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spidermilkshake · 5 days ago

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SAWBONES (chapter 2!)

Ah, yeeees... another successful procedure!

This story is finally on my FF.net now after forgetting to crosspost the first chapter for multiple months. OOPS!

But you can read the next chapter here, if you want:

2: Meet the Team, Part 1

Mid-October, 1962

Undisclosed R.E.D. complex in Western New Mexico

Dr. Ludwig had napped for most of the journey, an improvised "bird cage" tucked under each arm. They were dog crates, technically, but would each more comfortably hold six of the white homing pigeons each without much alteration. The pigeons mostly followed the mad doctor's lead, though one or two perked up whenever the team's liaison, Ms. Pauling, paced the reserved rail car and would either coo at her inquisitively or waddle to the closest spot they could reach the doctor's coat—reaching out and nipping at the fabric.

R.E.D.'s liaison found them cute, in a way. For pigeons. Er, or were they doves? She couldn't tell. Honestly, she couldn't remember if there even was a difference between the two, aside from the PR the names received. She had heard somewhere recently that pigeons carried horrific diseases though she wasn't sure if it was reliable information. She also wasn't sure if it was then more or less logical for a mad doctor to keep such critters.

When the doctor woke up, the train had started rattling to a halt at the remote station in the desert far west of Albuquerque, and the few passengers not employed by the mercenary group scuttled out with their simple luggage as if all struck with a deadly premonition. They were more likely somewhat aware of who and what the trains with restricted cars brought into this arid valley.

Dr. Ludwig stretched, rubbed at his eyes under his round wireframes, and then checked on his rescues. The especially feisty male was plumped up happily next to the slim female he seemed to have been courting since before he'd come into ownership of them. The little, sicklier one seemed to be cleaner, spunkier now and taking better care of its feathers with help from its closest two neighbors on the perch. In the other cage, the trio he was sure were ladies had stretched their necks up in worry—unused to the noise and vibrations of trains. He hushed them, muttering that they were fine, they were safe, and were in fact gorgeous girls. He then eyed the one with the clipped wings still on the way to growing back… sheisse, what a stupid thing to do to a "release dove", even beyond the stupidity of the practice to begin with. He gave the poor bird a gentle stroke over the neck and wings before hearing the hints that the new boss's unloaders were finished with the equipment crates and were now coming to what remained in the passenger car. He straightened up. Stern face. People moved their feet for the platonic ideal of "Stern, Scary German".

"Careful with zis one. Zhey are not up to a good veight yet," he commanded as the company porters took the large cages between two men each. Dr. Ludwig himself hefted a large backpack and a field duffel bag of his own personal effects. The biggest tools and specimens had either been sold off or shipped over two days prior. He was unbothered about letting go of much of the organic tissues. There would be more, and better, soon. The birds, pack, and bag were deposited into a… bread truck. Ah, but it bore the front-company's logo "RED BREAD", so of course.

He climbed into the passenger's seat, interested to see that the young lady, this Ms. Pauling, had hopped into the driver's seat and put the work van into gear to take off. She hardly looked old enough to drink in this country… much less be the one chosen to drive. Regardless, she ignored that she was ferrying along a notorious serial-killer as he subjected her to silent, dumbfounded study. She shifted higher and took that bread truck along a narrow road outside of town with speed and exactness. An… eerily exact driver. She was not used to standardized, legal-looking maneuvers, Fritz realized right away. Opposite of him.

Very interesting. Also, terrible for his nerves. He clutched at the armrests and prayed for the road-based leg of the journey to be shorter.

Ms. Pauling soon shifted to lower gears and turned to a gravel-only road—it stretched out into the more remote hills for over two miles before Ludwig spotted the first signs of civilization. A small outpost building preceded a razor-wire topped fence, a dust-spattered camper van parked up beside it. He just barely spied a lanky man posted up on the building's balcony with a sniper rifle as the truck passed through. Presumably, whoever that figure was would be taking care of any trespassers attempting to waltz in through the front gate.

Another half-mile within the fenced-off zone and he began to make out a large, disjointed-looking building. It had all started on the foundation of a wide block of concrete and steel, but had expanded upwards into three levels (though that was not counting the three makeshift tower positions slapped on top at several points, creaky, wooden, windswept). Pauling steered them down into a basement level parking garage before coming to a sharp halt amongst a small collection of other vehicles.

"Alright, here we go," she said as she slapped the parking brake into engagement. "Let's see if we can get your birds out between us…"

"Um… ja wohl… er, yes." He twitched, then followed her out on realizing she was marching her way straight to the darling pigeons without bothering to wait on him. Thankfully she was not too impatient and had waited at the open rear doors. Her on one side and him on the other, they took out the two dog crates and set them gently to the pavement before another of the Team Fortress mercenaries showed themselves.

The doctor felt a shadow fall over him. Unusual, his six-foot-plus self rarely met anyone more than an inch taller than him. To be casting a shadow… brr! Assuming the parking lot's lighting was not offset to exaggerate this, whoever was behind him had at least a four-inch height advantage. He turned with his head already a notch inclined.

Ooh, he was not ready.

This human being was fucking massive. This human man was clearly the mass of a horse. Good lord, he was a cylinder of muscle, ringed with an armor-pad of belly on top of all that, and then topped with the most ferocious glare on a bald, heavy-browed man that was physically possible. Ludwig felt… small. And, admittedly, a little titillated.

"Ah!" He could not restrain that initial pure excitement and fright, blended so inextricably, "Hallo! Who might you be?"

The giant wall of man's stalwart brows twitched, and an open fist the size of a hamhock thrust into range of the doctor:

"Mikhail. I am Heavy Weapons guy," the man's keen grey eyes leveled right into Ludwig's deep blue ones without much shift in expression, "Если ты нацист, я тебя убью."1*

"Ah! Well, you can call me Dr. Ludwig. Es ist shön, Sie kennenzulernen!"

In spite of stereotype, this huge man did not show an inkling of puzzlement or even concentration at this reply. He gave a nod, then looked past the doctor towards the cages of fussing birds, and Ms. Pauling standing by them, unsure how to manage these animals.

"Where do you want birds."

"Ah-heh. Ideally in ze room where I'll be staying."

The doctor all but squawked as the giant effortlessly took each crate under one arm and began to tromp off. After a second, Fritz recognized the behemoth was keeping those makeshift cages level as could be, and understood his pigeons were in good hands. The pigeons would be so lucky—carried around like that by a big, strapping bear of a man—

Fritz tried so hard to stop that train of thought, before it got off the rails. He was clearly red in the face by how Ms. Pauling snapped him back to reality:

"Don't worry, he's good with animals." She prodded him into taking his heavy backpack and duffel as he stared long after the colossus. "Come on, if we follow him we'll get right to your quarters and you can get everything put away."

The Team Fortress HQ had allowed for a private quarters within a six-second sprint of their current Medbay facilities. These quarters were not minimal, as with a true military shit-shack, and encompassed a twenty-foot by twelve-foot rectangular space. The giant—Mikhail—had let the pigeon cages down in a free space along the long wall close to the ventilation, across from the bed. Ludwig warmed to this reception—the big fellow seemed to know a thing or two about taking care of living creatures, and in particular knew the difference between what pigeons and parrots needed. Not very common knowledge. Very admirable traits!

"Does this arrangement work for you?" Ms. Pauling nudged, and Fritz woke out of his thoughts and cracked a slight grin.

"Oh, it's very good. But ze laboratory space is where I vill make my judgment."

"Fair enough. The Medbay and all its facilities are to the right of here…Main area has the O.R., recovery, waiting area and lab equipment. There's an office in the back for records—I'm not really sure what state it's in but any information about the team should be locked up there. Off the hall on the other side is some more storage, and the morgue." She gestured towards the latter, a flash of incredulity briefly visible behind her glasses, "Ah… If I remember right your, erm, 'perishable items' have been put away in there by the Demo man already. In case you… need those."

The facilities all proved to be a bit above standard. Clean, well-lit, and expansive, the receiving area had rows of chairs and one easily-sterilized modern medical cot before the main examination room. Which, it turned out, was also the operating area. And also the recovery area. Okay, so it was very much a battlefield-styled space. At the very least, each "section" was separated with a set of privacy curtains. 2*

Still, there was room for improvement. And the space itself was far nicer than his back-alley practices in taken-over bunkers, damp basements, and God-knows-what other "medical facilities" for the past several years.

"Zis will vork… Ja, it will need updates for ze operating spaces. I'm not sure zhese pump supports function, so I would have to test zhem for sure, but for ze moment I will be able to vork well from here."

"Alright. I'll let the boss know," Ms. Pauling leaned slightly on the edge of the steel slab of operating table, sweeping hair from her face, "Let me know if there's anything else specific you need, and I'll note it for the funding board. Oh, and if it's really urgent, just call my work number. I have the office in the entrance but, uh. I'm usually not there. But don't call that number unless someone's dying, okay?"

"O… kay." Ludwig frowned, "But… you do know by telling me zat, vhen you are called by me it will mean someone is dying."

"Yep, good. Anything else?"

"Ah… I forget my next question, sorry."

"Good. Well, it was good meeting you. I have a lot to do now, so I'm off."

"Ja." Ludwig was befuddled, already watching the back-and-forth swing of the double doors, "…danke?"

He was left, suddenly and unceremoniously, to his own devices for what was an unusual amount of time—and in those hours he poked and prodded through the medicines kept on-hand for treatments and triage and was frankly appalled by the organization, the expiration dates… Oof. At the very least, the bacitracin creams were in date and the gauze wasn't disintegrating. But mein Gott… this was going to be much more than a one-day job getting his predecessor's shit together.

He retreated to the room he'd been given after only disposing of the heavily-out-of-date compounds, knowing he'd be far better off spending what was left of the day becoming used to his new abode. Besides, his avian acquaintances should also get used to their room. No bird should ever be confined to an overnight cage indefinitely!

"Here ve go, komm hier!" He grinned and unlatched the two large cages and let pigeons flood out at will into the room, "Ja, good birds, time for exercise! And you, let me see you, little one. Ah," the thinnest of the birds let him grab it gently around the wings like a fluffy little hamburger before being set down onto his chest. Carefully, Fritz spread each wing out, studying its frail structure, then ruffled the little creature's head to study its nares and eyes closer.

"Poor vogëlchen… ja, zhat infection isn't beaten just yet." He petted the small pigeon over the neck, causing it to manage a whispery purr. The doctor melted, "Aww… it's okay. One more dose of antibiotics, and some good ventilation now vill fix you… and some extra treats, of course."

At the magic word, four or five pigeon heads swiveled and locked onto the man reclining on the bed. Fritz chuckled. "I have enough for all of you, Dummkopfs… patience!"

The pigeons regarded this insult with either confused, vapid stares, or an unruffled grace. They soon went about their business—preening on the highest shelves and the top of a file cabinet. Silently, Ludwig picked a single sunflower kernel from a stash in his pocket and set it on his chest for the weakest dove to take. Its pupils widened, and it began devouring the seed with such insistence that the doctor was being ferociously pecked even through his shirt and waistcoat.

"Easy, mein Freund, easy. Zere will be more seeds vhere zat came from," he scooped out an additional pinch of millet and smiled as the sickly dove snapped them up eagerly from his hand. Good appetite was a good sign. After one more round of extra sunflower seeds for the ill bird he sat up and whistled a few sharp tones. Finding the bag he kept in one pocket of his backpack, he deduced the widest, flattest surface in the space to deposit a few cones of seed mix and pinches of grit at evenly-spaced points along it. Millet mostly, though there was some thistleseed, fragments of sunflower, and the occasional chunk of corn kernels (which was not ideal, but he could source better bird food soon enough). He watched them waddle about, pecking and nibbling, and almost missed the soft knocking on his door.

The knocker more than likely meant to be missed, but was pressed to go to the effort anyways. When Ludwig wedged his body up to the doorframe to prevent Bird Escape Attempts and cracked the door open, their form was already turned to quietly scamper away…

"Hallo?"

"Er… oh, uh, howdy there!"

The doctor was faced with a shorter fellow. Not so short it would be obvious next to the average man instead of a human embodiment of Being Nearly Two Meters Tall, but on the "low-slung" side. He was obscured: A rigid hardhat and a pair of smoked-glass welding goggles shaded and hid his eyes, though he did smile wide as he offered a hand similarly enshrouded in a leather work glove. It was only his left that was covered up in this way, though Ludwig didn't think on this at the time.

"Guten tag!" He clasped the hand strongly, smiling wide over the twinge of the vice-like grip on his knuckles. The man appeared to either not notice or not care—just as he appeared to give zero fucks about the avian flutters and feistiness brewing in the room behind the medic, "Ach, you would be… ze team's engineer, ja?"

"Yep, that's me. Th' name's Dell Conagher. Pleased t' meetcha."

"Ah, gut!" Fritz grinned, though he started to sense something unusual about the man deciding to appear here, like this, and seeming embarrassed to be caught going straight to the doctor on his first day, "Please, call me Dr. Ludwig. Very good to meet you—I vas hoping to get ze chance to say hallo!"

"'M charmed." As Fritz suspected, this Dell seemed to cast a look back over his shoulder before turning his attention curiously to the doorway, "Er, is there some chance I could talk t' you 'bout somethin', er, particular… Like somethin' medical… Ain't exactly had a chance what with no medic around 'til now…"

Stunned for a second, but still willing, Dr. Ludwig glanced behind him and then lowered his voice: "Ach… are you sure you vant me to see you so soon about zhis? I'm sure I vill be asked to renew ze full team's physicals soon anyhow…Er, of course I will see you earlier if you vant, but… would you not prefer to come back in ze morning?"

"I reckon I ought to not wait any longer, doc." The man's mouth twitched into some expression possibly unhappy, possibly ashamed to have already waited so long, and possibly just a bit apologetic. Fritz did not want to give Dell the impression he was being turned away, and so widened the door a half inch further.

"Vell, alright… just, are you good vith birds?"

"…What?"

"Aheh… I have very many pet birds in here. You're not afraid of birds or allergic, are you?"

"…What? Er, no, I don't reckon so." Dell dropped to a mumble before squaring himself up, "I mean I outwaited that old medic on this, some birds ain't gonna bother me."

"But really ze birds—" Fritz leaned in, "Zhey are sort of all over at ze moment…"

"… Well, ain't that what birds do?"

"You're sure?"

"Yeah, I'm sure your birds'll be just fine, doc."

"Vell… come in, zhen," and he added, as the man stepped in, "Watch ze door—I don't want any of zhem getting out. Zhey don't have zheir homing instinct yet…" 3*

Dell ended up stood amidst a few flapping white doves—most fleeing the newcomer and trying to settle and find spots further from the door. Soon the shelves were lined with a row of black, beady eyes scrutinizing the engineer. The doctor squeezed by and sat on the bedside, directing Dell to the one armchair in the space directly across from him. He sat ramrod-straight, trying not to alarm any more birds and send them flocking anew.

"Er, I don't have access to your records yet, but, erm, anyzing you can tell me would help me understand what's going on."

"Well sure, I—Ah." The man froze as the sound of the doctor settling into conversation signaled to the boldest of doves that his overalls would be interesting places to try and perch upon. Fritz watched, patiently, bringing his hands up to hide the smirk he cracked at the endearing sight of the feisty male and his mate both fluttering in orbit around Dell to investigate. "Well, I know I just ain't feelin' right… You know what it's called when you're just so doggone tired all th' time? I get my breaks an' everything… an' I get more tired. Y' get so tired you can't hardly sleep. Kept waking up in a sweat after an hour or so. Comes and goes now, but every week or so it comes back.

"Tried tellin' th' old medic about it."

"Oh. Und what was zheir opinion?"

"Didn't bother t' say much about it. Course, he died about an hour later on that assignment…" 4*

"Yes, right… ze, ahem, incident." The medic paused to accept another dove's landing onto his shoulder, wings whirring as they flapped with excitement before plumping down, "Did zhey at least start on establishing vhat ze issue is?"

"Not so much. Mostly just told me t' keep my mouth shut and get back to work," Dell crossed his arms. "Well, I didn't shut up about it. If he'da known any of us Conaghers he'da known that wouldn't be th' case."

Dr. Ludwig clicked his tongue, face screwing into a mask of reserved disapproval; the team of mercenaries clearly had an utter Arsch mit Ohren for a field medic and on-site doctor until recently. Really—it showed how far having a license to practice medicine legally went compared to an actual skill, know-how, and passion. Utterly baffling why anyone at all making a career in this sort of thing would opt not to investigate a quandary which walked right up to them. Not to mention not caring to look into why a colleague was ill. Presumably this was due to this now-deceased former medic also being a Backpfeifengesicht…

"Ze infirmary here is in a state, I noticed," he grunted in displeasure, scrubbing at the barest hints of stubble returning on his chin, "Still, if you vish, I can check up on your vitals based on vhat I know at least. Und if you like I can start a simple series of blood tests tonight—zhat would be a place to start while I finish getting ze more involved equipment up and running."

"Yeah, that'll be just fine." The man's head bobbed, fascinating the aggressive little male pigeon who was climbing around on the folded shelf of denim just below the buttons holding them up. "Sorry t' be a bother right as y' get here, doc."

"It's no problem, Herr Conagher!" Ludwig stood and quickly scooped the more obnoxious of the birds from where he was cooing and assaulting Dell's overalls pocket in the hopes that all pockets contained secret seed treats, "I have vhat I need set up in ze waiting area—after you?"

The two of them got to it—with Ludwig shooing the pigeon back onto a shelf next to his potential paramour's perch—and soon enough Dell found himself sitting on the side of the cot in the waiting room of the Medbay with his right sleeve rolled up to the shoulder, a blood pressure cuff wrapped about his substantial bicep.

"Could you describe any more symptoms you've noticed?" Fritz asked while pumping this cuff up and studying the dials with intense focus.

"It's… well, a little tough to explain 'em all. Some days in th' shop I get faint real easy. But ain't every day, though—it's really strange. Like if y' stand up too fast, 'cept I'm just sitting there calm as can be layin' out my blueprints…"

"Hm," Fritz double-checked the numbers he was getting. Faintness could suggest blood pressure issues—or something connected. Cardiac. Pulmonary. Blood. Glandular infection? Maybe unchecked infection or damage of the sinus. Inner ear, even. Mercenaries would be around loud guns and explosives often enough that could be case quite easily… But, when hearing hoofbeats, horses before zebras. The engineer's blood pressure was currently coming back well within normal. "Is zere any pain when zis happens?"

"Well… no." Dell frowned and let the doctor strip off the cuff, "Not when I'm about passin' out. But, other times, I get a mighty bad headache. Started off thinkin' it was fumes leakin' from somewhere, then after I ruled that out I thought I was just getting' too old to stay up drinkin' with th' boys here, y'know?

"But I still get 'em—and I cut down on the liquor more than a month ago. And they get bad. I can't concentrate. Don't even go away with a couple aspirin…"

"Vhen did ze headaches start?" Dr. Ludwig carefully restrained the expression of alarm trying to wriggle its way over his features as he gripped the man's right wrist and counted—pulse seeming elevated but not enough to be alarming.

"Probably… at least two months ago. Yeah, it was at least as far back as July this year."

"Ah, I… I see."

"'Sthat bad, doc?"

"Well… too soon to tell, I zink. Now, I'm going to place zis hier," Ludwig hovered the business end of a stethoscope over the standard spot right of the sternum until the man straightened up a bit in silent permission, "Now, if you could take a deep breath in… und out."

Lungs. Sounded… normal. Considering the engineer apparently also did not smoke—a rarity among grown men in this country as well as the old one—this made sense. Repeating the process over the other quadrants of the chest, Ludwig was left admitting the result aloud:

"Hmmm… not somezing lower respiratory. Your lungs sound very gut."

"Er… thanks, doc. I try."

"Aheh," the doctor chuckled as he put the stethoscope away and retrieved an examination light. "Don't on my account. Let's see… ja, I should check your ears, nose, and throat now…"

"Uh… 'sthat necessary?" For the first time, Mr. Conagher seemed nervous.

"Yes," Fritz paused a safe meter back from him, "I vant to rule out ze more immediate and ze more common zings… your issue could be somezing upper respiratory, especially some infection in ze sinuses left ignored by ze last medic so long. Or inner ear trauma—zese things happen in proximity to explosions. It would be best I rule zhose out, at the least."

"Alrighty then… I'm a… bit of a mess, though, sorry."

"No need—I assure you, I've seen vorse!" Dr. Ludwig kept his tone jovial, patient until Dell appeared to prepare himself to hold still for a relative stranger to shine a beam of light into his face-orifices. With each pan of the light, Fritz found only fairly ordinary ear-flesh… nostril-flesh… throat-flesh… no swelling, redness, scarring, abnormality. With a little struggle, Dell peeled the welding goggles from his head and revealed his brilliantly green eyes (and a "tan-line" which was more of a grime-line that revealed he was a shade lighter than he'd first appeared), which the doctor checked but again found nothing amiss.

"Hrm. I see nussing obviously ze matter…" He muttered, biting his lip as he allowed Dell his goggles and his personal space back. "I suppose ze only thing left to check vould be somezing systemic… ein moment…"

When Dr. Ludwig turned back to his new patient/colleague he was armed with a rather large hypodermic needle syringe and a set of three sterile vials for collecting equal portions of the blood. The engineer winced.

The mad doctor noticed. His friendly smile dropped into a flustered look, and he held the syringe instinctually so that the stabby part was obscured by his other hand. "Oh. Ach. Um—sorry, you are not good vith needles?"

"Not big fuc—er, big ones." Dell caught himself.

"Ah… Sorry—zhese are ze ones I had ze chance to actually clean—" Fritz said with a note of deep grumble, "I von't take long—you'll only feel a little prick…"

The poor man had his jaw clenched the whole process, which was less than a minute long fortunately, and soon Fritz was retreating with about 100 mL of thick, dark blood he'd swiftly distributed into one-third volumes in the testing vials. He flicked the needle into the sharps disposal as the follow-through of his final fluid motion.

"Zere we go… Ah—er, don't stand up right away!" He squawked. "Let me get zese samples into ze centrifuge… I don't want you to pass out on me, ja?"

Mr. Conagher didn't need much encouragement to stay put, it turned out. Moments after he'd set himself back on the edge of the cot, a wave of dizziness crashed over him and Ludwig heard a muffled thutt! from the other side of the room as he was arranging the vials. Turning to look, the man's hardhat had just popped off and landed with a wunk! On the floor beyond the cot. Thankfully, Dell himself was still sprawled over it.

"Sheisse!" Fritz ensured the vials were stable before flitting over to the unconscious man. He tugged Dell more squarely onto the cot and snatched up a loose bag of supplies he had been meaning to sort through to prop Dell's legs up as much as possible. With two fingers he frantically kept searching his left wrist in vain for a pulse—perking up and sighing with relief as Dell groaned and started to come to after only a few seconds.

"…Oh. Howdy, doc…"

"Do you feel alright?" Fritz leaned over, instinctually trying to study his patient's pupils despite the deep tint of the goggles hiding them, "You fainted for a few seconds."

"Aw, shucks," Dell rubbed the faint bump on the back of his head. "Sorry 'bout that."

"Nonsense! I'm just glad you didn't end up on ze floor," Fritz stooped and retrieved the engineer's hardhat and handed it back to him while he sat up. "Have you ever fainted from drawing blood or needles before?"

"Well… no." Dell rubbed his neck, then adjusted his protective headgear back into its comfortable groove. "I haven't really had to deal with either in a while."

"A while?"

"Oh, about six years. I know, it's prob'ly bad. I really ain't even had to get stuck since… shoot, when'd they start givin' out shots for smallpox?" 5*

Dr. Ludwig broke into a worried chuckle; "Aheh. Well. I should note zis as soon as I have your records. Aversion to needles is not so uncommon."

After assuring Dell was clear-headed and stable—as well as fetching him one of the colas which other mercenaries had left spare in the mini-fridge after moving in the crates of equipment—Ludwig bid him a good night and promised to share the results of his tests as early as was convenient tomorrow. The engineer seemed content and most of all grateful to have a medic on staff giving a rat's ass about his problems, finally. He thanked the doctor and made off towards the upstairs rec area to unwind before it got too late into the night.

And Fritz got back to work. He set the dials on the centrifuge and started the annoying whine of the little blocky machine up, then retreated from the range that had him gritting his teeth. He delved deeper into the infirmary and sifted through the still packed crate of his more delicate and precise surgical tools. Now would be a good time to start deciding where would be handy spots to keep them stored in the large supply cabinet in the corner of the O.R. section. Scalpels, check… clamps, check… suction… check… now, where were those drill bits and the orthopedic repair rods? There, next to the smaller bone saw of course. Magnifying headset, some little-used trepanners, and the heavier bone saw were put away as well before he set to work examining the old disinfectant bottles left behind by his predecessor on a rolling tray…

"Eurgh..!" He'd barely tried to screw open a container of iodine solution when the reek of its long, neglectful stay out in too-high temperature sucker-punched him right in the olfactory nerve. Mein Gott! Nein, Gott! Might as well shove it into a grenade launcher as an improvised munition and let one of the enemy deal with it. It and the rest of the crusty, filthy substances were shoved far away from the fresher, sterile stuff he had yet to unpack. From far across the medical complex the whirr of the centrifuge slowed and came to a stop—alerting him with a dull, nasally beep. He skipped back to the waiting area's counter and snapped on a pair of thick latex gloves before selecting out his chemicals for a range of tests, as well as all the petri dishes and crystal-clear fresh slides for those that called for the chunky microscope set up at this short-term lab station.

"Let's see… you komm hier for red cell… und you for white cell on this one… Und du gehen hier zum Gifttest rein… Vhat else?" He paused, holding up the freshly-opened second vial of Dell's separated blood sample—its healthy-looking serum ready for another battery of tests, "Ah, jawohl—deficiency. Und you, on this one for gram-positive stain…"

It was hardly any time at all before eight petri dishes either held a pool of serum, solids, a number of blots of each, or was protecting a slide holding a stained droplet of the fluids. Some had already begun shifting hue from the dyes and chemical reactions which would hopefully return some answers. With a felt-tipped marker, Dr. Ludwig carefully noted which dish held which test, all being initialed with "D.C." for records purposes. A sigh escaped him, and he shot a look over to the dusty wall clock hanging over the double-doors.

"Zhat will have to do…" He exhaled, peeled off and disposed of the gloves. Some of these would be ready in only a few hours, but the slowest acting compounds wouldn't have much to show until at least the morning. Even so, most would need the additional evaluation under the microscope's lens. He would see to it all tomorrow.

Seeing to himself had to come now. It occurred to him that he hadn't had a bite since before getting on the train that morning, and he was hungry enough the secret pigeon treats still in the pocket of his waistcoat were starting to sound acceptable for human consumption. At the opposite end of the long hallway the Medbay was situated on was the base's kitchen and enmeshed dining area, so Ms. Pauling had informed him. After ensuring no chemicals were spilled on him and the lights were switched off, the doctor set off for that destination. People also tended to end up in common eating areas—perhaps this would be the best opportunity to meet a few more of his new peers.

When the medic stepped through the open archway into the space it was immediately obvious that it was much smaller than the Medbay. Less than half its size, to be more exact: In the portion divided by a half-wall (that was also serving as a bar judging by the empty bottles, the ashtray, and the two chairs pushed up to it), Ludwig noted one main table surrounded by mismatched folding chairs. Next to the entrance was another tiny countertop strictly for a drip coffee-maker and stacks of other caffeination accessories. The kitchen portion was fully visible from any point in the room, and while quite chaotic with all the drying dishes, scattered dirty ones, and various partially-used ingredients and crumpled hand towels it was otherwise decently appointed. There was a set of hobs and an oven, a quite large refrigerator with a water dispenser and an icemaker fueled by a massive tank of the bottled water those living here were advised to drink, and a lot of counter space and cabinets. Beyond the sink there was a massive sealed freezer door and a small, rickety door which he assumed led to a pantry of canned goods, MREs. Such storage would be needed to keep a squad of permanent hired combatants fed for the stretches between resupplying…

Ludwig sucked in a breath; in the kitchen were two figures—one he was not alarmed by at all since the man was occupied by the sink and had been loud and visible the whole time. The other was different. He seemed to appear into his view as he rose from a low stoop at the fridge.

It was the Russian goliath.

A half loaf of bread, a chunk of cheddar, a cylinder of a massive sausage coldcut of some kind and a single tomato were cradled in his beefy arms, and despite this very non-threatening assortment, he'd twisted to face the newcomer with a stern face that dried out the doctor's mouth and spiked his heartrate.

"A-ah… Guten abend," Ludwig nodded—mouth twitching into a grimace of a friendly-smile-adjacent sort as he stepped over the threshold. The huge man's brow crumpled into a deeper glare, appearing to watch the newcomer warily even as he took the single step to the kitchen's island and deposited his foodstuffs next to a cutting board.

"Doktor." The acknowledgement sounded like it had been forced through coarse gravel. Fritz had to swallow hard to banish his cottonmouth sensation. He averted his gaze to the relatively smaller man still muttering away at the sink before he felt able to speak again.

"I, aheh, see ve had ze same idea," Ludwig tried to chuckle, motioning to the pile of food. He stepped closer into the kitchen to occupy the space directly across from the buffer zone of the island. "Oh! Ja, and I also vanted to thank you for being so good to my birds."

The heavy weapons expert's icy veneer cracked, but veeery slightly, with one brow raising up. "Да. Is no problem."

Abruptly, the man at the sink let out a loud, guttural belch and cackled before launching into what sounded like both a Scottish and a heavily-inebriated accent: "Aha, Ah didn't know ye could speak German, man, but whyyyyy's y' voice gone all fookin' high?"

"Aheh." Ludwig waited for the… not terribly sober fellow to clumsily turn about and reveal an eyepatch over the left socket. He had been getting curious as to who this was—and why he'd yet to notice an unfamiliar presence—and this visual impairment as well as the judgment impairment seemed to answer most of this. In spite of the odd state of this first meeting the medic had the presence of mind to be pleasantly surprised and relieved his new employers had hired a black man. That was such a sticky thing sometimes with companies and organizations… one reason he seldom worked with such entities.

Though it was less of a relief how the fellow was practically soaked in alcohol. He would certainly not even remember meeting this way tomorrow, but it seemed too rude to not introduce himself anyhow:

"Ah, zhat was me, actually."

The blitzed merc managed to focus his one eye on the strange figure, squinting and formulating a response over a considerable delay.

"Well who d'fookss yooou, den?" While the doctor blinked in bemusement, he took to this harsh reception calmly even as the man rambled on into a barely-intelligible, hiccup-interrupted slur: "Gah, ye look like ah—hic!—greet bug-eye nellie inna coat, you'n'yr twin there—hic!"

"Um." Fritz mercifully hadn't caught the meaning, if any, in that and glanced back to the massive man wordlessly making a sandwich. Mikhail caught the glance and let out a huff not unlike that of a daycare worker after eight hours of managing pure toddler-sourced chaos.

"Not worry, doctor. I watch him… is too drunk. Not always this much idiot."

"I see…"

"Who'ye callin' 'n'idjit ye fat fookin'—hic!—fat bonny lassie, Ah'm drinker when Ah'm smartin', eh!"

"Mm-hm." The heavy weapons guy rolled his eyes and kept up layering slices of cheese and meat over the bread in front of him.

"Er, anyvay, I'm Dr. Ludwig. What should I call you, Kamerad?"

"Fook ye, Ah'm no' Conrad," the man wavered, eye rolling up into his skull briefly before regaining awareness and jabbing at his own chest with a finger, "Ah'm Tavish DeGroot, man, 'nye better remember et!"

"I… certainly will," Ludwig flashed an awkward grin over a soft laugh. Despite the flagrant hostility from the utterly plastered man, Tavish seemed to warm to the reply and with being faced with a smile, and grinned in his own slow, goofy way as he stumbled over to the drying rack full of dishes to prop the saucepan he'd been holding throughout the exchange.

"Weel Ah'm goen' ta bed cuz Ah'm doon here… Mikhail, mate, an'd yooooou better 'ppreciate it cuz Ah'm no' messin' after y'clean agin f'freeeee…" DeGroot managed an expression of reserved dignity over the flushed, sweaty baseline and staggered past the giant man for the doorway. Mikhail watched him go, jaw offsetting a bit instead of uttering the annoyed vulgarity he clearly wanted to. 6*

"Hug wall, use railing, remember. Do not fall and break head," he returned to the sandwich construction, grumbling, "…what left in head." With a robust flip, the man's massive hand finished the layered creation and secured the final piece of mayonnaise-streaked bread atop the stack. Fritz's quarter-second look down at the final result triggered instant salivation, followed by a thankfully quiet protest from his stomach as it demanded an introduction with something so Perfekt. The colossus sensed the covetousness in the medic's eyes and aimed a renewed scowl at him before taking his creation and sidling towards the dining area. "I not sharing with you, Doktor. Make own sandvich."

"Hu—ah—aheh, of course, I vas meaning to!" Ludwig almost choked at the blunt reprimand but absolutely agreed—he was entitled to a sandwich, but not another man's sandwich. Especially not that exquisite specimen, not after the giant spent all that time making it. "I just was waiting… didn't vant to get in your way. I'll just… make mine then if you are done?"

It was admittedly harder to concentrate on the task than expected. Intuition was nagging at him that the big fellow did not seem to like him being nearby so much—but he knew better than to trust that instinct. It had failed him in the past, throughout youth—he had always had to work every brain-muscle he had to successfully gauge even a friend's moods and intentions, after having grown up with an apparent chronic inability to read the room. There was a name for this, he was sure… but he didn't bother now. He'd adjusted enough. And now, with the heavy weapons guy's glare boring into the back of his head while grazing on the sandwich—like a bull hardly contained beyond a fence—Fritz scolded his first impressions and told himself it's fine, he's just big and strong and seems gruff all the time… it's just how his face sets naturally… he doesn't hate you, Ludwig, he's just unfamiliar!

Besides, maybe it's a good thing he's watching… A man so wundershön can look all he likes… no, careful with that!

Somehow, he managed to keep the bread knife steady enough to shear off a few acceptable slices each of bread, cheese, and the deep pink mystery meat. The tomato was gone, but not wanting to leave this snack so plain he checked in the fridge for something else to add to it while he stowed away the remaining perishables. There was not an awful lot left inside besides a half-empty case of cheap American piss-beers, a carton of eggs, a few more tomatoes and a head of lettuce, but in the door's compartments he spotted mustard amongst various sauces and pickles. The good stuff, too. He seized it and returned to his sandwiching with more gusto.

Finally, he had his remedy for hunger completed, and tucking a napkin around it to corral the crumbs he made his way over to the table. He chose a spot neither directly across from the Heavy's or next to him. It was polite to keep up a little space while they were not so well-acquainted. The Russian stared hard, as if trying to place every detail of the medic's clothes, his features, and his mannerisms as he snarfed a huge bite—too hungry to care about the scrutiny at the moment.

"Question for Doktor," he injected into the silence, overpowering the faint noise of devouring the sandwich like a starving wolf. "Where do you come from?"

"Mmf?" Ludwig hastily cleared his mouth to answer, "Originally, you mean?"

"Да." The doctor knew only a few Russian words; this was one of them.

"Ah, well I was born and raised around Stuttgart—though I spent a lot of schooling time in, let me see… Munich… Zurick… hmm, vhere else—"

"German?"

"Ja. Vas it obvious?" he chuckled.

"Да." Mikhail's expression was still intense, immobile, "When?"

"Er… vhat was zat?"

"When were you there. When." 7*

Dr. Ludwig's spirits sank, and his gorge rose; the shift was blatant and visible. His eye twitched as he fought not to aim a similar glare back up to his colleague. "I… beg your pardon, but I vould rather not discuss such zhings." Now was not the time to have his appetite suppressed, and having that period of his life pried at by a relative stranger (even a very handsome one) was just the sort of thing to get him less interested in snacking and more interested in shanking. The Russian's eyes widened in some uncertainty, but he was still locked onto the medic with that surly glower for an uneasy moment longer…

Mercifully, once Ludwig broke eye contact and focused on stuffing a few more bites of sandwich, Mikhail spoke again to change the uncomfortable subject:

"Hmm… How you get birds?"

"Oh," And Dr. Ludwig was more than happy to turn his mind away from that messy, helpless section of personal history. Especially if the topic was going to turn to the dove flock. He could talk endlessly of the little creatures even having known their peculiarities for such a short while. He straightened up, face brightening, "Zat's a bit of an er, incriminating story. Let's just say I liberated zhem a little while ago." He hushed, taking on an annoyed tone, "Zhey weren't being taken care of properly anyvay…"

"They are doves?"

"Ja. Well. Ja. Technically zhey are pigeons, but… enh. They're ze type of homing pigeon people breed to rent out to veddings… graduation ceremonies… all of zat sheisse." Ludwig huffed and paused to snap up the last chunk of sandwich. "Cruel business… very unfair to ze poor things. Mine vere technically not even old enough to use zis way under ze law. If zhey had been released, vell… zhey would not have made it long. Bright vhite—undertrained—inexperienced—und vith cats and hawks and vorst of all cars around…"

"Mm." Mikhail eyed the German for a long moment, expression softening into curiosity, "So you are vet Doktor also?"

"Sort of," Fritz tilted his head, "To be fair, zhere are not so many veterinarians anywhere who know how to treat birds. Anyone who has ever kept zhem usually is just self-taught." He smiled, ruefully, "Ze starting point of human medicine is a plus."

"You have pet bird before?" Now the giant seemed more or less intrigued—and the hulking musculature relaxed a touch from instant readiness to brutalize the newcomer if too many fascist boxes were ticked off during the "interrogation".

"Hoohaha—more zhan birds!" Fritz beamed and settled himself more comfortably in the chair, "I'm not sure most vould count as 'pets.' More wildlife zat needed a hand. Lots of songbirds zhat hit vindows or got clipped by cars—I've about lost count of zhose. Ah! I did have a sweet tabby cat as a boy, though. Und zhere was a time in ze mountains I found a scruffy little stray dog following me. I vasn't able to keep ze little Schatz but I had a patient's family take him in." Ludwig let out a fond snicker, "Puppy conned a lot of wurst off of me in zat week!"

"Doktor must love animals very much." Mikhail's tone grew more appreciative, his silent suspicions shifting ever so slightly. After a beat, he shot a sheepish glance over, "I can come see birds sometime?"

"Ja wohl!" Fritz felt a brief flutter in his chest, as if one such dove was stuck in there, at the goliath's interest, "Of course you can! It vould be good to give zhem more handling time also. Zhey would love it!"

"Hrmm. Yes," The Heavy disposed of the napkin he'd used to confine his superb sandwich and then crossed his beefy arms. "Is good. You invite, and I meet birds."

"Hoo…" the medic sighed, relieved that the conversation had turned around, "Though… I vill be busy for a vhile. Ze Medbay is a mess, and I've barely unpacked any of my zhings…"

"You ask, I will help," Mikhail offered, and the medic perked up higher.

"Oh! Wunderbar!" The larger man ended up rocking back in his seat at the exuberant response, "I'd be happy if you would! Aheh… I still have some large und, er, more sensitive scanning equipment I need to get out."

"Is under two hundred kilos, then I can move. Is easy."

Mein Gott..! Fritz tried not to show his starry-eyed surprise, or at least certain elements of his amazement. Mein Gott… he's not even two hundred kilo. What are they feeding this man?

"Sehr gut—zat would help me get everything up and running," the doctor cast a brief worried glance down the hallway towards the darkened infirmary, reminded of the blood panels waiting within for his earliest opportunity to study what the hell was going on in their engineer. Next, the time popped into his head; he cast around for a clock, "Sheisse… Vhat time is it?"

"Is ten," Mikhail answered after a glance at a wristwatch he wore. "This is late for you?"

"Well, going to be busy tomorrow, you know!" Dr. Ludwig stood, giving his arms a languid stretch behind his head as he became aware of just how much he'd been running around all day, "Suppose I should sleep vhile I can. Ach, and I left my birds free in ze room so I need to get zem to bed too…"

"Да." Mikhail was staring again, milder but still with a nagging hint of suspicion in it, "Good night, Doktor."

"Good night!"

------------

Footnotes:

1*- What the Heavy has just said to the Medic, against the poor clueless fellow's optimistic assumption, is essentially translatable to "If you are a Nazi, I am going to kill you." Medic's response is a standard "Nice to meet you too!"

2*- The consideration of a thin sheet between people being cut and sewn back together, and people who have recently been sewn back together is not always something found in true combat-oriented healthcare. Especially not in the current year of this chapter.

3*- Whether a domesticated pigeon has developed a homing instinct or not, it is generally not advised to let tame animals of any breed loose into uncontrolled environments due to risks from predators, vehicles, and shitty people. This applies to all species of doves/pigeons, including the ones businesses love to rent out intentionally for releasing into the threats of predators, vehicles, and shitty people. Businesses are often cruel, callous, and downright challenged in the logic department even in the real world and this doubly applies to those in the TF2 universe.

4*- Team Fortress's previously-employed Medic, as well as their three scouts at the time, their secondary Demolitions Expert, their sniper and two other more "multi-talented" combatants were all killed ass a result of a faulty presumption of a B.L.U. industry target's defensive set-up. The soldier, Jane Doe, the spy, Evrard Mercier, the Heavy Weapons expert, Mikhail Makarov, the engineer, Dell Conagher, and their liaison Ms. Pauling survived by virtue of not being assigned to go. The young Demo man, Tavish DeGroot, survived by having a functional preservation instinct and less-than-functional liver, and other current members survived by virtue of not having been hired yet.

5*- Outside of Dr. Ludwig's oddball and unconventional (and often correct) approach, mainstream medicine at the time of this story included relatively few vaccinations available and distributed to the public with the earliest mass-vaccination against the deadly smallpox virus being in only 1958 (with earlier, not-so-effective and often not-so-ethical versions being the earliest vaccines known). Mr. Conagher hasn't been jabbed in years, and likely wasn't exactly used to jabs prior to that single vaccination, making his reaction much more logical in context.

6*- Thankfully, Tavish already doesn't remember this embarrassing first impression.

7*- Everyone should know exactly why Mikhail is asking this, even though he could have been more clear that he was trying to rule out the worst possibility. Emotions can make even a Doctorate-holder forget to use his words (and his manners).

0 notes

dentwy · 8 months ago

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number 8: persona 3 reload

originally, i did not intend to write much about this game. the more i played the more i got into debates and discussions about it. mixed with the varied degrees of reception you end up seeing on social media, it only felt right to fully articulate my thoughts into something bigger. it often seems like people online (on twitter specifically) can focus their thoughts on a single thing at a time. the new game came out, now it's my time to bash on the rest of the series! the remake is finally real, everyone else must acknowledge how i was always right! and so on and so forth. i'm glad i take part of a group of people that care more about our specific takes and opinions (even if we can end up taking the piss on each other for the sake of the bit). i only wish media discussions online didn't usually end up as such black and white concepts.

unfortunately due to the 30 image limt on tumblr i'm starting to come to the conclusion that this site isn't too ideal for what i'm doing. going forward, i'll have to figure out something else or shorten these things.

with that said, whatever your opinion is on this particular game, persona 3 reload, i hope more can come from reading these words. that is ultimately what my goal with writing these things is. first i must clarify a few things:

i have only played persona 3, 4 and 5. it essentially means "the persona series" to me. from my understanding persona 1 and 2 are more smt than what we know as persona, but i couldn't tell you much about them nor compare them to any of the others, so for any mention of other persona games these do not come into consideration.

i played persona in reverse order, be first 5, then 4 and finally 3. both p5 and p5r, only golden, only reload. i could only wish to have an opinion on these things in a vacuum, but alas it is not possible to do. p5r is also my favorite so take that as you will.

there are some general (important) plot points i already knew before jumping into reload, that may or may not affect the end experience. we can argue about the importance of going into something completely blind without getting spoiled vs simply experiencing the way the story is told, but that is a completely different discussion for another day.

without much further ado, this is persona 3 reload. spoilers will be discussed. otherwise, the tl;dr:

persona 3 reload is my excuse to play persona 3. even if it very clearly reports itself as an older game in the series, it is unlike anything its two subsequent entries in the franchise would end up offering. it's an important game, for atlus, and for videogames. instead of tying it forever to its roots, it brings itself to modern audiences, and does it as it was needed.

i never had much intent to play p3, or p3 fes, or p3p. in fact the more i heard about it the less interested i was. pick your poison: uncontrollable party members, or a top down view of the entire game akin more to a regular visual novel than the persona you know. i do understand the intent behind not controlling your party in the original game, i still don't really care for it, sorry. social links don't really do anything, you can't actually talk to the male party members, and every interaction with a woman is exclusively with the goal of you romancing her. you also need to make sure they don't get jealous with you since that will sever the link and waste your time. hadn't really heard people find tartarus fun either, but i see different takes on it now. add this to the fact there are different versions of persona 3 that add and take different aspects of the game, never really offering you the full package. at some point i decided that, effectively, the only way i would play persona 3 is if it got remade. i try to not go back on promises, so i did play it. they got me.

initially, expectations weren't too high, but as the date got closer i did start thinking "damn so by next week i'm actually gonna be playing persona 3 huh". i'd say the first couple of hours of the game were the most magical part. it did get me on that train of saying "this could just be persona 6 if they wanted it to be", but it is a 100 hour long jrpg so things can change quite easily over time.

how would they not get you excited when you're just starting? the game is fabulous to look at. atlus can't miss with their presentation, as usual. actually playing it isn't much different either. the quality of life improvements are very much welcome here. thank you for adding the shift to the game, i was in need of my dear baton pass. all the animations are stunning, the music is punchy as usual, in addition to what could go up as my favorite (if not second favorite) persona battle theme. not mass destruction, it's going down now. first one would be axe to grind from scramble. only thing is that the game maybe looks a bit too much like Made In Unreal with the motion blur turned on so i chose to turn it off through the game files.

even if the places around iwatodai and tatsumi port island aren't the most visually stunning, they serve their purpose so i can't complain much. their simplicity has a charm to it as well. tartarus itself is the key point in visuals, with every floor having its own style and architecture.

general gripes? i don't really find tartarus that fun to go through after 50 hours of videogame. randomly generated hallways are not my thing there isn't much more i can argue; having 250 floors of that gets tedious after a while. tartarus also can simply end up feeling secondary depending on the way you do things. you don't really have to go as high as it lets you before the next full moon, as far as i understand. you do it because it's your end goal, and also because people go missing and you need to get them before they die. i can commend it for making it a player decision instead of forcing it onto you, i guess. puts you in the shoes of the characters and all that. it just turns out that going there once a month for 4 hours straight until i reach the top isn't the most invigorating activity, personally. the game focusing on tartarus exclusively at night also makes it so most other days are completely devoid of activity. even if this isn't an issue for the entirety of the game, there are some long sections where it becomes very evident that maybe you should space out your tartarus visits throughout the month. my schedule management still wasn't the best anyway, so that's on me.

the game is also seriously easy. playing on merciless could've been a better option, but who knows. i started on normal because if a game says the normal mode is "for experienced players. moderately challenging combat" then i'll take your word. maybe i'm just too much of a grind freak. i just try to defeat as many enemies as possible and if i have too much sp left by the time i'm done, i'll do another go at it to not waste it. otherwise, normal gameplay for someone who has already played a couple of jrpgs.

most "challenging fights" are solved with a single theurgy move, if not two. it got so stupid i decided to change the game to hard halfway through it, but not much changed. i do really like the theurgies, i rather they stayed than have them removed. they're just a bit broken in my opinion. i pretty much fused a black frost as soon as you could and used him for most of my playthrough. seems to have worked.

one of my biggest struggles personally is trying to find a reason to ever change party members. i think a lot of the blame can be put on me, sure. i don't recall one jrpg where i'm actually swapping around members a lot. if you find a party that works, stick with it. then there's also the part i can blame the game for. if i have to go back down and change around my party then i kind of won't ever feel like doing it. huge props to them for adding the level up clock, even if it's limited to 13 levels at once.

you might say "a lot of jrpgs are like that" and you'd be right. the issue to me comes with the way persona works. since you have a limited amount of time in a year, can only rely on the sp your party members have, and they don't really level up when they're not in your party, i'm simply gonna focus on the party i'm already using. p5 maybe solved this by letting them all get xp if you got mishima at a higher level, and you could swap them out whenever you wanted if one of them ran low on stamina (doesn't mean i did, though). then again, i also am the type of guy to hoard all the best items i can "in case i need it" and never use any. you do also have the fragments you can use to get everyone back to full and you find a bunch of those as you keep going. then again, you need them to open chests, if you open chests you get the clock to level them up, so maybe it's better to keep them. feels weird, i can't really ever get to decide on what i want to do. the fact party members also get special characteristics like cost reductions for healing magic and passive 10 sp gain every turn makes it a bit hard to swap them out (because, yeah, my party was yukari, ken and koromaru). either way, it is a fun game to play. maybe repetitive, but i can't entirely say i play jrpgs exclusively for turn based combat. "i hate jrpgs" says the guy playing jrpgs, we keep going.

what i'm mostly interested in is story and characters. things persona has a lot of! i'll go into those in the opposite order as how i listed them, because i like to talk about characters.

i am so sorry for the persona 3 fans because a solid 80% of the social links blow, real bad. the rewards for social links in 4 and 5 are definitely nice. initially, i wondered if the fact you don't get much through them besides a persona would give you another reason to max them out. the train of thought was "well, it should speak for itself if just talking to people is rewarding enough", turns out that for most of them the only goal is the persona at the end. if i didn't like someone, i simply wouldn't talk to them ever again. the ones i wasn't crazy into i simply maxed out because i had nothing else to do, otherwise the list of people i maxed would've been lower. i also don't really like how both p3 and p4 make a bunch of your links part of different clubs inside the school. the times end up messing up each other, it feels weird for you to be hanging out with 5 different clubs while never actually going to most of them for more than a month at a time, and everyone ends up being unavailable anyway when you get close to exams or on holidays. the fact that some of these are exclusively connected to one another, meaning you can't even start them if you haven't gotten another one to a certain level doesn't really make things easier. i want to go through each one of them one by one to get across my feelings in regard to social links.

also, i know i said "rewards for social links in 4" but to be quite frank with you i kind of did not do a single social link in golden that was not in the main gang - besides adachi, marie, nanako and dojima. as far as i'm concerned, the rest of the links could be just as bad as the ones in 3, i simply do not know. what it definitely wins over though, is giving everyone in the team their own social link, apart from the usual rewards for leveling them up. i do like the way they tried to fix this in reload, however.

here is where each social link would get their own banner image. images which i stole entirely from rpgsite.net but made it look slick and easier to follow. my apologies if they all blend together but i hope you remember what each social link looks like.

the magician arcana is occupied by tomochika kenji. what is so magical about him is how quick and easy it is to hate this guy. since he's the first obligatory social link, i did, unfortunately, get him to rank 2. in those two ranks all he could do was talk about miss takeba, pester you constantly on whether the two of you are dating, if you ever get too peep at her since you live in the same dorm, and if you've done anything with her yet. he's also really down bad for his teacher. i don't like him, he's annoying, a creep and keeps insisting he's your friend throughout the entire game even though i never talked to him. he's one of the couple i had to end up watching the full link on youtube because i would never have done it out of my own volition. apparently when you tell him you're into "girls of all ages" he says how "interesting" and "impressive" it is (maybe more on that later). his whole link is him trying to bang his teacher, even though she never really thinks of him that way. he only deludes himself through the entirety of it. he ruins said teachers status since everyone starts thinking she's dating a highschooler, then starts crying when she leaves to kyushu with her husband. nothing of interest happens here.

something i saw someone say is that "everyone knows a guy like kenji". maybe i did? it sure isn't someone i'd ever be friends with though. i don't even particularly think the idea of a highschool kid being into his teacher is terrible, those things happen. it's mostly the fact he is absolutely convinced it's a good idea and wants to dedicate his life to her completely even if he doesn't know the first thing about her or can't really say anything about her that's not the fact that she's extremely hot. she is hot though, so he gets a pass on that. mostly found him insufferable and wanted to bash his head with a rock whenever he started talking to me.

odagiri hidetoshi is part of the emperor arcana, maybe a bit ironic. i initially didn't quite like this guy since he started as a bit of a prick as these people usually do. extremely conceited and aggressive. i respect the dedication but your options end up being "yeah! fuck them all!" or "uh, i think you're going a bit far with this". guess which one he likes to hear you say. a bit further into his link he does realize that there's more important things he could be worrying about, as no one will hear what you have to say if you're this much of an asshole. my problem with his link stems from the fact that he decides to change after trying to defend you, since he trusts you wholly. this would be fair if it wasn't for the fact that you are one of the main people that have been fueling his horrible tendencies up to this point, unless you didn't pick the good dialogue options and instead took longer to do his link. if so, then why does he even like you then? unsure. i believe a better option would be for both of you to get in trouble. then, have you face the actions of your consequences in whatever way imaginable. that way you both grow as people, see the failures of your actions and manage to grow. what if you actually found the student that was smoking and he got expelled? at the start of the link it was only to avoid any further trouble, then it gets more serious. you both understand that kicking him out wasn't the way to do things, and you're directly responsible for it. somehow convince the teachers to give him a second chance, track down the guy and understand where he's coming from. maybe then he can consider his own future as a teacher himself. odagiri is strange because he becomes a lot more genuine towards the end of his link, i can only wish it was done in a different way. he's generally more chill when you get to know him better, so actually being friends with this guy kind of makes sense. maybe he's not the most evocative image of friendship or comradery, but it's something he is trying to figure out himself.

"hierophant" is similar to "elephant" and i think elephants live for long. bunkichi and mitsuko are the first social link i maxed out. they're easy to talk to since they're available all days of the week except for sundays. maybe i should've left them for later into the game but they were the only people i liked talking to so i focused on them at the start of the game. there isn't much deep reflection that comes with their link, but it's nice enough. you're a random kid and they're a random old couple, but you feel for them and they feel for you. what i find strange with them is how little action you actually take into helping them. you're usually just saying "everything will be fine" and "i'll make sure of it" in regards to the tree at the school getting taken down, but, as a member of the student council, you never take any actions regarding the tree. they thank you for helping them out and can say you didn't do anything but they won't believe you. maybe it would be a little bit annoying to actually go out of your way to get people to sign or do stuff outside of the link, but i think it would add a lot to it. you could also just make it part of the link and show a little cutscene of your character doing stuff, who knows. besides, for stuff like elizabeth requests you have to go around the city doing things that don't take your time anyway. they've done it already. imagine if you had to go to a couple of your social links, or talk to the people at sees to sign. all of that for the tree to get taken down anyway, but it's the thought that matters. it's a bittersweet end and i like it for that. it's nice, i only wish you actually had more to do with it than just listening to them progress through it.

miyamoto kazushi is supposed to be the chariot of the track team. instead, he's just the chariot arcana. i only maxed this guy because i had nothing else to do. i don't think i hate him? i simply don't see him as a friend. it strikes me that most of the guys in this game want to hang out with you so bad because they don't actually have any friends. they allude to the fact they do, but clearly they do not. miyamoto is just stupid. he's supposed to be the star of the track team yet you show up one day and sweep all over the guy like it's nothing. he may be the best in your school (before you showed up) but he's not that good in general. the guy is convinced that he has to train as much as he can to win, so he injures his knee. instead of doing what any sane person would do and rest for a month or so, he simply decides to continue to run, further injuring himself. he concludes that the best course of action is to tell you his knee is about to snap and that you NEED to keep it a secret. even if this is bad for you, for him and for everyone involved, he asked you to keep it a secret so there is clearly nothing else can you do. SURELY he has a good reason to keep injuring himself? oh, of course he does! his cousin got into an accident and broke his legs. if he wants to move again, he will need to go to rehab. except he won't go to rehab unless our guy miyamoto becomes the fastest fucking runner in the entirety of japan. it's that simple. so, the only way to do this is to get better now instead of waiting. i don't really think i need to explain how insane this is.

besides the fact that ruining his knee will only make it so he can never run again, thus making his goal impossible, he's not even fucking good at running in the first place? the worst part is that by the end of the game after 3 months of him resting, his knee is completely recovered. so what was even the point of hurting it so much throughout the entire year? as usual the other problem with it is how the best dialogue options you get are "keep going! don't give up!" and "if you stop running you're a pussy!" because it's the short term goals that matter i suppose. i don't even know how you'd improve this link. i think i would scratch most of it completely. what i would like is for him to be in the track team because he likes yuko, and maybe he gets hurt because he's training so hard to impress her. then, he keeps training only because he doesn't have any other excuse to be around her. now, you obviously have to keep it a secret because he doesn't want her to know he likes her. this scenario would consider them being less close than they already are, and would make it kind of high-key fucked up if you ended up dating yuko at the end. i can take that though, it would make for interesting conflict. ideally she would never fall in love with your regardless, as within the canon of the game she seemingly starts a relationship with him if you don't romance her. considering atlus still cannot fathom the idea of a same gender romantic partner, can't imagine they would do that. they did technically do it the other way around with junpei rejecting you in portable, but still.

fushimi chihiro is the face of the justice aracana, perhaps because some justice is needed for this poor girl. i do like chihiro. she's obviously not the most boisterous personality, and she doesn't really need to be for you to like her. at the end of the day, everyone has their type. chihiro is one of the links i do like, or most of it anyway. her insecurities and anxieties towards men come from a very real place, and having the protagonist help her get through it is really nice to see. i didn't actually end up finishing her link because i wasted my time doing other things, but i got halfway through it. the crux of her link had just started when everyone starts blaming her for stealing the club funds and she can't stand for herself. i ended up watching the rest of it on youtube. it's fine. she grows for the better and that's the main thing you need after all. she manages to gather up the words she's been trying to say, thanks to you believing in and helping her out, which is more than most other social links are willing to do. what mostly strikes me as weird is the fact they never address how she actually got the money to buy the manga she wanted. i may have misconstrued the situation, but around rank 6 or so she gets excited to go back to the bookstore and see if anyone bought the manga collection she wanted. i suppose she doesn't explicitly say "i hope no one got it so i can buy it", but i assume that's the reasoning. the thing is that a rank earlier she explicitly says how she'd have to save up an entire year worth of her allowance to get it. so where is this money coming from? i take this as purposely making her seem suspicious so the player has to decide between their intuition and the trust they have over her, which is good. i only say it's weird because she isn't guilty, nor ever was. did she actually get to buy it? how so? this is beyond me, but it's mostly a cool social link all things considered.

maya… maya…. maya…. you should've stayed as a hermit! i genuinely believe maya could be a really great social link if it didn't completely send itself down the drain halfway through it. i find the idea of our main protagonist staying on his dorm all day to play a dead mmorpg really funny. he's playing that thing for like 8 hours straight and then goes back down and someone says "oh, didn't even know you were here". besides that, maya as "maya" herself is a really fun character. the online lingo might've changed since 2008 but it doesn't really come off as unrealistic. most unrealistic part is the fact of all kinds of people in this niche dead game you would find a middle aged woman playing it every day off. there's a lot that the link tries to say in regards to the online spaces, teachers, the school system, social expectations and such. it would come together nicely in the end to have this woman meet someone online that helps her get through her troubles, to then find it was one of her students all along and get really embarrassed about it. the big issue is, clearly, that she goes and says how she's really into you. so, she's not embarrassed about the stuff she said but rather the stuff she said about you, to you. even as the game is about to shut down and she goes "we should tell the developers", it's pretty stupid. besides the fact no group of developers would give a damn about 1 person online telling them this, sending your message logs about how you came out to a guy online as a groomer is kind of insane. she backs down on it not because of that, but because it's pointless to try to do anything about the game. i understand that atlus tries to appeal to different audiences and age groups with these games, but it is a weird thing to have her say. at least she doesn't ask you out at the end of it, maybe persona 5 could learn a thing from that.

fortune is a bit of what hiraga keisuke has. can't really hate the guy for that. i do like hiraga's social link overall, it's pretty nice and round even if it doesn't do any major things. he's a nice kid. most believable of them all to actually be your friend. he's talented and the people around him have expectations on him. his concerns are understandable and being unsure of what you want to do in highschool (or even after) is a regular worry to have. he genuinely enjoys drawing, but he cares for others and wants to help however is possible. i suppose you don't "do" a whole lot for the guy besides being there for him, but you can't really be figuring out his life out as a favor either. you help him when he needs it and chip in when asked about, and that is enough for both of you. he's mostly one of the good ones in my eyes, and the final social link event is also one of the funniest in the entire game. i don't find him trying to run away from home as a good part of the link, but the fact that he keeps bumping into old people that are all about to die and he has to help them out in the moment is absolutely hilarious. at least it's better than maiko in that sense, if only just a little bit.

train those legs! gain some strength! nishiwaki yuko can help you with that! she's fine. i don't really hate her or anything, i just find her a little bit strange. her link surrounds her and some kids she wants to help with training. they're constantly pushing the idea that you're her boyfriend and that's fine, kids can assume those things. you can take the hint and roll with it, or ignore it and stay as friends. neither particularly seems like you actually getting to know her that well, and that's where it ends for me. there isn't much going on with both of you or her entire social link. the kids ask for her help, you aid her, they win against the older kids, you're done. it concludes with her wondering what she wants to do with her future and that's perfectly fine, a bit like hiraga too. she doesn't really decide on what she wants to focus on though. for the most part my thing with yuko was the fact that i always saw her as "the girl miyamoto likes" even if neither of them ever allude to anything of the sort - but she does, canonically, end up with him if you don't. they've known each other for a while and it's clear that the idea is both of them ending up together. unless you interfere, of course. as such, i never felt like getting closer to her had much meaning and i didn't finish her link. i watched it on youtube, though. again, fair enough. don't really have an alternative scenario for her link, sorry. she's fun, i understand why people like her. not that interesting to me.

the hanged man is what i become once i finish maiko's social link, because god. the start of her link is you hearing some girls at school say "hey, did you see that kid at the shrine" and of course the first thought any teenage boy would have in that scenario is "curious. i should go see what that's all about." who the hell is this guy? the kindest soul in iwatodai, i hope. i don't mind the idea of you bumping into a kid that's having trouble at home. he can play with her and waste time to stop her worries. maybe even help her deal with her that and have her learn a thing or two about life. i did laugh my ass off when she started crying about how her parents are getting divorced, but maybe i'm also just evil. maiko is the perfect example of how little input you ever get into these links. i'll go into detail about makoto's character later on, but he is such a brick here. it's either "everything is gonna be fine" or "yeah kid, your parents hate you". she says how her dad just hits her like its nothing and you also have to suggest her staying with her dad when she's given the choice. she tells you to your face how she's running away from home (reminder she's 8 years old) and there is nothing you can do. she simply runs away. right in front of you too. then her parents appear and you're like, "idk, i think i know where she might be though". i don't think i need to explain how bad it is that she promises to marry you when she gets older and there's absolutely no way you can choose to deny it. a lot of missed potential with this one. if it was tuned right it could come out really nicely, but that's not how persona 3 rolls.

tanaka may as well be the incarnation of the devil. a devil i'm a bit iffy about. i think tanaka is a piece of shit, not much to discuss here. he's an asshole, he takes advantage of you and anyone he can. he suffers a bit of odagiri syndrome where everything you say has to be to confirm his own shitty values. the main difference here is that he loves explaining how you are wrong and he is right so most of the time it's actually better to tell the opposite of what he wants to hear, and i find that somewhat more enjoyable. i hate how he got like 40 thousand yen from me and never gave it back, how he doesn't particularly teach you anything at all but pretends he does (and the does game too), and how he seemingly "grows" by talking to you but only because he deludes himself into doing it. it is another odagiri, but less charismatic. it's fine that he hides his true feelings (or at least that's the idea) but nothing about him makes me want to care for the guy. sure, he donated money to charity for one reason or another, but that doesn't wipe the fact that he still casually scams, bullies and mistreats others. the asshole supreme, is what he is. don't think they were going for much more than that. thank you tanaka's amazing commodities, i will continue to buy your products.

temperance is what i need to not kick bebe right on his nuts. hon hon hon how sugoi! french-kun is a weeaboo. he likes japan. he LOVES japan! he can't think about not being in japan. i find his voice and way of speaking extremely jarring and annoying with his japanese voice. in english it's a lot more bearable. his japanese comes off as a racist caricature of what a foreigner would sound like while his voice in english is just a heavy french accent with random japanese words sprinkled around. that's how i see it, at least. i also just find his japanese voice annoying to listen to. i hope for a day where the Weeb Foreigner In Japan character actually has perfect japanese fluency instead of the joke being that he's annoying to understand. now that would be funny. if it was only that then maybe i could put up with it, but he's a really boring character too. it's literally ONLY about him loving japan. his aunt dies and he gets sad because his uncle will get him back to piece of shit france instead of letting him live in beautiful nihon. you talk to him a bunch and he decides to make a kimono to convince his uncle how beautiful japan is. too bad his kimono is horrendous! i don't actually know what he tells to you if you have him maxed by march, or if he's even still around by then. i do not care either. my time was spent on more important people, the french guy was never in my priority. a much more interesting take would be doing the opposite, and having him learn about japan while he misses home. maybe his family moved to japan because they had it rough in france or something. home is where family is, and japan can also be a beautiful place if you know where to look, or something. you could be the one that shows him around and gets him to learn the meaning of home. he can do that ugly ass kimono at the end for all i care, as a token of gratitude to you. i dont know, man, just change the way he talks and maybe he'd be more bearable.

mutatsu has the tower arcana, i'm running out of ideas. he's a sad old drunk man that goes at night and tells teenagers to go pick up girls (fair). i don't really find this man endearing at all considering he's always under the influence but i get his deal. he fucked up and wants to get his wife and son back. the only way he realizes that he should be the one to take the first step is by talking to you. that's kind of it. i respect the advice to use your time wisely, even if the way he does it is hardly what i would consider wise.

the star of the local racing scene is called hayase mamoru, and that he is. i really like this guy. i really like his link. hayase is what i was looking for! thank you hayase! you meet this guy at the track competition when he rolls up to you and goes "hey, nice moves. we should hang out". it definitely comes off as a little weird but hey, he's a sportsman, he knows how to spot a friendly challenger. as opposed to that fraud miyamoto, hayase has his real reasons to run (and is actually good at it!). he does absolutely love it, but, over anything, he doesn't want to be a burden on his family. he is similar to akihiko, losing someone and focusing on himself to take care of his loved ones in whatever way it is possible. since he lost his father, he needs to get a scholarship, as his mother wouldn't be able to pay it. he's a really nice, caring and responsible guy. since he doesn't have many other people he can talk to from the track team, he relies on you to hear him out as well as to train with him. after a while, once his mother collapses from exhaustion, he figures out that he needs to put his family over everything and moves away to work at a factory far away. it's not any big revelation to anyone, but it's simply what was needed from him. he never feels bad about it or gets angry at anyone, he knows what he has to do because it's what he cares about that is at risk. you eventually find out that at the factory he's working the people he hangs out with end up getting into running just like he does, which makes him excited for the future and keeps his passion alive. it's really nice to see. a social link where our protagonist has more than just a passive role, even if not by much, with solid reasons for the link to grow and the character to change.

alone, fat and sad, which the moon watches upon, a constant pain he will be. suemitsu nozomi everyone, the gourmet king. the gourmet king is one of the reasons i'm convinced i don't need to trust persona fans on twitter. i'm pretty sure you have to level up tomochika first before getting to talk to this dude, hence the reason i never even started him. that, and the fact that everyone said he was the worst social link in all of persona. i ended up watching it on youtube and came to the conclusion that the worst social link in persona is still tomochika. maybe not, i just hate the guy. it's probably ohya in p5. either way, the gourmet king surely deserves some criticism, but i'm not sure if it's the social link that's to fault. i do believe that there's a high chance i would've ignored the guy anyway if i had the option to talk to him. he's crass, aggressive and generally unpleasant. all he does is go around giving you orders and pretend that he's better than everyone, to only then try to scam you in the end. however, i find it as one of the most interesting links in the game. the "cult" he starts talking about is heavily relevant to the events that take place by the end of the game. someone as weak as him can be tricked into major delusions. someone that is persecuted by his traumas and the actions of others. he can't face himself nor his problems, so all he does is eat. eat his problems away, puke when he can't take any more and continue eating. no need to worry about your problems, just eat. of course a guy like that wouldn't be the most inviting to talk to. it's uncomfortable, but he needs some help. the fact that his link purposely reverses itself once you go against his own beliefs is excellent. you are the one that makes him realize what his problems are and that he's doing things the wrong way. even if it feels weird to still hang out with the guy after all he's done to you, maybe it shows your belief in others (or the protagonist's). people can grow and change. maybe he is too ugly for you to be interested, maybe it takes a bit for the link to get interesting as well. it's fair, i didn't want to talk to him in the first place either. i wish i could've given him a fair chance as he deserved, instead of treating him the same way everyone else did for a long time. he reminds me a little bit of the drunk man in the little prince; "i drink in order to forget. forget that i am ashamed of drinking".

at last, kamiki akinari, the sun of your sunday mornings. i'd have to agree that akinari is probably the best link in the game, as long as we're ignoring aigis. i found it extremely bizarre when this guy of all people won that one poll months ago for who was the best social link in the series. i still think it's crazy, but at least he's pretty good. he is definitely someone that needs you by his side, and i'm glad for that. he's lonely and he's dying. it runs well with the themes of the game, and you can give it a lot of benefit for that alone. what initially seemed a mindless waste of time to him, only waiting for his demise, turned into a beautiful moment he can enjoy for what little time he has left. the only thing i find extremely weird is the creative liberties with which they took the end of his link, where he randomly disappears in front of you. the wiki says "it implies he already died some time ago and this final meeting was his spirit" which i'm sorry that's just dumb. is there any need to make him a spirit and not just a normal dying guy? what does this add to his character? i forget about this fact anyway so it doesn't really matter to me. i like him a lot. his story is also really cool, inspires me to write more things myself.

you will see people usually default to the "persona 3 has the best story, persona 4 has the best cast, persona 5 has the best gameplay". when we're talking about best and worst there's a lot of factors that can come into play. subjective vs objective analysis and what you generally prioritize in a story or a game or any kind of piece of media. throughout my playthrough there are many things i could've gone on about how one game or the other does better or worse, but i struggle to see the point of this exercise. i absolutely cannot look at persona 3 reload without thinking of the other two games, but i rather focus on the game itself than how i would compare it to the rest. ironically enough, i believe i ended up liking this one more to persona 4.

a lot of my issues stem from our main character. canonically, yuki makoto. it may or may not have been me playing the game around the time i started watching the monogatari series again, while also reading no longer human, but the same idea of an actor trying to fit into society struck me as i thought about the way he acts. whoever thinks that persona protagonists don't have a personality are simply wrong. at times they can do things that may be off character if the player decides to do so. others it can shift slightly depending on dialogue options. for the most part, though, there is a certain kind of person you can draw from their actions and their train of thought.

besides makoto always having a dialogue option that can make him simply go "i don't give a damn", for the most part he is the most neutral kind of guy you can find. for better, or for worse. he is sociable and likeable, but only because he's put in situations where others talk to him and he always puts the other person before himself. a good trait perhaps, but it feels as if it comes from a lack of empathy rather than coming from a place of compassion. it's a game of gaslighting and convincing others. miyamoto should continue doing what he wants, it's his leg. odagiri is doing everything right, he knows what he wants. tanaka is making a living off of this, he probably knows what he's doing. maiko hates her parents, she can run away if she wants to. the only reason it's different with the people on sees is because they are important to the story, so they need him to be there to do things.

you can be best friends with junpei from the very start, always have him in your party and gas him up whenever he's down. he will still get angry at you for being the leader instead of him. yukari can get pissed off at mitsuru for keeping secrets from her and the only reason you will go help her out is because mitsuru suggested you do so. mitsuru does the same with shinjiro and ken when they need some attention. not once is it makoto that thinks he needs to take action for his own teammates.

i'm not asking for multiple diverging paths that depend on what actions you take. it's still a linear story. stuff needs to happen. it simply often clashes directly with the actions you take, or want to take, as a player. ludonarrative dissonance plays a big role in persona 3 reload.

i do find the cast of persona 3 really enjoyable. they aren't the strongest group of people. they have their problems and they obviously don't get along quickly as soon as they meet. the dorm setting confuses me a bit in this scenario, as it's not quite clear to me what the requirements are to be part of the dorm or how this even works at all. in fact, is it even normal to have both boys and girls living in the same place like this? it's more of an apartment complex than a dorm from the looks of it, but persona characters kind of end up being more young adults than teenagers anyway.

yukari is the one i ended up going for the romance route. while i do like her a lot, she's also a really weird character. she's dependable, selfless and caring. she can have quite the short fuse, but it doesn't try to come from a place of genuine malice. try being the key word. the start of her social link has her getting assaulted by a group of men and her reaction is to get pissed at you for helping her out. i fully understand she doesn't want to be treated as if she's weak and unreliable, but we're talking about completely different things here. throughout the entire game she keeps throwing shade at junpei for every single thing he does. even if he does deserve it at times, he also has his stuff going on. the guy had the girl he loved die right in front of her and on christmas eve she goes "i can't imagine that guy going out with a girl". seriously what is her deal? again, story doesn't match with the things we are doing. i understand her complains with mitsuru most of the time, even if she doesn't trust her at the start for reasons that are beyond me. she knows how she is, and she knows that she's trying her best. it is her family that brings most of the problems. while i get that she would get pissed for learning what happened with her father, putting the blame on mitsuru without understanding her own situation is a little bit ignorant. if anything, it helps for later on when they learn they've been getting duped and she learns to open up with the people around her. i do really like yukari, i simply can't say she's fabulously executed in the context of the game.

junpei did come as a big surprise. at the start, he's a bit of a weird guy. he's the bro, the one that wants to pick up chicks and go out and play. even if not the type of guy i'd go out of my way to become friends with, there's a lot to him that you will only learn once you know him well enough. he comes off as a little bit strange at the beginning. he's really adamant on trying to hang out with you, but you have nothing better to do i suppose. he really forces himself into you. maybe yukari is a bit too quick into dumping all her trauma to you as soon as you meet each other, but her reasoning is fair. junpei looks more like he's desperate for friends. can't blame him though, he can be a little bit annoying at times. he's weird, in a charismatic way. i think i often find myself talking the same way he does a lot of times, randomly emphasizing some words just because it's funny, or changing his intonation.

junpei is a bit of an idiot, we all know that, but he never means any wrong. he will be there to help out. he wants to stand out, sure. he wants to be the center of attention, sure. he will complain about it, but he's not your enemy. he starts off as extremely selfish, wanting to feel like the hero, but comes to understand that there are more important things to care about. what i was hoping to be further explored with junpei, is this deeply rooted self esteem issues that aren't completely delved into. it happens multiple times throughout the story where junpei starts getting angry at you or blames you for everything going wrong. he knows this is not right, he understands and apologizes. then, it happens again. i seem to understand that at some point, either in the answer, some other spin off or the femc route in portable, we learn that his father is an alcoholic. unless i missed something along these lines in reload, i don't really think they expand upon it which is a bit of a missed opportunity. more content is good, but i don't think getting precise characterizations and key moments of his past outside of the main story makes things better.

his arc with chidori, though, is probably my favorite in the game. this is when he manages to meet someone he can take care of. someone that makes his life a little bit more interesting. when he's at his lowest, feeling useless and easily replaceable, he has someone by his side he can share time with. at first, she doesn't seem interested in him, but junpei is the reason why chidori opens up and learns what it means to live. to want to live for longer. they both deeply care for each other by the end of november, and sacrificing herself to save his life is all she could ever wish to do for him. on it's own, it's a really strong moment for the story and junpei himself, but by getting some flowers for him to give chidori right before she dies, she can survive and come back later on. now, i feel a little bit weird with the game wanting you to do things you can easily miss to get an extra event that completely changes the story development and junpei's character, but either result can work out in some way. if she doesn't survive, junpei has that moment he will always look back on to make sure it never happens again. live for her sake. if she does survive, that memory is still just as painful, but it comes with a bright light of hope for the future. chidori is back, the pain and suffering wasn't for nothing as he still grew and learned what has to be done, but now it's accompanied by a different future to push towards. her memories are gone, so all they went through is lost for her. at the same time, all the pain she suffered is missing as well. trying to overcome those hardships and staying there by her side is another reason to live and continue, for both of them. it may as well be poignant enough to kill her off and leave it there, but since it's not something the game retcons out of nowhere and does lead you into it way before it actually happens, it feels proper. i also cannot complain about having some nice and happy event in the list of tragedies that keep happening towards the end.

mitsuru seems like a nice lady. extremely responsible and intelligent. she can be cold, but she means well. there's a certain charm to her that stem both from her personality and big sister energy, as well as the ways she often misunderstands others due to her lack of experience with the world and her upbringing. even if not my favorite, mitsuru is someone they all need to have around. her social link in particular comes off as a little weird to me. at the point in the story where you can start talking to her, it doesn't really fit at all. she trusts you wholly so having you around in a moment where she needs it most makes sense. you know, with the whole dead father thing. you go around the town with her as she learns more about what Normal People do. turns out she's getting married off to a guy for the sake of the company. it would be nice and all if you helped her figure out what she wants to do, as the general idea seems to be that the kirijo group is tying her future down. what we're overlooking here is that the world is seemingly going to end in the next month. girl, you don't have a future unless we do something about it. it doesn't matter what you decide now with your fiancé if you don't decide if you even want to remember all of this. it won't matter if you have no plan for how to survive. no one in sees ever looks at this whole deal as a barrier to break through. obviously, it's scary. no one is sure what will happen or how to deal with it. is it better to forget and die in peace? or try your best and fail? on daylight, mitsuru talks to you about takoyaki and how getting married may not be a terrible idea. at night, she wonders if you're all gonna get killed. she even talks to you with the idea of "only having so much time left together" but until graduation, not the end of the world.

specifically with my playthrough, there is a specific dialogue where she says something along the lines of "if i was in love with someone but i knew i can't be with him, would that be wrong?". here you can either tell her that if it's not meant to be then that's it, or that it's up to her. i don't really know about individual opinions but i think that being in love with someone you can't be with isn't quite something you control. i understand the question is probably more suited as a "should i still try or do i give up?" but that's not what she's saying. is it wrong? no? should you do something about it? whatever you think is right. obviously in the context of the game this either means "be with me" or "i'm not interested", so telling her that she should decide for herself indirectly tells her that you like her back. unfortunately, that is not my case! she proceeds to confess to you in front of her annoying fiancé, makes both of you really uncomfortable and she runs away. interpretations may vary but i can't see mitsuru as the type to be into you. just like akihiko, she's close to him as a dear friend. not much more than that. she can absolutely defend your honor and you may mean a lot to her as a friend, but not as a potential lover. though, at the same time, she gets riled up in the moment and isn't quite sure about her own words so it could be fair to say she simply spouts out something that could be taken differently - but she does say "i want to be with him forever" and then confesses to you, so not a lot to misinterpret from that. maybe just a me thing. even then, it still doesn't fit in the slightest with the point we're at in the story, so whatever.

akihiko is definitely the bigger bro. he's always there, he's got your back, you got his, the respect is mutual all the time. akihiko is also autistic as all hell and we love him for that. most of the time he genuinely doesn't know how he's supposed to talk to others, but, over anything, he has one thing he focuses on and devotes his entire life to. to train, to become stronger and to become the best he can be. he sure trains because he genuinely enjoys it, but it also comes from a place of tragedy. a loss he cannot forgive himself for. he doesn't want that to ever happen again, so he knows he needs to improve himself. i absolutely adore the fact he was adopted by a caring family on what i assume was around his early teens. he becomes stronger by the people around him and it takes him a bit to realize it, but he will always have someone taking care of his back. be it family or friends. a guy that knows what he wants and will do anything to achieve it. "but even if that's how i feel, i can't back down now. i'll carry that responsibility, and pay for it the rest of my life if i have to."

before playing the game i was ready to become a devoted fuuka fan. i was a little bit surprised to find out i didn't go that hard, but i sure understand the hype. fuuka seems to be concocted to be the girl your average fan would adore. she's cute, shy, really nice, caring, good with computers, a bit of a nerd, curious about trying new stuff, and is always in need of your help. i do like her a lot. she's a really nice friend, i'm safe to assume most people would be glad to have a friend like fuuka. it's just that.. damn.. i find her social link pretty weak. the majority of it is solely her trying to get better at cooking and you trying out her food. at first, god awful. then, she learns she can make onigiri and it's good. only onigiri, though. it's fine if she wants to get better at a single thing for the sake of everyone, akihiko does do the same after all. akihiko, however, has many reasons to try and get stronger. fuuka wants to get closer to others, i suppose, except she's not particularly closed off from everyone in the group either. if you didn't do anything with her here, she would still improve on her own and grow as a person through normal story means. so at the end of the day she goes through the same arc twice in the game. she has that one moment where she mentions she doesn't like bookstores because she couldn't stand up for herself back when someone accused her of stealing a book or something. a fine example of why she wants to change, but it insists on focusing about cooking instead of having her do anything more active. slowly, she naturally starts wondering why is it that she relies on you so much and you get the option to tell her that she loves you or, actually, you're only really good friends. my guy yuki back at it again gaslighting women. she learns that it's not always about having a list of traits that are useful for others to use, and tones down all the negativity that's been burning her away. there's nothing inherently wrong with the link, she gains confidence in herself and opens up to people. whether through cooking or talking about her problems with her friends, she comes to understand herself. as always, i would wish you had a more active role in these things rather than let everyone passively grow by debating about what they should and shouldn't do against a wall (you). the counter argument is that i do really like fuuka so it gets a pass.

i want to talk about ken and shinjiro at the same time because they end up being intrinsically linked together by the time their arcs peak. for starters, i find ken extremely charming. he's a nice kid, maybe too grown up for his own good but that's what makes him responsible and easy to talk to no matter the age difference. he also tries to act more grown up than he is, insisting that he likes his coffee black, that tokusatsu is actually lame and generally trying to hide what he's thinking or feeling. not entirely dissimilar to shinjiro, the stern looking buff guy with a heart of gold hidden within the trench coat he wears all day every day for the entirety of the year. seriously, it's so hot outside what is your issue.

now i did know that shinjiro died, because, once again, persona 3 fans cannot keep a secret. i saw someone casually mention he dies, then i talked to someone else and explained how "i read about a character dying but i'm not too sure about it". then, they proceeded to say "oh yeah, i know who you're talking about. worst part is that he was the strongest party member so all the levels and armor i put into him were worthless". way to be subtle! regardless, a little bit before the events of october 4th, shinjiro himself reveals to you that he doesn't have much time left in this world. both him and ken have been living in pain for the past 2 years, and this day is where they want to put that to rest. before ken comes out and says he wants to kill shinjiro with his own hands, he does show clear signs of something going on in his head so it doesn't entirely come out of nowhere. same for shinjiro being responsible for the death of his mother as there must have been some reason he quit school and has been loitering for the past year. what i'm not entirely sure i can buy, even now, is the fact that ken, a 10 year old boy, has been actively planning to kill this guy for the past 2 years. not only that, but also planning on killing himself after the fact.

take this as my interpretation of the character, i've discussed this entire thing with someone else at length and couldn't really come to a proper conclusion. ken explicitly says to shinjiro: "i've even though about killing myself", "i vowed to live until i found her killer", and, literally, "i'm gonna kill you". i, personally, take the slightly goofy, responsible type kid that amada is as the type to not conclude that the entire meaning of his life from age 8 onwards, to be the fact that he has to kill a guy and end it all. perhaps the idea was that he initially thought about suicide, later figured that it wasn't the way to go and revenge was the better option - and not, killing shinjiro and then killing himself. unsure. either way, i'm not here to talk about the mental stability of an 8 year old child and child suicide rates. i'm here to talk about ken amada.

the way he throws around "i even thought about killing myself" rings pretty hollow to me. as if killing himself was a phase he had. i fully understand that his mother was the only one he had. she meant the world for him, obviously it would destroy him. is he really that kind of kid though? i always took him as the strong, independent kind. did yukari go "i thought of killing myself" when her father died? did anyone else at sees think of "killing themselves" when they lost someone close to them when they were younger? now don't take me wrong, these are all serious topics and it's evident that different people will take such loss in different ways. i'm only trying to understand how ken would react to it. he's not "weak" for thinking about such dark outcome for himself because he lost someone close to him, it definitely affected him severely and that's all it is. for 2 entire years though? you're telling me he was exclusively thinking about this for 2 years? that as a 10 year old, this was his only goal in life. i just feel like i have to suspend my disbelief a little bit too much for ken amada of all people to say such things.

shinjiro, as valiant as he is, ends up sacrificing himself to save ken. he tells him that he's welcome to kill him, but warns him that it will haunt him for the rest of his life, just like it did for him. definitely where shinjiro's character shines the most. for a moment, ken himself thinks that his revenge is now worthless if he dies through other means, but it's clear that it would be hard to process such an event. the guy that killed your mom just saved your life. how would you feel about this? it's a lot of mixed signals and of course he's confused. so confused to leave sees for like half a week. who knows where to, he is still just a kid. it's beyond me whatever the hell he did on his own for those days, but i digress. at the same time, everyone does kind of forget the fact that ken literally tried to kill shinjiro by his own hands. whether he was successful or not doesn't entirely matter, his plan was to kill.

now this, as i take it, is probably a lapse in judgement from ken. sure, he may have pumped himself for a while to think he had to kill shinjiro. i don't think 2 years makes sense. i think as soon as he found out shinjiro was the one that killed his mom, he started thinking about it and it got to him. when time came to it, i don't believe he would actually be able to kill shinjiro. again, he's not that kind of kid. maybe my own head canon, but words like "i don't have anything else to live for" is a thing he would just say in the moment and not mean with further thought. in my head, it simply works out better as ken living in pain for that long, not being able to move past it entirely, hating the guy and blaming all on him. only then, he finds out who shinjiro is and thinks that killing him is the way to go. this, instead of living for 2 years with the sole goal of killing a guy. once it gets to it, shinjiro saves his life and he realizes how even though his reasons for hating him are fully justified. there's more to the story, more to shinjiro and more things that are worth living for.

shinjiro's death doesn't particularly hit me as hard as something like chidori's, most likely because i already knew it would happen. plus, the fact he does mention he will die regardless, but it's very resonant in it's own way. not because you're gonna die anyway it means your life means any less. i didn't really talk to him much before he passed and never even added him to my party, but you only realize how important the people around you are once they're gone. his death incites hope for the future. he leaves off with a smile and finally atoning for his sins for the last time. death isn't happy, but he makes the most of it by doing what he couldn't do last time. save a life.

koromaru is a dog. he's a good boy.

aigis may have ended up as my favorite character in the game. she's a special one. what was initially a pretty hollow, although goofy robot girl, whose only purpose was to defeat shadows and protect you for reasons neither of you understood, turned into a deeply caring, worrisome character who bears no resemblance to that of a machine. besides looks, that is. i have to commend sakamoto maaya of all people, for the excellent performance behind aigis. sakamoto has always been good at her job, but it was only recently that i've taken notice of how precise her performance can be. how the slight changes in the way she speaks sell a different version of the character, through age, personality, or growth along a span of time. aigis does look like a human and does sound like one, but doesn't talk like one. there's a lot she doesn't understand and a lot she doesn't know. evidently, as you grow and get to understand the world around you, you will clearly become "more human". if it were only in writing you would surely understand how much she learns through time. sakamoto just makes it incredibly grounded. even after aigis is gone for a while and everyone starts mentioning how she seems different, you feel that as well as a player. i can't say anything about the english va, i watched her play the game for a bit and she seems fun. i simply didn't play the game with english voices.

beyond that, aigis becomes an extremely fun character. she grows so much but you grow alongside her. i mean, we're all human (i hope) but how often do you actively think about what it means to be a person? what truly makes you human? she has all the characteristics of a human being, but she comes to the realization that she will never really become one. she's a machine, she can be repaired and come back to life. she will outlive everyone around her and there is nothing she can do about it. what she can do, however, is to keep the memories of everyone important to her. if she will outlive them, the memories of them will do as well. even if it's not for long that you've known her for, she means a lot to you and to everyone. you mean a lot to her, too. caring for others is what makes her human. so even with the body of a machine, one that can be repaired, she cannot be replaced.

with these freaks, you get the cast of persona 3. they're a special bunch. they have their issues, as any group does. as any person does, really. they have an enjoyable chemistry that doesn't explode from nowhere but does bloom as time goes on. not much is forced here, but even if a bit slow it manages to hold itself together nicely. even the casual group events that happen on every game with the beach, ryokan and banquet celebrations are, honestly, better than usual. the beach episode doesn't feel out of character. junpei is always the guy that will try to hit on girls even if he's really bad at it, and he gets made fun of for it instead of making it awkward for everyone involved. akihiko only does it because of a bet, as he would, so it's also fitting enough. with the ryokan they do sort of get into trouble "by accident" and do just want to leave quietly before anything happens. even if it's more because mitsuru would get angry and take their lives if she found out, but still. ryoji is more to blame about this than the rest of the guys, which i haven't talked to about yet.

ryoji is unabashedly himself. he gets little time to do much for him to become, like, a relevant character in my head. i find him really fun, though. he's charming and goofy. he's so clueless about everything that it becomes funny. more than a creep he's curious about others in every shape and form which leads to misunderstandings and questionable behavior, but generally funny nonetheless. i would like for him and his time on earth to have a bigger impact on the protagonist as he's supposed to be part of him after living "inside his body" for the past decade, but that leads into the ending itself.

the big thing goes last. i talk way too much about the characters when compared to the story. i like to think that i'm better at that, hence the priority, but this has been taking so long to write that my thoughts get all scrambled around and i forget half of the things i wanted to say. i started writing these things just so i could set my thoughts on paper before forgetting them! only 8 of these and the length has gone up 10 times, so, there's that. in between beating the game, starting this, adding one more year to my life counter and the moment of writing this sentence, they've announced the answer as the dlc to come out later in the year. i cannot talk about the answer since i haven't played it, obviously, but there are some things i know about it. as far as i'm concerned, the ending of the game is the only thing that matters right now. the answer may as well be the fanfiction epilogue written by someone at atlus, i don't care. i'm sticking to what i've played and what i know.

i've been insisting on how the game often employs the ludonarrative dissonance card throughout it's runtime and characters. this is what strikes me as particularly truthful towards the end.

in december, everyone is told the world will end. there is nothing they can do to stop it. if you decide to forget, everyone dies happy. otherwise, you can try your best and see what happens. january, the background music changes and the entire screen gets a saturation shift for every color to be slightly muted. persona loves to make things clear at times, but this one seems a little bit too on the nose even for persona standards. you know what would be cool? making small changes throughout the month until the fated day. only then, the music would slowly change for all to sound more somber and the entire city to look dead. it comes off as extremely weird because the dorm theme is still the same one, as well as the song that plays for jobs and social link events. i say you either go one way or the other, not both. make it so everything is purposely dark, somber and sad. go all the way with it and have everyone around you react to it. i don't really see the point in doing this change so out of nowhere myself. it feels dumb. it doesn't really fit either. add the fact that half of the month is wasted on nothing because you can't talk to any school related social link until vacations are over, and it feels like a pretty stupid month leading up to the grand finale.

must say, the takaya fight was harder than nyx. not sure why that guy has more health. he also just drains your entire sp like it's nothing - he's crazy. nyx you can kind of beat in 1 or 2 moves for every phase. it's not that interesting of a fight, but i like the design. once you're done with nyx, you get a call from igor about how friendship gives you infinite power to seal nyx forever. "the power of friendship surges within you", since you've supposedly made the necessary bonds to garner a power unlike anything else. strong enough to sustain the heavy blows by this godlike entity, and strong enough to use your final ability "great seal". now, supposedly, since this skill uses up all of your hp no matter your level or items, the idea is that you're effectively using all your life force. had i not looked it up after beating the game i really do not think i would've ever thought about this connection on my own. maybe i'm stupid? i sure didn't read what the skill even did when using it, less so how much hp was necessary to use it. i cannot say with confidence anyone else checks that before hitting the final blow on the last boss of the game. if i understand right, what people infer from this and the events in march is quite simple. guy has no more hp (so literally, his life) -> waits until he could fulfill his promise -> dies. is this what has been getting hyped up since 2006?

genuinely, what are we working with here? i fully support the idea of killing your protagonist. i think that is fabulous. i only struggle to find it appealing in the way it's done here. first off: really? he uses all his hp in battle and dies? we know for a fact battles as shown in game aren't applicable to a real scenario. is the implication that your party members legitimately die and are brought back to life mid battle with a simple item? i do not find the idea of a skill you forcefully have to use to finish the game as a cool "got you". do we, as players, actively decide to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of those we love? does the protagonist do this on his own? if we're talking about a skill used to seal a god you just unlock in this particular scenario, of which you have no further info of, with the supposed strongest persona imaginable, with the help of the bonds you've crafted along the way, i don't buy it one bit. what i see as the weirdest thing in all of this is the fact that he doesn't even die right then and there. he's back up and kicking as soon as the fight is over. it takes a whole month for the guy to die, even though he's supposed to have been completely drained.

everyone forgot about what happened, except for you and aigis. i'm not sure why our main character remembers, but at least the player will obviously do. just when you're supposed to all meet up in the roof as you promised, they finally end up remembering and come running to you. you get this really nice cutscene with everyone running full of joy knowing what they've accomplished and what the future promises for them. you're dead, though. dead corpse in the roof. not that any of this is shown as a tragedy since it's presented as more of a happy moment than anything. the game ends. was this the promise he had to keep? what about ken and fighting him again when he gets stronger? what about whoever you romanced and promising to be by their side? what about aigis saying she wants to be alongside you forever? what about literally anyone you ever talked to expecting you to be by their side lending them a hand when they most need it? i'm really sorry, i just cannot think that this the only thing that mattered before passing away.

as i get it, the argument seems to be how it lines up with the theme of the game and the idea of death. not that death isn't a prominent idea in the game, but i would argue the only reason you are facing death is because you literally are facing Death, not because you get what death is. death isn't nice, it's a tragedy. "facing death" is about accepting that people can pass on and leave things behind, not literally dying and being okay with it. jesus christ, we're talking about a 17 year old highschool student. it doesn't matter if he gets what death means, he hasn't been alive for even half of what the average human lifespan would be. persona 3 is about loneliness. that's the theme. loneliness always comes along with death. the death of our loves ones making us feel alone. loneliness, and finding the people you live to fight that loneliness. the people by our side that will help us get out of our worst moments. the ones that will help us grief and bright our days back up. please, kill the main character - but make it meaningful, not a plot device.

you know how i take this as? making friends kills you. i played the game, i talked to people, i made friends, i made lovers. all of this for them to give me the power to defeat god and for it to kill me. this is the ultimate power you have cultivated. my actions as a player ultimately don't matter because you are there to die at the end of it all. you used a skill in battle and it killed you. sorry!

now, let me backtrack a bit. i knew the main character died at the end of the game way before i played the thing. it's another one of those things people cannot keep to themselves. no matter how slick you think you are by posting the same screenshot every march, i can imagine what is going on here. i had my own theories of how this would happen. clearly, Death had been living inside of you for this long. you are intrinsically tied to the fate of the world. surely, if you kill Death, you kill a part of yourself. maybe nyx had its fate tied to you. maybe it's as easy as a noble sacrifice for the sake of others. it's none of the above, apparently. you finish the fight, a month goes by and you go to the roof. it might've been clear already but i need to be frank, i had to look up what the ending was supposed to mean. rather, what people interpret it as. great seal skill and all.

now, see, had i not read about him dying or other theories, i'm not completely sure if that's what i would've concluded it as. after looking at it in retrospect, yeah, dies. he's extremely tired by march, he needs to close his eyes and rest. rest for how long? you decide. the problem to me is how unclear the reason for all of this seems to be. okay, so he died. let's track down the reason. why did he die? he beat nyx and kept living for another month, so why now? they never said anything about his life being tied to nyx either, so that can't be it. absolutely no idea. okay - so it's because of the stupid skill at the end of the fight. whatever, sure. why didn't he die back then? why did it take an entire month for anything to happen to him? does he just toughen out death for that long? i couldn't tell you. turns out, it's because that's the day they promised to meet up no matter happened. yeah, sure, that makes sense. what about literally every other promise he made the month before and months before that? was that the only thing that ever mattered? to meet up at the roof on graduation day? you know what fucks me up: he doesn't even fucking meet them! he takes his beauty sleep before they even get there! so you couldn't even fucking keep that promise anyway!

you know what doesn't kill you? sleep. actually, that's a lie, you can die on your sleep pretty easily. the way this entire scene is written and shot (or animated, i suppose) does not strike me as anything close to a death. i understand that it is, because aigis is crying, because you don't want to "sleep" but it will happen anyway, because you're literally fading to black, and because the guy just taking a nap may be a little bit boring. i say he could be taking a nap. who gives a damn! the ending is open ended enough for you to bring whatever the hell you want into it. does he wake up shortly after and they celebrate? why not? it makes as much sense as him breaking all those other promises and amassing the power of friendship to kill himself. you'll have a bit of trouble defending your head canon once the answer rolls up, unfortunately. guess he really is dead!

i will sustain that it's left open ended on purpose. it may be a little bit self explanatory, yes, but as long as it's not spelling out anything directly at you, you can take it as you will. the idea of coming up with an epilogue that blatantly details what happened seems off the mark to me, but at the same time i can't criticize a piece of story content i haven't seen, so that's all i can say.

i liked persona 3 reload. it's a fun game. it has great music, generally fun gameplay and enjoyable characters. it's not my favorite persona game by far, but it has many redeeming qualities to it that make it a really interesting entry. i deeply enjoy the dichotomies between themes, settings and aspects for persona 3, 4 and 5 a whole lot, which makes each one of them stand out in their own right. the more i played and as time passed, i started wondering how much i actually care about persona 4. i'm not too sure about it by now. i should probably replay it at some point, but this has taken way too long to write so here goes nothing. it's been one year and one day since i created this account. thank you for reading.

#review #game review #media analysis #persona 3 reload #video games

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leahblackk · 4 years ago

Text

Lies Pt.1

(The gif is not mine. Whoever made this thank you and I’m sorry)

Summary: Spencer Reid and Y/n Y/L are two incredible agents with a beautiful relationship. But things get messed up when Cat Adams comes into their life.

Type: Angst.

I changed things a little bit so there’s no spoilers for those who haven’t got into this part of the serie. Probably a second part if I dont have another block. Enjoy!

Pt.2 here

Pt.3 here

...

Y/n Y/L and Spencer Reid are some of the best FBI agents the Bureau has ever had, and all of their coworkers can tell you the same. Even those cops and agents who had to work with when the case was far from home. They were always so dedicated to their work. It wasn't a surprise when they got pretty close to each other. They had a beautiful friendship.

Their coworkers and other people they had worked with can tell you they looked so in love with each other. It wasn't a secret. The way they protected each other, the way they looked at each other. In the cases, always talking and laughing around and even got to the point where they got touchy, need to feel the other warmth. Yeah, they were in love.

But yet they were too proud to say it out loud. It took two long years to finally say it out loud. They started a beautiful relationship which, in the words of the technical analysts Penelope Garcia, their relationship was the remainder for all the team that love still exists, even when sometimes all can be sadness and death, they were the ray of sun and happiness who have entered the doors of the BAU.

But like anything can be rainbows and happiness all the time, things got messed up when Cat Adams came into the couple's life. Spencer had questions, and the only person who could give him answers was her.

Y/N on her side didn't feel right talking to Cat. It wasn't because she was jealous, she wasn't like that, and even if she were, she understands that it was vital for him to talk to her. Besides, Spencer wasn't excited either. Adding the fact that she received letters from Adams while Cat was in prison.

Cat Adams was utterly obsessed with Spencer Reid, and when she found out he was dating Dr Y/L, she got furious, so she decided to make a living hell for Spencer's little girlfriend. Writing her letters, telling her how much Spencer loved Maeve and Cat, and because he couldn't have any of them, he decided to pick Y/N as a third choice.

Y/N wasn't stupid, and she understands what Cat was trying to do, but the letters never stopped. Even in those moments when she needed comfort from all the stress, Spencer never found out what was going on.

Y/n exhaled and stood from her desk and walked through the BAU hallways with a million thoughts in her head. She stood in front of the Batcave how Penelope used to call it, and knocked on the door. After a few seconds, she heard chairs wheels moving on the floor, and later soft heels steps walking closer to the door. And then the door was opened, letting Y/N see Penelope's face. She smiled at her, and Y/N smiled as well.

"Hey pumpkin, how may I help you?" She asked and stepped aside, letting her friend inside.

"I just need some light and love into this madness," Y/N said while she sits on the empty desk aside from the computers.

"Well, you came to the right place."

Garcia could sense something wasn't okay with her. She sits on her chair and looks at her friend who was playing with her rings and with the specific one that Spencer gave her on their anniversary as a promise ring. Garcia wasn't a profiler, but she knew that the reason why she was acting particularly was because of Boy Genius.

"Tell me what is bothering that pretty mind of yours." She put her hand on her knee to give her comfort cause she knew Y/L wasn't good with talking about her feelings.

"It's just all of this thing about Spencer talking with Cat, I don't know, makes me have this weird feeling in my heart."

"Are you jealous?"

"No, I'm not. I thought that maybe was the reason, but I'm not at all. It's just, I don't know Pen." She exhales, feeling frustrated because she couldn't find the right words.

Garcia gives her a sad smile. "Look, if you were jealous, you don't have to because let me tell you that boy genius is in love with you. He wouldn't cheat on you or hurt you on purpose. Besides, with Cat? That lady is hella crazy."

Y/N chuckled and smiled at her.

"Hey, you two had a party and didn't invite me?" Emily said, walking inside of the room and sitting next to Y/N.

"Well, you are already here," Pen says.

"Is everything alright? Morgan told me Spencer was coming from his little chat with Cat."

"I hope he got the answers he needs," Garcia said, looking over at Emily.

"He didn't," JJ said in the frame of the door, looking exhausted.

"How did everything go?" Y/N asks.

JJ exhaled, walking inside and sitting in front of Emily and Y/N. "It wasn't right. She got into his skin, and he got so mad. When we're driving, he didn't want to talk with anybody. And then when we got here, he went to Hotch's office." "I hope he's okay." Y/N whispers, playing with her ring again.

"Why won't you go and talk to him? He probably wants to see you." Emily says, looking at her, but she was focused on playing with her rings.

Y/N shook her head. "When he's mad, he likes to be alone. Besides, if he went to Hotch's office for a reason."

"You don't want to talk to him, do you?" Emily asked.

Y/N could feel tears in the corner of her eyes and shook her head again. "Is not for something he did, but I don't think I will help if I go with him right now. I just feel weird, you know?"

"It has to be a reason why you feel like this, honey. "Garcia said.

Y/N nod and sigh. "When Spencer and I got together, he already met Cat, and when she found out we were dating, I don't know what happened, and she started sending me letters. She used to tell me how much Spencer loved Maeve and her, and you know I got this job months after Maeve died. Obviously, Spencer told me, but the way she described everything was so weird and hurtful, besides she told me he loved her so much and the reason he was with me it was because he couldn't have any of them and I was the third choice. I know she did it because she wanted to make me mad. But, I don't know, and today she wrote to me and told me she was going to do anything in her power to have Spencer with her again."

Y/N wiped the tear going down on her cheek.

"That bitch." Garcia said, wiping her tears because watching Y/N cry, one of her best friends, hurt her.

"Spencer knows about this?" JJ asked.

"No, he doesn't. It was nothing initially, and then I couldn't find the right moment and then all the stress we had been through. I didn't think it was a good idea."

"Baby, he's your boyfriend. He needs to know." Emily said, grabbing Y/N's tight.

"I know, but I don't think this is a good time either. Please don't tell him, I will, but not now." "Your secret is safe with us," Garcia said, and Y/N smiled at her friends.

…

When Y/N finally felt a little bit better, she walked out of Garcia's Batcave and put herself to work.

"Hey, where were you? I was looking for you." She heard her boyfriend's voice, watching him standing beside her. She looked at him and could sense how tense he was.

"I was with Garcia. How did everything go?" She already knew the answer but still asked. She watched her boyfriend sigh. She didn't notice the cup of coffee in his hand until he put it on her desk.

"It wasn't ideal, but it could've been worse."

"I'm sorry." She said, giving him a sad smile.

"It's okay. I have to talk with you about something." She could sense he was nervous.

"Yeah?"

He looked down, not wanting to tell what he was going to. He didn't want her to feel bad, but he needs her approval.

"Cat wanted a deal. Me going on a date with her so she can tell us what we need, but I needed to ask you first because I am not going to do anything you are not comfortable with because-"Spencer started rambling.

"Spence," She stops him. "It's okay. I mean, I know how bad you need to know this, so yeah, don't worry." It wasn't okay, she didn't want him to go on a date with her, but she would be selfish if she denied it.

Spencer stared at her girlfriend, he didn't think she would agree, and he would understand why. He didn't want her going on a date with someone else too. Yet, he felt relieved.

"Are you sure?"

Y/n only nodded.

…

It was now the day date. Spencer tried to find Y/n before he left, he needed to see her and ask her again if she wanted him doing that, but he didn't find her. She was getting distant from him. He felt weird not having her with him. They couldn't talk about it because Spencer knew that if she needed to speak to him, she'd.

And then with his heart hurt because he couldn't find his girlfriend, he went on a date with the woman who made her girlfriend be apart from him.

…

Y/n was doing paperwork all day, but then she received a strange call.

"Hello?" Y/n asked.

"Y/n Y/L?" The other line asked.

"Who is this?"

"I need you to come to the direction I will send you on a message, alone, please. I need you to save me."

"Who is this?" She asked again, more confused than ever.

"Emily Johnson, please come. She said that If you come with anyone else, she is going to kill me, please. I am scared."

Emily Johnson was one of the victims they were looking for a few months before, but for reasons the team didn't know, the case got closed, declaring Emily Johnson dead. The line went dead, and Y/n didn't know what to do. She knew that she might get in trouble if she goes alone, but she might kill her if Y/n doesn't go.

She grabbed her things and walked out of the Bureau. And then she received a message with the direction. Biting her lip, Y/n got into her car and started driving.

…

Y/n stood in front of a brown apartment door with the number 206. She took out her gun and opened the door softly. She walked inside, closing the door behind her, watching Emily Johnson tied on a chair, tears coming down her face. When Emily watched Y/n, she started moving and tried to talk, but she couldn't because of the tape on her mouth.

Y/n walked where she was. "Hey, it's okay. Everything is okay. You're okay. It is over now." Y/n took the tape out of her mouth, and Emily started crying again.

"Thank you, thank you so much. I thought she was going to kill me."

"I need you to tell me who she is." She started taking off the string who kept her in the chair.

And then the door got open, and Y/n retook her gun, pointing to the door. Her heart got broken when she saw what was in front of her. Spencer, her boyfriend kissing Cat, with his hands on her hair. Y/n put down her gun, and then Spencer pulled away from Cat, watching her, but Cat was watching Y/n with a smile.

Spencer, confused, looked where Cat was looking, and his heart got paralyzed. There was his girlfriend, looking at them with tears in her precious eyes.

"Y/n," Spencer said with all the guilt in the world. Shaking.

"It's her! Y/n, it's her." Emily said, and Y/n came out of her shook.

"Hello, Y/n, it is so nice to see you," Cat said with a smile.

"Sadly, the feeling is not reciprocated. And it's Doctor Y/L for you, " Y/n said. She untied the girl who was shaking and took her hand. "I will return you to your parents, okay? But we need to go with someone first." The girl nodded. Y/n looked at Spencer with disgust. He looked at her with guilt, trying to figure out what to do or what to say.

"Doctor Reid, I hope you can get Cat where she belongs, unless, of course, you want to keep her." She said, walking outside. Spencer took her arm hurt at the name she just calls him. It wasn't Spence, Spencer or even Reid. "Don't touch me."

"I told you I was going to get Spencie back," Cat said.

"What is she talking about?" Spencer asked, confused.

"Doesn't matter anymore."

And then Y/n left. Spencers biggest love went thinking he cheated on her

#spencer reid imagine #spencer reid x fem!reader #spencer #dr spencer reid #spencer reid x you #Matthew Gray Gubler #matthew gray gubler imagine #Criminal Minds Fanfiction #MGG angst #mgg fanfiction #mgg fic #spencer x y/n #spencer reid x y/n #Spencer reid #spencer reid angst #angst #reid #doctor reid #dr spencer reid fanfic

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couldntbedamned · 2 years ago

Text

Goodbye Grey Sky, Hello Blue - 3

Summary: In an alternate universe where trains and zeppelins are still common forms of travel and the internet and cell phones exist, nineteen year old Peter Parker has few options left after he’s swindled out of his inheritance. Unable to pay for college, let alone keep the house left to him by his deceased aunt, he’s running out of time before he’s out on the streets. Desperate, Peter signs his life over to the Bureau of Civic Spousal Selections to take his chances as the selected husband of a complete stranger. After all, he only has to make it through a year and then he can choose to annul.

Dr. Stephen Strange has little interest in marriage, preferring to focus on his career. When his career is threatened by what a nosy board of directors considers a “lack of personal fulfillment and settling down,” he opts to select a spouse through the BCSS and chooses Peter Parker. The young man’s profile he'd briefly skimmed suggests intelligence and compatibility. It’s not ideal, but if after a year it’s not working out, he can always annul the marriage and send Peter on his way.

It’s a marriage neither truly wants, with sharp learning curves for both. It’s either going to be forever or it’s going to go down in flames.

Warnings/AO3 Tags: 18+ MINORS DNI, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - 1950s/Modern Fusion, Doctor Stephen Strange, Jewish Peter Parker, Peter Parker is of Legal Age, Marriage of Convenience, Marriage Contracts, Government Sanctioned Marriages, Domestic Discipline, Dubiously Consensual Spanking, Spanking, Aftercare, Mildly Dubious Consent, Dubious Morals, Dubious Ethics, Asshole Stephen Strange, Smartass Peter Parker, Other: See Endnotes

Author’s Note: 1. This is where it starts to get spicy. 2. This chapter is dedicated to my lovely @rawringryu who enables me in the best of ways, with special thanks to Miri or helping with kosher rules and letting me ask all kinds of questions.

<<<>>>

Chapter 3

<<<>>>

When Peter finally fell asleep, he was sore but undeniably satisfied.

Stephen had not been exaggerating the pleasure part of it.

He’d stroked over Peter’s body with strong hands, almost as if he’d been trying to map out a problem. He’d been meticulous in preparing Peter to take his cock and used a healthy amount of lubricant as he stretched him out. His long, dexterous fingers seemed to know exactly how to bend and scissor, what spots would have Peter moaning in ecstasy. When he’d finally guided Peter onto his stomach and began to slowly penetrate him, Peter had cried out and spilled onto the sheets.

That hadn’t been the end of it, no. Not by a long shot. Stephen’s cock continued to ease into him, kept pressing in until Peter was sure he’d be split in two. And still, Stephen wasn’t fully seated. When Peter had finally felt Stephen’s heavy balls against him, he was out of his mind, lost in sensation. He’d barely registered the long groan Stephen let out as he started to withdraw only to work back into him.

Stephen had taken him with long, driving thrusts. Peter hadn’t ever dreamed that a person could feel so entirely claimed but soon there was no part of him that would ever feel like his own again. As Stephen worked in him, he’d felt the stirrings of pleasure build into an explosion that had him coming a second time. And still, Stephen hadn’t finished.

Again and again, Stephen had slammed into him, pulling Peter’s body up as he leaned back, hand resting on his throat. He hadn’t been overly vocal, only uttering words like ‘tight,’ ‘mine,’ and ‘so good.’ When he’d finally reached his finish, he’d groaned low into Peter’s ear, eyes closed in satisfaction. Heat had filled him; a sensation Peter didn’t find unpleasant. He could definitely get used to this.

It had stung when Stephen pulled free, and Peter hadn’t been able to find it in him to move from his place face-down on the bed, still feeling light and blissed-out. Stephen hadn’t been so useless, getting up to walk into the bathroom only to return after the flush of a toilet and running of water. He’d come back with a warm, damp washcloth and carefully cleaned Peter’s backside before helping him onto his back and wiping down Peter’s spent cock and thighs.

“You’ll need to launder these sheets tomorrow,” Stephen had said, laying a towel over the wet spot. “And the towel.”

“‘S fine,” Peter had slurred out.

“And we’ll have one more thing to discuss.”

“Great.” He’d been so tired, so floaty. He’d been so stupid to worry; sex was great!

“Good night, Peter.”

Peter woke up a little less sore than he’d felt falling asleep. As he yawned and stretched, he wondered just how soon it would be before Stephen decided to have him again. Turning his neck side to side, he caught sight of the clock. Its display had him scrambling out of bed.

6:20 am

He had to make breakfast!

He tried not to make too much noise as he hurriedly pulled on his discarded pajama bottoms and a simple t-shirt. He went down the stairs even as he heard the sound of the shower off the bedroom running - Stephen was awake, too. The kitchen, which had looked grand and impressive the day before, now looked imposing.

He rifled through the cabinets and found the cookware he needed easily enough. He set three skillets on a burner and let them heat. Then he pulled out a cutting board, a mixing bowl, and a whisk.

Breakfast wouldn’t be fancy, but it would be hot.

Sausage links sizzled in one of the heated pans, little pools of grease dripped here and there. Three of eggs he’d whisked would cook in the grease - a trick his aunt had taught him, the rest in the another with some butter. And finally, in the cast iron skillet, he’d fry the potatoes he was peeling and dicing. He hadn’t been able to find an onion, so plain fried potatoes would have to do.

He noticed that some items - such as the sausage and eggs - were running low when he gathered them. There wasn’t bread, either so there wouldn’t be any toast. He’d need to ask about grocery shopping. He couldn’t exactly cook breakfast and dinner if there wasn’t food to cook, now, could he? He just hoped that certain items, or at least the items to make what he preferred to eat wouldn’t be too difficult to find.

He figured out the coffee maker - the fanciest damn thing he’d ever seen for something as simple as coffee! - and found a mug in one of the cabinets. He’d already decided he’d have to rearrange the entire kitchen, since nothing was where he initially thought to look for it or stored in a way that was acceptable for him. It wasn’t as if Stephen would have a need to find things now that he had Peter as his little house husband.

“Good morning.”

Speak of the devil. Stephen seemed more awake and ready to face the day than Peter felt. He was freshly showered and dressed in black slacks, a light blue button-down, and a charcoal grey sweater vest. His expensive Kang watch glinted on his wrist and his black oxfords were polished. Stephen was, in Peter’s opinion, unfairly handsome.

“Good morning,” Peter said. He checked the clock. It was only ten ‘till seven; he still had time. “How do you like your coffee?”

“According to the hospital’s interns, black like my soul,” Stephen replied, sitting down at the table.

Peter snorted as filled the mug and set it down on the table in front of him. “There aren’t any oranges, so I can’t make orange juice for you,” he said. “There isn’t bread, either, and there wasn’t time to bake any.”

Stephen eyed him curiously over his coffee. “You know how to bake bread?”

“Kind of,” Peter answered. His challah was passable, at least. He checked on the potatoes, stirred when he saw that they had a good crust on the bottom. The sausage links were resting on a warming plate and in both skillets the eggs were just shy of being fully cooked. He quickly transferred them between two plates before they could turn rubbery and added the sausage to Stephen’s plate with the grease-cooked eggs. “I didn’t know if there were any cookbooks here.”

“There are,” Stephen said. “My previous housekeeper didn’t want to leave whoever I married in a bind. Feel free to check the den. You can always buy what books you need from the bookstore here in town."

Peter rather thought he’d be better off finding the nearest synagogue and hoping someone’s mother, aunt, or bubbe was there and willing to share a recipe or two than hitting up the bookstore. But at least there was a bookstore.

“I started making a list of groceries I’ll need,” Peter continued. “Back home, I could just walk to the stores I needed, but here, I don’t know where anything is.”

“That’s right, you’re not from Sanctum Heights," Stephen commented.

“Nope. I’m from Midtown,” Peter confirmed. The potatoes were done, so he finished loading the plates and carried them over to the table.

Seven am, exactly, he thought with satisfaction.

“There’s bottled orange juice in the refrigerator,” Stephen said, after taking a bite of eggs. “You can pour us both a glass and bring over the salt and pepper.”

Frowning, Peter got up. Why anyone bothered buying pre-bottled orange juice instead of making their own was beyond him. Fresh orange juice wasn’t just cheaper, it tasted better, too. He filled a couple of glasses with the stuff and grabbed the salt and pepper. After a moment’s consideration, he grabbed another bottle from the spice rack.

He gave Stephen his glass, then set the little jars down.

“Paprika?” Stephen asked skeptically when he watched Peter dash some over his eggs and potatoes.

“I had a neighbor who swore by it,” Peter replied.

“I’ll take your word for it.” Stephen continued eating. “These eggs are quite good.”

“Sausage grease,” Peter explained, making a note to buy turkey sausage so he could at least enjoy it. “Instead of draining all of it, I kept some in the skillet and cooked your eggs in it instead of butter.”

“And the potatoes?” Stephen questioned.

“I fried them with some butter and salt. Normally, I’d add in some diced onions, but there wasn’t an onion in the pantry.”

“I have accounts set up with the meat market and grocer,” Stephen said. He’d finished his food and was drinking his coffee. “I also have an account with the local transport service - you’ll use them to run your errands. Milk is delivered twice a week. If you determine it should be delivered more often, by all means, set that up.”

“I can do that,” Peter said. It couldn’t be that hard, surely. “What’s the weekly budget for all of this?”

Stephen stared at him, as if he wasn’t sure what Peter meant.

“I don’t want spend more on groceries than we can afford,” Peter explained. “I know how to stretch a budget; my aunt taught me.”

Stephen snorted. “I’m not destitute, Peter. And unless you spend every day buying pounds of lobster, caviar, and Wagyu beef, I doubt you’ll put us in a poor house.”

Peter felt his cheeks heat to a fiery red. “I didn’t know,” he said, finally. He shook his head, willed the embarrassment to die down. Thankfully, the very idea of him buying lobster was absurd enough to help. “Is there anything you’d like for dinner tonight?”

Stephen studied him. “I think I’ll be content with whatever you choose prepare,” he said. “My parents had an agreement: if my mother cooked it, my father would eat it without question or complaint. I can’t promise I won’t complain, but so long as you go through the effort of cooking, I will eat the resulting meal.”

That was more reasonable than he would have expected. Peter could work with that. Except, “What about when you have guests over? They’ll be expecting dinner to be fancy, not to mention hors d’oeuvres, dessert…” he paused, realized. “And drinks! I don’t know the first thing about alcohol, Stephen! I’m only 19!” He hung his head. “And I don’t know anything about entertaining, either.”

“You’ll learn,” Stephen said simply. “Along with the cookbooks, Ms. Drew left an assortment of notes for you. She’s also offered to help you with the first dinner party.”

There was that, at least. Whoever this Ms. Drew was, she was a mensch.

“Okay, good,” he said. “That’s good.”

“I’ve informed the hospital that I will be in later than usual today,” Stephen announced as Peter cleared away the dishes and wiped down the table.

Peter didn’t say anything, unsure of what point Stephen was trying to make.

“Last night I informed you there was an additional matter we needed to discuss.”

Peter paused, let the warm rag fall onto the table. He racked his mind, trying to remember. “Was it before or after you were um, you know, inside me?” He was blushing again.

“It was after,” Stephen said. “And that brings me to the matter at hand. Follow me upstairs, please.”

Confused, Peter followed him. The bedroom wasn’t as imposing as it had been yesterday, but it wasn’t exactly calming, either. The bed itself was a mess of blankets and sheets, along with the towel Stephen had placed because Peter had…

“It occurs to me that you may have trouble adjusting to your new life and your role as my husband,” Stephen said. He was pulling something out of a drawer. “I expect obedience, as I’ve said. In return for that obedience, you will be rewarded.”

At the sight of the small box in Stephen’s hands, Peter’s brows drew together. “Okay?”

“If you are diligent in your responsibilities and keep out of trouble, I will ensure that when you and I are engaged, you will have your pleasure as well.” He opened the box to reveal a…

Peter stepped back on instinct, shook his head. He had to be joking!

Stephen’s eyes narrowed at Peter’s reaction. “And if you act out, in addition to going over my knee, I’ll ensure you don’t receive the release you’ll be so desperate for.” He studied Peter. “Go shower. And be quick about it, I have patients to attend to today.”

There wasn’t any point in fighting it, Peter thought miserably as he pulled his pajama pants down and off in the bathroom. He’d acted out last night and ended up over Stephen’s knee and spanked until he was crying and begging for the man to stop. He didn’t want a repeat of that anytime soon. But the sex… yes, he wanted that, and the amazing feelings of when he’d gotten off. And now he’d have to earn that?

Once he was clean and had dried himself off, Stephen wasted little time in securing Peter’s cock in the cage. He wasn’t even mean about it, which would have been easier for Peter to stomach. No, his hands were gentle and thorough in making sure that Peter wasn’t in pain. He gave Peter’s newly caged cock a fond pat and then stood.

Stephen checked his watch. “I have to leave now. I should be back around 6:30. If I happen to be running late, I will call and let you know.” He nodded to the new cell phone on Peter’s nightstand. “If there’s an emergency, you will call me. My numbers are already programmed.”

He looked down at Peter, who was doing his best to keep every foul, hateful thought from exiting his mind via his mouth. Even if those thoughts weren’t in English, Stephen would no doubt understand the sentiment behind them.

“Behave and have a good day. I’ll see you this evening,” Stephen said softly. He pressed a kiss to his forehead and left the room.

Peter didn’t move until he heard the front door close, lock, and the sound of the Stephen driving away in his Buick.

Then he grabbed a pillow, brought it tight against his face, and screamed.

<<<>>>

Endnotes: As anyone on my SpiderStrange discord could tell you, I have a thing for Stephen putting Peter in a cock cage or doing something else kind of related. I don't know how it started, but damn if it doesn't make me happy. Whether or not it will make Peter happy in this remains to be seen.

#couldntbedamned fic #spiderstrange #spideystrange #stephen strange x peter parker #peter parker x stephen strange #1950s-modern era fusion au #1950s au #read the fucking warnings #no seriously read them #peter parker x doctor strange #doctor strange x peter parker

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i-want-my-iwtv · 3 years ago

Note

I hope the rumours of Louis being a brothel owner aren't true, but if they are I can sort of see why they're going for this route? I mean, with a black Louis they can't have him being a slaver anymore, so maybe they're trying to find something that is also morally reprehensible for him to be.

TL;DR: My kneejerk reaction was to be saddened, and I don’t like that this is starting up, and will continue to fuel, fandom drama. Ultimately, if we want peace, we’ll embrace the fact that the existence of this adaptation doesn’t take away from the existence of the books, and it also doesn't mean we have to acknowledge it.

It makes me wonder whether AMC wants us to make a storm about this. We’ll see...

After all, what makes this adaptation any more important than the graphic novels of the ’90s, the graphic novel Claudia’s Story, movie!IWTV, or movie!QOTD? In fact, many fans here on tumblr consider VC to be a trilogy only!!! and don’t accept the majority of the PUBLISHED CANON so what makes anyone think we have any obligation to swallow this AMC adaptation as some kind of gospel?

I see movie!QOTD as a buffet of ideas carried in an official fanfiction work, and I don’t accept as my headcanon the various things it changed about the books that I didn’t particularly like, such as merging Magnus and Marius (which, IMO, effectively made both characters more morally reprehensible). I accepted the things I did enjoy, like casting a Black/POC actress to play Akasha. I see this AMC adaptation as a buffet of ideas, some can be taken, and some not, it’s just another official fanfiction work.

[Anon, I need to catch other ppl up on the information, too.]

Deadline.com informs us that in the AMC adaptation for Interview with the Vampire, Jacob Anderson has been cast as Louis. I'm not familiar with him, but it looks like he’s a successful actor, from Game of Thrones and other things, he’s also joining Series 13 of Doctor Who. I’ll have to check him out from an acting standpoint!

Aside from his talent as an actor, this is by far the most controversial thing that's happened in VC fandom recently. I've been thinking about this for a few months now, talking about it privately online and offline, still gathering my thoughts. So this post is not engraved in stone, it’s initial thoughts on this.

I’m glad to see ppl talking about it and I’m sure we’ll have more public discussions. I’m trying to discuss it very carefully, but also, this is an entertainment blog, my opinions are mine alone, and I’m not looking for dogpiling on anyone, I have no obligation to respond publicly or privately to anything. Plenty of other ppl have differing opinions on this. So take all of the following with more than a grain of salt, I’m not being salty, I’m providing the links to the little info we’ve seen pulicly, I’m giving my initial thoughts, and I’m also trying to add a little levity because ultimately, again, this is an entertainment blog, and I try to add a little humor to help with such serious topics, humor can help ppl talk about controversial things.

-----

The casting of a POC/Black actor (I’m sorry I don't know the preferred terminology, let me know if you know what Anderson prefers) confirms at least one part of theilluminerdi articles that stated that Louis’ race will be different from the books. I didn’t post about these before bc I wasn’t sure how reliable theilluminerdi’s sources are (and I'm still not sure), but this was one major aspect that theilluminerdi announced before Deadline did, so now seems to be the right time to share those articles. For now, you can go check them out yourselves rather than have my reposting of the information, trigger warning: mentions of sex workers and race in the changes to the canon story of Interview with the Vampire.

>>>theilluminerdi articles from May 21, 2021 and July 15, 2021:

www.theilluminerdi.com/2021/05/21/interview-with-the-vampire-amc

www.theilluminerdi.com/2021/07/15/interview-with-the-vampire-amc-2

^Meme of Dr. Ian Malcom from Jurassic Park reads: “Your writers were so preoccupied with whether they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

I’m using that meme with a little levity here, clearly an AMC adaptation of vampires in which the producers/writers have chosen to change the race of a main character (arguably the original protagonist of the series) isn’t in the same VICINITY as the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park that broke out of containment and killed visitors to the park, but John Hammond’s intention for the creation of that park was very good, as I assume this race change was intended. Time will tell.

“But with this place, I wanted to show them something that wasn't an illusion. Something that was real, something that they could see and touch. An aim not devoid of merit.”

“Creation is an act of sheer will.”

- John Hammond, Jurassic Park

Race is a more complicated subject than ever, so for AMC to make this bold change, I hope they have POC and Black writers on staff and are handling this very carefully. Even then, no racial group, including POC and Black people, are a hivemind, disagreements are bound to happen in the writing room, whether in good faith or bad. People have different intentions and motives, compromises will probably be made with the story in many ways, we all know how it goes with collaborations; the end product is a shared vision among multiple creators. This could be a potentially controversial adaptation, I don’t know whether they’re aiming for that or not, but with the elements it has so far, it seems to be headed that way.

Here's a comment by "Angellus" on the 5/21 article. It's undeniable that there's going to be the accusation of racism thrown at anyone who has any negative view of this change, regardless of their reasons. I find it unfair and narrow-minded that any negative response is automatically assumed to be coming from a racist point of view. To say that changing Louis' race is unequivocally an improvement fails to take into account how that change has a Domino effect on all of the other parts of the story. Not the least of which is that, if he is still a slaver/slave holder/plantation owner/(insert your preferred term) that adds a whole new racist element to his owning Black/POC people, even though, apparently there were Black/POC plantation owners.

Not the least of which: How will this change impact his relationship with Lestat? Particularly when Lestat has the added issue of being described in those articles as having “mind control abilities” and “insistent that he gets what he wants and when facing rejection,” a terrible combination in terms of consent, even in a relationship of the same race, let alone invoking Caucasian/white dominance over Black/POC people, AND Lestat being the catalyst to Louis’ questioning his sexuality:

Lestat is insistent that he gets what he wants and when facing rejection, petulance can quickly turn to ruthless rage which causes frenzied acts of horrifically brutal violence. Lestat also has mind control abilities. Lestat initially infuriates Louis, but this soon turns to fascination which leads Louis to question his religion and sexuality.

^Screencap reads: "I love how racist everyone is in the damn comments, this doesn’t pervert the story you’re all racist and it’s disgusting. I’m looking forward to it, I hope you keep crying your salty racist tears asswipes."

It makes me question whether Angellus truly believes what they wrote, if this is an ideology, or a troll. I would suggest their use of the term “pervert” is correct though, pervert means: “alter (something) from its original course, meaning, or state to a distortion or corruption of what was first intended.” That’s what this race change does, factually. Although, in this context, “distortion or corruption” carries a negative connotation. It would take a lot to show how this change does not meet the definition or “to pervert,” though.

I hope the rumours of Louis being a brothel owner aren't true

I agree 1,000%, I was hoping that these were just rumors. But, aside from the race change, if this were the only change, I find Louis being a brothel owner to be equivalently morally reprehensible to being a slaver/slave holder/plantation owner/(insert your preferred term). Ideally, they’d change his career to something that doesn’t involve benefiting from the bodies/labor of others in any morally reprehensible manner.

I mean, with a black Louis they can't have him being a slaver anymore, so maybe they're trying to find something that is also morally reprehensible for him to be.

He might still be a slaver. Who knows. Being morally reprehensible as a mortal man didn’t seem to me to be crucial to the story, but they still could have chosen something better. It seems to me like they want a brothel so they can have eye candy for an audience who want to see sex workers, maybe full frontal nudity.

-----

What also gets my attention is that Anne and Christopher Rice have not yet posted publicly about it, which leads me to believe that this change wasn’t their choice. They take every chance to brag when they’re proud of something, every chance to crowdsource about casting ideas or which VC books Anne’s fans liked best, etc., and in this case, as of Aug. 31, 2021, (and to be fair, maybe I missed it), I haven’t seen either of them post about this on the official VC FB, Anne Rice’s FB, Annerice.com, Christopher Rice’s FB, or christopherricebooks.com. If it had been their choice, I think they would have gladly trumpeted their credit by now, but maybe they’re waiting to do it in a specific venue. Time will tell.

#vampire chronicles #interview with the vampire #louis de pointe du lac #race #racism #tw race #tw racism #tw sex worker #jurassic park #memeything #ian malcolm #anon #ask #anne rice #christopher rice #long post #iwantmyiwtv has opinions #Jacob Anderson #vc casting

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ripleycano · 4 years ago

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here’s a rant about the birthday boy :)

thank you @foxofthedeep for giving me a starting topic!

(It’s been a while since I’ve finished V3 + I’ve never done in-depth research into his character before today so please forgive any mistakes I might make! Also these rants will probably contain some of my opinions, none of which you are obligated to agree with, of course.)

Section 1: Shuichi

With Shuichi, I’ve noticed that there seem to be people who either adore him and consider him (subjectively) the best protagonist of the three main games or people who think he’s bland and uninteresting.

I think the reason for this is Shuichi being representative of a very specific personality that some identify with, while others might reduce him to just being shy.

The wiki explains that Shuichi’s parents were a famous actor and screenwriter who were constantly on business trips, leaving Shuichi with his uncle + his wife.

As seen in his dynamic with Kaede and the relatives who took him in, Shuichi seems to feel like he owes something to people who display care or affection towards him as a result of the neglect in his upbringing.

The way Shuichi explains stories and traits about himself heavily implies that low self confidence and the tendency to feel obligated to express his gratitude is in his nature; this, of course, led to him helping out his uncle and eventually gaining the title of Ultimate Detective.

Shuichi never held himself in high regard, which only worsened through the very case that ended up giving him his title. The moral conflict between arresting a murderer being the right choice and considering their motive for doing so ended up scarring both his confidence as a detective and belief in his choices; this state is how we first see him at the start of Danganronpa V3.

Here are a few central characters and how they led to Shuichi’s development throughout the game:

Kaede - Speaking in terms of tropes, Kaede was the optimistic, textbook protagonist. Shuichi was quick to warm up to her, and I imagine he admired her confident leadership despite what might lie in the path ahead of the class.

Her blackened case is a parallel to Shuichi’s ‘Ultimate Detective’ case; Shuichi was made aware of her (ultimately justified) motive for killing, yet he was the one to expose her. However, Kaede made a difference that would completely change things for Shuichi. While the last murderer who confronted him was filled with bitter anger and malice towards him, Kaede reassured him that he had made the right choice- even going as far as to entrust the future of everyone else to him. What Kaede told him moments before her death were, in a way, what properly assigned him the role of the protagonist and some trust in himself.

Kaito - If Kaede triggered Shuichi’s trust in himself, Kaito was the one who made him aware that getting through life can be a team effort. Personally, I like Kaito- but I completely understand where people are coming from when they find his blind faith in the people he takes a liking to irritating.

Thanks to Kaito’s comically exaggerated trusting hero archetype, however, Shuichi starts to depend on others to participate and fend for themselves in trials (instead of overthinking everything by himself) and get some relief from the Protagonist Pressure™ through Kaito’s “sidekick” persona.

Kokichi - Oh boy. Funnily enough, a lot of lessons to be learned from Kokichi’s character seems to go against what Shuichi gathers from Kaede. Kaede urges him to push for the truth as a detective, while Kokichi insists that lies are of value. These contrasts can also be seen in scenes like the first Death Road Of Despair; Kaede is an idealistic optimist but Kokichi’s talent (despite the oddly phrased name) renders him a better leader in the end. (I think I’ll talk about Kokichi’s talent in a separate post specifically for him at some point!)

Luckily, Shuichi pieces the two together and comes to the conclusion that truth and lies are not polar opposites- they’re often dependent on each other. In my humble opinion, I think what many people found appealing and relatable in Shuichi’s character was watching him grow into a protagonist rather than starting out as one. (Makoto started out with an optimistic and resilient personality, Hajime had some authority among his classmates)

In conclusion: Not only are Shuichi and the player put into a situation where they have to grow together as the game progresses, but (in general) he also has a subtle and likable personality that isn’t too ‘in-your-face’.

If you’re someone who deeply identifies with his character, you most likely found comfort in seeing someone who went from being plagued by doubt, self-deprecation, and loneliness mistaken for independence to a person who learns about love with no strings attached through their found family.

Bonus: The ideal dynamic of Saiouma? Saiouma is... interesting, because it’s a comfort pairing for many but also the scum of the earth to a large part of the fanbase. As with any other pairing in fiction, this is a result of difference in interpreting their interactions.

If you’re asking for my personal thoughts on it, I really enjoy Saiouma! The closest representation of their ideal dynamic would be Kokichi’s FTE’s, since it’s the clearest instance where Shuichi plays the curious detective to Kokichi’s complex and secretive supreme leader facade.

Shuichi tries to understand Kokichi more than anybody else would even attempt to, and I suppose it’s implied that Kokichi found it both amusing and touching (?) judging from the ‘trustworthy’ label next to Shuichi’s photo.

From all this, I guess their ideal dynamic is Shuichi being understanding of Kokichi’s flaws and encouraging him to stop isolating himself + Kokichi having someone to (1) have fun with obviously 🙄 and (2) confide his bottled up issues and trust into.

Man V3′s entire theme is trust huh

(Plus, if we see it as Shuichi representing truth achieved through some lies and Kokichi representing lies that hold some truth, Saiouma is a direct parallel to the game’s big concept of truth and lies! Neat huh)

Anyways. This is terrible and has no clear structure but it’s 1AM so I’m cutting it short. I hope you found it somewhat entertaining!

Please lmk if there are any other characters or things in DR you’d want me to write about :)

#sorry that i only intended to talk for two paragraphs and ended up going off guys #not all of us have the privilege of not being born a nagito kinnie #danganronpa #shuichi saihara #drv3 #danganronpa v3 #ndrv3 #kokichi ouma #saiouma #kaede akamatsu #kaito momota #analysis #requested rant

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byologee · 4 years ago

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an actually practical guide to being premed and getting into med school by someone who did it successfully

Majors and Classes:

Personally I feel you should choose a major that will be complementary to your premed studies-- something STEM or social science based that overlaps with your premed classes and will allow you to take upper level science classes that relate to physiology, disease and illness, pharmacology, etc. HOWEVER do not let this deter you from majoring in a non-bio STEM area like biochem or from pursuing a different science or liberal arts major.

That being said, consider double majoring in Public Health because it is very relevant to premed and going into medicine.

Make sure you take the correct order of bio and chem classes. This is important so that you take classes at the appropriate time when you have the appropriate skill level and so that you do not have any gaps in your premed education or major classes.

Be aware of what upper level bio and chem classes require prereqs that are not a part of your major requirements or premed requirements; for example some upper level bio classes require microbio which is not a premed requirement at all schools NOR always a major requirement. Plan your underclassmen years accordingly to allow you to fit in certain prereqs for upper level classes.

If you plan on taking lower level lab intensive courses, take them as an underclassman-- they will prepare you with basic lab skills you can apply to upper level classes and to irl lab work, plus most of your classmates will be underclassmen. You do not want to take these lower level lab intensive courses as an upperclassman. You will be bored and probably annoyed.

Take an intro level public health class as an underclassmen to see if you are interested in public health; this will also be relevant to your med school apps.

Gen chem 1 and orgo 1 are weedout classes. Many people will switch from premed and/or bio to public health or prePA after taking gen chem 1 and orgo 1. This is normal; don’t be judgemental. If you’re the one switching to public health or prePA, don’t feel bad or ashamed.

Do not take orgo 1 or 2 with super hard progressors. It’s just not worth it. Many people say that harder orgo progressors prepare you better for the MCAT, but this is false as the MCAT does not have a lot of orgo on it. Many people will fail out of orgo even without super hard professors. Set yourself up for success by taking orgo profs with good reputations, not profs with reputations for failing everyone, being purposefully difficult, or just nasty.

If you take a (relatively) “easy” professor for orgo 1, under no circumstances should you take a hard prof for orgo 2. You will suffer.

The best way to study orgo 1 and 2 is to memorize all the reactions. Copy reactions until you have them memorized. Then you can simply apply what you’ve memorized to synthesis reactions. This works for NMR too, just memorize what NMR specs look like and apply.

Always go to TA office hours for gen chem 1, 2 lab and orgo 1, 2 lab. The lab reports are very difficult and the TAs can help you more than professors can. Professors will be mostly absent for labs. TAs will know what’s up.

You do not need to take biochem 2 for the MCAT, biochem 1 will suffice as it generally covers amino acids and proteins and not respiration and metabolism. Most of the biochem on the MCAT is about amino acids and proteins; all metabolism can be self-studied. (This is my opinion to save you time, if your advisors tell you otherwise LISTEN TO THEM and not me).

If you take AP psychology you do not need to take intro psych.

You need to take a sociology course for the MCAT and premed reqs. You should take The Sociology of Deviance if offered at your college as this is more relevant to the MCAT than intro socy.

If you have to take a professional writing class for Gen Eds, try to take a science writing or health professions writing course as these will be relevant to you.

Take stats even if you don’t have to as it is very relevant for understanding papers.

If you switch to another pre-health path like prePA or prepharm you will generally have to take different prereqs. Clear this with your advisors and come up with a plan.

Med schools like to see a diversity in courses and not just science courses, so you need to take at least 8 humanities credit hours. Diversify your college education and take interesting and relevant humanities courses; this will also help with CARS on the MCAT.

Research

Many medical schools want you to have research experience. You can do clinical research or bench research.

You should start research early, either 2nd semester freshman year or summer before sophomore year.

The best advice is to research professors and PIs in the BSCI and public health departments and email ones you are interested in about working in their lab. You can do this before 2nd semester freshman year or during that semester. Email example: Hi Dr. X, I am an undergraduate freshman at UMD and am looking for research opportunities in X field. I discovered your lab and read your paper, “X,” and am very interested in this subject! Elaborate on what interested you I was wondering if there are any open positions in your lab for an undergraduate researcher. I have taken X, X, X, courses. I would be interested in working in your lab for 2 years. Please let me know if you have any openings! Best, X

PIs generally look for undergrads to commit to 2 years of research, but you can quit earlier if you feel like it. This is also why you should do research earlier-- that way you are not cramming it in during your upperclassman years.

The goal is to get some abstracts, posters, presentations, and maybe a pub out of it, but these things aren’t absolutely necessary.

Clinical Experience

Med schools like to see 10 months of continuous clinical experience, which translates to about 200 hours. However, this number is too low and to be really competitive for med school apps you should aim for 1000 hours if not more.

The best way to gain clinical experience is to work part time as a scribe, CNA, MA, or tech. You can take CNA and MA courses the summer before sophomore or junior year and apply to positions online. CNA/MA gives you a lot of experience working with patients. Scribing gives you a lot of experience working with doctors and seeing what they do. It’s best to start clinical experience sophomore year or junior year so you can gain enough hours prior to applying.

You should also have clinical volunteering hours which you can get by volunteering at hospitals such as Children’s or Shady Grove or any other local hospital. Other clinics also accept volunteers, you just have to look around. Check your health professions advising office (hereon abbreviated as HPAO) for their recommendations and job listings if available.

You can also shadow doctors. Your HPAO may have a continuously updating list of physicians in your area who are available to shadow. You can also genuinely just email local providers. Note that you will need to shadow a DO if applying DO.

Check your HPAO listserv for job openings and clinical volunteering opportunities.

You can find jobs by googling “CNA job near me” or “scribe job near me” and browsing postings on Indeed and other job sites, or alternatively postings on hospital sites.

Community Service

Med schools like to see 10-12 months of continuous community service, or around 200 hours. This is too low, and you should aim for around 600 to be a competitive applicant.

Join school listservs and look for volunteer postings. Go to your school’s First Look Fair or college organization fair (usually held at the beginning of each semester) and sign up for emails from clubs that do volunteering or other various organizations. There are many organizations on campus that do volunteering and service.

Ideally you want to work with marginalized communities off campus. This sounds shitty but you want to work with communities who need it. You should also aim for a sustained service opportunity, not a once a month thing but a weekly, continuous experience. Volunteering through clubs and societies like the women’s premed organization are not valid experiences.

Google local homeless shelters, women’s shelters, STD testing clinics, and food banks-- these are all really good places to volunteer at. You can also volunteer at crisis hotlines.

You can also utilize clinical experience for community service, so volunteering at a hospital, clinic, urgent care, etc. But you also need non-clinical community service, so make sure to prioritize both.

Consistency is key. Doing an experience for a longer period of time (ex. 4 hours every week for 10 months- year) is very valuable. Even doing an hour of volunteering at the same place every week for two years is great. Building relationships, gaining experience, understanding consistency-- med schools value this. Long term experience is very important.

Extracurriculars

You should also be involved in extraneous, non-community service based organizations and extracurriculars. It’s ok if these organizations include some aspect of community service. This can also include paid-positions that are not clinical.

Examples include campus ministries, sports, dance, art clubs, music/choir, social, restorative, and environmental justice organizations, interest groups, tutoring, co-ed frats, etc.

Joining societies, like the American Women’s Medical Association or your college’s namesake Pre-Med Society is a great way to do extracurriculars, build your resume, and get leadership experience. You can also join major-specific societies.

Check with your HPAO for a list of pre-health societies you can join. Your college will also have a website or list of clubs and orgs you can investigate.

Med schools like to see that you are well-rounded, so having a variety of experiences is important.

Advising

It is extremely important that you build a relationship with your advisors. It is very important that you outline all the classes you want to take with them and when AND that you meet with them every semester. Discuss your plans with them, ask questions, ask for suggestions and tips. If you make any major or minor changes you need to speak with them too. They are a resource; use them.

You will also need to build a relationship with your pre-med advisors at your HPAO. You may need to do an intro workshop to be able to meet with an advisor at your HPAO.

Meet with an HPAO advisor every semester to outline your courseload, volunteering, clinical work, extracurriculars, and application plan. Your HPAO advisor will help you craft a narrative for med school apps and can help advise you with regards to coursework and what opportunities to pursue. They can help you decide when to take the MCAT, when to apply, devise a school list, etc. so it’s best to start meeting with them early. The better your relationship with your HPAO advisor, the stronger the recommendation letter you’ll get from them.

If your grades drop you NEED to speak with an HPAO advisor. You should be checking in with them every semester to go over your grades and course history and make sure you are on the right track to apply. This is really really crucial.

If your HPAO offers workshops for applying to med school, crafting a school list, financing med school, writing a personal statement, etc. then GO TO THEM. Utilize the resources that are available to you.

Make sure you are on your HPAO listserv.

If your HPAO offers peer to peer advising consider using this resource to speak with current college students who are going through the application process.

2 Areas Med Schools Look At: Leadership + Diversity and Inclusion

These are two hot topics med schools care about. Here is how to address them.

Leadership: there are numerous ways to gain leadership experience; getting elected to a leadership position in a club or organization, being a TA or UA, getting a management position at your job, or being any kind of team leader in a community service endeavor. The important thing is that you are able to express what you learned and how you grew or changed from that experience, plus how you will apply what you learned in the future.

Diversity and Inclusion: Hot topics in medicine right now, my advice is to read about diversity and inclusion in medicine and what it means-- read articles, op-eds, peer-reviewed papers, etc. There are a few ways to go about this issue; one is to find out what is unique about you that you can contribute to medicine, the second (and most important) is to work with underserved and marginalized communities. Being able to express in med school apps and interviews that you understand the difficulties faced by marginalized groups and are committed to better health and wellness outcomes is REALLY important. Being able to show awareness about diversity in medicine is so key. To do this, spend time working with the marginalized and underserved through community service and clinical work. Be able to show med schools that you understand and care about diversity and inclusion.

You should be thinking about leadership and diversity/inclusion throughout all four years of undergrad-- how will you incorporate these things into your app?

Letters of Rec

Getting letters of rec (you will need 5-6) is very important. To do this you will need to build relationships with the following…

Professors: You will need recommendations from 2 science professors and 1-2 non-science professors. To get recs you need to go to office hours, ask questions in class and outside of class, email profs questions, stay after class to ask questions, participate, show an interest in what they are teaching. Office hours are important unless the class is small. Build relationships with professors ALL THROUGHOUT undergrad. Go to office hours even if you don’t have questions, especially in junior and senior year. Go and ask them to review prior tests and papers. Ask if you can explain concepts to them to get clarification. Listen to other peoples’ questions, piggyback off them. A prof is not going to write a LOR unless they know you.

Physicians: You need to have clinical experience to get an MD LOR. And you NEED an MD or DO LOR. Get the clinical experience, then ask whatever physician you worked with the most for an LOR. Many will say you do not need a DO LOR to apply to DO schools; I cannot advocate for this as I was told by my premed advisor that I needed one. Be safe and get one if you plan to apply DO.

Other: If there is anyone else who knows you well and can write a strong LOR, ask them. Your boss, manager, volunteering organizer, team leader, club sponsor-- whomever.

Committee Letter (CL): Many med schools require these. Your college probably has a unique CL process. Go to workshops, research, and ask your advisors how this process works. Maintain a relationship with your premed advisors to obtain a good CL letter.

Building a Narrative

This is talked about a lot junior and senior year when you are applying, but it’s important to think about building your narrative all four years of undergrad.

What this means is that you want to center your application around a theme or common experiences. You want to build a cohesive resume of common volunteering, clinical, and extracurricular experiences that complement each other. You should be able to summarize all of your experiences and draw a narrative about you based on what you have done.

For example, my narrative centered around marginalized and underserved communities as well as social and restorative justice. I used my volunteering experience with marginalized, underserved kids and my experience working with traditionally underserved patients to explain why I want to be a physician, what my medical vision and mission is, and what I have learned about medicine. Because I am interested in family medicine I was able to tie my experience working with the underserved into my goal of improving community health and welfare among marginalized groups. I also discussed how my passion for social and restorative justice ties into my clinical experiences and how I plan to integrate this passion into my practice of medicine.

One of my friends centered her narrative around being a Spanish-speaking person of color AND the descendent of physicians and how this has shaped many of her experiences in medicine and healthcare.

You don’t have to plan out your experiences to conform to a pre-chosen narrative. You do have to be able to draw common themes and lessons from your experiences, however.

MCAT

Talk to your premed advisor about when to take the MCAT and what classes you need to take prior to taking the MCAT. Ideally you want to take biochem 1, physics 2, and sociology of deviance before taking the mcat along with all other prereqs.

You also want to take the MCAT before applying (ideally) so that you can craft an appropriate school list. Your MCAT will give you a boundary for which schools you can apply to. Think of the MCAT as a checkpoint you must pass to apply to certain med schools.

Many people start content review six months before their test. Some start 2-3 months prior. Do what you think is comfortable.

You can use books or purchase review courses (Kaplan, Princeton Review) or use free online review content (Khan Academy).

Practicing how to take the test is more important than content review. What that means is that doing practice tests will help you more than reviewing content. Take as many practice tests as you can (AAMC makes their own).

Do a practice test one day, review what you got wrong the next day. Repeat this enough times and you will do well on the MCAT (511+).

Don’t anticipate retaking the MCAT. But don’t exclude it as a possibility either, so plan when you take the MCAT accordingly.

General Advice:

ALWAYS listen to your premed advisors. Do not elevate advice given by random strangers (including me) on the internet above advice given by your advisors. They know you. They know your history, your transcript, your personality. Us internet people do not. Trust your advisors. They know what they are doing.

Take everything said on the internet by supposed med school app experts, med students, doctors, premeds, SDN mods and commenters, premed redditors, and other random internet people with a BIG grain of salt. We don’t always know what we are talking about.

Limit the amount of time spent on SDN and premed reddit as well as other premed online forums. It can get unhealthy real fast.

You don’t have to study all the time. It’s ok to take breaks and have fun.

Don’t be afraid to reach out and get help or ask questions. Everyone else is struggling too. Your professors want you to do well.

Do non-science related things. Give your mind a break and diversify your experience.

Failing a test is not the end of the world. Many people fail tests and classes. You won’t be alone. Always remember that the curve exists.

If you are having a problem, talk to your professors and TAs. They are there to help.

Study with people. Quiz each other. Make study guides and ask each other questions. Help each other out.

Utilize campus resources- tutoring, study groups, yoga classes, conferences and seminars, counseling, etc.

Buy the MSAR when you start building your school list. It will make comparing schools so much easier.

A B or even a C is not going to ruin your chance of getting into medical school. People get in to med schools with 3.1 GPAs. You will be ok if you fail one test, have a few Cs or Bs, withdraw from a class, etc.

Getting into med school is more about fit than anything else. It’s not about how smart you are or how good your GPA or MCAT is. Everyone has a 4.0 Everyone has a 528. What matters is fit-- who you are, what you believe, what your values are, what your aspirations are-- and how you can demonstrate these things through your application, interview, and overall experiences. Remember that top tier schools are research-oriented (Einstein, Baylor, Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Stanford, NYU, Duke, Mayo, UChicago, Mt Sinai) whereas other lower tier will be more community focused.

ALL med schools (excluding caribbean med schools and a few DO schools, looking at you DMUCOM and LECOM) are valid. All med schools are good med schools. Med school is med school is med school. You will come out with an MD or DO and you will get into residency.

Always apply DO. Just do it. DO is great, DO is a viable option and good opportunity. Do it. Do not exclude it.

Links and other Resources:

AAMC: MD applicants, helpful resources in general https://students-residents.aamc.org/preparing-medical-school/preparing-medical-school

AACOM: DO applicants https://www.aacom.org/become-a-doctor/how-to-apply-to-osteopathic-medical-college

MSAR: handbook to med schools (MD) https://students-residents.aamc.org/medical-school-admission-requirements/medical-school-admission-requirements-applicants

AAMC’s how to apply to med school https://students-residents.aamc.org/applying-medical-school/applying-medical-school

AAMC’s FAQ and tips to creating a good app: https://students-residents.aamc.org/ask-experts/ask-experts-create-winning-application

Why Diversity Matters in Healthcare https://explorehealthcareers.org/career-explorer/diversity-matters-health-care/

#premed #prehealth #studyblr #med school #mcat #my posts #mine

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makeste · 4 years ago

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my long boring post about chapter 293 and Kacchan’s hero name

lmao I think that’s all of them. anyways, so I said I was gonna do a post on this, and so here goes.

first off, I just want to say that people are allowed to not like the name! it’s a completely subjective thing, there’s no right or wrong “it’s good” or “it’s bad.” or rather, there is a right or wrong, and it’s whichever one you think it is. if you think it’s good, you’re right. if you think it’s bad, you’re also right. it’s an opinion, it doesn’t need to be backed up by peer review lol.

that said, here is my own completely subjective opinion: I think “Dynamight” (though please not with the capital “m”, I beg you lol) is a terrific name for him honestly. it’s clever wordplay, it’s a subtle callback/tribute to his favorite hero who is also his inspiration for becoming a hero, and it’s a perfect fit for his chosen aesthetic. it’s honestly great.

and what makes it even better is that at the same time, it is also stupid as fuck lmao. this is a name that encapsulates the duality of man. it’s the perfect metaphor for this boy who think he’s the hottest shit god ever invented, and has no idea that the number of people who take him seriously after interacting with him for more than ten seconds is actually in the single digits. this hero name is the equivalent of an excited puppy ferociously bounding towards a squirrel only to trip over its own feet and fall flat on its face. it thinks it is scary as fuck, and has no idea that 30,000 people on TikTok think it’s the most adorable thing they’ve ever seen. I unabashedly love it, and will also ceaselessly roast the everloving shit out of it without the slightest remorse, just like I roast the beloved boy attached to it. that’s just how it is lol.

so that’s how I feel about the name! however, this next part I need to emphasize: my opinion of the name, and my opinion of whether or not I actually think this will be his name, are two different things. I like the name Dynamight. I really do. and I also think there is next to no chance that this will actually be his hero name.

here’s the thing. this would have been a perfect name for him if it had been his chosen name back in chapter 45 when everyone else picked their aliases. it would have fit in seamlessly with the rest of his class. Red Riot, Chargebolt, Earphone Jack, Sugarman, Uravity; those are all names that stick in your mind and look great on official merch. those are names that sell action figures, but they also do a great job of representing the individuals behind the names. they have personality. and so does “Dynamight”, for sure.

but the thing is, for whatever reason, Horikoshi didn’t have him pick this name back in chapter 45. he went with a running gag instead. “King Explosion Murder”, “Lord Explosion Murder”, and so forth. and in the end, we never got a hero name at all. he could have had him pick Dynamight after we’d had our laughs. hell, he could have used it as an early easter egg hinting at Kacchan’s admiration for All Might, which wouldn’t be officially revealed until the final exam arc about twenty chapters later. “Dynamight” in Japanese is written out in katakana -- ダイナマイト (“dainamaito”). this is the word that’s used in Japan for actual dynamite. there is no inherent indicator that it’s a pun; it just so happens that the “mite” in dynamite is spelled out phonetically in Japanese the exact same way that “might” is. so the pun isn’t obvious unless you know to look for it. Horikoshi could have left us all thinking that “Dynamite” was his name until chapter 62 or thereabouts when he revealed that Katsuki looked up to All Might, at which point Horikoshi could finally reveal the official English spelling and it would be like a second name reveal. which would have been pretty sweet, actually.

but my point being, for some reason he instead chose not to do this. instead he chose to drag it all out for 250 chapters, content to let us all languish. this man had not a shred of mercy for the thousands of Bakugou fans who were all “please, sir, the fic,” before eventually giving up and adopting Ground Zero as the official-unofficial name until we either got a real reveal or died of old age. he dragged it out, and kept it as a gag, and eventually it was just like, fine, whatever.

and then this happened.

and it changed everything.

because you see, all of a sudden “Bakugou’s Hero Name” wasn’t just a running joke gag plot anymore. in the span of three sentences, Horikoshi changed the entire meaning of it. “your hero name represents your desires. the embodiment of how you wish to be. your ideal self.”

just like that, the whole mystery of “what will Bakugou’s hero name be” goes from being a funny little ongoing thing to an existential question, with the implication being that the choice he finally makes, whatever it may be, will in essence reveal the very core of his character. “your ideal self.” in other words this will really be almost the pinnacle of his entire character arc. his hero name, when he finally picks it, will show us just how far he’s come. it will show us his answer to “what kind of person do you want to be.”

that is an insane amount of meaning to suddenly dump onto something that up until this point had just been a funny little running gag. “lol Bakugou loves murder and death.” “lol at this rate Bakugou will graduate while still not having an actual hero name.” from that, to suddenly out of the blue, “Bakugou’s hero name will show us who he is as a person.” like, holy shit though. and mind you, this isn’t something that’s been done for any other character. this is very Bakugou-specific. all this build-up and significance has been ascribed to his hero name specifically. at this point his name is basically its own fucking plot. it’s literally its own individual little arc. all of that build-up. all of that meaning and importance given to it.

and then Horikoshi goes and gives us this.

so. like... okay, I guess??

like, just some quick things of note here though:

he is still doing the whole “explosive destruction murder” thing on top of the “Dynamight” part. indicating that there has not been the slightest bit of thoughtful consideration actually given on his part. literally the one thing that everyone and their mom was trying to explain to him not to do, and all of it went in one ear and out the other. which is fine!! he is adorable here and I want to ruffle his hair, honestly. but it’s clear to me that he still hasn’t grasped what Jeanist was trying to explain to him before, if this is really his answer to “what would you consider to be your ideal self” lol.

the name is INSTANTLY panned by every single person in the surrounding vicinity, villains included. hell, Mirio might as well have stabbed him all over again. obviously this is intentionally being used as a lighthearted moment to briefly give the audience a breather before we wade back into the Todoroki drama; but at the same time it indicates that this name isn’t exactly going to be taken seriously by anyone who hears it in-universe. they are literally wincing upon hearing it skjlklhkgf.

lastly, none of the people closest to him -- Deku, All Might, Kirishima, or Shouto -- are even there to hear it. all of that build-up, all of that “Kacchan’s hero name will show us how far he’s come in his character development”, and then when it finally happens, the people who have had the most impact aren’t even there to partake in the moment. Shouto and Deku are busy dealing with an entirely separate plot and trying very hard not to be set on fire while Kacchan is out here providing comic relief.

because that’s really what this is, though. this is a joke. like, I don’t mean that in a pejorative sense; I mean that it is literally a joke. and so what you’re telling me is, if this really is his hero name, we waited 250 chapters and Horikoshi built up an entire character arc around it, only to have the end result be a joke panel that in the end was arguably not even the biggest thing that happened in the chapter.

like, idk, maybe there’ll be a flashback about it later after all’s said and done which will imbue it with more meaning as some have suggested. maybe Horikoshi will explain how it’s a childhood throwback name that Deku once picked for him, like that theory that’s been making the rounds. I’m not saying it won’t be possible to build on this after the fact. but it will be after the fact, all the same. as far as the initial reveal goes... this is it. the epitome of anticlimactic. a brief joke reveal mid-fight where everyone immediately goes “are you fucking serious” and he’s all “I WAS FUCKING SERIOUS” and falls down out of comedy lmao.

and so, to wrap this post up finally, basically the way I see it is that there are two possibilities here. either (1) I have been way overthinking this from day one and it was never really that deep and Horikoshi thought this would be an appropriate and funny conclusion to a plotline which in his mind was always meant to be mostly lighthearted, with the Jeanist stuff mostly just thrown in there to push Bakugou into picking an at least halfway-decent name in spite of himself.

or, (2) this isn’t going to be his final hero name either. this is instead the last hurrah of the “Lord Explosion Murder” part of that plotline, and after he’s laughed out of the room yet again he will mope and cross out this one as well, and Horikoshi will sit on it for another 500 chapters until he finally reveals it at the very fucking end of the series. like at this point I wouldn’t put it past him to wait until the very last page. I s2g, this man. but the flipside of it is that when that moment finally does happen, I fully believe it will be a moment that actually feels earned. it will feel right. it will feel like the moment we spent all that time waiting for. or at least that’s what I hope.

so anyway, those are my thoughts on it! tl;dr, while I like Dynamight as a hero name in and of itself, I don’t think it’s going to be endgame, mostly because nothing about that reveal moment actually felt right to me. and of course, it’s very possible that I’m completely wrong about this; it wouldn’t be the first time (Kacchan’s quirk says hello). but on the other hand fandom isn’t totally batting a thousand either (Ground Zero says what up), so hey. we’ll see!

#bakugou katsuki #dynamight #bnha 293 #bnha meta #bakugou meta #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha #asks #anon asks

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murasaki-murasame · 3 years ago

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Thoughts on Higurashi Sotsu Ep15 [FINALE]

For better or worse I think Ryukishi achieved exactly what he set out to do with this series, and I guess everyone’s just gonna be forced to reckon with how they feel about his own perspective on this franchise versus how they feel about it, lol.

Anyway, thoughts under the cut, plus Umineko spoilers.

I’m not entirely sure where to even start with this, but I guess the TL;DR is that I honestly think Gou/Sotsu was ultimately just fine despite it’s issues, and part me of can’t help but be like ‘I told you so, lol’ about how this really did end with this episode, and also committed pretty hard to the Umineko prequel elements.

It’s not like all of my theories were correct in the end, but I at least think I was pretty spot on in my prediction last week that this would end with the miracle of them side-stepping the sword issue entirely and choosing the third option of forgiveness and reconciliation. And also them ending it with an epilogue where we go back to the Matsuribayashi timeline and get a happy ending for Rika and Satoko that provides a ‘non-magical interpretation’ for the story while also giving us an idea of how Bern and Lambda formally split off into their own entities and start the relationship we see in Umineko.

I didn’t quite expect them to go down the route of having them agree to just spend a few years apart and accept that they don’t need to literally always be together, but I think that was a really good way to wrap things up between them. It’s pretty much the healthiest compromise to their conflict that doesn’t come across like it completely invalidates one of their dreams. I get why it feels too anti-climactic and convenient for people, but when you pull at that thread you get into wider topics of what the entire story is about, since this was always going to end with Satoko being redeemed and forgiven. People might not have taken him seriously, but Ryukishi was 100% genuine about his regrets about Matsuribayashi’s ending, and how part of why he came up with this new story was to create a better ending, while also doing more with Satoko as a character.

Basically I think a lot of the fandom negativity towards this boils down to people fundamentally disagreeing with the idea that Matsuribayashi was even ‘flawed’ in this sort of way to begin with, or that Satoko was badly written. It’s valid to disagree on this stuff, but at the very least we all have to grapple with how Ryukishi has his own specific relationship with this series.

People like to focus on how he’s a troll who likes to mess with people, but I feel like this is a bit of a wake-up call for people about how he’s actually extremely sincere, almost to a fault, and he likes to use his stories as a vehicle for expressing his personal philosophies and ideals.

This whole story is also a good example of how he just sees this as ultimately being a fictional story about fictional characters, and not literally a matter of real people who need to be sentenced for their crimes or whatever. As early as the original VN he was almost being outright preachy about the message that nobody is irredeemable, and that philosophy carries through to this. But to be more specific, nobody *in this story* is irredeemable. He’s pretty open about the fact that in practice you can’t apply this sort of ideal to real life, but fictional stories are their own separate matter.

I think this whole issue of how he views this as a story first and foremost is also the central reason why this ended in a way that comes across as Satoko being let off too easy for her crimes. One way or another, Ryukishi’s made it clear that he sees this as being no different to how other characters had arcs where they committed crimes but still got forgiven, or how Takano is basically a straight up war criminal who also got forgiven for her crimes.

Anyway, this episode at least committed to the Umineko stuff, so that was satisfying. Sure there’s people that still want to deny it, but at this point I think a lot of people are just being stubborn, so it’s not like anything would have really convinced them, lol. I’m also genuinely not sure what people even would have expected them to do beyond what we saw her, aside from having the two of them literally put on their gothic lolita outfits and turn to the camera and go ‘we are literally Bernkastel and Lambdadelta from the video game series Umineko When They Cry’. I almost feel like there’s some kind of misunderstanding from people who aren’t familiar with Umineko when it comes to the idea of what it even means for this to be ‘an Umineko prequel’, or ‘a Bern/Lambda origin story’. I mean, this is quite literally exactly what I expected and hoped for in that regard. It’s not like I was expecting them to incorporate anything related to, like, Beatrice or the Ushiromiya family.

I think this is also one of those things where you just have to decide for yourself whether or not you want to earnestly engage with the story that’s being told, or if you want to assume that there’s some level of malice or trickery going on.

To be honest, I wasn’t expecting them to literally have Rika and Satoko recite part of Bern and Lambda’s final conversation with each other word for word, lmao. Combined with the scene at the end where ‘Witch Satoko’ talks to herself about how she’s going to give her body back to Satoko while she goes chasing after Rika, it was literally just the exact origin story of their relationship as it’s depicted in Umineko.

I still feel like this would all only really be ‘worth it’ if we actually get something like a full on anime remake for Umineko, but at this point I can’t help but feel satisfied with this part of it all.

It’s not like I think Gou/Sotsu as a whole is perfect or anything, though. I don’t hate it as much as basically everyone else does, but I think Ryukishi’s the sort of VN writer who really struggles with the shift to writing for an anime. I think a big part of the frustration people have is just from how this is formatted as a weekly anime series spread across basically an entire year, instead of being something like a stand-alone VN chapter that you can read at whatever pace you want, even if it ultimately takes the same amount of time to read as it would to watch all of Gou/Sotsu.

There’s also the whole issue of this being a sort-of-remake, which snowballed into a whole list of structural problems. They absolutely tried too hard to have their cake and eat it too, and they should have just committed to it being made for old fans only, instead of trying to sincerely incorporate elements from the VN that old fans don’t care about anymore because they’ve gone over it already.

And as I’ve said several times before, it was a major issue for them to decide to put Nekodamashi in the middle of Gou and then spend like 20 episodes on flashback answer arcs until finally getting back to that cliffhanger. I’ve been waiting until this all ended to decide exactly how I feel about that, and now that it’s all over I still think it was a really bad idea. I don’t think it was an issue for them to reveal that Satoko’s the culprit that early, but having the gun cliffhanger specifically happen that early just gave people misguided expectations and tainted the answer arcs because people were just impatient to get back to the cliffhanger. And then the cliffhanger itself ended up being somewhat anti-climactic, which is what I’d been fearing would happen. It would have worked fine if they shuffled it around so that the cliffhanger happened right before Kagurashi and was followed up in the very next episode, or if this was a VN where you could binge your way through the flashback stuff, but spending like half of an entire real-life year to get back to that point only to have the resolution be ‘Satoko just shoots Rika and the death loops keep going’ just didn’t really work properly.

I’m a lot more generous towards the Akashi arcs than most people are, since I think they really over-estimate how much re-used content there is there, but they still suffer from the central issue of the show trying to be accessible for new fans. It could have been heavily condensed otherwise, without losing anything in terms of Satoko’s whole character arc.

On the other hand I think the first half of Kagurashi was awful specifically because it highlighted how bad of an idea it was to put Nekodamashi so early in the story. They still ended up having to go back to that arc and repeat it anyway, in the most 1:1 recap-y way in the whole show, but that wouldn’t have even been an issue in the first place if that was instead the first time that arc happened in the show.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I would rearrange the story to make it flow better while still following Ryukishi’s intentions, and I think they could have condensed it into a 2-cour season with this sort of structure if they did something like this:

-First arc where Rika gets thrown back into the loop and quickly figures out that somebody intentionally caused this to happen, and it’s not Takano because at least in this idea of mine she’d try and investigate her only to find out that this version of Takano regrets everything and is planning to flee the village with Tomitake.

Basically I think this could tie into the idea of Satoko initially wanting to just concoct an idea world for Rika so that she won’t want to leave this time, but sort of like what I think happens in Saikoroshi, Rika would still reject it, and this time around there’d be the additional layer of her knowing that somebody did this to her for an unknown reason. Maybe they could even initially market it as a new adaptation or a remake of Saikoroshi, and then reveal that it’s a sequel, to keep that whole element to the series. Either way I think this would end with everything going to shit when Rika rejects that fragment and wants to go back to St. Lucia’s, and Satoko basically snaps and kills her, and that way the audience can find out about her being the culprit without Rika finding out about it yet.

Maybe there could even be some dramatic irony where Rika’s attempts to meddle with certain ‘trigger events’, and her displaying her looper side, inadvertently triggers people around her to get paranoid, and the whole fragment would start to spiral into tragedy from there. I think they could at least use the whole conflict in Tatariakashi about Teppei actually being good this time as a starting point for that sorta thing.

-Second arc, rounding out the first cour, which is basically just Satokowashi. I don’t think there’s much that you’d need to change here, but like I said above I like the idea of her initially trying to just invent a perfect world for Rika and her to live in, instead of jumping straight to murder. But maybe instead of her literally just watching Rika’s loops, she could instead just be stuck using her looping powers to try and figure out how to create that ‘perfect world’ in the first place, by personally investigating all of the different tragedies and how to prevent them.

-Staring the second cour, a third arc where we basically just get to see those loops Satoko goes through, and her whole process of solving the tragedies and ‘purifying’ characters like Teppei and Takano, until we eventually see her perspective on the first arc, and how she reacts to Rika ultimately rejecting the world she tried to make for her.

-A fourth and final arc which is basically just Nekodamashi + Kagurashi, where she just totally snaps and tries to just torture Rika into never wanting to leave the village again, and eventually Satoko gets exposed and they have their direct confrontation with each other.

With that sorta story structure, you’d keep all the relevant bits of Gou/Sotsu as it is now, while being more focused on Rika and Satoko instead of doing kinda half-assed reruns of the Rena and Shion arcs. It’d also push the big cliffhanger between them until near the end of the show, while still revealing to the audience relatively early on that Satoko’s the culprit.

I’d also like them to do more with Satoshi and Shion, so maybe like with how Teppei gets redeemed and Satoko almost gets to have a happy life with him in Tatariakashi, the central question arc of this hypothetical story could also involve Satoko making sure that Satoshi wakes up from his coma, and Shion also gets to have a good relationship with all of them. You could probably do something interesting with the idea of Satoshi and Shion being in the camp of not trusting Teppei and his whole redemption arc.

Honestly I could spend a long time talking about how I would have done things differently, lol. For one thing, I think the Akashi arcs would have been much better if they just changed it so that Satoko used psychological tactics to make people paranoid, and we completely cut out the whole syringe plot device. I get how it fits with Satoko’s whole certainty gimmick, but it made those arcs way too predictable. Even if we knew the outcome, it’d at least be entertaining to see exactly how Satoko might go out of her way to set up the different tragedies. We kinda got glimpses of that sorta plot point in Wataakashi when things seemed to go outside of her control, but they didn’t really do much with it.

Anyway, this is a whole lot of words to say that I think that in spite of the serious structural issues going on, I think Gou/Sotsu as a whole is fine, and was at least working with a lot of perfectly good ideas that could have been executed much better.

Also, on a side note, that one scene during their fist-fight at the start where the art-style changes a bit was kinda weird, but I really liked how it looked, and part of me almost wishes the whole show looked like that, lol. I like Akio Watanabe’s character designs, but I feel like that sort of stylized, almost TWEWY-ish art style would have been really fitting for this series, especially in the horror/action parts.

Oh, and the new rendition of You was so good it almost felt emotionally manipulative, lol.

#murasaki rambles #higurashi #higurashi sotsu #this got kinda long but I still feel like there's so much more I could say about this if I wanted to

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curioussubjects · 4 years ago

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come be a season 12 truther with me; or what if dean and cas got together offscreen

Originally, I wrote this post to celebrate “Galaxy Brain” airing as Berens & Glynn gave us “The Future.” It’s been a while since that episode aired, and some things have changed about this meta. As such, there are multiple versions of this post floating around, so make sure to go back to the source for the most up to date version. For all intents and purposes, this post functions as a meta manifesto not unlike shipping manifestos from days of LJ past. In keeping with that tradition, this post is a close reading of Dabb Era Destiel in which I argue that by using narrative gaps, queer coding, and romance tropes, Dean and Cas are shown to be in an established relationship. Although beyond the scope of this post, it’s worth pointing out that keeping Destiel mostly off screen was a way for the creatives to bypass network censorship while still remaining true to the characters.

This post is divided into three sections. Section I focuses on giving an overview of why earlier seasons of Supernatural aren’t as compelling as season 12 as a turning point for Dean and Cas’s relationship. That said, special consideration is given to 09.06 “Heaven Can’t Wait” as a potential rest stop in our journey due to it’s significantly placed narrative gap as well as themes in the episode. However, this post isn’t going to examine season 9 trutherism in depth, though it does coexist with and allow for it. Section II analyses season 12 and proposes a timeline and justification for the shifting Destiel dynamic. Finally, Section III will offer an analysis of how Dean and Cas’s relationship has changed dramatically from previous seasons in a way that is most like the shift from a “will they or won’t they” pairing to an established one.

Before I move to Section I, I’d like to note something this post takes for granted: Dean and Cas are the main romantic subplot of Supernatural, and, in fact, their relationship is elevated to main plot for both characters in season 15. This post won’t argue about the canonicity of Dean and Cas’s feelings for each other, therefore, and so won’t spend time looking at many Destiel defining moments. I’d also like to make clear that this post also takes for granted that Destiel is being intentionally developed by the writers starting with Carver’s Era, and more so in Dabb’s.

I. Why Seasons 4 through 11 May Not be It

The tl;dr. here is that while there are many moments throughout these seasons that Dean and Cas could potentially get together, none of those moments are ideal for a bunch of reasons that can be summed up as really bad timing. I also think the narrative is actively pushing them towards a moment that works. We get plenty of stepping stones, especially once we hit seasons 8 through 11 (and 11 most of all).

Seasons 4 & 5:

I know there’s been a lot of get together fics over the years set in this time period, but I just don’t see it. Do I see them being intrigued and drawn to each other? Yes. Do I think either Cas or Dean would act on it? Nope. I’m not arguing anything re: Dean’s feelings, but with everything going at the time I find it hard to believe he’d pursue anything with his angel friend. Most importantly here, though, is that during this time Cas was still very alien and other. There was too much angel in him, and while he obviously came to care about Dean (and Sam) very much, I just can’t see him navigating the realm of human relationships. That said, seeing human!Cas in “The End” is the first we see of potential developments for how Cas could behave without his angelness interfering. Being human changes Cas a lot, beyond even his experience existing among humans, though that of course matters too. This development will be important later /wink.

Seasons 6 & 7:

Before anything else let me just recognize that if we could see some sexual tension in seasons 4 & 5, these two seasons come with our first taste of romantic tension. The pining! Also note the difference between season 4 Cas and season 6 Cas in terms of behaviour. He is much less the angel we saw in that barn in “Lazarus Rising.” In season 6, we have a Cas making misguided decisions guided entirely by his emotions – namely, not wanting to involve Dean with the war in heaven – which is peak human, honestly. Put a pin on how sad Dean is in both seasons with Cas’s absence. Finally, put a pin on this being our first moment of Cas doing things on his own to spare Dean and it not ending well (soulless!Sam, Cas “dying” after Leviathan) because this is *the* hurdle in their relationship (along with Dean’s lashing out and self-worth issues). With all this said, the marked distance between Dean and Cas in these seasons negates the possibility of them entering into any kind of relationship. Much like seasons 4 and 5, there’s too much going on.

Season 8:

Ah, yes, the summer of purgatory. If you thought we had pining before…! I think we’re all very clear on season 8 being a turning point for the show, not only because new showrunner, but we also get the bunker. TFW now has an HQ, which pretty soon becomes home. Yes, Baby will always be home, but the bunker becomes the *unmovable* safe haven that Baby couldn’t be. The bunker is a place to coalesce, and for all the amazing things Baby is, she is not that. The acquisition of the bunker marks a shift in the psychology of the show: with the stable home space we can start to imagine domesticity, a place to come home to, the stuff of ordinary living. Most of all, the bunker is emblematic of security, of safety –keep this in mind, as we go forward.

This season also continues to see Cas go down the path of independently solving his problems instead of asking for help from Sam and Dean (his family in a way heaven never was) – note that the better together issue is at play in different ways with Sam and Dean also, but I digress. I also want to point out disastrous instance #2 of Cas’s insistence on figuring it out on his own: he loses his grace, and the angels fall. As for Dean, season 8’s focus for him has much to do with Sam, and them coming face to face with their issues with codependency, which hit catastrophic levels with the gates of hell and Gadreel plots.

So despite all the deliciously angsty get together purgatory fics and spec, there’s too much distance between Dean and Cas on Cas’s part due to his guilt over betraying the Winchesters in s6 plus slaughtering angels plus unleashing Leviathan. We do see Dean being more emotionally open with Cas and continue to voicing his wish that Cas would just stay with him and Sam, and let them help. It’s clear as day how much Dean cares. The timing is still bad, though.

Before moving on to next season, let’s take a moment to appreciate that this is the season Dean admits being kinda done with one night stands because “always with the adios.” Remember the bunker as a sign of stability? Yeah. I wouldn’t say Dean is craving a relationship, exactly, but I think we can see that he does want something more (ahem also I’m nodding to Cas refusing to stay put just cause).

Seasons 9 & 10:

The most important thing to happen between this two seasons is Cas’s stint as a human for an extended period of time. There’s been plenty of spec and meta written over the years about the effects of being human on Cas’s grace (a proto-soul now maybe?). What we can say for sure, regardless, is that Cas is much more humanized once he becomes an angel again. The understanding he gets from being human doesn’t go away once he regains his angel powers. You’ll notice that while we still see some of season 4’s characterization, Cas is not the same as he was – he is alien to angels now and is more intelligible to humans. Additionally, in an interesting reversal from previous seasons, we now get to see the depth of Cas’s feelings for Dean (thanks, Metatron) as well as seeing him be more open emotionally, while Dean does most of the pushing away (first because of Gadreel, then because of the Mark of Cain). In short, the timing is still bad as Dean and Cas are largely kept apart both physically and emotionally.

9.06 Heaven Can’t Wait

This episode is my white whale, friends. While I’ve come to fully subscribe to the idea that something did happen between Dean and Cas during the fanfic gap, I don’t actually think it’s feasible that it marked the start of a relationship -- be it sexual or romantic. My reasoning here is quite simple: the timing is bad. Were it not for external events (Cas regaining his Grace and Dean taking on the MoC), the course would have likely differed. Furthermore, Dean’s guilt over making Cas leave the bunker as well as Cas’s own hurt and self-loathing pose a significant and as yet insurmountable obstacle, which is easily seen with how Dean and Cas’s character trajectories go separate ways.

YMMV on what exactly happened between them in that Motel, but something definitely did. Perhaps one day I’ll have a proper s9 trutherism post to link to here for more details (likely won’t be written by me, though).

10.16 Paint It Black

From the point Dean gets the MoC until the end of season 10, anything between him and Cas is quite impossible due to distancing, to say the least. Again, yes, the fic is really good, but alas. One of the reasons I’m bringing up this episode in particular is because of the confession scene. One, it’s a rare bit of explicit emotional honesty from Dean, and two, it tells me that while he and Cas may be well aware of the Thing™ between them, it’s still uncharted waters. It’s scary, and murky, and they’re unsure how to navigated it or if they should even try. Makes sense, too, there’s been A LOT going on since s6. Anyway, he’s the full confession:

You know, the life I live, the work I do…I pretty much just figured that that was all there was to me, you know? Tear around and jam the key in the ignition and haul ass until I ran out of gas. I guess I just thought sooner or later, I’d go out the same way that I live – pedal to the metal, and that would be it. […] Now, um… recent events, uh… make me think I might be closer to that than I really thought. And…I don’t know. I mean, you know, there’s – there’s things, there’s…people, feelings that I-I-I want to experience differently than I have before, or maybe even for the first time. […] Yeah, I’m just starting to think that… maybe there’s more to it all than I thought.

Can I just say, first, that this confession keeps me up at night because we never actually see anything done with it explicitly? I mean, obviously, I think we do in fact see the effects of this confession in the show, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this behemoth, but still, like. Damn. Ok, so, remember when I brought up that thing in season 7 about Dean being kinda done with hook-ups? Here’s where that led us. We’re seeing a Dean here who wants more than what he has convinced himself he gets to have. He wants more than dying bloody. And when he talks about wanting to experience people and feelings differently, well, that says a lot not just on the queer coding front or the romantic front. I mean, jfc, Dean is accepting the idea that he can have more in life than just hunt until he drops, and he’s specifically talking about experiences at the interpersonal level.

Do you ever see a character having an epiphany and find yourself wanting to cry because this is it right here. Dean is just blatantly admitting he wants more and maybe he can make himself be open to that (!!!), which all culminates in season 11, so…

Season 11:

The pining is still here, but it’s worse now since it’s the whole plot? It’s been *checks calendar* 5 years of this. How are any of us still kicking I don’t know. Your slow burns could never. Cool worth noting points: Cas says yes to Lucifer (bad decision #2.5, lots of mitigating effects_I don’t actually hold it against him that much but Dean is another story & not entirely rational at this point); for the first time since the early days, Dean and Cas are on equal grounds: they’ve both fucked up a lot and have hurt each other. The issues this season are outside their dynamic. Amara and Lucifer here serve as externalizing forces for Dean and Cas’s problems: Cas checks out with Lucifer because he thinks it’s the only way he can help, Dean is caught up in the turmoil of Amara, the emblem of absence and avoidance of struggle. We do get something like an affirmation from the two of them to each other via Dean calling Cas his brother (and I want y’all to consider the historical queering of that statement, and Cas’s “I could go with you.” It feels like we’re headed to them being on the same page. By the end of the season, though, it feels like we’re getting a clean slate: Mary is back, nobody died, no end-of-the-world in sight, no interpersonal crisis. We’re also getting a new showrunner, so. No wonder. We’re gearing up for something, but I’m getting ahead of myself. What this season does that is super important is that it sets up the stage for the possibility of an actual relationship between Dean and Cas, something that has, up until this point, been pretty much impossible.

11.04 Baby

Y’all know what I’m about to quote here, right? That conversation between Dean and Sam about having something with someone who understands the life. Here we still have Dean reverting to the idea that it’s impossible, which is a direct contrast to the openness in 10.16. It’s understandable, though, considering there’s been little reason to think anything like that would be possible (see all the mess and poor timing from seasons past). The quote in question, though, marks a continuing development regarding the issues Dean is struggling with this season:

DEAN: Piper? That’s awesome. Heather. One-night wonders, man. Shoot, we’re lucky we still get that at all. SAM: Really? You don’t … Ever want something more? DEAN: I’m sorry, have you met us? We’re batting a whopping zero in domestic life, man. Goose eggs. SAM: You don’t ever think about something? Not marriage or whatever. But … Something? You know, with a hunter? Somebody who understands the life?

We wouldn’t be talking about this stuff all these years after Sam and Dean had a serious relationship if it wasn’t important, right? Also who else do we meet this season? That’s right! Eileen! And doesn’t that hit different with season 15 hindsight? And who does Dean have that understands the life? Whose stories have been intricately connected to his? Right now, this is all conjecture. A pipe dream Sam is revisiting, and Dean is skeptical about. Except, well. Look at what we get in “Into the Mystic” and “The Chitters.”

11.11 Into The Mystic

I’m bringing up this episode as a cross reference to “Paint It Black” as well as to complement the talk from “Baby,” and to show, again, that, for all the closeness between Dean and Cas, there’s still a marked distance they haven’t yet bridged. There’s still truths they haven’t told each other. Thanks Mildred for the delicious exposition:

Darlin’…If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my years on the road, it’s when somebody’s pining for somebody else. […] Oh, don’t try and hide it now. Follow your heart. Remember?

11.19 The Chitters

And here we see some validation to Sam’s imagining of a possible future with someone else. We actually see hunters who not only are married, but they both make it out alive. Jesse and Cesar get their happy ending. They make the dream come true. And the reality of it important not just for Dean to see, but Sam too.

Dean: [with realization] Oh, so … [points back and forth to Jesse and Cesar] Cesar: Yeah. Dean: Okay, that’s… Cesar puts his beer bottle on the table and looks at Dean, while Jesse is being silent. Dean: What’s it like, settling down with a hunter? Cesar: Smelly, dirty. [turns to Jesse] Twice the worrying about getting ganked.

I’d like to point out, too, that the fear of getting ganked is thematic when it comes to the tension between Dean and Cas. More on this when we hit s13.

Alright, now, having said that, let’s take a look at season 12. Bear in mind, this is the official start of Dabb’s era, even if he kinda began taking over in season 11, and the change in vibes is obvious. In fact, 12 jumped out at me as a turning point, in hindsight, after getting smacked by the domesticity of seasons 13 and 14.

II. Why Season 12

[Out of date section. Update coming soon when spoons. After significant debate, I’ve altered the definitive start of Dean and Cas’s friend-with-benefits-with-mutual-pining relationship to between 12.02 and 12.03. I briefly explained why here, and yes it’s a shitpost--still true tho.]

Finally, the promise land, y’all. Getting right to it: what s11 was for Dean in terms of setting up the relationship stage, s12 was for Cas. In its initial beats, any way. That is, until the Kelly debacle, this was the longest Cas has been around the bunker and with the exception of seasons 13 and 14, it’s one of the first times we get to see how Cas might actually fit into the bunker-as-home. Things seem remarkably chill. Of course, we’ll notice that there’s still a lot of baggage hanging around because despite Dean and Cas being in a more stable place, they haven’t actually dealt with their interpersonal problems. I didn’t single out directly this episode, but do keep in mind Cas’s declaration in 12.09 First Blood as far as how much the Winchesters matter to Cas & how we also see Dean and Cas be particularly singled out with them seating together in the backseat of the Impala. What we also see this season is Cas trying to prove he is worthy of this family, his family. He’s not fighting for heaven or to right some grievous wrong (a la s8). No, this season he’s fighting to spare the Winchester, to bring them a win. To bring Dean a win. The major disconnect is that Dean (and Sam & Mary) already sees Cas that way, he doesn’t think Cas has anything to prove. And just maybe, Cas starts believing that too – or, at least, believing it enough.

12.10 Lily Sunders Has Some Regrets

This episode, oh my god, the goodness. In the wake of 12.09 we have Dean and Cas in a tiff because Cas mistake #3 (killing Billie and “cosmic consequences”), this is a pattern. Twice the worry of getting ganked, etc etc. But where this episode really shines is through the contrast between Ishim’s obsession with Lily and Cas & Dean’s mutual affection for each other. Ishim sees no difference here and, to him, Cas’s feelings for Dean are a human weakness. Returning to my point about human!Cas, this episode underscores that Cas’s increasing humanity is what puts him in the place where he can want what Dean wants instead of either being too alien to get it (see s4 & 5) or unable to experience it properly (Ishim).

12.12 Stuck in the Middle (With You)

Cas’s trajectory culminates here with the whole I love you (@ Dean), I love all of you (@ Winchesters). Let’s note too that Cas is dying here, in a way that is much more human than going up in light. This declaration of different types of love is entirely human. It’s also a definitive step wrt to Cas and Dean’s relationship because of what happens in 12.19. This. is. it. Oh, and, of course, let’s not forget to point to Dean’s face when Cas says that “I love you,” and how terrified he is that Cas is dying. Might make one rethink some things, hm?

12.19 The Future

This episode is simply hella suspicious, and all the kudos to Berens and Glynn for writing it. It’ll haunt me forever. Consider watching it again and just questioning everything. So. Weird things:

1. Dean’s reaction to Cas no getting in touch as opposed to Sam’s. Dean is pissed, which is Dean-speak for worried out of his mind. Sam is very worried, too, and puzzled, but he’s mostly expressing his relief that Cas is back. But Cas has gone awol before, but this time Dean is much more worked up about it; Sam takes note of this, too. Now, let’s imagine that maybe the events of 12.12 led to something happening between Dean and Cas. Then Cas decided to leave to find a lead on Kelly, but eventually Cas decides to work with Heaven and goes radio silent. For days. Having taken a chance, and something having happened between them, how would Dean react to Cas just going poof and not contacting him – despite Dean having called Cas multiple times.

2. Cas knows about the Colt. Ok, nothing off there. But when he goes to Dean’s room to talk, right after Dean leaves we see Cas looking around briefly. Like he know Dean would keep it in there. Maybe Cas had looked other places already. Who knows. What we do know is that eventually he does find the Colt not only in Dean’s room, but under Dean’s pillow. Sam didn’t even know the Colt wasn’t in the safe. So how did Cas know?

3.“He came into my room and he played me.” So, this quote right there, makes it seem like some seduction for personal gain, right? But can you see Cas actually doing that if they hadn’t gone there previously? For Dean not to suspect anything and go with it? There’s plenty of plausible deniability here, but the gaps in time in the narrative make me question what is there in those spaces. The scene where Cas tried to give Dean the mixtape back doesn’t read like “playing,” so it’s about a different interaction. Hm. Hmmm.

4. Dean and Cas’s brief conversation in Dean’s room is clearly Dean just wanting Cas to stay, so they can work (and be) together – because they’re better that way. Which, yeah, truth, but also ow.

5.And most importantly: When did Dean give Cas that mixtape??? How did that happen?

Sequence of events: Cas tells Dean he loves him – Dean is clearly shook by it – Dean gives Cas a mixtape (romantic gesture, often a declaration of feelings; in true Dean speak too lolsobs) – Cas goes awol - Dean acts like he got ghosted by his new bf -?????- Cas somehow knows the Colt is under Dean’s pillow – "He went into my room and he played me."

What am I supposed to do with that, hm? Like. Y’all realize they probably had some emotionally constipated getting together moment, right? Something that Dean clearly initially thought meant things were gonna change, now. Something that Cas couldn’t allow to happen until he could give Dean a win. Y’all are seeing this, yeah? I’m not saying they slept together and were full of feelings, except that’s kind of what I’m saying. But YMMV, there are other possibilities beyond sex. The full of feelings isn’t up for debate, though, even if the whole thing is informed by ridiculous amounts of miscommunication.

III. Seasons 13 through 15 As Established Relationship

Regardless of what happened in season 12, exactly, I can’t shake the feeling that something did happen, and something did change. My reasoning here is actually really simple: in comparison to previous seasons, Dean and Cas’s dynamic shifts significantly come season 13. I know some folks have been disappointed with some of season 13 and then season 14 for having dialed back on the destiel side of things. And, hey, maybe there’s truth to that in terms of backstage stuff, but I also want to point out that...well, the dialing back isn’t quite dialing back is it? Let’s look at 13 a little more closely:

Season 13:

So I said the deancas dynamic changed, right? I also think that change caught us unaware because the pivotal turning point that would cue us in never happened on screen as well as being subsumed by Cas’s death and Jack’s birth. But if I ask you about deancas in season 13 what would come to mind? Grief arc? Brokebacknatural? How domestic Dean and Cas are? There’s just something easy about their relationship after Cas returns from the Empty. The tension we’d grown so familiar with over the years is gone. Actually, it feels like we skipped the getting together bit of their relationship and went straight to established relationship and parenting. Some of the most peak married deancas moments we see circulating? Season 13, (and 12.10). It’s a lot, and it’s different, and it’s amazing.

13.01-13.05

Dean’s grief mini-arc. He was acting like a widower. Here’s me vaguely gesturing towards the mapping of Jonh, Mary, Dean, and Sam onto Dean, Cas, Sam, and Jack. And the reunion? I can’t help but be giddy at the song choice: “it’s never too late to start all over again.” To. Start. All. Over. Again. I’m just saying.

13.06 Tombstone & 13.16 Scoobynatural

I’m not going at length about these episodes, I just want to point out that they reveal that Dean and Cas have a whole thing going on off screen: they watch movies together, Cas knows about Dean being an angry sleeper, Cas seems to have been aware of the Dean-cave before Sam was. It’s little things like this that are examples of the narrative gaps surrounding Dean and Cas that have cropped up over the years. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to wonder what else could be hiding there. And when did the movie nights alluded in “Tombstone” happen? Maybe in season 12 when Cas in hanging around the bunker? The same period when Dean and Cas seem to be coalescing into something safer and more stable? Something that we never see come to a head because plot happens and Cas dies? Something that is immediately taken back up once Cas is alive again?

Season 14:

Overall, this season is more of what we got during 13, but it had two high notes I wanted to single out before ending this already too long post.

14.15 Peace of Mind

Look me in the eye and tell me Dean and Cas talking in the kitchen about Jack doesn’t read like husbands talking about their child. Look me in the eye and tell me Cas just texting Dean to gossip about Sam isn’t couple-y as hell.

14.18-14.20

Ah, yes, the divorce arc. Awful. Terrible. The culmination of Dean’s problem in all this: he lashes out, he pushes Cas away, his anger is alienating. Cue all of us suffering. But while Dean is clearly in the wrong in how the deals with his feelings, let’s not pretend some of his anger doesn’t come from a long established, and unaddressed, rift between him and Cas, which had its last traumatic turn when Cas died in s12. Dean isn’t being rational here: he saw Cas doing something on his own, and he saw that his mother is dead. What else could happen? Why won’t Cas just trust they can work as a team? What if Cas died again? And why should Cas put up with Dean’s behavior without knowing the cause? How can any relationship work this way? But notice how caught in the middle Sam was during all this. Notice how Jack is running off and acting out. The whole family is falling apart. Divorce arc, indeed.

Season 15:

But what about what we’re building up in 15? That seems like it could be a getting together plot, too, right? Well, yeah. It could very well be. But I’d argue the tension we’re seeing isn’t a will-they-or-won’t-they because they already have. We’re are watching a getting back together plot! The tension is, instead, will-they-or -won’t-they use their words to talk about the baggage that has kept them from truly being confident about their relationship. That’s the crucial step in their togetherness that they’re still missing, which is also the bedrock of the divorce arc that spanned twelve fucking episodes -- y’all, that’s half a season.

And technically? We’re not even done with yet because Cas never let Dean finish his prayer/confession in purgatory. What’s more, Cas hasn’t grappled with his role in the breakdown of their relationship, either: that he keeps going off on his own and getting hurt (and getting other people hurt), and Dean has to deal with the fallout. The deep emotional understanding, the truly being on the same page is what we’re on the edge of our seats for. We’re waiting to see what else Dean had to say, and what will happen when Cas’s deal with the Empty comes to light.

Finally, could we still have this plot without Dean and Cas having gotten together off screen? Sure, but I think the stakes are higher if they already did have something between them. If they actually have an established romantic relationship going on. Something real and tangible and as of yet much too fragile.

"...you asked what about all this is real. We are."

#destiel #deancas #supernatural #spn #spn meta #this thing is gargantuan yikes #anyway enjoy? let's chat #my writing #this thing is half meta half my adhd unleashed

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