#i will not lie. i love this thing. i know the fight itself is divisive but it is just so laughably tailored to my fave things

[spacecolonie]

the last stand

[onyourowndaisymae]

when lucifer falls in love

content + warnings: minor s1 of og! game spoilers, discussions of death, nightmares, hurt/comfort, lucifer's regretting the past again // [masterlist]

word count: ~1.2k

it’s the dead of the devildom night. not a single creature dares to stir in the house of lamentation, to interrupt the heavy darkness that lays claim to the kingdom like a siege, like a thick blanket over a fragile child. the night is oppressive at this hour. hell freezes over each night– sizzling temperatures plummet to biting cold, a violent swing that dares all to be prepared for any weather. 

it starts as uncharacteristic shuffles. tossing and turning at an hour he should usually be asleep, shifting from one side to another without waking. sweat peppers his hairline. his fingers twitch once, twice, eyelids fluttering restlessly. something’s going wrong. where there should be peace, there’s chaos, his dreams infested with something dark and unpleasant. 

lucifer morningstar wakes violently with a nightmare. 

his body jerks in panic, rising to a seated position before he can even fathom what’s going on. adrenaline floods his veins. fear grips him hard, and his labored breathing is the only sound that fills his senses for several long moments. 

memories swirl together at the top of his consciousness, a glossy oil slick of tangible emotion and thought. 

the great celestial war. bloodshed. the violent division of his family, of heaven itself, at the folly of his own pride. he can feel lilith’s body limp in his arms, chest rising with strained effort, her own blood soiling the angelic robes she once wore. she was beautiful. so innocent and pure. her only folly was falling victim to a love that should have never existed. a love he should have stopped earlier on, should have reigned in before things continued to deteriorate. his fault. it’s his fault that everything went down the way it did. 

the sound of your breathing finally catches his attention when his own begins to steady out. you’re fast asleep next to him– it’s a nice indication that he was able to hold in the cry that burned his throat as to not disturb your peaceful slumber. humans need their rest, after all. 

lucifer slips from his spot in his bed next to you. the bed shifts silently like a willing accomplice, letting his exit go unnoticed. a quick glance over his shoulder– you’re still unconscious, blissfully unaware of his departure– and he stumbles out into his office. 

he flicks his wrist haphazardly and the fireplace sparks to life. tired feet carry him to a nearby chair and he slumps, defeated into the cushions. 

in the dead of night, when he’s alone, his mind wanders to his mistakes. some nights, like tonight, they creep into his dreams– regret, uncertainty, moments of tranquility ruined by the stormcloud of war creeping into the foreground. was he wrong to fight against his Father? did his pride, his actions– have his siblings all been damned in ways they wouldn’t have had he discouraged them from following him? if he had stopped lilith from falling in love with that human in the first place, would his brothers be happier? would lilith still be alive?

that’s the thing about hindsight. he doesn’t know what the best decision was. in another life, maybe lilith lived– but he’ll never know. 

“lucifer?”

his name is garbled and groggy as it falls from your lips. he’s surprised to see you in the doorway– were you not asleep just a few minutes ago?

“yes, my love?”

“what are you doing up? i–” a yawn interrupts you, and you shift on your feet uncomfortably. “-- i missed you.”

an awkward lump settles in his throat. he didn’t realize that you’d noticed his absence. your expression shifts from exhaustion to concern, rubbing your eyes with your fingertips to adjust to the light. 

“i– couldn’t sleep.” he rasps the lie with ease. he doesn’t have the willpower to explain what was really going through his mind.

your bare feet pad quietly across the hardwood floors, steady and lethargic, as you make your way to his side. he watches each step carefully. you still next to him and press a soft, warm kiss to his forehead. 

you’re sweet. that’s the first thing he thinks when your lips find his skin, now tacky from cooling sweat as he reels in his own panic. it’s hard to be so upset when he’s next to you. your hands find the sides of his face and cradle him oh-so-delicately, like too rough a touch will make him scurry off into the darkness. 

“do you want to talk about it?”

he shakes his head. 

“alright,” you murmur, kissing the top of his head and taking a step back. your fingers linger on the side of his face a moment longer before they fall to your sides. “just– don’t stay up too late, alright?”

he nods, watching you shuffle off to the bedroom once again. his heart beats rapidly in his chest from the lingering panic, but it starts to calm as his thoughts wander to you. 

when did disdain become affection? when did suspicious looks turn into forehead kisses? lucifer couldn’t remember a turning point when you became so important to him– it was a slow march with his eyes closed, blind to the storm raging inside of him until push came to shove and his lips met yours. 

now you spend your nights in his bed. he can hardly lull himself to sleep when you’re not there. funny how things change. 

when the panic finally settles, he creeps back into his bedroom. the rhythmic lull of your breathing reassures him. there is no danger here. no death, no war, no mistakes. only you. 

his movements are hesitant as he crawls back in bed. it’s an attempt not to wake you– a failed one. you immediately reach for him in a state of half-consciousness, tucking yourself into his chest as he settles back in his original spot. your hands are smooth against his broad chest, lazily brushing across the skin before winding around him. 

“i got you, luci.”

four little words. barely audible amongst the shuffling of changing positions, but enough to make his heart pound against his ribcage. four little words conveying the depths of the care you have for the demon in your arms. 

oh, how lucifer morningstar loves you so. 

in the darkness of his bedroom, the flush of his cheeks does not announce its presence– yet it’s there, warm and fuzzy like the feeling in his chest, reminding the avatar of pride that he is nothing more than a man. a simple man. he loves his family and his home, the life he lives. and you. by god, he loves you so much that it makes his breath catch in his throat and his fingers tremble against your back. his arms wind around you to return the affection in any way he can. 

he’ll wait to tell you he loves you another day– soon, surely, so he won’t have to carry this burden for long– when he can muster up all the romance and passion you deserve. would dinner be a more appropriate place, or would that be seen as too gaudy? maybe he’ll find a time at him, when the two of you are alone in each other’s arms again. lucifer will iron out the details with time. 

sleep comes for him rather quickly. somewhere in your arms his mind is finally laid to rest, and he drifts off to sleep with the quiet comfort of knowing tomorrow will be a better day.

the nightmares do not return again tonight.

taglist for this series: @deepseafragments // @darkflowerav // @annoying-and-upset // @katerinaval // @lurkingsnails // @chirikoheina // @all-mights-wife // @notareum // @ollieoven

[cheesus-doodles]

So if it was Mikey that was getting married would the wedding be a lot smoother or is izana crashing the wedding too?

Link to relevant Wedding Ask 1 ; Ask 2

Masterlist

‎

Been a while since I answer a ask and since this came in ;-; im sorry its been almost two years...

No doubt that anything related to Mikey would be absolute chaos, and doubly so if Izana is involved.

Considering just Mikey to begin with, the rest of the Toman founders already aren't very happy - not because you picked Mikey over them or anything of the such (with the exception of Kazutora of course, this baby boy is seething with envy). Okay maybe all of them are a bit jealous over the whole situation, seeing that the blond-haired airhead who was probably the least capable of caring for another person being the one you chose. But still, putting aside their jealousy, the other five just know that it'll be a huge, huge uphill struggle its going to be having to wrangle him into behaving himself so that you would have the time of your life that you deserved.

Getting Mikey to propose to you to start is a fight in itself, because this baby boy doesn't want to bother with anything, not even proposing, lest of all a full wedding - after all, why care when you were already as good as his? Just wants to move in immediately and start gate-keeping cuddles, forehead kisses and head pats. So right from the beginning, it is the other five Toman founders pulling the strings; okay maybe four, because Kazutora would stubbornly refuse to do anything but cling to you and cry for attention. He does not support this wedding one bit and will not hesitate to make it known (even tried asking you to marry him with an onion ring that he was in the midst of eating), though all he gets in return was reassuring pats and extra love.

Baji and Draken pull their weight for the proposal - the First Division Captain would secretly take your ring size while playing a game of chopsticks (don't ask how, he's an expert), while Draken and the brothel girls would pick out a ring. Your wedding dress has 100% been sorted out many years ago by Mitsuya, delicately designed and impeccably crafted to your exact taste and dimensions, and Mikey is getting side-eyed and threatened into being measured for a custom suit if it was the last thing the Second Division captain does. Pah bless his father's real estate company connections has a venue down pat, and Kazutora is brow-beaten in helping with the decorations on the threat of sending you off on a honeymoon with Mikey and without him.

Everyone and anyone would be threatened to tiptoe the line - your wedding will be nothing but perfection, and you would repay their efforts will lots of attention and affection of course.

The guest list is short and vetted over and over again. Immediate family only, no strangers, and absolutely no other men (absolutely not, especially if it wasn't someone the Toman founders knew). You having guests at your wedding was already something they compromised on because they knew you had several people you desperately wanted to invite.

Having to drag Mikey to the actual wedding is an entire issue altogether, and it required all four of them to stuff the stubborn and whiny boy into his suit and whisk his ass off to the wedding venue. Seeing how excited you were for your big day only made the other founders more determined to make sure it goes off without a hitch. The Toman President is tied to a chair and Draken even seats on him so that he doesn't go running off to find you and ruin the surprise of what your wedding dress looked like. Not like Mikey cared, no. He just couldn't wait for cuddles and those handmade taiyakis that his friends told them you had on hand (it was a lie).

But then, for some reason unknown to even god himself, if you somehow caught not only Mikey's but Izana's attention. Oh boy.

Izana is bound to overhear about all the preparations for a wedding and quickly puts together that you, the Tenjiku princess (not Toman's, definitely not, not in a hundred years), were getting ready to marry Mikey, and throws an absolute fit. Unacceptable, outrageous, and downright heresy. Would attempt to storm over to your place and demand an answer, had to be held back from doing so by the combined force of Kakucho, Rindo, Ran and Mochi, who rather not their president start a gang war this very moment.

But this tanned boy was not going to let this slide so easily, no way in hell - he knew what those Toman bastards were planning, and he wasn't going to let them get away with keeping you all to themselves, not when you're probably just going along with it so that you don't make your so-called friends feel bad. So of course Tenjiku starts devising their own plan. Kakucho outright kidnaps you from your school to go ring shopping, biting his tongue and lying that it was a friendship ring (Ran had to be stopped from bursting out laughing). Izana got huffy getting fitted for a suit, and Rindo awkwardly shuffling by the side didn't help much either.

At last when your wedding day rolled around, everything was ready.

And as you started walking down the aisle, Mikey waiting at the end, Tenjiku springs their plan into action. They gate crash your wedding right through the front door, Kakucho, Ran, Rindo and the other executives immediately jumping on the Toman founders while Izana rushes straight through. The white-haired boy barely even having to stop as he sweeps you up into his arms, makes a split turn, and then proceeds to rush back out with just an eep from you, with a mind to get you to his arranged priest/official and making you sign his own document of marriage. Mikey letting out an outraged shout as he gave chase, Mitsuya is shouting, cursing and telling Mikey to be careful with his suit and don't dirty or tear your white dress.

Ends up starting a gang war anyway at your wedding, with Izana expertly turning to intercept a flying kick from Mikey just in time while balancing you in his arms, while the audience (however limited, no one else is allowed to look at you after all, the Toman founders would never allow it) are left looking on in utter disbelief at the fight breaking out in front of their eyes. You probably having to end up calling off your wedding more bemusedly than not when the whole thing devolved into a screaming match with both Izana and Mikey pinching and pushing at each other while insisting you pick one of them right this instance.

Honestly, you thought that getting married to one of them would settle all of them down, since you would be "safe" and they would be able to continue to "protect" you. You didn't think that gang lines would still be drawn, but obviously you were mistaken. Definitely have thought about just picking a third neutral party to marry, but knowing your very fussy, very overprotective baby boys, that would just drag more people into the fight.

[neurodecadence]

RIN QUESTIONS: numbers divisible by 5, vowels

Goddam.

5. How easy is it to earn their mistrust? I mean she approaches every interaction with a healthy amount of suspicion, so really you already have it by default. She warms fairly quickly, assuming any betrayal would be swift and brutal rather than prolonged. That said do not mistake that warmth for total trust, that is a prize not easily earned.

10. What lie do they most frequently remember telling? Does it haunt them? "I'm just an itinerant chirurgeon, here to lance a few boils and make a few coin before I move on." It's not a special lie but she tells it a lot. She has the intonation practiced to perfection, a certain tired lilt intended to imply an unexcited malaise.

15. How do they speak? Is what they say usually thought of on the spot, or do they rehearse it in their mind first? She has scripts for entering inns and adventurers guilds, planned conversations showing a character of a bored but dutiful medical professional. It's well established enough that she rarely gets questioned. If she's caught off script she will pause and consider carefully her next words. Between friends, dalliances, and drinking partners she is much quicker to answer, often embarrassing herself. It's the kind of free and open speech she could have with Seth that made her love him so much, and that he loved in her. Remembering that will often make her reticent once more.

20. If they were asked to explain the difference between romantic and platonic or familial love, how would they do so? Rin has never really known familial love and only trusts what she can observe herself. Marrying Seth was as much about fleeing her home as it was loving him (though she did love him fiercely) She has had few platonic loves, but she views it as a kind of comradeship. People she knows would lie for her to keep her safe, and that she would fight to protect. As her day go on she finds them easier to come by, she isn't sure if this makes her happy or uncomfortable. There is one romantic love for her, as established.

25. What are their thoughts on marriage?  RIn knows the kind of mad dedication she had to Seth is not common, not usual, perhaps not right, but she doesn't care. She found her one and only, and when she said forever in her vows, she meant it.

30. Who do they most regret meeting?  In bitter-cold nights kept company by a jug of cheap wine she wishes Seth had never walked into the palace library, had never seen a little cripple girl pouring over medical texts, had never flashed that razor smile. Come morning she regrets it and the churning of her hangover mixes with a fresh dose of self loathing.

35. How do they treat the things their friends come to them excited about? Are they supportive?  To an extent. People who are excited about their passions, their works, a chance to see the works of an expert, she understands these things and would encourage them. She believes people should strive for perfection, even if they might never make it, because how else can society raise itself up. Excitement about petty drama, or even worse, magic would likely be ignored or derided. Despite softening a bit, she is still a bitch.

40. How sensitive are they to their own flaws? No one knows them closer or in more detail than Rin. There's nothing you can say she doesn't know already, that she hasn't made peace with.

--

A. Why are you excited about this character? So I made her for a dnd3.5 game that never went ahead, and I had no fucking idea what character I wanted to make. I was looking at class options when the name "Vivisectionist" stuck out to me. At the same time I was considering a video I had been watching over a decade ago in which someone was deriding Bald Grizzled White Army Man protagonists, and noting that the trend was continuing over even as they became fathers too. In that video he talked about how he could only think of two protagonists who were mothers, compared to a vast swathes of father figures. Now, I wasn't interested in making a mother, but I did consider the archetypal "Grizzled man angy cause wife am dead" kind of character and how it might be neat to flip that on its head. In a flash I had Rin almost formed in my head, a woman madly devoted to her husband even past death. She gripped onto my higher brain functions and something about her character, her intended playstyle, the question of what it means for an immortal to mourn forever, and also how she would fuck nasty as an unhealthy coping mechanism, it all really hooked me.

E. Are they someone you would get along with? Would they get along with you? I truly don't know. I think she'd be frustrated by me to be honest, and she'd scare me. Certainly not someone I'd want to roadtrip with.

I. Do you prefer to keep them in their canon universe? Mostly, but I have had some fun ideas about modern versions of her doing hotline miami shit. It is a fun version of her I have to admit, much less hinged than even canon Rin.

[yunhostinyuyu]

no one‘s gonna believe that

pairing: co-worker!ten x fem reader ft. co-worker!johnny

genre: work!au, suggestive, little smutty

wc: 2.1k

synopsis: Y/N tried to escape the flirtatious attempts of one of her colleagues, but thankfully someone else stepped in to help...

warnings: mentioned sexual harassment, hickeys, they’re basically just making out at work

—

You find yourself in the break room by the water dispenser, and waiting for what feels like ages for your jug to fill up all the way. Internally praying that a certain someone would leave you alone, and that he would not appear out of thin air right now, just to hit on you. But of course, your prayers were not answered:

„Hey there, Y/N, how are you doing?“ the tall man in question walked up to you and stood just a few inches away from your small form. Internally cursing at him, but not letting your discomfort about his presence show.

„Hi, Johnny... I‘m good, thanks for asking“ you tried to dismiss his attempt on starting a conversation with you. It could be nice having someone like Johnny swoon over you, yes. He was indeed a very handsome man, but everyone knew that he isn’t a keeper, and quite frankly you were just not into one night stands or anything casual. Admitting to yourself that you were a hopeless romantic, but  at the same time you were okay with being single for now. This way you could have all your attention on work, no distractions. And if you didn’t knew better from your other coworkers, who have worked here longer than you, you would think he just really attentive in trying to seduce you. But not only have you witnessed him behaving worse in order to get what he wants, the stories that are being told about him around the office are ten times worse. So you wanted to avoid him at all costs, telling him you are in a relationship, or currently seeing someone, but he doesn’t believe you - lack of evidence. Today however, you came prepared.

As your jug was full enough, you tried to walk around him in order to get back to your office, but you were unsuccsessful in your attempt. He took another step to cut of your way back. “Why are you always in such a rush? It’s break time soon, isn't it?”. You sighed to yourself, but quiet enough for him not to register.

“I would really love to Johnny but, I have an important file open on my PC that i need to finish and submit tonight...” you dragged your hand up to your shoulder, pushing the soft material of your loose blouse to the side, revealing a hickey you placed there by yourself. Yes, you went as far as giving yourself hickeys to get rid of him. It sounds stupid, yes, but he has been trying shooting his shot for weeks now and he didn't accept any of your excuses, assuming you were playing hard to get. And you tried every trick in the book, except for one: being said love bite on your pale skin that was on show now for him to see.

His eyes wandered to the red and purple spot and widened in shock. You send him a quick apologetic smile as you walk around him, dashing towards your cubicle in a hurry.

You placed the jug on the edge of your desk and turned your attention back to the piece of work that was right in front of you. Only sounds coming from you were the keys of your keyboard being pressed rythmically and and eventual clicks of your mouse. Even if this wasn't your favorite type of work, it was a way of proofing that you are indeed a talented writer and deserved the promotion your boss was dangling in front of everyone in your division for the past couple of weeks. And you were eager to get it. Minutes pass by and you loose track of time as you only focus lies on the task at hand.

“Now, you know that no one’s gonna believe that?”

You turn your head around and find one of your colleagues at the entrance of your little cubicle. But as you see his face, you turn right back around and continue typing. “Believe what, Ten? You see that I’m busy, right?”

He just chuckles and moves towards your chair, starting to explain his intrusion. “Of course i know that, Y/N, we all work our asses off for that promotion. But I’m speaking of your amateurish attempts on getting Johnny off your back. And I have to admit, the idea wasn't bad, but poorly executed. You played yourself.”

The only thing you could manage for now was a half hearted scoff. Ten was a decent guy, but borderline annoying some times, now being an excellent example. He was friends with Johnny, so you didn't understand what he was hinting at.

“Last time I checked my relationships were non of your business.” you remonstrated. But Ten wasn't buying it as easily as Johnny did minutes ago.

“Listen, I’m not trying to defend him, I admit that I think most of the women in here give him a bad wrap for things he might have said or done while being drunk, but that’s not the reason why I’m here right now, Y/N. You see, first of all, who would give you a hickey on your shoulder of all places? Chest, okay, i get it, neck, i get it. But shoulder? He will become suspicious of it soon enough.”

Your cheeks started to burn with embarrassment as Ten dismantled your disguise right on the spot. It was humiliating being called out like this. You couldn't even keep you lie up for longer than a day, but Ten was right, you both knew it. You pushed the keyboard back in frustration, turning yourself to the side to look at the slim figure.

“What else am I supposed to do? He won't take no for an answer and I fucking enjoy my single life. And I can't be mean enough to tell him to fuck off now, can I? I don’t know, Ten, tell me!” you exclaim, both anger and frustration tangible in your tone, and he whips his head in all directions to make sure no one heard your mini-outburst. 

The older one crotches down, so that he won't be visible for people walking around in the office. You try to calm down and get your focus back to work, which seemed almost impossible after Ten took apart your plan into small bits and pieces, trying to hide your state behind your hands and covering your face up with them.

“Listen, I know you damn well by now, so don’t fight me on this. But, I may or may not have a solution for you, that could get Johnny off your heels for good. But feel free to tell me to fuck off anytime, darling. It’s just an offer.” He asserted while patting your hair lightly. Slowly but surely taking your fingers off your eyelids to look him into his eyes. There was no sign of pranking you or any sarcastic comment being in sight, but you still sneered at him in response.

“Don’t pull any shit on me, I’m warning you. What’s the solution?”

ignoring your moody comment, he continues his explanation unbothered.

“If you would really have a boyfriend, Johnny would leave you alone, but you play hard to get without realizing it... You see, your own mouth can only reach so far...” his fingers trailing up to your selfmade hickey, traveling further up to your throat and neck, “while someone else's mouth can reach much further”.

Without a second thought, you slap his hand away. “Thanks, but no thanks. Can you now kindly piss off?” Ten visibly took offense to your reaction, pulling himself back into a standing position. 

“Suit yourself. But don’t come back to me when you realize your plan was doomed to fail.” and he disappeared out of your workspace. To say his offer didn’t leave you hot and bothered would be a lie, but you pushed all that aside, before taking another gulp of water and once again, shifting your concentration on the file.

-

Another week goes by, and unfortunately, Johnny didn't leave you alone, still hitting on you every time you crossed paths. The hickey on your shoulder left a sour taste in his mouth, and it really didn't imply that you were in a relationship at all. His comments teasing you about the guy that gave you the hickey, making it harder and harder each day to get out of his presence, to the point were you didn’t leave your cubicle on your own anymore. It was all starting to eat on your conscience and take your confidence away. With every passing day, you were conflicted over and over again, debating if you should pick up on Ten’s offer. Yet, you find your eyes glued onto his work space, were he busied himself with a shit load of work. What’s the harm in asking him to do what he has come up by himself? you keep thinking to yourself, but then still unsure if it was the right thing to do.

Sighing to yourself, but your legs are already taking you to his desk, only a few cubicles away from your own. You turn again, just realizing that it was past 18:00 o'clock and most of your co-workers already left, leaving only a handful of people that are all eager to finish their work as soon as possible.

As you bring your hand to knock on his glass shield, immediate regret makes itself present in your system, but it’s already too late now. He turns around in his office chair and a smile appeared on his lips the moment he saw you. Genuinely glad about seeing you right now.

“Hey! What’s up? You’re still here?” he asks as he leans back and lets his eyes trail over your form, oversized black blouse that is messily tucked into your blue high waisted jeans. A forced smile stretching over your thin lips before you replied.

“Yeah, uhm, kinda... Am I interrupting you or something?” stammering and tumbling over your own words, awkwardly crossing your arms. He eyes you skeptically, clearly noticing your nervousness.

“No, not at all, why? Did something happen, dear?” his tone calm and comforting, even if you didn't expect this reaction from him. You bit your tongue before you continued.

“No! Well, uhm, yeah... kinda? The Johnny thing- you know, uhm... I was just wondering if-” you stammered and tried your hardest to avoid eye contact, feeling uneasy about the whole thing still. You felt stupid, really, even after he reacted so harshly after he suggested this whole thing for the first time.

He coos as he gets what you’re hinting at, “Aww, so you did realize your plan wasn’t working out, huh? I figured, but I didn’t realize you would actually take up on my offer after all, even if you were rude last time.”

Your ears turn red the longer you stood in front of him. “I’m sorry about that, I didn't mean it...” Truly expecting him to tease you further, but that wasn't the case. Instead he stretched his arms out towards you, motioning for you to come and take a seat on his lap, and you carefully did just that. Making him look at the side of your face from the angle you sat down. Ten took hold of your hands, and rubbed little cirlces into your palms. 

“Are you sure you want me to do this? Just tell me to stop and I will.” He asked for consent, but you nodded eagerly in reply. “I trust you with this. It’s okay.”

He nodded as his eyes were fixed on your exposed neck, fingers slowly touching the skin before he leaned in. Hands wandering to the crook of your neck and your hip respectively. As he started to place wet kisses all over your chest and neck area, sucking on the skin quite harshly, your fingers gripped his hair at the sensation, and you readjusted your sitting position, for Ten to have better access. You quickly lost yourself at the sensation of his lips and tongue working on creating dark marks all over yourself.

To your surprise, after only giving you a few more sucks and bites, he pulled back to admire his work of art. Secretly hoping that he would continue for a little longer, but you snapped back into reality quite quickly. Hands detaching from each other. 

“You okay? Look at them.” he held out his phone, which had the front camera opened. After a few seconds you started to giggle and hand him his device back. 

“They look okay, thank you.” you stood up and told yourself that this would never happen again as you went back to get your stuff from your desk.

But in the end, you found yourself in Ten’s lap more often then you expected.

—

[supersonic-womanofyou]

My first attempt at an interview fic! Read this on Ao3, or under the cut. 

Spotlight on Eric Bittle

 Interview by Elizabeth Chu

Photographs by Jack Zimmermann

  The internet personality, author, and baker talks about his childhood, his relationship with Providence Falconers captain Jack Zimmermann, being a LGBTQ role model, why he struggled with his overnight success, and his upcoming cookbook.

 I meet Eric Bittle in person for the first time on a Saturday afternoon, in a trendy coffee shop in downtown Providence. Even though I’ve heard of it in passing, I’ve never been inside. Eric obviously has, since when I approach the table where he’s chosen to sit, Eric is already chatting familiarly with one of the waitresses. 

 But after a couple minutes talking to Eric, I mentally revisit that assumption. Eric Bittle has a way of putting people at ease, of making even the most distant strangers feel like long-lost friends-- through his warm personality, but also through his seemingly-never ending supply of homemade baked goods. By the time I sit down across from him, I’m already in possession of a whole pie and two jars of jam. 

 Most of the celebrities I’ve met have on screen personalities that are vastly different in person, but the Eric Bittle I meet that Saturday could have been pulled directly out of his Netflix series or one of the episodes from his vastly popular vlog. He’s perennially bright and cheery, with a Southern drawl that’s been blunted by years in New England, but is still very present. When I mention it, Eric laughs. “I used to hate my accent, but I think it’s become as part of my brand as pies are. I’d probably lose all of my followers if I started talking like a Yankee,” he jokes.

 The source of Bittle’s accent is his hometown-- Madison, Georgia, a town of barely four thousand people. When I ask what drove him to move up north, he gestures to himself as a whole. “Not too many opportunities for a baking, skating, Beyonce-loving gay boy in Morgan County.” He turns more serious, though, when he continues: “I was bullied a lot as a child. When I think back to my childhood, to living in Georgia-- for people who looked or acted different, it could be suffocating. I remember feeling like my future was just so starkly outlined for me-- going to a state school, settling down with a nice girl, spending the rest of my life just pretending. It sounds like overdramatic teenage angst now, I know, but I always knew if I wanted to live honestly, I needed to get out.” 

 And so Eric applied-- and was accepted to--Samwell University in Massachusetts, which touts itself as one of the most LGBTQ friendly schools in America, under the motto “one in four, maybe more.” According to Eric, it’s where he began to come to terms with himself and his identity, where he finally said the words “I’m gay” out loud, where he continued to bake and vlog and began to think seriously about a career in both, and where, perhaps most famously, he met his now-husband, Providence Falconers captain Jack Zimmermann. 

 “We both played on the hockey team, but we weren’t exactly friends at first,” Bittle says about his relationship with Zimmermann.

 So, of course, I have to ask him-- what is it like, being a baker married to a hockey player? Eric and his husband seem like almost comical counterpoints in every aspect of their careers and personalities. Eric makes his living through baking and cooking, Jack plays in the notoriously-macho NHL. Eric has built a brand and a food empire off of cheeriness and Southern hospitality, Jack has a reputation of being a “hockey robot,” with his cold, generally disagreeable demeanor during interviews.

 “Well, with it all laid out like that, it really does sound like we’re night and day,” Eric laughs. “But honestly? We just work. We both love skating-- that’s what we bonded over in college, actually. We also both technically majored in history, even though we have very different specialities and did so for pretty different reasons. But even our differences are compatible. Like, I love talking, he doesn’t, so we’re never talking over each other or silent. Also, pro hockey players have to eat an insane number of calories, so Jack’s always there to eat my cooking, and that’s really all I can ask for.”

 Eric and Jack, who played on a line together briefly at Samwell, took the sports world by storm seven years ago when they kissed on the ice after the Falconers won the Stanley Cup, making Jack the first openly LGBTQ player in the NHL. The pair broke yet another barrier for LGBTQ people in hockey soon after, when Eric became the first openly gay NCAA Division I hockey captain. 

 When I ask Eric if he ever thought about following in his partner’s footsteps and pursuing a career in professional hockey, he just laughs. “Oh, definitely not. I love being on the ice, but I don’t think I would have made it very far in the NHL or AHL.”

 His fame may have started out in the (relatively niche) world of professional hockey, but since graduating from Samwell, Eric has found incredible success beyond the legacy of that historic kiss. His first book, published five years ago, spent several weeks on the New York Times Food and Diet bestseller list, and was applauded as a fresh, vibrant take on Southern cuisine and desserts.  Check, Please  reads as seventy percent cookbook, thirty percent memoir, with every page infused with Bittle’s indomitable, ubiquitous personality. His vlog, which he started in high school and has updated continuously ever since, has millions of subscribers, who tune in every week to hear Bittle talk about everything from pies and cookies to relationships and family. Finally, and perhaps most famously, Bittle hosted his own Netflix series last year, applauded as a combination of Marie Kondo and Queer Eye, in which he taught baking with his usual brand of positivity and universal appeal, interspersed with feel-good moments and life lessons.

 It strikes me that while Bittle’s career may have been jump-started by his relationship with Jack Zimmermann, he’s certainly managed to make a name for himself in the years since. To the hockey world, he may still be an afterthought to Jack Zimmermann, but to the baking world (and a good portion of Netflix’s viewership), the name Jack Zimmermann is an afterthought to that of Eric Bittle. 

 “Jack definitely gets a kick out of it when we’re in public together and I get recognized, and he doesn’t,” Eric says. “It’s kind of crazy, actually-- I definitely couldn’t have imagined all this ten years ago, back in college or in high school.”

 And what did Eric imagine himself doing? “To be honest, I don’t think I had any idea. When I decided to go to Samwell, I didn’t even have a major in mind or anything. I just wanted to get out of Georgia. And at Samwell-- I mean, I majored in American History, of all things. Talk about a useless degree! I literally just chose the major that let me take the most baking or baking-adjacent classes.” He pauses, and laughs. “It drives Jack crazy, actually-- I never have a plan for anything, really, big or small. I’m the kind of person who just crosses my fingers and hope it all shakes out for the best.”

 His husband’s opinion aside, this tactic seems to have worked out pretty well for Eric. His next, eagerly anticipated cookbook, which follows much in the vein of his Netflix show, is due to come out in two months this August. “It’s going to be focused on easy, cheap cooking and baking that’s still healthy and fulfilling. I think there’s a mindset that to make tasty, healthy food you need to have expensive ingredients and tools, or a lot of time on your hands, or have a lot of experience. But like-- I made food for an entire hockey team in a frat house on a college student’s allowance for four years, so I know something about cooking healthy on a budget,” he jokes. “I really just want to make good, healthy food accessible for everyone.”

 Well, he’s managed to do that, and more. Eric Bittle’s career so far has certainly been a whirlwind. He’s gone from publishing his first cookbook to hosting his own show in what’s only been a matter of years.

 “I do have to pinch myself sometimes, “ Eric says about his dizzyingly quick ascent to fame. “Like, Carrie Underwood tagged me in a tweet about hockey husbands the other day. Carrie Underwood!” The disbelief is clear in his voice. “I mean, Jack’s always been the bigger fan of country music, but the Georgia boy in me had to lie down for a moment when I saw the notification. So I think-- I still can’t really believe all of it, you know? It feels like yesterday I was still about to graduate college, with barely any plan and procrastinating on my thesis. And I guess sometimes-- sometimes I do feel a bit guilty, you know? Like-- there’s so many people fighting for this, fighting for what I’ve got-- getting books published, getting a show, everything else. I definitely had a leg up in name recognition because of Jack and hockey, and even when Jack and weren’t married yet, I never had to worry about having a roof over my head if the vlog wasn’t bringing in enough money or the cookbook wasn’t selling well enough.” He pauses, pensive, and it’s not the first time in this conversation that I mentally reassess my first assumptions about Eric Bittle. Behind the nationally famous smile and welcoming accent is a thoughtful young man still grappling with becoming a public figure and a role model, with a sprinkling of imposter syndrome, who doesn’t understand exactly what millions of people across the country see in him. 

 But perhaps that as well is an unfair assessment. It’s clear that Eric has a refreshing genuiness that few public figures possess, and that this is part of what has managed to speak to so many people from all backgrounds. That on some level, his modesty about his own fame is part of what constitutes his appeal. 

 When I mention this, Eric flushes a bright shade of pink. “Oh, aren’t you a flatterer. Well, I suppose so.”

 So after this cookbook, what’s next? Is fatherhood on the horizon? 

 “I did mention that I never have a plan, didn’t I?” he quips. But he does confide that he and Jack have been talking about having a family. “We’ve always wanted kids, but there’s always been something going on. Jack’s job and being on roadies all the time, me trying to get my career started. We don’t want our kids to be raised by babysitters and nannies, you know? We want to be there for them, so while it’s definitely something we’re considering, we’re trying to balance timing. But it has been a couple years, so.” He blushes. “We’re revisiting the idea.”

 “But other than that-- I have been approached about the possibility of some other projects and shows in the future, but I probably can’t talk about those,” he says. “And though it’s always been a dream of mine to own a bakery, that would be a pretty huge commitment. So I guess I’m just trying to say that I’m not really sure exactly what comes next.” Nevertheless, he grins, as if to say,  and isn’t that exciting ?

 Fatherhood or his own bakery-- I’m sure that no matter what comes next for Eric Bittle, he’ll forge ahead with his characteristic positivity and Southern grace, with plenty of baked goods along the way. *

[the-great-imagines-of-1812]

Through The Years Pt. 10

A/N: feedback is so so appreciated! THANK YOU SO SO MUCH TO EVERYONE WHO WAS KEPT THEIR PATIENCE WHILE I WROTE THIS! (also, this is kind of short, my apoligies)

tags: @a-girl-who-loves-disney @the-romanian-is-bae @bihoeofmanyfandoms​

@thicc101q

takes place during: The Avengers

Italics= flashbacks

~~~~~~~

NEW YORK, 1942

SSR HQ

“As you all know, a threat has risen. Commander Johann Schmidt has his eyes on something new; they call it the Tesseract. The power it holds is unlimited and unknown. If it falls into the wrong hands, especially in times like these, this is a war we won’t win. Meeting dismissed.” Dr. Erksine said, as all the agents seated around the table got up, desperate to go home. 

You had dozed out ages ago, and would’ve practically fallen asleep if it weren’t for Howard. He laid a hand on your shoulder and shook you. 

“Y/N/N, it’s time to go. C’mon. I heard your favorite radio show is on tonight.”

“Thanks, Howwie. It’s just, there’s something-”

“This Tesseract thing? I know were supposed to believe everything Dr. Erksine tells us, but this is a stretch-”

“Except it isn’t, Howard. I got a bad feeling about this one. You know how strong my intuition is.”

“I know. That’s what worries me.”

~~~~~~

PRESENT DAY, 2012

BRUCE BANNER’S LAB ON THE HELLICARRIER

The Hellicarrier is quiet as it floats across the night sky, and you absentmindedly type some data that Tony had given you a few minutes ago. You weren’t going to  lie; you were scared then, and you are scared now. It seems like history is repeating itself; some bad dude wants to get his hands on the Tesseract and if he isn’t stopped, a lot of people will die.

Only difference was, you didn’t have a brother this time. 

Blinking back the tears that were about to escape, you kept typing as Dr. Banner was scanning the scepter for gamma radiation, and Tony was solving several different equations and theorems and god knows what all at once. 

“Well, we’re going somewhere now. The  gamma readings are definitely consistent with Selvig's reports on the Tesseract. But it's gonna take weeks to process.” Banner said, letting out a sigh, laying down the object he was using to measure gamma readings on Loki’s scepter.

“We bypass their mainframe and direct route to the Homer Cluster we can clock this at around 600 teraflops.” Tony replied from across the room.

“And all I packed was a toothbrush.” Bruce said, going back to the computer.

“You know you should come by Stark tower sometime. Top ten floors, all R and D. You’d love it, it’s Candy Land. I’m talking to you too, Auntie. Paris must be as boring as-”

“How- Tony, I can promise you its not. Paris is fine.”

“But Pepper and I miss you in New York. Think about it, will you?”

“Sure will, hun.”

“Thank you for the invitation, Mr. Stark. But last time I was in New York- I sort of broke Harlem.” Dr. Banner said. 

“Well I promise it’s a stress-free environment. No distractions, no surprises.” Tony says, while poking Bruce in his side with an electric current.

“Tony, leave him be!” you say, taking the current away from him. 

“Hey! Are you two nuts?” Steve says, scolding Tony as he walks in. 

“Oops. Jury’s here. Tell em your secret, Dr. Banner. Bongo drums, mellow jazz, bag of weed?”

“You think is is funny, Mr. Stark? Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship? No offense, Dr. Banner. You neither, Y/N.

“None taken, sir.” Bruce says, while still working on the scepter.

“Don’t worry about it, cap.” you say, while finally snatching the current from Tony’s hand and placing it down on the countertop to continue working.

“You- you don’t have to worry, capsicle. Last time I checked, you spent over 66 years stuck in the ice. You don’t know how anything works here. This little gadget-” he getsures to the comm in his hand. “will let us know everything S.H.I.E.L.D has been hiding from us since the beginning of it’s existence.”

“This is going to cause trouble.”

“Ding, ding, ding. We got a winner. Congratulations, you’ve just won a free box of popsicles. Or is that too cold?”

“What have you three been doing all this time?” Fury’s voice cuts in as he walks into the lab. “You’re supposed to be locating the Tesseract.” 

“We are. The model’s locked and we’re sweeping for the signature now. When we get a hit, we’ll have the location within have a mile.”

“You’ll get your cube back, director.” You say, crossing your arms, after hopping to sit on the table with Tony. 

“No muss, no fuss.” he passes you the blueberry bag, then looks at the screen “What is ‘Phase 2′ anyway?”

At this point, Steve has had enough and decided to intervene. “Phase 2 is S.H.I.E.L.D uses the cube to make weapons. Sorry, the computer was moving a little too slowly for my taste.”

“Captain Rogers, we have gathered every part of information possible related to the Tesseract. This does not mean-” He’s interrupted by none other than Tony.

“What about this Nick? What were you lying?” Tony said, turning the computer so Fury could see it clearly. 

Steve takes one look between the two men, but keeps his gaze on Tony, and says “I was wrong director. The world hasn’t changed a bit.”

Thor and Natasha enter the room and Bruce asks them “Did you two know about this?”

“Dr. Banner, you might want to think about removing yourself from the premises.” Natasha said.

“I was in Calcutta, I’m pretty sure I can handle this, Ms. Romanoff.”

“Loki’s been manipulating you.”

“And you’ve been doing what exactly?” 

“Dr. Banner, You didn’t come here because I batted my eyelashes at you.” She fired back, crossing her arms. 

You hopped off the table, and on the hilt of the sword on your left side, if tensions just so happened to go to another level. 

“And I’m not leaving because you’re getting a little twitchy. What I do want to know is why S.H.I.E.L.D is using the Tesseract to build weapons of mass destruction!”

~~~~~~

NEW YORK, JANUARY 1943

SSR HQ

“Starks, Ms. Carter, General Philipps, should the case arise that we get our hands on this - ‘Tesseract’ - as it appears, it shall not, under any circumstances, be used for weapons of mass destruction. It goes against everything we stand for. Everything the SSR stands for.” Erksine says, addressing the group.

“But Dr. Erksine, The rise of facism in Europe is a threat to our national security, and if the SSR can not make weapons of not necessarily of mass destruction, but weapons to protect the country, how are we to protect the nation?” General Philipps said from across the table. 

“Excellent question, General. That’s were Y/N and  comes in. Y/N, if you will.” Erksine said, gesturing to you.

Straightening yourself up, you opened a file. “I’ve thought of this concept for the past couple of months- although just a concept, It would, has General Philipps mentioned, make weapons not of destruction, but of protection. This is why, I’ve decided to name the concept- S.H.I.E.L.D. Get it? A shield is supposed to protect, and that’s what this will do.”

“And what does it stand for, Y/N?” Peggy asks. 

“Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.”

“And it’s purpose?”

“To Protect and Serve, Dr. Erksine.”

“I like it, but we will discuss  it further on Monday. Meeting Adjourned.”

~~~~~~

PRESENT DAY, 2012

BRUCE BANNER’S LAB ON THE HELLICARRIER

“And I’m not leaving because you’re getting a little twitchy. What I do want to know is why S.H.I.E.L.D is using the Tesseract to build weapons of mass destruction!”

“Banner, calm down.” Natasha said cautiously. 

“No, Romanoff. He had every right to be mad and confused. With all respect, director, me and my brother did not start S.H.I.E.L.D so we could pull stuff like this.” you said.

“But we have a reason, Stark. It’s because-” Fury points to Thor “him.”

“Me?” Thor questions.

“Yes, you. Last year Earth had a visitor from another planet who held a grudge on a small town. We learned then that not only are we not alone, but we are hopelessly, hilariously, outgunned.” He finishes, diverting his eye to you, but saying nothing.

“Your work with the Tesseract is what drew Loki to it, and his allies, as a signal to all the realms that Earth is ready for a higher form of war.” Thor booms.

“A higher form of war?” Steve questions.

“You had us in a corner, Thor, we had no choice. We had to come up with something.” Nick fired back.

“A nuclear deterrent. Cause that always calms everything down.” said Tony.

“Remind me again how you made your fortune, Mr. Stark?” Fury asked.

“I’m sure if Stark industries still made weapons you both would be knee-deep in-” Steve was cut off by you.

“That’s enough, Steve! Leave it alone!” you exclaimed.

“No, hold up capsicle, how is this about us?” Tony asked, in a tempting manner.

“Are you midgardians really this naïve?” Thor asked.

“Oh please, are you that immature?” Natasha said, looking between Thor and Fury. 

“Everyone, we’re a mixture for chaos. A ticking time bomb waiting to explode.” Bruce said. 

“You should step away, Doctor.” Fury said to Bruce, before being overlapped by Tony. “Why shouldn’t the guy let off a little steam?” Tony asked, putting a ahnd on Steve’s shoulder. 

“You know damn well why!” Steve yelled.

“I’m starting to want you to make me.” Tony said, coming face to face with Steve.

“Big man in a suit of armor, take that off and what are you?” 

“Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist.”

“He’s not wrong-” Natasha said, shrugging her shoulders.

“Thank you, Romanoff! Someone with sense on this ship.” Tony said, thanking Natasha.

“I’ve seen guys none of that worth ten of what you are. The only person you fight for is yourself. You’re not one to make sacrifice play, to lay down your life for someone else. You better stop playing the hero.” 

“Steve-” you began, now both hands on both swords, both of them on your waist.

“No! You better stop acting so cocky, Rogers. You’re a lab rat, everything special about you came out of a bottle.” Tony fires back.

“If you think your think you’re so special, put on the suit then, lets go a few rounds.” 

“I’m not afraid to hit an old man.” 

“Stop it you two! You’re acting like children!” You yelled, cutting both of them off.

“You are ALL acting like children, man up, all of you!” Fury said. 

Bruce kept his eyes firm on Loki’s scepter. It seemed to glow even more now, but all of you had to resolve the argument first. 

“Something’s coming. Something bad.” Bruce muttered. “I can feel it.” 

“Keep calm, Banner.” Natasha said, and both her and Fury put a hand of the holster of their gun.

“Dr. Banner, please-” You began. 

You were once again cut off, but not by anyone talking. Thor, Natasha, Bruce, Fury, Tony, Steve and yourself were knocked down to the floor, scattered all over the room.

“What the hell was that?” Natasha asked. 

“Engine’s been blown off. I didn’t want to say I told you so, Agent Romanoff.” Bruce said, while helping you up from the floor. 

“You alright, Tony?” you ask, as You help Tony up.

“Just fine, aunty. You?”

“Barely hurts, tones.”

“What the hell was that, Fury?” Natasha asked. 

Fury looks out the window before running out of the room.

“Agent Barton.”

[nothisis-ridiculous]

Take Me Home Now: Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine: The Radio Reminds Me

Set after the events of ME3.

A rewrite. Ao3.

FemShepxKaidan

Notes: I know this is a slow build, but it was always meant to be more about the re-entry of Shep than a romantic story. I will have more Shenko content, I just don't want different expectations put on this work.

The mass of biotics division huddled around a central table, while most craned their heads to get a better view, some jostled their way in closer. Jane only approached because it was something to bide her time, well really, it was to avoid Rahna and their 'friend date'. Specifics were not important.

"What's going on here," Jane questioned.

Three-quarters of the biotics stood taller, and all stopped moving. The woman still spoke with the authority of a commanding officer, would have been if... well, that wasn't important either. Here, she was just Jane. Even after the deference, the biotics instinctively gave her as they allowed her front row access to the device on the table. Jane chalked it up to her reputation for holding her biotics at full force with a faulty implant rather than face the reality of her other-self.

Jane picked up the comm, looked it over, then promptly set it down, "impressive paperweight?"

A brave student snickered, plucking the device from the table, "did they not teach you old folks tech?"

"Said the 2nd Lieutenant to the N7," Jane smirked, "tell me, how long did it take to put your bars on and still leave them crooked?"

The kid fussed, trying to wave away his faux pass with some technobabble and blustering. Leave it to Alenko to be soft on his kids.

"We've been scanning the airwaves for news, news outside of earth," the soldier finally stammered out, "I found a promising channel I just have to.."

"Well, everyone is waiting."

"Aye, Aye ma'am."

The kid nodded, bringing out the interface of his omnitool, punching out codes until the box relented.

"Relayed July 23rd. Charon Relay is inoperable. Mass relays comm buoys inoperable. Attempts to fix relays have begun. Repeat message."

"The 23rd was a week ago," a voice commented from the crowd.

"Is there another channel?"

"Please respond. We are alive. This is Commander Bailey, C-Sec, on a looping message. Please respond. We are alive."

The lightness a simple broadcast brought to her shoulders was rejuvenating, sublime in the brief moment of having one friend survive the war she wrought upon the galaxy. Until the weight returned in the form of a warm hand resting on her left trap, prior commitments and all.

"Jane."

"Rahna."

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Jane leaned back, folding her arms tightly across her chest. Proficient in the use of silence, she kept an easy stare at Rahna. If she had to play the hostage, she wasn't about to make it easy, defiant yet still compliant. Speaking now put her into a position of giving something away- well something more than she wanted to give away. With the level of fame Shepard had reached curious hands liked to get into her file, while against the rules, those with access often did. What else could be juicer than personal details on the Commander? On her failures? Successes. Her psych profile.

It was violating.

"It's good to hear someone on the Citadel is still kicking," Rahna broke first.

"If anyone could have survived, it was him."

"Someone you knew well?"

"Compared to most C-Sec officers, he was a dream," Jane allowed her face to relax, "a real cut through the red tape kind of guy. Bailey really came through during the Cerebrus coup."

Rahna nodded, returning with a small smile, "that sounded like a tense situation. Everyone back home was shocked we never thought Udina-"

"Udina was a rat."

"You would know," she mumbled, "I'm glad it ended as well as it did. Without losing another friend."

Jane's lips tightened, shoulders bracing for the mental impact of the emotions she wanted locked beneath the surface. The cacophony of feelings blurred and grew, loss, regret, pleasure, reconnection, and the legion of secondary emotions attached to the cold anger freezing her system. A brittle connection shattered, leaving behind a numbness.

"Is this all about Alenko?"

Rahna's eyes widened, reeling, the blunt words not within the realm of what she expected, "that wasn't-"

"You couldn't; you rejected the man he was," Jane snarled, pitching forward on her chair, "is this jealousy? I can armchair you right back, Strawberry."

The woman chuckled, "you've heard about me."

"Yeah, I've heard about you. I don't need to go snooping into your file."

"Then you should know we reconnected a couple years back- and nothing happened," she returned cooly, "it was obvious he still had feelings for another."

The immediate surge of pride warped with bitter jealousy, her throat tightening. If she didn't know better, Jane swore her heart stopped the long pauses between the beats petrifying the organ. Her world grew cold, hollow. This jealousy was certainly foreign, the Commander was better than this. Mary knew better, knew that after all Kaidan had returned for her- had written that after all this mess, he didn't know, they both didn't know then.

The Yeoman's call that she had a message at her private terminal had grown past the stage of annoying- Mary had hinted once that Chambers should switch it up. Apparently, her tone had been too jovial, and a week later still nothing had changed. Not even a crack at a 'message for you' or a plain 'message.' With a sigh that Kelly met with a quick glance, Mary sauntered over to the terminal. The sender had her retreating.

While she was under no guise that she had privacy, Mary liked the illusion of it.

Back in the empty room of the Captain's Cabin, Kaidan's picture flickered on accusingly. Still, Mary grasped for it, a thumb tenderly resting over his cheek.

"I want to think you're angry, that you'll tear me a new one. But we both know better."

She set the frame down, looking away, focusing on the one-third finished model of the Athabasca Class Freighter. It seemed like a simple ship, not something flashy like a Geth Dreadnought or Sovereign, but it was apparent to what drew her to the model. A sentimental reminder of the Canadian she loved. The man that stared at her when she walked by. The one she talked to in the billions of moments she regretted working for Cerebrus. Kaidan was silent, but it was better than nothing, the picture at first was a warning to what Cerebrus could take from her. Now it became a lifeline. Unhealthy. But a small drop in the bucket compared to the Suicide mission she had thrown herself headfirst into.

"You could never stay mad at me long... you'll even expect me to, to-"

Tears tumbled from her eyes, the first to come since her time aboard the 'fake' Normandy. One painted in colors and emblazed with an emblem that made her skin crawl. It was all wrong.

It filled her head with screaming.

Mary didn't read the message that night.

Or for the next week.

Kelly stopped reminding her about one unread message.

Shepard put the Athabasca down gently, careful not to disturb the drying sealant. Her eyes flickered to the picture that stared at her, "I know it's time to look."

They hadn't spoken in that time, either.

Kaidan was predictable. His gentleness- his compassion. The love he claimed to have for her obvious, even if Mary was fighting to ignore it. After all this, after turning up in bed with a terrorist organization, he still beckoned her to be careful. To return to him when, if, things settled. Most of all, his honesty.

Damn, did it hurt. Her heart squeezing and constricting itself.

Could Mary blame him for attempting to live happily?

She wanted that for him. In her current situation, she would do nothing but bring him strife. It was selfish to reach out now. To clamor for his attention, to stir up old feelings. To let him become a target. The Illusive Man had tried once; what was to stop him from doing it again? As much as she hated bringing Anderson into her troubles, it was becoming apparent she needed to lean on him, at least to get Kaidan out of the line of fire.

Mary left the message unread. Call it revenge or heartbreak.

"You didn't know?" Rahna pressed, her fingers raking across her forearm, "I thought you- well. It was only to reconnect; that's how I got recruited to Biotics Division, eventually. I don't think he had been assigned-

Commander?"

Jane's pupils narrowed, "what do you want from me? This is- this-"

Rahna tried to interrupt, but Jane was not finished, "do you like seeing me squirm? Do you like that I'm not the person you saw on all the vids?

What fucked up reason do you have for doing this? You were stupid enough not to see Kaidan for who he is. You spurned him for trying to help you. I bet you couldn't even look him in the eye. Beauty...sure. But kindness? I see someone who can't stomach a hard decision and is infected with naive idealism. He stopped Vrynnus from torturing more kids, like he did to you, and you just-

Now you have to pull me into this? Do you regret losing him after seeing the compassionate man he became over the years? You could pull anyone, is only the capable and handsome Spectre enough? Or is it more fun to gloat over the decimated competition?"

Rahna watched as Jane rubbed at her cheek and the strange flashing scars. Observing the woman's tension across from her as she only grew more enraged as it did not elicit the reaction she desired from the accusations, pity filled the void that might have been anger.

"I doubt either of us has moved through life without regrets," her voice was silk and cool, "Kaidan and I could have both handled that better. Perhaps I was naive, but what is done is done. There was no longer a spark; we both knew that was the end of an 'us.'"

The blonde huffed.

"I won't lie and omit that I have seriously breached protocol and decorum by perusing your files; the 'Commander' is a fascinating subject to anyone that paid attention. She was hope to many," Rahna looked her in the eyes, playing the woman's staring contest, "can't blame a girl for being curious."

Jane slowly settled into her chair, swiveling her eyes away, arms folding across her chest. More so in a move reminiscent of a pouting child, but it was a start.

"Do you know what your file said? Specifically your psych evals?"

The woman didn't look at her, going stiff as stone. Jaw flexed in her effort to maintain silence.

"Brass had you tabbed for immediate evaluation after the war," she let that settle in, the woman's throat bobbed, "and more than that. I see someone who needs help. Selfishly- I hope I can help. Even a little, even if it is just someone to listen. After you have helped so many."

"Shepard is dead."

The Commander walked out of the room for the last time.

[kingsofneon]

nsfw angst widowed ace x childhood friend sabo who's secretly has always been in love with ace ( sorry for my bad English, love your blog

NO apologies, only vibin with how badass you are for sending me an ask.

Ace always wears his ring.

Solid silver against his dark skin or half-obscured by reins, he's always got it on - and Sabo could never forget that ever-present band. Ace always wears his ring.

Which is why it's such a shock to see Ace fighting to get it off, listing to the side and catching his balance with his shoulder against the barn. Sabo hurries forward, unable to stop his concern, and grabs Ace's hands in his own to stop him fighting his wedding ring.

"What are you doing?" he asks, half a snap, but Ace looks up at him with tear-filled eyes and the tinge of alcohol on his breath, and Sabo feels his anger drain away. "Ace, what are you doing?"

Ace gestures with his left hand, pulling Sabo's arm out with him. "It's stuck," he says mournfully, and drags his hand back in again, trying in vain to get away from Sabo's grip so he could keep trying to pull the ring off. "It's stuck and I hate it and it's not- I don't need it. Everybody knows what happened. Everybody- everybody knows."

Everybody knows that Marco is dead. That he's never coming back and Ace has to run their farm by himself, alone on miles of property. Everybody knows that he's missing, presumed dead, because the rest of Marco's division is just gone, gone, gone.

(But that was the awful thing. The word 'presumed'. MIA was almost worst than certainly dead - at least death left no recourse.)

"And you want to forget him?" Sabo asks, and Ace bares his teeth at the very inclination, finally focused on rage instead of grief. Sabo knows how to handle rage - he's been with Ace his whole life, and Ace has always been a ball of anger.

But grief? To watch Ace's heart rip itself to shreds and know he can do nothing? To watch Ace love love love so strongly, so utterly, that it's killing him?

He's not a selfless man. He doesn’t want to see Ace grieving.

He doesn’t want Ace to grieve someone who isn't him.

"Fuck you," Ace spits, but he's leaning in, curling in, and tangles his hands in Sabo's sweaty shirt. Sabo brings his arms around Ace, guiltily relishing the warmth, and tries not to heave a heavy sigh. He knows how this goes, now. When Ace is drunk enough not to care, but sober enough to know what he wants. To forget. To pretend. To sink into someone's arms and take a moment to believe he's not alone.

(And doesn't it make Sabo's heart ache, that he's been here for months, and Ace still wanders the house like a ghost? Rides his horse out to check on the stock but doesn't come back for days, till Sabo starts to worry he's aiming for an MIA too. That Ace keeps thinking he's alone, even with Sabo here? He's bitter, to think that, but at least the bitterness reminds him, in times like this, that Ace in his arms, begging for his bed, is nothing.)

"Are you-" he asks, and sure lingers in his throat, like a rock, swelling to a stop. How could he ask and get a no? Hear Ace say for certain that he didn't want him, just wants what he can offer? This is double-edged, now, and it’s his own slip of the tongue that set him up for it. The last time Ace had said fuck you and Sabo had laughed and snarled and said would that make it better?

This time Ace gives him a crooked smile. "You're my best friend. Who else?"

Who else but his husband, whispers Sabo's traitorous mind, and he swallows the rock and gives in to the last ditch effort. "I love you," he whispers, knowing the word is enough to scare Ace away, wanting to scare Ace away, unwilling to take another night of this, but Ace leans in, in, in, and brushes their lips together, so soft, barely touching. So that when he speaks Sabo can feel him saying the words, know that it's not just his imagination.

"I love you too."

And he sighs, and gives in, because he can’t fight this, has never fought what Ace wanted when Ace wanted him, and he slides Ace’s hands to his chest and kisses back. 

"You know," Ace whispers, a deviation when usually he would just start nipping at Sabo's neck, trying to rile him up till Sabo no longer had the strength to say no. "Marco-" (and there's the hitch. When he says Marco's name it crops up, an avalanche of memories in a single pause.) "Marco said you were allowed. If I was lonely. If you wanted to fill in. That's why I- but I- this isn't just 'cause you're the only one here. I can hear you thinking. And I need to know- you know that, don't you?"

Sabo's eyes go wide at the desperation in Ace's tone. It's not new, the tone, but the words-

"I know," he says, but Ace has always been able to catch him in a lie. Ace pulls back, swaying, eyes narrowed.

"You're not his replacement," Ace says. "You're not second-best."

"Aren't I?" Sabo mumbles,

"Idiot," he says, more a curse than fond, but his hands are so gentle and his eyes are so sad as he traces Sabo's jawline. "You're important to me. How could you ever be anyone's replacement?"

Sabo looks away, and Ace's fingers press against his cheek; force him to look into the steel grey flint of Ace's eyes. "You can't replace him, but I don't want you to. Why can't I-" and there's the anger, back again, grief lending it fuel. "I'm allowed to move on! To be happy, to love, fucking damnit! And you keep acting like- acting like I'm not choosing you, every time. Fucking- yeah. Yeah this hurts. Yeah it fucking sucks and I want him here and I want things to be better but it's not and I just to get to live with that and at least I have you."

Ace sags into his arms, exhaustion wringing him dry, and Sabo’s words are stuck in his throat. “At least I have you,” Ace whispers, and Sabo thinks about the wedding band, cold against his cheek as Ace leans in to kiss him again. 

(He wasn’t enough the first time; why does Ace think he’ll be enough now?)

[windstormwielding]

Slipstream

「 ...Hatchling. 」

“...haven’t heard your gruff old voice in some time.” Kōtarō’s posture straightened when he heard his blade address him. For an instant, it felt like the old shack that made for his childhood home and present surroundings blinked out, and he found himself pulled back into the sea of clouds that made for his inner world.

It was only for an instant, but the sight stuck with the Lieutenant all the same: the sky above him there wasn’t a clear, sunny blue. Clouds, ones at his feet and ones on high, were a charged black, threatening to burst with lightning and roar thunder at any given moment, and moving overhead and below with speed.

「 11 years will have passed soon. 」

“...yeah.” Now that was a comment from his projected instinct Kōta felt he could have done without, leaning back against the old wall and letting out a huff that came out more tired than he intended. It was one thing that he already trained himself ragged, with newer, deeper scars torn into the earth and cliffside alike outside proving as such, but while he would’ve appreciated hearing the often silent Hai’iro Ranmaru speak, it was another to be casually reminded of the looming anniversary of the Great Soul King Protection War.

Reiō, he always hated that name for it. They were more fighting for their own lives, their survival as a collective, than that of a faceless, nameless lynchpin. While Kōtarō found it easier to process those events in the decade-plus since, remembrance still stung. Fear and helplessness unlike anything he felt. Losing too many relationships in one fell swoop than can ever be counted. The death of the one man he respected and looked up to most, whom he only wanted to make proud one more time before his untimely demise. Oh how distraught he had been, in repressing the resulting despair as much as he could and sinking himself into his work, into bettering himself in case-

「 Why? 」

“W-why what?”

「 Why do you remain grounded? 」

“Ranmaru, we’ve been at it here since morning,” the windstorm wielder pointed out, even going so far as to jab a thumb toward the sunset-hued sky outside for his mentally aboding partner. It was rare that he had an entire day to himself, and of course he spent it dedicating in refining his skills and abilities with nigh bullheaded obsession, but he intended on returning to the Seireitei once he recovered enough of his strength. “We can get back into it later in the week, can’t we?”

「 That is not what I meant. 」

Oh here we go with the cryptic gotchas. Returning his thumb so that he may drag his hand, palm and digits, down his face, Kōta paused before he opted to take the bait: “So if it’s not me taking a break, then what?”

「 Why are you not honest? 」

“Wh- Excuse me?!” Maybe it was the exhaustion talking when his own voice rose, but those words still touched on a nerve. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

「 You first chose to carry this burden in the name of a man who has not walked among you, not for the last 11 years. 」

“Okay, don’t you dare bring Captain Ukitake into this.” His tone turned as sharp as steel at the comment, and his reiatsu threatened to flare in turn. It was not long after Aizen’s arrest that Kōta made such a pledge to his late commander, to be of better use to him and the 13th in the future, but it was the absolute last thing he wished to recall.

Still, as bitter as he felt, he knew Hai’iro Ranmaru was correct.

“Shit.” How cruelly that memory aged, from an ignorant and hopeful 4th Seat who saw not the storm on the horizon. Hell, none of them saw it coming. The shinigami in question felt his back ease against the wall he sat against, all while mulling over bygone times.

「 So what reason do you have to still seek such power now? 」

The answer to that is obvious, no?

“Rukia... She’s going to need me to back her up. I have a whole Division to look after now as Captain Kuchiki’s right hand. The newest Captain and Lieutenant pair. All eyes of the Gotei 13 will be on us. I can’t afford to slack off just yet.

“...I’ll need to be at my best.”

And for his answer, all he received was a dismissive scoff from the elder voice in his mind.

「 You lie to yourself. 」

“Lying to myself?” Here Kōtarō thought he was being forthright, yet his blade’s accusation came with a gale creaking the wood of the hut from the outside, as though wind itself was objecting to his questioning.

「 You pursue power because you are afraid. 」 

The claim spurned the Lieutenant into trying to deny it, but however he tried to raise his voice, any attempt at a sentence died almost as soon as it left his throat. What could he say to convince his own id otherwise? Not five minutes ago, his thoughts still lingered on a conflict over a decade past; Hai’iro Ranmaru naturally would have thought it too.

“Well don’t you have me all figured out, jī-chan,” he finally answered, letting a defeated smile sit on his countenance.

「 There is no shame in such an act. 」

“In what, pursuing power out of fear?”

「 In figuring you out. 」

A snort broke from the swordsman at the bluntly delivered remark, and with it, so did the tension between himself and the spirit of his weapon.

“Pfeh. That too, then.” 

With that, the pair allowed silence to reign between themselves. The clouds hanging high over Kusajishi seemed to rumble, ready to dispense with rainwater it had built up for several days of aridity with the coming summer season.

It only took moments for the first droplets to fall, pelting the roof little by little until a full shower began in earnest. A satisfied sigh left the soul reaper as he closed his eyes and focused on his other senses, taking in the soothing sound of rainfall and the building smell of petrichor from the outdoors.

Ranmaru’s presence, meanwhile, still lingered in his mindscape, seeming to enjoy the outside weather along with his wielder.

“...it’s been fun, though.”

「 Fun? 」

“Hm.” Kōta nodded to themselves as he sought to piece his thoughts together, while reflecting on more recent history for a change. “Over the last several years. All those techniques and manoeuvres? I wasn’t capable of half of that before we started training so seriously.”

「 Getting stronger... brings you pleasure? 」

“If you want to put it so starkly, then sure, I guess.” A low chuckle broke from Ryōhei younger before he continued. “It also means I understand you—and us—better in the long run, doesn’t it? I’d call it fun.”

「 Hm... I suppose it does, hatchling. 」

“I don’t know, I just... I want to keep flying. Higher, and higher still, until I can’t see the earth at my feet anymore.” He didn’t realize he started waxing poetic, but he remembered that wish well from when he was a little young soul: a great yearning to stand above any and every trouble on the earth, and equally untethered to the forces of gravity – freedom unlike anything he’s ever known. “That’s... just how it always felt like to me, I guess.”

「 Yet you ground yourself. Fear has locked you within a gilded cage, all while the clouds above call for you to ascend to their heights. 」

“Is that right?”

「 Of course. I am the wind at your back, the air in your lungs, and the sword by your side. I know when fear takes hold of you, even should you attempt to deny it. 」

“...it’s not like I’m afraid of death or anything. Kinda grown numb to that sort of thing after this many years on the job and all,” Kōtarō opined, feeling that a shinigami in his position would not last long in their duties if they weren’t used to putting their life on the line. Ranmaru hummed in affirmation in turn, wishing to hear his wielder speak his mind more. Anxiously, the man rested his hand on the back of his weary neck as he went on. “It’s just... back then, with the Quincy...?”

For a moment, he fell quiet.

“...they fucking steamrolled us. Slain us by the thousands. Hardly took them any effort, at that.”

As for the words he did not say aloud, though his zanpakutō understood as though they were spoken? None of us should have survived the war, least of all me. We got off lucky.

However, it was more than just fear. More than just helplessness. Hopelessness. Despair. Desperation.

「 ...so what do you intend to do, the next time your world threatens to fall around you? 」

There was one more feeling that took root in his soul, though buried within the chaos of the last day.

Memories of his own last stand proved... hazy, given he would only remember waking up in the 4th Division barracks after the dust settled at last. But, Kōta did remember the Seireitei, though ruined, returning in front of his eyes after days spent skulking, fleeing, hiding, and fighting within the city of shadows.

Then lights fell from the heavens, by the dozens, and from their descent rose those... things.

「 The next time providence itself chooses to become your enemy? 」

Squawking, shrieking, swearing vengeance in the name of their perfect, almighty god-king. Threatening to raze the one relief he found in his home materializing before him to ashes, after he thought it truly lost forever. After he finally had a moment to breathe—let alone recollect himself—when he reunited with those who still remained from the 13th. After they already took Captain Ukitake from them.

It was coming back to him, albeit in pieces, that those bird-beasts were so. Fucking. LOUD. Like a sickening cacophony of dissonant trumpets gleefully tearing into whatever peace of mind he still held on to, blaring into his ears lest he turned deaf.

The spark of hope he felt that that some of the normalcy he loved could return at all, only for someone to dare rip it away from him again, ignited something else.

「 The next time someone dares to stand in the way of your peace? 」

WRATH.

He stopped caring about power gaps.

He stopped compromising on what best approach there was to take.

He stopped worrying about whether he and his own would live to see tomorrow.

All he wanted was to see those Quincy bird things dead. Rally whoever among his men could still fight, and order the remaining ones to safety.

So, he brandished Hai’iro Ranmaru.

He saw Kira Izuru, a man who inexplicably stood while half his own torso was missing, going in as the vanguard against those lording, sanctimonious monstrosities.

Thus, Kōta summoned his cavalry.

Charged like a roaring typhoon, with a great fury he had not shown again since.

Fought until he could stand no longer, having slain one beast after the next with only red in his eyes.

The wrath he felt in those memories of the past simmered under his own skin in the present.

「 The Ryōhei Kōtarō I saw that last day, who did not let such fears hold him down... 」

Kōtarō was not alone in the cabin anymore. Not there one moment, there the next he blinked. It was enough to jolt life back into the shinigami, but he showed no fear before the intruder, for there stood the one same hermit he saw countless times within his inner world, now far and away—or a mere five steps away?—from the cloud sea it inhabited.

The same priestly kimono, with the same yuigesa. The same hauchiwa fan at his hip, with black feathers from the same black wings folded at its back.

Although, it was not the familiar face of a wise old bird Kōtarō would see. No, that mask fell away when Hai’iro Ranmaru made himself corporeal.

“...would break free from his cage, by tempering that same rage worthy of my power.”

Even his voice had changed with his younger, more human-like appearance, sounding smoother than Kōtarō had ever recalled hearing, almost melodious in his chiding. Next to one another, one could swear they looked like twins. The swordsman himself would have realized it as well, had he not sat there on the floor of his childhood home, looking shellshocked.

It did not immediately sink in that, at long last, his zanpakutō spirit materialized before him.

“If you can confirm to me you are worthy?”

It did not yet click that, indeed, he proved to possess the aptitude for Bankai after all.

“If you can show me you can rise above that fear?”

It did not come to mind that his years of training have finally, against all the odds, paid off.

“If you can prove that by besting the hells of yesteryear once again?”

No, above all else...

“Then I will gladly bend the knee to you...”

...what really stood out to the soul reaper was...

“...so that, as my master, you may soar to-”

“What the fu—YOU WERE YOUNG THIS WHOLE TIME?!”

“THAT IS WHAT YOU CHOOSE TO FOCUS ON?!”

[glumvillain]

GlumReviews #5

Stepping further into the darkness we find our journey landing us on July 18th, 1980. The release of Joy Division’s second and final studio album.  Those not familiar with the band history should be aware that this album was released 2 months after singer Ian Curtis’ death. 

By this time in music history the world had witnessed the folly of mankind as societies collapsed and transformed due to economic or social woes.  This is some of the first popular music that was perhaps the most honest as it could be, it didn’t lie to you, there was no promises of a better tomorrow, your future prospects will be dried up by the time you’re old enough to manifest them.

Curtis’ lyrics pull no punches about the dour and hopeless experiences of the human condition.  The music itself is a sparse backdrop to his narration. Definitely not an album you come strolling into looking for a good time.  Although I read previous reviews saying it was danceable music so what the %^&* do I know.

1. Atrocity Exhibition

The album opens with a tribal-like drum lead, beginning a relentless journey through the tortured mind of Ian Curtis. Random sounds and textures fade in and out, building to add a layer of menace to the overall tone. The lyrics, stark and crushing. “All the dead wood from the jungles and cities on fire/ Can’t replace or relate can’t release or repair.”

2. Isolation

A synth heavy turn-around from the intro song, something a little more cozy, but in contrast of the upbeat sounding song, Curtis goes on to sing “I’m doing the best that I can/ I’m ashamed of the things I’ve been put through, I’m ashamed of the person I am”.  The theme of--yes Isolation is heavily present throughout the album as it feels this entire album was recorded in the vacuum of space.  Sterile and cold.  Almost empty.  As mentioned before Curtis pulls no punches with his lyrical content but the rest of the bands playing feels like an exercise in taming that overwhelming emotion that Ian constantly struggles to keep in.

3.  Passover

As a pretty empathetic person it’s difficult to read his lyrics at times because they are just so brutally raw and negative.  Most people don’t talk this way for fear of alienating people, but the way he sings it, how it’s sung. You just feel the exhaustion of a world beating down on you. The music is simple, but it serves a perfect device for him to convey his message of “This is the crisis I knew had to come/ Destroying the balance I kept”.

4.  Colony

In reading some interviews from Joy Division, when asked to explain the lyrics to his songs, Ian says that it was simply up to anyone’s interpretations what his lyrics meant.  And I can really respect that, because for one it makes it easy for me sound like I may actually know what I’m talking about here.  But really it allows the listener to make something personal to their own experiences, I’d offer mine up but this album is dreary enough.  It really feels as if Ian is just in a completely different band from the rest of his bandmates as some of these compositions don’t really match up with the vocal moods. 

5. Means to an End

Now with the previous song in mind, this is where I feel they all align in ideology or mood.  As previous bands I reviewed, Joy Division seem to have a distinct style that made them stand out from a crowd of hundreds of bands in the same position as them. This is that sound and it embodies everything perfectly. Vamping lyrics, a hopeful hopelessness in the sound but it’s all just the soundtrack to the deteriorating condition of someone whose experienced too much loss to really muster up the energy to keep fighting. 

6. Heart and Soul

“Existence, well what does it matter?/ I exist on the best terms I can”.  And this album is just full of these strikingly dark and beautiful lyrics. The song itself, which was brewed with a punk backbone, but lacking the power of rage, it’s chill mood music and again such simple arrangements carrying Ian’s haunting singing.  A steady groove of vamping lyrics and regretful self-loathing. 

7.  Twenty Four Hours

Another staple sound for goth bands of this era is the chorused bass sound heavily present here and I love it. One of their more energetic songs for Ian to brood over. According to interviews with Joy Division, Curtis’ bandmates wish they would have noticed the signs pointing to his untimely demise sooner.  Furthermore also saying they’d never really paid attention to the lyrics.  Because I mean.....it doesn’t take a scholar to read between the lines of the massive monoliths Ian Curtis was constructing to doom and gloom. And I got all this from wiki so if you wanna read up more about it I suggest starting there and digging through their sources provided.  Invoking a gloomy Jim Morrison, this song is a pretty standard experience with Joy Division by this point in the album but the stylistic changes are welcome to break up any monotony you may be feeling.

8. The Eternal

A very somber song encased in synth pads and dark gothic piano.  Painting the picture of a funeral, of going through the motions of death and loss.  These are probably some of the saddest, depressing songs I’ve ever heard in a row.  Not being said to take away from the album.  If you ever wanted to hear what a normal person sounds like, I think Ian Curtis is that voice, just a young man lost in a gigantic world, suffered from epilepsy and battling depression amid a dissolving marriage. Being hoisted on-stage where he would be victim to his seizures.  Even in wanting to shout his pain to the world, he was made to suffer.

9.  Decades

The album closes with a realization of sound.  A beautiful piece of music as they abandon almost all instruments in favor of cold, lifeless synthesizers.  and they play with Ian’s voice so beautifully in this moment.  Alot of these songs play as if they’re being sung by someone dying on the side of the road.  Watching a world pass them by, counting up all the regrets and eventually having to let go. 

This was not an easy album to review as it took multiple listens to really get it to sink in, perhaps I’m not at the darkest moments of my life, but I empathize deeply with Ian’s thoughts and emotions.  Through the research and listening of this album I do feel a bit of sadness for him, and thankful that such a record exists of such a HUMAN take on the world and music. I find it really hard to rate because of how relentlessly depressing it is at times, does that take away or add to the experience? I guess every listener will react differently and perhaps if you’re one of those people who needs sad music to get through difficult times, this could serve as an important piece of music to you.

⭐⭐⭐⭐/5

I decided that the depressingly real aspect of it only adds to the experience.  While not exciting in terms of a party or dance record, it really does serve as an important document to mental health and the struggles of depression. I’d be hard pressed to say I’d revisit this album again. But I’m glad to have discovered it and really gave it a chance to grow on me. 

[the8worldking]

If Jaune does get revealed to be Salem's descendant and becomes half-Grimm, how will it play out according to you?

(Oh boy you’ve done it now my friend)

A now part Grimm and Immortal Jaune on his knees and facing towards the ground out of distraught in the freezing tundras of Atlas. In front of him was the enemy, the being who he had just become. The being who he had just found out he shared the same blood and the curse inflicted upon her. The being who had damned him with a path filled with darkness that won’t end. Salem, the queen of Grimm. Salem gazed upon her youngest descendant with a gentle smile on her face. Jaune didn’t even notice this. He was still in shock and despair in his new reality. He could never return home to his family, in fear of the reaction of seeing the abomination their son and brother has become. What would his companions think? Would they still love him? Or fear him like they do Salem? These are all questions that he didn’t even want answered. Salem could feel the boy’s despair and felt sympathy, something she hasn’t truly felt with another living creature in literal centuries. She decided to console her new future companion to walk the human-less world she is creating.

Salem: It’s better this way.

Jaune immediately snapped his head up, and was looking straight towards Salem. and in an instant, all his despair turned into rage. he remembered that he was holding his shattered sword, Crocea Mors in his hand. He used his semblance to boost his legs and dashed towards Salem, ready to pierce her. Salem knew this was coming due to her Grimm side sensing his rising rage. and before Jaune knew it, he was encased in a dark purple ice. Only his chest and head was exposed. Jaune struggled all he could to break free. But he used up his strength in that dash. But that didn’t matter to him. he just wanted to hurt Salem. He needed to hurt Salem

Jaune: better this way? BETTER THIS WAY?!

Salem: yes. Better than fighting and dying with those fools. Better than allowing you to fall for the lies that your previous life gave you.

Jaune had many murderous thoughts towards his eldest family member, but for some reason he wanted to entertain that last part. 

Jaune: oh and what might those be?

Salem: The lie that is victory against me. The lie that is uniting humanity, a species that thrives upon division. The lie that is love, from your companions, your family, and Ruby.

Jaune was shocked when she said that

Salem: I have been watching you for quite some time Jaune. I know you believe that she’ll accept you. That she’ll be the one to help you out of the darkness. your “bright red rose” in your dark world. but that is the lie of love. She’ll choose the mission over you in an instant. She’ll see you as nothing more then the enemy! and then she’ll take your family from you, AND TURN THEM AGAINST YOU ONLY TO-

Salem had to stop herself there. for it was not Jaune’s future she was telling him, but her own past she’d rather not remember. She took a deep breath and continued.

Salem: she will be against in the end.

Jaune: you know NOTHING about who she is!

Salem: She is warrior of light, darkness is her eternal prey and enemy. do you truly believe that she’ll love one who is an avatar of darkness itself?

Jaune: you ruined your second chance happy ending. NOT the brothers. NOT Oz. You did when you chose power and hate over forgiveness and love.

Salem eyes lit up with rage in an instant. if its one thing she despised more than Ozma, was people telling her she was in the wrong. But instead of lashing out at Jaune, she calmed down and looked at him with disappointment. for she looked in his eyes, and beyond the rage and despair she could still see the small spark of light she has grow to detest over the centuries.

Salem: you still have hope? fine then, go to the others and discover the truths of your new life. 

Salem’s body from bottom to top was slowly fading away in a black mist. slow enough to give her descendant some words to think about.

Salem: you may detest the very thought of me now, but know this. When Remnant has been purged of humanity. When you lose your precious loved ones. And you are alone in the darkness, regretting to have felt hope, I’ll be there. for all of eternity, a companion to remain by your side. A kindness I wished I received. The kindness I will give to you.

And with that final sentence the mist and her was gone. leaving Jaune there, still encased in ice and thinking about those words. of being alone with Salem. Of being alone with the devil herself. A dark feeling swelled up inside Jaune as he kept thinking about his possible isolation with Salem. The thought of his friends and companions dead fueled the dark feeling in him even more. But the tipping pint was the thought of Ruby’s dead body. His rose’s body, scarred and bloodied and her beautiful silver eyes, dull and lifeless. The dark feeling manifested itself as a mist of darkness that surrounded Jaune’s body. He then let out an inhuman like scream, and the darkness shattered the ice that encased him and sent the snow around him into the air. Jaune then broke down screaming into the cold night, tears streaming down his face. As much as he wanted to deny Salem’s words, he couldn’t. Right now all he could feel is despair. The despair he inherited from his Ancestor, Salem.

[kawasaki-division]

Akihabara Division: DayBreakers Drama Track 1 - Part 2

Kosuke plans to send the mics back to Chuo-ku, but many people tend to be quite stubborn

Haruto: Hah?! You’re sending them back?! Why?!

Kosuke: . . . Because I don’t want to form my own division

Haruto: But you know that there are throngs of people who would love to be in your division!

Natsuki: Can’t you at least form some kind of door between your mouth and brain?

Haruto: It’s a true statement and you know it- ohhhhhhhh, riiiiiight. Ops.

Kosuke: Yeah. I mean it’s been a while, but I have more than one reason for wanting to give back the mics.

Haruto: Wait, there’s-mpf!

Natsuki: Take your meal and hide from my tactless brother in your room. Now

Kosuke: How are you two older than me. . .?

Natsuki: Don’t ask, just do.

Kosuke: Yes, Yes, understood!

[backs away]

[Lets go]

Haruto: I am just getting beat up today. . .

Natsuki: For the sake of all of us, just try to make like an owl and be silent while doing your thing.

Haruto: *inhale* Thank you for clarifying, but also, please stop with your animal metaphors.

Natsuki: Just finish your meal.

Haruto: mm.

——————————

Kosuke: (eating)

[phone rings]

Kosuke: Jakurai-sensei?

Jakurai: Hello Kosuke, apologies if this is an inconvenient time for you.

Kosuke: Not at all sir. Is there something wrong?

Jakurai: No, it is just a simple question I would like to ask you.

Kosuke: Go ahead then.

Jakurai: Did you by any chance receive two hypnosis mics from Chuo-ku?

Kosuke: . . .

Jakurai: I see. So you did.

Kosuke: Um- wait! I’m sending them back tomorrow! I have no intention of starting my own division and it’s just that-

Jakurai: Kosuke, please, calm down. I understand you have reservations about this. I’m sure we all do.

Kosuke: . . .

Jakurai: Kosuke?

Kosuke: Jakurai-sensei.

Jakurai: Yes?

Kosuke: . . . We . . . We know that it was Chuo-ku who split us up.

Jakurai: Indeed we do.

Kosuke: I just don’t think I can rap again, much less lead a group, I’ve never been a leader, you know that. And... there’s that...

Jakurai: I cannot force you to do anything, it is your choice.

Kosuke: Mm. Yeah. Thanks. Bye then.

Jakurai: Yes, goodbye.

Kosuke: Dangit.

[Places phone down, tapes box shut, takes out sketchbook]

——————————

[chirping of birds]

Haruto: I’m off!

Natsuki: Right.

[door shuts]

Natsuki: Loud as ever isn’t he Hajime?

*mrow*

Natsuki: *chuckles* I agree… ahhhh… I need coffee.

Kosuke: Good morning.

[pats Hajime]

Natsuki: Morning.

.

.

.

Kosuke: I’ll be going out early to go do some dessin.

Natsuki: Alright.

Kosuke: (takes onigiri) See you in the afternoon.

???: Hey! You’re Kosuke Furuhata! From the Dirty Dawg!

Kosuke: A-ah… yes, um, may I help you?

???: Name’s Tamaki! Please let me and my friend join your division!

Kosuke: Oh. Well, apologies, but I’m not looking for any teammates, I actually-

Tamaki: Whaaat?! You already have a team?! Wait! What if we have a battle?!

Kosuke: N-no! It’s that I-

Tamaki: I’ll be back and challenge them!

[Sprints away]

Kosuke: Wait! Oh no…

[texts]

Kosuke: Hopefully they’ll be careful.

——————————

Haruto: Hm? Be careful? A guy and his friend seem to be under the impression that the two of you are my teammates? Pfft, I wish?

Coworker: Haruto? Is something the matter?

Haruto: Nah, it’s nothin’ that won’t fix itself.

——————————

Natsuki: (making notes to buy more kibble) Hey what are you hanging around here for?

Tamaki: You’re one of the twins who live here right? My buddy Ryu and I were waiting for ya.

Natsuki: Oh, the bothersome parasites.

Ryu: Parasites?! The f#ck?!

Tamaki: Relax, we gotta wait for both of ‘em.

Natsuki: Tch. (Starts to text)

——————————

Haruto: *heavy breathing* Where’s Kosuke?!

Ryu: Finally! Let’s get this over with!

[Mics activate]

Tamaki:

So you’re the chosen runts?

What kinda trick is this?

Once you’re replaced, know that you won’t be missed.

We’ll bring Akihabara straight to the top!

While you just turn around and drop!

Ryu:

You’ve got a lot of nerve to go and piss me off!

This’ll be a fun little run for us.

It’s just a warm up after all.

So don’t even try to act tough!

Natsuki and Haruto: Arghhhh!

Tamaki: Thought that would knock ‘em out.

Ryu: Let’s hit ‘em again!

Haruto: Dammit! What can we even do?

Natsuki: Explain obviously!

Haruto: Yeah! Hey! We’re not actually part of Kosuke’s group! He isn’t even forming one!

Tamaki and Ryu: Haaaa?!

Ryu: What an obvious lie! All the other’s are forming groups!

Kosuke: No. they’re right.

Tamaki: Furuhata! We’re winning! See? We’re much better as you’re teammates!

Kosuke: Did you not hear what I said? They’re right. I wasn’t looking to start my own division.

Ryu: Why not?!

Kosuke: Do I need a reason? Please leave.

Tamaki: No way! You can’t deny us this?

Natsuki: What kind of entitled creature are you?

Haruto: Can you hear yourselves?!

Tamaki: We'll just have to convince you otherwise!

Kosuke: *sigh* Why? Just why?

[takes out mic]

Haruto: You have that on you?

Natsuki: Not another word. Just be grateful.

Kosuke:

You think that you can beat me?

Well then good luck with that!

Hey now don’t look so surprised.

I’m standing right in front of you.

I’ll stay up all day, and late into the night.

That is until you’re finished, and done with this fight.

The only thing that matters is that you’re going home!

Tamaki and Ryu: uuuurghhh!!!

Kosuke: I’ll say this again, please leave. I wouldn't ever choose teammates who can’t listen to anyone else.

Tamaki: Ack! Fine! It’s your loss!

[They stagger away]

Haruto: Kosuke! That was awesome!

Natsuki: Can we just go inside?

——————————

Haruto: Gotta say, that felt exhilarating!

Kosuke: But you’re both hurt! And mostly because of me!

Natsuki: That’s a primitive thought. The fault is those two’s.

Haruto: But you were so cool! You blew them both away! Wish we would do that!

[Whack]

Haruto: Ack! Not again! You sadist!

Natsuki: If that’s the case, then you’re a masochist for not learning your lesson.

Kosuke: It’s fine. Really it is.

Haruto: See? Besides, Kosuke sent those mic back. Otherwise, I’d be begging right now.

Kosuke: Actually, I ran over before I could send them over.

Natsuki: Does no one think when it comes to speaking?

Haruto: *gasp* Please let us join! We took those hits like champs after all!

Kosuke: I still plan to send them back.

Haruto: But that’s such a waste of talent! And you and Natsu need something other than school in your lives.

Kosuke: Oh, you’re not going to let this go.

Natsuki: What a genius.

Haruto: Well?! Well?!

Kosuke: . . .

[Hands mics over]

Haruto: YEAAASSSSSS!!!!!

Natsuki: What am I? The chaperone?

Kosuke: (thoughts) This seems like the beginning of a new era of sorts. Like daybreak. I suppose…

Kosuke: Hey… what do you think of having DayBreakers as our name?

[kob131]

https://rwdestuffs.tumblr.com/post/625097351282966528/done-dirty-ironwood

So, the guy who is declaring martial law, and thought to himself “The people who attacked Beacon hacked our systems, but they totally won’t do it again” is supposed to be the “good guy” right?

A. Better than the mass murdering, child abandoning, family endangering woman but then again considering your hard on...

B. Gee, almost like the show is saying he’s not entirely in the right OR wrong...

C. “ Watts: (sighs) While cybersecurity has been stepped up in Atlas, as usual, none of the code was updated in Mantle. “ Wanna try that again Dudeblade.

Okay, I guess we can’t be totally unfair to him. After all, he’s just being paranoid. Paranoid to the point that he’s become a nervous wreck…

And Yang being depressed to the point of doing nothing to help her sister is so terrible of her right? Since we’re mocking PTSD and mental issues here...

How is he not a grimm magnet?- Starting to get the vibe that that whole thing about them being attracted to negative emotions is a load of bull, but whatever. Subject for another time.

Like the subject of him pistol whipping an Alpha Beowolf and surviving a crashing plane in Volume 3 showcasing he’s too competent to die to a Grimm under normal circumstances. Nah that’s show don’t tell and the act of acknowledging that would probably kill Dudeblade.

Well, I’ll say this much: He looks better with a beard.

Now let’s see, what Wizard of Oz character is Ironwood supposed to be based off of?

Ah yes, the heartless Tinman. Fun fact: The Wiki labeled this as “Terminator.Png”, so make of that as you will.

In the original lore, the Tin Man wanted a heart so that he could love. But the story showed that he had that ability to begin with.

You know, like Ironwood repeatedly showing warm emotion throughout Volume 7 and having the right idea but loses it all due to his own human flaws.

Ironwood’s… recent behaviors is troubling. Nora has pointed out that Mantle is bearing the brunt of the burden while Atlas has to shoulder… Nothing.

She talks to Ironwood, not Atlas as a whole dumbass. You’ll even prove it later.

Ironwood could tell Mantle about the plan so that he could hire Hunters there to guard the tower against threats, and also maybe get some programmers to, I don’t know… Keep it safe from hackers?

Nora: I am so sick of secrets! If we just told everyone about Amity, about Salem--

Ironwood: We can’t!

Everyone turns to look at Ironwood.

Ironwood: If we talk about Amity now, we risk Salem’s forces, who we know are here, working to sabotage it. If we tell them about Salem now, we risk falling to the Grimm before we can reunite Remnant.

Stealing argument from the show now are we?

The label the PNG image has is right. Ironwood is the Terminator. Bad under pressure, easily hackable, and only knowledgeable in combat but nothing else.

... So Yang.

Dudeblade: *goes into a snarling fit of rage*

Yeah just as I thought.

Considering that he’s abandoning Mantle with no real plan to actually stop Salem, it’s obvious that he’s doing what Oz is doing: He’s just desperately trying to hold off the inevitable.

Gee, almost like that’s a theme of something...

Which I think is a post for another time.

Can’t wait to see you fuck yourself in the ass then.

Nora here is correct. No matter what Ironwood says, no matter what he tells himself, Mantle took on the burden of completing that tower. Atlas?- They never had to fear grimm attacks. They never had to fear losing their jobs (At least until jacques decided to take them away and blame Ironwood for it). Mantle was a police state once the main characters got there, and all their resources were being diverted to Atlas.

Not pictured- A mention of Atlas.

Also not pictured- Ironwood talking about AMITY, not ATLAS getting the resources.

Atlas had an embargo. But as far as we’ve seen, Atlas if full of a bunch of rich assholes that don’t give a crap about the rest of the world.

Not the point of the embargo, which is to prevent mutual destruction among the kingdoms by killing each other with Dust from Atlas.

Then we consider that Ironwood declares martial law and orders the arrest of the titular team.

So suddenly the team is in the right, even as you love to make the case they’re monsters?

Funny how shit changes according to your political whims...

In all honesty, Blake and Yang made the right call in telling Robyn of the plan, because it got her to back off of stealing the supplies, even only for a bit.

Proof? ... No?

Gee, trying to excuse characters from their actions- Guess that’s something that’ll never change with Dudeblade.

But then we get this bombshell:

Ironwood just wanted to lure out Watts. He had no plan. Just like Oz, he was only delaying the inevitable.

‘Ready to launch’ dumbass. That’s the lie.

What Ironwood is doing is dividing the people. He is basically giving Salem exactly what she wants: A divided humanity.

You know, what the show itself is saying. So how is this a failure of the show’s and not your dumb ass again?

I mean… The is the guy who brought an ARMY to a celebration of PEACE that started because HIS KINGDOM started a war. Are we really supposed to see him as the “good guy” here?

Repeating Ozpin I see.

Ozpin: (standing up) And fear will bring the Grimm. A guardian is a symbol of comfort. But an army is a symbol of conflict. There's an energy in the air now, a question in the back of everyone's minds... (gestures to the display) "If this is the size of our defenses, then what is it we're expecting to fight?"

Say, wasn’t Ozpin ‘done dirty’? How come you’re ripping off his own arguments?

He can keep saying that “it’s the right decisions that are the toughest to make” and all that bullcrap, but as we all know: The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The guy refuses to admit fault in any capacity whatsoever, instead blaming others for his own shortcomings.

Ironwood: I wanted Ozpin's advice.

Oscar: And his advice probably would've been to keep your secrets. When we first got here, you already knew that wasn't the right course. You had a new plan.

Ironwood: It's time to give up on that plan.

Ironwood straightens up, lowering his hand from his face.

Ironwood: It's all falling apart.

Oscar: The panic you were worried about? It's already happening. The secrets you're keeping? They're about to be in the open anyway. It's time.

Ironwood turns and looks at Oscar.

Oscar: Tell the truth.

Ruby: You're not alone.

Ironwood looks over to see that Ruby has approached him with an encouraging smile.

Ruby: We can do this together.

Ironwood nods and smiles.

Ironwood: Thank you. Oscar, I think it's time you get back to the Academy.

Oscar: I think you're right.

Oscar rests his hand on the Relic again. While Ironwood speaks, Winter brings out her Scroll and starts using it, heading over to him.

Ironwood: Miss Hill, Councilman Sleet, Councilwoman Camilla, there are some things you need to know about. Let's figure out how we can help Mantle… together.

You were saying?

He has the “My way, or no way” mentality. He literally shoots a teenager because he’s throwing a temper tantrum over not being treated the way he wants to. It was his drones that got hacked. It was his system that got compromised. It was his lack of empathy that made team RWBY turn against him.

All points (except the temper tantrum you fucking hypocrite) the show already made.

Wanna know what else it made?

‘Team RWBY did the same thing to Ironwood Ozpin did to them’

‘Team RWBY betrayed Ironwood and caused this division too’

‘Team RWBY and Ironwood are both at fault.’

But hey, those don’t fit your politics.

And yet, he refuses to see that he’s become the thing that he fears most.

Here’s another post that also goes in detail about what Ironwood did.

Oh hey, Dudeblade agreeing with the show!

Also: self sourcing. Source denied.

So, remind me again why we should at all trust him when he refuses to trust anyone not blindly loyal to him?

Because he’s not that and you’re being a biased asshat.

Which, I must add:

SOUNDS DANGEROUSLY FAMILIAR!

What, did you listen to yourself for once?

But congrats on making the show look good as you rip points straight from the show itself. Which I’m all but certain of was the opposite of your intention given your series. While also outing the series as your personal bitchings as NONE of this discusses the show itself.

The ultimate self fucking.

[bigskydreaming]

A big part of the reason I harp on NTT #55 and that time Bruce hit Dick after Jason’s death is to me, its just such a perfect example of the downsides of letting something like that go unaddressed. For fans of the whole family, because the ripple effects of letting it go unaddressed either in canon or largely in fandom as a whole....like, those affect every member of the family, even if you’re not particular a fan of Dick or Bruce specifically.

First off, I want to be perfectly clear.....I do believe that a large part of the problem in the writing itself is that the writers and various editors at DC didn’t view it as a father abusing his son. To them, I think it was simply an extreme example of Bruce’s grief getting the better of him....it was meant to be big, dramatic, dark, it was meant to hurt Dick and cause an even bigger division between them, but it wasn’t meant to be abuse, in their eyes, I don’t think. At the end of the day, as far as they were all concerned IMO, it was simply a punch, and Dick’s certainly taken worse in his years as a vigilante.

None of that changes the fact that what was depicted on the page was unequivocally abuse. And I particularly want to break down the mental components of the scene, because I do feel like even when this is mentioned in fandom or fics, the weight of it is rarely felt, because its so often implicitly compared with the lifetime of abuse Jason had before coming to live with Bruce, or the times Dick’s been hurt far worse, or any of a dozen different things. Bottom line is, even when its nominally held out as being abusive, it tends to be in a perfunctory kind of way like “okay, yes, you’re not supposed to hit your kids, that’s abuse, but ultimately it was still just a punch.”

If you’ve been fortunate to never have been abused by a parent, please understand and internalize this:

A punch is never just a punch. 

Or any form of physical abuse for that matter...the delivery isn’t the point. Its what it represents.

Even if its just one hit, and the abuse victim has been hit far more or far worse in fights or sparring or whatever.....the damage doesn’t come from the physical blow alone.

The far greater damage is to every single thing that person had until that point built up in their mind to be true about their parent and their relationship with that parent. 

Society teaches us that parents aren’t supposed to hurt their kids. More than that, its a parent’s job to protect their kids from harm, we’re told from a very young age....with none of this coming from just one single source, but everywhere around us. We’re immersed in this perception, via entertainment, via our teachers, via everything we’re taught about how to protect ourselves. 

What’s the first thing you learn as a kid, that you’re told you should do if someone or something makes you uncomfortable or afraid? ‘Tell your parents’....even if we never hear that advice from our parents themselves, to come to them, its the first thing teachers advise, etc....with there rarely being a caveat about what to do if your parent is the one making you uncomfortable and afraid. Society’s default message to kids doesn’t really factor that in....because those are the outliers, as far as society’s perception goes.

Even as we get older and we start to consume media where older kids and parents have tense relationships, fight a lot....the vast majority of them still end with some form of reconciliation, whether deserved or not, because the implicit understanding is even when families fight, when parents yell, at the end of the day its all okay, because the parents love them and only want whats best for them....because of course they do. That’s how it works. The exceptions, again, are outliers.

The problem is, those of us with abusive parents are just as immersed in these outside narratives as any child with non-abusive parents....even if we don’t get this same reassurance from our parents themselves. Not only does this make it particularly hard for abused children to recognize or acknowledge when they’ve been abused (my parent can’t have meant to hurt me, because they’re my parent, they love me, so its not like they abused me)....

But in addition to that, up until that first moment of actual abuse, up until that first true piece of evidence that our relationship with our parent is not the same as the message we’re immersed in about what it should and should not be....

Before that, in the absence of that, we hear the same narratives and messages everyone else does, about how parents are supposed to protect us, nurture us, be our last line of defense against those who would see to harm us. That they love us, that we should never have to be afraid of them, etc. We absorb these implicit beliefs, the same as any other child. We internalize them. We accept them. We believe them to be true. We believe this to be fact.

‘No matter how much we fight with a parent, they would never truly hurt us. Not on purpose. That’s the last thing they’d ever want, because at the end of the day no matter our disagreements, they love us and want what’s best for us, not for us to be afraid of them.’

A punch is never just a punch, when its from a parent.

Its also the end of that belief. That trust. That unspoken faith we had in the message we’d been taught over and over throughout our lives....

Because its hard to argue that a parent would never really want to hurt you, when you’ve been on the receiving end of a willful and deliberate attempt to hurt you.

Bruce may have been lashing out in his grief, but he didn’t try and take it back. He didn’t show remorse or look horrified by what he’d done. Instead he doubled down, loomed over Dick, glared at him, yelled things about Jason’s death being Dick’s fault, that Dick was jealous that Bruce had adopted Jason but not him, specifically calling up things that he knew were sore points for Dick, things he knew would hurt him....making it unequivocally clear that in this moment, yes, Bruce’s intent was to hurt Dick. For him to be cowed, intimidated, even afraid of him. And then Bruce told him to leave, and to leave his key behind.

And in Dick’s case, all of this is compounded by the fact that Bruce isn’t his biological father, had yet to even be named his adoptive father. Meaning, the unspoken and spoken messages and lessons we’re taught about a parent’s role, and what children can or should trust or expect of a parent...these were only ever things Dick believed (and I don’t think anyone would truly argue that Dick didn’t believe these things about Bruce, that he loved him, wanted to protect him, etc)....

The point being....these things were never taken for granted in this case, because Bruce wasn’t technically or even nominally Dick’s father by that point. They were only ever believed by Dick...because Bruce worked to convince Dick they were all true. Dick was a traumatized orphan when he first came to live with Bruce. No matter how quickly you yourself see or headcanon him as having ‘bounced back’ from that, so to speak....that was only possible in the first place by virtue of Bruce making him feel safe enough to do so. Feel loved enough to well, act like a kid who has love and support in his life. The Manor was only ever Dick’s home because Bruce made it his home. Made him believe it was home. That it was a safe place for him, a place to feel comfortable and secure in, a refuge from the trauma that had made it necessary for him to even need another home.

One punch shattered all of that.

Because there’s no way for it not to. Dick spent years by Bruce’s side as Batman. He knows better than anyone what Bruce looks like when he wants to intimidate, when he wants someone to be afraid of him. He just never expected to be on the receiving end of that, because up until that point, even at their worst or most contentious, Dick still carried that unspoken faith that Bruce loved him even if he was bad at showing it, and as such, he’d never hurt him, not deliberately, not on purpose.....because the very idea of that, we’re taught, is incompatible with love. They can’t coexist. Someone can’t love us, and be capable of even a moment of that.

Life, unfortunately, is rarely that simple.

Make no mistake, someone can love someone and still abuse them. Our tendency in society is also to try and label people as certain things, as though they embody the description we give to them, even when that description originally is just meant to be of an action. So we call people abusive in general, even if at the start, its a specific action that’s abusive. Because abuse is ultimately an action. An abusive action that only turns into an abusive behavior when its repeated. An abusive behavior that only belongs to an abusive person, when that behavior becomes characteristic of that person.

And so whatever it was that Dick had specifically internalized about his and Bruce’s relationship by that point, whether it was that Bruce would never hurt him because Bruce was still his father for all intents and purposes, and loved him, and had made this his home, wanted it to be Dick’s home, for him to feel like it was his too...

One punch didn’t just split his lip and knock him to the floor while Bruce towered over him and yelled blame at him. It also made a lie of everything Bruce had previously worked to impart to Dick about his place here, his home, his relationship with Dick and what Dick could expect of him: to always be safe here, with him, to be wanted.

The reason I said at the start I believed that letting all of this go unaddressed was detrimental to the whole franchise and fandom, even if you’re not a fan of Dick or Bruce’s specifically - that goes back to what I said about how abuse initially is just a description of an action, before it becomes a behavior, and through enough instances of behavior, becomes characteristic enough of someone that they themselves are just described as abusive.

Because at this stage in the comics, this point in time.....Bruce’s abuse of his children is still limited to one singular scene, enacted in a time of extreme grief and emotional turmoil.

Make no mistake, I’m not for a second saying that excuses what Bruce did....because no matter his headspace, that doesn’t change the effect his actions still had on Dick’s headspace. An “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, I was grieving” alone can’t singlehandedly repair the kind of damage that was done to a child’s belief in his father’s inability to truly do him harm, or even want to.

But its a place to start from, and the problem is.....by never actually starting from that place, by never working from THERE, specifically, to stem the behavior that ultimately is seen repeating at various points in the comics....a precedent is made. That he can do this and just have it papered over with a mere refusal to ever really acknowledge or address it, and life will superficially go on the same, as though something fundamental hasn’t changed, shifted....with nothing nearly as impactful put in motion in counterpoint to it, to push back against everything this scene did and implied about their relationship to either of them.

I admit to being somewhat triggerhappy on this subject, lol, but see, the bottom line is ultimately, fandom’s general refusal to give this particular scene real acknowledgment or weight has nothing to do with being a Dick stan, its purely about how abuse narratives are interacted with in any medium, as a whole.

Like, hopefully it makes a little more sense now why it might be downright maddening to see a fandom so frequently write fics tackling Bruce’s behavior.....while largely skipping around and outright avoiding or ignoring:

the initial instance of abuse that without which, and if not for there never having been any consequences resulting from it, Bruce’s actions in this direction would never have kept repeating enough to become a behavior.

Its about for every action there’s an equal an opposite reaction. By one instance of abuse not being deemed worthy of an opposing reaction to address it, attempt to correct it, push back against it and try and return things to where they’d been before an unapologized-for abusive scene skewed things heavily in another direction....

The groundwork is laid for more of the same to happen again, either with the same character, or literally any other.

Because the thing that goes hand in hand with this, without ever really getting acknowledged either, as it would require referencing that time Bruce abused Dick which tends to be counter to this line of thinking entirely: 

Instead of trying to ignore that this scene happened because it clashes with the idea that Dick is the favored son who can do no wrong in Bruce’s eyes.....IMO stans of Jason and the others might be better served by looking at this moment in the characters’ lives as “if we vehemently believe that Bruce favors Dick more than the others, and he can still do this to him, what does that say he’s capable of with the others?”

Hopefully I’m making a case for how after a long enough time has past where scenes like this one just exist and yet there’s not a sizable enough pushback or attempt to acknowledge, address or ‘fix’ it....it was literally inevitable that there would reach a point where shitty writers intent on just making a spectacle rather than because they care about the implications of what they’re writing....

Would eventually come up with something like RHATO #25.

How could they not? When the takeaway was that all this prior abusive stuff Bruce did never even got the kind of outcry, dramatic reception that writers like Lobdell live for.....what were writers like him ever going to do but double down? Up the stakes? Do worse?

Bottom line is you can’t keep a pattern from recurring so long as you refuse to acknowledge various of the points that make up the pattern. Especially the initial point, without which there very well might be no pattern.

And going back to that scene from NTT #55....

No, I don’t believe a simple apology was ever going to make it right. But as I said, its a start, and you have to start somewhere. If anyone ever truly wants to address Bruce’s worse tendencies with his children, IMO, you start here....where its still largely limited to a specific moment in time, and can be addressed as such. Forced out into the open and condemned before it can grow due to a lack of consequences. With Bruce expected to make amends. He can’t and shouldn’t expect Dick just to forgive him, but not even asking for forgiveness literally only lays out the inevitable conclusion that he doesn’t need to, in order to have things back the way they were. 

Whereas owning up to what he did and its effects on Dick, recognizing that Dick only had this initial security of feeling he’d never harm him because he’d once upon a time worked to give him that feeling of security in the first place......that could be a reminder to Bruce that he did it once, and if he wants to badly enough and works at it hard enough, he can do it again.

But again, that requires focus on what this did to Dick, and what he needs in order to make things better from that point on...as well as effort.

An action caused this. Nothing but action in the other direction can actually have any kind of effect equivalent to the one the abusive action had.

I firmly believe that focusing on this as the starting point of any ‘fix-it’ fics meant to address or even curb Bruce’s abusive behavior in canon, is to the benefit of fans of every Batkid.

Cut it off at the source. Before it ever even gets to the point of RHATO #25, or NW #30.

Because there reaches a point where it becomes too little, too late. Where acknowledging it only once it gets to instances of that magnitude is akin to trying to put a bandaid on a gaping hole going straight through the body.

There are some instances of abuse that are so extreme, so damaging, that....they shouldn’t be forgiven, IMO. Where when if you’re focusing on what’s best for the victim, rather than trying to make things better for the whole family overall, including the abuser, under the belief that the family truly needs and would be worse off without them...

Like, sometimes the best thing for an abuse victim is to just walk away, if that’s at all possible. Cut ties and start fresh elsewhere. Some things are too big to ever truly come back from, to make things so everyone truly feels comfortable and safe and secure in another’s presence.

So I mean, its never not going to be baffling, and a little frustrating, to see fix-it fics for Bruce’s abusive behavior or actions that only act like something like RHATO #25 is a call for an intervention.

Because the thing that never ever gets mentioned in those fics, even when they bring it up and toss it out there like a throwaway line, like its still not that big a deal...

Is if your premise acknowledges that this initial scene after Jason’s death still happened in your fic....that it was the starting point for a pattern of abusive behavior that unchecked grew until it reached the point of RHATO #25....

Then your own fic is acknowledging but not addressing the fact that Dick has been living as an unacknowledged abuse survivor this whole time, without anyone in the fic’s continuity ever having addressed or even attempted anything to repair that initial damage to his faith in Bruce’s desire to protect and shelter and never harm him.

And that has nothing to do with feelings about individual characters, but again....how we interact with abuse narratives as a whole.

Just, please. If you are not a survivor yourself, if you take nothing else away from this, just please remember, reflect upon, and internalize this:

There is a difference between abuse and assault for a reason.

And that reason boils down to the fact that unlike in instances of assault, with abuse?

A punch is never just a punch.

[ryanmeft]

Ryan’s Favorite Films of 2019

A stuttering detective,

A top hat-wearing vamp

A forced-perspective war,

A bit of Blaxploitation camp

Prisoners on a space ship

Having sex with bears

A writer goes remembering

Whenever his pain flares

  A prancing, dancing Hitler

A gambler high on strife

Here will go cavorting with

A mom who becomes a wife

A family plot with many threads

Three men against their own

A stuntman and his actor

A mobster now quite alone

Doubles under the earth

Two men in a tall house

Are here to watch a woman who

Is battling with her spouse

A family’s plans for their strong son

Go awry one night

A man rejects his country

Which is spoiling for a fight

 A house built by his grandpa

(Maybe; we’re not sure)

Looks out upon three prisoners

Whose passions are a lure

  All these are on my list this year

It’s longer than before

Because picking only ten this time

Was too great of a chore

  What are limits anyway?

They’re just things we invented

I don’t really find them useful

So, this year, I’ve dissented

  You may have noticed this time out

That numbers, I did grant

Promise they’ll stay in this order, though?

Now that, I just can’t

  I’m always changing my mind

Because, after all, you see

Good film is about the heart

And mine’s rather finicky

  There are a lot more I could name

(And I’ll change my mind at any time)

For now, though, consider these

The ones I found sublime

 20. Motherless Brooklyn

I’ve got a (hard-boiled) soft spot for 90’s neo-noirs like L.A. Confidential, Red Rock West and Seven, and Edward Norton’s ‘50’s take on Jonathan Lethem’s 90’s -set novel can stand firmly in that company.

19. Doctor Sleep

There’s something about Stephen King’s best writing that transcends mere popularity; his work may not be fine literature, but it is immune to the fads of the moment. So, too, are the best movies based on that work. This one, an engaging adventure-horror, deserved better than it got from audiences.

18. Jojo Rabbit

There was a time when the anything-goes satire of Mel Brooks could produce a major box office hit.  Disney’s prudish refusal to market the film coupled with the dominance of franchises means that’s no longer the case. If you bothered to give Jojo a shot, though, you got the strange-but-rewarding experience of guffawing one moment and being horrified the next.

17. By The Grace of God

I’d venture this is the least-seen film on my list; even among us brie-eating, wine-sniffing art house snobs, I rarely hear it mentioned. Focusing on the perspectives of three men dealing with a particularly heinous and unrepentant abusive priest and the hierarchy that protects him, it’s every bit as disquieting and infuriating as 2015’s Oscar-winning Spotlight.

16. Waves

You think Trey Edward Shultz’s Waves will be one thing---a domestic drama about an affluent African-American family (and that in and of itself is a rarity). Then it becomes something else entirely. It addresses something movies often avoid: that as life goes on, the person telling the story will always change.

15. Transit

You’re better off not questioning exactly where and when the film is set (it is based on a book about Nazi Germany but has been changed to be a more generalized Fascist state). The central theme here is identity, as three people change theirs back and forth based on need and desire.

14. American Woman

Movies about regular, working class, small-town American usually focus on men. This one is about a much-too-young mother and grandmother, played brilliantly by Sierra Miller, dealing with unexpected loss and the attendant responsibilities she isn’t ready for. 

13. Marriage Story

There is an argument between a married couple in here that is as true a human moment as ever was on screen---free of trumped-up screenplay drama and accurate to how angry people really argue. The entire movie strives to be about the kind of realistic divorce you don’t see on-screen. It is oddly refreshing.

12. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Quentin Tarantino’s love letter to 70’s Tinseltown is essentially a question: What if the murder that changed the industry forever had gone down differently? Along the way, it also manages to be a clever and insightful study of fame and fulfillment, or lack thereof.

11. High Life

Claire Denis is damned determined not to be boring. Your reaction to her latest film will probably depend on how receptive you are to that as the driving force of a film. Myself, I’m very receptive. I want to see the personal struggles of convicts unwittingly shipped into space, told without Action-Adventure tropes, in a movie that sometimes misfires but is never dull.

 10. Dolemite Is My Name

And fuckin’ up motherfuckers is my game! Look, if you don’t like naughty words, you probably shouldn’t be reading my columns---and you definitely shouldn’t be watching this movie. Eddie Murphy plays Rudy Ray Moore, the ambitious, irrepressible and endlessly optimistic creator of Blaxpoitation character Dolemite. Have you seen the 1975 film? It’s either terrible and wonderful, or wonderful and terrible, and the jury’s still out. Either way, Moore in the film is a self-made comic who establishes himself by talking in a unique rhyming style that speaks to black Americans at a time when black pop culture (and not just the white rendition of it) was finally beginning to pierce the American consciousness. What The Disaster Artist did for The Room, this movie does for Dolemite---with the difference being I felt like I learned something I didn’t know here.

 9. 1917

Breathless, nerve-wracking and somehow intensely personal even though it almost never takes time to slow down, it is fair to call Sam Mendes’s film a thrill ride---but it’s one that enlightens us on a fading historical time, rather than simply being empty calories. Filmed in such a way as to make it seem like one continuous, two-hour take, for which some critics dismissed it as a gimmick, the technique is used to lock us in with the soldiers whose mission it is to save an entire division from disaster. We are given no information or perspective that the two central soldiers---merely two, in a countless multitude---do not have, and so we are with them at every moment, deprived of the relief of omniscience. I freely admit I tend to give anything about World War I the benefit of the doubt, but there’s no doubt that the movie earns my trust.

8. Ash Is Purest White

Known by the much less cool-sounding name Sons and Daughters of Jianghu in China, here is a story that starts off ostensibly about crime---a young woman and her boyfriend are powerful in the small-potatoes mob scene of a dying industrial town---but after the surprising first act becomes a meditation on life, perseverance and exactly how much power is worth, anyway, when it is so fleeting and so easily lost. What do you do when everything that defined you is gone? You go on living. This is my first exposure to writer-director Jia Zhangke, an oversight I must strive hard to correct in future.

7. Knives Out

The whodunit is a lost art, a standard genre belonging to a time when mass audiences could appreciate a picture even if someone didn’t run, yell or explode while running and yelling every ten minutes. Rian Johnson and an all-star cast rescued it from the brink of cinematic extinction and gave it just enough of a modern injection to keep it relevant. Every second of the film is engaging; Johnson even manages to have a character whose central trait is throwing up when asked to lie, and he makes it seem sympathetic rather than juvenile. The fantastic cast of characters is backed up with all the qualities of “true” cinema: perfect camerawork, an effective score, mesmerizing production design. As someone who didn’t much care for Johnson’s Star Wars outing, I’m honestly put out this didn’t do better at the box office than it did.

6. A Hidden Life

After a few questionable efforts and completely losing the thread with the execrable vanity project Song to Song, Terence Malick returns to his bread and butter: meditative dramas on the nature of faith, family, and being on the outside looking in, which encompass a healthy dose of nature, philosophy and people talking without moving their lips. That last is a little dig, but it’s true: Malick does Malick, and if you don’t like his thing, this true story about a German dissenter in World War II will not change your mind. For me, what Malick has done is that rarest of things: he had made a movie about faith, and about a character who is faithful, without proselytizing. That the closeness and repressiveness of the Nazi regime is characterized against Malick’s typical soaring backdrops is a masterstroke, and the best-ever use of his visual style.

5. The Lighthouse

Robert Eggers is a different kind of horror filmmaker. After redefining what was possible with traditional horror monsters in The Witch, he returned with something that couldn’t be more different: an exploration of madness more in the vein of European film than American. Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe are two men stranded in a lighthouse together slowly losing their minds, or what is left of them. The haunting score and stark, black-and-white photography evoke a nightmare caught on tape, something we’re not supposed to be seeing. It’s not satisfying in a traditional way, but for those craving something more cerebral from horror, Eggers has it covered.

4. Us

I have become slightly notorious in my own little circle for not thinking Get Out was the greatest film ever made, and now I’ve become rather known for thinking Us just might be. Ok, so that’s definite hyperbole: “greatest” is a tall claim for almost any horror movie. Yet here Jordan Peele shows that he can command an audience’s attention even when not benefiting from a popular cultural zeitgeist in terms of subject matter. It’s a movie with no easy or clear message, one that specializes in simply unsettling us with the idea that the world is fundamentally Not Right. I firmly believe that if Peele becomes a force in the genre, 50 years from now when he and all of us are gone, his first film will be remembered as a competent start, while this will be remembered as the beginning of his greatness.

3. The Last Black Man in San Francisco

Ostensibly about urban gentrification, this story of a young black man trying to save his ancestral home from the grasping reach of white encroachment is a flower with many petals to reveal. Don’t let my political-sounding description turn you off: the movie is not a polemic in the slightest, but rather a wry, sensitive look at people, their personalities and how those personalities are intertwined with the places they call home. Though the movie is the directorial debut of Joe Talbot, it is based loosely on the memories and feelings of his friend Jimmie Falls, who also plays one of the two central characters. If you’ve ever watched a place you love fall to the ravages of time and change, this movie may strike quite a chord with you.

2. Uncut Gems

When asked why this movie is great, I usually say that it was unbelievably stressful and caused me great anxiety. This description is not usually successful in selling it. The Safdie Brothers have essentially filmed chaos: a man self-destructing in slow-motion, if you can call it slow. Howard Ratner has probably been gradually exploding all his life; he strikes you as someone who came out of the womb throwing punches. He’s an addictive gambler who loves the risk much more than the reward, and can’t gain anything good in life without risking it on a proverbial roll of the dice. His behavior is destructive. His attitude is toxic. Why do we root for him? Perhaps because, as played by Adam Sandler, he never has any doubt as to who he is---something few of us can say. He’s an asshole, but he’s a genuine asshole, and somehow that’s appealing even when you’re in his line of fire.

1. Pain and Glory

When I realized I would, for the first time, have the chance to see a Pedro Almodovar film on the screen, I was overjoyed. His movies aren’t always great, but that was of little concern: he’s one of the handful of directors on the planet who can fairly call back to the avant-garde traditions of Bergman or Truffaut, making the movies he wants to make about the things he want to make them about, and I’d never seen one of his films when it was new and fresh, only months or years later on DVD.

It seems I picked right, as his latest has been almost universally hailed as one of the best of his long career. An aging, aching filmmaker spends his days in his apartment, ignoring the fans of his original hit film and most of his own acquaintances, alive or dead---he tries hard to put his memories away. Throughout the course of the movie, he re-engages with most of them in one way or another, coming to terms with who he is and where he’s been, though not in a Hallmark-movie-of-the-week way. Antonio Banderas plays him in the role that was always denied him by his stud status in Hollywood. It isn’t simply him, though: every person we meet is engaging and, we sense, has their own story outside of how they intersect with his. Most engaging is that of his deceased mother, who in her youth was played vivaciously by a sun-toughened Penelope Cruz. Perhaps Almodovar will tell us some of their stories some day. Perhaps not. I would read an entire book of short fiction all about them. This is the year’s best film.