example of how Katsuki takes a terrible experience and uses it to grow leaps and bounds as a person. he develops a new awareness of how his actions can potentially be perceived by others (a vital lesson if he ever hopes to make it to the top). and he’s profoundly humbled (I keep using that word, so I just want to pause a sec to clarify that I mean it not in a “humiliated and crushed” way, but in a “freedom from pride and arrogance” way; in other words this is ultimately a positive thing, even if it comes about in an unpleasant way) by the experience, enough so that he finally lets his walls of pride crumble enough to have his weirdly violent heart-to-heart with Deku. and as a result the two of them grow closer, and All Might sets him down the path of Win To Save and Save To Win. something which I feel compelled to note that he still had ABSOLUTELY NO CLUE ABOUT beforehand. this is another thing that literally had to be spelled out for him before he could grasp it. it’s very hard for me to conceive a way of somehow spinning this particular development, which is by far the most important in his arc to date, as being something he just “learned on his own.”
and I forgot to mention it, but him failing the provisional license exam also directly contributed to the character development mentioned above! that was what finally tipped him over the edge. even though he was reeling from everything that had happened at Kamino, he still had too much pride to actually open up to anyone about it until this second “loss” of sorts finally convinced him that he really was doing something terribly wrong, and pushed him to talk to Deku about it.
and that brings us to where we’re at currently! there are a few other things I didn’t mention, like Jeanist lecturing him on the meaning behind choosing a hero name, and his internship with Endeavor teaching him... something. tbd lol. but anyways my point here is that Bakugou has always been a character who learns chiefly through his mistakes and painful experiences. it’s extremely rare for him to just arrive at some new tidbit of enlightenment all on his own, and if it does, it often still originally stems from a past -- often painful -- experience. that’s just how he is. his stubbornness is one of my favorite things about him, but it’s also always hindered his growth to some extent, and has made it harder for him to change his viewpoint all on his own, even though he is to his credit very open to change once something finally does sink in. he’s someone who’s always trying to be better. it’s just that a lot of times he needs to be nudged and pushed in the right direction, particularly on those few occasions where the thing he has to learn is something that runs counter to his current viewpoint to such a degree that he’s resistant to learning it (see, again, working together with Deku in the final exam).
and that finally brings me to my second counterargument to this point, which is that I very strongly feel that having to learn something “directly” in this very blunt manner does not make it cheap. that actually comes off as a bit insulting to all of Bakugou’s previous character development if I’m being honest. his development isn’t cheapened just because something was harder for him to learn. he’s not less of a good person just because he had a harder struggle to learn those things, and needed help and guidance, and made mistakes along the way. I feel very strongly that people shouldn’t be judged on how they grow, or their reasons for that growth. that to me feels like gatekeeping the concept of being a good person. “Bakugou isn’t as good of a character because he only started saving others and caring about people after he got kidnapped.” like, come on. people grow through their experiences! that’s literally where all growth stems from, even growth that on the surface appears to be self-fueled and motivated. every single action, every single motivation, happens because at some point or other, that person experienced something that led to them thinking and feeling that way, and deciding to do that thing. we are the sum total of our experiences, I believe is how the saying goes. and that goes double for characters in a story, because watching them go through those experiences is how we the audience discover who these characters are.
anyway so this argument is also a miss from where I stand. if it takes losing his quirk for Bakugou to have an epiphany about true strength, and what truly makes a hero on the inside, then goddammit, good for him. that’s nothing to be ashamed of. in the end that’s still his hard-earned growth, and he’s not any lesser for having learned it through adversity instead of just stumbling upon the answer somewhere along the way.
3. losing his quirk would put him on the back-burner, story-wise, and exclude him from further fights and story development.
hard disagree here as well. losing his quirk would be the single biggest thing that ever happened to Bakugou. a development like that would almost demand we focus on it. perhaps not right away (just like we didn’t immediately focus on him right after Kamino), but it would be inevitable. in fact, I’d argue that Bakugou losing his quirk is one of the only ways to guarantee that the story puts his character development back at the forefront again at some point, and doesn’t just drop the plotline entirely in an “eh, good enough” manner. it’s a development that basically makes his character development the focus of the plot, instead of us only ever getting little side anecdote scenes of “slowly becoming less of an asshole” for the rest of the series. it’s character development on hard mode, to be sure, but the fact of the matter is that Bakugou is not the main character, and so his personal character journey is only going to make it back to the forefront of the story if and when something significant enough occurs so as to make it worthy of being a focus.
as for the other half of this argument, the thing to understand here is that “Kacchan loses his quirk” is NOT the beginning, middle, and end of that storyline all in one. it absolutely won’t be “welp too bad, guess you can’t be a hero after all” and that’s that. “Kacchan loses his quirk” is only the first act of a story arc that continues with “Kacchan struggles with the aftermath of losing his quirk”, and concludes with “Kacchan regains his quirk and reemerges stronger than ever.” how that will ultimately play out, I don’t know! Vestiges; Eri; OFA; the quirk-restoring bullets which the villains also had at some point unless I’m misremembering things; whatever! the key thing here is that I have faith that it will play out. every single argument you see here is in the context of me believing that the endgame here is not a loss for him, but a win. it’s actually the win, because if all goes well, he comes back stronger than ever because he’s finally done away with the one remaining thing that was holding him back -- that lingering unnecessary fear, insecurity, and pride that’s still at the root of so many of his actions even now.
which brings me to my next point.
4. Bakugou doesn’t need to learn anything more/there isn’t anything important Bakugou could learn by losing his quirk that he couldn’t learn in some other manner.
you’ve no doubt guessed it, but I once again disagree here lol. he definitely still has more to learn. Bakugou’s character development thus far has been extraordinary, but all the same, I still want more for him. I don’t think this is the best he’s capable of. his ceiling is much, much higher, and to say that this is as good as he gets is to underestimate him imo.
here’s an incomplete list of things that Bakugou, at present, is still clearly struggling with, numbered alphabetically so that I can explain afterwards how losing his quirk would address each one.
a.) he still obsessively compares his progress to Deku’s at every turn. we got a little bit of insight into his thought processes just recently in chapter 275, and it was extremely revealing. his rivalry with Deku has been a good thing thus far, but this is primarily because up until this point he has been able to keep pace with Deku. so much of his confidence and self-worth seems to hinge on this one specific thing which is notably outside his control, and that’s troubling to me. but more on that further down in a bit.
b.) he’s still incapable of admitting that he cares about people (which is endearing to be fair, but nonetheless indicates that he still views caring as a weakness, and is uncomfortable acknowledging or expressing it).
c.) he has not yet sorted out the problem of coming off as hostile, vulgar, and aggressive even when a situation necessitates him to be more cooperative. to put it plainly, he’s incapable of dialing back his personality even the slightest degree and as a result gets edited out of interviews and has his friends constantly scrambling to apologize and/or interpret for him. I know that a lot of people -- myself included -- actually adore this feral side of him and even consider it one of his most endearing traits, but still, the fact of the matter is that it’s not a good thing that he’s entirely incapable of even the slightest bit of emotional regulation. at some point he’s going to have to sort his shit out at least a little bit; even Endeavor and Mirko are capable of reining it in when it comes to dealing with the public at large and with the press. if he wants to reach the top ranks he still has a lot of growing to do here.
d.) he still thinks of his own worth purely in terms of physical strength. this is a big one. Katsuki has always defined his own world in terms of strength and weakness. “strong” is good; “weak” is bad. people who win are strong. people with quirks are strong. he has a good quirk so he’s strong. Deku doesn’t have a quirk so he shouldn’t be strong (which becomes a paradox and a source of great fear and confusion to him when he realizes on a deep subconscious level that Deku somehow is strong in spite of lacking a quirk). All Might is the best hero because he’s strong and never loses. he’s going to be even better than All Might, and he’ll do it by being strong and never losing.
except that these ideas are all limited, and limiting. physical strength is not the only kind of strength. All Might wasn’t the number one hero and the Symbol of Peace only because he was strong. Katsuki isn’t strong only because he has a good quirk. but he’s still stuck on this idea regardless, and everything he does, everything he is is defined by this idea. even now, with everything he’s learned, he’s still stuck in this limited perspective. and the very obvious problem with that is that it places him in a precarious emotional position where if he ever actually loses, or something happens to strip that physical strength of his away, his entire core of self-worth stands to fall apart as a result. he’s put all his eggs in that basket. and it’s the source of all of his insecurity, and it’s a weakness that’s just waiting to be exploited, and which is holding him back from discovering and acknowledging so many other good things about himself.
e.) and last but not least we’ve got what is by far his biggest current failing (and I say not to put him down, but rather in that same spirit of “learning to acknowledge your own weaknesses” which he himself has so readily embraced), which is that he is still only focused on himself. mind you, I’m not saying that he’s a bad person, or that he doesn’t care about other people! but I am saying that he is self-centered, and that’s just a fact, and I would defy anyone to try and argue otherwise tbh. he is constantly and completely focused only on his own goals. and on top of that he also has great difficulty seeing things from any perspective other than his own, which has been the cause of numerous clashes and misunderstandings with other people, some more disastrous than others (see: that one time he thought Deku must be looking down on him because he couldn’t conceive of a situation where anyone would actually want to accept help from someone else, rather than being self-sufficient, and thus assumed that Deku’s attempt to help him was in fact an insult). he casts himself in the role of the main character, and dismisses most everyone else as “extras.” and it took him an extraordinarily long time to learn the importance of learning from and helping other people (and again, this was something which had to be explicitly spelled out for him. I’ll say it again and again if I have to, because it’s so important in understanding where Bakugou is coming from and what his mindset is in all of this. he had to have it spelled out, because it was genuinely something which wouldn’t have occurred to him otherwise, because it’s so alien to everything he grew up believing up till that point, and because he has so much difficulty seeing other perspectives).
and again, I’m not saying this to dump on him or imply that he doesn’t care! because he does; we’ve seen that demonstrated on multiple occasions. he has compassion for others. he wants to do the right thing and he wants to be a good person, and he tries very hard in his own way. but he is nonetheless still stuck in his own perspective. he struggles with empathy and being able to see from other people’s points of view. and that is a huge barrier to his becoming the greatest hero of all time, and it’s probably the most difficult barrier to overcome. the behavior is something he can and has been chipping away at little by little, but the root causes of the behavior are still there.
anyway. so now that I’ve said all of that, which probably could have been its own essay in and of itself, how would losing his quirk do anything to address these issues? so let’s now break that down point by point as well, using the same alphabetical numbering system as before. I’m skipping the first one because I’ll address it further down, so we’ll start with b.
b.) it makes him more vulnerable in that it’s a huge blow to his pride. how is that a good thing you ask? because pride is always a double-edged sword. the downside is that losing it hurts his self-esteem (but more on that in a sec), but the upside is it opens him up more to accepting kindness from other people, and allowing himself to express kindness and caring himself in return. pride is almost always the biggest obstacle in doing that. so the short of this is that it could lead to us seeing a more open, willingly vulnerable side to him that would strengthen his relationships and serve him well in the long run.
c.) in a similar vein, the ego check would probably help to address some of his emotional instability as well. a not-insignificant chunk of his tactless exterior is basically just a projection; a tough guy persona he’s constructed over the years as part of his neverending quest to be strong. there’s also a fair amount of insecurity (interpreting everything other people say in the worst way possible and reacting with defensive hostility), arrogance/boastfulness, and fear of vulnerability (aka weakness) mixed in as well. so I could see the whole experience leading to a softening of his personality. in my ideal world this would mostly be just temporary, with his usual Bakuattitude gradually being restored piece by piece as his soul searching adventures wear on and he starts acting like his old self more and more. but I do think that in the end, the loss of that insecurity in particular would go a long way towards helping him gain the ability to chill out just a little bit more when the situation calls for it.
d.) it strips him of that physical strength he’s depended on and defined himself by his whole life. sometimes we need to lose something in order to see and appreciate the other things we take for granted or don’t even realize that we have. Katsuki has so many other qualities that make him a good person and a great hero. he’s intelligent, perceptive, brave, resourceful, and extraordinarily determined. he’s strategic and analytical and quick-thinking. he inspires devotion in others and is a natural leader. and he is honest and sticks to his principles and stands up for his beliefs. there is so much more to admire about him than just strength. so many other kinds of strength that he has. and stripping his quirk away would force him to see that at long last. he’s not just a nobody without his power. the things that make him a worthy hero at his core have very little to do with his quirk.
e.) and then the big one -- learning to see past himself. the truth is that Bakugou has always led a relatively privileged life. he was good at everything, the things he wanted came very easily to him, and he’s basically been at the top of the food chain since he was very young. but the downside of this is that it led to a deep-seeded fear of losing all of that, or failing to live up to it. and because he feared weakness so much, he’s spent his entire life looking down on weaker people. his fear of weakness led to him despising anyone with those “weak” qualities that he secretly feared, rather than having compassion for them. add to that the fact that he just has a hard time seeing outside of his own perspective, and we’ve got a situation in which perhaps the only way for him to really gain that kind of compassion and empathy is to experience some of these things for himself.
becoming quirkless is a way of presenting new challenges to him that he would have never faced otherwise. it forces him to answer questions he’s always been too afraid to ask. it forces him to look at himself in a way he never has before, to take a good long look at his own fears and desires. what if you can’t become the number one hero? do you just give up? do you stop trying? do you stubbornly push back against the inevitable? what happens if you do become weak? do you just accept that for the rest of your life? just sit back and watch as everyone else moves on without you? how can you fight without a quirk? what can you do without a quirk? why did you want to become a hero in the first place? why did you seek out strength? what was it for? why do you struggle with everything you have to reach the very top??
and I’d like to think that some of the answers to those questions are, yes, I am still strong. and, no, I can’t give up. and, no, I won’t accept defeat, no matter what. and, I’m not sure, but no matter what happens I’ll keep on fighting. and, because the person I admired taught me to never, ever give up. and, because I wanted to surpass my limits. and, because I want to be the best version of myself.
and that is growth. and it’s precisely the kind of growth you can’t achieve until you’ve searched deep within yourself and laid your soul out bare. and it will make him a better character, and a better hero in the end. and that’s what we’re all here for isn’t it? that’s literally what this story is about. the journey of these kids growing up to become spectacular heroes. so, just, I don’t know. is it really such a great surprise that I want to see it?
anyways, this was by far the longest of these answers and this post is really starting to wear on, so let’s just get to the last one and wrap this up.
5. losing his quirk would mean him falling hopelessly behind Deku, and playing second fiddle to him when he should be Deku’s equal. it would render his whole story and all of his development meaningless.
okay, listen. first of all, this argument often comes bundled with a whole host of other arguments about Bakugou’s relationship with Deku, and how the narrative has already given him numerous other “losses” to Deku, and how this would just be the latest and greatest loss of all. and I’m just going to say it straight up: this argument is ridiculous to me. actually, what it reminds me of is the very same flawed mindset that Bakugou himself has which I mentioned earlier (the forgotten point 4.a), where he is obsessed with comparing his progress to Deku’s at all times, and only considers himself a success if he beats out Deku. the idea here is basically that Bakugou and Deku are running along parallel tracks with the same end goal/finish line of becoming a hero. and so if Deku gets too far ahead and starts lapping Bakugou or something, then it’s like a slap in the face with regard to all of Bakugou’s hard work, and it makes Bakugou’s whole journey pointless because no matter what, he’ll never be able to catch up, especially if he loses his quirk, which is like the metaphorical equivalent of him spraining his ankle.
the thing is, this entire analogy is flawed. first of all, if Bakugou doesn’t sprain his ankle at some point, he'll miss out on discovering and healing a separate underlying injury that’s been unknowingly hampering his progress this entire time. and second, the race isn’t timed. it’s more like an infinite series of races where the finish line is never actually set in stone, because the finish line isn’t actually “beat the other person”; the finish line is “run as fast and as far as you possibly can, and do it in a better way than anyone has ever done before, and while you’re at it maybe stop and save a few million people, because being the best runner isn’t actually about being faster than each other, even though that admittedly makes this a pretty crappy analogy.” anyways though, so what this means is that the sheer magnitude and scale of this race is such that little victories and losses here and there are ultimately meaningless in the big picture. maybe Bakugou sprains his ankle. maybe Deku breaks an arm or two or three or four. maybe someone shows up at some point and starts uprooting the entire track all around them and they have to put the whole race aside for the time being, because what the fuck. and maybe after spraining his ankle, Bakugou eventually comes zooming back ahead on a segway. and maybe Deku stops running for a while without Bakugou there, because he loses sight of his goal without his rival there to keep him on pace.
but anyway! the point is that declaring a winner and loser in this race before we reach the end is kind of absurd in that it ignores the whole nature of the race and how long-term it is. you see the beauty of the race is that it’s actually the opposite of footraces in real life. in this race, the longer the two of them run, the faster and stronger they become. and this same logic applies to any hurdles which are placed in their lanes along the way. the goal of these hurdles isn’t to trick or punish or humiliate them; it’s to help them get even faster and stronger and ultimately closer to their goal. and also, tbh? it’s a long, long race you guys. and so sometimes, as a fan, you almost start to want to see those hurdles. because otherwise it’s just a lot of endless running and running and running. so yeah, go ahead and throw in a damn hurdle or two and some traffic cones and maybe even a long jump here and there. because that’s part of what makes the thing great to watch in the first place.
and I don’t care whether or not Deku is ahead right now, because I also love Deku too by the way, and because I’m not invested in prematurely declaring a winner. and if Bakugou himself gets upset that Deku is ahead? if Deku pulling ahead of him is enough to send him spiraling into despair, and questioning everything about his life, and losing hope and purpose? well then honestly I would say that’s all the more reason for him to go on and get that new character development, because I don’t want him to always be hindered by those kind of toxic thoughts his entire life. their rivalry should serve to make each other better, not bring each other down. so if Bakugou’s ego is still so fragile that he can’t handle a loss to Deku -- a loss, mind you, not the loss, because ultimately these are all just little battles, and not the actual war -- then I want him to grow the fuck up and get the fuck over that, goddammit. he’s a bigger person than that. I want him to grow beyond that. I want him to develop the real, actual confidence that allows him to bounce back from something like that, and to move on better and wiser and stronger, instead of getting dragged down by the pettiness of it all.
in short, if losing to Deku would really be enough to render his story meaningless, then maybe it’s time for Bakugou to find some meaning in his story that’s not dependent on him winning or losing to Deku. because I for one am not actually in this thing just to see which character “wins.” I couldn’t care less who actually wins. I just want to see my boy grow up big and strong and self-actualized, the better to kick ass without anything holding him back. that’s it.
so this brings me at last to the end of this seemingly neverending post. I have no doubt this won’t be the last of my quirkless!Bakugou debate posts in spite of me trying to comprehensively address every single point I could think of lol. but for now it’s my best attempt. and by the way, if it doesn’t actually happen, that’s fine! I love the idea, but I’m not gonna go full on “oh happy dagger” with it if it doesn’t actually pan out lol. the downside is it will mean that I’ve posted this entire 5600-word dissertation for nothing, but you know what, sometimes that’s just how fandom goes.
#bnha#boku no hero academia#bakugou katsuki#quirkless!bakugou#bakugou meta#bnha spoilers#mha spoilers#bnha manga spoilers#makeste reads bnha#asks#anon asks
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Oh look, exactly what Katekyo Hitman Reborn should have been.
A cowardly main character that is a pushover for gag purposes? Who’s ultimate destiny is to rule over a bloodthirsty underworld despite his desire to be normal? Who has insanely large shoes to fill as the unofficial ‘grandson’ of a powerful and revered underworld leader? Gathering friends who view themselves as his allies, including a fiery hothead right hand man who is overly reverent toward the main character and prone to picking fights with everyone else?
I was ready to drop Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun like a hot potato, I’d seen that set up before.
But every time I braced for the punch? For when a teacher would scoff at him for being cowardly or when a friend would trample all over his wishes. I was ready for everyone to blatantly use Iruma as a stepping stone and you know what?
I was proven wrong every time.
Iruma’s spineless nature is played for laughs, but we’re meant to dislike those who take advantage of it. Or find them at fault for pushing until he caves. We don’t laugh as his tutor calls him stupid and shoots him in the head for being shy, we laugh because he’s squirming but the other person is too oblivious to notice. He’s not Tsuna.
Bullies and cruel nicknames aren’t inevitable because he’s such a loser for not proving himself, bullies apologize or are chased off. Friends and mentors wouldn’t dream of making him sad with name calling either, even the stern ones. Why would they? Being low ranked in the school means people don’t respect him, but the school doesn’t hate Iruma for being a misfit. They’re not Namimori.
It’s not that Iruma is idyllic and lacks conflict, the reason I’m comparing them is because their concepts and gags are so similar, but their executions couldn’t be more different.
There is a mean mentor, but he is ‘punished’ through humiliating gags and softens to the main character as they get to know each other better. The joke is always that he’s prideful and strict and is then humbled. The joke is never than Iruma is lazy or can’t be taught any other way. Or that it’s just funny to tell Iruma they don’t care if he dies.
There’s a mean mentor, but he grows and is not someone who demands to be impressed by his own terms. He is made to see qualities he hasn’t had the chance to appreciate before. He’s not Reborn.
There’s a bully who takes things too far, but he apologizes and respects the main character as a rival. A proper rival too. No scheming or beating the shit out of him. They chat and help each other out and cheer on each other’s progress. He’s not Hibari and like, half the former antagonist rogues gallery,
There’s a right hand man who thinks he’s in the most prestigious position as Iruma’s best friend. But he listens to Iruma, enjoys goofing off with him, doesn’t care at all where Iruma chooses to lead them because he’s there to be Iruma’s friend first. No cow towing to tutors or ignoring virtually every word out of his mouth because he wants to have an in with the future demon king.
God, he doesn’t call him Demon King despite Iruma begging him not to because he hates everything it stands for and draws genuinely terrifying people looking to kill him for the title.
He may also snap at other friends for ‘disrespecting’ Iruma, but clearly cares for them all. Fussing and following after Clara the most and working together unprompted from the beginning. He’s not Gokudera.
Clara is an airhead who only thinks in terms of childish games and never takes anything seriously. Except that gets addressed, she gets layers. She and Iruma talk one on one about how they feel and she doesn’t follow him around out of vague gratitude for saving her life- but because Iruma speaks to her and treats her like a person and not a throwaway gag. When Iruma pays attention to someone else, she is bothered by this and seeks to regain his focus, because she’s not there to just soak up residual chaos and wind up other friends. She’s not Yamamoto.
When Iruma wants to improve, the gag of overzealous mentors and insane work out plans pops up. Except none of the teachers smack him, or shoot at him, or threaten him into compliance. They’re tough, but encouraging, quick to praise and are invested in his growth. They fuss when he gets hurt because it’s not funny or something he needs to get over. They cheer him on when he achieves his goals. They’re not every single adult from Katekyo.
And they’re Iruma’s goals. Sure he’s dragged kicking and screaming into the plot, but his choice to rise in the ranks and follow personal interests are his own. No one popped out of the blue to make him become something he doesn’t want to be upon pain of death. A friend told him he should have an ambition and he agreed. And then his friends listened with their working ears and went out of their way to help him out without any obvious net gain for it.
Less than halfway through the first season, Iruma repeatedly expresses a desire to stay in the underworld. He is loved and cherished and has made genuine bonds with many people. I legitimately cannot recall a single moment Tsuna said he wanted to be in the mafia, there was only that “I’ll change it since I have to be there” tacked on much, much later in the series.
That utter lack of autonomy or affection for Tsuna as a character is why I’m so glad we’re finally giving that set up some justice. This Tsuna just has blue hair now and real friends.
TLDR: STOP COMPARING IRUMA TO DEKU.
#i genuinely like the katekyo fandom for the record#this isnt a knock on katekyo fans#but i could not stomach more than a season of thenshow because of how mean spirited it was#lollll this middle schooler is scared of being shot in the heeeead#maybe he shojld be better at math then stupid#iruma was such vindication after that#such genuine love in writing animation design#everything#welcome to demon school iruma kun#iruma suzuki#katekyo hitman reborn#sawada tsunayoshi#alice asmodeus#hayato gokudera#meme#essay#rant#deku#my hero academia#boku no hero academia#midoriya izuku
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S1, E6
"There's No Place Like Homecoming"
Before I react to the contents of this episode, I want to point out that Sasha Pieterse brought some massive talent. She is kicking it effortlessly with actors twice her age.
I also want to talk some about how Alison has been portrayed in the first five episodes. This first season has her treading the line between friend and foe. There's enough characterization that I can see both how destructive and toxic she was to everyone around her but also I can believe she really did try when it came to her friends. She wasn't a complete monster. I remember her being worse than this, but maybe the later episodes will have me eating my words.
Something to think about is that a neighborhood like this wouldn't have trouble churning out bullies left and right. Kids are usually parroting back the messages they extrapolate from society, and a neighborhood with this many unspoken social rules dictated by this many stuck-up, hypocritical snobs would (passively) validate the behavior. The adults in this town are the unspoken villains. Alison is a natural consequence of the soulless adults who are supposed to be in charge.
I think Alison is probably a huge reason why the fandom stuck it out for so long with this story, myself included. The first few seasons constructed a fascinating character; I wanted to know what was going to happen with her. And the quality of the show's writing went way down after they brought her back, so she never felt like she was fully explained. I will almost definitely talk about this later.
Why are they so desperate to make Toby look culpable? Friends, her body was found in her own back yard! When was he at Alison's house?! No one has mentioned any sign that the body was dragged.
I wish I could relate more to how hard it hits these kids in TV shows when their parents go through marital problems or get divorced. My parents' divorce didn't bother me all that much, but it had been a long time in coming.
Why does Spencer's short-term S1 boyfriend have the same name as her sister?
You can not convince me the writers took no inspiration from "It" to write this script. I know it doesn't actually end up mattering in the long run but this makes me wonder where the fortunes in these cookies get printed up. There are so many variables to this gag. The build-up they gave "A" was unreal. I remember suspecting that Alison actually was behind some of this on my first watch, but I can't see it now. The person sending these messages has more power when no one can see them; Alison has more power when she's visible.
Is this "RLW" a real thing in high schools? I've never heard of it. It sounds like a church function. But Hanna attending this meeting, disinterested as she is, might be enough to substantiate character growth. A group like this would come off as stupid and cheesey to anyone who isn't balls-deep in religion, and I don't blame her for her resistance to forced participation. Is the main point of this group that they stand around and roleplay sexual advances for what I can only assume is an entire class period?
Maya checking out Emily's ass/legs as she walks away.
If Mona was feeling neglected by Hanna, I feel like trying to shit-talk Hanna's other friend- who is going through a very heavy loss right now- is...not it. I like this scene because it shows that Mona is still, socially, extremely clumsy. She seems to have a limited capacity to understand social situations. She is also a fascinating character the show may not have succeeded without.
Ugh would they stop fussing over Toby already? I followed this so eagerly my first watch. They play him up as a creep way too much for him to be 'A' or the culprit. The only reason they suspect him is the house fire. I get that he has a motive, but what access would he have to find out their secrets? Are they imagining that Alison just started screaming out things like "Aria's dad is fucking one of his university students!" while he was (allegedly) beating her to death?? Granted, I'm not even sure how the actual early seasons 'A' knew, and I don't think the writers did either because it all gets swept under the rug with the sci-fi diagnosis. PLL somehow created a mental health diagnosis that lets you in on peoples' personal lives but does not allow you to filter a normal conversation with them. Hm, now that I think about it, maybe I have that too.
Okay, what the fuck did I miss?? First Martha, now this door behind which people are doing construction. What the hell is Hanna doing? Maybe I shouldn't have watched like four episodes under the influence.
Why the fuck is Spencer's university-aged sister at her high school homecoming dance? And why does she look like a fucking werewolf? Was that hair a trend, or something? (*this question was partially answered, but I'm posting it anyways)
The subtitles have spelled "Melissa" four different ways in a span of ten seconds.
Lucas is actually kinda cute. "Lucas is 'A'" is still my theory and I will die on this hill.
I want to know what it was that got Lucas branded by Alison (*opting to minimize my use of the term as it may be considered a slur). Was he literally born intersex? Is he a trans man? The explanation they give us doesn't make sense.
This dramatic blue lighting makes all of their makeup super visible, and I normally can't tell when someone's wearing makeup unless it's either extremely obvious (ie, glitter eyeshadow) or I have seen them without.
Will I get branded as something unpleasant if I admit I don't know who this band is, or any of these songs?
It really took them all this time to figure out 9/01 is a date? What do they think they're gonna do?
Damn, Hanna really doesn't sound like a good girlfriend.
I would give anything to see this Emily/Toby scene without all the "creep" edits. It really looks like she's just having an episode in the middle of a heavy discussion. He has no idea they think he killed Alison.
What I don't understand, for this whole thing, is how our protagonists can find room in their minds and energy and time to give a fuck about having a love life in all of this. There is so much emphasis on that, I can't imagine trying to date at a time like this.
#pll rewatch#pll#opinions and commentary#review#aria montgomery#alison dilaurentis#spencer hastings#hannah marin#mona vanderwaal#emily fields#maya st germain#wlw
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