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something-very-special · 4 years ago

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they ran over the seals

More Replicant playthrough observations and general nonsense under the cut. For reference, up to the keystone quest; completed the Forest of Myth and Junk Heap.

This fucking game I swear to god.

A vaguely coherent ramble about sidequests An observation about sidequests in general in this game -- and I don't recall if I ever voiced this somewhere public or it was just a personal observation from my time with the original -- is that the quests in the first half of the game are all relatively easy to complete. There's that one asshat who wants 10 goat hides, but other than him, most of the sidequests are either very much based on finding characters, or gathering a sensible number of items that are either relatively common, purchasable, or given a guaranteed spawn for the duration of that quest.

The sidequests everybody remembers having to do are in the second half, where everybody is demanding and awful and I'm sorry ten MACHINE OILS do you know how goddamn rare those are? They're goddamn rare.

(We'll not discuss Life in the Sands.)

This is generally agreed to, in the technical vernacular, 'suck'. And it's always funny that the most interesting sidequests are the ones with very minimal requirements (Yonah's cooking, getting Popola drunk, the Lighthouse Ladoh my god everything's gone blurry I'm not crying you're crying who am I kidding we're both crying). That particular aspect of the design also feels intentional, not really gating your ability to progress the really meaningful or funny sidequests behind an unreasonable number of rare items. The other aspect of the design is that these quests are not meant to be completed in a single playthrough; most of them are single-stage and just absolutely unreasonable, but if you're going through the game four times you have a... reasonable chance of getting everything you need more or less naturally.

Nobody does that but I think that was the intended design. I think it's a good idea, although the execution of expectation is flawed so I don't really blame people for saying those sidequests suck. (Although I will in turn blame people for saying the sidequests suck as a blanket statement. Yeah getting that guy who burned his kitchen down a billion Broken Motors is aggravating but did you not find that old man's dog? Speak to Ursula on her death bed? Solve a murder? Then again I think tracking down that rotten son who's trying to get away from The Family Business only to learn his father is a con-artist and get literally no reward is the height of comedy so maybe I'm not the greatest point of reference.)

But that asshole in Facade can get bent. I can't exploit my garden properly, jackass! I am no longer a god of time. (I kid, of course.) (This guys sucks even when you can fix your clock.)

Forest of Myth It didn't even occur to me to wonder how they would incorporate the comprehensive voice acting into the Forest of Myth. I like how it plays out, although I wish the voices maybe had a fade as you went deeper into the dream instead of just cutting out at some point, especially for the lines where the characters are being ascribed actions by the narrator that they themselves aren't doing near the start of the Deathdream. But it's just delightful to go back to it. The second half of the game really sticks in your mind both for emotional reasons and because you play it at least three times per full playthrough of the game, but the first half is just so much fun.

Protip: Talk to everybody after you've finished the dream sidequest. Weiss tries to dissuade you. Don't let him dissuade you. I'm still delighted by the Mayor; "We're building a statue of you, made of solid gold. I know you don't own a horse, but we're going to put you on a horse."

I forgot about Yonah being a disaster chef Papa Nier's reaction to the stew is better. Brother is still funny but Papa Nier just expecting to die is comedy gold.

For anybody curious, the joke about the cakes is that Yonah made 'fruit cake' using some of the worst possible fruits for cake-making. If only she'd thrown a tomato into the mix, too.

Lighthouse Lady Every time. what the fuck is a canal I'm aware of the addition of the new-old content but it didn't occur to me until Popola suddenly starts nattering on about fixing the canal when I'm expecting Yonah to talk about a penpal that oh, yeah, I guess Seafront would have had something going on the first half that would play into the second half? (I assume it does. Be weird to introduce these characters just to have groundwork for an added sidequest. ...but it was a cute sidequest.) But look Popola my boy is supposed to be in the next area I visit could we-- I mean he's on the way could we just-- no-- fiiiiiiiiiine. (It was short and sweet, though, and I appreciate that the couple's love is exemplified by them both calling Weiss a floating magazine in tandem.) On a related note but was I the only person suddenly concerned when the sidequest completion maxed out at 50% and not 51%? I had to double-check with a guide just to make sure, since I've spent the last decade telling people to make sure you hit 51% before going on to Part II.

MY BOY I love that nowadays, Emil is everybody's son. But I really wish I could go find somebody only familiar with Automata and just watch their reaction. (I'm guessing there are streams out there that fulfill this but man I'd love to get it in-person.) If you're only familiar with him from Automata this has to be a mindfuck.

Personal anecdote, but I've had the privilege of playing NIER with somebody else almost every time I've gone through it. I had a wonderful experience of doing a replay some years back with somebody who had experienced it with me before but didn't have the most solid memory of the beginning (and had actually missed the entire weapon's lab the first time through). I get to the boy at the piano introducing himself and the 'Wait, what?' was a thing of beauty.

MY ANDROID This was a welcome mindfuck for me; finding Sebastian and having him 'reactivate' in such an unnatural, mechanical way. I don't recall if it was ever officially confirmed that Sebastian is an android (I know that it's just understood that this is the case but I'm not I can't recall a specific one) but the little flair they added to his animation caught me completely off guard. I liked it!

Destroying the food source A lot of people will cite a major inciting incident for the game as being when the protagonist heading back into the village and killing the child Shades just outside the entrance. This moment is such a great bit of subtle foreshadowing that's so easy to miss... but kind of joining that, just before the Knave of Hearts attacks, I realized that the Shades out on the Northern Plains are clearly ramping up for an assault of their own by murdering the sheep. The sheep population at this point is decimated (which is great when you realize you haven't gotten the Sheepslayer trophy and you're about to enter Part II and you don't know if the boar drifting minigame got carried forward with the inclusion of 15 Nightmares). You go out onto the Plains and you will find not only small clusters of sheep left behind instead of the vast, terrifying herds from the start of the game, but until you get their attention the Shades are prioritizing killing the sheep. (Also annoying because that doesn't count toward my sheep murder number.) The Shades will be out there also killing sheep earlier on, but since the whole map is in Overcast mode after talking to Yonah it's especially prevalent to go out to the Northern Plains and seeing the slaughter. And I realized-- they're cutting the Village off from a primary food source. Shades don't eat and they don't have any beef with the local ungulates (at least, no more so than anybody else does), so why are they hunting down the sheep? To deprive their enemies of resources. Sheep are extinct by the timeskip. It's actually really clever of them, and a really clever indication of their sentience and intelligence before it's fully verified.

"Let's get these shit-hogs!" Everything about the way Kaine and Emil interact across the entire game is perfect I will brook no argument this is objective fact.

Emotive Rectangles I wrote an essay about this before but it really bears repeating that the job the original animators did with this scene is just phenomenal. The way Weiss drifts, flits, flips, fans his pages, drunkenly swerves, shoots around the room in defiance... He's a goddamn rectangle, but there is so much emotion and personality in this scene just based on the movements conveyed through a what is effectively just a box. Ten years later and triple-A titles with full facial capture don't have this much seething personality. I really have to give props to the cavia animators, wherever they wound up. That studio could really put some subtle love and care into their titles, utterly unnecessary and easy to miss but you can tell that whoever was working on it was giving it their all. The books are probably the exemplification of this, but every time I go into Seafront and visit the seals I can tell that the guy on seal duty was having just the best day. They made Emil so pretty There's an FMV cutscene right smack in the middle of the original game after the battle against Noir. I understand why it was a necessity on a technical level, but it always looked pretty out of place and a little uncanny valley compared to the rest of the graphical fidelity. That's no longer a necessity so this cutscene is rendered in-engine. I admit I was actually curious to see it redone this way and it looks fantastic. I single out Emil since he is the focal point of cutscene and because his particular high-poly model had some pretty weird difference from his in-engine model, but he and Kaine both look great. But, like, it's almost mean how pretty he is.

They made Brother Nier so pretty Yeah okay you got me he's kind of hot. Kaine's expression when she wakes up and looks him over is... significantly easier to read now. Good voice, too. (Ancient rumors tell that one of the issues with international releases of RepliCant was that they couldn't find an English VA with a voice that 'fit' Brother Nier. He sounded good out the gate but hearing him growl "Let's go TAKE CARE of those KIDS" during the thief sidequest-- I got chills. It sounds so silly but there's a kind of percolating fury to that delivery. Papa Nier was like frustrated but mostly disappointed dad; I felt like Brother was going to take care of those kids, and nobody was going to find the bodies. Younger Brother Nier just never stops looking goofy to me but Older Brother just looks great in motion, between the alterations they made to the movement and just the entire weaponry system. The distinction between the two halves of the game was always a little odd in the Gestalt version-- not odd enough to really raise eyebrows if you didn't know about RepliCant, but of course you can tell that this age gape between the optimistic doe-eyed dogooder and a man largely ruled by his fury and calloused by tragedy is what the timeskip was going for. Swab me down and call me Ishmael, it works. Younger Brother wasn't quite clicking with me-- not because of any writing or voicework issues, but I've got Papa Nier on the back of my mind and it's impossible not to compare and contrast the delivery and dialogue between the two. I know that this is intentional, too; Younger Brother is supposed to be that happy-go-lucky video game protagonist, always doing the right thing and helping people, in order to contrast against the man he becomes. Even just edging into Part II the effect is dramatic and it recontextualizes Younger Brother into a much more effective overall character. And let me reiterate, I enjoyed my time with Younger Brother just fine, I have no issues with him. But he's up against Well Meaning Big Dummy Part I Papa Nier. No contest. And I'm excited to see where Older Brother goes from here.

Speaking of voices I mentioned this before but the delivery on the character's lines is different. The entire game was re-recorded and quite a few lines are still pretty similar to the original, but there are some that are... definitely different. Part of this is a difference in the relationship between characters based on their life experience and ages-- Weiss is much more of an ass to Younger Brother but has a much more even respect for Older Brother (neither of which are like the rapport he established with Father). Some of Kaine's lines feel more aloof, dismissive, and almost tired in the front half of the game. I haven't really gotten to a point to dig into Emil's rapport with the other characters, but the delivery feels more hesitant and uncertain (which I think is more in line with his Japanese VO, but I'm prefacing that on an untrained ear and a presumption rather than recent memory). It's been interesting to see not just where hey adjusted dialogue (and how-- there are some lines that didn't need to be rewritten), but also how they adjust tone and delivery. Dealing with Younger Brother is one thing, but as I said, I'm very excited to see what's different in the second half, especially being much more familiar with that part of the game. Speaking of Voices! Halua got dialogue! I... preferred when it was inferred (and the implications of "I'll always be watching over you" are borderline malicious given the results of their fusion dance, yeah THANK YOU HALUA this is GREAT). Halua's delivery also felt a little too innocent and upbeat both for the situation and when compared to her narrative voice in The Stone Flower, where she comes across as much more cynical and cold. But given what she's been through and the nightmare she's finally escaping I guess she's allowed express happiness. She's certainly earned the right to having a spoken line. No matter what. Every fuckin' time.

"Here we go." This was always a great line to kind of ease in to the officially-official start of Part II-- every time you start up a New Game+ you're greeted with Emil musing about his conflation of Halua to Kaine, and then the phrase "Here we go". There's a lot in that one line. On a personal level he's grounding his thoughts in the moment and steeling himself for what comes next and pushing through his pain and sadness and fear. Whatever Nier told him in the facility he's still terrified, desperately terrified, that Kaine -- who was the one who told him his life had meaning -- is going to reject him. And why wouldn't she? Ultimately they don't know each other, not really. He understands at that moment that his relationship with Kaine is based on confused memories of his sister, that maybe the bond he thought they established isn't actually real. As soon as he frees Kaine he's going to have to confront her, like this, and how could she ever-- she won't-- but he can't just leave her. Whatever happens next. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. (God it matters.) "Here we go." On a meta level, that's our introduction into the second half of the game. The first half is all prologue. This is where we'll be spending the rest of our time, even to the point that 'New Game+' skips straight ahead to this moment. Now that we've finished the establishment, this is where it all builds and where it all matters. Here we go, audience. The ride starts now. You get up to this point now in Replicant. You get the same lead-in. My dumb ass even whispered "Here we go", because I can't help myself. And he says, of course he says--! "Anyway." ... ...a-anyway? What the hell kind of line is that? "Here's some deeply personal musings that are also an indication of my own discomfort as I babble to myself just to fill the void so I can stave off thinking for just a few more seconds. ANYWAY." What a... bizarre decision. Just bizarre.

Upgraded melee combat The introduction to the armored Shades always feel kind of rough-- the defenses on those Shades are significantly higher than anything you've faced and the new weapons you're given to combat them just aren't that good. (If you got lucky you could have a fully-upgraded Faith by now, which is nearly three times as powerful as the 'heavy' two-handed sword you're given; if you downloaded the 4 YoRHa pack for Replicant you've probably been able to upgrade one of those weapons once, which are also a really nice strength boost that leaves the freebie heavy swords and spears in the dust). As an introduction to the new weapon types it always feels like rough going. But then you get a chance to get decent weapons and the combat system truly opens up, and compared to the first game you really feel it. At this juncture I would always just bustle off to Facade and grab the Phoenix Spear and never look back-- the raw power compared to the rest of your arsenal coupled with the triangle dash is basically the bread and butter of the rest of the game. It's not exciting, but it's effective. No more triangle dashing, which was deeply disappointing... but both weapons definitely feel good. I am also somewhat ashamed to admit that it wasn't until now that I realized attacks weren't just about rhythmic input-- you can hold the attacks down to do different charged hits and combos depending on when you execute them in your combo, similar to Automata. I, uh... I felt a bit dumb. But hey, wow, it's a welcome adjustment and it makes all of the weapon types feel equally valuable for different purposes. I never liked using the heavy blades in the original release because they just felt too slow for the damage output they did, even if their 'point' was mostly to sheer off armor (and they definitely felt too slow for use in crowd control). Now they're still heavy and slower, but not to the point that you're basically leaving yourself open just trying to attack. Spears now do crazy sweeping combos and multi-hits. Both of these properties were borrowed from Automata and I find myself prioritizing melee combat and almost forgetting I have magic because honestly it just feels intuitive and fun. I feel like Kaine and Emil might have gotten a power boost as well? Not that I can really confirm this but going into some of the Junk Heap rooms I'd focus on killing a few robots in the corner and then turn around and just see a field of item drops and no more robots. Don't take my word on that, of course, but they felt a little more effective, and a placebo effect is still an effect. "You're staging a protest? That's fun!" Emil. Rebel without a cause. Will not hesitate to kill you if you trespass on his property. (Might explain the statues in the courtyard, actually.) I'll have to double-check this dialogue because I definitely remember more of a melancholia before we get to roasting marshmallows. I think Papa Nier actually offers to talk to/implicitly threaten the villagers to let them in the Village whereas Brother offers to sleep outside with them... which is actually kind of funny. In the former it comes off as Emil and Kaine maybe kinda-sorta not wanting to be allowed in the Village for their own reasons (they're not happy reasons but they're reasons nonetheless) and reassuring Father that no, it's okay, it's fun! The latter is almost telling Brother to stay inside because he'll ruin their sleepover.

(They're absolutely having giggly girl talk about him outside the gates, 100%.) they ran over the seals All I want in Seafront is to enjoy the music and run out to the big beach and hang out with the last living seals and they put a fucking pirate ship on top of them. Oh, wow. Gideon. Wow. OG Nier featured a Gideon that tried to keep himself together and then had fits of mania. You'd be concerned about him during some of the dialogue but generally speaking he came across as... functional. The delivery on all of his lines is now so insanely murder bonkers, like every line he's addressing you like you're already chained to the wall of his serial killer dungeon and it's glorious. I don't know if the distinction between the games is deliberate (in that Gideon in Gestalt was just more even-keeled between his 'rip 'em apart' snarlings and was always just totally nutso in RepliCant) but I do appreciate it. It's a good mirror to Brother Nier's own anger, which only ever seems to be mollified when he's talking to his friends (even kindly accepting sidequests there's a pretty consistent -- not universal, but consistent -- air of barely-bridled frustration). The other characters that Brother encounters are various reflections of himself if things had just been a little different-- Gideon was a representation of the kind of obsessive madness that would have eaten Brother alive if he hadn't had his network of support. Gideon's constant fury and bloodlust even bleeds into him just saying "What can I do for you?" He has no anchor to keep himself sane, nobody to stay human for; he's all mania, all anger, and he only takes any real interest in Brother on his return because he sees an opportunity to act out his vengeance. After defeating Beepy and Kalil he even goes so far as to not only blame Beepy for killing Jakob, but for also killing their mother, which is patently insane but really speaks to how far his justifications and fury have taken him. Papa Nier responds to his anger toward Beepy by basically backing away slowly and saying "Oookay then". Brother, however, actually commiserates; "That's enough. [...] We get it. We really do." This is definitely one of those moments where Brother's context works better than Father's; he absolutely sees himself in Gideon. He completely understands him and sympathizes. He recognizes the madness of his own quest, he sees where it could take him, and there's a resignation when he speaks to Weiss: "Revenge is a fool's errand." "...yeah." Papa Nier has a similar delivery and similarly implies that he understands how terrible his quest is, but there's something decidedly haunting in Brother's sympathy. Also just verifying something on the wiki and this bit of 'Trivia' really jumped at me:

Gideon is the only character to only cause the deaths of other characters. In his case, he caused a platform to crush Jakob and ordered the deaths of P-33 and Kalil, with P-33 surviving.

Metal AF.

#NieR #NieR Replicant #Rambling #He will always say 'here we go' in my heart #And that's probably a serious medical condition

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chronicbatfictioner · 4 years ago

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"Overall, it wasn't so bad..." Tim commented.

"Except for the fact that Bane roared like a constipated bear and literally lunged at Damian and Jason threw him out the window..." Barbara quipped, her face serious but her lips were still twitching. "I... am highly amused. Twice."

"You were laughing until you bent over double that if you weren't in a wheelchair, you've probably knelt on the floor laughing." Dinah deadpanned. "It was hilarious."

"Yes, it was. The fact that Jason could actually lift Bane and throw him out... Did you guys see Bruce's face, though! Oh my god! He... he looked at Jason as if he'd seen the lord savior Jésus Todd or something!" Tim crowed. "Like, the dude Bane got thrown out a bay window twice. I get the awe, I was a little star-struck myself. But I can't believe dude actually wanted to try the third time until Alfred pointed a damn shotgun to his forehead! I can't even!"

"This thus solidifies my thoughts that the Waynes may be trying to figure out a way to get rid of this... brute without... I dunno..." Barbara pondered.

"Gotten themselves broken in half?" Tim suggested. "He sure insinuated that he would do such a thing to Damian."

"Oh, gee, Tim. Which part of his speech insinuated that? 'You lying bastard!', or 'I'll break you in halves!'?"

"I'm partial to the 'bastard' remark, really. I mean, pot, kettle?" Tim replied, giggling.

"Technically," Helena Bertinelli - The Huntress - sighed as she chimed in; "and ironically, at that; the 'bastard' would be Bane since he claimed to be Thomas Wayne's son and is younger than Bruce. Which means he was 'conceived' while Dr Thomas was already married to Mrs Wayne..."

"Right? Bruce and Talia were two consenting adults, albeit under 20 years old; and were wed in a local ritual witnessed by locals, according to Jason. You should see Bane's face when Jason presented copies of the marriage's registry." Tim continued.

"Oh, we saw, all right. Harper's drones worked quite well." Dinah replied, snickering, referring to Harper Row, one of their tech 'consultants'. "Even at that height, it still delivered crystal clear pictures. I vote we use them again."

"No vote needed, the drones are on stand-by at the Wayne Manor permanently at this point. I'm more interested in his reaction when Damian offered them a DNA test." Barbara told her.

"I'm more interested in Bruce Wayne's reaction, really. He didn't seem too surprised, as if he was expecting this to happen or something." Helena pointed out.

"Maybe he did," Barbara replied absently. "Dude has been swingin' more than the roarin' 50s, there has got to be some juniors out there that even he didn't know of."

"Ugh, while I'm not a fan of Bruce Wayne's womanizing ways, I personally don't think he's that reckless. He's not a drinker or a junkie, as far as I know. He has virtually no vice other than extreme sports." Helena argued.

"I agree," Selina, who has been quietly watching from the corner, chimed in. "This is a guy who got visibly antsy when some sexy girls in bikinis come up to him - I thought he was gay. But if he'd been... wedded to Talia Al Ghul all these times, that would make sense. He knew exactly where he stood, and what would come up if he screwed it up."

"Has Jason or Dick said anything of the Doc and Mama Wayne's reaction?" Helena asked.

"They seemed truly confused, a little apprehensive, but didn't seem to be opposed to the idea that Damian is Bruce's child. Dr Wayne said that a DNA test wouldn't be necessary, but Jason insisted it." Tim replied, and added a little absently a few heartbeats later. "But why would he, a physician with more specialties than a truck stop, would not question the biology of anyone claiming to be his biological descendant?"

Barbara glared at Tim, "excellent question, Tim. If my dad has someone coming out of the boonies saying he's related to me, the first thing dad would do is draw blood."

"They... don't care?" Dinah suggested. "Maybe the Wayne men were less... chaste than they appear?"

Barbara glared at her this time. "Of all the women Bruce Wayne has dated, I've only recorded a handful who would end up in a second date. Less than a handful who were actually mentioned beyond social media photos; and you know how I feel with social media photos: generic, unverifiable, and showoff-only. Dates with Bruce Wayne generally would start with the pick-up, dinner, and then some form of jewelry. I..." she looked at Selina and Helena, "you've both dated him at one point or the other."

Selina shrugged, "I went for a gala dinner, and was honestly there to scope the homeowner's safe, really. I wasn't interested in a follow-up date." she replied. "Helena?"

"Social arrangement. My people called his people and boom, we were on a red carpet." she elaborated. Helena was a part of a mafia family, until she decided that the mafia way would not be the best way to make Gotham a happy place for all, and donned the costume of the Huntress to hunt down wrongdoers. Barbara had decided to let her join to prevent her from going over the line and murder anyone out of overzealous-ness; but also in order to get a line-in into the mafia families.

"No second dates, either, huh?"

"No, I'll have to check, though. I think his people called me again, but I wasn't interested in a vapid playboy, even if he has more money than Jesus."

"Vicky Vale," Selina reminded. "She has had a... somewhat lengthy relationship with Bruce some years ago."

"Sooo... the next answer in our mystery could probably be answered by interviewing an investigative journalist." Tim commented.

"Oh, no..." Barbara grinned mischievously. "Not this investigative journalist. I know just the journalist to talk to when it comes to gossip among themselves."

Dinah snorted a laugh. "I thought you didn't like her."

"I liked Vale less," Barbara griped. "Plus, Vale is already getting news on Bruce's probable child; why shouldn't I send Lois Lane the allegations of the Bane Conspiracy?"

"Conspiracy with who?" Dinah asked curiously.

"Oh, the Waynes, of course, to get rid of the Court of Owls," Barbara smirked. "Why should we be the only ones racking our respective and collective brains when we can have someone else on the ground doing the grunt work?"

"Babs, you can be... pretty evil sometimes," Selina remarked. "I know there's got to be a reason why I like you."

"I'm also awesome with technology and can launder your ill-gotten money and make it legal and undetected." Barbara pointed out.

"Oh no, that's why I liked you." Helena quipped smirking. "Seriously, how many mob family can say their ill-gotten money is accountable by law?"

"As long as it is within the facets of the law, and so on and so forth... Anyway! Tim, you're quiet for more than two seconds. I'm always nervous when you're quiet."

"Just thinking..." Tim said, looking a little lost in his own brain. He often does that when he has at least a dozen scenarios running through his mind. Through the time of Barbara knowing him, Tim would probably be the only person whose claims of 'just thinking' wouldn't immediately be picked on by anybody.

"Care to share with the class, kitten?" Selina prompted.

"It's not fully mapped yet... but I was thinking. What if the Waynes aren't... didn't cooperate with Bane in order to destroy the Court of Owls, and they're literally being hostages in their own home? What if Bruce Wayne has predicted something like this could happen, and has gotten himself all prepared all the way to ten years ago when he wedded Talia Al Ghul? I mean, who would have had enough firepower to defeat Bane other than the Al Ghuls? Look at Jason," Tim pointed out. "He threw Bane out the window as if he was a fly. While Jason is as solid as a rock but isn't a metahuman - Bane is. He was assigned by Talia herself - out of Gotham - to protect and guide Damian-- why? What's so special about Jason Todd? Why did Talia choose him? Why didn't Bruce Wayne - at least - act shocked when Damian said he was his son? Surprised, sure. But not shocked or in denial.

"Who's gonna win if Bane turned out to be Dr Wayne's son? Who's gonna lose? What will they lose? Who is Bane accountable to? If none, who planted the idea of him being Dr Wayne's son? Because from what I've read about him, he was born and raised in a prison with his mother - no mention of a father. His mother was an insurgent of Hasaragua, fighting against US-condoned democracy. And while there was a record of Dr Wayne being there, there was no exact date and length of stay, because he was there privately and not as a part of Médecin sans Frontieres or something like that.

"What about Mrs Wayne? She wasn't a poor or uneducated woman, since she was a Kane. Society-wise, do you think she would have tolerated her husband's indiscretion, both then and now? Yet she kept quiet for nearly two months. She has a Ph.D. in psychiatry, and would she be the ones to keep quiet about DNA testing and all that? Personally, I don't think so. If my mother - a little 'lesser' society lady compared to Martha Kane-Wayne - ever got a word of a child that 'probably' got fathered by my dad, she would have demanded a divorce right away without bothering with a paternity test, sure. But my dad, who was also a society man, would have at least attempted to convince her that it was a mistake and/or it was a lie. What best method to decide a child's paternity than DNA test?

"The criminal front in general - especially the costumed criminals - has been pretty quiet since Bane eliminated the Court of Owls. Why? That's rather stupid since we know that the Court's Talons were the ones who made moves to 'discourage' the costumed freaks. Annnd... that's where I couldn't map out things further." Tim rambled.

"Keep talking, even half sentences are better than none, Timmy." Barbara prompted. Tim might have had a brain that worked a mile a minute, but he was still very young and would often get flustered with himself. Barbara, on the other hand, has an eidetic memory, and things Tim said tend to stick to her brain and would fill the gaps in any puzzles she might be thinking about. Even half sentences.

"Right, I do the fact spreads, you do the jigsaw-puzzling." Tim nodded. "The murders of Talia and Ra's Al Ghul. Jason said they were deliberately murdered in a way that they would never be able to be resurrected through the Lazarus Pit. The perpetrators would be the League of Shadows, a rogue splinter of the League of Assassins. Lead by Lady Shiva. Why? Why were they murdered? Why now and not - say - next year or last year? Who benefited by their death? Aaand... I'm done, for now, I think..."

"I... can feel a headache brewing," Dinah admitted. "You and your conspiracy theories." she rubbed Tim's head fondly. Tim gave her a half-smile, still trying to articulate the thoughts in his head.

"That's why we need him, he takes the most random input and makes a theory out of it, and some of them would actually make sense. I'll start a search string based on some of your questions. If you have more, don't hesitate to tell me, Tim." Barbara realized belatedly that her tone sounded dismissive, and turned to Tim. "Want me to call up for Chinese and powwow a little more?" she added.

Tim shook his head, still glaring blankly. "Thanks, I gotta go... I've some... things to look into. Thanks, Babs," he replied, ending it with a genuine smile as he got up.

"Want to come home with me, Kitten?" Selina asked, worry for Tim apparent on her normally-blank face.

"No, thanks, Ma. I gotta go back to the mansion, just in case, right?" Tim pointed out.

"Then Dinah should go with you," Selina decided.

"She's coming there later, right, aunt Dinah?" Tim asked. Dinah nodded.

"I'll get home with food, so don't worry about that, kiddo." she said. Tim waved them all and then walked out.

Once he was out of the door, Selina sighed. "Ah, young love..."

"Right? Remind me to check in on him before going to the House. I don't want to walk in on something and have him traumatized." Dinah agreed.

Barbara glared at them quizzically, and then at Helena, who shrugged. "Grayson said it first, I think. Our kitten is growing up. I just hope that Jason guy is worth his firsts..."

The memory of Tim gawking at Jason when he thought Barbara wasn't watching flashed in her mind.

Oh.

And then of Jason blatantly checking Tim out just before Oracle made her appearance, and at times when her Oracle projection was turned off.

"Oh boy," she sighed.

"That's about it in a nutshell. Good thing I've told him of the birds and the birds..." Selina grinned slyly.

"Millennial parenting at best, Ms Selina Kyle." Dinah grinned. "Come on, let's go patrol and induce the fear of goddesses to Gotham's low-lives before inducing maternal fear to our little kitten."

"...or to the big tabby. We'll see," Selina added, waving as she and Dinah walked out of the room.

Suddenly Barbara felt a little sorry for Jason. Just a tiny, teensy, weensy bit of sorry.

#Batless!AU #jaytim #Jason Todd #Tim Drake #Barbara Gordon #Selina Kyle #Helena Bertinelli #Dinah Drake #Oracle

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dcomicsficrecs · 4 years ago

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Got any good longish casefic recs? Got a loooong trip and I need something to keep me occupied. Thank you so much!!

First of all, thank you for sending this ask! I love case-heavy stories and long fics, so that was an opportunity to re-discover some of my favorite stories. I am going to re-read half of the list now, as well!

Here we go - top ten recommendations for long(ish) case fics!

1) detective stories series by prismatical starting with bad signal (38K)

The rescue mission went well. Nightwing is safe. Everything should be alright.

Right?

It’s a really gripping story that will keep you on the edge of your seat till the end. Features all of Batfam with Dick as a focus but other boy Robins play significant part too.

2) For Those Who Can't by GoAwayOlivia (8K)

They don’t understand him at all. There is no setting him off, that’s not the way it works. And he doesn’t go on violent sprees. Jason kills when the situation demands. That’s it. Plain and simple. He doesn’t lose his temper and murder any asshole that pisses him off. Every kill is a decision that he makes, and every decision is carefully weighed and measured with a cool head. He only ever kills because the person deserves to die.

Red Hood!Jason conducts investigation into a sting of murders that happened on his territory. I have a lot of feelings about this story and I’m sure you will, too.

3) Raisin Delight by LemonadeGarden (8K)

A year after Jason Todd dies, Tim Drake and Bruce Wayne take on the case when they notice strange occurrences in Gotham city. This has disastrous consequences, but so do most things that Tim gets caught up in, so what's new, really.

It’s not only a case fic but also a time travel fic which is, imo, a double treat! The ending is very powerful even if I expect you’re going to have mixed feelings about it.

4) Little Wing and Big Bird by Airawyn (16K)

When Bruce attempts to murder Jason in his sleep, the young Robin goes to his predecessor for help. Nightwing and Robin must work together to find out what happened to the real Bruce Wayne.

Fic featuring Robin!Jason teaming up with Nightwing!Dick. The boys save Bruce and Alfred and have a heart-to-heart in the process. Superb.

5) Some fics from More to Being a Father than Having a Kid by Romiress:

We Don't Raise Heroes (70K), Don't Call It Revenge (58K), Legacy's Sway (107K)

While technically not a case fic but include a big mysteries that Batfam investigates so I think it counts. I highly recommend the whole series. First fics are gen!

6) The Bat's Crest by livierambles (200K+)

Tragedy strikes the hero community when Bruce Wayne commits a crime so heinous even the best start asking for blood. However, as the heroes try to recover from the hit and carry out justice for their friends, a random assortment of people start acting oddly, including the current Speedy Tim Drake, a child hostage in Gotham, and a young man from an unremarkable circus amongst others. All of them seem intent on saving Bruce Wayne from the grasp of the Justice League for no apparent reason, going as far as betraying their previous allegiances.

Unknown to the Justice League, these people are equally confused. Clearly they're stuck in another dimension, but how do they get back? How did they even get here? Who else is stuck in this world? And how long will Tim's patience last? Back home, the Bat was a planetary symbol that struck fear in the hearts of criminals. In this new world, it has no meaning, save for the handful of stranded souls.

All Batfam is featured. While this is also technically not a case fic but adventure/dimension travel fic, its plot has a mystery element to it and characters have to investigate a lot as far as I remember. It’s probably the only WIP here on this list but god, is it worth to read and bookmark it. You know what? I’m even going to go ahead and subscribe to the author, too.

7) The Volatile Verse (117K) by BlackFriar, starting with Volatile (47K)

After a transdimensional mishap, Batman and Robin are faced with a murderous Joker rampaging through Gotham and an anti-hero who is determined to remove Robin from the crime-fighting business. Can they strike a balance before it all ends in tragedy and the Joker has the last laugh?

It’s a dimension travel case fic (series of fics, actually!) set in Young Justice with Robin!Dick and main universe!Red Hood!Jason. It’s a great story that doesn’t shy away from darker themes, can and probably will make you cry, but it also has hopeful ending. This Jason is going to be okay with these Bruce and Dick, and at the end of the day, after the case is solved, what else do you need?

8) I saved one of the best till the end, and it’s basically anything by Mikimoo

Fair warning, most of their fics are jaydick. My favorites are:

8.1 Between The Bars (48K)

A number of suspicious deaths at South Haven Penitentiary are being ignored by the authorities, but have attracted the attention of various other parties.

OR:

That one time Dick and Jason accidentally ended up undercover on the same mission and started a riot.

8.2 And If I Recover (33K)

Officer Dick Grayson is captured by a criminal group that makes it's living from torture and extortion. Half the family are forced to watch as events unfold, while the rest franticly try to track down the culprits.

8.3 That Awful Bitter Taste (30K)

Roped in to find out what has happened to Dick on an undercover mission, Jason finds himself faced with situations that challenge his personal identity. Meanwhile, Dick is having to face demons from his past, and Jason is not sure if he is helping or hurting.

But of course, the best time to have this particular existential crisis is while trying not to die in the desert, and being chased by angry men with guns.

8. 4 This Night (33K)

The Red Hood and Officer Grayson are on the same case. A small misstep has far reaching consequences for them both.

All those fics are tagged as jaydick, and most of them have high rating but it’s for graphic description of violence so read the warnings before reading.

Even if you aren’t a jaydick shipper, those fics are plot-heavy and case-focused. The relationship dynamic and its progress would be natural and heartfelt as well.

Also, if asked to choose only one fic from the author, or only one jaydick, or only one case fic, I probably would have chosen Between The Bars, just so you know.

9. Two Birds on a Wire by empires, pentapus (20K)

Dick asks Jason for help on a case. Jason should have never agreed.

It’s so popular you probably read it already. Still, just in case, I will include it too because it’s such a great undercover mission fic.

10) Crimes at Night by empires (16k)

It's summer in Gotham, and the city is experiencing a record breaking heatwave and a rash of violence centered around a strange new drug circulating through the city's youth. Robin is determined to locate the drug's source and put an end to the distribution before things get worse.

Young Justice verse, Robin!Dick and never adopted!Jason, jaydick. It’s a great AU and well-executed case fic and if you’re into Jason/Dick, their relationships are very cute also.

#Dick Grayson #Jason Todd #Bruce Wayne #Tim Drake #Damian Wayne #Cassandra Cain #Stephanie Brown #Slade Wilson #Batfam #Case Fic #Time Travel #Dimension Travel #Gen Fic #JayDick

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love-sapphirerose · 4 years ago

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Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon Episode 24

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/review/yashahime-princess-half-demon/episode-24/.170860

Look, there was never even the slightest chance that Yashahime's 24th episode would end up functioning as a proper series finale. I knew that. You knew that. We all knew that. Over the last six months, Yashahime has rambled, meandered, bungled, and straight tumbled ass-over-elbows in its vain attempts at telling a coherent and engaging story, but never has it managed to establish so much plot and character motivation that anyone would mistakenly think that it would be a one-and-done. I was a fool for ever dreaming of a world where Yashahime might have the decency to end here and now. Still, you can't blame a guy for hoping right?

Except, we've also learned what happens to hope when Yashahime comes calling, haven't we?

In a certain sense, you'd think a part of me would be happy to find out that “Sesshomaru's Daughter” was never meant to function as a complete conclusion to this story, because that could only mean that this season finale has less responsibilities to juggle, in the long run. In spite of every attempt on Yashahime's part to sabotage itself, that last couple of episodes managed to lay the groundwork for something that at least kind of resembles a conflict for this final chapter of the season: Zero has been revived by Sesshomaru's Tenseiga, and now she's got some Rainbow Pearl-fueled demonic wrath to bring down on our heroines; Kirinmaru has also descended from the sky to do…something, which can only mean double trouble for the girls!

Haha, no. That would be far too reasonable a direction to take the story, so instead Yashahime decides to spit right in its audience's face with more of The Usual Yashahime Bullshit™, starting mere seconds after Sesshomaru revives Zero with the Tenseiga. For some reason, Sesshomaru reveals that he is no longer concerned about her mortal link with Rin, and vows to do…something to her that involves a thorough stabbing. The logical assumption is that he wants to kill her, but that makes a negative amount of sense given that she was literally just dead, so I'm just going to pretend that Yashahime is trying to trick us, and that Sesshomaru's plans are more complicated than that. Is there even a scrap of proof to that effect? Hell no, but we're only a couple of minutes into this thing, and our collective sanity can only withstand so much of this malarkey.

Meanwhile, in Spooky Tree World: Jaken notices that Rin is crying. Later on, he manages to hitch a ride with Totosai and his cow thing, claiming that he needs to fix Rin's sadness. How does he plan on doing this? What purpose does this mission serve? I sure as hell don't know, and it never comes up again. Next scene.

Before Zero has the chance to do a single thing with her twice-recovered Rainbow Pearls, Kirinmaru lashes out and magically poofs them out across the corners of the land. Yes, after spending an entire season building up the Rainbow Pearls as the ultimate artifacts of unlimited power or whatever, they served no purpose whatsoever before the script re-scattered them like the knockoff Shikon Jewels they've always been. The most reaction that anyone musters is when Moroha says, "Oh damn. There they go." Cool, show. Cool.

As for Zero? She disowns her brother and then magically yeets herself away by thwipping her spider-web onto the thin air. Then, Riku stabs Kirinmaru, which does absolutely nothing, before he flicks his little earring and poofs away too. Then , Sesshomaru goes after Zero and explains that Kirinmaru should fight his daughters as a “rite of courage and cowardice.” He then also just zips off into the sky. No, we never see Zero or Riku again. Their entire involvement in this scheme was – you guessed it – absolutely pointless!

Around this point in the episode is where you might be asking: “Wait a minute. Why does Kirinmaru tell the girls he would have let them run away if they asked? Why does he seem concerned over Sesshomaru abandoning his children? Why did he turn on his sister; does he still want to kill the girls because of that one prophecy about getting murdered by a half-demon? What does any of this have to do with the big evil comet that is going to strike the Earth in the future?” Oh, you sweet summer child. Yashahime doesn't give a shit about your questions! And no, before you even think about it again, the future comet and the Mr. Kirin subplot are not ever mentioned again, either.

With all of that out of the way, the only thing left is the big showdown between Kirinmaru and the three girls, all of whom decide to stay and fight the guy who has already handily kicked their asses without so much as breaking a sweat because…they think he's lying about being strong? And Setsuna doesn't want to back down from the rite of passage she only just learned about thirty seconds beforehand? Sure. Fine. Let's go with that. Who cares?

Now, I do want to say at least one nice thing about this episode. Even though most of the episode looks embarrassingly sloppy and rushed, the visuals really turn themselves around for this last fight, especially right at the beginning. Each of the three girls gets a delightfully-animated action cut to show off their moves, and kudos to the artists in charge of those sequences. If anything, the sequence might look a little too good, as it clashes mightily with the butt-ugly visuals that the show usually sports and serves as a bittersweet reminder of the series that Yashahime could have been.

There. That was technically a compliment, right? I hope so, because the pretty visuals can't save the back-half of "Sesshomaru's Daughter" from being almost awe-inspiring in its lameness. For one, fricking Moroha just gets whooshed out of the fight after landing maybe one or two hits. Again. Then, in order to deprive us of even the barest shred of dramatic tension, Kirinmaru loudly announces that he is going to threaten Setsuna's life in order to draw out Towa's latent power. Unsurprisingly, this leads to him murdering the hell out of Setsuna after she nicks his cheek with that Blood Blade of hers. Or rather, he slashes her from her heels to her head with his magic blade thingy, and then she falls down perfectly intact, and slowly slips away into her first “sleep” in years. Do you get it? Because Dream Butterfly.

One final almost-good thing happens when Moroha comes back with her Beniyasha face on, and she finally gets to help Towa land a major blow against Kirinmaru (it sure is a good thing that nobody ever pointlessly sacrificed their life to try and teach Moroha about the dangers of using her incredibly useful Beniyasha powers, right?). For her part, the raged-out Towa gets her own demony glow-up, and she ends up looking like a little silver-haired Super Saiyan 3 (Super Sesshy 3?). Two giant super-power blasts later, and…a slightly winded Kirinmaru admits his respect for Towa, and then flies away of his own volition. Then Sesshomaru comes back from wherever he was and offers his broken Tenseiga to Towa to help bring Setsuna back to life, finally winning that Father of the Year award he has been vying for all this time.

That's it. No, seriously, that's the end of the season. No mention of Kagome or Inuyasha whatsoever, no clues as to what any of the villains' true motivations are; we don't even get a proper explanation for whatever the hell an “Aruku's Pinwheel” is! Instead, Yashahime's first season ended as we all should have expected it would: As a slow-motion train wreck of gobsmackingly stupid writing, lame action, and a veritable mountain of wasted potential. So sure, maybe some of the series' gravest failings can get ironed out in another year or two. Lord knows that I would be ecstatic to learn that future iterations of this show ended up being halfway decent.

However, that would never change the fact that this first season was one of the most exhausting, frustrating, and disappointing anime that I've ever seen. So, with no small amount of relief, I bid adieu to our three half-demon princesses. I wish I could say that I'll miss you, but I most definitely will not. Except maybe for Moroha, who always has and always will deserve better than Yashahime. For the rest of the knuckleheads that have been leeching away at our time and our patience these last six months, there is only one rating they could ever deserve...

#anti hanyo no yashahime #anti yashahime #anti towa #anti moroha #anti sunrise

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thisiswhymomworries · 5 years ago

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If I may contribute to your statement about how much Agamemnon deserved death, it wasn’t just his daughters wedding day. He arranged for her to be married to Achilles so that she would be within convenient murder range. If I remember correctly, at least in Euripides’ telling of the events, even Achilles thought the whole thing was awful when he realized what was going on. So yeah, there is no telling of the story in which I feel bad for him.

oh yeah, you’re absolutely correct that Agamemnon totally set that up and arranged for her to be married solely to get her out of the house to be killed

and Achilles WAS like “hey what the fuck this is my wedding too--well. not anymore I guess >:/”

ALSO Agamemnon is the bitch who started the Biggest Dick Slap Fight with Achilles about the distribution of loot, which led to Achilles having his Big Sulk and refusing to fight, so Patroculus put on his armor and fought in his place--shout to him by the way!! he has the highest kill count in The Iliad, NOT Big Baby Achilles--and was therefore eventually killed by Hector

so the order of fuck ups is:

Agamemnon makes a stupid ass promise (to Artemis I believe) at the beginning of the war to sacrifice whatever he sees first when he arrives home

immediately sees his daughter, who ran out to welcome him first bc she loves him

realizes now he has to kill her otherwise the gods will be mad and he won’t be able to join / or will doom The War expedition

doesn’t just stay home!! like yeah, he made a regular human promise ala WWI alliances where if something happens to this other guy over here, then fucking everybody in their dog has to go to war over it, including him, but this is YOUR DAUGHTER my dude, just stay home

Decides to go ahead and kill his daughter, I guess!!

lies to his wife (Clytemnestra) and to Achilles (ally) that he’ll marry Daughter to Achilles before they go off to war

when Clytemnestra brings Daughter down to get married, he instead ties her to the alter / pyre and kills her while Achilles is like “whoaaa what the fuck”

all so he can go to this stupid war that again, Does Not Involve Him. he only promised that if Other Guy’s shit got fucked up (ie, his wife Helen getting abducted), then he’d help out but like,, Helen maybe wanted to go to Troy anyway and also still ultimately not his problem

yes breaking promises his a huge No-No but also so is literally all of these other fuck ups he does, so why not just do One (1) fuck up and also NOT kill your daughter\

Goes to war and tries his hardest to fuck THAT up too!!

so the whole point of killing his daughter is that he HAS to go help fight in this war and then when he gets there, he’s useless

coulda just stayed home, moron

he starts a Biggest Dick Slap Fight with Achilles--ACHILLES--over who gets the best loot by pulling that he technically has rank as a king or something but he didn’t do shit

Achilles Big Mad

so basically this guy made direct eye contact with the Greeks’ BESTEST most special warrior, lied to him, killed his would-be wife, snidely pulled rank, took away another woman he wanted (that’s the “loot”), and pretty much fucked her while loudly reminding The Best Warrior he ain’t shit

like,,, ?? the Greeks DID NOT need him there!!

Achilles--their best warrior--refuses to fight, Patroculus fights instead, gets killed, Achilles mourns for three days, they basically come This Fucking Close to losing the war--which has already stalled for ten years btw bc they can’t actually get inside Troy, so the “war” thus far is basically just glorified yelling “meet me in the fucking parking lot you bitch” and sometimes someone from Troy would in fact come out to fist fight someone in the parking lot, aka Hector vs Patroculus (RIP)

if Achilles hadn’t been sulking, maybe he would’ve won the fist fight vs Hector, and Troy would’ve surrendered after losing their leader

but that doesn’t happen so Odysseus does the horse thing to get the soldiers inside Troy and they sack it, but the point is that Agamemnon DIDN’T DO SHIT except make things worse

Comes back home and immediately insults the gods

Clytemnestra does kind of set him up for this by asking leading questions, but they’re so Babey Basic. like,, if a woman asks “hey do you think you’re better than the gods” just say no!!

there’s a red carpet, which is a huge honor for the gods alone, and it’s Super Super Obvious Clytemnestra is goading him into hubris but Agamemnon “Can’t Think Critically” the Daughter Killer is like “oh fuck yeah I’ll accept honors only reserved for the gods because I’m just as good as them DO YOU HEAR THAT GODS I, A MORTAL, AM LOUDLY PROCLAIMING HUBRIS WHILE SYMBOLICALLY STEPPING ON YOU GEE HOW COULD THIS GO WRONG”

didn’t seem to put any thought into how Clytemnestra, a woman, was supposed to hold onto the throne for him FOR TEN FUCKING YEARS but then when he comes back, he rolls up like “hey, honey what’s up with you? me?? oh yeah, I had fun killing our daughter, going to war, fucking other women. LOTS of other women, I even fucked Achilles’s woman. yeah, yeah, that’s just the kind of leader I am Babey!! but anyway, you’re going to give the throne back to me and let me start making decisions as king for the whole country after I killed your daughter, nearly cost us the war, and loudly insulted the gods, right? Right??”

Guess who just got MURDERED

yeah it’s the asshole who deserved it. like, the Agamemnon specifically makes sure to recount how he killed his daughter as she begged for her life and then flashes forward back to the present where he insults the gods, just to make sure we know he Really Really deserves it

not even by modern standards! the audience was at least supposed to understand the promise he made to Artemis was dumb and shitty, that regardless of whether he was “”forced to do it”” he did still kill his own child, AND he committed hubris

Clytemnestra even has a monologue about what the fuck else she’s supposed to do: there are no laws she can turn to, and as a woman, she’s not allowed to get revenge, so her only other option is to just hand the kingdom back over to this Moron and keep sucking his cock or whatever while pretending he didn’t murder her child

basically, if someone kills one of your family members, you are morally obligated to kill them

Agamemnon MUST get his shit wrecked due to hubris

Orestes (their son) has been off dicking around and sulking, and he doesn’t want to kill Agamemnon, and anyway, all he did was kill his sister! does that really count?? seriously though, does it? spoiler: the ultimate answer is No, killing women does not count as killing a person bc women are not people

this message brought to you by Athena (ironically)

also some shit about how women aren’t actually involved in motherhood or creating a child, so a mother isn’t really a parent, and that’s why Orestes gets to kill Clytemnestra via The Greek Obligation For Revenge

Clytemnestra decides Fuck That

she holds Agamemnon accountable and kills him as he must be killed in order to avenge the killing of their daughter

she tosses a net on him while he’s in the bathtub and stabs him a million times with a spear, while laughing maniacally and bathing in the rain of blood that spurts out

as is her parental RIGHT for avenging her daughter

except the problem is that she’s Not A Man, so she ““isn’t allowed”“ to kill a man

and also that the reason Agamemnon deserved to die is ultimately decided to be his hubris, because Women Are Not People so it was OK or whatever for him to kill his daughter bc that didn’t count

therefore Clytemnestra double wasn’t allowed to kill him / avenge her and should have sat around waiting for the gods to kill Agamemnon I guess, but there’s no indication any of them actually planned to do that

they just used her to do their dirty work, so if anyone in this story was fucked into a corner by the gods, it’s Clytemnestra, not Agamemnon

Orestes then has a big long story about killing Clytemnestra

like fuck his sister I guess?? he wasn’t doing shit about revenge and his moral duty to kill the killer of his family when she was sacrificed but now that his shit idiot dad got himself killed, nooow he’s all about His Moral Duty

so he kills his mom

and he’s kind of sad about it and worried that now he deserves to die too because he killed his mom, and it’s a super fucked up sin in Greek World to kill your parent

hence the deus ex machina--literally, how this trope got invented

they lowered an actor playing Athena from the rafters and had her proclaim that Women Aren’t People, so it was probably OK or whatever for Agamemnon to kill his daughter and since women have nothing to do with the creation of a child, and just hold that little sperm-baby inside them like a cup until it magically comes out with zero effort or risk to them, then Women Aren’t Parents so Orestes didn’t reeeally kill his parent

#greek mythology #ancient greek #ancient greek mythology #the agamemnon #clytemnestra #ask #anon #answered #mine

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whumpster-fire · 4 years ago

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@just-a-whumping-racoon-with-wifi posted this awesome prompt about slicing a merfolk’s finger webbing, which inspired me to do this. I’m crediting by link-back instead of reblogging because this is technically minor whump and I don’t know whether you’re comfortable with, like, having that as a direct reply to your post or what the best etiquette for crediting inspiration is. I apologize if I’m doing this wrong!

Anyway, I’ve been on a dragon kick lately so I wrote about dragons instead of mers.

Dragon Fun Fact: If a dragon’s wings look like this, it won’t be able to fly!

It would be simply awful if some person or persons were to do this to a dragon. It would be a shame. I cannot endorse mutilating a sapient being in such a cruel and inhumane way. Especially not if it’s just a little wyrmling. Sure, it’s a powerful, dangerous, intelligent creature, not like a defenseless human child, but it’s still the equivalent of a child, and it would be wrong to -

Wait... did you say it’s a chromatic dragon?

Oh. My mistake. Never mind, it’s fine, the little bastard deserves it. That’s what it gets for stealing sheep, and robbing travelers, and starting that forest fire that ended up spreading and destroying people’s homes and livelihoods. The one survivor of the last party of militiamen that went up into the mountains to try to stop it said after they wounded it it burned the whole forest around them out of sheer spite. Even cut off their escape routes, trapped them downwind of the flames. Dragons are spiteful, ruthless, vicious. The damned thing even enslaved that entire goblin tribe, made it do their dirty work and give them treasure so it wouldn’t eat them - not that gobbos are innocent either, that’s why they weren’t given any mercy, can’t have them living in the woods raiding the villages either - but it’s the principal of the thing.

CW for: Monster whump, minor whump, fantastic racism, torture, mutilation, wing whump, sickness, poisoning, emeto, child abuse/death mention, execution, ambiguous ending.

Evil, cruel, vicious, greedy monsters. The avarice of a dragon is legendary. You know, they found enough gold and silver in its cave to buy the whole town twice times over - just hoarding all that wealth even though it had no use for it. Now it’s back in the right hands: by law after expenses one third goes to the crown, one sixth to the Duke, and one twelfth each to the Baron, the Lord Mayor, and the Church’s tithe, and the rest is divided among the soldiers with a double share going to the families of the ones the beast killed. Hopefully they spend it on better arms and armor, there’s another peasant revolt a few days away - something about the taxes being too high and the levies for the war - you know how these frontier towns are, never grateful for being protected.

Good men died fighting that dragon - family men, with wives and kids back home to feed. Hell, some of ‘em were barely boys, so no kids, just mothers and fathers and sweethearts. Look - I know I mentioned the levies but don’t get the wrong idea, it’s not like the crown’s just sending people’s sons off to die against their will. Mostly it’s second and third sons joining up. You know how it is, no inheritance, so they sign up to make their fortunes or die trying - and dragon slaying does pay well - it’s like being in the first wave through the breach in a siege, if you’re brave enough to face that monster and lucky enough to live to tell about it, you can buy yourself a good few acres, enough for a hardworking man who’s still got all his limbs to make a comfortable living for life. Or it’ll pay for a few full nights at a brothel.

But dragons aren’t like that: they don’t care for their own like humans do. If a female’s already got a full nest of mouths to feed and there’s more eggs coming they’ll just lay them someplace out of the way and forget about them - or sometimes they’ll keep some of them but leave the runts to fend for themselves. Or if a stronger male moves in on her terf she’ll chase the youngsters away since the males’ll kill ones that aren’t their own... yes, yes, I know about John’s stepdad - sorry John. But I have to stress that that’s extremely unusual in humans - really, you too Rob? I’m so sorry, I never knew. Oh - and Derek? Your sister? Really? Oh, Gods... anyway, I was talking about dragons. Heartless creatures. Disgusting. This one was probably abandoned, luckily.

Don’t feel sorry for it, though. Dragons are self-sufficient. They’re deadly from the day they hatch, their hearts as cold and ruthless as their flames are hot. And they’re crafty, too. It’s been pretending to cry out for its mother. Bluffing. Trying to act like there’s a greater threat. But most of the soldiers don’t know a word of their language, and the ones who do are smart enough to know you can’t trust a damn word a dragon says. No one’s coming to save it.

You can’t trust a dragon. Not a chromatic, especially not a Red. It doesn’t matter if it’s begging for its life – that makes it even more dangerous. A dragon always avenges every slight, every defeat, every humiliation. If you let it go it’ll come back and burn the whole damn town to the ground. If it gets away and survives and grows up it’ll always remember. It’ll track you down – it’ll track your children, your grandchildren down and kill them in their sleep if they inherit so much as one wretched piece of silver from its hoard. That’s how greedy, how possessive, a dragon is. It’s not a child, it’s a monster. It’s lucky that it took the bait of going after the poisoned meat. Dragons are smart, but they’re arrogant, they don’t think anyone else could possibly outsmart them, and they love to prove how superior they are. That’s their downfall.

And it was a really clever strategy by the baron, you see. Declare that he’s having a grand feast in honor of the dragonslayers’ arrival, and that anyone poaching the prize lambs chosen for his table will be put to death – put them in a locked barn with armed guards and all. Now a grown dragon probably wouldn’t fall for that but an arrogant wyrmling? It could hardly resist! The guards shoot a few arrows but they run off for reinforcements as soon as the dragon attacks them, but by then it’s already made off with one lamb and torched the rest. And the poison’s clever too – a new concoction the royal alchemists came up with. It’s harmless to humans, but when it’s exposed to a firedrake’s stronger body heat it activates.

Mind you the poison was supposed to kill it, not just make it sick, but it did weaken it enough that it couldn’t fly, although it still put up a hell of a fight. Bloody fiend killed four men before they got it in the net, three more wish they’d been among the four. It’s a monster, a savage. After what it’s done – well, a human who murdered royal soldiers wouldn’t get a quick, clean death either. But seeing it just flapping around trying to fly was what gave them the idea.

The dragon deserves to have its wings sliced to bloody ribbons. It deserves to be bound in chains and muzzled so it can’t breathe fire, and dragged through the town square on horseback and left chained up for a bit while the townsfolk throw stones at it. It deserves to be starved until it’s desperate enough to choke down rotten meat – dragonfire doesn’t really cook things too thoroughly, just chars the outside, and if it’s bad enough even a dragon can’t stomach it. Think of all those farmers who can’t put food on the table because of it. Think of those soldiers who’ll be begging for scraps after their share of the loot runs out. It deserves to have the townsfolk laugh at the so called powerful, superior being while it pukes its guts out like some stray cat that’s eaten a three-day-old fish head.

Dragons are sadistic. They’re cruel. They toy with their prey, they revel in the pain and suffering of other beings that they, in their hubris, think are better than them. That’s why it’s so satisfying to see one put in its place, brought down to the level of us “lowly” humans. I once heard of a dragon that kidnapped a woman for ransom, but she begged and cried to go home so much that the dragon got so annoyed it changed its mind. It promised her it’d take her right back to her own cottage, and true to its word, it flew her there… and dropped her on it from the Gods know how high in the air. The guy who told my the story says she hit the chimney dead on, and one of her legs and a few organs he didn’t look close enough to identify ended up in the fireplace. That’s why I keep saying you can never trust a dragon. You can’t trust it when it says it just wants to go home. The sleeping potion’s not all the way worn off yet, perhaps it hasn’t realized where it is. I suppose it deserves some credit for picking up so much of our tongue so fast.

See, we’re true to our word. This may not be its lair – only a fool would let a dragon go back there – but we let it go free, right there on the mountaintop where a sharp-eyed shepherd first saw it looking down on him. Like it was so superior for getting up there with its wings. Now let’s see how the blighter likes being up there! It’s sheer cliffs all around, at least a thousand feet down. That’s why it probably chose that perch, it’s a nightmare getting up or down without wings – or without the rope bridge made to get it up there – now burned. Reds are superb climbers of course, but that’s when they’ve got their wings as a safety net. Look it pacing around, right up to the ledge and looking down. Cowardly. Pathetic. Not so brave with its wings ruined. Not so brave with no way to save itself if it slips and falls.

It’s cold and windy up there. There’s no trees, no caves, no shelter from the damp and the chill and the mountain winds. Dragons might have fire in their hearts, but for the little young ones it’s not a strong flame. If it’s cold enough, even they’ll feel it. There’s no food, no water. Not that it could probably keep it down now anyhow. It could try it’s luck but it’s already half-starved, weak, and still sick as a flea-ridden dog in a plague pit. It can still be heard crying for help, but no one is coming to save it.

The Crown’s Army and the Royal Dragonslayers’ Guild highly recommends slicing a dragon’s wings to tattered ruins. A dragon that can’t fly is helpless. It can’t climb down a sheer, slippery cliff, or out of a deep, dark, damp well knee-deep in cold, muddy water. Dragons are cowards. Especially if you get ‘em while they’re young. And the dragon deserves this. If it’s the wrong color of dragon, that is.

The Royal Dragonslayers’ Guild would like to remind the reader that by order of the King, any man, woman, child, or any other subject of the Crown not covered by those categories, who spares a dragon’s life or offers aid or comfort to a dragon, is a traitor and shall be punished by death.

~~~

A/N: I love D&D, but my god I can’t stand the whole trope where entire species of sentient creatures are inherently evil and okay to indiscriminately slaughter, even the children. Like, if it’s literal demons or undead or eldritch horrors that consider humanity as important as insects or bacteria, sure, but when it’s creatures that are in any way “natural” and they’re just evil with no more justification than “Uhh... the gods did it?” or something, I don’t like that.

On the other hand, in-universe application of this trope is amazing. I seriously cannot get enough of sad monster whumpees being persecuted by ignorant humans.

If I think about it, dragons are the epitome of this, though, since there are stats for every age category. I can’t think of any other iconic D&D monsters like this, aside from things like mind flayers that have distinct larval stages. There’s a lot of “Oh, here’s a bigger, older version of the same monster” but generally the stats are only given for adults. Sure, the players massacring orc or goblin children may well be a possibility, but the game doesn’t devote page space in the Monster Manual to describing exactly how many hit points an orc toddler has. Dragons are specifically and intentionally designed to let the players kill their babies.

But hey, the motto is: “If it has stats, the PCs can kill it.” My motto is: “If it has stats, I can ignore those stats, especially the annoying ones like climb speed and immunity to nonlethal damage from cold etc. and especially ignore the ‘Alignment’ section.

#whump #my writing #dragon whump #monster whump #minor whump #wyrmling abuse #fantastic racism #wing whump #mutilation tw #sickness #poisoning #emeto tw #child abuse mention tw #child death mention tw #torture #execution #ambiguous ending

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thewhumperinwhite · 5 years ago

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Café: Treetops

Previous: Teaser 1, Teaser 2, Hospital/Squad Car, Empty Bar, Used Car Lot 1, Used Car Lot 2, Gas Station, Roadside 1, Roadside 2, Forest

TW for: illness/fever, mention of decapitation/murder, smoking mention, very lightly implied parental neglect, Thing That Seems Like Deadnaming For A Second But Take This As My Personal Guarantee That Sol’s Deadname Will Never Be Said Out Loud In This Story.

Also i’m not gonna check but i think this might be the first chapter where Sol smiles? so look forward to that.

@whumpitywhumpwhump

----

Rainwater is dripping from Sol’s hair down the bridge of his nose and soaking into his shirt collar, even though if you asked him five minutes ago he’d have told you his poor abused work shirt had absorbed literally all the liquid it could physically hold.

“Just for the record,” Kent says in a slightly breathless voice, “when I used the phrase ‘huddled in trees,’ that was sarcasm.”

Sol thinks about rolling his eyes, but given that nobody would see it from this angle, he doesn’t bother and just leaves his eyes closed instead.

“Funny,” Pax snaps, sounding, at least, no longer pretend-cheerful. “When I told you to shut the fuck up, I was serious.” Sol can hear them shifting, but doesn’t turn to look, partly because he does not care and partly because he thinks he might fall out of the tree if he tries.

“I think you should both shut up,” he says flatly, knowing he’s wasting his fucking breath.

It does earn him almost a full minute of silence, which is a step up, technically.

“The bleeders are too clumsy to climb trees,” Pax says testily, apparently unable to help themself. “Therefore, being the wonderful, coordinated living beings that we are, we are taking advantage of that weakness.”

“I know that,” Kent says, also sounding slightly testy, but even more tired and kind of in pain. “I am aware of the logic, but I gotta say that I am not feeling super coordinated at the moment.”

“I know that,” Sol growls. “I was the one who had to help you up, and since we are all fuckin’ exhausted from that little ordeal, how about we all just go the fuck to sleep, huh?”

Kent makes a noise that is probably supposed to convey irritation but just sounds sort of— pathetic. “I can’t sleep. I don’t understand how either of you can sleep when it’s so hot up here.”

Sol blinks his eyes open. That— does not sound like a great sign.

Careful not to overbalance and throw himself off the narrow branch currently supporting his ass, Sol cranes around the trunk of the tree to squint through the driving rain at Kent, who is leaning back against the tree with his eyes closed. Sol half-carried him up this bigass goddamn tree and set him with more care than he wants to admit in the stablest position he could find, at the fork of two large branches, but at the moment his perch there looks kind of precarious.

Checking to see that Paxon, on the opposite side and several branches higher than either himself of Kent, probably can’t see— not that he cares what they think— he leans carefully forward to lay his wrist against Kent’s forehead. It’s hard to be sure of anything when the freezing rain has turned his hands and arms into icicles, but the heat coming off Kent’s face almost makes him jump.

“Aw, great,” he mumbles, grabbing hold of his own branch so he can lean forward a little more to examine Kent’s face, which, now that he’s looking, does have kind of a greenish cast to it. “Hey, man,” he says softly, giving Kent a gentle poke on a part of his cheekbone that doesn’t seem to be bruised yet. “How ya feeling?”

Without opening his eyes, Kent heaves a tired sigh that turns halfway through into a cough. Sol freezes like a popsicle, going very quickly back over the last several hours to try and determine whether one of the bleeders could possibly have bitten him without Sol noticing— but Kent’s brief coughing fit fails to bring up any red-flecked phlegm, so Sol tries to reel in his panic. He doesn’t sound crazy, anyway— just sick.

“Not very good,” Kent croaks, letting his eyes drift open. They look kinda glassy, but Sol sees with knee-weakening relief that they are not particularly bloodshot. “Too warm. And also shivery.”

“I fuckin’ bet,” Sol says. “You look like microwaved dogshit, dude.”

Sol chews his lip, something uncomfortably close to worry churning in his stomach. When he doesn’t move away, Kent laughs faintly, though it turns into a cough at the end.

“You sure you want to get that close?” he asks, smiling a little, though it doesn’t come close to reaching his eyes. Sol doesn’t think Kent’s smiles usually do, actually.

Sol blinks. “Huh?”

“Aren’t you worried I’ll suddenly decide to take a bite out of your arm?” Kent says, and it sounds like it’s trying to be a joke but isn’t quite making it.

Sol stares at him for a second. Then he snorts.

“Please,” Sol says, smirking. “You? I could definitely take you, crazy or not, you fucking stick. Besides, look.” Sol fishes around in the pockets of his sopping-wet jacket, ignoring Kent’s look of utter confusion.

His lighter is freezing and dripping wet, and who knows if it’ll still work as an actual lighter after this, but it makes a serviceable mirror, in a pinch. He holds it up so that Kent is blinking into his own wide blue eyes.

“See?” Sol says, and is surprised at the softness of his own voice. “Not a drop of blood in sight, man. You’re probably just feverish from running around in the mud with open cuts and stuff.”

“Heartening,” Kent says, reaching up to change the angle of Sol’s grip.

“That’s what I’m here for,” Sol says, smirking.

And then Sol suddenly realizes that Kent’s hand is wrapped loosely around his own, and is horrified to feel his own cheeks heating up, which is--so fucking stupid.

“Who’s ‘Rina’?” he asks curiously, blinking down at the lighter, and Sol starts badly, jerking his hand away like Kent’s question burns his fingers.

“No one,” he barks, shoving the lighter back into his pocket, leaving Kent with his hand still outstretched and lips parted slightly in surprise.

“Oh,” Kent says, blinking. “Uh, sorry, I didn’t mean to— “ He pulls back, looking carefully anywhere but at Sol’s face. “Sorry.”

Sol stares at Kent. Kent stares at the unnervingly-far-away ground.

Goddammit, it’s like kicking a puppy.

“Ugh,” Sol growls, running a hand through his hair. “Look, fine, whatever, don’t look at me like that— Karine is my little sister, okay? She always hated it when I smoked, so she used to steal my lighter all the time. That’s why it’s— that’s why.”

He had been very mad at the time, in high school at some point, when he had finally wrestled his lighter back from her— after almost a week of searching and shouting half-hearted threats at her when their father wasn’t home, which was often— only to find that she had scratched Sol Sux Shit on one side and her own big girly signature on the other, with a big fucking heart around it. He didn’t talk to her for a few days after that.

He didn’t throw the lighter away, though, either. That was junior year, or thereabouts; he’d been Sol for a short enough time that seeing the name scratched permanently into metal was--something, even if it was followed by the words “sux shit.”

It’s been— Christ, almost four years since he’s seen her, which means she’s all grown up and definitely has at least two boyfriends by now. That thought makes him unconsciously ball up his fists, and then he’s distracted by the sound of Kent laughing at him.

“Wha— what are you laughing at?” Goddammit, is he blushing again?

“I’m s-sorry,” Kent says, amid honest-to-god giggles. “I-it’s just— your face—!”

Sol just barely resists the urge to cover his cheeks, trying to will the heat back out of them. “Sh-shut up, I was just—” He pulls up short. “H-hey— are you okay?”

Kent is doubled up with hard, damp-sounding coughs, so much so that Sol has to dart out a hand to keep him from falling forward off the branch.

“Kent— hey—”

As he’s readjusting himself to hold up Kent’s weight without falling off his own branch, there’s a rustling in the branches above them, and Paxon Field drops abruptly onto the end of Kent’s branch, like an enormous pink cat.

“Let me see your hand,” they say sharply. When Kent doesn’t immediately respond, they reach forward to tug his hand away from his face.

“Hey!” Sol snaps, trying to shove them back, “what the hell are you—”

“Shut up,” Pax says, turning Kent’s hand over so they can examine both sides. Finding no blood on it, they relax, their hand sliding off the hilt of their sword.

“Idiot,” they say, not unkindly, and reach up to lay their wrist against Kent’s forehead. Kent, his coughing fit finally starting to subside, lets them, his weight pressing into Sol’s chest in a way that is— neither embarrassing nor pleasant but in fact entirely neutral, fuck you. Pax sighs. “You’re burning up, you dumbass.”

“That’s not exactly his fault,” Sol snaps, to his own surprise more than anyone else’s. Pax raises their eyebrows at him. Kent’s eyes flutter shut. “Well,” Sol goes on, into Pax’s surprised stare. “We’ve been wandering around in the rain for a long time. He’s got— broken bones and stuff.”

Paxon gives Sol a look he can’t quite read, and then frowns down at Kent, whose cheek now sits just under Sol’s collarbone, like coughing has used up all his remaining energy. “How long have you been feelin’ the shivers, sunshine?” they bark.

Grumbling like an annoyed child, Kent turns away from Paxon, which involves burying his face against the sodden front of Sol’s shirt. Sol freezes, a violent electrical current making its way up his spine. When Kent mumbles his answer (which is unintelligible but seems to contain the words “the car”), Sol can feel his lips move against his chest, and would readjust if he could move. ...probably.

“Then it’s entirely your fault, you daft idiot,” Paxon snaps, annoyed. “Why the hell didn’t you say anything?”

Kent turns back, opening one blue eye. “I suppose,” he says coldly, “I was worried you’d decapitate me.”

Paxon, to Sol’s surprise, starts like they’ve been hit. There’s a very awkward silence. Sol is afflicted with a bizarre desire to laugh.

Then Paxon growls, long and low, and starts their descent out of the tree.

“Uh,” Sol calls after them. “Where are you going?”

“To get sunshine some medicine, I guess,” they shout back, bitterly. “Since neither of you is in any way equipped for survival, apparently.”

Sol stares down at the top of their head as they make their weirdly nimble way down out of the tree. Then he looks down at Kent, who is also frowning down at Paxon’s retreating form.

“Someone should go with them,” Kent mutters.

Sol shifts uncomfortably. “You can’t stay in this tree by yourself.”

An embarrassed flush makes its way into Kent’s pale cheeks, and he shoots Sol an apologetic look from under his lashes. Sol’s brain stops working for a second and he misses what Kent says next, but makes an educated guess that it’s some variation of “sorry for the trouble.”

“Don’t be dumb,” he says, biting his lip.

Sol runs through their options in his head, and from the unhappy look on Kent’s face he suspects the blonde is doing the same.

“Fuck,” Sol mutters, and then, making sure Kent has a firm grip on the tree trunk to go with the confused look on his face, turns himself very carefully around on his own branch so his back is to Kent, the blonde’s bony knees digging into his back slightly.

“Um,” Kent says.

“Shut up,” Sol snaps. “Put your arms around my shoulders. Try not to choke me or we will both fall and die.”

“Um,” says Kent.

Sol takes a moment to bury his rapidly-reddening face in his hands and groan because why does shit like this keep happening to him. “Paxon shouldn’t go by themself, and you can’t stay here or climb down. This is the only fucking solution, okay? I don’t like it anymore than you do, so shut up and get on.”

There’s another terrible silence, which Sol uses to pray to anybody who might be listening to give him a fucking break already.

Moving carefully, like he’s waiting for Sol to stop him, Kent slides his slim arms around Sol’s shoulders, knitting his fingers together around Sol’s chest and being careful to avoid his windpipe. After a moment’s hesitation, he moves closer, awkwardly scooting forward so his legs are wrapped around Sol’s waist.

Sol, very aware of Kent’s chest and biceps and thighs, clears his throat loudly.

“Okay,” he says, trying his very best to sound businesslike. “I need my hands to do the tree-climbing thing, so hold on, yeah?”

Sol can feel the heat coming off of Kent’s face where it’s buried against his shoulder even through the thick wool of his jacket, though he can’t tell how much of that is the fever and how much is embarrassment roughly equivalent— if there is a loving god— to his own.

“Yeah,” Kent mumbles miserably into Sol’s jacket. Sol feels a slightly insane giggle building in his chest.

“Okay,” Sol says slowly. “I am now moving to the next branch over. You good?”

“Perfect,” Kent says in a very muffled voice, and shifts slightly against Sol’s back. Sol clears his throat again, and reaches out for the next branch, shifting so that he’s carrying most of Kent’s weight.

“Christ, do you ever eat?” he says before they can stop himself. God, maybe they will make it to the ground, after all. “My sister’s cat weighs more than you.”

Kent, his face very warm indeed, chooses not to respond. In fact, he keeps his mouth mercifully shut for almost the whole awkward, painful climb down, and Sol’s left foot is actually on solid ground when he finally mumbles, so low Sol can’t be entirely sure of the words, “Thanks, Sol. You’re wonderful.”

Sol freezes with one foot still on the lowest branch, feeling an unfamiliar sort of heat spreading in the center of his chest. Before he can stop it, his mouth twitches into something that feels suspiciously like a grin.

The feeling fades pretty quickly when he turns and sees the color Pax is turning from trying to hold in their amusement. Seeing Sol’s fiery glare and immediate, violent blush, they give up and throw their head back, sending bright peals of laughter up into the still-raining sky.

Sol bristles, his hands tightening under Kent’s thighs. “Sh-shut up! Don’t— don’t laugh at me!”

Pax laughs hard, holding their stomach. “Your face!” they crow delightedly. “You’re turning purple, babe!”

Sol’s blush doesn’t get any worse, but probably only because there’s no more blood left in the rest of him. “Shut up!” he squawks. “It’s your fault for leaving us up there, anyway!”

Pax shakes their head, grinning. “I didn’t say you had to come with me,” they point out.

“Kent didn’t want you wandering off by yourself,” Sol snaps, looking over his shoulder. “Did y— oh.”

Kent, his lips slightly parted and rain making his long lashes sparkle a little in the moonlight, has rested his head against Sol’s shoulder and is breathing long and steady, his breath making faint snuffling noises through his broken nose.

Sol stares a little.

“What’s up with sunshine?” Paxon says, a trace of worry in their voice. “He’s not dead, is he?”

“No,” Sol says, a confused smile spreading over his face. “I think he’s fallen asleep.” Looking carefully anywhere but at Paxon’s stupid smug grin, he clears his throat. “Let’s just go. I’ll carry him. He isn’t heavy.”

#hurt/comfort #original whump #original hurt/comfort #the café at the end of the world #sickfic #fever #piggy back ride #Emotionally Fraught Gay Piggy Back Ride

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kinetic-elaboration · 5 years ago

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January 27: Thoughts on The 100 2x09, Remember Me

...For some reason I was really angry at the beginning of this? Also there’s a lot of Lxa bashing. Sorry. And some Clarke criticism but in the latter case, I mean it well.

Also this is really long whoops.

So...I miss when killing off main characters was a big deal and people actually reacted to it.

I truly cannot take Lxa seriously I’m sorry. I don’t find her... intimidating at all.

I’ve already complained repeatedly about her complete bad faith deal making at every turn so I won’t go into it again but nevertheless, here she is, again, moving the goal posts of the negotiation. ‘I’ll withdraw my army if you cure the Reapers. No, if you give up your friend. No, if you give me his body.’ Clarke should have double crossed her immediately.

Also I know that I ultimately did think it was reasonable for Finn to face Grounder justice (except insofar as that justice was itself morally untenable--that is, the Torture Porn) but now that he’s dead, I think there’s no real moral argument to be made that the Grounders deserve his body. I understand their traditions, which in fact I found quite moving when I first watched this ep, but surely his people have, or could make up, some traditions for his burial also. He is still their friend. This seems like little more than an excuse to be cruel. And Clarke’s so fucking broken she just goes with it. It’s truly awful. I mean she’s doing the only thing she can do I guess but it’s laughable that she sounds as if she has any sort of upper hand, you’re getting played bitch.

(Yeah I know, Lxa is being ‘groundbreaking’ and ‘revolutionary’ by even semi-accepting capital punishment without torture and taking his body is a way of appeasing her harder line advisers but like cry me a river--she’s either the all powerful commander or she’s fucking not.)

“We want the same things.” Lol if you wanted the same things you would have stuck to the original deal. No I’m not over this at all I guess.

I also still can’t get over how Clarke has literally never earned true leadership in the eyes of her own people and yet she continues to be randomly viewed as a leader by the Grounders and thus retains pretty much full de facto control over her own people’s power structure.

Also Kane shut the fuck up. I completely forgot about this but they really did put him through an off-screen 180 where all of a sudden Lxa is a God to him and can literally do nothing wrong and to this day we have never been given an explanation how that came to be. Guess it’s easier to tell not show huh?!?

ALSO I get we’re suppose to see a sort of racism-corollary to lines like “I don’t think they know what peace is” like obviously this rubs one the wrong way automatically. But Abby’s not really wrong. And despite what Kane thinks, Lxa has given, again, NO indication at all that she is interested in peace. She has given a lot of indications that she wants to do whatever she can to wring as much from the Sky People as she can without giving anything in return and hey we’re only halfway through the season and she’s already psychologically broken Clarke (also the only person she acknowledges as the leader even though she is not, cannot emphasize this enough, the leader of anything... and thus the only person L really has to break) and sunk-cost-fallacy-ed her into submission. Now that Finn is dead Clarke would cut off her own tit to make Lxa happy because anything else is “letting him die in vain.”

...Why am I so angry lol?

I understand the positions of both Clarke and Raven in this scene, which is fucking brutal, but I sympathize more with Raven. Clarke’s basically just a messenger, but what the Grounders are demanding is (I know I already said it) cruel, and cruel to Raven above all. And Clarke is almost all business. I think that’s what she needs to be for herself but it’s not helpful to the situation.

Anyway here are my faves in Mount Weather. It’s almost hard to watch these scenes because I want to, like, memorize them. Partially for the C/M story and partially just because. Today’s adventure is getting to a radio to send a message to the Ark-wide channel, which is a term for a thing that exists. Also I forgot how snarky everyone / Miller was to Maya. Which, I get. But--are they not thinking about how her own people have experimented on her? Like she is expendable to them, this is just a known fact at this time. So yes, there is a real risk to her, Nathan.

“Oh, is that all?” / “No--there’s more.” Monty’s so one-track he didn’t even hear the sarcasm. I love him.

“Their army has been getting their ass kicked by Mount Weather forever.” Bellamy speaking the truth. Do they need the alliance, or do they just need the Grounders to back the fuck off from attacking them? (Spoiler: they do not need the alliance.)

Ah Bellarke, always quick to reassure each other. Blindly, even.

“Since I don’t take orders from you, I’m going to need a better reason” is one of my favorite lines, and underrated. Finally someone reminding Clarke she’s not actually in charge of everyone and everything all the time. (I realize this sounds like I dislike Clarke. I don’t. I just find certain traits of hers frustrating. But this just makes her a good character.) Also you can see that, rather like her moment with Raven, she falls back on being business like and direct and issuing orders to avoid talking about feelings or breaking apart.

The United States War Room survives the apocalypse.

I’m sorry but it’s ridiculous to think that Lxa invented the concept of an alliance lol.

I guess Clarke needs to go all in on the alliance because of Finn, but... I also think this is part of who she is. Her sense of practicality outweighs any human desire to hold a grudge, and I think she assumes a level of practicality in others too, automatically, such that she underestimates wariness in others. Like Bellamy and Gustus and everyone is right to be uncertain about this literally hours-old alliance--not even an official alliance, since L’s latest demand hasn’t technically been met!--and Clarke’s like ‘yeah I’ll sleep next to people who would have killed me six hours ago np!’ because now that she’s in, she’s in. She’s neither angry nor afraid.

Linctavia like “Google Earth, always taking pictures.”

Is Lincoln wearing Ark clothes?

I know Raven is made to look kind of wan and sunken and sad but yet this scene where she’s being disarmed is honestly like peak hotness for me and I don’t know why. I like my women sullen and covered in knives?

Interesting how allegedly only the warriors knew English and yet Lxa’s big announcement re: get in line with me or die is made in English. Just going to point out yet again what a big mistake that throwaway S1 line is.

What a sad life to lead, where random declarations followed by “or death” have to form the entirety of your belief system “Don’t be upset that your wife and child are dead...or I’ll beat you to a pulp.” I truly don’t understand how we were ever supposed to get in line with this society as sympathetic or interesting. So much so that they get a whole prequel I guess???

I’d rather have a Mount Weather prequel except not really, don’t ruin it for me.

I love Miller’s canonical insane superhuman strength. This is a trait often overlooked in fics.

The usual comment on Mount Weather scenes: I love all of it.

The thing is that if everyone were on board with the funeral ceremony, it is touching. Murderer and murdered together, and the people who’ve been hurt, on both sides, saying goodbye as a group. It’s just that Clarke’s people were coerced into this--they weren’t convinced it would be a fitting ceremony, just told ‘well this is how it is and if you don’t like it, we could perhaps... KILL YOU?”

Is this a new revelation that Mount Weather crashed the Exodus ship (still a really satisfying belated explanation imo)? Or did we know that because, unlike Monty et al, we knew about the jamming signals already? Can’t remember.

You can see how L came to believe what she believes but nevertheless this is bad advice lol. “Don’t care about other people.” Okay, I’ll just stop doing that then.

Mmmm, a feast in a subway station. Delicious. Fucking full pig head as the centerpiece. Very DC.

Kane (handing over pure space moonshine probably): Just don’t drink too much of it. Clarke (five minutes later): Guzzles whole bottle at once. #partygriff is officially canon.

Waiting until tomorrow to start the war? Procrastinators. Clarke didn’t kill Finn for this.

I love Certified Dramatic Ho Bellamy knocking the cup out of Clarke’s hand even though she had made no move whatsoever to drink it.

“When you plunged your knife into the heart of the boy you loved, did you not wish that it was mine.” Lxa, also a certified Dramatic Ho.

Clarke kinda deserved to be punched in the face given that it wouldn’t actually make sense for Raven to try to poison Lxa--and make Finn’s death mean nothing? And put them all in danger in enemy territory? Nonsense. Nevertheless it’s hard not to feel bad for her when she follows this accusation up with a psychotic break.

Hmmm, do I think Abby turning in Jake was the same as Clarke killing Finn? Not really. She didn’t directly kill Jake, that was Jaha, and Jaha is who Clarke should really be mad at. That said, I don’t think she was really saving anyone in the direct way Clarke was. So, apples and oranges. Crazy awkward moment to bring it up, though lol. “Oh Clarke, you’ll feel better eventually--remember that time I killed your Dad? I got over that! Wait--does talking about your dead father upset you? That’s a surprise!” Nevertheless I appreciate major actions having consequences as that’s a semi-rarity on this show.

Monty Green: hero.

“Lxa needs this alliance as much as we do.” - True, if she intends to get her people out of MW. “She’s shown herself to be flexible.” - Not true. She’s given the bare minimum of concessions. Kane, please crawl back out of her colon for like 5 seconds, get some air.

Interesting that Raven and Bellamy are chilling near each other. I wonder what they were discussing. Tbh Bellamy’s feelings on everything in this episode are rather opaque. Other than understanding why Clarke mercy-killed Finn and being skeptical of the alliance.

“Kill one person and destroy the alliance” is literally only merciful because the default in this society is “kill everyone all the time for any reason.” Like, I guess??? That’s mercy by comparison?? But forgive me if I am not moved to admiration.

“This time justice will be done” says the woman who used the barest sliver of evidence to decide that a random person was guilty so she could have a public execution. A public execution to replace the other public execution, in fact, not to avenge a death because Gustus isn’t dead. (Yet.)

Kane’s really okay with letting Raven be tortured to death, huh? Gah he’s fucking annoying.

Bellarke: Crime Solving Duo. That’s some satisfying teamwork. Clarke figures out how the scheme worked. Bellamy figures out who’s behind the scheme. With all the evidence put together, the motive becomes clear. (Honesty, they should have been suspicious that the poison not only didn’t kill Gustus, it barely harmed him lol.)

Check out all the Department of Homeland Security stuff on Monty’s computer. This is perhaps Dante’s log in? There’s a set of “personal” files too. And a set of President’s Office files, which one would assume not everyone would have.

Anyway, I have a Thing for tense sequences of hackers...hacking.

When I first watched this season I was often so tense my whole body hurt and it’s mostly because of MW scenes like this one where Monty is caught. Like aaaaah it still gets me. He almost makes it... and then almost makes it again, with his silly little salute... (Never forget that he is A Dork.)

On the one hand, Raven being tortured and then seeing Gustus tortured to death allows her to see why Clarke killing Finn was an act of mercy, to forgive her, and to move on, so the narrative can continue with them as allies and nominal friends. And it works, basically. But I also think there’s something to the theory that they were never the same, that the wound never really healed.

I’m sorry but Octavia’s face when Clarke’s like “Yeah B, you’re expendable, go get yourself killed, have a map!!” is hilarious. Like, he’s just said that Gustus doing anything for Lxa made sense, and Octavia responded with “Look at the thanks he got” which seems to me like She Knows and then 5 seconds later Bellamy is basically thrown away by the person we all know he’d do anything for... I mean the face is fair. Also this is Bellamy’s idea and it’s a good idea and so he was right before and Clarke is also right now, but it’s still so... annoying.... like “okay, I’m done caring about you lol bye.”

And Raven’s just totally confused. It’s been a damn long day I guess.

Why are they all such fucking hotties? It’s hard to pay attention to “the plot.”

So the ashes Abby tries to give to Clarke are the same ashes, perhaps, that Jasper scatters in S3? This vial looks smaller. Why did she not immediately give them to Raven? That would seem to be the obvious thing to do.

And here we see Clarke, under L’s direct influence, becoming Increasingly Insufferable. I love her but this is obviously supposed to be her descent into the abyss: she treats her friends like little expendable minions, she turns her back on Finn’s memory, and then she ends the episode by dramatically walking into a dark room in slow motion to creepy chamber music. I mean this is the hero’s fall guys!! That’s what it always was!!!

If only they’d handled Bellamy’s hero’s fall in 3A, and Clarke’s rise again in 3B, as well.

That ending is a straight up horror movie thanks that’s why this is my favorite season.

#the year 2020 #2020: fandom thoughts #2020: the 100 s2

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forever-more-never-again · 6 years ago

Text

Blood Ties (Part One)

Word Count:1883

Warnings: Swearing

Pairing: Shoto Todoroki X Fem!Reader, Platonic!Izuku Midoriya X Reader, Platonic!Katsuki Bakugou X Reader, Father!Shota Aizawa X Adopted!Reader

a/n: Would you look at that! Another series that popped into my head to add to my growing collection of WIP’s...this is my first BNHA fic so please let me know if you like it or not!

Masterlist

Part Two

Mariko - first name, The truth

Adohira - Surname, peace within chaos

Adohira Mariko - the truth of peace within chaos

Quirk- Can shapeshift into another person after touching them. Can also use the persons who they shape shifted into Quirk, but it comes at the cost of Nausea and fatigue and sometimes causes them to collapse. They can choose to keep the ability to shapeshift into someone any chance they need to, by taking a bit of their dna and ingesting it. The ones they keep permanently are known by the strange marks on their back that show up after ingesting the DNA.

Students slowly filed in, shooting questioning glances towards you, but no one approached.

You struggled not to smile. No. Mr. Aizawa does not smile.

Perched on the edge of his desk, swinging your legs, you watched the class of 1-A sit down in their respective desks and wait.

Silence.

And then the door slammed open as the real Mr. Aizawa strolled in. He did a double take when he saw you, but did not change his facial expression.

“Hello Class.”

“Mr. Aizawa!”

“How!”

“What!?” “Who is this!?”

“This is highly irregular! As the student Representative, I say declare yourself now Impersonator!” This was loudly spoken by a teenager wearing glasses, karate chopping his hands in the air to emphasis his point.

You laughed, still keeping Mr. Aizawa’s shape. His laugh coming out of your mouth, his voice when you spoke, “Mr. Aizawa knows who I am. I’m joining your class.”

A very familiar short green haired boy spoke up shyly from the back, “But School has already been going on for a month now.”

You nodded, “I got in on recommendation but I couldn’t get here till now. Coming from over in America is a real struggle.”

The room erupted into mutters as people took in what you were saying. You knew what they were wondering. Why would someone from America come to Japan? There were plenty good hero academies in America. You had your own reasons for coming to UA, but you wouldn’t share them.

“[Y/n]...could you please stop using your quirk...or did you bring eye drops for me?” One of the real Mr. Aizawa’s eyebrows rose.

You smiled, “I know you aren’t going to use your erasure on me. But okay.” You turned back to the students who were still staring at you in various degrees of confusion, admiration, and fear, “Please...take in mind that since I came from America...Where women can dress very differently...that I mean no offense by my outfit.”

Mr. Aizawa let out a long suffering sigh, “Where is your uniform [Y/n]?”

You turned, sheepish, “I uh,” You rubbed the back of your head, still as Mr. Aizawa, “Might have lost it at customs earlier this week.”

Another long suffering sigh and a wave of his hands, “Return to normal and I’ll have another student take you to the office to get a new one.”

Taking a deep, calming breath, you let your quirk fade out. And stood before class 1-A in high rise denim shorts, a plaid shirt, and cowboy boots.

“Holy!”

“Jesus!”

“Sorry!”

“Indecent!” “Look away Midoriya!”

Looking over the sea of faces, you settled on one that wasn’t participating in the shock fest, who actually looked...bored. A kid with peppermint hair.

“I volunteer to take you to the office!”

“No! I volunteer!”

“You perves, let a fellow girl take her!”

Mr. Aizawa sighed and you couldn’t stop the laugh, knowing what he would say.

“I don’t care, figure it out so that class can begin.” He unrolled a yellow sleeping bag and you smirked.

“Lost the red one?” You asked.

The class stilled once more.

“Get a uniform.”

And he faced the wall so that you could no longer see his face.

Spinning on the heel of your boots, you began walking to the door, “Alright, well I’m off to find the office.”

“Wait!”

The voice startled you. Without looking back, you ran out of the room.

Turning a corner, you listened as footsteps followed.

Your memories forced you back to a time before everything...a time of innocence. Two young boys and a girl playing in a river together. Proclaiming that they each would become a hero one day.

You hadn’t realized it, but you were now on the floor, hyperventilating as the memories overpowered you.

“Hey...are you okay?” That soft voice again. Still the same as it was all those years ago.

You looked up at Izuku Midoriya...the same child who used to play with you and Kacchan...Katsuki Bakugou all those years ago.

You saw the moment his eyes widened in recognition, “Mariko Ad-”

You jumped up, hand flying out to cover his mouth. He jumped and struggled, but your grip was strong.

Sparing a glance to the hallways, making sure no one else was around, you tugged Izuku further into the shadows before releasing his mouth.

He frowned at you, “Mariko, what’s wrong?” You hissed, “I’m not Mar-” You couldn’t say the name, biting the inside of your cheek, you flinched and sighed, running a hand through your hair.

“I’m [Y/n]. That, “You spat out, “other person is dead.”

You knew you were confusing the boy.

“Look, Izuku...let’s find somewhere else to talk. I’ll...I’ll explain everything.” Shoulders sagging in defeat, you followed your old childhood friend to an empty classroom.

Jumping, you sat on the desk across from the chair that Izuku sat in. He looked up at you, those big eyes waiting.

You closed your eyes for a minute. Trying to calm the storm inside. The fibers of your being that were yelling at you to run away. That this was a mistake.

“I see you finally developed a quirk. I’m sorry I wasn’t here when it showed. Did it happen right after..?”

Looking at Izuku, you saw him fidget, and his eyes dart around. Narrowing your eyes, you knew something was up.

But he didn’t cave, “Yeah. It’s strength, agility and mobility...and Well...you left before your quirk showed too.”

You groaned, pushing the palms of your hands into your eyes, “I didn’t leave!”

That came out harsher than you planned.

Taking a deep breathe, you lowered your hands and opened them pleadingly to the tense boy, “I didn’t leave.” You repeated, softer this time.

Izuku leaned forward, confusion all over his face, “What do you mean? One minute, you were next door and the next minute, you were gone. No one knew where you or your parents were. But none of the police were concerned, saying that it was all official business and that there was nothing to worry about.”

You let out a short sarcastic bark of laughter, “Of course they did. They couldn’t have it be known that two of the cities finest citizen quirk users were brutally slaughtered in their own home.”

A horrified gasp.

Your eyes were staring at Izuku, but were unfocused..seeing the past. Your folks both had powerful quirks, but they never went pro. Choosing instead to follow business jobs and staying at home to raise you.

Until that day you came home from a day of playing with Izuku and Katsuki, excited to show your parents the quirk that had showed itself on your way home and found..

You shuddered, bringing yourself back to the present, you hung your head, staring at the ground, “I still have nightmares. I’ll spare you the details of what I stumbled upon at five years old.”

A cold hand grabbed yours, “Mari...I mean [Y/n]...I had no idea. I’m so sorry.”

You laughed again, a bitter sound, “Yeah. Everyone was so damn sorry. The police officers, the case workers, the mayor. Everyone was so damn sorry but they did nothing. Those villains got away with killing innocent people and no one gave a damn.”

You were getting heated. Standing up, you began pacing at the front of the empty classroom.

“But what happened? Why did you disappear?” Izuku muttered, more to himself than you.

You answered, your voice growing thick and emotional, “A few days after, I was stuck at the police precinct...they didn’t want anyone to get wind of the murders...they knew it would only cause panic and chaos. That was how Shota Aizawa found me.”

You paused your pacing for a moment, before starting up again.

Izuku leaned back, stunned, “You met Mr. Aizawa when he was still doing Hero work?” Obvious Awe in his voice.

You smiled softly, he was still the same five year old nerd you remembered.

“He was bringing in some low level thugs when he saw me crying in an interrogation room that was being used as a temporary room for me. He came in and talked to me, calmed me down. He showed up everyday for a week before he finally decided to talk to an official about my situation. When he learned that I had no relatives and nobody knew what to do with me, he decided to take custody of me.”

Izuku gasped, “So you’re technically..”

You walked back to the desk he sat in, perching on the edge, you smiled again, “Yeah I’m technically his kid. At least, according to the courts. He adopted me. I thought he would keep me with him. But..” You trailed off again.

Now that Izuku had gotten you talking, it actually felt good to get this all off your chest.

“He said his line of work was too dangerous. So he sent me to New York where a friend lived.”

Izuku snorted, before realizing what he had done and promptly covering his mouth with his hands, his face turning red.

You snorted after, “It’s okay. I know it doesn’t seem like Shota has friends. But he does...did..anyways. Back when he was still Eraserhead. I grew up in New York….until I was old enough to apply for UA. Shota told me not to. He kept in contact all these years, but I am determined. I’m going to become a hero and I’m going to find the villains that killed them.”

Izuku’s coloring gradually returned to normal and he looked at you concerned, “[Y/n]...revenge isn’t something you should go after. A hero can’t use their quirks outside government regulations and certainly not for personal justice. You know this.” He tilted his head, “Why didn’t you keep in contact with me or kacchan?” He sounded hurt.

You gently ruffled his hair, “I’m sorry. I was just five. Scared. Hurt. In a new country. By the time I thought about contacting you...it had been a few years and I figured you both had moved on with your lives and I would just mess them up. That’s why I was hoping neither of you recognized me.”

Izuku laughed, “I don’t think Kacchan recognized you. I barely did with how you’re dressed.” He waved a hand at you, averting his eyes from your body, though his face still turned slightly red.

You laughed, “Yeah. I got used to the customs in America. I need to remember how to behave in Japan.”

Izuku sighed, “[Y/n]...you can’t let this revenge cloud your vision or decide your future...Why can’t you just be Mariko?”

Your eyes burned, you stood up again, towering over Izuku who for once looked terrified at you, “Mariko Adohira is dead! They died with their parents. I am Aizawa [Y/n] now and forever. I won’t let those villains who killed my parents find me.”

Izuku’s terrified expression turned to one of intense thinking, “You think they will target you after ten years?”

You stood tall, staring out at nothing, but seeing the shadowy figures that haunted your nightmares, “I don’t know. But for now, I have the element of surprise and I’m not losing it.”

FOREVER Taglist:

@sxph-t @mialeelavellan @rainydaysrnevergrey @platonic-plots @sociallyawkwardcircus-freak-hi @ayyidkeither @queenbbarnes @mythixmagic @chas-z @thefridgeismybestie @strangersstranger

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ettadunham · 5 years ago

Text

A Buffy rewatch 4x14 Goodbye Iowa

aka military bad

Welcome to this dailyish text post series where I will rewatch an episode of Buffy and go on an impromptu rant about it for an hour. Is it about one hyperspecific thing or twenty observations? 10 or 3k words? You don’t know! I don’t know!!! In this house we don’t know things.

And in today’s episode we are exploring two different sorts of team dynamics. Sort of. Jury’s out.

You know how when you have an idea of how you will feel about something informs and predetermines how you’ll actually feel about it when you get there? That’s how I’ve been treating season 4 so far, and I’d like to formally apologize.

That’s not to say that I managed to find the holy grail of connection that I felt lacking before. But maybe the main plot of season 4 was never meant to connect with me emotionally on the same way that other seasons were, and that’s okay. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t valuable content for me to find here.

Like how toxic the environment Riley finds himself in by the end of the episode. Literally. Walsh and the military has been drugging him and his fellow soldier friends without their consent all this time, and now they’re taking him away to a hospital because ‘they take care of their own’.

That’s a load of bullshit, but it’s also the same type of rhetoric that these institutions use to draw people in. There’s a sense of camaraderie and belonging that comes with it - you’re all in this together, a part of a community. And nothing can threaten that community, so the response to any interference is to close ranks immediately.

This is a complex subject in itself, because as much as western culture focuses on the individual, community is still important in many people’s lives, even in these cultures. And community relies on putting the many before the one, and keeping and enforcing the rules that keep it all intact.

Of course, that’s what makes it so easy to exploit people under these institutions that rely on the sense of community. There’s a lot that you can get away with when quoting tradition and the greater good, especially when it’s for the good of those sharing this experience.

That’s why fever-talk Riley rants about how Buffy “doesn’t belong” in the Initiative, when finding out that she went there to look for answers. He understands that she’s a disruptive element to that institution, and too much of his identity is wrapped up in that group and purpose to let go of it.

Meanwhile, on the other side of this, we’ve got the Scoobies. And maybe the comparison is a stretch, but they sure as fuck are doing the opposite of everything that Riley and co. are up to. Where the Initiative is controlling, the Scoobies are aimless. Where the former sticks together the latter is falling apart.

The scene where Anya asks why Xander must do the dangerous undercover mission is an interesting one in that respect. Anya is questioning Buffy’s authority and Xander’s sense of responsibility to the group, and then Xander explains that he wants to do this, but that he’ll be careful. It’s a nice balance of those two ideas, and shows a consistency and growth for Anya too when you consider how she previously tried to get Xander to run away with her from the impending apocalypse at the end of s3.

You know who else is like “fuck the greater good, I’m gonna look out for me”? Tara. She’s not gonna do a spell and reveal herself just to find some child-murdering demon beast, no sir. (Technically we won’t actually know why she sabotages the spell for another season, and with that knowledge, we know that there’s nothing to reveal, but oh well.)

And you know what? Good for her. She deserves better. She spent enough of her life in a toxic controlling environment that used the pretense of tradition to keep her in her place. She can fake a spell.

(Okay, that’s an improper use of the metaphor. We all know that there are definitely no faking with those spells between Tara and Willow.)

Anywho, Riley going off is kind of scary? But I like the admission that he’s not sure if he’s the bad guy after all that. I like that he’s actually questioning those things about himself after how he acts in the bar, withdrawal or not.

Do you know who I don’t have any sympathy for though? Forrest. I can’t even get into the subtext of his crush on Riley, ‘cause he’s just so goddamn awful. And it’s double unfortunate since he’s the only prominent non-white character on the show currently.

Yeah... That’s probably gonna come up more.

#buffy rewatch 2k19 #btvs talk #btvs

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madly-writes · 6 years ago

Text

Little Rook

Requested by @kawaiiassassino

Kawaiiassassino asked: Could you do, “you will treat this child like royalty or I will kill you”, with Jacob Frye from Assassin’s Creed, please? Thank you, either way! ^-^

Rating: T

Characters: Reader, Jacob Frye

Relationships: None

Warnings: Abuse, blood

Word Count: 4,426

Story below the cut:

“Get over here, girl.”

“Yes, papa.”

Your steps were soft on the wooden floors as you approached your father, your head hung low and your hands clasped tightly in front of you. The smaller you could appear, the better. It made you look vulnerable and weak. That was preferable. So as you stopped in front of the broken glass on the floor, you curled in one yourself and prepared for the onslaught of hatred that would be lashed out at you. You were prepared. This was normal.

“What is this?” His voice was harsh and bitter.

“Broken glass, papa.”

You didn’t cry out at the cuff to your ear. You only flinched and scrunched up your shoulders, hoping they could protect you from another hit.

“I’m not blind, stupid girl. I’m asking why it’s here.”

“I accidentally dropped it on the ground while cleaning the counters,” you explained, “I was going to get the broom to clean it up, papa.”

The man snorted, folding his arms across his chest and glaring down at you. The malice in his eyes had long stopped making you cower. When your mother died when you were two, he’d begun to grow angrier. He drank whiskey in the mornings before he went to manage the dye works, he barked orders for twelve hours, and then he came back with a flash in hand and his fist raised to strike. Sometimes you worked in the dye works, but generally he made you stay at home to care for the house.

You would wave at the children that passed by or chat with the orphans through the window, but only when your father wasn’t there. You didn’t dare go outside unless you were told to go to market and buy groceries. You neither dared to slack when at home, but it wasn’t as if there was much else to do here either than work. You could barely read, much less write, and your father had prohibited you from his study when he wasn’t there. You didn’t care about his study, anyway. It was all paperwork and pens and crosses. It wasn’t worth bothering with.

“I didn’t ask what you were doing, did I?”

“No, papa.”

“Idiot,” he sneered, his breath rank from alcohol, “I don’t tell you to do something, but you do it anyway. I thought you knew better.”

You didn’t respond. He didn’t want you to. Instead, the man motioned to the floor. “Pick it up.”

You began to turn around to fetch the broom once again, but his hand tightly gripped your arm. You held back your yelp of pain, allowing him to yank you around and toss you to the floor. Falling on your hands and knees, you narrowly missed the shards of glass. Blood on the floor would of just made him angrier. It was so hard to clean up. You knew that.

“Did I tell you to get the broom?”

“No, papa.”

“Then don’t. Pick it up with your hands, then start making dinner. I’m going to be in my study, stupid girl.”

He twisted on his heel, his coat tails brushing your face as he walked away. You listened to his footsteps as they went up the stairs and disappeared down the hall, and the final loud slam of his door told you he was gone. A long sigh slipped from your lips, and you began carefully picking up the shards of glass and placing them in your palm. Luckily, you were able to avoid any injury, and soon the glass was tossed away in the waste bin to be dumped out on the streets later. A wagon would come by later to shovel it up and take it away.

Rising to your feet, you brushed off your dress and set to starting up dinner. You would make something simple tonight. You were tired, and you imagined he wouldn’t really care either way. He was drunk enough that he wouldn’t tell the difference between a plate of steak and a bowl of stew. He would eat, tell you to clean up his mess, and then he would go to bed. Hopefully you’d be able to sleep not long after him.

You crawled up on the counter to reach the cabinets, and your small hands just barely hovered over the handles. There was nothing stopping you from poisoning his meal and killing him. There was nothing stopping you from poisoning yourself and ending this. And there was nothing stopping you from running away tonight. In a variety of ways, you could escape so long as you planned ahead. What was keeping you from doing it?

Maybe he would sense something was wrong with his meal and he wouldn’t eat it. Then he would beat you, or throw his chamber pot at you. Maybe the poison wouldn’t work on you and you’d just suffer all night until he woke in the morning to see you writhing on the floor. Then he would beat you. Maybe you wouldn’t escape far enough. Then he would find you and really beat you.

It was safer to do as he asked and to deal with this life. Hopefully, by the time you were old enough, you’d be able work somewhere outside of the dye works, or he would give you up to some man in order to gain money. You would be free, then, but for now it was wiser to make his dinner. As a mere child, what else could you do? You had no hope of fending for yourself. London would gut you.

“Papa,” you whispered against the door, voice barely audible, “I have your dinner.”

It was better not to be too loud. He might be working on something that needed his concentration. He didn’t want to interrupt him. So you slowly pushed open the door, balancing the platter in your hands as you stepped into the room. You glanced toward your father’s desk, taking note that there was two figures there. A man stood just barely in front of your father, and you could hear some sort of hushed conversation between them.

A business partner, probably. Best not to interrupt them. You walked forward, gingerly placing the platter on the table with a small thunk. The noise seemed to gain the attention of the man, and he soon whipped around to face you. There was a squelch of wetness as he turned, as well as the sound of metal grinding on metal. And you were able to see the cause.

There was a hole in your father’s neck, wide and gaping into some black abyss. Blood spurted freely from the opening, dripping down his double chin and staining the white cravat tied about his neck. His eyes stared up unseeing at the ceiling, and blood dripped from his open mouth. The tiniest glint of metal came from the other man’s wrist, and you knew who your father’s killer was.

You stepped back, arms rigid down at your sides as you stared up at the man. He looked genuinely surprised to see you, if even a bit remorseful. He held up his hands in a friendly manner, moving around the wooden desk. Hazel eyes glinted at you in the candlelight, and a bearded jaw worked as he tried to come up with the right words to say. His face was cloaked mostly in shadow from the strange hood he wore, and it was hard to determine any definite facial features.

“Whoa, I’m not here to hurt you, okay?” His voice was rather deep, and his accent was more rounded and throaty than the traditional Londoner. He was large and imposing, and he gave you every reason to feel fear.

You kept your mouth shut, instead favoring toward backing away. Unfortunately, you were soon blocked by a bookcase, and a small squeak escaped you as a few books tumbled forth. One landed right atop your head, causing you to grip it in pain. It hadn’t exactly been a light novel, and you were certain you’d have a good bump. That is, if the man in front of you didn’t decide to kill you off immediately.

He continued to move toward you, his steps careful and quiet. You could barely hear them, despite the clunky boots he wore. “You’ve got to understand me, alright? I know it’s going to be a lot to understand, but you have to try.” His eyes briefly flicked to the bruise on your upper arm, and you could see a twitch in his features. “Your father was a bad man. You know that, right?”

Still, you didn’t speak. Yes, he was a bad man, but you’d never ever planned to say it. You knew he was cruel to both you and his employees. He’d never once given alms to the poor nor donated to the churches. He turned up his nose to anyone who had less money than he did, and it was commonplace for him to gossip and sneer at parties—when he was invited to them.

The man got down to his knees in front of you, pulling his hood back. He had a strained smile on his face, but he did his best to look friendly. His brown hair was haphazardly swept back, and a few strands slipped out and stuck to his forehead. He appeared to be a fairly young man—still older than you by several years, but he was young. If you were to see him in the streets, he wouldn’t appear to be anyone dangerous. Then again, didn’t the most dangerous people blend in the best?

“I had to kill your father, I’m sorry.” He wasn’t. “It was necessary, okay? He was going to do something really awful, and I couldn’t let it happen. And he’s been hurting you too, I can see. You don’t have to be scared anymore. He can’t touch you again.” He shuffled on his knees toward you, taking his time so as to not scare you.

You spread your hands out over the bookcase, staring nervously at the man. It appeared as if he really wasn’t interested in harming you, but he was clearly a killer. No matter the reason, your only provider had been murdered. He may have been cruel to you, but he provided you money for food and a place to sleep. While you rarely ever considered him your father, he was the one who by all technicalities kept you alive. With him dead, you would quickly follow suit.

You had very little money. What you had earned from the dye works was miniscule, and you could probably only live a few days off of it. You could take your father’s coin purse, but there was only probably a minimal amount in it. You didn’t know where his safe’s were, and you were scared to work in some factory. You’d heard the stories of children’s arms getting stuck in paper mill’s machines and having to be amputated, or heavy stone blocks slipping from restraints and crushing someone.

Death was at every turn.

You took in a deep breath, clasping your fingers around the spine of one of the books. If you were going to die, you wanted it to be on your own terms. You wanted it as quick as possible, so you wouldn’t have to suffer. This man was deadly, and no doubt he was efficient. He would end you in a matter of seconds, and you wouldn’t have to starve to death or lose an arm. It would be quick and easy. You were scared, but that was okay. Death was a scary thing.

So, mustering all the strength you could, you flung the book directly at his face. It hit him squarely in the nose, and he let out a cry of pain. He stumbled backward, falling onto his rump as he clutched his nose. Beneath his gloved hands, you could see the blood trickling down. You hadn’t expected to hit him so well, but perhaps it would make him that much angrier. Then he would kill you that much faster.

However, as you waited there for him to kill you with the same blade that ended your father’s life, he began to laugh. It started off as a soft, bubbling giggle and soon went into full-blown, room-shaking guffaws. He pulled his hands away from his nose, checking them to see just how much blood he lost. He’d smeared it a bit up on his cheek, but it seemed he’d stopped bleeding rather quickly.

“Christ!” he exclaimed, his laughter slowly dying down, “You have quite an arm, kid. I’ve broken my nose a lot of times, and that one hurt like the devil. Where’d you get so strong? I’m kind of jealous, honestly.” He grinned up at you, his teeth slightly red. “Imagine if I could take out someone with a book. What would you call that, huh? Death by knowledge? Oh, or a really bad paper cut! Ahaha!”

Even his laughter had you giving soft giggles. He perked up at the sound, his grin widening. “See? It’s funny!”

You shook your head. “No,” your voice was still soft, a little unsure, “It… It wasn’t. That’s what made me laugh.”

He didn’t seem too hurt by your comment. Instead, he shrugged, wiping his hands on the floor. “Ah, I’ll have to come up with something real good then. Can’t have you laughing at me. It’ll hurt my ego.”

He shifted back forward, rising to his feet. You tensed back up, your smile immediately dropping. Oh no, had you angered him by telling him he wasn’t as much of a comedian as he thought he was? You should have watched your tongue. Even though you were expecting death, you wanted it quickly. Making fun of him might only prolong it.

He just smiled down at you. “You’re a good kid, you know? For all of the piss-poor treatment this bastard gave you, you’re coming out alright. That’s good to see.” He leaned down a bit toward you, his gaze softer. “Do you, ah, have someone else you can go to? Some family that’ll take you in?”

You shook your head. As far as you knew, your father was your only relative in London. You might have had family outside of the city, but you wouldn’t know how to begin finding them.

The man frowned. “That’s… Not good. I’m not just going to leave you here.” He quirked his lips to the side, seeming to ponder for a few brief moments. You watched him carefully, searching for anything that could give you an inkling as to what was going on inside of his head. He hummed, scratching his chin.

“Well, if you’re okay with it, I’ve got somewhere you can go. The people there will take care of you, no questions asked. They’ll teach you how to fend for yourself. You can even work with them, if you’d like. Earn a bit of your own coin.” He tilted his head at you. “I’m only asking because they, uh, happen to be friends of mine. Employees, really. Well, not employees, but…”

He rolled his hands on his wrists, trying to figure the best way to word it. “They’re… Gang members. Yeah, better to just say it. They’re gang members, but they’re good guys.”

“You’re a Blighter.” The sentence came out without any hesitation from your mouth.

The man spluttered, giving you an almost offended look. “Me? A Blighter? Fuck no!” He caught his swear at the last second, wincing slightly. You’d heard far worse in the company of your father, but he still seemed sorry to curse in front of you. “Sorry. I’m a Rook, you see. The leader of them, actually.”

He bowed at the waist. “Master Jacob Frye at your service.”

Rooks? You’d heard of them, but only in passing. Apparently they were a gang that was slowly rising up to power and taking down the Blighters. In other bureaus, they’d been working on rebuilding the city and helping its citizens. Their control hadn’t quite reached your section of town just yet, but you’d seen glimpses of green in passing. Perhaps he was here to begin work.

“You want me to live with the Rooks?”

Jacob nodded. “And work with them, if you’d like. We have lots of kids your age, and even a little spymaster. Her name is Clara. I’m sure she’d be glad to show you the ropes.”

You hadn’t considered moving in with a gang as an option. It seemed dangerous, and what would they want with some kid who couldn’t hold her own? You knew you were rather weak, and you had very little street knowledge. Would a gang really be willing to teach you everything you needed to know? It seemed so unlikely, yet here their leader stood, offering you a place within their ranks.

He was dangerous, a killer. No doubt he was only gaining so much control because he was removing those who would oppose him. He took out leaders and placed his own men in their place. Who was to say he wasn’t just replacing the Blighters to enforce his own rules? Maybe he was just as greedy, and he was only pretending to help the citizens of London so he could turn on them later. It wasn’t something unheard of. Many good men grew darkness in their hearts.

Yet Jacob seemed like he was entirely genuine. He had no other goals than a bit of peace in the world. He was kindly offering you a place where you could learn and grown up, even earn your own money. He was being kind straight from the heart. He didn’t want to see you struggle, now that your father was dead. You may now no longer be beaten by him, but you still had so many other things to deal with. He wanted to make this transition as easy for you as possible.

“…Are you sure?” Your question was barely more than a whisper.

“Kid, I wouldn’t offer if I wasn’t serious.” He briefly glanced over at the dead body of your father, quirking his lips to the side. “Unless you want to be found by the police, that is. Sometimes they’ll even accuse a kid.”

You doubted prison would be much worse than what you’d endured for several years, but it still wasn’t a very pleasant thought. So you turned your attention to the man before you, straightening yourself up and stepping away from the wall. You may not have known what would lie ahead, but you knew deep down it would be safer with the Rooks. They were a gang, and therefore danger followed them like a hawk, but they would take care of you. You would learn how to fend for yourself and earn a living.

“Okay, Mr. Frye,” you said, voice as strong as you could muster it to be, “I’ll go with you.”

The man beamed down at you, smile jovial and relieved. He held out his hand to you, offering a small nod of his head. “Come on then, Little Rook. We’ve places to go.”

Your days as a Little Rook were the happiest you’d ever had. The older members took such great care of you, and they were fiercely protective. A Blighter had immediately regretted his decision to manhandle you by the arm when four Rooks appeared and gave him a beating. He’d narrowly escaped with his life, and when Jacob later learned of the incident, he’d fretted over you like no other. Despite having jobs of his own, he’d stayed with you for two days straight until his twin sister, Evie, dragged him away.

The man was so kind to you. He insisted you call him Uncle Jacob, but many of the Rooks joked that he was more like a father than anything. He had taken many young children and teenagers under his wing, but none were so important to him as you. Perhaps it was the fact your father had been an important target of his and he felt sorry for you, or perhaps he felt as if he had to make up for all the poor treatment you’d received. Either way, he treated you like you were of his own blood, and you couldn’t be happier.

Of course, he couldn’t always be by your side. He was a Master Assassin, you’d learned. He had missions he needed to go on and people he needed to kill. It was all for a greater good, but it did keep him fairly busy most of the time. Initially, he’d tried to pawn them off as often as he could so he didn’t have to leave you alone for too long. In the beginning, it was understandable. You were still fragile, and you didn’t know the other gang members terribly well.

Soon enough, however, he couldn’t make excuses.

So he started dropping you off at Henry’s shop. The man was very nice to you, and he didn’t mind letting you wander around so long as you were careful. Sometimes you’d wander from the store and explore the town, but you were sure to not stray terribly far. Henry had even begun to help you perfect your reading and writing, though it was certainly a long process. You still had plenty to learn, but you could at least somewhat understand the books he held in his possession.

Unfortunately, today Henry was out with Evie on a mission that required him. He normally wasn’t one for field work, but he had no choice this time. Even worse, Jacob had a mission of his own that he had to tend to. He had no one to babysit you, even though you tried to assure him that you were completely fine on your own. He just seemed really stressed.

“Jacob, she’ll be fine.” Evie was doing her best to convince her brother, but he was having none of it.

“What if she wanders off and gets hurt? Sometimes the kids come back with scratches and bruises, you know.”

“And why don’t you send them to Henry too?”

Jacob gave her a stink-eye, looking none too pleased with the subject she brought up. “They know what they’re doing, Evie. She doesn’t. She’s still learning. She hasn’t grown up on the streets and she’s still learning how to navigate the city. I don’t want her getting lost.”

Well, they could at least talk like you were here.

“I’m fine, Uncle Jacob,” you insisted, crossing your arms indignantly, “If it’ll make you feel better, I can just stay here, in the Rook hideout.”

He groaned, running a hand down his face. “That’s worse! These guys are so rough, they don’t know how to take care of you properly. Most of them don’t have kids of their own.”

“But isn’t it better than me walking on the streets? Uncle Jacob, I’ll be completely fine. Either you or Aunt Evie and Mr. Green will be back soon, and you’ll have nothing to worry about.”

The man’s twin gave you a slightly miffed look. She’d told you before that she wasn’t fond of being called Aunt because it made her feel old, but you’d continued on. It was easier for you.

“Please? I’ll be good, I promise.”

Jacob stared at you, frowning at the puppy eyes you threw toward him. Really, you just wanted him to stop fretting so much. He had other business and he didn’t need his thoughts surrounding your safety to bother him. There was a greater good to be done, and you didn’t want to keep him held up.

He gave in quickly, his whole body deflating. “Fine. Let’s go talk to the men.”

And so you found yourself standing in front of several burly men with Jacob behind you, his hands on your shoulders. He seemed extremely tense, and it was making the men in front of him nervous.

“I’m going to be gone until tomorrow morning. I’ve nowhere else to send her, so you’re going to be watching her. Get me?”

The men looked at each other, then at their boss. The tallest and burliest of them was first to speak, in a voice matched perfectly to his stature. “You mean for us to watch her, boss?”

“Exactly. Glad you understand.” He bent over so his mouth was near you ear. “They give you any problems, you tell me, alright? I’ll do them in.”

He gave you a small push toward the men, and you wondered if he’d picked them because they were the largest in the district. Certainly men so imposing would keep you safe. Hell, the Blighters might not even see you if you were to walk between them. Jacob certainly made sure to put you in the care of the strongest men he could find.

“Remember,” he pointed at the men who would now play as babysitters, “You treat this child like royalty or I’ll kill you.” His face betrayed nothing. He was entirely serious.

His men saluted him and then he was off, leaving you in the company of men who had absolutely no idea what to do. Neither of you were exactly pleased with the situation, but you were going to make the best out of it. You wouldn’t give Jacob reason to worry over you. You would behave well and wait until he came back.

As dark as it may have seemed, you were glad Jacob had killed your father on that night. You doubted you could have dealt with many more years of his constant abuse. Soon enough, you would have caved in under the stress. You would have died young with having changed nothing. Instead, Jacob gave you a chance to live anew and thrive. You couldn’t thank him enough.

You wanted to make him proud. If you were to disappoint him after everything he’d done for you, you would never forgive yourself. You would be entirely heartbroken. You wanted to grow up and become a strong Rook, maybe even join the elusive ranks of Assassins. You wanted to make this man who saved you from death proud. You wanted to be part of his legacy, part of his family. When all was said and done, you just wanted him to be happy.

So if for today making him proud meant behaving in the company of the burliest men in London, you would do that. He had saved you, and you aimed to repay him. One step at a time.

#text post #assassin's creed #ac #ac syndicate #reader #reader-insert #jacob frye #fanfic #fanfiction #request #sfw #kawaiiassassino

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yakumtsaki · 7 years ago

Photo

Ok I knew I hadn’t posted Unions in forever but good lord. The screenshots after, not before, AFTER this.. are the previews for this. Like we’re literally talking ancient history here. Let’s dive right in and see if we can wrap this up sometime during a human’s natural lifespan. SO when we left off we were desperately trying to make friends for Wyatt’s final promotion, ‘desperately’ being the operative word. We’ve done some pathetic shit in our time but shittalking each other to Apartment Life nobodies is honestly peak gutter, so you know. our natural environment. Spoiler alert, the kids are teens now and Wyatt has still not gotten promoted! Truly the Picasso of incompetence.

Good ol’ uncle Gunther is also here for some reason which I’m guessing is ‘came over uninvited’ but at least someone is paying attention to Shajar for once. Beggars can’t be choosers and Gunther as a father figure is the equivalent of someone leaving a button and good vibes in your cup.

-So you see Shajar, life is nothing but a slow march towards our certain doom so who cares if your parents hate you?? My parents hated me till adulthood and I turned out amazing as you can surely tell by my stripes/plaid/indoor sunglasses combo!

-Think long and hard before procreating, brother, because there’s no guarantee you’ll even like your kids. Looking at you, Shajar.

-Um can I go now?

-Don’t know why you’re here in the first place and not in the crypt where we’ve set up your bed and everything! Kids these days.

Oh right, Brit Brit is also here so I guess I did invite these douchebags over. Way to go @ me.

-BRITTANY HOW COULD YOU TEAR THE MORAL FABRIC OF OUR WIFE-SWAPPING-BASED LIFE PARTNERSHIP LIKE THIS???? JUST STEAL ONE OF THEIR PETS LIKE AN UPSTANDING CITIZEN

DON’T YOU DARE BRIT-

Ugh nevermind, it’s Sophie aka Brittany in cat form. Take her!

And take Shajar too while you’re at it cause absolutely not @ Victoria dying but the gnome drama living on. ENOUGH. This almost makes me appreciate Cyneswith’s ridiculous 10 nice points for a split second..

..but then I turn around and see this. GOOD GRIEF. How did Jojo and Wyatt produce vegan Tinkerbell here not even god knows.

This alliance of obnoxiousness is but the first in what is gonna become a running theme of every annoying flop in this neighborhood looooooving Maxx. Can’t keep kindred spirits apart for long! Honestly this legacy is turning me from pet maniac to Captain Ahab, like on one hand you have fucking Maxx who hasn’t done anything yet but just you wait till he grows up-

-and on the other you have FUCKING VICTOR’S GHOST TRYING TO KILL US EVERY NIGHT. Apparently Victor + being a dick = a love not even death can tear asunder. Seriously tg kids can’t die cause these overactive freaks are up all night till the sun, are up all night to get some (entertainment), are up all night for good fun, are up all night to get lucky murdered.

This happens about 3000 times per night, I’m not even taking pics of it anymore, but it’s worth pointing out that everyone in this house, both alive/dead and human/non has a raging hate boner for Shajar in particular. It’s uncanny and depressing..

..and speaking of depressing, UGH. My poor, poor Shajar. I actually attempted to intervene and have them interact being the moron that I am:

JOJO WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM

.....................................WHERE IS VICTOR’S GHOST WHEN I NEED IT

Yea sure, waste your niceness reserves on fucking Goro here instead, who isn’t even the cat heir and is about to go live on the farm (not a euphemism, Daniel and Melody’s literal farm). This Jojo fuckery is seriously starting to bum me out on top of pissing me off, let me find something cute to look at to raise my spirits..

No.

NO.

Disturbing stuff.

Seems about right.

Old habits die hard.

No.

Ugh.

UGH.

OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE

FINALLY. THANK YOU CATS. Now let’s get back to this nightmare..

..and I mean nightmare in the technical sense of something not real occurring when you’re asleep, because Wyatt maxing a skill is truly the stuff of Taylor Swift-Wildest Dreams.mp3. It’s official, the only thing standing between us and Wyatt’s LTW is social ineptitude. But what if we revolutionize the friend game by approaching someone who can’t leave..

..because she’s contractually obligated to be here?? Go for it Wyatt!

-So Kaylýnn, you have the français maid thing going, I’m French and in need of a hag, c’est match made in les paradis!

-Yea sorry, Henry III, but it’s my professional policy to not fraternize with married clients I have no chance of fucking.

-But..but you’re just a face template fiasco!

-..I have some bad news for you.

Kaylynn left Wyatt dick in hand and went to pet the cats, so I guess the day has arrived for me to go from being the leading Langerak hater of this community to being the leading stan-

-and apparently the leading Jitmakusol stan as well, which as we all know is a large and very competitive group. DOWN WITH JOJO

Well at least you still have this invaluable stamp of approval! All I see in this pic is 3 bags of trash.

Look at this trove, treasures untold, how many assholes can one photo hold? The reason there’s more awful people in our house than usual is the “exciting” occasion of the Shajar/Wulf double birthday and honestly even by our standards this party was especially terrible. Like it makes the one where Komei and Marissa happened look like Project X.

When this is the situation 10 seconds in you know you’re in for a good time. I don’t think a single positive interaction took place this entire party and I’ve subconsciously (?) forgotten every birthday since. What a loss!

Wulf is up first, and of course since this is Wyatt’s literal one and only parenting-related job, it took 3 cakes to happen and no one is paying attention by the time it does.

Wyatt makes one last-ditch effort to kill his child via decapitation and obviously he thinks it worked thus the wide smile. But Wulf is named after the spawn of Satan, head spinning comes with the territory-

-as do incredible looks. Gunther hair + tuxedo, and you think your little yellow blazer is subversive?? Step it up.

-If the sunglasses weren’t blocking the power of my stare this child would be dead by my sheer resentment.

Happy birthday, Wulf! 2/2 surviving murder attempts.

Wulf gets this Don Corleone makeover because a) he also survived murder attempts b) wedding tuxedo c) trying to avoid a Gunther mental breakdown. He looks exactly like Wyatt, like I don’t think there’s a drop of Jojo in there..

..BUT MAN IS THE PERSONALITY PURE UNION. Another nice little addition to our ever expanding freakshow.

Shajar time and no one is paying attention now either but there’s no cake malfunction, they just don’t care! And why should they? What is she, their child?

Wyatt can’t even be bothered to stay standing for literally 10 more seconds. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a parent do that before but you can always count on Wyatt for this sort of innovation.

And this is what Shajar grows up to: Wyatt half-asleep, Daniel waiting to beat him up and the rest reacting to Wulf having shit himself. I don’t think any further comment is needed.

Now, having lived through the experience that was Daniel and having marveled at Shajar’s seemingly genetic unlikability, I’m sure we can all tell which is the one aspiration she should under no circumstances roll because it’s going to make nails on a chalkboard seem like a fun musical break.. Yes, this is not a drill..

..we have another trainwreck firstborn who can’t get their own family not to hate them roll popularity. AND DANIEL WAS NICE. Shajar is bringing 1 nice point to the table so all I can say at this point is fml.

And of course because the above wasn’t bad enough on its own and we always need the overkill, gaze upon whatever the fuck this is-

-YE MIGHTY AND DESPAIR. GOOD GOD SHAJAR

LOL. Well with the custom sky this is an Under The Dome situation so technically you’re not wrong but still. fucking popularity? Leave the sky alone and aim for ‘slightly above ground’. Even that is pushing it.

Good, finally we return to reality and face the facts. Couldn’t agree more!

#ts2 #gen 2

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drunklander · 7 years ago

Text

Drunj!Der Yells About Outlander

Thoughts on Ep. 306

GUYS THEY’RE FINALLY BACK TOGETHER AND THE WHOLE POINT OF WATCHING THIS DAMN SHOW IS ACTUALLY ON MY TV AGAIN!

Like I feel like I’ve been waiting for this episode since the end of season one. I didn’t get sucked into the show because of the adventures du jour. I got sucked in because of the relationship between Jamie and Claire. Their intimacy. The intimacy they had even before the wedding. Yes, shenanigans need to happen around them or it’d just be a bunch of fluff, but watching how they go through the shenanigans *together* was kind of the whole point for me.

And the beginning of this season was obviously supposed to make the reunion feel earned, but with the lack of story on Claire’s side, it really kind of felt like a chore to slog through it at times.

But! This episode really was a great reminder of why I’ve stuck with the show with one glaring exception which I’m still salty about but not at all surprised by, and I *really* hope that they’re not going to treat it as a one and done.

Like in season one no matter what else was going on in the episodes, time was spent on building Jamie and Claire’s relationship before they got together and then time was spent figuring out what kind of couple they were going to be. *pretends the search doesn’t exist* Season two started with them dealing with Jamie’s rape, which it should have, but then when they came back together it was for like *a minute* before they basically then just started fighting over “saving” Frank. And then they lost Faith but the show skipped over them coming back together after that. Like suddenly they were just all ok and happy again, but literally for only one scene before going off to war. The investment in their relationship was put on the back burner and I think the show suffered because of it.

So now they’re *finally* back together and I *really* hope that this episode is just the jumping off point for showing them rebuilding their life together. Yes, I’m very much aware that they can’t spend every episode in a room together in various stages of undress. I’m not asking for that. I’m just hoping that the show goes back to the way they did things in season one. Where yes, stuff is happening and shenanigans ensue, but their relationship is still regularly given the attention it needs.

Anywho, that got longer than I meant it to... Sorry... Rambling nonsense and pterodactyl screeches are under the cut.

Apparently Jamie inherited his mother’s curse of having literally everyone fall in love with him or lust after him. Like are they trying to make it that Mme Jeanne is super into Jamie or something?

The music from Lallybroch as Jamie walks to work gives me life but also kind of makes me sad. Like he’s built a life for himself! He has his shop! He has shenanigans with Fergus! He’s content! But at the same time he’s living under a different name and his home at Lallybroch is no longer his home...

Although I’m glad I’m not the only one in this fandom who went straight to Beauty and the Beast as he’s walking through the street, tipping his hat to literally everyone. *group high five*

Him like polishing the sign with a finger and then being like nope, gotta go full arm makes me smile.

How did Hayes not get transported? Like it’s def the same dude from Ardsmuir, so how is he not in the Colonies with everyone else? Whatever. Not important... Treason is the point here, haha.

Geordie looks like Young Simon Fraser/Lovat so much it’s mildly distracting. And tbh, as much as he has a stick up his ass, I def feel him on wanting to know the required morning duties in advance.

Hai Bonnie! Who’s a good press. You are!

Ok holding the sheet up like that in the title card is cheesy? Idk. The second sheet just lying there worked for me though? But who cares. It’s a fucking title card. Moving on.

OMG SHE’S REAL AND HE’S REAL AND THEY’RE REAL IN THE SAME PLACE AND OMG GROUP HUG BECAUSE IT’S FINALLY HAPPENINGGG!

I wasn’t really a fan of the alepot thing in the book? Like it’s already awkward without Jamie needing to take off his pants?

OK BUT THEIR FACES THROUGH THIS WHOLE BIT WITH HIM LOOKING AT HER RING AND HER TELLING HIM HOW SHE NEVER TOOK IT OFF, I CANNOT HANDLE IT.

Asking if he can kiss her is my favorite. Except them kissing. That’s really my favorite. But consent, y’all. It’s sexy af.

BEAR WHY DON’T YOU MURDER ME WITH THE SWELL OF THEIR THEME YOU BEAUTIFUL BASTARD.

Jamie, this is a beautiful monologue, but she def touched you at Culloden. They literally had her touch him in ep. 301. But whatever, it was a vision, you can’t feel a vision. This isn’t the point. The point is OMG THEY’RE TOGETHER AND REALLY THERE AND MAKING OUT AND AHHHHHH.

Ok, I’m 1000% blanking. Was the “don’t be afraid, there’s the two of us now” line in the show before this? I can’t remember. Or is it just a thing for book people that we’re supposed to just accept was at some point a thing between them off-screen in the show? I’m really asking.

Oops, that distracted me from squeeing over how they like remember all their whatever the word is for an in-joke that’s not a joke and is actually something really romantic. Because squeee!

In Geordie’s spare time, he’s part of Edinburgh’s recreational cockblocking league. We’ll meet some of his teammates later on in the episode. No one really likes them. They’re basically the worst.

“Our child?” “Our daughter?” *has feelings*

LOOK HOW HAPPY CLAIRE IS TO TELL JAMIE ABOUT BREE! LOOK AT HER! SHE’S FUCKING BEAMING! SHE’S FUCKING GLOWING RIGHT THERE! I CANNOT REMEMBER THE LAST TIME I SAW FUCKING CLAIRE LOOKING THAT FUCKING HAPPY. IT’S A BEAUTIFUL FUCKING SIGHT.

Ok but them being insecure about aging is fucking adorable and I love them so fucking much.

Ok so the pictures. I’m a bit torn about this sequence...

I hated that Jamie tells Claire he doesn’t like Bree’s name in the book and I hate that that’s his first reaction here. Like seriously, dude? This is your child. The child you sent your wife away to save. The child she raised without you because you made her go. And the first thing you’re going to tell Claire after she shows you the photos is that she picked an awful name? Wtf. I don’t care if he’s kidding around or whatever. It’s a fucking weird thing to say.

I *do* love that he brings up Faith and calls her Bree’s sister. Because she is and he hasn’t forgotten her and neither has Claire because how could they and it makes me want to hug them both.

“You’re a doctor now?” “Surgeon.” “You always were one. Now you have the title to go wi’ it.” Yaaas. I will always and forever love how much Jamie appreciates and respects Claire’s skills.

Ok for real they should have just cut the dog. I get it’s in the book. And they forced it into that other episode just so they could have it in the pictures. But like it seems like a weird, super not important thing to go out of their way to include? But whatever, who cares.

So the Willie stuff. I’m glad they’re getting it out of the way now. It always seemed super weird that Jamie never told Claire until almost the end of the book and it was weird that LJG was the one to tell her first. But the way they did it doesn’t work well for me. Like yes. Tell her up front. Tell her when you’re talking about your children. That makes sense. But the way they have it play just doesn’t work.

Like the whole time he’s looking at the photos of Bree, his child with the woman he loves more than anything, the child they were separated to save, he keeps his strong emotions in check. Like he’s clearly moved, dumbass comment about her name aside, but he’s restrained. And then he’s talking about Willie and he like becomes so animated and excited. Like I get that this is one of the only times he’s been able to talk openly about Willie being his son. And to share how much he loves him. But it definitely makes the two of them talking about Bree seem shortchanged.

I kind of wish he’d given Claire the gift of knowing that Willie was conceived under coercion or at least that it was a one time thing. Like no need to get into all the details, but just saying he’s a bastard doesn’t provide much context. Especially for someone whose husband had a longterm affair. Which he doesn’t know, but still...

Maybe they’re playing it this way so that in ep. 308 or whenever Claire finds out about Laoghaire and her girls, the Willie stuff might come back around in their fight? Maybe? Bueller? Guess we’ll find out in two weeks...

Same with how it was for Claire to be with Frank all those years? Like in this initial convo she gives the most watered down, BS description of her life with him so maybe that’ll come back around too? Because they didn’t really “make it work”? He was terrible to her and treated her like shit and she just endured it for the sake of Bree?

Really I’m just looking forward to that damn fight. Because they need to have the fight to get into the meaty work of coming back together.

HAI FERGUS! Fergus got hot. Fergus knows he got hot. It’s somehow endearing.

I’m so fucking glad they changed the hook to a wooden hand. So. Fucking. Glad.

This scene really makes me wish that we’d gotten something of Claire missing Fergus during her half of things in the earlier episodes. Like my kingdom for a scene of Claire telling Bree about her French Scottish pickpocket brother. I know technically Bree knows about Fergus because Claire told her the whole story, but like, they expanded that relationship so much last year that I wish he had come up at some point. *forces self to stop dwelling on my general dislike of how Claire’s story was handled*

They really doubled down on the book’s already not-at-all subtle foreshadowing that Jamie’s already married...

Wouldn’t Claire have given some thought to explaining where she’d been before she went back? Like she definitely knew if she found Jamie, she’d probably be running into some of the other people she knew also? Whatever. Wherever they said she ended up, it’s always going to be weird because like how would she have known where to find Jamie?

It kinda bugs me, and by kinda I mean it really bugs me, that Claire starts to say Randall when she’s introducing herself to Willoughby. Like yes, that’s the name she went by for the last 20 years. And she’s in the habit of saying it. But she literally just went back in time and found her husband and is like in the midst of a very emotional time where she is very aware of the identity she’s actively reclaiming. It would have worked better for me if she’d started to say Fraser. Like she’s excited she *finally* gets to say that again only to have Jamie cut her off and that leading to the same questions she has as it plays out now, but with like the added layer of emotion that comes with not being able to use the name she’s wanted to use for so long.

I’m cautiously optimistic about Willoughby? Like fuck him for cheating the hooker out of her money, but he can be a garbage person without being a racist caricature?

Cool so now we have treason, questionable marital status and smuggling drama for Jamie. Seems like plenty to set up the shit that’s going to hit the fan next week without a certain scene they decided to end the episode with...

Ok but with Jamie’s face and Willoughby’s grin, it’s super obvious he didn’t *just* say honorable wife, implying again that something’s up with Claire’s status as Jamie’s wife. But I’m glad they changed it to Chinese because the first wife thing in the book was like so on the nose that it was weird Claire never asked why he kept saying that.

For real though. They’re not being subtle at all...

I love that Claire calls him Yi Tien Cho as she says goodbye though. Yay for treating him like an actual person and not “Jamie’s pet” as he’s literally described in the book.

This introduction to the brothel is very Game of Thrones-y in terms of the randos banging everywhere.

I didn’t like Mme Jeanne being a bitch to Claire in the book and I’m not a fan of it here. Like the lady clearly has the hots for Jamie or whatever they decided to do for the show, but we already have one person who’s terrible to Claire because she wants Jamie and that person is about to come back so do we really need another? And I know that it’s partly so that Claire feels insecure or whatever and questions Jamie, but like I feel like the fact that he’s on friendly terms with Mme Jeanne and has a room in the brothel accomplishes the same thing well enough? Maybe it’s just me...

For real though the sex sounds from the other rooms is a bit much. Like we get it, show. It’s a brothel. And these two want to bang but they’re still a little awkward. The noises are more distracting than anything.

Ok but the look of like pain on Claire’s face when Jamie says he doesn’t know why she came back and then reduces (maybe the wrong word, but close enough) her to just the mother of his child. Like bro, it’s an important question. I know you want and deserve to know the answer. But I do feel for Claire a bit in how he chooses to word it.

“So I took a chance.” Understatement of the centuries, Claire.

Throw her a bone, Jamie! She took an impossible leap! Give her something!

Claire’s “do you want me to go?” breaks my heart a little. Like I 1000% know what Jamie’s getting at and why he wants and needs to know why Claire came back. But I really do feel for Claire here. She made the choice to risk everything to find him, and Jamie knows what it cost her. (*cough Bree cough* Remember her? You literally just looked at pictures of her.) Maybe lead with the fact that you’ve burned for her for so long, dude? And then bring up the knowing each other less now than at your wedding? Because it *is* a valid observation...

I know that basically everything in this room is like verbatim from the book, but I do kind of wish some of it had been tweaked.

BUT WHATEVER BECAUSE THEY’RE TOGETHER AGAIN.

OK BUT THE FLIRTY WAY CLAIRE SAYS THAT SHE MIGHT BE A HORRIBLE PERSON MAKES ME FEEL THINGS. LIKE SHE SPENT SO LONG BEING TREATED LIKE AND TOLD THAT SHE WAS ONE BUT HERE WITH JAMIE SHE KNOWS SHE ISN’T AND SHE’S JOKING AND SHE’S HAPPY AND SHE’S GETTING WHAT SHE’S DREAMED ABOUT FOR SO LONG AND I’M JUST SO HAPPY FOR YOU CLAIRE. ILY, LADY.

The recreational cockblocking league really should be disbanded. I feel like there are better options for extracurricular activities out there.

OK BUT JAMIE’S FACE WHEN HE LOCKS THE DOOR AND CLAIRE’S FACE WHEN JAMIE LOCKS THE DOOR. YOU’RE GOING TO DO IT, GUYS, YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE THE SECKS.

You know what would be better than this voiceover? Not this voiceover. I get that they wanted the parallel to the wedding voiceover about getting to know their new spouses for the first time, but I’m just not a fan of the majority of the voiceovers and was kind of hoping they were not going to use them as much this year...

I like the parallel to the wedding with them talking first, I just could have done with more actual talking and less VO about talking.

Also like Claire, we know you’re both thinking about banging. There’s no reason to VO the fact that you’re thinking about it.

OK BUT THE SASSY LITTLE WAY SHE PULLS OFF HIS STOCK OR WHATEVER IT’S CALLED. HERE. FOR. IT.

AND SHE OPENS HIS SHIRT LIKE SHE DID IN EP. 103 WHEN SHE WAS CHECKING HIS WOUND AND IT WAS HOT AF THERE AND IT’S HOT AF HERE.

AND HIM PULLING OFF HER SCARF THINGY AND IT GOES DOWN HER FRONT LIKE THE RIBBON DID IN THE WEDDING WHEN HE UNTIED HER LITTLE CHOKER THINGY.

MY KINGDOM FOR ONCE THEY’RE LIKE COMFORTABLY BACK TOGETHER AGAIN AND IT’S NOT LIKE 20 YEARS OF EMOTION BUILT UP FOR JAMIE TO JUST LOVE ZIPPING AND UNZIPPING CLAIRE’S CORSET THINGY AND HER LIKE PLAYFULLY SMACKING HIM UPSIDE THE HEAD.

THIS IS AWKWARD AND ADORABLE AND I LOVE IT AND YOU REALLY ARE BEAUTIFUL, CLAIRE.

Ok they held hands in the wedding episode at one point right before Claire cockblocked herself by asking about Jamie’s family, but the stuff about touching making things easier wasn’t actually in there, right? It’s just another book thing they’re putting in that we need to pretend happened off-screen? Which is fine, I’m just trying to keep the book and the show straight...

“Do you want me know?” “Oh, God, yes.” SO SAY WE ALL.

The subtitles say [both breathing heavily] and OMG SAME, SUBTITLES, SAME.

I KNOW IT’S FROM THE BOOK BUT I LOVE THEM BUMPING HEADS AND GIGGLING AND JAMIE KISSING HER ON THE NOSE AND THE LITTLE NOSE KISS IS MY EVERYTHING AND GUYS I HAVE SO MANY FEELINGS RIGHT NOW AND ALL OF THEM ARE WONDERFUL.

“Do it now. And don’t be gentle.” OK BUT THIS IS LIKE THE FIRST TIME IN LIKE 18 YEARS THAT CLAIRE IS WITH SOMEONE WHO ISN’T HER HAND AND SHE’S CALLING THE SHOTS AND YOU GET YOURS, CLAIRE. YAAAS.

Unpopular opinion, but I’ve never really been a fan of the “give me your mouth” line.

BUT WHO CARES BECAUSE THEY JUST DID THE SECKS. THEY JUST DID THE SECKS, GUYS!

GUYS THEY GET TO CUDDLE AND BE CUTE AND TOUCH EACH OTHER AND KISS AND BE SILLY. MY SKIN IS CLEAR AND MY CROPS ARE THRIVING.

Can we do a kickstarter for a NSFW webseries about learning new vocabulary? Or is that only cute with these two?

I CANNOT WITH ALL OF THEIR LITTLE KISSES AND CLAIRE JUST LIKE LOUNGING ON HIM AND HIM LIKE STROKING HER BACK AND I AM DED. I AM THOROUGHLY DECEASED.

Cool that we’re establishing all of this stuff about Jamie’s current situation with the law. So we know all of the stakes and shit already. So maybe there’s no fucking need to end the episode how they did just to get a cliffhanger.

“To find you again... And to lose you.” Like he has to know that he’s basically lying by omission about being married, right? Like Jamie isn’t perfect. If he was he’d be boring. He doesn’t tell Claire about Laoghaire because he’s scared to lose her again. Which I get, but like how did he think it was going to play out? He knows/fears how it’ll play out and we know that from this line. I’m not saying I wish he’d done anything differently. Because that’d be cramming too much into the episode and iron out a flaw that leads to one of my favorite parts of the book...

OK BUT I LOVE ROUND TWO BECAUSE LIKE OMG THEY JUST NEED TO BE TOUCHING EACH OTHER AND JUST BEING WITH EACH OTHER AND GUYS THEY’RE TOGETHER AGAIN AND I JUST WANT TO HUG THEM BOTH EXCEPT LATER BECAUSE I AM NOT PART OF THE RECREATIONAL COCKBLOCKING LEAGUE BECAUSE I’M NOT A MONSTER.

LOOK AT THESE BABIES FALLING ASLEEP ALL CUDDLY AND ADORABLE AND I JUST LOVE THEM SO MUCH.

“Maybe I’m a ghost.” Don’t get cute, show...

CASUAL WITH THE HAND SECKS WHILE RECALLING A CONVO THAT INVOLVED HAND SECKS THE FIRST TIME. I’M OK.

Thanks, Claire Bear, for not wanting to burst this perfect little bubble. We can definitely wait to hear about who Jamie may have gone to in blind need. No need to sully this episode with anything like that.

And high fives for understanding the difference between sex and love and yet omg I can’t wait for everything to blow up because they’re both human and emotions are messy and then for things to get better again in a wicked real way.

Ok is the recreational cockblocking league’s season over yet? Can’t Jamie ever finish his full English breakfast without someone trying to interrupt him? Wtf.

Lady boner for Claire’s little salute.

Lady boner for Jamie saying Jell-O.

I’m trash for Claire calling Jamie soldier. Sorry not sorry.

And I love that it’s the same fucking shot of her very satisfied face as ep. 110.

Perfect Young Ian is perfect. And so is his pause before “woman.”

Glad they clear it up right away that Claire’s his aunt.

“Do you live in a dun?” Are you being sassy, Ian? Or are you legit asking about fairies? Please tell me you’re being sassy. (Either way, I love show!Young Ian.)

“Very please to meet you, Uncle Jamie’s wife.” I LOVE YOU, YOU AWKWARD GOOBER WHO IS APPARENTLY VERY BAD AT HIDING THE FACT THAT YOU’RE PROCESSING INFORMATION THAT WILL BECOME RELEVANT SOON.

Ok, tbh, I would have been fine if they ended the episode with Young Ian leaving. Like awesome. Set up Jamie and Claire cautiously and optimistically back together. Set up Jamie’s various things that can come up and pop their little bubble of innocent bliss. Reintroduced the Murrays. Cool. Done. End it. Roll the credits. Great ending is great.

Except...

I don’t love the whore’s brunch like some people do, but while I don’t think it’s necessary it is nice to see Claire interacting with the community around her. Like to see how at ease she is with these women even though they have nothing in common. Except, you know, having had sex the night before.

Nice little coda. Cool. Done. End it. Roll the credits. Ok ending is ok.

Except...

Ok I hate the last scene with my whole heart. Hate. It.

Why the fuck did they include this? Why the fuck couldn’t they just end the fucking episode on a hopeful note. With all the other shit like the treason and smuggling and questions about Jamie’s past few years all nice and set up so we know not everything will be smooth sailing?

What. The. Actual. Fuck.

Yes, in the book there’s a dude who shows up and manhandles Claire and thinks she’s a whore and flicks her boob while telling her there’s a reward in the form of a percentage of the seized contraband that’s being smuggled through the brothel. And I was hoping they’d change that in the show to like dial it back to just like him menacing over her or something instead of actually grabbing her and touching her boob. Because do we really need more sexual assault? No.

But apparently this fucking show thinks we do.

“Maybe if I fuck you, it’ll jar your memory.” *grabs Claire by the throat* Yep. Instead of even just sticking to the fucking book, they fucking take it up five notches.

Fuck whoever decided to end the episode like this. Fuuuuck them.

And don’t give me any bullshit like “oh it was needed to set up the next episode!” or “oh, but the 18th century is so dangerous, that’s just how things are!” No. Fuuuck that.

Not everything needs to be a fucking cliffhanger.

WE DO NOT NEED ANY MORE FUCKING ATTEMPTED RAPES.

We spent fucking two season with everyone and their brother getting raped and sexually assaulted. Claire knows it’s fucking dangerous. Claire has been assaulted more times than I care to count at the moment. She doesn’t need to fucking get nearly raped *again* within like fucking two days of being back in the past.

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK, SHOW. WHY DO YOU INSIST ON MAKING ME HATE YOU.

But hey. They’re back together again. Woot.

Ok I tried, guys. I really did. But I really don’t care for the majority of A. Malcolm. Consider this a one time only sober!Der gets honest about Outlander...

I watched the episode four times. Not because I loved it, but because I thought watching it more would help me convince myself that I loved it. I watched it twice the night it came out, but I figured I was just like missing something because it was late and I was drunk and maybe it was actually really awesome? So I spent the next day reblogging smutty gifsets at the regatta I was working, thinking that would get me excited to go home and watch it again. And I did watch it again, and was like oh I must still be missing something because I’m sleep deprived and have been day-drinking. So I livetweeted and posted a recap with what I though were the requisite amount of squees and shouty caps so I wouldn’t be The Girl Who Didn’t Like The Reunion. Because I’m always the downer fan. And this was *The Episode*. So clearly I was just watching it wrong and I shouldn’t rain on everyone’s fangirl parade.

But I watched it again yesterday after work, sober and rested, and tried to watch it just as an episode and not like comparing it to the books or over-analyzing it or anything. And yeah, apparently I wasn’t watching it wrong. I just don’t care for a lot of it. So if I were to have written my 100% honest take on it without worrying about being a buzzkill, this would have been it:

I hate how they played Mme Jeanne. It was like they were forcing it and it just didn’t work for me. Seeing Jamie’s day before Claire shows up? Sure, ok, I’ll sit through it because I know what’s coming. But it should have been the only sidequest of the episode. And then Claire shows up and instead of getting sucked in and emotionally invested, I’m stuck watching Jamie take off his pants for no reason. It’s already awkward, there’s no need for that. And then they’re like oh hey remember this motto/catchphrase thing we shared that never happened on screen? Instead of playing like “aw, that’s sweet,” it just took me out of the moment because I was like “wait, when did that happen?” instead of being swept along. Like, there’s a difference between referencing something that happened off screen and doing what’s supposed to be a deliberate callback to a meaningful thing when that meaningful thing was never established. And then they’re interrupted for the first of what seemed like a fuckton of unnecessary times because lol nothing matters.

The scene with the pictures was just terrible. You can’t have Jamie basically be stoic while looking at the pictures of his daughter he sent away his wife to save, shit on the name his wife gave her and then wax poetic about how cool his other kid is. Wtf. I’m all for having him bring up Willie, but they completely fucked up the execution. Jamie barely showing emotion about Bree and then fangirling over Willie seems out of character and cruel to both Claire and Bree.

They needed to move locations so I was fine with meeting Fergus en route, but even that didn’t work as they played it. They built up the Claire and Fergus relationship so much last year but I felt like nothing at their reunion. It was a quick like oh where have you been? Oh cool. Btw, I need to talk business with Jamie. Because clearly that takes precedence over letting the emotional beat of a mother and son seeing each other for the first time in 20 years land. It just felt wicked rushed. I wish they had skipped everything at The World’s End. We already know Jamie’s doing treasonous stuff from the cold open and he’ll give Claire more details on his illegal activities and their potential consequences later in the episode. We didn’t need to meet Willoughby in this episode or the shady dude in the basement.

So then they get to the brothel and Jamie just like immediately starts interrogating Claire. Basically my biggest issue with the first half of the episode is Jamie. Like, can he at least pretend to be happy to see Claire? I get the shock and disbelief and stuff, but jfc dude. It’s like he doesn’t even want her there. They doubled down on his secret and it, for me, sort of ruined his half of their reunion. Like Claire has told him what going through the stones was like for her (we hear him ask her about it in ep. 111), and she literally just gave up her entire life and modern society to come back in time. Plus she left *their daughter* to come find him. I don’t know how many other fucking big red signs you need to tell you why she’s there, Jamie. Stop being an idiot. Like yes, he can and should be vulnerable. He can want to be sure she knows that he’s changed and be scared she might not want him for who he is now. But that’s not how it played. It played like he almost didn’t want her there and was questioning her motives rather than him being vulnerable and scared she might not want him. Putting it all on Claire with how they had Jamie question her wasn’t a good look for him.

I hated the voiceover while they ate. Just let them talk. Don’t VO that they’re talking. Have them actually talk. And sorry, but I really don’t think we needed to watch them silently undress for that long. They could have gotten the same emotions across with a shorter montage and leave more time for, you know, actually catching up after 20 years.

I did like the lead up to round one once they were naked and Claire was all adorable and insecure and Jamie finally acted like he wanted to be there. (Minus the second instance of attempting a meaningful callback to a thing that was never established.) And yeah, round one was going to be awkward. I know, it should be. But then round two wasn’t hot at all? Like they shot a rape scene in ep. 304 like soft-core porn but when the main couple gets back together it’s like awkward side-flopping? Yes, they need to touch each other and look into each other’s eyes and that’s all lovely and should happen, but like the way it was shot didn’t match what the scene should have felt like? Also, their wigs are terrible. Like distractingly terrible.

Them talking in between rounds one and two, and them talking after round two through round three until Jamie leaves I did like for the most part. And I was glad that I did, because I really did want to really like this episode and I feel like if there were important parts to like, it was those parts. And honestly what they talk about there was enough to set up that they weren’t going to stay in this little bubble for very long, so the World’s End stuff and the very not subtle convo with Jamie and Fergus and the stuff at the end seemed even more unnecessary.

I did like Young Ian. Because it’s Young Ian. And I heart that awkward goober. But everything after that, especially ending it on another fucking attempted rape, I could have done without.

So yeah. There were a couple scenes I liked, but as an overall episode? It just didn’t do it for me. And what I did like didn’t really drive me to full on fangirling. It was just like oh, this is better than those other parts. And with the way it ends, it left me feeling angry rather than happy that these characters are back together. Not a great aftertaste for what’s supposed to be like the biggest episode of the series.

And yes, I *know* that they can’t please everyone and that they aren’t making the show specifically for my exact tastes and vision. I’m well aware I’m a #BadFan. But I think I’m still allowed to be disappointed that the episode I was looking forward was kind of a let down for me.

Holy shit this got way longer than I thought it would. I meant to just write a short update and hide it in an old post so I didn’t get yelled at... Because for some reason, bullshitting about how I felt about this episode wasn’t sitting well with me. Whatever. Brevity has never been my strong suit...

Here’s hoping ep. 307 is amazing...

#*#drunj!der yells about outlander #outlander starz #outlander 3x06

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azebraslife · 7 years ago

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A Zebra Plays: FE8 Queen of Swords hack, part 2

Finally finished the so-far-completed nine chapters of the hack.

I’m still upset that Max got HP gains on promotion. I wanted him to live the 9 HP dream :(

In spite of his memery, he was probably my MVP along with my Archer. His huge Def and Res growths made him pivotal to my team since a lot of enemies had stats on par with mine, if not even better at times.

I wonder if the hack maker will buff the stat caps on his promotions, because when I tested out his promotions at level 13, he’d already surpassed both defensive caps and got stat deductions. Which means that as of this version of the hack, he’d be better off remaining unpromoted.

Oh, and you can acquire Rocks from a house in one chapter, and even buy them from Shops in later chapters. Rocks + Max = Amazing. They have 1 Wt, which means he gets no Speed reduction like he would with most axes, and are 1-2 range. Anyone can use Rocks, but I found them best on Max since he has a huge amount of Power, alright Speed (I think I got some lucky growths), but his Con isn’t quite there to handle most two-range Axes.

Chapters 5 and 6 involved us getting chased around by this guy here.

He even brings a buddy with him for Chapter 6!

He’s designed to be unbeatable, which is a bit of a problem in Chapter 5 when the objective is Sieze, and if you’re like me and are taking your sweet time getting to the boss. It doesn’t help that this guy is a Great Knight and is using that mobility for all it’s worth. Keeping everyone out of his range taught me a lot about abusing rescue mechanics. It is not insignificant that units can hop on to other units, and not just be rescued by that unit. (Basically, reverse-rescue.)

Chapter 6 was more interesting since it was an escape map with a side objective of visiting the houses. There was one boss who started on the southern end of the map but made his way up, while these two shitlords appear after a certain turn. As it so happens, I managed to lure the original boss up to that island around that time as well (he’s hidden by the dialogue box), and one of the houses you visit cuts off the two bridges. Which means the bosses are all trapped on that island together and you get to go through the rest of that map in peace. (Also, they don’t have any of that “all other units must go ahead of the Lord” stuff. One unit ends their turn on the escape tile and the map is cleared.)

Also, did you know that you can visit a house if there’s Fog of War on it? Because the original chapter boss has innate fog of war around him (you can actually see it a bit in that above image, it’s the darker tiles). It also can’t be dispelled with thief vision, so you need him to get baited away before you can visit. My (only) flier came in handy for this.

There is no reason for any GBA FE map to be this big. Also, that top left house? You can trade your thief Girouette for Leif. Like, FE Leif. I don’t know why he’s here either. (There’s some guy named Kai on this map, too, who uses Shiva’s portrait. You need to recruit him with the myrmidon girl.)

Here’s Leif, by the way. He’s pretty clearly using a recolored Thracia portrait. I ended up going with Leif because he has Adept for a skill and an 120% HP growth. His other stats are a bit susceptible to RNG, but I decided he was ultimately better than her.

However, if you do pick Leif, anything in Girouette’s inventory will disappear along with her. I actually brought her with me into the map, so I had to trade away her items to another unit before making the switch.

After you cross a certain threshold, one of the map bosses (literally Olaf from Advance Wars) uses his AW gimmick to turn the map into winter wonderland. It impedes movement of all units save for your flier and, as seen here, knights (and Generals). (As an aside, there was a General up top who ended up making my game freeze again when Max got a level up after combat with him. I rectified it by turning off battle animations again.)

Oh, and this is the chapter where you get the Rock. It’s some good shit.

This is one of the chapter’s enemies. You can talk to him. It won’t recruit him. He will continue attacking you, and it will hurt. (He has a unique tome that’s also effective against fliers. Keep the pegasus knight far away from him.)

However, he will automatically join your party after the chapter is cleared (it’s a Seize) and he’s still alive. (I didn’t test what would happen if I killed him, maybe he survives either way.) So the best thing to do is rail against Olaf, who has no weapon, and then seize before this child murders someone. (Alternatively, try to keep him baited with Max. If you’ve been using him regularly, this kid will do 0 damage to him.)

This girl has Desperation, and it procs once her HP goes below 75% or so. Combined with cavalry’s canto, it is amazing. (Her competition isn’t bad, though; he comes way earlier in Chapter 2 and has Cancel. But this game has a lack of deployment spots so she ended up replacing him.)

I haven’t really talked about enemy stats, but as you can see, they really are just about even with the units I have. I would say that most of my units wouldn’t be able to double this generic brigand, and the ones that can are still facing some 40% odds of getting hit. Relying on the RNG is not a good idea, though my units did manage to dodge a good number of 60-70%s.

The final completed map is literally FE6 Chapter 16, sans Douglas and Manaketes. Still have siege and status assholes (though they weren’t actually that hard to deal with in the end).

Also the map boss was great because he’s technically not equipping Fenrir. I was free to just steal it right off him and render him helpless. (He also had a chunky 17 Speed; I fed Leif two levels to push him up to 18 Speed, and if you’re unlucky with his growths it might not get that high. You could also promote him to a Rogue to get +4 Speed from promotion gains.)

Of course, since he’s an infantry unit, you can also capture him to take his stuff. But it’s more fun plucking his tome right out of his fingers.

Long in short I actually do recommend this hack in spite of some of the frustrations with it. Once you get a grasp of the mechanics, it’s a lot more manageable, and the Skills can be fun to play with. It’s a pity most of the Skill Manuals were things like Great Shield and Miracle instead of something flashy. The good stuff comes with promotion, but I didn’t bother promoting anyone (permanently) this time around. It was tempting, but I didn’t do it.

#a zebra plays #fe8 queen of swords #romhacks #long post

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agecfmiracles-archive2 · 5 years ago

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MOBILE MUSES - GRACE HOWARD

GENDER ↠ CIS WOMAN AGE ↠ 26 SPECIES ↠ HUMAN

All Grace Howard has ever wanted is the one thing she’s never had: a real home, and a real family. She had a parents, of a sort. Most kids worship their mothers, the center of a universal orbit, but looking back, Grace really did liken her mom to an angel who got kicked out of Heaven. Mom was pretty, and kind, and always a little sad. Their tiny double-wide trailer on Staten Island was filled with pictures and posters of beautiful desert landscapes that Mom called her home, a long time ago. She never talked about her own family, or why she ended up so far away, and it never occurred to her little daughter to ask. Kids are inherently selfish; they don’t know any better. Still, it would bother Grace for the rest of her life that she never bothered to ask. That Jessica Howard wasn’t really her mom’s name. That she’ll never know the things you start to learn about your parents as you both get older, because Jessica Howard didn’t get to grow old.

Enter Dad. He didn’t come around often, and never stayed long, and that’s exactly how Grace and Jessica liked things. Visitation was his right in the custody agreement, though, in exchange for child support, so once a month (but never on the same day) he would show up with a check, give Grace a cursory pat on the head, and find a reason to fight with Mom over the money. She was always asking too much, or wasn’t grateful enough, or was too eager to take his money and must be blowing it all on drugs or gifts for her boyfriends. Mom’s pride never could stand much damage, and Dad knew it. Within a few minutes of him showing up they’d be locked in the bedroom screaming at each other, with Grace in her room on the opposite end of the trailer pretending she couldn’t hear him hitting her.

Just once, Grace tried to help her mom. Just once, she tried to break the flimsy lock and get inside and tell him to stop. Dad heard her screaming and swung the door open so hard and fast that it broke her nose. Afraid of losing the child support, Mom told the ER nurse that Grace stepped on a rake in the yard and the handle hit her. Grace didn’t blame Mom for lying; it was her own fault for getting in the way.

A few weeks after Grace’s eleventh birthday, a woman called the landline and said she was Harlan Meyer’s wife in a hard, scary voice. Mom took the phone into her room and didn’t come out for hours. Grace played outside until it was long past dark, then put herself to bed.

She never found out what the woman wanted, or why she sounded so scary saying Dad’s name, because a few days later Dad came unexpectedly. They argued, Mom told Grace not to answer the door for anyone and that she would be back soon, and then she left with Dad, looking scared and worried.

The police came two days later and told her Mom was dead, and Dad was in jail. Grace identified him in court, and told the jury that she had seen them leave together that night, and told the jury all the times she could remember him hitting Mom, and told the jury about her own broken nose. Harlan Meyer was found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years in prison, due to the disturbing and violent nature of the act.

For the next seven years, with no living family to claim her, Grace was a ward of the state. She doesn’t like to think about that time. There were a few sleepovers with foster parents; some went well, some went badly, and a few went really, really badly. Tired all the time, miserable and alone, she kept to herself intentionally throughout high school, because her middle school classmates treated her different when they found out her dad murdered her mom. Some kids tried to be nice, but she knew they were scared of her, like being evil was catching and she was Typhoid Mary.

After burying herself in her studies to get through high school alone, but with no idea what she wanted to do with her life, she tried to join the army and failed the physical exam. Asthma since she was ten. She went to a community college in New York, unable to find the point in it but with nothing else to do with her life.

It wasn’t until shortly before she finished her general studies that it occurred to Grace to find out more about her mother’s death. That maybe she owed it to Jessica to learn the details she couldn’t handle at eleven. Looking at the original police report, though, only made her feel worse. Sick and sad and just as helpless as she had felt those two nights alone, waiting for Mom to come back. No one had thought to check on her, Jessica’s self-sufficient girl, abandoned to fend for herself every time a new man came sniffing around. All that loneliness and fear and desolation came rushing back as if it was only yesterday, and at 20 years old Grace decided what she would do with her life. She was going to devote her life to helping other people through awful times like these—just as long as she didn’t go anywhere near traumatized children. Nothing too close to home. She would live her life as well as she could, and maybe she would learn how to be happy.

For the next two years of college Grace shifted her focus to major in psychology with a minor in education, and she did it with a sense of purpose she had never felt before. So many years had been obscured by her own tragedy that she didn’t have the chance to form any opinions about life other than alive was a terrible state to be in. By the time she finished her bachelor’s degree she was eagerly making plans to move on to her master’s in...something useful. Only her financial aid ran out, and she couldn’t afford to take on any loans.

A blessing came in the form of an end-of-semester careers fair, where the still-legitimate SHIELD organization had a booth stationed. A bored-looking recruiter gave her a pamphlet about continuing education on the government’s dime while gaining valuable experience; it seemed too good to be true. Probably because it was. Other than a few crappy part time jobs waitressing, Grace had never had a career; walking into the SHIELD’s New York headquarters for her interview was a culture shock like no other. People were serious but friendly, they were tidy, professional, everyone seemed to know their place, and before she even had the job she felt herself breathing a sigh of relief. Order in a world of chaos. This was perfect. Twenty-two and scared out of her mind, she fumbled her way through the interview and got a job as the counseling office’s assistant, where she would be able to train under the SHIELD mental health counselors and study part-time for her master’s degree. Within four years, three if she worked very hard, she would be prepared to take the licensure exam and become a counselor herself.

By the time she was 23, Grace was transferred to be a counselor at the Triskelion, in Washington, DC, and with the change of scenery she felt like she could finally let herself settle into adulthood. No chance of running into classmates who heard about the trial because their uncle worked at the courthouse. She was finally free of the shackles that had bound her to her childhood. Never since she was eleven had Grace been so happy. Still, Grace wasn't used to having friends. It took her a long time to warm up to her coworkers, even though they were all perfectly kind. Especially Mason, who was a few clearance levels above her — but not technically her supervisor, it turned out when she couldn't help herself asking. Mason made it his responsibility to make sure she knew exactly what was what around the office. He showed a kind interest in her that didn't feel like the interest some of her foster parents had shown, or the interest a particularly malevolent TA in college had shown, either. Just interest. He asked questions, and didn't push if she couldn't answer them.

When she couldn't tell him about herself, he told her about himself instead. How he grew up in foster care after his parents died in a car accident, and he was adopted at the age of seven by the nicest couple in the world who had been fostering kids for twenty years. Grace was intensely jealous of him, and the first time he took her to a family birthday party she had to leave early and cried all the way home. They were all so happy, and only reminded her of her own miserable experience in foster care. But Mason didn't shy away from any of that. He just let her hurt and remember and made sure she knew he was there if she wanted him. And eventually, she did want him.

They started dating, and after six months of pure happiness Grace found out she was pregnant. Maybe it was stupid, being her first serious relationship, but they were in love and decided this was a sign they should get married. They went to a jeweler, picked out rings, and were planning a quiet courthouse ceremony — and then came Insight Day.

It was a quiet morning. Everyone was a little excited about the big day, a little nervous because apparently Captain America was a fugitive, but it didn't have a huge effect on the counseling offices. Grace did her work around the office, worked on some homework, when suddenly Steve Rogers's voice came over the intercoms and half her coworkers pulled out weapons and started firing on the other half. It was instant pandemonium. Grace hid under her desk and hoped she would be passed over, but then a different kind of screaming started. The Helicarriers were colliding and careening toward the Triskelion. Mason dragged her out from under her desk and they ran for the stairwells along with everyone else on their floor and the floors above. The stairs became instantly congested with bodies trying to flee, being picked off from above by the armed agents. A few flights from the bottom, a falling body hit Grace from behind and she was trampled, losing consciousness in the tumult. Hours later, Grace came to in a hospital crammed to overflowing occupancy. She had a broken arm, two broken ribs, a concussion, and had miscarried at eighteen weeks.Two days later, Mason's body was pulled out of the Potomac.

On the third day, she was sent back to her apartment. No family, no SHIELD to return to, half her belongings in boxes in anticipation of moving in with Mason. In the span of a few hours the life she struggled to build had been destroyed. She went back to the Potomac and tried to throw herself in. Her broken arm was just enough of a hindrance, though, that a bystander was able to restrain her and call the authorities, who brought her back to the hospital for 72-hour observation.

With nowhere else to go and an incomplete education to get her counseling licensure, after being released from the hospital Grace returned to New York and started working as line staff at the foster group home where she lived from eleven to eighteen. It was the last thing she ever wanted to do with her life, but the staff reached out to her when news of SHIELD's collapse broke, and the current climate didn't leave an ex-SHIELD agent with many alternative choices.

Salvation came in the form of the newly founded SHIELD, working underground until it could gain some legitimacy and desperate for support. She didn't ask but drew the conclusion for herself that there was no one left to ask besides herself. Still, working with children who reminded her too much of her own upbringing was a daily torment, so she agreed to rejoin SHIELD as an unlicensed counselor. It was better than nothing, for herself and for the agents who were wrestling with the morality of their actions every day.

She did have one condition to re-joining, though: Grace asked to be trained in the same way a field agent would. Not because she wanted to work in the field, but in case anything like Insight Day ever happened again. She had been completely helpless when the insidious Hydra presence started firing on her friends and coworkers, and needed to be prepared and capable of protecting herself, if not others.

The events of Insight Day have left their toll on Grace that will never leave her. After an early life struggling with self-harm and suicidal thoughts due to so violently losing her mother, she also started drinking to help herself sleep at night after returning to New York, and still struggles with those tendencies, severe anxiety, and PTSD.

#mobile muses #grace bio #terrorism cw #murder cw #abuse cw #long post for ts

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