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marshmallowprotection · 3 years ago

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[Previous Post]

By his calculation, it was no real surprise that she couldn't remember anything that she'd said to him.

She had been floating on the edge of elixir and the aftershocks it left in her system, most of what left her lips was nonsensical, at worst. She had far more clarity with her ability to speak but she had been easily distracted and confused if he let her talk without some kind of motivation.

Ray hadn't even had to pry. It was as if she were a Goddess who truly knew everything. She knew things that Ray had to double check for their authenticity but found she was right every step of the way there. There were things that he would have otherwise had no way to know, but she was right enough for him to put every word to thought.

She had firm thoughts and opinions, and it was precious to see her get upset over nothing. She would get so inflamed over this or that, but she spoke of the stories of himself and those around him like it was her livelihood. As if the world around them was her everything.

However, some of her tone needed to be corrected. She spoke highly of much of the RFA, even if she was able to easily proclaim what she saw as a perceived fear or hesitance. He didn't care if she pitied the most of them… he just didn't want her to feel anything for the liar and the traitor. It's why he didn't ask about them.

But, the rest of the members?

He had enough information to draw out anything he wanted from them. She even had her own suggestions for what could work on them. He noted it in her phone, where she had been trying to figure out what may bring the RFA to Mint Eye. It was amusing to think she had considered it before meeting him. It was just another reminder that she was meant to be a saint to Mint Eye.

Setting aside his feelings in knowing that her information had been given to her because of a game, he knew it didn’t matter how she got it. She wielded it with grace and luxury in her hands. She built upon the backs of what she had been handed and made it stronger... she found holes in stories and mended them by her hands.

"Princess, relax for me," he was as gentle as he could be but she simply hadn't had the time to learn how to sit still. She was coming more and more out of her gaze so she was having such a hard time with her tremors. "I know it's hard. But I need you to look your best today."

Either way, Ray had what he needed and plans could begin. But, right now, he had something even more important to think of. His Savior wanted to meet the person who would save Paradise with ease, his precious one. He tutted when he felt her squirm underneath his hand, smoothing out the brush against her messy curls as he did.

Kaitlyn blinked a few times and then looked at the reflection in the mirror. She would see Ray fretting over little things as he did but she hadn’t quite realized how much work he was doing. He had taken great care to make her look exactly as radiant as she was. If they didn't see it before, they would see it in front of the Savior.

He caught her hand before it could touch her hand, and he lowered it back down onto her lap with a tight smile. He spent an awfully long time making her messy curls tighter and consistent. He didn’t want her to mess any of it up because she wasn’t in the state of mind to look at herself just yet.

She was easily placated, though.

All it’d taken to make her listen to him in the first place was to wrap his coat around her shoulders. She stopped shivering and shaking when he did. It was almost adorable. Compared to the acidic mint and undertones of alcohol within the potion, he imagined the floral scent calmed her down. Aromatherapy was a good idea! If he could’ve taken her back to the garden...

As the clarity was slowly returning, she seemed like in a daze and more of a frenzy. Her eyes darted all over the place as she strained to figure out where she was and why she was there. He knew that feeling, it happened often as he came out of the buzz that elixir warranted to those that survived the first trial.

"Why…?"

"You're meeting with my Savior, remember?"

He frowned. What did she have to be afraid of? Did she misunderstand how lucky she was? Or, was the elixir still making her fearful to be alone with other people except for him? She would cry out with names that he couldn’t recall or know, after all. She might’ve been scared to make a fool of herself in front of his Savior.

Something akin to fear flashed in her eyes, “I thought... I thought you said she was okay with us being together, Ray.”

“Of course! My Savior promised that we’ll be together, but she wants to meet you so our mission can begin. After all, she wants to formally greet you as a true member of paradise! You took the elixir so well, too. It’s amazing. So, she wants you to see our paradise now that you’re able to function properly.”

She’d seen worse.

—

“I’m...”

“A member of paradise,” Rika spoke with resolution. Her emerald eyes flickered over the newcomer, as if sizing her up and trying to figure out the best way to be able to pick her mind apart. “It’s a pleasure to welcome you to Magenta, for the first time, officially. While you must be surprised to be here with you, I must thank you for offering your wisdom and insight to ensure our success.”

To put it plainly, Rika was searching for something in between the lines. Ray had said over and over that her information knew no bounds but there were parts of it that he couldn’t gain access to quite yet. She knew everything about them and yet, she was devoted to the cause. She had no doubt in her mind after what he’d shown her on that phone.

She always imagined that she would have to tether Ray with a string to keep him to obey but now she had two tools to use at her disposal. She not only had Ray who worked himself like a dog for the smallest grain of affection, and now, this girl who would do anything for Ray and the paradise that he wanted to hold so badly.

Photos that couldn’t exist in this world as they existed in quality unlike their own. Information about everything and everyone that nobody was ever meant to get into their hands. Reports and essays that could rival anyone in their terms of control and clarity. Her devotion to Ray was something else, and it could readily be used and manipulated.

An idealistic young woman who believed in empathy and shining love. She was a realist but her romantic heart could sway her to be bent easily. It reminded her much of herself before she realized her true potential. A shining light was easy to capture as long as you had the right tools.

Then, she would finally feel the light of salvation.

This could be a useful love.

Love built upon obsession that came from sincere bonds. Unlike the way that her former flame had done. His love had burned and devoured every part of her heart and now... she could take back her precious family from his clutches and wave this love in his face. She could use it, she could use them, and she was going to do so.

Though, Ray seemed to have dosed her with more than she expected. Her eyes still looked glossy even though she had enough clarity to realize the situation at hand. Her hand nervously fiddled with the fabric of the borrowed coat she wore, as her eyes darted left to right, not wanting to meet Rika’s gaze.

No matter, it was a delight either way to see things working.

Though this girl was taller than she was, she paid no mind, resting her hand against her shoulder to catch her attention. “You don’t need to worry about a thing. You’ve proven your capability already with your charming perspective, I must say, you’re a delightful read when you tear people down. You’ve seen the things I’ve always overlooked.”

“Ah, I...” Kaitlyn murmured. It was a small nod to indicate that she’d heard what Rika said. “I... I like to study people, it’s a hobby... I’m not that great for what it's worth.”

Oh.

An insecurity.

“Ray has shown me otherwise. Your words will be the very thing that save my precious mistreated family. I’m interested to hear more about what you think we should do. After all, someone as devoted as you can only know talent. Trust me, I know skill when I see it. I welcome it to our paradise because we need people like you.”

“...Thank you, Savior,” the words seemed foreign against her lips but she had managed to catch herself in time. She seemed to be good in print but in need with her actual words. “I... I’m thankful you see it that way. I’m... I’m happy you have welcomed me.”

Rika’s attention shifted back to Ray. He seemed to be eyeing his plaything with a serious fever in his eyes. It could’ve been a problem, but... as long as she knew that this infatuation was going to secure paradise, she would allow it. It wasn’t as if they would be able to turn away from their promised future. It was a given, and Ray would never let go of it, now.

She smiled.

What a frightened little rabbit.

“Ray, be a dear and see to it that she’s comfortable. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us if we want to achieve our goals within the next few months... aren’t you pleased it won’t take years to succeed now? All you’ve ever wanted, you’ve got it in your grasps. Don’t lose sight of that,” her voice was clear. “To get what you want, you must never look away from what’s ahead. No matter how ugly it seems. After all, I have a strong feeling that our dear Kaitlyn will have them on their knees soon enough.”

His expression changed with that. His lips curled upward and he nodded, his way of saying he understood. The bloodlust in his eyes... now, that was what she wanted to hold onto. As long as he behaved, as long as he kept his dream ahead, paradise would thrive, and she would have what she wanted. Jihyun on his hands and knees, begging for mercy.

And she’d snap him like a twig for thinking she’d given him a chance after what he did.

Rika stepped back and Ray stepped forward. He took her by the hand and let her gaze into his eyes, that cloudy look leaving him as he played the role that he wanted. Pity, he wanted to be a prince when he was better suited for something else. Well, in due time, she thought.

“I’ll begin preparations, my Savior. For eternal paradise.”

“For eternal paradise, my children.”

#self insert #danger ray #drabble #mod kait

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bloodraven55 · 4 years ago

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Dude I just saw the stupidest take of my life, someone waa like ' if you can forgive catra then you should be able to forgive shadow weaver because they are basically the same and catra never really apologized for anything and shadow weaver was also abused' It's like adam apologists all over again shitting on ilia even though she actually had remorse for her actions and tried to make good choices i am a f salt mine today literally fuming :(

Yeah that's some bullshit. See, here's the thing. It's fine if personally you weren't invested in Catra and her story, or if you never cared about her and Adora's relationship. We all have personal preferences and some stuff just won't be to your taste! But you can acknowledge that something is good without liking it yourself, and without trying to twist the facts to prove that your opinion is correct.

So for interest's sake let's break this down point by point.

“[Catra and Shadow Weaver] are basically the same.”

Catra is a highly traumatised teenager who was raised without a single positive role model or example of healthy behaviour, while being put through constant verbal and physical abuse from her guardian/parental figure which made her feel completely worthless and inferior to everyone, and as a result developed self-destructive tendencies and damaging defence mechanisms which caused her to lash out at people to avoid being hurt again.

Shadow Weaver is a fully grown adult who knowingly and insidiously abused and manipulated both Catra and Adora throughout their entire lives up until they were approaching adulthood and previously risked the life of a literal child performing a dangerous spell because of her desire for power clouding her reason. She was never shown to grow up in a horrifically negative environment and the trauma she suffered during the Spell of Obtainment was primarily her own doing.

There's a parallel to Catra in that Shadow Weaver also felt neglected and taken for granted by her mentor figures, but they are not remotely the same.

“Catra never really apologised for anything.”

During Season 5 Catra apologises on no less than three separate occasions (to Adora in S5E3, to Entrapta in S5E6, and again to Adora in S5E8) and she also tries to apologise to Scorpia on two separate occasions but can't because the first time Scorpia is brainwashed and the second time Scorpia hugs her before she can finish. And not a single one of those times does she attempt to justify anything she did, or attempt to put any of the responsibility on other people.

Catra has repeatedly acknowledged her mistakes and sincerely expressed regret for them without any blame shifting or dismissing the pain she caused, and to say otherwise is flat out not true.

“Shadow Weaver was also abused.”

I sort of already covered this, but yeah, this point also doesn't hold up at all. We're shown that Shadow Weaver felt ignored and sidelined by the other sorcerors, but never that she was deliberately stripped of her self esteem and repeatedly mistreated to the point of torture.

Comparing Shadow Weaver's frustration at her colleague's unwillingness to take extreme risks which could have equally severe consequences to Catra being constantly treated like literal garbage and ““punished”” with magic from when she was still just a child is ridiculous.

“Catra's toxicity towards Scorpia was the same as Shadow Weaver's abuse of Adora and Catra.”

They're the same in that neither situation was remotely okay. But again, equating a traumatised victim of child abuse projecting that cycle of abuse onto someone else to the perpetrator of said child abuse who began that cycle in the first place is, uh... Not a Good Take.

This isn't to excuse anything about the way Catra treated Scorpia or anyone else she hurt—those actions were entirely her own and she had to take responsibility for them and face the consequences—but to say those two examples are identical is wrong.

“Shadow Weaver deserved a redemption arc.”

No, she didn't. Because as you say, she never took any of the necessary steps to redeem herself.

Noelle has said that Shadow Weaver's death wasn't a redemption, and I also remember her saying that as far as Shadow Weaver was concerned, once she was working with the Rebellion she considered herself redeemed and one of the good guys. Which is exactly why Shadow Weaver never deserved redemption, because she didn't even understand that she needed to redeem herself.

Shadow Weaver never once hesitated over her decisions or showed any remorse for what she did to Catra and Adora. She never apologised to anyone, and the only truly good thing she ever did was to die so that her victims would be free of her forever. But even then, her “you're welcome” to Catra shows that she still wasn't being truly selfless and felt like she was obligated to some measure of forgiveness for doing the absolute bare minimum.

On the other hand, let's look at some of the main things Catra does in Season 5 as part of her redemption arc.

She saves Glimmer, risking her life and allowing herself to be tortured similarly to how Shadow Weaver used to ““punish”” her with her magic, I might add and brainwashed in an attempt to keep Adora safe.

She chooses to try and discover Horde Prime's plans by looking into his mind using her chip, even though it means reliving a hugely traumatic experience, in an attempt to help Adora and the Rebellion against Horde Prime.

She literally throws herself headfirst into fire with zero hesitation to try and rescue Adora.

She stays behind to fight what is essentially a giant potentially deadly monster alone, once again to protect Adora and hopefully allow her to save Etheria.

She lets herself be physically attacked by members of the Rebellion on multiple occasions without fighting back or holding onto any bitterness over it because she knows it's warranted.

She offers or at least tries to offer genuine apologies to the people she hurt the most (Adora, Entrapta, and Scorpia) without attempting to excuse any of her wrongdoing and without any expectation of forgiveness.

Catra achieves zero personal gain through any of these actions. They are wholly selfless acts, and that's how she proves that she's actually changing for the better. Not with one single instance of doing a decent thing which comes with a “you're welcome” as a final guilt trip, but with repeated good choices which she makes without demanding any sort of reward for them.

To give more examples:

In Episode 3, Catra starts to learn how to apologise for the things she did and express the regret she feels over her actions.

In Episode 6, Catra starts to learn how to let herself be vulnerable, and how to openly and honestly ask for the things she wants instead of assuming other people already know and then lashing out when they don't understand. She also lets Adora set clear boundaries without reacting badly, and manages to share her feelings knowing that Adora might choose to reject her or walk away.

In Episode 8, Catra starts to learn that feeling exposed and embarrassed isn't always a bad thing, and that when the rest of the group tease her it's a sign of them beginning to accept her rather than them mocking her— that they're laughing with her, rather than at her. She also shows that she's making progress towards working through her issues by finding ways to manage her anger rather than lashing out.

In Episode 9, Catra tries to reassure Netossa that Spinnerella will be okay, demonstrating that she's starting to learn how to empathise with other people more and express sympathy for their struggles.

In Episode 10, Catra is willing to go back to the Fright Zone with Adora and the others, a.k.a. return to the place which is the source of most of her trauma, because she knows it's what has to be done.

In Episode 11, Catra decides to go to Mystacor with Adora and the others even though it's Shadow Weaver's idea, a.k.a. follow a plan thought up by the woman who's the source of most of her trauma, because she knows it's what has to be done. She also willingly lets Adora go to the Heart and potentially sacrifice herself which has literally been Catra's greatest fear throughout this entire season, because she accepts that it's Adora's choice to make and finally understands that Adora's priority will always be the greater good and she can't and shouldn't change that.

In Episode 13, Catra chooses to stay by Adora's side no matter what, regardless of whether Adora feels the same way about her, because she's reached a place where she's able to accept that her feelings might not be reciprocated and she still wants to be there for Adora in any way necessary even so— even if it means watching the love of her life die in front of her.

Catra spends the entire season going through the personal growth necessary to become a better person and learn how to have healthy connections with people. She makes the effort to improve time after time and dedicates herself to the ongoing job of breaking her toxic tendencies and making up for everything she did. If you still don't believe that she deserved to find peace and love after all of that then I can't make you, but you can't just ignore everything that happened in the show.

tl;dr - you don't have to like Catra or her arc, but she more than earned her happy ending.

#she ra #spop #catra #she ra catra #spop catra #shadow weaver #she ra shadow weaver #spop shadow weaver #she ra spoilers #spop spoilers #she ra analysis #spop analysis #she ra meta #spop meta #asks #anon asks #raven answers y'all

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violaslayvis · 4 years ago

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Dear Megan,

From the time you burst onto the scene, you have been a breath of fresh air. Your ethic of “real hot girl sh–” reminded us to have fun and embrace our sensuality, even if it meant living vicariously through you and envying those knees! More than anything, you were the girl from around the way who was everybody’s friend. The one who wrote the nicest messages in our senior yearbook and promised to keep in touch. Everyone, including your famous peers, enjoyed watching your rise and did so with immense joy. You are such a light.

That made it even more devastating, when you broke your silence to let us know you’d been a victim of gun violence. As one of the elder “Hotties”, I wanted to know who did it and where I could find them. Even though some of us have never met you, we’re protective of you. Because you are one of us. When you took to Instagram Live to give us an update, I watched with immense pride and sadness. I am happy you’re alive and continuing to thrive. Many of us are right alongside you, thanking God and your ancestors that you will make a full recovery. And we are heartbroken that you had to endure any of this at all. You didn’t deserve it.

While the specific details of what happened are yours alone to share, the first and only question for many of us is “why?” Why would anyone do this to Meg? She is so nice. Maybe too nice. There were more than a few times we saw pictures and videos of you posted up and “driving the boat” with folks who warranted a side eye. There are many who wanted to be around you because, as your star rose, it gave them momentary status and validation. They used you for clout. But even if we were skeptical of folks around you, the truth is you are navigating all of this–the good and the bad–without the people who would protect you from these people the most. To the world, you are Megan Thee Stallion. But, in so many ways, you’re just Megan Jovon Ruth Pete, a girl who wants her mama and daddy.

I don’t think many realize that it has only been a year since your mother passed. An essential barrier of protection is gone and it takes a minute to wrap your mind around that. I was grateful for your transparency that, after her death, you tried to fill your life with as many people as possible in hopes of reaching the void created by her passing. After the death of a parent, 40 percent of people experience a major depressive episode within the first month and, unfortunately, Black women are less likely to seek help with depression and grief. So many of us tried to fill our lives with other people and overall busy-ness to cope with the loss of our mothers. It left us vulnerable to those who didn’t mean us any good. It made us prey for folks who took advantage of our kindness and grief. It wasn’t until recently that I realized I was looking for my mother in other people. I let certain people close to me because I thought that, if they were around, I could feel my mother through them and she would still be alive. It sounds crazy when I think about it, but grief is like that. It doesn’t make much sense.

Like many, my heart and my prayers have been with you as you’ve journeyed through this while also having to watch as others make a mockery of your pain. It amazes me how, in a moment of global uprising where we are calling for an end to systematic oppression, we fail to realize how oppressive we can be within our own communities. I waited to see how many of those who couldn’t wait to publicly post their pictures with you, when you were up, would take to those same platforms to denounce what was happening and stand with you while you were down. Maybe they sent you flowers and texts, as you said. And that’s good. But we need more people–especially Black men–calling out the mistreatment of Black women whenever it happens.

...More than anything, I hope that you don’t dim the light we love so much but learn who deserves to stand with you in the fullness of its brilliance and glory. It is beautiful sight to behold.

You are ours and we love you.

With Love,

Candice

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totallyjazzed · 4 years ago

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Analysing Copaganda (or "I watched seven seasons of Brooklyn 99 so you don't have to")

Introduction:

Several months ago my parents approached me asking if I wanted to watch Brooklyn 99, not knowing anything about it, my first instinct was to say no, but then I thought it would be interesting, to watch it and write a proper analysis for exactly what makes it propaganda and why it gives liberals brain worms. If you've spent any amount of time engaging with politics online for the last few years, you've likely already heard of Brooklyn 99. It's a sitcom written by Michael Schur, who previously wrote The Office (I'll get to that later), Parks & Recreation, and The Good Place. The show follows the lives of a squad of police detectives in Brooklyn and the wacky hijinks they get up to.

Brooklyn 99 has become famous, or arguably infamous, on Tumblr (and potentially other social media websites too) for being used as a "retort" to anti-cop sentiments (namely ACAB and any variation thereof), mainly taking the form of "the only good cop is Raymond Holt". In this essay (to use a funny Tumblr meme phrase) I will provide a brief overview of the show and the main characters, and analyse how the show, and each character individually, is pro-cop propaganda (copaganda).

The Show:

Brooklyn 99 is The Office, at least from what I understand about The Office. It’s a sitcom based in a workplace in which characters often pull pranks on each other and have wacky adventures pertaining to their job. The main thing that sets it apart from The Office is that the workplace in question is a police station, this makes it a cop show too. However, unlike more “classic” cop shows like CSI, Law & Order, The Wire, and so on, B99 doesn’t seek to glorify it’s characters as action heroes, but rather paint them as normal people living normal lives. This is far more insidious than the picture of the gnarled man of action who doesn’t play by the book, and by making the characters relatable the show gives viewers people to project onto, making them more vulnerable to the propaganda of the show.

Occasionally, in a break from the antics of Relatable Immature Prankster Archetype and Funny Overly Attached Best Friend Archetype, the show will attempt to say something about racism, or homophobia, or misogyny, or something like that, and while it usually feels well-meaning it often falls flat as it’s a watered-down safe-for-TV version of whatever the issue du jour is.

In S4E16 (“Moo Moo”), Terry is harassed by a racist cop while he doesn’t have his badge, and is almost arrested until he manages to prove his cop status, the rest of the episode revolves around how racism is bad and that one singular racist cop is a problem, in the end Terry submits a complaint to the NYPD higher-ups and gets his job application denied, and the racist cop gets away with a slap on the wrist. Throughout the show, Captain Holt tells stories about how he suffered from racism and homophobia, and still does. Transphobia is mentioned once (presumably for brownie points) in a throwaway line about Ace Ventura.

At the end of Season 4, Jake and Rosa are framed for a series of bank robberies and sent to prison, and the first two episodes of Season 5 work to show that prison is bad and prisoners are mistreated, they also make abundantly clear that everyone in prison is a menace and deserves to be there (Jake’s cellmate is a literal cannibal and he’s shown to be one of the nice inmates), once the duo are released from jail, there are a few lines here and there about how prison is bad, but they’re only throwaways used to serve as one-off jokes and never again used as an actual critique of the prison system.

Police Brutality is never mentioned, the closest it comes to bringing it up is in S1E19 (“Tactical Village”), where Rosa is introduced to a sonic-blast weapon and aims it as Charles, this is clearly supposed to be a very harmful piece of equipment, but it's only appearance is treated as a joke.

There are also recurring gags about Defense Lawyers being “the enemy” because they only defend guilty parties (the show heavily implies that none of the squad has ever arrested the wrong person), which meshes with the harmful stereotype in cop shows of only guilty people saying for a lawyer or a warrant or whatever, which has been documented before by others.

The Characters:

Jake Peralta (played by Andy Samberg) is the Relatable Immature Prankster Archetype I mentioned before, he’s the office funnyman and usually responsible for the majority of the goings-on and goings-wrong in the show, while he does mature and evolve through the show he never grows out of this character. He’s the closest the show gets to the “gnarled man of action who doesn’t play by the book” character I mentioned before, not because he is that character but because he wants to be, his favourite movie is Die Hard and it’s the reason he joined the police, so he could be like the cool bruce willis man. He’s also the most unlawful character on the show, in S1E7 (“48 Hours”), he arrests a man with no evidence and the squad is essentially locked down until evidence can be found, in the end it turns out the man is guilty. Jake is scolded for this, not for essentially breaking the law, but for wasting everyone’s time when they had much better things to do that night. Jake’s character is propaganda because he’s the zany relatable one with a heart of gold.

Amy Santiago (played by Melissa Fumero) is the overly-organised hyper-nerd archetype, in direct opposition to Jake. Her dream is to be the NYPD’s youngest female captain, and she’s very “I want to keep the people safe” in her approach to policing. In S3E3 (“Boyle’s Hunch”), she is used as the face of the NYPD’s poster campaign, only to have her image vandalised, which is painted by the show as being very bad and sad. Amy’s character is propaganda because she’s the uptight peacekeeper who sticks to the rules.

Charles Boyle (played by Joe Lo Truglio) is the Funny Overly Attached Best Friend Archetype I mentioned before, often depicted as bumbling and naive, he’s an incredibly competent detective, arguably more so than Jake. He’s usually polite and friendly, and has moments of childishness that compliment Jake’s character. Charles’ character is propaganda because he’s the nice guy who just wants what’s best for everyone.

Raymond Holt (played by Andre Braugher) is probably the character most people are aware of, he’s a somewhat stuck-up man who embodies a lot of the same characteristics as Amy, he’s highly-educated, incredibly smart and quick-witted, and emotionally restrained. Originally presented as an outsider, being the new guy to the pre-existing friendgroup, he learns to relax and let go over the course of the show, and acts almost as a father figure to the other characters, primarily Jake and Amy. Raymond’s character is propaganda because he’s a black gay cop.

Rosa Diaz (played by Stephanie Beatriz) is tough, aloof, and often scary in the eyes of the other characters, she is shown to have problems with engaging with people socially, particularly romantically, and while her exterior is rough as uncaring, she’s shown to be fiercely loyal and have some not-so-tough secrets. In Season 5 she comes out to the squad as Bisexual. Rosa’s character is propaganda because she’s the no-nonsense tough cop who secretly has a heart of gold.

Terry Jeffords (played by Terry Crews) is a kind and caring man with a firm-but-fair attitude, acting as Holt’s second-in-command he also acts as a father figure to the other characters, he has two (eventually three) children which he is often seen gushing about. He is the most mature of the group, on-par with Holt in some respects but sometimes more so, refusing to take part in hijinks to focus on his job. Terry’s character is propaganda because he’s the physically strong and imposing, yet kind cop who just wants to provide for his family.

Michael Hitchcock (played by Dirk Blocker) and Norm Scully (played by Joel McKinnon Miller) are an inseparable pair of bumbling, lazy, oafs. Scully is fat, lazy, and old, Hitchcock is lecherous, lazy, and old. They’re propaganda because they’re the lazy incompetent cop archetype.

There are plenty of minor recurring characters, as well as Gina Linetti, a main character who left after Season 6, however as she’s a liaison and not a cop I won’t be analysing her in detail.

There’s a lot more I could have mentioned here, from the dirty cop that sense Jake and Rosa to jail, or the police commissioner who wants to spy on everyone’s phones all at once, Holt even says the line “I don’t want to live in a Police State”, but I’ve left them out for the sake of brevity.

Conclusion:

Brooklyn 99 is copaganda to it’s very core, this much everyone already knows, but unlike serious cop dramas and high-stakes high-action cop shows, Brooklyn 99 offers viewers an escape to a world where the police are the force for good that people want them to be. The premise of “The Office but police” suckers people in with nostalgia for the late 2000s/early 2010s back when things were “good”. Given Michael Schur’s previous work I imagine he and the other writers didn’t explicitly set out to make copaganda, but it’s undeniable that this is what was achieved. And now with the political climate being what it is and the threat of a potential Season 8 addressing this year’s BLM protests, it’s now more important than ever to be able to identify and root out police propaganda, no matter how unassuming, no matter the source.

#long post

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orchidbreezefc · 5 years ago

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OKAY COOL I WAS ON THE FENCE ABOUT POSTING MY OWN EXPERIENCES IN THE KFAM DISCORD BECAUSE A POST ABOUT People Being Mean To Sage Specifically SEEMED KIND OF MASTURBATORY OR SELF-PITYING OR WHATEVER BUT IF WE REALLY ARE GOING TO STILL BE OUT HERE PUSHING THE This Server Is A Lovely Familial Community And Dissenters Are The Problem NARRATIVE EVEN NOW? HELL NO. ABSOLUTELY NOT.

obviously this is hard to be objective about. this stuff is a lot less concrete than my first post, a lot more based on vibes i got, which, yknow, is why it’s not in my first post. but if anyone identifies with this, if anyone sees their own experiences in this discord reflected in mine, then it’s going to be worth the worry i’m reading too much into things, or others thinking the same of me. if i can help anyone who felt like THEY were mistreated there and weren’t sure if they were reading too much into things, then. it’s worth it. especially since the M.O. in there was ‘everything’s fine and if not we’re going to MAKE IT FINE by silencing anyone who disagrees’.

a lot of talk has been done about the censorship (word used loosely, first amendment protects from the government not from the mods etc, definitely a specific suppression of dissenting ideas though) the mods have been doing--once more i suggest @kfam-tea for receipts and screenshots. not something i feel great about, but not something i have personal experience with, so i won't speak to it. see also my first post about my interactions with the creators. it touches on the dogpiling, which i'll go into more depth on in this post. you can find it [link: here].

so. the first thing in the official discord that tipped me off about the hivemind samethink phenomenon is that the whole place is distinctly frosty on the subject of samben. that’s a post all its own, one that follows through to numbers on ao3 and whatever, but i’m not here to make a ship manifesto. suffice it to say i got attached to the ship upon listening, inhaled the (suspiciously small) ao3 tag, and was stopped in my tracks at the discord server where any implication of such ship inclinations were met with silence and pointed changes of subject.

distinctly weird. distinctly unusual fandom behavior, that i couldnt even hint around shipping the two men whose incredibly profound relationship is literally the crux of the show, who have exchanged ‘i love you’s, one of whom is confirmed gay--all other romantic entanglements aside, because when have those stopped shippers? that was weird. i realize that's maybe a bit tinfoil hat of me. it could have been the goldfish-bowl big-brother-is-watching vibe from having creators in there, except, as i said, it carries to other sites.

anyway, much more concrete was when i spoke out about my thoughts on ben’s actions in ep68. again, enough there for another post, so tl;dr: he was doing his best, he’s a good guy and a good friend, but his actions DIRECTLY outed sammy to the WHOLE town, without allowing sammy to say the words himself. it was an accident, yes, but it had tangible, harmful consequences, and even accidental harm warrants apology. it should at least be... acknowledged. at some point. by the show OR the fandom. it's a disservice to ben himself to never get the chance to own up to it.

this was an unacceptable take. i tried breaching this topic and making my case twice, and got THOROUGHLY dogpiled both times. a dozen fans crawled out of the woodwork to argue heatedly, sometimes getting quite aggressive, sometimes toeing the line of outright hostility toward me personally. definitely some downright rude messages. not once did anybody speak up to defend my right to put forward my dissenting opinion, let alone SUPPORT my argument, god forbid. ben’s were the actions of a good friend, i was told. outing someone to their whole town without giving them the chance to say it on their own terms didn't qualify as harm at all, i was told, on account of ben's heart being in the right place.

still, the opinions being argued matter less than the attitudes and behaviors. people don't have to agree with me about that ep, i don't care. i do care about being given the right to, as a single person on my own, have space to make an argument without being shouted down by a dozen people. i do care about how it fit into a greater pattern of forbidding any criticism of the show, and ben in particular, who is a good friend and therefore all of his actions are good and harmless, who is our resident heterosexual unassailable paragon of purity. which might explain the samben problem--sammy/ron[/jack] was perfectly fine, even popular, but there was never a whisper of shipping ben with anyone but emily. they're Official. theyre The Perfect Couple. don't you dare challenge that (and for the most part, i didn’t dare. i quickly learned not to).

my [link: previous post] details kyle's response to these fun events, where he specifically went out of the way to follow me being shouted into silence (a result of me being driven to literal tears and shutting down rather than invite more argument) with a warm congratulations to everybody for their conduct in this discussion. because that's the kind of conversation kyle wants to specifically and explicitly praise and encourage, i guess.

anyway. this contributed to the growing sense over my time in the discord that people held a certain distaste for me but didn’t want to say anything direct. instead they talked around me, ignored me, immediately changed the subject from my messages, the whole while bestowing constant glowing compliments on each other and endlessly repeating saccharine sentiments about what a nice family type community they were, how grateful they were for the discord being such a positive space. i suppose that’s an easy impression to get when negativity is ruthlessly suppressed (and apparently outright censored nowadays) and instead of insults or, god forbid, communication with people with whom folks might take issue, they just (more or less) silently stonewall and cold shoulder them.

again, i could be misreading cues, being egocentric or tinfoil hat by reading this pattern into how i in particular was treated. either way, the fact that i was given the fandom friday shout out the week after KFAM live was definitely... strange. fishy, even. i was already mostly out the door at that point, had been for weeks--it was actually in my last few days speaking there period. i felt strangely guilty that they would dedicate a day to me when i didn’t like being there much and hardly spoke any longer. one thing’s for sure: my congratulations were fewer and more impersonal, perfunctory, and/or generic than other fans got (i kept a screenshot). i still have no idea what to make of that one, but there you have it.

p.s.: since vagues are in vogue now apparently, i might as well mention the person who's been accused of being A Problem In The Discord For A While Now, among nastier things, which definitely is not an effort to justify kyle's passive aggressive response to their untagged post which used the phrase 'death of the author', or kyle subsequently crying on twitter about death threats because apparently he couldn't be bothered to google a basic literary analysis term and thought if he was vague enough nobody would look into what was actually said. i guess he was right, if the hundreds of asspats and outcries against The Evils Of Podcast Fan Meanies were any indication.

i digress. i just wanted to testify that the fan in question was one of maybe three or four people on the server who consistently treated me nicely and acted like they liked me. and that another fan who claimed to be uncomfortable around death-of-the-author-person was the person who came the closest to being outright nasty to me when i expressed a critical opinion. make of that what you will i guess!

p.p.s.: if i never say anything more about this whole thing or the creators’ part in it, i do want to say for the record: noah james is fully exempt from all of this and remains absolutely wonderful and a whole treasure. like dont pedestalize male creators and assume them incapable of wrongdoing etc etc but i had an hour long midnight denny’s breakfast sitting across from him and he was nothing short of an angel the whole time. sweetest guy i’ve ever met. he hasn’t breathed a word about any of this drama. he may not even know it’s going on because he’s too busy being the most beautiful and talented man in america or something. i love you noah

#sage speaks #sage original post #kfam #king falls am #kfam drama #kfam critical #kfam negative #kfam hate #long post #kfam tea #ok to reblog

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kokkuri3 · 5 years ago

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I think VnC’s treatment of female characters is better than in PH, where most of them were props, tools to further the development of males, *coughLacieyoudeservedbetter*, tools to humanise the males *coughAdayoucan’tfixhimwithlove, endlessly forgiving and impossibly saintly *coughreallyAlyssyou’rejustgonnaforgiveJacklikethatyouarenotangryatall??*, amongst other problematic tropes.

VnC’s treatment of female characters is absolutely better than PH’s-- in fact, I’d say VnC was one of the few shounen manga to consistently treat its female characters with the same passion and respect as its male ones. One thing I say often is that VnC feels as thought it was written with Mochizuki having acknowledged PH’s problems (the complete lack of nonwhite characters, the continual mistreatment of female characters, the at times facetious treatment of issues such as incest or pedophilia which is... Not A Fan) and to that effect, I think she is making a deliberate effort to make multiple female characters with their own arcs which exist outside of men, who have important relationships with other women, who are capable of agency in the same capacity as their male counterparts.

This post isn’t really about VnC though so I’m not gonna sing its praises much anymore. I’ve talked before about how, despite being written by a woman, despite clearly acknowledging misogyny as a chronic problem among violent men PH is... not especially self aware when it comes to the misogyny of its own narrative.

I’ve made my thoughts on Lacie clear before (see here) and particularly how I believe her treatment was one of the times where PH’s treatment of women was particularly remarkable in that it’s good, despite her arc being drenched in misogynistic abuse and violence. I absolutely wish that the atrocities pinned on Lacie being not her fault was made more clear (aside from what I said in the post, and Oz saying that Lacie would never desire for the destruction of the world she loved) but I don’t think her writing itself was misogynistic-- I’d even go as far as to say it was feminist, though, obviously, I’m open to disagreement.

What most certainly does piss me off, however, is the writing of Ada’s arc. Yesterday I joked about Ada being the ‘anti-Lacie,’ and while it was a joke, I still intended some seriousness with it. Unlike Lacie, who was forced to constantly reevaluate her morals and the positions of her and her loved ones as a person whose existence was an inherent sin and who was abused throughout her life, Ada’s arc is built around the fact that she has never had to question anything. Similarly, while Lacie’s arc is about how she sought her own agency despite being surrounded by and allowed only those who were at best complacent in her suffering, Ada’s arc is about how... she continually sought out and apologized for a misogynistic predator despite being surrounded by better options.

The gender of the Core of the Abyss is something which I think warrants a separate post, but the official translation refers to the Core as being female, and for nearly the entire story she takes the form of a girl. Lacie reached out to an entity referred to and most often perceived as female, sought to understand her, and was abused as a specific consequence of this. Ada, meanwhile, made no real attempts at sympathy for her female counterparts. She never sought to question the circumstances of Noise, or Echo, or their relationship with Vincent. She gave forgiveness for crimes she had not been affected by nor did she even understand; her defense of Vincent was done not out of concern for Noise’s psyche but out of unquestioned pity for her abuser.

Ada’s arc bothers me for its utter lack of agency. She was a teenaged girl, expected to fix a predatory, abusive man in his twenties, and throughout her arc she is given no real means of choosing other options nor protecting herself. Her decision to defend a predator was not even an educated one; she simply did not know. Nor did she ever really come to understand anything about Vincent, aside from brief glimpses into his past. Ada is dragged around by the plot, pursuing an abuser she did not know was an abuser yet still felt sure she could heal, being forbidden from choice-- where she was not denied choice in the sense that she lacked the knowledge to make one, she was denied choice via other characters forbidding her. She was not allowed to protect Vincent though she wanted to because Vincent felt it was too dangerous to allow her to, she was not allowed to remain beside her friends and family though she wanted to because they felt it was too dangerous to allow her to, she wasn’t allowed to stay with Vincent because it was too dangerous, she wasn’t allowed to see him again because it was too dangerous... and she’s never given the choice to do anything but go along with it.

Alyss’s forgiveness of Jack is... a more complicated issue. That Ada “forgive” Vincent-- along with many of their other interactions, I might add-- felt utterly meaningless to me. Ada had never really perceived Vincent as performing a slight against her, being perfectly willing to assign any violence he committed against her as either her own fault, or part of his mental illness, thus Not His Fault. That Alyss forgive Jack, who was violent towards her, who she understood as victimizing her and others... I don’t like it, exactly, but at least it’s not the same.

I’m not sure “forgive” is even the correct word for what she did-- she acknowledged him, and she was gentle, but she never told Jack that she forgave him. Vincent’s dialogue during Retrace CIII supplements this in saying he suspects that Alyss’s feelings for Jack are the same as his own.

Vincent feels unable to either forgive Jack nor reject him entirely, feeling that he had done too much good for him to ever really hate him. Alyss, similarly, felt too strong a love for Jack to reject him outright. She never expressed sympathy for his actions, nor did she make any attempts to defend him. There was no misunderstanding on Alyss’s part on whether her love for Jack was unhealthy, but she loved him nonetheless. When she finally “finds” him, she offers no words of kindness. She simply expressed her gratitude in having done so before calling him a hopelessly lonely man, making no further attempts at even acknowledging him.

Of course, there is the inherent misogyny of a character arc about a young girl infatuated with an adult man, to the point of destroying her other relationships in pursuit of it. That Alyss was deliberately isolated and that Jack be the only person aside from the other Alice and the Core of Abyss-- two entities that cannot be meaningfully separated from herself-- is an obvious contributor, but that does not erase the problematic aspects of her arc. Then there’s the matter of Alyss’s wish to die being the only one treated as though it was a necessary evil, as opposed to a reflection of the individual’s personal instability that should be addressed through supporting them as opposed to killing them. It’s sort of an unfair double standard, and that the plot make Alyss’s death a necessary evil is a matter of author choice, not something inherent to the work.

On the topic of other instances of misogynistic writing in PH as a whole, there’s the matter of Alice and Sharon’s arc. While I don’t think either arc is in itself misogynistic, both characters are totally ignored in favor of their male counterparts. Despite Alice being one of the most important characters in the series, she has almost no narration and is frequently characterized as, to quote a friend of mine, a “feral animal.” She’s not given the same emotional or psychological depth as Oz or Gil, despite having around the same number of appearances and being the plot’s catalyst. Sharon has her own arc, theoretically, but we only ever see it within the context of Break or Reim despite being more of a main character than the latter. That Sharon spend entire volumes not appearing a single time is a recurring joke. A major part of her characterization-- that she feel insecure in relationships due to her halted aging-- is not revealed until the last chapter of the comic. Her arc ends with her marrying to a character who... I wouldn’t have been upset if the two of them had had any real interactions outside of Break, but they didn’t. There’s no inherent problem with their relationship except it’s boring and rushed.

Then there’s the matter of the sheer number of female versus male characters whose purpose in the plot is to die violently-- the Flower Girl, Vanessa Nightray, Bernice Nightray, Miranda Barma, Mary, etc. All of these characters did little or nothing to actually progress the plot, and all are murdered by a male character with the exception of the Flower Girl (who is a sex worker in the anime adaptation, and while I don’t know the canonicity of that, I feel it worth mentioning).

Ultimately, PH suffers a lot for Mochizuki’s internalized misogyny. Her narrative seems over eager to forgive perpetrators of misogynistic violence, and in many ways over eager to characterize sympathetic men as misogynists. A Pandora Hearts without its themes of misogyny seems... nearly incomprehensible, though that’s in large part because of how meticulous the narrative as a whole is. The improvements Mochizuki has made subsequently, though, are noticeable and greatly appreciated.

#pandora hearts #answers #gisellehexen89 #OP I am you #ph spoilers #abuse ment #This is REALLY long so I put it under a readmore #Pandora Hearts huh..........#ph #mochijun #animanga

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puckinghell · 6 years ago

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Friends Don’t | Jamie Benn

Requested: nope Word count: 2822 Note: basically if a player is being mistreated in any way i have to write about them. also based on a song with the same name

You tucked your legs under you, wrapping the blanket a bit tighter around you. It had been one of those days. First, you spilled your coffee, then your car wouldn’t start, your computer crashed halfway through your assignment, your teacher made a snippy remark towards you, and then your mom had called and banged on about how disappointed she was with you for not going on that date with her coworkers “perfectly nice son”.

You didn’t want perfectly nice. You just wanted to be left alone. And maybe watch a movie with your best friend, but when you’d texted Jamie, he had other plans. Whatever that meant.

You picked up your glass of wine. You tried not to make it a habit to drink alone at home, but some days just asked for it. For some reason, you could feel that you were on the brink of tears; it was stupid, really. Maybe you were PMSing. You decided to text Jamie again.

Now I have to drink my wine alone, which is just depressing. Thanks for nothing, James.

You knew he would have a laugh at that little inside joke, probably text you back something snarky. You waited for his reply, but nothing came. He must be at something where he couldn’t have his phone on him.

You met Jamie at a charity event. You’d been working as a waitress there and he’d been there representing the Stars. He’d been sitting at the bar alone, and you’d joked about how drinking alone was just depressing. He’d told you that it would be a lot less depressing if the pretty waitress joined him, and although you’d been on the clock and couldn’t actually drink, you had stayed in his general vicinity all night, talking about everything and nothing.

He’d been with his ex girlfriend, back then, and when they broke up, you were already so deep into your just-friend regime that it seemed impossible that anything more was ever going to happen. You’d since accepted it, and yet, sometimes, like tonight, you wished you were more than just the best friend. More than just the best friend would be allowed to demand cuddles, and you wanted cuddles. Instead, you had to do with your cat; and she just looked at you with pity in her feline eyes.

You nearly spilled your wine in surprise as you heard a knock on the door. Your blanket wrapped around your shoulders like a cape, and your wine glass still in your hand, you padded towards the door and opened it only slightly, to reveal your best friend standing there. He was wearing a suit and holding a bottle of wine, raising his eyebrows when you stared through the gap of the door.

“I was expecting a more enthusiastic response to my arrival,” he said dryly, holding up the bottle of wine. “I brought booze.”

“Jamie?” You threw the door open, reaching for the bottle and prying it out of his hands. “What are you doing here?” You knew you looked ridiculous, with your blanket cape, cradling what looked like a very expensive bottle of wine, but you didn’t care. Jamie had seen you in worse ways.

“Wouldn’t want you to be drinking alone, would we?” he grinned, pushing past you into your apartment.

“You’re a bit overdressed for wine drunk and movies,” you frowned, closing the door behind him. Jamie was already shrugging off his suit jacket and taking off his tie. Then, he kicked off his shoes and sat down on your couch.

“Was supposed to go to a dinner party,” he explained, “but I’d rather be here.” He frowned at your TV. “We’re not watching the Princess Diaries.”

“You can’t crash my pity party and start making demands,” you sputtered, but you didn’t really mean it. You would watch whatever movie Jamie wanted to watch. And it wasn’t because he looked awfully delicious in that dress shirt. Not at all.

“I think I can,” Jamie challenged. “Also, since I canceled my dinner for this, you better be down with ordering pizza.”

“If you really think I’d ever not be down for that, you don’t know me at all,” you mumbled, and you finally sat down next to him on the couch, a clean wine glass now in your hand; for him. You cuddled up into his side and he picked a movie and then ordered some pizza, and somehow, you’d forgotten all about your bad day.

“God damnit Jamie, it’s 1 am, you better have a very good reason to call me,” you growled into your phone.

“Oh.” Your best friend sounded wary on the phone. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize it was that late. Time difference.”

You usually didn’t even have your phone on sound, usually put it on silent when you slept because your many group chats would surely keep you awake, but fate had it that you forgot to do that that night.

“I just wanted to say hi.”

You smiled at his statement. “Hi,” you told him, and you could almost hear his smile on the other side as he answered.

“Hi.”

“Not the results you wanted, huh?”

The Stars had played the Flames that night, and boy had it not gone good. You’d managed to watch all of it, but had to mute the third period, because seeing them get smashed in like that literally hurt your heart too much. You had, however, even on mute, seen Jamie’s fight, and as always, it felt like you hadn’t breathed for a solid half hour afterwards.

“How hurt are you?”

“I’m fine.” He was lying, you knew it, and he knew you knew it, too. “Just a busted lip. I was trying to get some fire into the boys, but I guess you can’t expect much when you’re down 4-0, huh?” He sounded defeated, and you hated it.

“I’m sorry, Jam. It’s not your fault, you know. These games happen. There’s always next time.”

“Yeah, I guess.” He was silent for a while. “I’m sorry for waking you up.”

“Don’t worry,” you hummed. “I’m glad you called. I haven’t heard your voice in a while, you know.”

His deep sigh cut straight through your bones. “I know, it’s been a long road trip.”

You knew Jamie, knew he was beating himself up over their loss and knew that he wasn’t going to sleep for another hour or so, too much adrenaline flowing through his veins. And you knew exactly what would calm him down, too.

“Want me to tell you about my day? I can tell you all about my math assignment.”

“I’ve never been more thrilled for anything in his life,” Jamie said, but he sounded amused now, less focused on his misery. So you settled into your pillow, put your phone on speaker - you’d be talking for a while, and your arm got tired quickly - and told him all about the little details of your day, the mundane things that really didn’t matter, that Jamie wanted to hear about anyway.

You had to get up early the next morning and you knew you’d be so tired, but going to sleep was not an option. Not when Jamie needed you to be awake with him.

You knew this neighborhood well enough to realize that Jamie was going the wrong way. And yet, you didn’t say anything.

The car was going awfully slow, way under the speed limit, for no reason at all. It was 3pm, and there was barely any traffic. Definitely not enough traffic to warrant this turtle speed.

“Jamie, you have a sports car, use that accelerator,” you teased him, and pretended not to notice the red flush on his cheeks. He sped up, but barely.

You didn’t really want him to, anyway.

He’d insisted on picking you up from college and dropping you off home, and although you’d told him a few times that it really wasn’t necessary, you were glad he had. Tonight, he’d leave for another road trip. He’d be gone for almost a week. It wasn’t that long, not that big a deal, had happened many times before and would happen many times again; so why did your heart feel so heavy with dread?

You wondered if he felt it to, if he was driving slow, taking the long way home, just to make this last a little bit longer. Spend a little more time with you. You didn’t dare hope.

The radio was on, but you didn’t really register what song was playing. Jamie wasn’t talking, but he was tapping his finger against the steering wheel on the beat of the music. Tapping his fingers was a nervous habit of his, and usually when he did it, you could pinpoint exactly what he was nervous about. Not this time.

“You got your chemistry project done in time?” he asked suddenly, and you frowned. You’d told him about that project about two weeks ago, and it was one of the last things you expected him to remember.

“Yeah, I did. Why on earth would you care about my chemistry project?” You’d said it jokingly, but he didn’t take it that way, shooting you a pointed look.

“I care about everything going on in your life, Y/N.”

Oh be still, fluttering heart.

“Did you get your skates sharpened?” you shot back, and he smirked.

“You don’t give a shit about my skates.”

“I really don’t. I just wanted to let you know that I remember things you tell me, too.” You sunk back into the car seat as Jamie stopped in front of a red light. You willed it to stay red a little longer, but it jumped to green too quick.

“I remember your grandmother’s name.” Jamie sounded proud of himself, and you couldn’t help but laugh.

“God, that’s so not special! I remember your dentist’s name.”

“How?” Jamie asked, bewildered. “I don’t even remember my dentist’s name.”

You shrugged. “I care about your teeth.”

“Yeah, well, I care about your…” he paused, you could see the wheels turning in his head. “Nails!”

“Nails?” you giggled.

“Yeah, you go to this nail place to get them done.”

“You don’t even know what it means to get nails done,” you countered, and you could tell by his scowl that you had hit the nail on the head.

“Well, I’ll come with you next time,” Jamie said triumphantly. “Then I’ll know what it means.”

“Such a problem-solver,” you shook your head. “That’s a true captain at heart.”

You were totally going to drag him to your next nail appointment and you weren’t sure whether he was going to be super bored, or super interested by all the - for him foreign - things going on at a nail salon.

The car slowed down even more and just when you wanted to start scolding him for driving too slow, you realized you were at your house.

Oh.

Jamie put the car in park, took his keys out of the ignition. “I’ll walk you to the door,” he said. It was completely unnecessary, with it being a clear afternoon, but you didn’t fight him on it.

“I’ll see you in a week, I guess,” you smiled, but you had to work for the smile. He was playing with his keys, fumbling with them, staring at his hands.

“Uhm, yeah,” he mumbled. There was a pause and you wished he could find a reason not to leave yet, but he clearly couldn’t come up with anything. “I’ll see ya.” He turned, as if he was going to walk away, then suddenly turned again and launched forward, wrapping you into a hug. He smelled so familiar and warm and you squeezed him. Maybe, if you just didn’t let go, he wouldn’t leave.

“I’ll call you tonight, okay? When I’m at the hotel.” His words were soft against your ear, and you sighed.

“Yes, please.” Another second, he pulled away, steps on the driveway, the car rumbled, and then you were cold and alone on your porch, and you wondered why you could feel tears burning behind your eyes.

You didn’t really want to go to this party, but there really was no other option. You were pretty sure your friend would have your head on a stick if you didn’t go to her birthday party. To make it a little more bearable, you’d brought Jamie, however, your best friend had seemed to disappear as soon as you walked into the house, and now you were drunk and alone and most importantly, extremely bored.

“Want another beer?” the guy you’d been talking to asked. You didn’t even really know his name.

You didn’t want another beer, you just wanted him to stop talking. And so you smiled politely, made up an excuse, and started making your way through the crowd.

“Jamie, you in?”

You weren’t even sure why your ears decided to focus on that specific sentence, because it had nothing to do with you. But as always, Jamie’s name rang in your ears and somehow pulled your eyes into the direction of the speaker, and there he was; talking to a girl. A beautiful girl.

That shouldn’t hurt as much as it did.

“Ouch!” You’d been too concentrated on Jamie, and bumped into a person. The girl steadied you, smiled.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m so sorry!” Your voice was hoarse and suddenly the air around you seemed to thick. You made your way outside, wanting to get away from the people, but you hadn’t realized your squeal had alerted Jamie to your presence, and as he saw you storming outside, he’d immediately left the girl he’d been talking to - mid sentence, even, it really wasn’t very polite - to rush to your aid.

You sat outside on your friend’s porch. It was warm in Dallas, even at this hour, and the stars were bright in the sky.

“Hey, you okay?” It was the second time someone asked in maybe three minutes, but this time, you saw no reason to lie.

“Not really.”

Heavy footsteps sounded behind you and then Jamie sat down next to you on the porch. “I saw you run away.”

“I saw you talk to that girl.”

You probably shouldn’t have said it, should probably still be pretending that you were just friends. Because that’s what you were. But friends didn’t feel this way, watching their friends flirt with pretty girls.

Jamie laughed lightly. “I saw you talk to that guy.”

You shook your head. “Not that same. I don’t even remember his name.”

“I don’t remember a word of what she said,” Jamie countered, and you finally turned to look at him. His big brown eyes caught yours right away, and you were taken aback by the sheer emotion in them. “I wouldn’t flirt with her, not when I lo…” His eyes widened as he caught himself, cut himself off. “When I came here with you.”

That’s not what he was going to say. You knew it, because you’d been in this situation so many times before.

And maybe it was because you were a little drunk, but after all those time, you were finally done with it.

“That’s not what you were going to say,” you told him, wrapping your arms around yourself. “What are we, Jamie?”

He stared at you, seemed to really think about your question. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “What do you think we are?”

“I think we tell ourselves we’re just friends,” you said. You were staring at the grass in front of you. Looking at him, while you were going to say what you were going to say, was way too hard. “But friends don’t cancel other plans just to get wine drunk on the couch. They don’t forget the world around them when they hear each other’s name.”

“Friends don’t call you in the middle of the night just cause they feel like saying hi,” Jamie continued. He reached out and you felt his fingers against your hands.

“Friends don’t get chills with every accidental touch,” you whispered, and Jamie intertwined his fingers with yours. “And friends don’t drive too slow and take the long way home and play with their keys, just to postpone goodbye a few seconds longer.”

“Friends don’t almost say I love you.” His words rung through the quiet night sky and your heart seemed to be in your throat. His other hand reached out and with one finger, he took hold of your chin and pulled your face towards him, forcing you to look at him. “Friends don’t do this.” And then, he kissed you. It was like electricity ran all through your body and at the same time, a comfortable warmth took over you as your lips moved against his in perfect synchronization. He pulled away, smiling, and you couldn’t help smile back. You nodded in agreement.

“Friends don’t.”

#nhl imagines #nhl imagine #nhl one shot #nhl writing #hockey one shot #hockey imagine #dallas stars #dallas stars imagine #dallas stars one shot #jamie benn #jamie benn imagine #jamie benn one shot

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eloissaadni · 5 years ago

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10 Signs Someone Is Trying to Blackmail You

Blackmail is a heavy word. Luckily, this crime isn’t committed very often against regular, everyday folk – but emotional blackmail is. Emotional blackmail is a fairly straightforward concept. It involves getting someone under your control through the use of psychological manipulation and mind games.

The problem with this kind of blackmail is how subtle it can be. You think you’re not susceptible, but master blackmailers are capable of slowly but surely creeping their influence under your skin when you’re not paying attention. That’s why you need to be aware of the red flags for this behavior.

HERE ARE 10 SIGNS SOMEONE IS TRYING TO BLACKMAIL YOU

1. GUILT-TRIPPING

Guilt-tripping is very common behavior from emotional blackmailers. The goal is to make you feel bad for something you’ve said or done, or to feel bad for them. Blackmailers hope that this will make you cave in and compromise on your beliefs or statements out of sympathy.

Primarily, guilt-tripping uses your compassion against you. It gets even worse if the blackmailer has the support of other people. The tricky part about all of this is that, usually, an expert emotional manipulator will never need to blame you openly.

They’ll imply your guilt somehow, often through phrases like:

“It’s not like I (insert things they’ve done for you) just to help you out before or anything.”

“Yeah, it’s just that I tried hard at this, but whatever.”

“I guess it’ll be difficult for me, but maybe I’ll be able to figure something out.”

“I just thought it would be a great symbol of our friendship/relationship, but if you don’t feel the same, I guess I can learn to handle that.”

“So I did this because you don’t care about me much, anyway.”

“I talked to (insert person), and they agree with me on this that you’re unreasonable.”

“I mean, you owe me, don’t you?”

“Are you sure you want it to leave this like this, with me in this situation alone?”

2. GASLIGHTING

Gaslighting involves twisting situations, events, or statements into something that didn’t happen. Basically, it means that emotional blackmailers will try to change a story to best suit their whims, even if that’s not what happened. It can mess with your mental health, positive thinking, sense of self, and, eventually, your perception of reality.

Gaslighters have a way of making you feel like you’re losing your mind, and in the long run, this can be extremely damaging. Here are some common phrases gaslighters use:

“You’re crazy, that’s not what happened at all.”

“Actually, it happened in the way I remember it. Don’t you recall?”

“Lighten up! It’s just a joke.”

“You’re a little sensitive, huh?”

“You’re really overreacting to this.”

“Why even bring this up? Let it go.”

“I never said or did those things. You must have imagined it.”

“You’re always reaching all the wrong conclusions.”

“Don’t be so insecure.”

“Maybe you need some mental help.”

“If you’d been listening or paying attention, you would know that…”

“You’re reading into this whole thing too much. It’s not that deep.”

Stand up to gaslighting by reiterating that what they described is not your reality and stand by what you remember.

3. PROMISES OF INCENTIVES

Some blackmailers offer some incentive to convince someone to do as they please. They may offer a gift or a favor, or, more menacingly, they may dangle something they know means a lot to you over your head and imply that they could find time to do it if you do something for them first.

Conversely, if someone has already done something nice for you in the past, they may use that old favor to convince you that it’s time for you to do something for them.

4. “PROTECTION”

Many emotional blackmailers like to take on the role of a protector because they can do whatever they want under the guise of such “protection.” Someone who is trying to blackmail you will likely be very controlling and claim it is for the greater good. They may say things like:

“I do all of this for you.”

“I’m just looking out for you.”

“I care about you, that’s why I’m doing this.”

“Don’t you appreciate all I’ve done for you?”

“I only have your best interests at heart.”

Primarily, they use this as a means to control those around them while pretending not to be blackmailers – an easy success for them, as most emotionally abused individuals have difficulty characterizing mistreatment of any kind as abuse. Some even positively view those actions.

It’s important to remember that the kindness of anyone towards you does not make you indebted to them. You are under no requirement to put up with things you aren’t fond of just because someone has positive intentions – and especially if those intentions are secretly bad ones in disguise.

5. PUNISHMENT

There are healthy ways to get some time and space to process a disagreement. Discipline is not one of them. This involves a blackmailer letting you know indirectly that you’re to blame for what happened and that you must suffer consequences:

Ignoring you for hours on end after an argument

Giving you the cold shoulder for days

Trying to make you feel anxious, jealous, or angry

Refusing to acknowledge your sadness or emotions

Withholding information from you to spite you

These seem like insignificant things, but what they do is slowly but surely teach you that fights, disagreements, or other problems will lead to a “punishment” of sorts, which will make you feel even more terrible. You may begin doing everything you can to avoid these disagreements

6. MENTIONS OF HARMING THEMSELVES

An emotional blackmailer may threaten to harm themselves, instead of threatening to harm others. They are banking on the idea that you would be frightened for them, so they imply that if they harm themselves, it will be you who is to blame. They may say things like:

“I will hurt myself if you don’t do this for me.”

“I’ll probably just end my life if even you aren’t willing to help me.”

“If you go, I’ll commit suicide.”

“I hope you know that if I don’t wake up tomorrow, it’ll be because of what you did.”

“I guess I’ll just have new scars after having to deal with this all on my own, huh?”

Emotional blackmailers believe that these threats can help them gain control over you. There are also less severe versions of these kinds of threats that don’t mention physical self-harm but still count as emotional blackmail. These statements can include:

“Do this for me, or I’ll be really upset”

“I’d be so unhappy if you didn’t help me out with this”

“I’ll probably cry all night long if you don’t do what I asked”

“I thought you cared about me enough to do this, and I’m hurt that this relationship is more one-sided than I thought.”

“You’re going to ruin my whole night!”

7. CALCULATIVE BEHAVIOR

An emotional blackmailer is often calculative, as this is the best bet they have at controlling you with factual or statistical evidence. The numbers don’t lie, but a healthy friendship or relationship of any kind doesn’t involve perfect 50/50 split rules – they require an exchange of giving and take. A blackmailer may perform the following calculative behaviors:

They do things for you to get something in return

Keeping a perfect score of how much you’ve done for each other

Always expecting you to make up for the time they’ve spent on you

They use their past positive behavior as proof that you owe them something

8. BLAMING

Emotional blackmailers never want to be in the wrong. They will always find a way to shift blame onto you, refusing to take responsibility. Common phrases include:

“Look what you made me do!”

“I had no way of knowing about that.”

“You should have been clearer.”

“I only did it because of what you did first!”

“This isn’t my fault.”

“You should have stopped me.”

9. THREATS

Blackmailers very commonly make threats to get what they want. They behave this way to gain control over the situation. Indeed, you have to either obey or risk their wrath. Here are some of the common threats performed by emotional blackmailers.

· THREATS AGAINST THEMSELVES

We’ve already covered this, but it warrants saying again: an emotional blackmailer may threaten to injure themselves so you will feel guilty and do whatever you can to not be to blame for such an event.

· THREATS AGAINST WHAT YOU CARE ABOUT

An emotional blackmailer may threaten to break your belongings, hurt the people you love, or ruin your chances at something. These are all hazardous signs of aggression and should not be taken lightly.

· THREATS AGAINST YOU

If someone is making threats against you, this is a serious matter, and you should go to the police and spend the night with people you can trust. Many people make the mistake of brushing off threats with positive thinking, but many physically abusive relationships begin with emotional abuse. Protect yourself.

10. REPEATED SHAMING FOR FLAWS

It’s okay to be honest and direct about someone’s flaws. But always harping on every minor misstep someone makes is not healthy at all. Someone who wants to blackmail you may do these things to lower your self-esteem so they can get through to you in your compromised state.

This behavior can cause you to doubt yourself, and it can even make you anxious and afraid. You may second guess everything you do, only to have the blackmailer assure you that only they are being honest with you. This will cause you to rely on them more than they deserve, and it may make you feel like no one else could like you, so you’re stuck with them.

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khtrinityftw · 6 years ago

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An Unintentional Narrative: The Nature of a Beast

Because the writing of the KH Trinity was more collaborative than the writing for the series beyond it (especially past BBS), there was rooms for certain narratives to form organically within it without that having been the plan from the start by any one person such as Nomura. These “Unintentional Narratives” warrant posts of their own.

One such narrative centers around the Beast, cursed prince and master of Beast’s Castle, who finds himself increasingly torn between his humanity and his beastly nature. But what defines both? And is there a balance to be found? While likely unintentional, a full character arc for the Beast formed around these questions.

In Kingdom Hearts, the Beast is introduced to us as a mysterious but mostly positive figure. Belle, his beloved, was taken from his castle to Hollow Bastion, and through sheer force of will he was able to follow the Heartless through the dark corridors. After Sora loses his Keyblade, and both Donald and Goofy along with it, the Beast becomes his sole ally, giving him renewed motivation with his words:

“Why did you come here? I came to fight for Belle. And though I am on my own, I will fight. I’m not leaving without her.”

The one glimpse of negativity to the Beast’s character is when Riku is able to fool him by playing to his volatile temper, disguising a Shadow as Belle right outside the door to the Entrance Hall and, once the truth is revealed, locking the door once Beast lunges at the Heartless. Keep in mind that Beast had just said that he can feel Riku, Donald and Goofy close by, so if he’d stayed rational then he’d have known this was an obvious trap. But his temper got the best of him, and it might have meant the death of Sora if Donald and Goofy didn’t rejoin him. It’s a big hint as to why Beast is the way he is.

Beast reunites with Belle and everything seems fine. But in Chain of Memories, we get an alternate telling of this scenario. When Beast finds Belle, she acts cold toward him and insists upon staying in Hollow Bastion with Maleficent. Beast’s first reaction is self-pity:

“No-one could ever care for a beast like me.”

Clearly, our badass Beast has a lot of vulnerability and self-worth issues deep down. It turns out that Belle is rejecting Beast because Maleficent’s magic will take her heart the moment she lets its true feelings shine through. This leads to this confrontation:

Belle: You came! No! You mustn't! I told you to leave this place! Leave me alone! I never want to see your face again!

Beast: Belle. All right. If that's how you feel, I understand. My hideous form is punishment for being selfish and unable to love. Transformed into a monster, loved by no one, I only became more selfish.

And then I met you, Belle. You're the only person who accepted me. Little by little, you warmed my cold, selfish heart. The memories of our days together are my most precious. I won't cast them aside. So I'm sorry, but I can't leave you here...even if you hate me for it. Consider it my final selfish act.

Even if he loses Belle’s love forever, Beast is willing to do what he knows in his heart is right for her and bring her back home to her world. This act of love makes Maleficent decide to steal Beast’s heart instead, which is prevented by Belle jumping into the way of the magic blast. After Maleficent is defeated and Belle’s heart restored to her, Belle apologizes for being so cruel to Beast. His response?

“I'm the one who should apologize. For just a moment, I doubted your love. I never want to remember those feelings of despair.”

So not only do we get some hints at the Beast’s origin, that he’s a human cursed to become a beast because of his selfish heart, but the self-esteem issues this has caused him run so deep that it’s possible for him to doubt the love Belle has for him. This was just a memory simulation, but it informs what transpires with the real Beast in Kingdom Hearts II, who falls under the thrall of Xaldin of Organization XIII. Xaldin has put darkness in the Beast’s heart that feeds off all of his vulnerabilities, converting them into a rage that consumes Beast’s mind. The main way Xaldin makes this spell work is to lie to Beast about Belle, claiming that she doesn’t truly love him and is actually using him for his castle, scheming to kill him for it.

Xaldin: It's time you dealt with Belle. She's scheming to take everything you have. This castle, your precious rose. And then---your life. Trust no one. Feed your anger! Only anger will keep you strong.

Beast: I've had enough of strength. There's only one thing I want---

Xaldin: What? To love, and be loved in return? Who could ever love a beast?

Note how similar Xaldin’s line here is to Beast’s in CoM. Xaldin is psychologically abusing Beast and playing off all his worst fears, doubts and inner pain. When all of that is transferred into rage, Beast will truly become a beast: a violent, abusive monster who hurts the people who care about him, thus likely to become a Heartless (and also producing a Nobody). It’s a truly twisted and diabolical plan.

When the Beast’s Castle level opens up, Beast has locked Belle in her room and the castle staff in the dungeon, hinting that he has fully fallen under Xaldin’s dark spell. But as it turns out, Beast was a step ahead of Xaldin from the beginning...he locked them up in order to protect them from what he might do if the rage consumes him.

Goofy: Well, I'll be! That must be why you threw all of your friends down there into the dungeon. You wanted to make sure that you didn't hurt 'em, right?

Beast: Was that it? Was it to protect them?

Goofy: Sure. We know you're good inside.

Despite this, Beast is still so predispositioned to seeing the worst in himself that he assumes he must have hurt Belle during the time spent under Xaldin’s spell.

Beast: I've mistreated her... I've mistreated her and been so selfish.

Sora: She didn't say anything about that.

Beast: She'd never tell anyone of my cruelty... She's too good.

Cogsworth: You see, I'm afraid he judges himself far too harshly.

When he reunites with Belle, we have this exchange.

Beast: Belle... I-I'm sorry---I...wasn't myself. I hope I haven't done anything to hurt you. Forgive me.

Belle: I know you weren't yourself. You don't have to apologize.

I’m...not quite sure what to make of this. In the context of the story, this makes sense: Beast truly wasn’t himself because an exterior force was involved in controlling him. But if you showed anyone it out of context, then it sounds way too much like a boyfriend who got drunk or drugged up and beat his girlfriend, only to apologize afterward with a half-assed excuse and then she just swallows it and takes him back. I don’t know if this was intentional, but it probably should’ve been worded better, especially since Beast, despite his fears, did NOT do anything to hurt Belle, and in fact went out of his way to make sure that didn’t happen. However, what he DID do wrong was do this without actually consulting Belle or telling her what was going on, which Belle thankfully does take him to task for.

Belle: But I had hoped...that you might have changed a little bit. I wish you could start trusting me!

Later, Beast has decided to try opening up to Belle more and letting her call the shots, which leads to Belle setting up a ballroom date for the two of them. But Xaldin crashes the party, filling the castle with his forces and stealing Beast’s rose. The loss of the rose is a huge deal to Beast, and he’s so upset about it that he lashes out at Belle.

Belle: Please, calm down!

Beast: Calm down!? You just had to have a party, didn't you? Don't you see what's happened? The rose... My rose...

Belle: But surely, you can find another rose...

Beast: Silence! You don't know anything!

Thankfully, Sora intervenes at this point.

Sora: That's not fair, Beast! Don't take it out on Belle! It's not like she stole it!

Beast immediately realizes what he’s doing, and all of the fears of doing something to hurt Belle come rushing back. In fact, this time it’s worse...last time, Xaldin actually did something to him to make his anger consume him, things were beyond his control. But now, there’s no such excuse - it’s all on him. The greatest fear of Beast’s heart comes to the surface now - that not only was the curse placed on him justified because he behaved like beast (read: abusive), but that he can’t change this behavior. That he is a beast to the core, beyond any hope of humanity, and that the lonely, miserable existence he lives is what he deserves to live with forever, and what is needed to protect others from his incurable beastiness. And thus Beast says this:

Beast: Belle... Sora... I want you to leave the castle. Look at me. Look. This is what I am. When you first got here, I tried to change. But I was only fooling myself. I can't be any different. I'll always be a beast. So, I should live like a beast. With no one, alone. Goodbye, Belle.

Sora is able to snap Beast out of his funk by reminding him not only as to how brave and inspiring he was when they first met, which is totally at odds with the negative self-image Beast has cultivated for himself, but that he can’t just abandon the rose as it’s also the only hope his servants have to regain their humanity, and that just accepting being a Beast will only make everyone miserable like they were before Belle came to the castle. If you go to Belle’s room, you get a missable scene where Beast tells Sora that he still wishes for her to leave the castle, as he still feels guilty about lashing out at her and feels that he cannot love her the way she deserves to be loved.

Now, I’ve heard some people say that this whole plotline is too abuse-y for their tastes, due to what’s going on and what is said and all that stuff. I take issue with this, though, for several reasons.

1.) Let’s be real: there was always an abuse-y vibe going on with the Beast in his character arc. Just watch this scene. Do you really not think “abuse” when seeing this? I think it was always kind of the intention that Beast’s nature as a beast was a metaphor for an abusive man, and that the story is a subversion of the “good girl changes an abusive man with her love” cliche, since it’s ultimately Beast’s love for Belle that sparks the change, not the other way around. She doesn’t come close to loving him until he actively changes his ways, becoming a man worthy of being loved, a non-abusive man. The peak of this arc is when Beast has a helpless, pleading Gaston dead to rights. Belle has nothing to do with this moment: in his face, in his eyes, you can see Beast realizes that if he kills Gaston, then he truly is a beast. That this kind of ruthless, violent behavior is what makes one a beast, and that it’s not the way he wants to be anymore. It’s a superb arc in the animated version.

2.) The KH version is an alternate telling. For one thing, the oft-cited “Stockholm Syndrome” crap doesn’t apply here, as there’s no reference made to Belle’s father or her being a prisoner in any way, the circumstances are different and Belle is here of her own free will. Since that moment with Gaston can’t happen here, Beast’s arc needs to have a different climax. What was decided upon was a test of Beast’s resolve, for him to fear becoming an abuser to Belle due to his low sense of self-worth and for those feelings to be used against him to push him into almost becoming an abuser. And it’s done by a REAL abuser, Xaldin, who has stalked Beast for almost a year, learning everything about him, and then psychologically preying upon him in order to hurt him, all while clearly enjoying himself in doing so. Xaldin, like Gaston, is a foil for Beast: someone who looks human but is in fact inhuman in his behavior and because he’s a Nobody. Beast wanting Belle to leave the castle because he fears he’ll hurt her is the equivalent of him letting her leave to help her father in the movie. It is in fact the opposite of abusive behavior, as he is putting her and her needs ahead of his own. Just as with keeping her in her room to protect her from what he might do, it’s proof that Beast is no longer an abusive person, and the tragedy is that he’s too down on himself to see that. If you want some REAL Disney products that outright turn Beast into an abusive partner to Belle, see The Enchanted Christmas and Belle’s Magical World DTV movies.

3.) I fucking love the resolution to the arc. First off, Belle finally has her moment - when Xaldin tries to make Beast choose between Belle and the rose (and he chooses Belle without a second thought), Belle takes advantage of Xaldin smugly letting his guard down, elbows the bastard in the chest, and runs off with the rose, thwarting Xaldin’s plot altogether. Then, we get an important distinction that I feel needed to be made. Violent, anger-fueled behavior is not always bad, it’s not always beastly, it’s not always abusive. It mostly is, but there’s one key exception - when one is protecting the people they love from threats. Beast’s arc comes full circle, as this was what he positively portrayed for in the original game too: he channels his rage and beastly strength in order to fight for his loved ones and protect them from harm. Xaldin is an active threat to Belle and all of her and Beast’s friends, so there’s no shame in Beast helping to kill him.

Xaldin dies, Belle returns the rose to Beast, and is ready to leave the castle as per his wishes. But upon being reminded of his own goodness and Belle’s own strength, Beast realizes that they can make their relationship work after all, and so he asks:

Beast: Belle, I'd like you to stay... With me... Please?

In addition to the phrasing (”I’d like”), the “please?” really seals the deal in how much Beast cares for Belle’s consent, he is asking her permission rather than making any demands of her. Belle accepts, of course, and they dance to the tune of “Beauty and the Beast”.

In KH2′s credits, the curse has been broken. The Beast is a human again, living happily ever after with Belle, thus ending his arc. An arc about showing not only the audience that someone who was once a bad person is capable of change and of love and of channeling his lesser qualities as a force for good, but to show him that he’s capable of it too. In other words, a faithful reworking of his film arc adapted perfectly to the setting of the KH universe. Very few Disney characters, or even KH characters, have had an arc nearly so rich.

#Kingdom Hearts #Chain of Memories #Kingdom Hearts II #The Beast

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writeforwronggg-blog · 6 years ago

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Tsuyoi Josei(5560 words)

When I was younger, my mother always told me to honor myself and others equally. She would tell me of her childhood before the adoption of Chinese political systems and the insertion of the Samurai way of life. As a young child, I never truly grasped why she would tell me these things.

Why would my mother tell me of the superiority complex of nearly all men of our time? How she was supremely mistreated by men older and younger than herself, just as every Japanese woman was? Though that’s not a major problem as of now. Not as of 638: the year I became a Samurai.

The Tang dynasty and the introduction of not only an empress of China, Wu Zetian but also Buddhism and it’s empowerment of women on the rise, us women were at a high point. Though there were still major tensions between the Confucian and Buddhist beliefs, Buddhism was a major game changer for the empowerment and belief in female abilities in modern Japan, China, and Korea. We were no longer viewed as the lowest class, but as equals to everyone else(in justified cases of course).

Still, I was not a believer of any religion. I had always believed in people and their own personal morals, versus the morals, thrust upon them to follow by religions for selfish reasons. Yes, selfishness, because although nearly all religions preach the ideals of selflessness, it’s for purely selfish reasons. Every religion, for which I have seen, give promises after promises of reward for being a kind and serving person. It’s fuel for us to be good, but why do we need to be motivated to be decent people? We are all human dealing with the same struggle of life and its challenges, no?

People love to twist the words of good men and women from religions to fit their own agenda, and it’s very warranted because one can not say it’s out of context since most teachings are open to interpretation. How can you say something means one thing, yet when another points out its hypocrisy or ‘plot holes’ you change your words? That truly is religion in its purest form. It’s meant to give people reassurance through symbolism but all it does is turn a heart to the dark side through the idea of a prosperous afterlife or reward.

That is the focal point for me as of now. Being a female Samurai in a country that was so against the idea of women existing as anything more than a wife and mother was strong only a few short years before. 625, the earning of the Tang dynasty’s Tian Ming, was a major milestone for this small town called Chiba, near the rapidly growing city of Tokyo.

I bet you’re wondering about me, who I am, what story I’m here to tell- and the answer is soon to come. First I should start from the beginning, no?

My name is Otokita Karanaki, daughter of Haruto and Kaito Karanaki. My father, Haruto, was a well known and supremely respected elder in our town, but a few years ago when our town had been raided, and my father killed, the people mourned greatly. As my father had no male heir to his fortune, and the teachings of Cong Fuzi’s “the Master said: When the father is alive, observe the son’s intent. When the father dies, observe the son’s conduct. One who does not alter his late father’s way for three years may be called filial.” But those teachings neglected to speak on behalf of the daughters, leaving me to become the ‘son’. No, I don’t mean becoming a man, simply taking over his responsibilities.

I had no person lined up for me to marry, and my mother was becoming more and more ill every day. The flu had caught up to her, and the physician was frequently gone to other, more wealthy, families. I had two young sisters, only one and two years younger than I, and I was meant to raise them. As most of our society was very judgemental of our lifestyle, I had chosen to raise them as I wished and not into a religion. I used most of my money to try to educate them in European ways and fighting techniques my father had taught me. I was already a low ranking Samurai, so finding time to see them between my duties was difficult and I eventually decided it best to send them off to a school in India.

It’s been years since I sent them off, and not one week have we missed a letter. Though I worry about them greatly, my life here is not on hold. I have a friend, and she’s amazing. Being put in the situation I was, it could be difficult to find someone who would be there for you unconditionally, but she… well, she was there. For everything and anything.

Her name is Ishi and the only way I would ever describe her is strong. She is always supportive, kind, reassuring, and dependant. Oh, how strong she is. As a child, her parents gave her away to a caretaker who would raise her in an abusive home in which hated any girl or woman. She fought her way out of that place and journeyed across the regions looking for somewhere to live. She endured much across the way, many hardships such as rape and other unspeakable woes, and finally made it here where I had found her and taken her in.

I found her along a path, clothes were torn, body worn, and face filled with resilience. She had gone through so much, yet she was still one of the best most understanding and accepting people I’d ever known. She had so many stories she’d kept to herself for so long, some good and most bad, and she was so scared for so long to trust me with them. It had taken a long time and a lot of patience before she could open up to me and when she did I was astonished and even more proud of this girl, woman, I had come to know. Her heart, mind, and soul were beautiful, as was her body.

Her hair, when let down from her usually messy bun, goes down like a smooth black waterfall all the way to her wide-set hips. Her eyes were solotica and utterly beautiful. Her naturally milky-turned-tan skin is as soft as my mother's silk, and her voice was deeply captivating. Anyone and everyone wanted to wed her, but I was looking after her and no one had dared to ask for her hand in marriage if they were not absolutely sure she’d agree and love them. I was not so easy to persuade, especially not with her, and it seemed she wasn’t either.

“Oto? What are you thinking of?”

I looked down, into the eyes of my mother’s eldest friend’s son’s eyes as he examined my stone cold features. Kawa is his name, and he’s been at my side since this morning when I left my home to patrol my small town. He was about 1.8 meters tall and surprisingly handsome, though he is surely the epitome of male arrogance.

I looked at him, thinking of all the times he’s tried to take my hand, and rolled my eyes at him. He looked surprised as if this wasn’t expected of me.

“None of your concern, Kawa. What is it you are following me for, anyhow? Has your mother finally tired of you?” I ask jokingly, earning a small chuckle in return.

“Tire? Of me? Never. I am too entertaining and hard working to bore of. If only you’d see it, Oto,” he insisted, nudging me slightly.

I eyed him suspiciously and took a step away, uncomfortable of our close proximity. I looked out over the small hill we stood on, wondering what Ishi was doing at the moment.

“Do you suppose Mrs.Itō will make that kimono well? I promised to pay very much for it, but Ishi isn’t comfortable with the tailoring process and I didn’t want her to be uncomfortable so I hadn’t given Mrs.Itō the measurements. Will it fit right? I told her it’s similar to me, maybe 40-50 centimeters wider at the hips, about 28 shorter at the legs. Was that okay do you think?” I ranted, slightly happy about tonight’s event.

Tonight, being our last elder’s 82nd birthday celebration would be very extravagant. Every person from the town would be there and there was nothing more exciting to me than a break from my duties. Though I would still carry a few small weapons with me, I would not be actively on duty.

He looked at me strangely, as if he was very confused and suspicious. I rolled my eyes, not expecting a response and turned around to begin heading back down the beautiful hill. He followed short behind but stopped a few minutes later. I did as well, hand on my Katana in case there was danger lurking.

“Why do you care so much for her? She’s just some random wench from off the street. Why would you even-” his sentence was cut short by my katana being held to his throat.

I stood there, mere inches from his handsome face, teeth gritting in anger, and fists clenched around the strong tile handle, hardly aware of his appearance. I could see his surprise, as I rarely lose control of my patience, and tried to calm my rising temper.

“I would do my best to not insult my dearest friend. She is far stronger and smarter than you may believe. She is not a wench and you will show respect when talking of her or face the consequences of us both.” I seethed, receiving a huff of disagreement and damaged pride.

“Of course,” he agreed hotly, after a few more seconds of violent tension, releasing him and stepping back, “You’re quite a strong-willed woman. The people who doubt your strength have much to come for them.”

I tried not to, really, but I could never stay angry with Kawa. He’s my oldest friend! How could I?

I shoved him lightly, letting out a breathy and quiet laugh. He did the same until it turned into a full-on shoving contest, resulting in him being held down to the ground, arms pinned behind him. He tried to resist, multiple times, but I would only make my grip tighter.

“I surrender! I surrender!” he choked out tiredly. I released him, standing up and adjusting my gauntlets.

“You best remember this, Kawa, the next time you think you will win.” I teased.

I was about to look up, but I was quickly shoved into a tree, arms pinned awkwardly behind me, and Kawa holding my head against the trunk. I was breathing hard, as was he, from the quick action and he leaned in slowly to my covered ear.

“I think I will remember this,” he simpered, “will you?”

It was odd, the way he said it. I’m not used to this, it’s usually foolish flirting and pointless innuendos, but this wasn’t. This was ‘I’m bigger and better than you’ and it wasn’t doing anything but fueling my feminist anger. I leaned into the tree, surprising him and throwing him off balance, and pushed back again making him stumble back. I turned, pushing his back against the tree and used my foot to kick between his legs, making him release his hands so I could turn and elbow his mouth. He turned around, cradling his bleeding lip as he whimpered lowly.

“Don’t ever do that.” I raged, clenching and unclenching my fists tightly.

He looked at me, eyes confused and nodded his head slowly. I relaxed my face and turned back around to continue my walk down the hill. He followed, not as closely anymore, and I would occasionally stop to listen for any loud, troubling noises.

“I’m sorry,” he said once we reached the town again.

I huffed, not impressed, before taking a left down a small alley. He followed again, I walked faster, as did he. Once we reached the end of the small passing I turned abruptly, stopping him in his tracks. I tapped my foot, waiting there silently for him to continue his earlier apology.

“I’m sorry for taking you off guard. We do this all the time though, Oto, why were you so upset?” he asked irritatingly.

I huffed, balling my hands up before taking a calming step backward.

“It’s not that, Kawa,” I admitted solemnly, “it’s the fact that your tone sounded as if you believed you were any better than I. I care about you, but I would never see you again if you truly believed that.”

He was confused. You could tell because his chocolate brown eyes read that all over them. He looked down and back up at me, taking a step forward, and trapping me against the rough wall.

“If you think I believe that at all, then you truly haven’t been paying attention to me. I am infatuated with you. You’re strong and caring and you take in poor, worn strays off the street. You’re determined and stubborn and focused. You’re loving and wise and attentive. You’re a beautiful and independent woman and I love you for that. Damn it. I love you Otokita!” he confessed, surprising me very much.

And then he kissed me. He kissed me so fiercely, so kindly, yet so softly, I could do nothing but believe him. I could tell he felt a spark, fireworks even, but I did not. I couldn’t feel anything from that kiss other than sadness and pity. I kissed back, simply in reaction, and felt horrid.

I could never love him, not truly, not like he did me. I could only think of one thing as this was happening, and it terrified me beyond words. He pulled away, out of breath and sweaty, and smiled genuinely. I simply stood there, shocked and sad, and watched the happiness in his strong features fade. He examined my eyes carefully before stepping back, removing the arm that he had wrapped around my covered waist, and looked away.

“Do you… do you not feel the same?” he asked shyly, shoulders held firmly as a shield from my soon to come words.

“I-I-I...I cannot. I am so sorry, Kawa! I-” I didn’t finish that sentence as he turned away and walked determinedly.

I stood there solemnly, confused and angry and scared, as I filtered through my thoughts. I brushed over them all before straightening up and returning to my job.

==================

After the rest of my duties that day, I decided to go to Mrs.Itō’s shop to see if she finished the kimono I commissioned. I was outside of her small bright shop, merely looking at the cute calligraphy her 12-year-old son had made for her. One of the small window signs read ‘Kamotos- 3 yen’. I smiled lightly, remembering my sisters when they were his age. They had been obsessed with the new lessons on writing and calligraphy. It was the highlight of their week and they would practice whenever they had the chance.

“Oto? Oh, okosama, why are you not coming in? Come, come!” she gushed, broom in hand, and a bean-sack filled with needles in hand.

I smiled lightly, glad that Mrs.Itō has never judged me. She was always so kind to me and my family and was never a displeasure to be around. She radiated grace and honor, along with love and welcome. She was what I’d always imagined my grandmother had been like. It’s how my mother spoke of her, and I had no choice but to believe that.

“Mrs.Itō, what a pleasure,” I crooned, “I’m only here for a moment, the celebration is tonight and Ishi and I are in need of our kimonos. Are they ready? I have the 6 yen right here”

I reached into my small sack wedged between my armor and pulled out the cloth-covered coins. She smiled, nodding and taking me to the next room that was covered head-to-toe in cloth and fabric. I saw so many bright colors that worked so well together, something she had quite the eye for.

“Right here, okosama.” she said, smiling and holding out two burlap covered dresses, “Would you like to see yours?”

“Of course,” I agreed, watching as she lifted the cover.

I was in awe. Simple, unadulterated awe.

“It’s…”

“-Beautiful?” she chimed lightly.

I nodded, thoroughly surprised by the dress in front of me. The dress was covered in embroidered pink flowers that shrunk in size the farther up they got. The fabric was a black and pastel pink gradient, black being at the bottom. The obi was on top of the dress, a thick and wide black ribbon with pink floral lace bordering it. It reached past my feet, opening to show my ankles and the detailed black-bordered-pink silk on the inside.

It was far more than I had paid for and I was so grateful for the hard work I knew she had put into making this dress. I could only bow, arm resting on my back and the other holding the sliding weapons on my belt.

“Words cannot describe the great honor I feel for your hard work on this masterpiece.” I compliment sincerely, head still bowed.

She chuckled, setting the dresses down carefully and resting a hand on my shoulder. She sighed, bringing her soft hand to grab my chin lightly and lift me up.

“It’s only what you deserve, okosama. Do not underestimate what we, as the people of Chiba, appreciate of you. Tonight is not only to honor our elder, but also the work of our strongest warriors. I know at times you are judged, but the Elder thinks very highly of you and asked for me to do my best work on you two.” she explained, bringing a few tears to my eyes. I quickly wiped it before smiling and standing up straight.

“Thank you, but I must go. I should see you tonight then, yes?” I asked, reaching for the dresses.

“Of course,” she replied, giving me a farewell and leading me to the door.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Ishi? I’m home and I have our kimonos!” I announced, closing the wooden door behind me as I headed into her respective room.

She was behind her partition wall, probably changing. I heard a squeal before I saw a half-naked Ishi running towards me and tackling me. I laughed along with her, glad the bed was behind me and pushed the stout girl off of me.

“I see you’re excited,” I tease, getting a giggle in return, “Would you like to put on your dress?”

“Of course! I am so excited for tonight’s event! It’s been ages since we’ve had a real time away from the tensions lately. Please tell me you’re coming tonight!?” she begged, turning on the bed on her knees to sit on my lap.

I chuckled, stroking her soft black hair and looking at her beautifully cheerful face. I nodded, she squealed, I laughed, she hugged, I hugged. We sat there for a good while, holding each other comfortably while she played with my messy helmet hair.

“Did you hear about what this party is for, Oto?” she asked genuinely, continuing to play with my frizzing hair.

“I did, from Mrs.Itō no less. It’s very reassuring. Do you know why I became a Samurai, Ishi?” I asked.

She sat back up, arms sitting on her lap and shook her head, truly interested.

“When my father died, and the town was so scared, I left my house. I went up to the hill I always did and sat there, wondering, crying, and mourning. While I was doing that, I hadn’t noticed the lanterns floating. It was the tradition- every and anytime a person passed, the people who cared about them must light Chinese lanterns. It was a new tradition at the time, just learned by our people from an immigrant, and the town’s people loved its symbolism. Well, while I was looking at those brightly lit white lanterns, I noticed the atmosphere hadn’t truly changed. I could still feel the pain those people were feeling, the fear. I knew we had never had the best protection in Chiba, but this had shown me how important it was. All that fear, that pain, could have been avoided had we had a Samurai devoted to protecting this small but beautiful town. I never wanted those people to have to face that fear again, not if I could help it. So hearing how these people truly care and appreciate and respect my position and duties truly brings me to tears.”

I meant every word, every spilled syllable, every emotion that leaked through. It was true, and I wanted to share that with Ishi because I had come to a realization that I would always want her in my life. I never wanted her to be married, I never wanted her to be taken from me. It hurt to think that she could consider another person over me. Why? Why did that scare me? Why did I care?

“Oto?” she asked shyly, eyes glossed over, “You’re amazing, you know that?”

I smiled, tossing those thoughts away and she smiled back, rubbing her eyes to make the tears go away.

“As are you. Let’s get ready, shall we?” I asked, cheerfully standing up and turning to get her dress from the pile.

I handed it to her, watching as she removed the burlap to see the almost exact same dress as mine. Hers was a pale yellow and light blue, with blue being at the bottom. Her eyes grew wide in awe, a wide smile growing on her beautiful face.

“This is...Spectacular!” she gushed, turning the kimono around to see the back.

She rushed behind her partition to get changed as I went to mine to change as well. The dress fit me perfectly, the only thing I needed to do was tie my ribbon and do my makeup

“Ishi? Can you tie my ribbon?” I asked, knocking gently on her door.

It soon opened, revealing a gorgeously dressed girl. Her hair was pinned in a beautiful braided bun with pieces of hair systematically placed on her face. It had the chopsticks I had bought her for her birthday last year in the back, placed accordingly to hold her hair.

“You look amazing.” we both said together, resulting in us both laughing hysterically.

“Ribbon?” she asked, handing me her own yellow-laced-blue ribbon. I smiled before raising an eyebrow and handing her mine.

“Of course, turn,” I said, wrapping the ribbon around her slim midsection, grazing just below her breasts and tying in the back a beautiful bow.

“My turn,” I say, turning so she could do the same.

“There, now we’re both properly dressed. Makeup?” she suggested.

I smiled, nodding, and turned to head to my room where I kept our supplies. We did a simple Kabuki look with blue eyes for herself, and pink for me. I turned to her, finished with my look, to see her applying her mascara. Her face was stretched in the funniest way, causing me to giggle quietly to myself to not mess up her application.

“All done. I already took care of your mother. She’s eaten and is resting right now. If we’re back to check her before midnight we should be okay. I’ll go get my gloves and you can go powder the shoes.” she told me, standing up and walking out of the room oh-so-gracefully.

I got up and did as she said, waiting for her to come outside as I tapped my foot impatiently. When she finally came outside I gave her a raised eyebrow and she chuckled, standing close to my side as we left for the center of town where the celebration was at.

“You look spectacular, let’s hope your makeup stays put in this heat.” she joked, a smile growing by every step closer we get.

“Same for you, but you’d look beautiful either way.” I coaxed.

Though the makeup was covering most things, I’d imagined she’d blushed by the way her shoulders tilted, if that makes any sense. I hadn’t mentioned to her that I brought my Tanto with me, a small dagger used in honor, tucked into the side of my ribbons where it was blocked from sight by my arm.

As we got to the area it was being held, you could hear the sound of a koto and shakuhachi being played. The people were all gathered, conversing with each other, eating the sushi and other foods being served. I smiled, looking over to see that Ishi was smiling brightly at the colored lanterns hung above the town square.

“They dye the glass,” I tell her, pointing at the man who did its shop, “it’s a technique the English use in their Catholic churches to make window paintings.”

“That’s beautiful.” she says, now noticing the food, “Let’s eat! I’m starved.”

I chuckle, following her as we pick up the wooden plates and pick food. I followed her to go sit at a table with some of the acquaintances she’d made over the last few years. After about an hour or two, I saw Kawa walking toward our table.

“Otokita, may we speak in private?” he asks, looking far more professional than I’m used to.

I look over to see Ishi giving him an unreadable look and I agree, excusing myself. We walk a few meters away, behind all the set tables and a few rows of trees. He stopped, turning to look at me and giving me a coy smile. I cross my arms grumpily, tilting a hip out and staring at him.

“So, you don’t love me,” he said, smirk not wavering.

“Yes, and I apologize.” I agree sympathetically, nodding my head and looking over his shoulder, back to the table I was at to see Ishi missing. I look out to the dancing area and see her swaying with a young man about her age.

Jealousy.

“Well, I think we can fix that. You just have to see what a great husband I will make for you,” he says, drawing my attention away from my girl.

“What are you talking about, Kawa?” I ask, confused.

“You say you cannot love me, but I think you can,” he reached out, grabbing my hand in his and holding it there, “We already have a connection, you just need it to strength.”

I was shocked, to say the least, I hadn’t expected this from him and I was so confused.

“Kawa, you don’t understand. I can’t love you because I don’t have room.” I say as lightly as possible, trying to release my hand.

“No, no,” he chuckles, pulling my hand back towards himself, “You have room. I accept your duties, I know they come first. I can be secondary, I don’t mind”

“Kawa, you’re really not getting it-” I was cut off by his lips on mine, invading it and making me angry.

I shoved him off of me, turning him around with the Tanto held to his throat. I got close to him, almost touching his nose with my forehead and looked up into his frazzled brown eyes.

“You. Aren’t. Getting. It.” I say through gritted teeth, “I don’t have room to love you because I already love someone.”

He was mad, I could see it. His hands were pinned so he couldn’t do anything. I backed away slowly, keeping the Tanto to his throat, and finally removing it when I was at a safe distance.

“You mean so much to me, Kawa, but do not confuse that with romantic love. You doubt me, see me as another woman, another wife to make dinners. I am not that and I could never love or be with someone who expects that.” I said softer this time to make him understand.

“Who is it? Who do you love?” he asks angrily, a hint of sadness seeping through.

“It isn’t important. I need you to know this isn’t hurt you.” I say seriously, deflecting the question I could barely admit to myself.

“I understand. Just know that I won’t give up on you. I will stop the flirting, but know I will never give up on us.” he said sincerely, making me feel sympathy for his cluelessness.

“I understand,” I say simply, turning around and heading back to our table where Ishi was not present.

I gave the tablemates a questioning look and they all smiled lightly.

“She’s gone from the dance floor, okosama. Try looking near the food, she left with that young man. Possible husband?” one of the older women asked.

I smiled shyly, internally cringing at the thought of her marrying. I thanked them before heading over to the food table to see her and the young man sharing a long, slimy, kiss. I cleared my throat, arms crossed angrily, looking at the two.

“Ishi. We’re leaving, say your goodbyes.” I instruct, reaching to separate the promiscuous pair.

She looked at me, anger and regret shining in those beautiful green eyes. She huffed, turning t the young man and whispering something in his ear and giggling. He smiled, resting a hand softly on her wait. I huffed, tapping my foot and flipping the blade in my hand from earlier.

“Goodbye.” she purred to him, sauntering away from the table and towards our table to say goodbyes.

I’m not going to lie, that hurt, but I really had no reason to discourage her behavior. I wasn’t her father, she could canoodle with whomever she pleases. Still, I was angry.

“What was that?!” I blurted, squeezing the Tanto.

“What was what?” she retorted, “It wasn’t any different than what you and Kawa were doing in the woods. I’m not blind, you know.”

I scoffed speeding up my walking since she had.

“What does that matter? It’s none of your business!” I shout, she scoffed, turning her heel and stopping.

“And what’s any different from my situation?” she seethed, puffing her white cheeks.

“Because it is! Who was he anyway? Is he going to ask for your hand?” I ask honestly, anger radiating from me at the idea.

“Kii Wan! He’s amazing, and maybe he will! And I’ll accept!” she shouts, arms flailing as she steps closer to me.

That shot daggers down my spine. I wanted to scream, cry, yell, fight, stab, and most of all I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to kiss her cute face. The face that makes me smile every time I see it.

“Why?” I asked, my voicing cracking slightly as fear crept up my spine.

A single tear. One little tear. It rolled down my face, I could feel it taking some of the makeup with it. I hadn’t cried in nearly 6 years since my father’s death. Not once, but the thought of losing her to some man made my heart ache worse than it ever has. I couldn’t take it, I couldn’t. I had to convince her to stay.

“Oto-” she empathized, stopping before she finished.

“Please.” I cried, “Please don’t do this. Don’t leave me. Am I not enough?”

I sobbed. Sobbed. Actually, truly, sobbed. And she knew. She knew how I was broken. She hugged me, crying just as I am, likely ruining each others kimono. We held each other, tighter than the day she told me her story, and it was bliss. I was broken, yes, but something about this hug told me it wasn’t what I thought it was.

“Otokita, I love you,” she said, staying still as can be, yet still holding onto me just as tightly.

“I love you, too, Ishi.” I emitted with all my heart.

We kissed, on an empty dark road, with ruined smeared makeup, the taste of rice flour invading our mouths, but we didn’t care. Because all thought we would never be able to share our love with the world, we could still love each other. We could love each other until the day we die. Until the day I fulfill my promise to protect Chiba.

“You didn’t really care for that boy, did you?” I asked, regrettably.

“Never, I was simply acting out of anger and jealousy. I’m sorry, Oto,” she mumbled.

As the years moved on, I fulfilled my duty. Kawa accepted that I could never be his and eventually found himself the most beautiful woman he said he’d ever seen. I found that there were many troubles with being, not only a female Samurai but also a bisexual woman in love with another. It wasn’t until 6 years later did my sisters return to take care of my ailing mother. They were happily married to two different and feminist men. The Karanaki name had been carried on through my 2nd niece, and my mother died 8 years later.

I could never regret any of my choices- to raise my sisters Atheist’s, to become both an okugatasama and Samurai, to fall in love with a lost and nearly broken woman. None. It was what led me to my happiness throughout the struggle and judgment of 7th century Japan.

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nicholas-wolfwood · 7 years ago

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♒ Who has made you feel cherished during a good moment of pleasing and who do you wish to express such adoration to in that manner?

“………” That question got him thinking back to a time he’d rather forget, but he was compelled to answer.

“There was… someone a while back. I kept pushing him away at first, wanted nothin’ to do with him, but fuck, he wasn’t only persistent but patient. Bit by bit he brought all my defenses down, some by force, an’ others more gently. ‘Course, I didn’t start fallin’ for him ‘til he started treating me like an equal, but that’s when I realized his patience won out.

“…He was the first person I ever heard ‘I love you’ from. Directed at me, I mean. He was the first person that made me feel like I could actually mean somethin’ to someone, that I could be… valued, as somethin’ more than a tool or weapon. Precious. I’d never really felt that before, that kinda love. Or, so I thought it was…” He chuckled, bitterly.

“It’s funny, lookin’ back I shoulda known better. He started to try an’ become a better man, a more ‘godly’ one, if ya will. Higher standards. He grew less interested, only comin’ ‘round for sex an’ pushin’ me aside whenever I tried for anything else, even at times when I was fallin’ apart at the seams an’ just wanted-…” Comfort. A simple gesture of comfort, or even the slightest bit of acknowledgement from the man that broke down all the defenses around his heart, only to toy with it and eventually drive a knife through it. In more ways than one.

“Anyways, he must’ve grown tired of the game an’ ended up tossin’ me aside for someone better. Someone more ‘worthy’ of him; more submissive, less mouthy I guess. Someone who wouldn’t call him out on his shit. An’ less damaged. Why take damaged goods when there’re better ones in your reach, yeah? Ones that ain’t broken?” Despite another small laugh, Wolfwood was slowly curling in on himself, the past pain coming back with that familiar surge of self-loathing. He’d been an idiot; and having never known what a healthy, non-abusive relationship looked like, once he let the man in he just assumed the mistreatment was normal at first.

“Not even worth enough to cut it as a-... ‘cum bucket’, I think was the term used… Hell, even KNIVES had been right, I was jus’ too much of an IDIOT to realize I was bein’ played. Shoulda known better.”

“…I tried to speak out against some of the shit. Speak my mind like usual, but guess that warranted nearly getting killed. Gettin’ gutted an’ left in the street to die like a dog. The friends I had at the time… Lot of ‘em jus’ looked the other way. One even said I deserved it… Fuck, that one hurt more ‘n anything… All of it just reinforced the lessons I’d learned in the Eye. Nobody wants damaged goods, especially not tainted ones like me… Least not ‘til somethin’ better comes along. Hell, maybe that’s where Vash went? Not that I’d blame him, he deserves someone better.”

“As for who I’d want to show the kinda love I thought we had to someone, I dunno. Vash… is still pretty damn important to me, but he’s fucked off to who knows where…”

“Can… I stop talkin’ ‘bout this?”

#oooh the wording of that one hit a nerve #anon #ask #old shit but it greatly effected him #meme response #bit of a story time #long post #Anonymous

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chericoco91 · 7 years ago

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My thoughts on Mass Incarceration

I would like to highlight certain aspects of Human rights violations and the racial disparities in the prison system. The human rights violations in the arresting, sentencing, life in the prison, and even life after release. Law enforcement today has made common practice dismantling lives and communities, making black men six times more likely to be incarcerated than white men, and black women incarcerated at four times the rate of white women. A system designed to make it easier for the state to strip away the human rights of African Americans.

The 13th amendment was ratified on Dec 6 1865. It was the year that black people set sail on liberation and the chains were supposedly cut loose. Section 1 of the 13th Amendment clearly states “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” The 13th amendment never truly abolish slavery, it merely constructed conditions.

After slavery allegedly ended, Southern states criminalized minor offences. It was a crime to speak loudly around white women. It was a crime to sell the products from your farm after dark. It was a crime to walk beside a railroad. Anything from being drunk, or loitering, to spitting. The most damaging of all of these laws were the vagrancy laws. In every southern state a person became a criminal if they could not prove, at any given moment that they were employed. African Americans were essentially left to fend for themselves. They couldn’t count on sympathy from northerners, or the federal government. One thing they could count on was more and more attacks and animosity from southerners. Slowly state by state, new laws were passed that effectively criminalized black life. At this time, only ten percent of prisoners were white. It is very likely that white people didn’t commit less crimes because, historically, lynching was at an all-time high. Jails would rent prisoners out to companies for labor, and exchange labor for the companies paying housing of prisoners. The highest rate was reserved for the strongest workers and longest sentences. It was the nation’s first prison boom.

In between World War 2 and the 1970, black people were needed for work in factories during which time, black people weren’t needed in jail. Even while Jim Crow and racism was flourishing. It wasn’t until the need for factory jobs dried up in the 1970’s that another boom in the prison system. African Americans began to go back to prison in record numbers. The Nixon era returned once again to destroying African American families, with the launch of the “War on Drugs”. Nixon’s adviser John Enrilchman stated “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we

couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”(LoBianco, Tom.)

This was a war on specific groups of people, not drugs. Ronald Regan extended the power of the prison system further by pushing for mandatory sentences and “no knock” warrants. Reagan, knowing that the new drug “crack” was prevalent in black neighborhoods and cocaine was largely in white neighborhoods, placed mandatory sentencing for crack which was far harsher than cocaine charges. The presidents to follow passed more policies that contributed to mass incarceration.

Fast forward today, and the prison system is a complete mess. Prison is intended to be a place where people are sent to be punished and learn their mistakes, hopefully deterring others from breaking the law. Punishment, corrections and deterrence. However, society has adopted a line of thinking wherein prisoners are external to society. Prisons do have high walls with barbed wires and gunman separated them from civilians. Society has forgotten that millions of prisoners are released each year. Today’s prisoners are tomorrows neighbors. If this were considered with more prevalence, society would think that corrections would be the most important part of the equation. In reality, this is far from the truth inside the prison system. Correction takes a dusty, distant back seat to punishment. America contains only about 4% of the world’s population, however, it is home to 25% of prisoners world-wide. America has the highest incarceration rate in the world. In the last 30 years that number has increased 400%. With 41% of juveniles arrested by the time they are 23, while rates for black women in particular have risen by 800%. African American men make 37% of the prison population but only making up 13% of the general population. African American woman account for 58% of drug offences; they are greatly affected by the “War on Drugs”. Denying the implication of these facts becomes impossible when examining the ratios in many states. New Jersey incarcerates 12 black men to one white man. Wisconsin; 11 black men to one white man. Iowa; 11 black men to one white man; the list goes on. There are more African Americans in prison than college in America. Children as young as 13 have been sentenced to die in prison.

Solitary confinement is a human rights violation. Our prisons violate internal standards, with solitary confinement that increases instability, and violence between inmates, to an extent that is considered torture by international law. In America, the practice is not regulated by anyone other than the prison officials. No judge, no jury. It’s arguably the most inhumane practice in prison, with no available appeals process. Solitary confinement is a form of imprisonment in which an inmate is isolated from any human contact, often with the exception of members of prison staff, for 22–24 hours a day, with a sentence ranging from days to decades. (“Solitary confinement.” Wikipedia,)It is mostly employed as a form of punishment beyond incarceration for a

prisoner, usually for violations of prison regulations. However, it is also used as an additional measure of protection for vulnerable inmates. (“Solitary confinement.” Wikipedia,) Prisoners are at high risk of suicide, anxiety, depression, anger, cognitive disturbances, perceptual distortions, obsessive thoughts, paranoia, and psychosis. The U.N. says anything longer than 15 days is torture, however, in America people may stay in solitary confinement for years.

The lack of health care in these prisons is a violation of human rights. Overcrowding, violence, sexual abuse, and other conditions pose a grave risk to prisoner health and safety. Mistreatment of prisoners is based on race or disability remains far too common. Juveniles who have been placed in isolation repeatedly and held in five point restraints for days on end. A prisoner whose diabetes went untreated, causing him to lose 90% of his eyesight in one eye. A prisoner who repeatedly complained of chest pain and shortness of breath suffered a heart attack and was left to die alone in his cell. Multiple prisoners who are denied auxiliary aids and services for their hearing, vision, or mobility disabilities. Prisoners with disabilities are also not provided accommodations in the parole hearing process, leading to denial of parole, longer stays, and contributing to overcrowding, often leading to overuse of solitary confinement, including putting two prisoners into an isolation cell designed for one. This practice has resulted in death on several occasions. All of these effects are amplified disproportionately upon African Americans. (“Overcrowding in Nebraska’s Prisons Has Led to Constitutional Violations.”)

A significant contributing factor to overcrowding in prisons occurs when people get arrested without sufficient money for a lawyer or bail. Most people are bribed with a “plead deal”. For example, a person is offered the opportunity to take 5 years in jail or be faced with a trial that may result in 50 years. Most people who don’t have money for a lawyer will likely not take the matter to trial. The accused could be innocent man or woman doing 5 years because they didn’t have money for bail or a lawyer. The primary cause for this practice is ridiculously long mandatory sentence that was set in place. 97% of people that get locked up never see a trial, marking one of the worst human rights violation in the U.S. In the event a person were to bring the matter to trial, regardless of their situation, they could sit in prison for years until seeing a court. By overloading the court system, the right to a speedy trial is cleverly bypassed. What essentially is being done is, the courts punish people more for fighting a case.

Another problem generated by the prison system occurs when returning to civilian life. America makes it intentionally leagues more difficult to get a job in America once a person has been convicted of a felony, and the right to vote is removed indefinitely. Convicts are ineligible to get student loans, welfare, food stamps and public housing. They are often disconnected from support on the outside. In addition to having high rates of returning to prison, inmates have high homelessness and suicide. They are stripped away from their rights as an American. So many aspects of Jim Crow are legal again, once a person has been branded a felon. Jim Crow did it’s job by locking people of color

into second class citizens. Jim Crow and slavery were caste systems, which resemble the current system of mass incarceration flawlessly.

Options for people in this situation are now very limited. Voting out the people who established these policies is not an option, as the right to vote for felons no longer exists. African American community are affected, and as a minority group, many of them can’t do anything alone to fix it. Not being able to vote, and having a discussion on your life and community is a human rights violation.

One might argue, “if you can’t do the time, don’t do the time.” However, there are drugs all over campuses and yacht clubs. I don’t see the swat team busting in their doors. The circumstances are different for low income neighborhoods. If rich kids get in trouble they go to rehab, if poor folk’s kids get in trouble they go to prison. African Americans have been affected the most. When there are disproportionately high incarnation rates with black men and women. Mothers and fathers are taken away from their homes. Homes are broken and when mothers and fathers come back jobs are hard to obtain, boosting the criminal activity in their neighborhoods, making the neighborhoods unsafe. All while the property taxes going doing in said neighborhood. The children are not just affected at home, it affects their schooling as well. In low-income neighborhood schools get money off of people’s property taxes. Schools in those neighborhoods don’t get as much money. Not giving a child equal opportunity in schools, is also a human rights violation. Society is spending $100,00.00 keeping that kid in prison, when we could’ve spent less helping him become a NASA scientist, or anything they want to be. When these people come home, they aren’t given the opportunity to start over. They leave a physical prison for a social prison. There are more African American people in prison today then there were slaves in 1850.

Through the review of incarceration statistics and socio-economic analysis, a conclusion can be drawn that the American prison system today is and always has been wielded as a replacement for slavery, abusing the 13th amendment to accomplish the violation of human rights disproportionately in the direction of African Americans. A system designed to revoke the rights to voting, freedom from torture, freedom from unpaid labor, entitlement to a speedy trial by jury, and devastating equal opportunity in schools, housing, and employment. Indeed, the prison system is stacked against the rights of many African American’s to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness defying the very notion that all men are created equal.

#humanRights #african american #black #prison #america #blackhistory

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gorocult · 7 years ago

Text

Warmth

Hideweek Day 4: Good/Pleasing Author: Ayainu Summary: Hide was warm, and taught Kaneki how it felt to be as well. Notes: If you like, please leave kudos and comments on my ao3! Warnings: The relationship type is up to the reader.

***

“Today again a little snow falls on sorrow already spoiled today again even the wind blows through sorrow already spoiled,”* The boy recited, his voice quivering like an autumn leaf on a stormy day. Oddly, to Hide’s ears, that feeble voice sounded kind of beautiful, somehow soothing. Hide watched as its owner sat back down and wrapped that ever present scarf tighter around his neck.

“Thank you Kaneki,” Their teacher droned, Hide was sure if he were to draw his eyes away from Kaneki he’d see the mixture of entertainment and pity adults always seemed to get out of messing with helpless kids in their teacher’s eyes.

Kaneki nodded in his seat and the teacher, that apparently had enough of messing with Kaneki for the day, went back to the lesson at hand. Hide didn’t know much, this is his first day in this school, he had enough common sense to understand what’s going on though.

From what Hide could glean out of other students and the way teachers talked, Kaneki was everyone’s favorite weakling. From what he collected he seemed to have a kind of condition that rendered him unable to tolerate the slightest bit of cold. If one were to observe him closely, like Hide was currently doing, it’d be easy to notice how he was constantly trembling. According to other students Kaneki has never been seen without that huge wool scarf wound around his neck, not even in summer. From the instances Hide got to hear him talk, his voice was always quivering and weak.

It was the end of Hide’s first day of school and he was more than a little intrigued. He’d just transferred from the countryside to study high school in the big city. It was his only choice if he wanted to follow his mother’s footsteps and study at Kami University, a university that prestigious won’t accept any country bumpkins

The subway systems were really confusing, but he could probably get the hang of them in a couple of days. “I’m home,” Hide called as he discarded his outdoors shoes for a pair of slippers.

“Welcome home,” called Marude from the kitchen.

“Oh, you know how to cook Marucchi?” Hide placed his bag on the counter and stared across the kitchen at the adult struggling at the oven.

“I don’t, and don’t call me that you brat,” Marude mumbled. Hide could smell the sharp scent of burnt rice and a weird nauseating mixture of spices.

“Sorry, sorry,” Hide brushed off, not sounding the least bit apologetic. “What are you doing here then.”

“I don’t know, your father entrusted you to me and I thought I could try to cook you something, I can’t let you starve here,” Marude sighed. “Are you by any chance interested in the worst curry you’ll ever put in you mouth?”

“I heard sometimes when food reaches a certain level of nastiness it actually starts to taste good,” Hide supplied.

“You never hold anything back do you?” Marude clicked his tongue.

“I am my mother’s son,” Hide grinned.

“You really are, now set the table you little shit,” Marude couldn’t suppress the small smile that tugged at the corners of his lips.

“‘Kay Marucchi,” Hide drawled, already reaching for the cupboard with the plates.

Marude just sighed.

“So how was your first day of school?” Murude said as he filled the plates Hide handed him with slightly – extremely– overcooked rice and a hellish mixture Marude called curry.

“Wow you suck at acting like a parent,” Hide burst out in laughter, Marude flushed. “Thanks though, it went really well. All the kids are really friendly and the teachers are nice. To me that is,” Hide trailed off.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Marude glanced at him quizzically across the table, his spoon was already digging into his plate though.

“Well..” Hide started as he picked at the food on his plate. “There is this kid…”

“This kid?”

“He’s in my class, he’s kind of odd, but everyone in school goes too far making him feel like a freak, even the teachers,” Hide stabbed at a piece of chicken with his fork and took it into his mouth.

“Sounds tough, but that’s high school for you,” Marude shrugged and Hide was quick to shake his head.

“It’s not your textbook case of social outcast, he definitely has something wrong, not that it warrants any of the mistreatment directed at him.” Hide said deliberately.

“You keep saying weird but you never explained exactly how, care to elaborate?” Marude raised one eyebrow.

“Ah well, it’s hard to explain, but from what I got so far he has really low cold tolerance, when I say really low, I mean really low,” Hide tried to explain.

“Really low?”

“Like he wears a heavy wool scarf in the middle of summer kind of low.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah”

“Have you tried talking to him?” Marude supplied through a mouthful of curry.

“I didn’t, other students always avoid him when they’re not being douchebags, I didn’t want to scare him away,” Hide said over the rim of his glass of water.

“Well if you feel that bad for him maybe you should try befriending him?” Marude stood, his now empty plate in his hand.

“It’s not that I feel bad for him, I do think what others are making him go through is beyond wrong and I want it to stop, but it’s not why I’m interested,” Hide bit his lip.

“What is it then?” Marude met his gaze with his own inquisitive one.

“I.. I don’t know,” Hide answered honestly then hurried to change the subject, “I guess it was true after all, that curry didn’t taste half as bad as I thought it would.”

“Shuddap.” Marude either took the bait or decided to drop the subject for the time being, Hide suspected the latter. “I cooked so you get to do the dishes.”

“But Marucchi..!” Hide whined but Marude cut him short.

“No buts, hurry up before it dries and becomes troublesome.”

“You’re the worst,” Hide grumbled.

“Right back at ya punk,” Marude called, already in the hallway.

The next day was the same, relatively uneventful save for the occasional Kaneki mistreatment. Hide tried all day to build enough guts to talk to Kaneki but every time he made a move to go in Kaneki’s direction so much panic filled the other boy’s dull gray orbs that Hide instantly lost his resolve.

It was when he decided to give up and started to head home that it happened. On his way to the station he passed by the riverbank he always liked to admire the beauty of, except this time four figures were blocking the scenery. It looked bad too because he was sure three of them were attacking the fourth smaller one. Taking a closer look Hide recognized the uniform as his school’s, the next thing he noticed was the violent tremors of the fourth figure and the heavy scarf that was being yanked off of it. Hide broke out in a sprint.

Hide asked no questions and went straight for the closest guy he encountered and swung. He quickly whipped around to meet the other one’s stomach with the heel of his shoes, and as the third approached from behind he elbowed him hard enough that he lost his breath for a few seconds. Hide stepped back to block Kaneki from their view.

“What the hell-”

“You’re all an awful bunch, targeting a kid that obviously can’t even fight back, three of you at once too. If it were anyone but me they wouldn’t stand a chance, what a bunch of cowards,” Hide glared so hard he thought his eyes were feeling kind of hot.

“Who the hell are you?”

“I’m my mom’s kid,” Hide said simply. “Now would you scram or do I need to throw you out myself?”

“You’ll pay for this transfer student!”

“Sure, sure,” Hide brushed them off and turned his back on them before they even fully stood.

Kaneki was convulsing harder than he’d ever seen him in the short time he’s been around him, he was on the dirt reaching pitifully for his discarded scarf. Hide’s heart twisted and he was quick to pick it up and hand it to Kaneki who in turn fastened it back around his neck securely. Kaneki’s lips had always been covered by that absurdly huge muffler but from the few seconds Hide could see them they were deep blue.

“Thank you…” Kaneki mumbled quietly, even with his voice that low Hide could tell it was shakier than ever.

“Ah, no problem! Jerks like these should be put in place. I’m Hideyoshi Nagachika, but please just call me Hide!” He grinned at Kaneki widely.

“Kaneki Ken, nice to meet you.” Hide was starting to worry about how much Kaneki’s voice shook.

“You probably already know, but I’m a transfer student here from the countryside and know next to no one here. What I’m trying to get at here is, wanna be friends?” Hide was an absolute wreck, but he still extended a hand towards Kaneki.

“Friends?” Kaneki stared long and hard at the hand extended towards him, it was when Hide made to retract it that he finally extended his own.

“Yeah!” Hide’s lips were pulled over his teeth as his smile widened.

“Ok…ay..” Kaneki trailed off, his eyes wide and confused as he stared at their connected hands.

“Are you okay Kaneki?” Hide cocked his head to the side, puzzled.

“Warm..” Kaneki’s eyes welled up with tears and Hide was starting to freak out.

“Kaneki what’s wrong? Did I do something wrong? I’m sorry!” Hide was talking faster than he ever knew he could. When he tried to retract his hand in his haze of panic Kaneki tightened his grip around it.

“N-No.. Hide I.. warm.. I can feel it, seeping into my skin… Hide I can-” Kaneki was full on sobbing at that point and Hide opened his arms to offer a hug.

Kaneki scrambled into Hide’s arms and it left Hide dazed, how fast everything was going. Hide let Kaneki get all his waterworks out on his poor shirt. Kaneki was extremely cold in his arms, the kind of cold his mother described the skin of a corpse with.

When Kaneki finally stopped crying Hide noticed he was considerably warmer and the tremors were all but gone. He could feel the coolness of Kaneki’s lips seeping through his shirt from where they were squished against his shoulder.

“I couldn’t feel warmth,” Kaneki murmured against the shirt, his words shapes against Hide’s skin.

Hide said nothing but nodded for Kaneki to continue.

“I was born this was, not from my aunt or uncle, or anyone at school, or neighbors, not even animals. Everything I touched was cold, no trace of the warmth I used to feel from my mother.” Kaneki made no sense at all but Hide let him go on.

“My mother, when she passed away I was never able to feel warmth again. My world has always been freezing ever since, until.. until just now.” Kaneki pried himself away from Hide’s shoulder to peer at him with wonder filled eyes.

“Why? What makes me different?”

“I don’t know..”

“Am I your personal heater now?”

“I-I’m sorry! It’s just-”

“No no, it’s fine I was just kidding. This is kinda nice anyways. Plus, what are friends for?”

Kaneki smiled and Hide’s heart tightened in a way it never did before. “Thank you Hide.”

“Don’t mention it, I guess now you’re stuck with me, huh?” Hide tried to sound nonchalant but he was sure his excitement bled through his voice.

“Being close to you feels really nice!”

“Then I guess it is where I’ll stay,” Hide winked and KanekI looked flustered but his cheeks didn’t tint pink, Hide guessed that’s expected when his lips were only barely the same color as his skin now.

“We should go home,” Kaneki started after a while.

“We should,” Hide replied but made no effort to move.

“But I want to talk more with you,” Kaneki murmured.

“Didn’t I just promise to always be here? We have all the time in the world,” Hide assured, even when he himself didn’t want to leave.

“You’re right, it’s just, this is so hard to believe for me. I feel like the second I let go of you none of this will be real,” Kaneki sighed but stood up.

“How about this then,” Hide started and removed his headphones from around his neck, placing them on Kaneki’s slender one beneath the muffler. “Like this you have a part of me with you at all times!”

“It’s warm..” Kaneki smiled up at Hide and the poor blonde was about ready to melt of the spot.

Hide smiled back with triple the luster.

“See you!” Hide waved at him.

“See you!” Kaneki’s hands were cradling the headphones with the gentlest of looks on his face.

Hide couldn’t wait to get home and tell Marude, he couldn’t wait for tomorrow to come so he can meet Kaneki again. Their futures were near and now intertwined, he was now bound by nothing but his own will to be close Kaneki at all times he could be.

Something good was waiting for them and Hide just knew it.

*For Tainted Sorrow, Nakahara Chuuya.

#hideweek #hideweek2017 #day 4: good/pleasing #fic #fan fiction #tg #Tokyo ghoul #hideyoshi nagachika #Kaneki ken #hidekane #aya writes #writing #vague relationship #marude itsuki #high school verse #implications of bullying #fluff

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