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paradisetemporarilymisplaced · 4 years ago

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So I was being a basic bitch the other day and listening to my true crime podcasts when it occurred to me just how suspicious Nile’s “death” would look to everyone not in the Guard, leading me to a train of thought that, 2200 words later, absolutely got away from me but I can’t let go so I’m inflicting it on all of you!

To set the stage, we know the movie takes place over approximately a week. Here’s what happens to Nile from the military’s point of view:

She dies is very seriously injured

She heals without a scratch

Just before she’s supposed to be shipped out to Germany, she vanishes, leaving two men concussed (and presumably reporting being knocked out by a woman with short hair wearing civilian clothes)

She goes AWOL for several days

They get word from the CIA that she is to be reported killed in action (details unclear)

So, at the beginning of this very weird week, the USMC has to tell Nile’s family of her death critical injury. What her family was told depends on how long she was dead – a Google search tells me that family will be notified in person within 8 hours of a soldier’s death, but we don’t know how long her first death lasted. For an injury, however, they’d get a phone call to notify them and the unit would arrange for them to visit as soon as the soldier is transferred out of a combat zone. Like I remember when I was in high school, a guy from my church who was a Marine was really seriously injured in a helicopter crash in Iraq and from what I could tell, his parents were told immediately and were flown out to Germany to see him, so it stands to reason that Nile’s family would have been informed relatively quickly after her throat was slashed, one way or another.

And then, she goes AWOL. Her family would be notified while the USMC tried to figure out where she went, not least because the military would want to know if she’s contacted them. (And it’s possible that her family may have been on the way to Germany to see her since we know that’s where she was supposed to go!) So for several days:

Nile’s mom and brother have no idea where she is

They know she was seriously injured and most certainly should not have been moving around on her own

They can’t get a hold of her

The military can’t tell them anything

And the next thing they know for sure is that she was “killed in action.” After being injured and vanishing into thin air. And they presumably cannot produce her body or any concrete evidence of her death. In any case, something sketchy is going on, so they’re like. SMELLS LIKE A MILITARY COVERUP.

In a surprise to probably no one, there is a well-documented legacy of mysterious US military deaths, particularly of women of color (TW for sexual assault in these links). The cases of LaVena Johnson and Vanessa Guillenin particular have made national news because of their families’ persistence in seeking justice. Likewise, Nile is a Black woman, and her mom and brother are most certainly hypercognizant of (a) state violence against Black people and (b) these high-profile cases of suspicious military deaths. So her family are seriously side-eyeing the situation, knowing that (a) the military has a serious incentive (and a documented history) of covering up things that make them look bad and (b) nothing about Nile’s disappearance and supposed death are adding up.

And Andy’s right. Nile does come from warriors. And you know who else does? Her brother.

Don’t get me wrong. Nile’s mom would absolutely not back down. She’d know something was up and want to get to the bottom of it. But based on what I know about Gen X parents (mine), they’re not the most technologically savvy. Like they can use the internet, but they didn’t grow up with it the way we young millennials and Gen Z did. So Nile’s brother takes the lead. And what do zillennials do best?

Social media.

Nile’s brother starts going hard on any site he can, trying to get the word out to see if anyone knows what happened to his sister. He starts a Reddit thread. He starts a Facebook group. He reaches out to the media and true crime bloggers and podcasters à la Sarah Turney, getting loud and being a general nuisance in hopes of getting some answers. He gets his friends and Nile’s friends involved. Maybe eventually Dizzy, Jay, and others from Nile’s unit hear about it and reach out, telling him what they saw and how weird it all was. He’s drumming up interest, and soon “Nile Freeman” becomes a household name (at least among the true crime fans).

Copley is, of course, trying his best, but at this point there is just so much that it’s impossible for him to scrub everything. Sure, he can erase new footage of Nile and the Guard, but what can he do about Reddit threads and podcast episodes that are speculating something weird has happened? Maybe he could hack the sites and shut those things down, but honestly, that’s the last thing he’d want to do, because that only adds weight to the theory that Nile’s disappearance is a military coverup. So eventually he has to tell Andy what’s going on.

Andy, obviously, does not take the news well. However, she is also completely computer illiterate, because that’s Booker’s job and he’s the only one who ever bothered to learn what the internet is in any meaningful way. (She probably calls Booker for advice, and for the record, I think Booker would have no qualms about shutting down conspiracy threads, tinhats be damned, but Copley is too concerned about the consequences. He’s ex-CIA for crying out loud, he knows how it’ll look if they scrub every mention of Nile’s name from the internet.) Maybe she confers with Joe and Nicky but, let’s be honest, they’d be equally unhelpful. So at this point, she knows they have to bring in Nile.

But the thing about Nile is that she, too, knows how to use the internet (duh). Aside from her being a young millennial/digital native, we know from the cave scene where she’s giving Booker suggestions on how to track Copley that she clearly is even more computer savvy than the average person. And for that reason she almost definitely took over the day-to-day tech stuff after Booker’s exile. So I think it would be foolish to expect her to be unaware of what’s happening. She’s not contacting her family or posting on the message boards or anything, but she knows what’s up. So Copley and the team probably sit her down to “break the news,” but we know the girl does not have a poker face (see: literally shooting herself in the foot and not being able to play it cool whatsoever) and cracks immediately, telling them she’s seen everything about her case – she’s not interacting with any of it, she certainly didn’t instigate anything, but she knows. (And she is so goddamn proud of her brother.)

At this point, I’d like to pause and consider Nile’s role in the overall narrative of this movie. She’s set up as a foil to Andy, obviously, but she’s also a foil to Booker. Booker, who, like Andy, is a serious pessimist, but who, unlike Andy, still has very fresh memories and trauma associated with being the new kid, which have destroyed him. In his mind (and Andy’s), if Nile communicates with her family, she’ll become just like him in a century or two – bitter, alone, and stuck with her grief and memories of watching her family die and knowing they died resenting her. It’s a small sample size, but this is the only experience they have to go off of.

But it doesn’t have to be like that.

There’s been a lot of discussion of TOG being a fundamentally queer movie – a group of people brought together because of something inherent about themselves that is different, that must be hidden, that causes others to hate, fear, and reject them. Booker’s backstory is the archetypal traumatic “coming out” story – his family learns who he is, hate him for it, and attempt to cast him out of their lives. He’s stuck with his trauma, his pain, his loss, and it consumes him.

But what if Nile’s family would be the opposite? What if her “coming out” to them as immortal is met with acceptance, love, celebration? What if her family is just overjoyed to have her back, and they don’t care what the circumstances are? I'm reminded of this incredible post from @shitty-old-guard-deaths a while back, where Nile’s mother hits Booker with a frying pan because “my baby let me believe she was dead for FIVE YEARS based on your bad advice???” (which may or may not have inspired this whole tangent). Nile takes the advice of someone who did the same thing she wants to do because she doesn’t want to risk her family’s rejection. She wants the good memories with her family and is afraid that showing them her true self will bring her unbearable pain, forever replacing those memories. But, with high risk comes high reward.

Anyway. Nile and the team are trying to come up with a plan for how to handle this whole thing, but she’s not really participating because she’s too afraid to hope. Until finally, quickly, so she doesn’t lose her nerve, she suggests she reach out to them, knowing that, realistically, that’s the only solution before things snowball even further out of control. The team is shocked, but realize that she has a point. They decide that Copley should actually be the first point of contact, posing as a US government official to talk with them and test the waters.

So Copley goes to Nile’s family’s house to talk with her mom and brother. They’re probably distrustful and apprehensive, but nonetheless secretly ecstatic that their work has paid off. They talk and review all of the information that they’ve collected, including testimonials from the people on Nile’s base and recent sightings (along with photos) of Nile (with the same three people) over the last few years that people have sent them but they haven’t posted publicly. At this point, Copley’s like, yeah this is about to blow up, we gotta put our cards on the table. He convinces them to come with him to some safe house/black site/whatever he can get that is technologically impenetrable (I’m picturing them in like, an interrogation room at a police station kind of deal), takes their phones, locks the doors, and brings in Nile.

What follows is the most delightful reunion scene of all time, bringing Joe, Nicky, and even Andy to tears as they watch and listen from outside the room. With Copley’s help, Nile tells her mom and brother about her immortality and what’s been going on since she died (within reason, of course), and they are thrilled. They don’t understand why (because no one does) but they don’t question it and they see it as a gift from God – she’s been resurrected, she will live, and she has a purpose. Her mother and brother are so happy to see her again and are willing to agree with pretty much anything to stay in her life as long as they can.

So. They set up some complicated agreement (they bring in the other three for support/intimidation as needed) setting the terms of their relationship. They swear Nile’s family to secrecy, maybe bringing up the lab to show how high the stakes are, and they readily agree. They come up with some cover story for Nile’s brother to share on the message boards (maybe that the government has opened an investigation but because it’s an open case he has to shut it all down? Tells people to direct their tips somewhere else? Something to that effect). There’s still speculation, of course, but without Nile’s brother at the helm providing the energy, the hype dies down as news stories are wont to do without any movement. And Nile’s family goes to work for the team. The experience has taught them that Copley can’t possibly do everything himself, especially when it comes to social media, so Nile’s brother takes the lead on the day-to-day tracking/social media while Copley and her mom focus on finding jobs and scrubbing their traces afterward.

So there you have it: Nile gets to integrate her biological family into her found family and spend the rest of their lives with them as it should be, Copley gets some badly needed help managing the reality of social media, the team finally has a positive narrative surrounding outsiders Knowing About Them AND about interacting with people from their previous life, and the audience gets the happy ending to this very lovely and very queer story to counteract the pain associated with Booker’s family.

Plus, you know, I’m a sucker for both a good government conspiracy theory and for Nile getting every good thing she deserves.

#the old guard #tog #tog fanfiction #tog meta #immortal family #nile freeman #mine #damn look at me contributing to a fandom! that’s new #pls reblog if you like this my self esteem could really use it #I just love nile so much and I’m being the nile-centric content I want to see in the world #it is just genuinely nuts to think abt how this situation would be perceived by anyone outside the narrative #she just mysteriously heals from a fatal injury and then VANISHES!!! this should be national fuckin news #also I do think there’s a major hole in the story when you think abt social media #like the only time it’s even hinted at is right at the very beginning when Andy erases that girl’s selfie #and the concept of fuckin Reddit is not even brought up despite Copley’s stalker board being analog Reddit #there’s just a lot of places one could go with this which is very much what we got here #1k

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mishafletcher · 4 years ago

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Are you a Gold Star lesbian? (Just in case you don't know what it means, a Gold Star lesbian is a lesbian that has never had the sex with a guy and would never have any intentions of ever doing so)

So I got this ask a while ago, and I've been lowkey thinking about it ever since.

First: No. I am a queer, cranky dyke who is too old for this sort of bullshit gatekeeping.

Second: What an unbelievable question to ask someone you don't even know! What an incomprehensibly rude thing to ask, as if you're somehow owed information about my sexual history. You're not! No one—and I can't reiterate this enough, but no one—owes you the details of their sex lives, of their trauma, or of anything about themselves that they don't feel like sharing with you.

The clickbait mills of the internet and the purity police of social media would like nothing more than to convince everyone that you owe these things to everyone. They would like you to believe that you have to prove that you're traumatized enough to identify with this character, that you can't sell this article about campus rape without relating it to your own sexual assault, that you can't talk about queer issues without offering up a comprehensive history of your own experiences, and none of those things are true. You owe people, and especially random strangers on the internet, nothing, least of all citations to somehow prove to them that you have the right to talk about your own life.

This makes some people uncomfortable, and to be clear, I think that that's good: people who feel entitled to demand this information should be uncomfortable. Refusing to justify yourself takes power away from people who would very much like to have it, people who would like to gatekeep and dictate who is permitted to speak about what topics or like what things. You don't have to justify yourself. You don't have to explain that you like this ship because this one character reminds you a bit of yourself because you were traumatized in a vaguely similar way and now— You don't have to justify your queerness by telling people about the best friend you had when you were twelve, and how you kissed, and she laughed and said it was good practice for when she would kiss boys and your stomach twisted and your mouth tasted like bile and she was the first and last girl you kissed, but—

You don't owe anyone these pieces of yourself. They're yours, and you can share them or not, but if someone demands that you share, they're probably not someone you should trust.

Third: The idea of gold star lesbians is a profoundly bi- and trans- phobic idea, often reducing gender to genitals and the long, shared history of queer women of all identities to a stark, artificial divide where some identities are seen as purer or more valuable than others. This is bullshit on all counts.

There's a weird and largely artificial division between bisexuals and lesbians that seems to be intensifying on tumblr, and I have to say: I hate it. Bisexual women aren't failed lesbians. They're not somehow less good or less valid because they're attracted to [checks notes] people. Do you think that having sex with a man somehow changes them? What are you so worried about it for? I've checked, and having sex with a man does not, in fact, make your vagina grow teeth or tentacles. Does that make you feel better? Why is what other people are doing so threatening to you?

Discussions of gold star lesbians are often filled with tittering about hehe penises, which is unfortunate, since I know a fair few lesbians who have penises, and even more lesbians who've had sex with people, men and women alike, who have penises. I'm sorry to report that "I'm disgusted by a standard-issue human body part" is neither a personality nor anything to be proud of. I'm a dyke and I don't especially like men, but dicks are just dicks. You don't have to be interested in them, but a lot of people have them, and it doesn't make you less of a lesbian to have sex with someone who has a dick.

There's so much garbage happening in the world—maybe you haven't noticed, but things are kind of Not Great in a lot of places, and there's a whole pandemic thing that's been sort of a major buzzkill? How is this something that you're worried about? Make a tea, remind yourself that other people's genitalia and sexual history are none of your business, maybe go watch a video about a cute animal or something.

Fourth: The idea of gold star lesbians is a shitty premise that argues that sexuality is better if it's always been clear-cut and straightforward—but it rarely is. We live in a very, very heterosexist culture. I didn’t have a word for lesbian until many years after I knew that I was one. How can you say that you are something when your mouth can’t even make the shape of it? The person you are at 24 is different to the person you are at 14, and 34, and 74. You change. You get braver. The world gets wider. You learn to see possibilities in the shadows you used to overlook. Of course people learn more about themselves as they age.

Also, many of us, especially those of us who grew up in smaller towns, or who are over the age of, say, 25, grew up in times and places where our sexuality was literally criminal.

Shortly after I graduated high school, a gay man in my state was sentenced to six months in jail. Why? Well, he’d hit on someone, and it was a misdemeanor to "solicit homosexual or lesbian activity", which included expressing romantic or sexual interest in someone who didn’t reciprocate. You might think, then, that I am in fact quite old, but you would be mistaken. The conviction was in 1999; it was overturned in 2002.

I grew up knowing this: the wrong thing said to the wrong person would be sufficient reason to charge me with a crime.

In the United States, the Defense of Marriage Act was passed in 1996, clarifying that according to the federal government, marriage could only ever be between one man and one woman. It also promised that even if a state were to legalize same-sex unions, other states wouldn't have to recognize them if they didn't want to. And wow, they super did not want to, because between 1998 and 2012, a whopping thirty states had approved some sort of amendment banning same-sex marriage.

Every queer person who's older than about 25 watched this, knowing that this was aimed at people like them. Knowing that these votes were cast by their friends and their families and their teachers and their employers.

Some states were worse than others. Ohio passed their bill in 2004 with 62% approval. Mississippi passed theirs the same year with 86% approval. Imagine sitting in a classroom, or at work, or in a church, or at a family dinner, and knowing that statistically, at least two out of every three people in that room felt you shouldn't be allowed to marry someone you loved.

Matthew Shepard was tortured to death in October of 1998. For being gay, for (maybe) hitting on one of the men who had planned to merely rob him. Instead, he was tortured and left to die, tied to a barbed wire fence. His murderers were both sentenced to two consecutive life terms in prison. This was controversial, because a nonzero number of people felt that Shepard had brought it upon himself.

Many of us sat at dinner tables and listened to this discussion, one that told us, over and over, that we were fundamentally wrong, fundamentally undeserving of love or sympathy or of life itself.

This is a tiny, tiny sliver of history—a staggeringly incomplete overview of what happened in the US over about ten years. Even if this tiny sliver is all that there were, looking at this, how could you blame someone for wanting to try being not Like This? How can you fault someone who had sex, maybe even had a bunch of sex, hoping desperately that maybe they could be normal enough to be loved if they just tried harder? How can you say that someone who found themself an uninteresting but inoffensive boyfriend and went on dates and had sex and said that it was fine is somehow less valuable or less queer or less of a lesbian for doing so? For many people, even now, passing as straight, as problematic as that term is, is a survival skill. How dare you imply that the things that someone did to protect themself make them worth less? They survived, and that's worth literally everything.

Fifth, finally: What is a gold star, anyhow? You've capitalized it, like it's Weighty and Important, but it's not. Gold stars were what your most generous grade school teacher put on spelling tests that you did really well on. But ultimately, gold stars are just shiny scraps of paper. They don't have any inherent value: I can buy a thousand of them for five bucks and have them at my door tomorrow. They have only the meaning that we give them, only the importance that we give them. We’re not children desperately scrabbling for a teacher’s approval anymore, though. We understand that good and bad are more of a spectrum than a binary, and that a gold star is a simplification. We understand that no number of gold stars will make us feel like we’re special enough or good enough or important enough, or fix the broken places we can still feel inside ourselves. Only we can do that.

The stars are only shiny scraps of paper. They offer us nothing; we don’t need them. I hope that someday, you see that, too.

#queer stuff #lgbtq #gold star lesbians #long post #sorry #Anonymous

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ofhouseadama · 3 years ago

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happy birthday i am curious about your take on the dynamics in "our man bashir" since i can't stop thinking about it today. there's a spectrum of takes going from "garak coward" to "bashir terrifying and cruel, actually" which is a vast oversimplification but basically, there's so much in that episode about their moral stances and values and i think the reason its so important for the development of their relationship is that garak sees that sense of moral righteousness and commitment to duty that he considers to be the greatest good of all, and he REALLY did not expect that of julian when push came to shove. who was actually "right" or "wrong" or cowardly or not in that situation i think isn't the point, it's the fact that julian proves himself to garak. would love to know your thoughts thank u and have a lovely day

Oh, hard agree.

When it comes down to it, Garak is someone who feels very strongly about duty and obligation. His morals may be relative, but Daddy Tain broke his brain in a very specific way and broke it very well. If Garak knows how to do one thing, it's how to be loyal to an ideal and to be willing to do anything to uphold that ideal. Whether or not something is just and moral depends on how efficient the action is to uphold the ideal. He prizes utilitarianism above all else, to the point that the cognitive dissonance of it all and the tension between his desperately unprocessed grief about Tain and the Cardassia of his youth versus his loyalty to the Cardassian people literally causes a breakdown. Garak's relationship with Cardassia and with Tain (and Mila) is something that changes very subtly over the course of the show, and is directly and fundamentally tied to his identity.

Without Cardassia, who is he? Without Tain, who is he? Without Mila, who is he?

Garak both is and isn't a Cardassian alone. He's an exile, but still working for the benefit of the State and then later the People. He's a bastard, but for most of his life was the heir apparent as head of the Obsidian Order. He's no man's son, but he owes Tain his life out of filial duty. Tain won obligation and duty out of fear, not reciprocation. Garak loves his mother (whether Mila is his biological mother or not in alpha canon is a moot point to me, blood relation or not, Mila is his mother) and wishes to protect her and she wishes to protect him, and it causes them both to remain under Tain's power and control and in his service. He becomes a Starfleet asset and causes the death of Cardassians in the hopes of saving the heart and soul of his homeworld. He returns to Cardassia to see it through it's destruction. He survives the Dominion bombardment, but anyone who has ever loved him is dead.

And I think for much of the show, Garak and Julian have trouble seeing each other through the secrets they both must hold tight to their chests to keep themselves safe. (Yes, I know that the augmentations were a game time call, but I'm going with Death of the Author here.) They're both so preoccupied with fulfilling the roles they think they must in order to keep themselves and their families safe. Or rather, "safe." None of them are actually safe. And beyond that, Tain and Richard can go die in a fire. So while they accept each other and like each other and find joy and a measure of emotional security in their friendship and mind games and coy conversations, they don't quite see each other before "Our Man Bashir."

Because they don't really have the opportunity. Garak doesn't see Julian go toe-to-toe with Tain in "The Wire." Julian wasn't present for "Improbable Cause" and "The Die is Cast." Julian didn't hear Garak quote Shakespeare on the bridge of the Romulan warbird. Garak isn't on Starfleet away missions or in Julian's head in "Distant Voices" or "The Search." They remain tremendous influences on each other and integral parts of each other's emotional lives, but they don't see it. They underestimate each other, because who could possibly be as dark and twisted as they are? Who could be as fucked up and tormented? Because they don't talk about. They can't talk about. If they spoke about it, it would wrench away that thin, false veneer of security that's keeping them sane.

And we see it in "The Wire." Julian is so irate that Tain didn't have to ask Garak to put the wire in his head. That Tain had just manipulated and abused and positioned Garak into just accepting the modification. We know that Julian knows what it means to have a father who is an architect. Even though Julian doesn't clock that Garak is biologically Tain's son, he's been given the context that Garak is the Son of Tain. He has the threads of the story. He knows the emotional beats and the pain and the torment and the outcome even if he doesn't have access to the objective truth. But they don't talk about it. Garak's distraught enough that he's spoken about the emotional and physical pain that he's in. He'd rather be dead than seen as weak. He can't talk about it. He won't talk about it. And neither will Julian. Julian is also a decided master of not talking about it.

But that moment is the buy-in of trust.

"Our Man Bashir" is the pay off. Because Garak challenges Julian again and again and again, about his morals and his ideals and his sense of duty and his obligations but he doesn't see them. He isn't ever given an opportunity to really witness Julian's mettle. He isn't given the opportunity to see if it's just Federation propaganda and democratic doublethink taken root. There's no proof of concept of Julian's loyalties and promises to Garak that yes, Julian can be trusted and Julian can follow through and Julian can roll up his sleeves, get his hands dirty, and see the rough work done. There's no substantive proof for a man like Garak that this isn't just a game, an idle pastime, to Julian.

Julian, who holds all the real power and prestige and position in their relationship. Julian, who could have him turned out of the station. Julian, who might just be a fellow spy, even if he's an inept one. Julian, who might just turn out to be a useless dreamer who folds under the pressure of choice; might settle into the cold comfort of "no choice" when there is always, always a choice for men like Garak, who has always been forced to make it when others have been too weak or too squeamish or too scrupulous.

And then Julian shoots him in the neck to save his friends.

Julian shoots him in the neck, and says he'd rather die with his friends than to assure his own survival. That if he condemned his friends to death to ensure his own safety, it would be a betrayal to unconscionable to bear. Because Julian is honorable, and he is loyal, and he is idealistic.

And Garak realizes that they're both capable of the same things. He realizes Julian is his equal. And Julian realizes that Garak recognizes him as his equal.

Because Garak is also honorable, and loyal, and idealistic. He has just never been allowed to be those things in a system that is worthy of his strength of character. He has never been given the opportunity to be loyal to someone who would tell him to save himself. Loyal to someone who would tell him to stay. Loyal to someone who loves him. Never been allowed to hold ideals that would shape a society that would free him. Ideals that would keep him safe. His sense of honor has always been warped by Tain's machinations and abuse.

And Julian isn't that man, not yet. They don't love each other yet. Neither of them is really capable of that by "Our Man Bashir."

But for the first time they see each other. And they like and respect what they see.

#ask #wanderingwriter87 #otp: there's hope for you yet #emily watches ds9

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dmclemblems · 2 years ago

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Claude calling the people of the Kingdom and Empire monsters and rallying people under the promise of their deaths and only giving half of a shit for his own people, on top of being willing to worsen foreign relations and refuel fighting on the border wrt Sreng for the same reasons. Hm wow that sure sound like someone who sees outsiders as less than human and only as threats to his own people (who are the only ones deserving of peace and safety). You know, that mindset that Claude fundamentally hates and literally came to Fodlan to wipe out so that people can live in harmony with each other?

Fuck this game and the absolutely horrific treatment it gave to Claude's entire character. Literally nothing anyone says can possibly explain why such a core aspect of Claude's character is not just not present, but actively replaced with its perfect opposite - and this game doesn't even bother to give a HALF-HEARTED explanation, he Just Is like this now. This game can actually suck my ass.

I like the game generally speaking (and AG was written really well), but I'm definitely not fond of how Claude was handled.

Like you said, and one of the biggest things that bothers me that I mentioned in another post is how he basically tells people to surrender or die, yet he says he wants to minimize casualties. It doesn't even make sense that he wants that but attacked the Kingdom without so much as a letter being sent to speak to Dimitri personally talk to to him about the Church and whatnot. Plus, if he did, he might have been made aware that all his perceptions of the Church were wrong.

The whole Sreng thing bugs me because they informed Sreng about the war and whatnot so that they'd invade, but later Claude tries to... not get them involved? He used them when it was convenient and then suddenly didn't want to after that.

One of my biggest gripes is that Claude has no consistency. You know how in CF they kept doing this back and forth trying to be like Edelgard is a bad person who started the war, oh wait no she's just a good person with strong views, etc etc? They really did that with Claude here except at least Edelgard was always consistent with her character. Claude's writing here is just like... they're trying to make him the anti-war person he is in Houses but they wrote him to be the exact opposite. When it starts going too far they pull him back again and have him keep iterating this nonsense about not wanting the war to keep going because people are dying.

Also, Nader saying he couldn't wait to rampage in the Kingdom REALLY bothered me (and he says this at camp so it's missable if he wasn't spoken to). After all the shit they said about Almyrans not being barbarians and whatnot, he's planning to go nuts with attacking the Kingdom? All that would do is make the Kingdom more unwilling to make any kind of relationship with Almyra.

There was definitely a lot of "we're doing this for Leicester" and not... any bit of care for any other land. I've been goofing about it a lot and trying to be mellow about it but just in general I find the things Claude does and the things he says to be absolutely abhorrent in this game. The way he manipulates people with the politely worded "surrender or die" is seriously awful and isn't much better than Edelgard's behavior.

I really doubt there would be any true harmony after this war. Even if the Kingdom lost and ceased to exist (and became just Adrestia and Leicester), I can guarantee there would be civil wars and uprisings all over the place. The people in the Kingdom would never, ever settle for that. Honestly, I could see Sylvain rallying troops and launching an attack on Leicester. I feel like even though he acts mostly calm during the story, he still has that in him because of the way Dimitri didn't want his emotions to get the better of him in battle. It's pretty clear to me that Sylvain despises Claude and the Alliance in GW.

Literally the whole thing with the Kingdom just sits so wrong with me. They were just minding their own business and suddenly everyone is trying to invade. In fact, they're trying to do good things within their borders and fix their society, but they can't because everyone around them just wants to go to war. Even the Church kind of forced them to get involved by asking for their aid. I'd put the least blame on them honestly because they really don't do anything bad at all here/in this game, but the war forced Dimitri's hand in so many ways when all he wanted to do was make a better society for the Kingdom.

By the end of the game I'd say Claude is really just... marginally better than Shahid, and that is not a high bar. It just served to keep the theme going that Almyrans just want war and fighting. Claude had other options and he chose invasion and killing. He chose to do what Shahid did to Leicester.

I honestly feel really bad for the Kingdom. Nobody will leave them alone and the worst part is that they're all so loyal to each other and so tight knit that like... once you've fucked with one of them you've fucked with all of them. They're not just gonna let it go and be like oh yeah okay we'll just stop the Kingdom from existing and give up on it. Dimitri also just wants to keep his people safe and Claude abuses that fact to make Dimitri let him get past him to get to Rhea. Basically, Claude is saying either I kill your people or let you me pass by and kill Rhea. Seeing as Rhea has always supported Dimitri and has never tried to obstruct any part of his rule, it's really shitty to be like oh hey you know this person who has done right by you and has been super chill with you? Let us kill her or I'm gonna kill your people and make you feel like shit about it. He uses people's emotions to make them stop fighting, and what he said to Ashe really bugged me.

There's a lot of stuff at the camp in GW that I saw (I'll end up posting some of it later, it's just that my posts are totally out of order for when I actually post them compared to when I'm playing so that I don't end up posting tons of stuff all at once, flood people's dashboards and then just have nothing to post lol) that really highlight how awful all of this is. Several characters are unhappy with all of it, and then you have the dumbass types who don't give a fuck like Raphael and Leonie (which is BEYOND me, especially with Raphael. He's supposed to be the gentle, kindhearted one and he's like 150% okay and happy with invading and fighting people and just knocking them flat. He gets excited for it. Hopes Raphael just ain't the one for me lol), and they only care about a good fight no matter who they have to kill.

Only a few people regularly question the morality of Claude's army, like Yuri, Hapi, Lorenz and Ashe. Most of them just... do not care. They'd kill good people for a good fight or because they just happen to like Claude so they'll ruin other people's lives.

I know it's just a video game, but... I just hate everything about the second half of GW lol. I love the early Almyran lore and it helps a lot for the missing pieces in Houses, but the story is just... disgusting. I've always hated Edelgard's actions in Houses and I'm not gonna justify Claude's behavior and actions in Hopes just because I like him in Houses. Just like her, he's a huge warmonger in this game. I guess it's because I just... don't like war and I have a very strong mindset on people who do things like that, especially when they attack people who are just living their lives and doing their own thing. Even though I've always been a Kingdom girl, I don't think my feelings would change on any of this if I was more bias toward Leicester. I don't think I'd be comfortable seeing the Kingdom being trampled for literally no reason whatsoever. We can't even blame Cornelia or other TWS members in this game for a lot of what happens to them. It's Edelgard and Claude doing a lot of it.

There's just... a lot of really awful things happening in this game and Claude spearheads a whole ass lot of it.

Claude von Deserved A Lot Fucking Better.

#Three Hopes Spoilers #I'm torn for my next Houses run bc I AM technically in the middle of a GW run #but I miss AM. but also I am not ready to have to see Rodrigue and Miklan die again lol #I mean Miklan technically seems to survive in GW and... I guess in SB? I don't remember well on that one but #at least in AG he died having gotten better and being a commander!#but also I just miss the good writing LOL I miss AM and wanna play it but #my data/progression would end up being split off into two playthroughs and that just bugs me #I am sad and miss Dimi's accidental flirting!!! I miss the pure lil cutie who got to be at least #a lil happy at the Academy and WAS ACTUALLY FRIENDS WITH CLAUDE #this game gave me many good things... all of which were isolated to AG lmao #I got a lot of things I rly wanted in this game but LIKE. AT WHAT COST #DCB Reply

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makeste · 4 years ago

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save no matter what.

so this is going to ultimately be a post about Deku. however, if you’ll be so kind as to indulge me, I would like to start things off by making a point about Bakugou. specifically, I’d like to point out that back in the day before this kid got Character Development no Jutsu’d, people weren’t always so inclined to view his attitude towards winning in the best light. which is a nice way of saying that he came off as unhealthily obsessed, not to mention more than a little unhinged.

sorry for the image spam btw, I just think they’re funny. he’s so demented lmao. KILL DIE CRUSH.

anyway so we’re gonna do the rest of this below a cut before it gets long. but I promise it really is a Deku post lol. don’t let the pre-readmore stuff fool you. I PROMISE THERE IS A POINT, AND WE WILL GET TO IT.

anyway! so yeah, we really didn’t have the best impression of Bakugou’s whole winning fixation at the beginning there. and I mean, it’s not like we had the best impression of Bakugou himself at the start of things either. we were already primed from the very first chapter to see this kid as an adversary to Izuku. the story goes out of its way to paint him in pretty much the worst light possible. which is why what happens next is so interesting.

because one might see all this and think, “holy heck, this kid is off the shits, somebody needs to set him straight pronto and get it into his head that winning isn’t everything.” because that’s almost the natural conclusion to draw. “look at this kid, he doesn’t care about helping other people at all, all he cares about is winning, someone needs to come along and show him that he’s got it backwards.”

except that’s not what happens, is it? because this is where, much to my delight, Horikoshi came along and started subverting expectations. because not only is Katsuki not rebuked for being so obsessed with winning -- it’s pretty much the exact opposite.

the one and only time Deku ever straight up hands Katsuki’s ass to him is when he says he doesn’t want to win. Deku is IMMEDIATELY all, “THE FUCK KIND OF BULLSHIT DID I JUST HEAR OUT OF YOUR TRASH MOUTH,” and that’s when he sets him straight.

the important people in Katsuki’s life never tell him, “hey you need to cool it with the whole winning thing.” All Might and Aizawa never scold him for it, or tell him that he shouldn’t try with everything he has to win, or that wanting to win is a bad thing. on the contrary, they both commend him for it. and ultimately, he’s told by All Might that this desire is actually one of the two fundamental qualities that every great hero needs.

he completely turns the whole thing on its head. not only is it not a bad thing, it’s actually crucial. essential. because what the desire to win really is, at its core, is tenacity. it’s the fiercest kind of determination. it’s not something he should be ashamed of; it’s something that sets him apart, something that makes him worthy. he is someone who refuses to back down no matter what. refuses to give up, no matter what. and this quality, which is initially misunderstood by some to the point where even the villains mistakenly take him for one of their own in the making, is eventually validated to the fullest degree by the person that Katsuki looks up to the most. his desire to win goes from being this awkward “son wtf are you doing” thing to being one of the core philosophies of the series. and ever since then, we pretty much don’t question it.

so why do I bring this up now? well, the answer to that can basically be summed up in one word.

“parallels.”

so here’s the thing. there’s been a lot of talk lately about Deku’s ridiculous, reckless, and absurdly self-destructive desire to save others while having little to no regard for himself. currently he’s lying in a hospital bed, having broken approximately 218 out of the 206 bones in his little hero body (yes, somewhere along the way he found an additional dozen bones to break). it is worrying. it is Concerning. and it’s raised a lot of questions, such as “???” and “wtf is this idiot doing.”

and a lot of people have been pretty critical of him! this is, of course, an ongoing thing with this child, and people have been giving him grief over it going as far back as chapter 6.

while others have been bothered by it going even further back than that.

and I’ve seen these sentiments being echoed pretty frequently in the fandom as well. and there are basically two talking points that I want to address here. the first is the idea that Deku’s aggressive brand of selflessness stems from an inherent lack of self-worth. in other words, because he prioritizes other people’s safety and well-being above his own, and is willing to go to such drastic lengths to save them, there’s this feeling that he doesn’t value himself enough, that he must not care about himself.

but I don’t think that’s quite it. let’s go back to those parallels first, though. let’s take another look at Kacchan.

what I mainly want to call attention to is the intensity here. again, it’s something that at first strikes most readers as being absurdly over the top. the truth is, I think a lot of people simply can’t relate to it. Katsuki cares about winning with a ferocity and a fervor that most people, for better or worse, simply don’t have. I certainly don’t, lol.

but he does. to him it’s not a shallow, superficial thing at all. it’s important to him, perhaps the most important thing. I think we often talk about it in terms of it being a desire, but imo a more accurate way to define it is not as a want, but as a need. in other words, it’s the opposite of the question “what is it this character wants” (i.e. “what is it they can’t live without”)? instead, it’s a question of “what is it they don’t want” (i.e. “what is it they can’t live with”)?

and in Katsuki’s case, the thing he can’t live with is feeling like he hasn’t tried his absolute best. he needs to give his all in everything he does. he wants to win, but winning just on its own is not enough.

it has to be earned. he has to prove to himself and to everyone else that he deserves it. anything less than that is unacceptable. anything less than that, and he can’t be at ease. he can’t be settled. he can’t rest. and so he puts everything he has into winning, even if it means going to extremes. because it’s that important to him.

it’s something that’s at times alarming and even disturbing for others to witness. but nonetheless, it’s a part of who he is, and at the end of the day his teachers accept that, and the story acknowledges that it’s his greatest strength.

so now, to finally bring this back around to Deku, this is what I keep seeing in his character as well. only in his case, the thing he can’t live with is knowing that he didn’t do everything he possibly could to save someone. or to put it another way, Deku, at his core, is someone who cannot rest until he knows that everyone is safe. simple as that. it’s not just a desire to protect people; it’s a need. he needs to know that everyone is safe and protected. otherwise he can’t be at ease. it’s no different from how normal, everyday people aren’t able to feel at ease unless they know that they are safe and that their loved ones are safe. it’s just that in Deku’s case, this same fundamental need extends to everyone, not just himself and his friends and family. everyone. he can’t live with himself knowing that someone was in trouble, and he had the ability to do something to help, but didn’t. and so, if you literally can’t live with not doing something, you basically have no choice but to do it.

and this is what in my opinion defines Deku’s character. Kacchan, in trying to understand it, noted that Deku doesn’t seem to take himself into account. but I think OFA Prime summed it up a little more accurately. “he rages for the sake of others. for them, he does his best until he can do no more. this young man is possessed by a drive to save others that eclipses all common understanding.”

so yeah. it’s not that he doesn’t care about himself at all, it’s that he cares about others even more. he has that same intensity and ferocity towards saving people that Katsuki has towards winning. and just as it was difficult at first for fans to understand Katsuki’s feelings, it’s hard to fathom the sheer depth of that “save everyone” feeling that compels Deku to break his own body in that pursuit. it’s scary, not to mention extremely destructive and dangerous. and so really, it was almost inevitable that there would be some backlash.

but just like Katsuki’s desire to win was ultimately validated in the end, I think Deku’s desire to save others will be as well. in fact it already is being validated, for starters by the other denizens of OFA, led by Lil Bro as mentioned above. let’s go back for a moment to that same scene.

here we get a huge hint that “Deku gets taken down a notch and chewed out and scolded for his recklessness” is not, in fact, the direction that the story is going in. because in general, when the main villain starts mocking the hero and saying that they’ve done something wrong, that’s a very good sign that said hero is actually on the exact right track. like, no offense, but as far as character critiques go, AFO is probably the least qualified person in the entire manga to start offering those up lol. so yeah. if AFO is denouncing Deku for something, and OFA Prime is praising him for that exact same thing, I think it’s safe to say that means he is in fact doing something very, very right.

“okay but makeste, he nearly got himself killed and broke all of his arms AND legs and is now lying in a fucking coma,” you say, gesturing emphatically to the last page of chapter 298. “so I mean, that’s all well and good that Wonder Boy has the best of intentions and all that, but at the end of the day he’s only one kid. he literally can’t save everyone, and if he pulls one or two more stunts like this, he’s going to get himself killed.”

and okay, but this here is the other talking point that I wanted to address. because it’s true, Deku does need to learn a specific lesson here. but that lesson is NOT that he can’t save everyone. this is a superhero story, guys -- “you can’t save everyone” is never going to be the underlying message, ever. it’s the OPPOSITE of the message. Deku is the hero because he tries to save everyone. because he doesn’t give up on saving people no matter what. that is literally the core of the story. it has been since the very first chapter.

so then what is it that Deku actually needs to learn here? well, once again, it all comes back to those parallels.

btw, I really just love how he’s carrying Katsuki there lol. he’s just so done with him.

but anyway. so, the final exam arc. Katsuki initially wants to win at all costs -- but there’s a hitch. because even though he wants to win, he refuses to do so while working with Deku. enter Deku’s left hook, and one impromptu Rival Encouragement Speech later, our boy has thankfully come to his senses.

but here’s the point -- the lesson here wasn’t “you can’t always win.” rather, the lesson that Katsuki needed to learn was that you can’t always win alone.

yeah. so now you can see what I’m getting at here.

“...on your own.”

that’s the key. this is the one and only thing that Deku actually needs to get into his head. wanting to save everyone is fine! his will to save others has never been a weakness -- it’s been the most admirable thing about him from day one. it’s what makes him strong. it’s why All Might chose him. it’s why OFA has chosen him. it’s what sets him apart, and I firmly believe it’s what will ultimately help him save the day and defeat AFO as well. because what other character would look at Shigaraki Tomura, the person who just impaled his friend and destroyed an entire city, and instinctively reach out a hand to try and save him? and if you don’t think that’s going to wind up being key to the final battle, you and I have very different ideas about this series’ endgame.

Deku’s determination to save everyone isn’t arrogance or futility. it is and always has been his greatest strength. but what he’s missing now, what he needs to learn, is simply to trust. y’all might have seen that theory about the Fourth’s quirk, and why All Might was so hesitant to tell Deku about it. basically, the theory (which is based on an attempted translation of the crossed-out parts of All Might’s OFA notebook) goes that the Spidey Sense was so overwhelming that the Fourth -- whose cause of death was one of the things crossed out -- eventually couldn’t bear it, and went to live alone in the middle of the woods somewhere. and possibly wound up killing himself?? all of which is just speculation right now of course. but it makes sense. and it would certainly explain why All Might, being all too aware of Deku’s self-destructive tendencies, would keep that from him.

but if this is the case, that means it’s clear that the Fourth’s solution didn’t work. “give up and accept that you can’t save everyone” clearly is NOT the answer to be had here.

the answer is trust. trust that his fellow heroes have his back. trust that they’ll be able to help him reach the people he’s not able to reach on his own. trust that they can work together to save everyone. that he doesn’t have to rest the entire world on his shoulders alone.

it’s the one lesson that All Might, his predecessor and his teacher, never learned himself until it was too late. but of course, All Might never had a prickly and determined rival who was ready to step in and deal out some tough love if need be. a rival who, perhaps, just might soon get a chance to repay an old favor.

“I don’t wanna hear you say you can’t save someone.”

I’m just saying. just as Deku has been watching Katsuki all this time, and admiring his determination to win, and emulating it himself, so has Katsuki recently begun to emulate Deku’s determination to save others. we’ve seen it not just in his recent act of self-sacrifice, but even in little things like his habits and tricks of speech. just like Katsuki is Deku’s image of victory, Deku is becoming Katsuki’s image of saving others.

and so I’ll bet you anything that if Deku ever starts to doubt himself, or starts feeling like his dream and desires are futile, Kacchan will be there to set him straight with a good old fashioned Rival Encouragement Speech of his own. possibly with his own left hook to match, though his left shoulder is currently out of sorts atm so he might need to modify that approach a little bit. but the point is, he’ll be there. and he will not allow Deku to give up on himself. he will be there to remind him that he doesn’t have to face this alone.

so yeah! finally managed to wrap up my giant Deku meta which I’ve been working on for ages and rewritten like fifteen times lmao. just in time for this to be relevant for all of a day, probably, depending on what happens once chapter 279 drops lol. but yeah. tl;dr, local boy tries to do too much, but his heart is in the right place, and hopefully all he really needs is a good pep talk from his tsundere bff to set him to rights again. r.i.p. to the Fourth, but he’s different.

#bnha 298 #midoriya izuku #bakugou katsuki #bakudeku #bnha meta #deku meta #bakugou meta #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #makeste reads bnha

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thepartyresponsible · 4 years ago

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this soundtrack fill is for kittenlzlz, who i cannot tag because it’s all sabotage all the time over here. also, i'm sorry, i didn’t realize you’d changed your prompt until after i wrote this one, so this is for the first thing you sent in.

anyway, here’s some dystopian sci-fi angst for sam and bucky with a hopeful ending. the song for this one is “achilles come down” by gang of youth.

—

When he was young, Sam spent thirty-seven weeks in New Mexico, learning how to keep people alive until evac. That others may live was a motto they preferred to operationalize rather than idealize, and, without the EMT training, pararescue tended to turn into high-risk body retrieval. So he spent the better part of a year learning how to keep a body breathing, and he learned, also, how to recognize when any effort was likely to be wasted.

Which is how he knows that what he’s looking at isn’t fully human. Because a human would already be dead.

It’s the blood that tells him, more than anything else. The Chitauri bleed a thick, dark blue substance that goes black if their cybernetics are leaking. And there’s plenty of blue and black puddled on the asphalt, but that red is a hemoglobin gift, and that means it’s all human.

“Shit, man,” Sam says, crouching next to the only human at this massacre. “You could keep a blood bank in business all by yourself.”

The man lifts his head and blinks at him, slow and a little dazed. Not dazed enough, though. He can almost focus on Sam’s face. “Not anymore,” he says, after a beat.

More blood bubbles up at the corners of his mouth. Sam can see it between his teeth.

“Yeah,” Sam says. And he laughs, because he might as well. Because he came out here with a team of ten to clean out the aliens, and it looks like one guy did their work for them. “Guess not.”

He’s a pathetic sight, really. Ragged body armor, hair clumped together, skin sticky with blood and ichor. He’s belly down on the cracked parking lot, and there’s a smear of blood behind him, showing exactly how far he’s managed to drag himself.

Sam’s not excited about what he’s going to see, when he rolls this guy over on his back.

“You gonna fight me if I help you?” he asks.

Most of them, these Enhanced, the surviving Super Soldiers, they can’t help it. Sam’s had to put a few down himself, although not for a while now. It’s been almost a year since he had to kill anything with a human face.

The man sighs. He rests his forehead against the asphalt, closes his eyes. His fingers flex and then go still. “I don’t know,” he says.

That others may live, Sam thinks. But the problem has always been that lives are balanced on both sides of the scales, and, sometimes, saving one means sacrificing another.

This man killed fifteen Chitauri, and he did it alone. There are kids back at the base. Vulnerable people.

The safest choice would be to leave him here. Let him save himself, if he can. But Sam’s never really been the safe choice type.

“Okay,” he says, hands curling around his shoulders, carefully rolling the man over on his back, “let’s see the damage.”

It’s enough to kill a human. But that’s not really what he’s dealing with.

�� —

The Super Soldiers were a desperation play. Sam was supposed to be one of them. The best of Earth’s fighters, dosed with serum, patched up with cybernetics based on Chitauri tech, sent out to face the enemies that had invaded the planet.

Sam’s still not sure exactly how it happened, what level of their defenses failed. He only knows failure by its consequences.

The neural implants were hacked. The soldiers turned against their people. Sam, who’d been four days out from his own procedure, was shifted to a team tasked with hunting them down and eliminating them.

These days, there aren’t many left. There’s not much of anyone left. The Chitauri fundamentally misunderstood their target. Sam could’ve warned them. The species of mutually assured destruction was never going to die quiet.

He thinks about that while the Soldier sleeps, chained to a bed in a locked basement in an abandoned building two miles from the base. Sam keeps watch. He has a radio in case anything goes wrong, but he doesn’t intend to use it for anything other than warning them what’s coming.

“I could’ve been you,” Sam tells him. And then, smiling at nothing, shaking his head, “Hell, you could’ve been me.”

He wonders where he’s from. He wonders what his name is.

He wonders, when he can’t help it, what he did. If he ever killed anyone Sam used to know.

—

The Soldier sleeps for forty hours and then sits straight up in bed, rips the chains off his wrists like they’re pipe cleaners, and then turns to face Sam. “What the hell,” he says.

“Oh, well,” Sam says, too startled to be afraid. “Didn’t want anyone stealing you.”

The Soldiers makes a face at him, an incredulous sneer that twists up his mouth and pulls his dark eyebrows together, and he looks so human, so perfectly skeptical, that Sam starts laughing.

“Well,” he says, with a shrug, “you killed fifteen aliens with a tire iron. You’re a treasure.”

“And I want it back.” he says, immediately. “Where’s my tire iron?”

“Confiscated,” Sam says.

He glares, and Sam‘s probably meant to be intimidated, but he knows – they both know – that, if this guy wanted to scare Sam, he could just start breaking bones. Or walls. “I want it back when I leave.”

“Leave,” Sam repeats. He kicks back in his chair, balances on the back legs as he swings his feet up onto the Soldier’s bed. “Why’re you leaving?”

The Soldier stares at Sam’s booted feet near his knees. “Usually it’s the fact that I’m a timebomb that chases me off,” he says, “but it looks like your manners are the real horrorshow around here.”

Sam grins at him. He’s merciless about it, uses the most charming smile in his arsenal. He expects the guy to soften a bit, but he’s not expecting the doubletake he gets, the there-and-away bounce of his stare, like Sam’s suddenly something he wants to look at but doesn’t want to get caught looking at.

Huh, he thinks.

“When’s the last time you hurt someone?” Sam asks.

The Soldier’s face crumples up and then flattens out. “What is this? Some kinda trial? An interrogation?”

“If this were an interrogation, I wouldn’t’ve given you the soft pillows,” Sam tells him.

The Soldier doesn’t look like he buys it. But, after a moment, he tips his head to the side. “Probably wouldn’t want to get blood on these white sheets,” he acknowledges.

“Christ,” Sam says, because that more or less seems to be the only thing he could possibly say to something like that.

The Soldier shrugs. He brushes his hair away from his face, blinks, and gives Sam a skeptical sideways stare. “Did you wash my hair?”

“With a firehose,” Sam confirms. “Damn near shaved the whole thing off. You were a mess, man.”

He shrugs. “It’s messy work.”

And, sure, it is. Sam knows. His base is the first resettlement outpost in this region. They’ve been clearing Chitauri out of the area for months.

But he still takes a damn shower whenever possible.

“Who were you?” Sam asks. “Before the program?”

The Soldier looks away. Looks at nothing. After a long pause, he recites, careful and rote, “Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes. 107th.”

“Okay,” Sam says. “James. When’s the last time you hurt a human being?”

He worries at his lower lip, teeth pressing into the skin. He’s quiet for a very long time. “Thirteen months, ten days,” he says, finally.

Sam considers the timeline. “You think it’s over?”

“I think the implant’s in my fucking brain,” he says. “It’ll be over at brain death.”

“It’s just a chip,” Sam says. “It’s not sentient. Someone’s gotta send the message, right?”

The Soldier’s jaw works. “Even if the aliens stay out, there’s gonna be plenty of people who want to use someone like me, as soon as they rebuild enough to manage.”

It’s a hell of thing, and it could’ve been Sam.

He nudges the Soldier’s knee with his boot, and the Soldier stares at the point of contact. He doesn’t look angry anymore. If Sam had to use a word to describe the expression on the Soldier’s face, he thinks he’d use something bittersweet and barbed, something like lonely or longing.

“Gonna be a long damn time before anyone’s rebuilt,” he says.

“Aliens could have reinforcements here at any time,” the Soldier says.

“Maybe,” Sam says, although he thinks they might’ve learned some kind of lesson. At the very least, they’ve probably learned that it’s just not worth the effort.

“Look,” Sam says. “I think you should come back to the base.”

“No,” he says. Immediate and definite, louder then he’s been so far.

Sam expected it. Maybe part of him hoped for it. “Okay,” he says. “Then we’ll stay here. And, when you’re better, I want you to take a radio. And I want you to check in with us. All right? Every day.”

The Soldier stares at him. “Why the hell would you want that?”

Sam smiles, studies the hollows of the Soldier’s face, the scars, the freckles he must’ve earned when he was young, used to play too long in the sun. He has, Sam thinks, beautiful eyes. “There’s not a lot of us left,” he says.

“‘Us,’” the Soldier repeats, scoffing audibly.

“Us,” Sam repeats. He nudges the Soldier’s knee again, and the Soldier cuts his eyes away, glares at the wall. But, a moment later, he shifts, leans his knee into Sam.

—

His name is Bucky Barnes. He’s fussy as hell, stubborn beyond belief, helpful every chance he can get, and fond of cats and songbirds. He doesn’t cheat at cards, and he doesn’t accuse Sam of it either, even when Sam beats him damn near every hand.

He’s a good man. Even now.

“I’m gonna miss you,” Sam says. Because it’s been two weeks, and Bucky’s decided he’s well enough to go.

Bucky ducks his head. “Shut up,” he says.

Sam wonders if he was always this head shy about affection.

“C’mere,” he says. “I’ll give you a goodbye kiss.”

“Shut up,” Bucky says, practically scuttling away, head still ducked. When he raises it, he’s grinning one of his ghost grins, the ones that almost show who he used to be, like a faint echo of a louder, happier man.

“Okay,” Sam says. “But if I don’t get a goodbye kiss, I’m definitely not gonna talk dirty to you on that radio. You gotta put in the work, Bucky.”

“I hate you,” Bucky tells him, and his crush couldn’t be more obvious. Sam would be embarrassed for him, if he weren’t busy being charmed.

“Yeah, yeah,” Sam says. “Check in every day, or I’m gonna track you down.”

“Hm,” Bucky says. He adjusts his pack on his shoulders. He’s got that tire iron, an alarming number of knives, and two guns. He’s setting off to kill more aliens. He’s going alone. “That supposed to be a threat?”

He was a Barnes in the Army and Sam was a Wilson in the Air Force, and so Bucky is a Super Soldier and Sam is not. It’s unpredictable, sometimes, the way mercy falls.

“Be careful out there,” Sam says, and he knocks his elbow against Bucky’s.

“Yeah,” Bucky says. He rolls his eyes and then catches Sam watching, and he blinks, falters. “Yeah,” he says, again. Softer, steadier. A promise, not a joke.

Sam considers him, lets the moment hang. Waits. Sometimes, all Bucky needs is the space and time to make up his own mind.

“I’m gonna miss you, too,” Bucky says.

“There it is,” Sam says, grinning, almost crowing in triumphant. “There--”

“Oh, Jesus,” Bucky says, rolling his eyes again, getting theatrical about it. “I already regret saying it.”

“Can’t take it back,” Sam taunts, grinning wide and smug.

“I’m going,” Bucky says, and he starts off, doesn’t look back.

“Hey, Buck,” Sam calls, when Bucky’s just about to break through the treeline, disappear into the woods. “I hate to see you go, but I love----”

“Fuck off, Sam!” Bucky says, but he’s laughing, and Sam can still hear it – surprised and happy, fully human – even after Bucky disappears.

#writing #soundtrack fills

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clarste · 4 years ago

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Since it's been a few weeks, what's your opinion on Chapter 8 of Arknights? Reading about your opinion on other pieces of Arknights has been very nice so far.

I find this enemy description inordinately amusing so I will start with this before going to spoilers below the break.

1) First of all I am a sucker for flashbacks following the villain, so the basic structure of Chapter 8 was right up my alley. Even if Talulah's arc was more or less predictable—who among us did not expect Alina to die? I think some people might feel that it was a little too long, but honestly I think it said everything it needed to say and frankly there is nothing more important the chapter could have said. If anything, the parts that weren't about Talulah would be first on my chopping list if I were editing this story down. In particular, the whole bit with Kal'tsit and the sarcophagus and all that had almost nothing to do with the themes of this chapter or the Reunion arc, so they seemed especially superfluous. Even if that story might have been interesting told on its own.

2) Talulah. The main character of this chapter, obviously. I think there are two different angles to approach her from that seem almost mutually exclusive, which are that A) she is a tragic figure who started with noble ideals but was pushed to her limits until she became a ruthless shell of her former self and B) she is literally possessed by Kaschey, ie: the Deathless Black Snake, who is the immortal spirit of Imperialism manipulating the country of Ursus into a constant state of war. From what I've seen of people’s reactions, I think most people focus more on angle B, which makes sense because that is literally true in the story, but what I took from it is that it's a lot more ambiguous than that.

What I mean is that the story is constantly emphasizing that the Deathless Black Snake can only take action as long as Talulah agrees with it. It's more insidious than just an external ghost taking control of her (and thereby freeing her of responsibility for her actions), it's a philosophy that was planted in her by her mentor, a way of thinking, an idea. A living meme. So when I say that it's the immortal spirit of imperialism, I don't mean that as a joke, it is the embodiment of imperialism itself, of imperialist ideals and goals, manifested in this particular person the moment she starts seeing her enemies as obstacles to be eliminated instead of people with their own motivations. I certainly don't think that the trigger for the transformation was set arbitrarily, that's just Who She Needed To Be in order to buy into the ideas that Kaschey and the Snake had taught her from a young age. It’s also an ancient god taking physical control over her, but hey, it's fantasy.

Ultimately, we didn't defeat the Deathless Black Snake in battle, we just gave Talulah second thoughts. And she will live with what she's done for the rest of her life.

3) Amiya. In this chapter, more than anywhere else, it's clear that Amiya is the main character of Arknights. Sure, we have whatever Kal'tsit is plotting, and whatever the hell the Doctor is, but that doesn't actually matter. In fact, they spent this entire chapter walking around in the basement and never once interacting with Talulah. The Doctor shows up at the end with no idea what's going on or what happened, which is quite comical when you think about it.

By contrast, Amiya sees the big picture. Of the three people on top of the tower during the climax, only Amiya knows what both Talulah and Chen have been through, or indeed what she’s been though. What brought them all to that point. She is watching all these flashbacks right alongside us through her empathy powers. Which, as I've mentioned before, is really the best superpower in this setting: the power to see the world through someone else's eyes, and to feel the pain that drives them. And we, the players, feel what she feels. In a certain sense, she's even more of a player avatar here than even the Doctor, which I mean in the best possible way.

And of course her empathy gives her cool shounen superpowers that are suspiciously similar to Emiya Shirou, but I will allow it.

4) Chen. Chen is honestly kind of the weak link here, imo. While of course we've been following her character arc since chapter 3 and I don't mind where they've taken her, it ironically kind of felt to me like she had no personal stakes in the final battle. Which is odd since the story seemed to be hammering that it's all personal for her, what with Talulah being her long-lost sister and all that. The problem (imo) is that her close relationship with Talulah is all Told-Not-Shown, and also that Talulah is being possessed by the Deathless Black Snake, so it kind of feels like she's being left out of the loop, both in terms of knowing the facts and also emotionally.

I'm not saying she doesn't get any good lines, or that her banter with Amiya isn't cool or funny, I'm just saying that what should have been a big emotional moment at the climax of the story just sort of fell flat for me, and I was left wondering "wait, why is Chen here again?"

That said, I did enjoy her bit afterward where she's like "you need to stand fair trial for your crimes, Talulah, but in this world that discriminates against the Infected, there’s nowhere worthy of giving you one." I feel that sums up the game's stance on these things quite succinctly.

5) Rosmontis. Rosmontis had sort of an interesting arc here because it separated her from Amiya and I almost want to say that was a good thing? While I thought her relationship to Amiya was one of the most interesting things about her in the previous chapter, it almost feels like it was preventing her from forming bonds with other people and becoming a more well-rounded person? I guess what I want to say that is that Rosmontis was being coddled, sheltered, treated as a child. While some would call her a monster, Amiya was always around to say "no no no, don't listen to them, you're cute!" And while that was certainly nice of Amiya, it feels like what truly made her accept herself was almost the opposite: being accepted as a monster (or rather, a person with monstrous powers) by people used to fighting alongside monsters. Being told that she's allowed to hate the people who hurt her, and to be ruthless to her enemies. That her own emotions, both good or bad, are valid. For the first time, she felt human.

What you'll note, of course, is that these aren't exactly heroic virtues, and in fact they're kind of similar to what Amiya rejects and what got Talulah into so much trouble? Honestly I don't know if I would say Rosmontis is a good person right now, but what she is doing is thinking on her own for the first time, and deciding what's right and wrong for herself. It sounds almost malicious to put it this way, but it's like Amiya and Rhodes Island were trying to mold her into someone she's not. In some ways the opposite of what Kaschey did to Talulah.

I don't think her story is over yet, of course, but I found it an interesting direction to take. Rosmontis is on the path to find her own justice, which may or may not align with Rhodes Island's.

Also, kitty:

6) W. Back when I was doing a write-up for chapter 7, I said that maybe she would have been better off being recruitable in chapter 8 instead of 7, because it seemed a little early in her arc for that. I was wrong. She wouldn't fit in for chapter 8 either. Honestly she probably shouldn't be recruitable at all right now, not that I'm complaining as someone who uses her. Just, you know, narratively she is not at a place where she would consider joining RI, and in fact she ends the chapter pretty much going "later losers, I hope we never meet again." Which implies that the W in my squad right now is like a totally different person who is either from an alternate dimension or the future, after a lot of character development. That's not like the worst thing ever, it just seems a little weird to have her right now. W's story isn't about Reunion and never was. It's about Theresa and Babel, which as of now we are still only getting little hints of. I'd be glad to see that story when it happens, but until then W's just kind of there.

7) Themes. For some reason, this one line in this chapter really hit me. While it's not literally true, especially if you count all the former child slaves or feral children and whatnot, it does feel broadly true that most of the characters come from middle-class backgrounds. Like, your Krooses and Orchids of the world. Kal'tsit goes on to explain that this is because RI can only really recruit in cities, and that rural Infected tend to get thrown into the wilderness on their own and have no idea that RI exists.

Interestingly, this idea also sort of comes up in Talalah's side, when it's revealed that Talulah is the daughter of a duke, making her followers hesitate for a moment. While I don't recall it being explicitly spelled out, the implication was obviously that she's not "one of them" and this might be a cause for distrust. But what are "they' exactly? Clearly she is in fact Infected, she made sure of that herself. But she wasn't abandoned in the same way her followers were. She had a choice, and chose to side with the Infected. Which is honorable of her and all, but it also indicates a fundamental disconnect between them because they never had a choice. She could've used her influence to hide her oripathy and be treated like a normal person (as we saw happened with both Chen and Patriot), or used her wealth to get sent to a fancy private hospital like Rhodes Island, with the latest medical technology and treatments.

So while the story focuses on the discrimination of the Infected, it's clear here that that's not really the only thing going on. Being Infected means little to those in power, while for those without power it's just an an excuse to intrude on their lives and make sure they aren't "harboring any Infected" or whatever. Basically the story starts discussing intersectionality, which I found interesting.

8) This is a good line:

#not touhou #arknights #chapter 8 #roaring flare #if we don't pick a name for ourselves we will only ever be called the names others give us

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ace-trainer-risu · 4 years ago

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what are your fave diana wynne jones books that aren’t howl’s moving castle??

Oh whattt a lovely and fun question which I was definitely not secretly hoping someone would ask!!!! Yay!!

Hm okay so, not specifically in order, probably my top fave Diana Wynne Jones books would be:

Deep Secret! Deep Secret is not just one of my favorite books by DWJ but one of my favorite books full stop! It’s so good. Basically, the premise is that there is an infinite series of interconnected worlds, some of which have magic and some of which don’t, at the center of which is a vast interdimensional magical empire. Magic in the multiverse is overseen by an organization of magicians called Magids and there must always be a specific number of Magids in existence. When Rupert, a young Magid living on Earth, discovers that his mentor has died (ish) he becomes unexpectedly responsible for finding and training the next Magid, which is extremely inconvenient timing for him because the aforementioned magical empire is on the brink of civil war and chaos and its his job to stop it. And also almost all of this takes place at...a science fiction convention. It’s amazing. I have read this book minimum four (probably more) times and every time it’s absolutely delightful and hilarious. I would like to go to the sci fi convention in this novel more than anything. It’s such a good read and its one of her few novels which is specifically aimed at adults, so I would EXTREMELY recommend it. Plus the romance in it is extremely good...not exactly enemy-to-lovers but more like ‘annoys-the-shit-out-of-each-other’ to lovers. (**One note about this one...there’s a few very briefly mentioned side characters who are gender noncomforming and even tho they are actually portrayed very positively, it’s not necessarily ideal and 100% respectful (basically the protags comment on them being very beautiful and nice but also keep trying to guess their “real” gender). Additionally there’s a different briefly mentioned side character who is fat who isn’t portrayed very nicely. Both of these are brief incidents, just wanted to provide a warning for them)

Dark Lord of Derkholm - Okay this one is weirdly hard to summarize but it’s about this magical fantasy world which has been taken overy and is being used as a tourist destination by a non-magical world (heavily implied to be Earth) for people who want to role play at being in a classic high fantasy story, including fighting and killing THE DARK LORD...who is really just a random magician pretending to be evil. The inhabitants of the fantasy world do not enjoy this and are trying desperately to stop the tours, but unfortunately according to a magical oracle, their best hope of stopping the tours is this year’s Dark Lord, a hapless farmer magician named Derk, and his, um, eccentric family consisting of his glamorous wife, seven children (of whom five are griffins and one is a bard) and a simply improbable amount of magical animals. And also there is a very good dragon. I think Derkholm is so great as a novel b/c it’s a very funny, loving but sharp, parody of high fantasy stories...but a lot of the time parodies only function as parodies but not as good stories in their own right, you know? But this novel completely functions as a story too, and in fact the first time I read at maybe age nine or ten, the high fantasy parody went completely over my head...but I still loved it. I also really love that this novel is very accessible to all ages, I think I enjoy reading it as an adult just as much as I did as a kid, which is rare. For anyone who has read Howl’s Moving Castle but nothing else by DWJ and isn’t sure where to start, I think this is a great place to start. (TW: There’s a brief, non-explicit scene which has implied sexual assault.)

Fire and Hemlock - This may be the most controversial one since it features a romance with a significant age gap where the two characters meet when one is a child and the other an adult. And I fully agree that that’s :/ and normally that trope is NOT my thing but it doesn’t come off at all creepy in this story imo, and if you think you can deal with that then this is a very weird, atmospheric, cool book about storytelling and fairy tales and growing up. The short summary (this is another hard to summarize one) is that as a child, Polly encounters and strikes up a friendship and correspondence with a young man, Tom, which mainly consists of the two of them jointly making up a silly, ongoing fairy tale type story...but things get weird when parts of their story start to come true in real life. I’ve only read this one twice but it really stuck with me and in fact just describing it here...really makes me want to read it again!

The Chrestomanci Series - So all of the above are either specifically aimed at adults or a general audience whereas the Chrestomanci series is aimed at children, mainly a middle grade type audience. And tbh I started reading them as a kid (fond memory - I bought an omnibus of the first two with my allowance money...b/c it had a cat on the cover!) so I don’t know what it would be like to first read these as an older teen or an adult. BUT. Honestly they are really good and would be a quick read so I do still recommend them. There’s seven overall, with th seventh being a collection of short stories, and they’re only semi-chronological so the reading order isn’t vital. My recommended order (b/c this the order I read them in, haha) is Charmed Life, The Lives of Christopher Chant, The Magicians of Caprona, Witch Week, The Pinhoe Egg, Conrad’s Fate, and then Mixed Magic you can read whenever you want so long as you read it after Charmed Life and The Magicians of Caprona. So the very core premise of it is not dissimilar to Deep Secret - there’s an infinite series of worlds/universes and there’s a magician, called the Crestomanci in this case, who is responsible for making sure magic isn’t abused across the multiverse. The Chrestomanci is an extremely powerful enchanter who has nine lives, and the novels are various semi-connected stories about the adventures of Chrestomanci as an adult and child. Chrestomanci is a title so it’s not always the same person, but for the majority of the stories it is the same guy and he’s...the best/worst...He’s this extremely handsome, charismatic, powerful enchanter who is very good at his job, loves his wife a lot, wears very beautiful clothes and makes, um, questionable life choices and is very annoying to everyone. I’ve thought about this very hard and I believe that he’s what happens when you take a fundamentally chaotic good person and make him do a fundamentally lawful good job; yes, he’s going to do it and do it well, but he is going to do it in the most chaotic, ridiculous way possible, and he IS going to die at an ALARMING rate, doing things that would not normally kill a person, such as playing cricket and trying to catch stray cats. He also, as previously mentioned, frequently wears very dramatic silk dressing gowns with elaborate embroidery, which the protag of Charmed Life finds deeply alarming. It’s very odd to me how these books don’t seem to be well known, because the Chrestomanci books were some of my absolute favorite books as a child. I still have my omnibus editions of the first four novels and they are very worn and very beloved. And it’s so WILD to me that I don’t think I have ever talked to someone who also read those as a kid! Like I’m not saying those people don’t exist, I’m sure I just haven’t met them, but that’s so weiiirddddd to me. If I bring up Tamora Pierce or Garth Nix or other authors of weird, eccentric children’s fantasy novels to other avid childhood consumers of fantasy, people usually know what I mean, but Chrestomanci and its just..crickets. Is it b/c she’s British? Anyway all of the Chrestomanci books are very degrees of good, but if I had to pick a favorite, I think, controversial choice here, it would be Conrad’s Fate. Particularly in terms of recommendations to others, Conrad’s Fate works as a standalone and, unlike the other books in the series, it’s aimed more at a YA audience, so if you wanted to read a Chrestomanci novel without getting into the whole series, that’s a good way to go. It’s about a boy, Conrad, who is told that he has a terrible, possibly fatal Fate awaiting him unless he goes to work as a servant at a wealthy, and weird, estate neighboring his town, at which place he encounters things including color changing livery, an extremely annoying teenage Chrestomanci, and the greatest liminal space house EVER. It’s like a combination of an upstairs/downstairs Downton Abbey type social drama with bizarre fantasy shenanigans. How could that not be good??

Also as Honorable Mentions - A Sudden and Wild Magic and The Time of the Ghost. A Sudden and Wild Magic is fun b/c it’s one of her few works aimed specifically at adults and it’s (gasp) a little bit NAUGHTY which I was very surprised and delighted by when I read it. (This may seem like an unfair statement considering that Deep Secret fully has an orgy in it, but Rupert is so fundamentally unnaughty of a character that he completely unnaughtifies the whole novel, whereas Sudden and Wild Magic embraces being a (little bit) naughty.) The Time of the Ghost on the other hand is weird and haunting and creepy and atmospheric. I only read it once but it’s one of those novels you just think about periodically and go “wait what the fuck that was a weird novel” (Also known as the “Garth Nix” effect)

#the ask and the answer #i spent...too long writing this out but i love talking about her novels soo muchhhh #that i couldn't help myself!!!!!!!!#diana wynne jones #things you didn't care to know about veronica

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fairycosmos · 4 years ago

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i need help i can’t stop thinking about killing myself like it’s happened before but i’ve never gone through with it it’s going to hurt i know it i know

i'm really sorry to hear that love :( it seems like you're having such a hard time right now. i know there's nothing i can do or say that will really put a dent in ur pain, but since we're both here rn i'll do a bit of talking and if you're not feeling it you can ignore it, or you can come back to this later. maybe you want to try some grounding exercises, here / here and here before you feel capable of focusing. that's ok, take all the time you need. now, as someone who also struggles with this, i just wanted to say that i understand the intensity of the moment and how sometimes it really feels like the urge to give up is far stronger than any notion of hope the future has to offer. it is totally understandable how we get to this point when so much of life just seems to be suffering. having said that, i think it's a good sign that you reached out to me and an even better sign that you're able to recognize that these ARE just thoughts. and while they can be very powerful hurtful things, they do not exist in the tangible reality. not every idea that passes through your mind has to be believed or acted upon - all of this turmoil and self loathing, it is not factual and it is not permanent either. you're not in a place right now where you can trust your thoughts and feelings, so please let them pass on through, even if that takes a long time. allow it to. we've already established that this state of mind has come and gone in the past, and it will do the same again, if you give it the chance to. i'm not trying to downplay how unbelievably hard to live with, of course, but it can be freeing to acknowledge that this is transient no matter how difficult it is to endure. that fear is your survival instinct and it's kicking in to keep you here. you deserve to be here and you deserve to thrive, no matter what your mind is telling you. it sounds like you're going through phases of intense suicidal ideation and there can be a whole host of underlying causes for this - mental illness, past trauma etc. obviously those are very serious issues that need real medical attention in order to begin to overcome but with that and with time, it is totally possible to learn to live a full live along side them. almost nuturing them, so they don't overwhelm you as much. sometimes it boils down to loving yourself through it like a parent loves a child.

are you currently in touch with a mental health professional of any sort? your doctor, a therapist, a support group, even a hotline? if not, i would really urge you to seek help as soon as possible. and if you already are, let them know where you're at with your thoughts lately so they can focus on treating you more intensely. if you're worried about money, there are cost-sensitive options like finding a therapist who offers a sliding scale price, or looking into mental health resources within your community. any effort, no matter how small, counts. i know the prospect of reaching out and being honest is a daunting one, and i'm only bringing it up as something to consider at the moment (or when you feel able to) so please don't write it off all together. but it really is not the nightmare your brain is probably building it up to be. just like with physical illness, mental illness can be confronted and worked with. it's all about learning how to manage your unique mind, and even if it takes a lifetime, it is so possible to lessen the frequency of crises like this, to become more prepared for them so they feel less earth-shattering when they do occur. talking about what you've been through, pinpointing root causes, learnng how to implement healthy coping mechanisms into your daily routine, building a support system, finding the medication for you if needed - all of this is going to make a difference. it is not going to fix everything, obviously, but it is going to lighten the weight. you deserve to be supported without judgement and with genuine care, you deserve to be heard. there are a lot of people, professionals or otherwise, even just randoms like me, who are willing to be that presence for you.

this isn't always the case but a LOT of the time, suicidal people don't want to die, they just want to stop living 'like this'. you don't have to hurt yourself in order to achieve that, i mean it. i know when you're in this state of mind, any even slightly positive statement just feels like rubbing salt into the wound. but even if you can't seriously take them on board, i hope when you're in a more grounded place you can at least consider them as valid alternatives to absolute hopelessness. you might as well, because you are alive and that is not always going to be a burden. you honestly have an inherent worth that has been with you since the day you were born. it isn't gone just because you can't see it right now. every day you fulfil your purpose by experiencing the world. you can't fathom how many lives you've touched, directly and indirectly, just by being who you are. it is so hard to believe it, i get that, but it is a fundamental truth. there is nothing you need to prove, or give. the future is ever changing and doesn't exist yet, and you've already survived the past, so the only thing that really matters is this moment. focus on what you need, not what you want, but what you need to do right now to truly prioritize yourself. even if that feels like the last thing on earth you want do. if self destruction and self harm was gonna work, it would've by now. it's ok to try something new and to attempt to guide yourself through this with a bit of self-compassion. please, if you feel like you are an immediate danger to yourself, please exercise that and call the authorities, a hotline or a friend/family member right away. no matter what lies your brain is feeding you, no matter how much you don't actually want to in the moment. everything is always changing and things are going to change beyond recognition, they always do. you deserve to stick around to see that, and once you've made the decision to do that, you won't have to be scared anymore, not the way you are right now. i'm going to leave some links that i think might be of some service to you right now, but like i said, please call someone if you feel you can't be alone right now. i believe in you so much and i really hope you are able do the right thing for your own safety. such strong emotions are not built to last. just get through today, or even the next five minutes, andthen go from there. sending so much love.

list of hotlines

coping with suicidal thoughts

coping with depression

template for creating a safety plan

so you feel like shit? (this site really helped me the other day)

#anon #tw suicide #long #talking #tw self harm

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uhhhhyandere · 4 years ago

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If you're still doing requests how about omegaverse with omega Light and alpha m!reader who's a kickboxer. The reader's and Light's families are close and have high expectations of the two eventually marrying in the future, but the reader has no interest in being tied down and focused solely in his training and career. Lately he's noticed that some of his belongings have gone missing, like an old shirt or his boxing gloves, strangely enough the medication to help control his ruts keep (1/2)

running out quick, but writes it off as him being absentminded. One day he's forced to visit Light at his house and catches his scent forcing the reader into a rut, mating with Light all the while unaware they're under surveillance by the task force but Light finds this highly amusing. Now with mating bite and possibly pregnant, Light is tied to the reader no matter what now. (2/2)

we ain't gonna talk about how this has been sitting in my inbox for more than a year and ain't gonna talk about how i’ve almost had it done for more than a year, then forgot until i was digging through my drafts. no comment. i stink. i know, okay?!?!?!?!?!? AAAAHHH but i had fun finishing it so that’s what matters!!

6.6k words m!reader x light :)

warnings: smut! light is a.bottom and that's a hill i’ll die on.

Sweat, blood, and tears. It’s all you’ve ever known, and it’s all you’ve come to love and live for. The adrenaline of the ring, the quick, decisive movements, the thrill of winning, and the lessons learned from losing, it all accelerates your pulse and excites your nerves. Hard work never daunted you. You’ve learned to keep pushing, to run when you can’t walk, to fight when you’re knocked down, and to do whatever it took to come out on top. Your alpha blood craved the victory.

5am runs followed by strength training, then workouts after school was a routine you forced into your system. With your lifestyle, however, there was no other option. Strength. Flexibility. Reflexes. You needed everything to be successful. At the forefront of that “everything,” was commitment. There were things you had to miss because of training: family dinners, parties, club meetings, and more you’ve gotten an earful about for missing, but at least your family understood that boxing was your livelihood, no matter how much they were against it. It wasn’t some hobby you were going to drop when you got older. You wanted to make a career out of it, to be able to fight until you have to retire.

Of course, that was the plan. There were things, expectations, that naturally got in the way. It wasn’t ideal when your only son wanted to be a boxer of all things. How dangerous, risky, a dream you only have as a child. Well, fuck them, you said. Your dream was going to be your reality, and you couldn’t care less who or what stood in the way. Hard work perseveres in the end. You just had to focus. To get distracted by anything was the risk of losing that future.

The Yagami’s were a prime risk of losing that future. Your families were intertwined from before you were even born. Friends through their years of schooling and beyond. They married in the same year, moved into houses on the same block, and, of course, had their oldest child in the same year. It was like clockwork from there on out, a script to be naturally followed through the course of time. It only helped all the better when you were born an alpha and Light an omega.

Light’s and your baby pictures were taken together. Vacations were taken together. Chief Yagami pulled strings at school so you were put into the same class, assigned the same tutor, put in the same prep course, and the same private academy. At that point, you were almost sure your parents wanted to be there when you two undoubtedly mate. Your paths were carved to be identical, linked to the very end, yet so you saw them as so incredibly different.

However, you and Light were fundamentally different people. He was not a friend you chose, but someone who’s just been there. A constant, a tick on the back of your neck that left you with no choice but to live with its existence. You’ve come to accept the reality that he’s going to be there for the near future, the far future if your parents had anything to say about it. They and the Yagami’s had a matching plan, but while they were audibly planning your wedding, you were conniving a scheme of your own.

The Koyanagi Invitational. Held at the beginning of January, this tournament-style invitational welcomes only the best of the best in fighters from all over Japan. The winners almost always see themselves on the international stage. It’s a nationally televised program, and you were only one win away from securing your spot in round one after your championship match for your region coming up soon.

Your time is always dedicated to your passion, but now more than ever. Your trainer, an alum of the invitational himself, has allotted the time you desired to train in the gym at the expense of his other lessons. The trade-off was after your championship, you had to find another place for the time it will take to make up all the canceled lessons with the clients you were replacing for the time being, which shouldn’t be hard to do if—when you win the regional championship. Therefore, your time was acutely cut short for academics, social events, and everything else that was not training, but those were the sacrifices you warned everyone you would be making to come this far and reach even farther. You were not even keeping track of Kira at this point. Even that was on the backburner. What? Were they going to kill you for missing dinner with the Yagami’s for the third time this week?

“Y/N,” your name was called. Through the surging endorphins of your body, you were able to feel good enough to answer the call from your father from the sweat you were yet to shower off. You’d rather reek on the way home rather than use the gym showers. Dropping your bag from your shoulder, you rub the muscle there as you approach the full table. “You were supposed to be home forty-five minutes ago.” You sighed, dropping your hands back to your sides. “Yeah, sorry, dad. Lost track of time. Coach was fixing my style again. Swarmer has always been good for me, I think. Just refining it.” You didn’t miss the shared look between your parents.

“Well, it’s a good thing we scheduled this later because we knew you’d do this,” your mother says, low heat in her voice. “Get cleaned up and be down here in no more than ten minutes.” Biting your tongue, you nodded, making eye contact with Light as you turned to grab your bag and follow her request. “You could at least put jeans on.” You weren’t even down the hallway when your mother spoke again. This time, you were not being civil for the company’s sake and didn’t bother concealing your groan.

“It’s not like we have company over.” The Yagami’s were over for dinner or you were over there at least four times a week. It would be odder to have dinner with just three instead of seven (or five, if you missed due to training or Soichiro because of the Kira case) people around the table. You pulled out the chair they left for you beside Light and lowered yourself into it, immediately taking another drink of water from the gallon water bottle you lugged around. “Or, at least, no one new.”

“Y/N—,”

“No, he’s quite right. There’s no need to dress up for us. We’re practically family already.” Mrs. Yagami, your savior, laughed. “Light just always does,” which is wildly true. Light had a tendency to always look presentable and put-together no matter where the setting was. Late-night study sessions and other in-house cases were the only occasions you would see him clad in anything comfortable. Then, there was you, in your sweats at all times except when you were forced into your uniform at school.

Luckily enough, the comparison game was not thrown between the two of you too often. It wasn’t necessary when your parents were convinced you would mate and live the rest of your lives together. An unspoken truth that simmered in the air whenever you all got together.

“How is your training going anyway, Y/N?” Soichiro was an odd sight at the table anymore. The Kira case was an equivalent time commitment to your championship training, (except he gets paid to almost die. You get into fights willingly) and it was more and more late nights on the investigation team.

Especially now, of all times, with the dead FBI agents from the United States the news mentioned one morning, he was busier than ever.

“Gets harder and harder, Mr. Yagami. Though, I’m keeping up. With the championship on the seventh, I can’t afford not to. The guy’s a monster from what I’ve heard. Tomorrow we’re watching his match from the semi’s.” Your mother cleared her throat.

“Soichiro, sorry. We just prefer not to talk about business at the dinner table. Our son has a tendency to talk about fighting at all hours of the day, so we cherish this time where we don’t have to hear about it.” Ignoring her blatancy, you took another drink.

“Well, I like to hear about it.” It was Light who spoke up. “It’s his passion, with all due respect. Do you not see it when his eyes light up when he describes his feelings or explains his regime? He’s someone with an innate gift he wants to pursue. Not to mention the strength he possesses to live this lifestyle. If anything, you should be proud to hear him talk about it, the time he dedicates. It’s nothing short of awe-striking, what he can do.” Your skin feeling unbearably hot, you blinked a few times and hoped to hide from the admirable line of defense Light brought up for you. Peeking from your pit of embarrassment, you met his eyes, bright and unabashed, and you smiled a silent thank you to him. He, without moving a single facial feature, accepted it.

Instead of seeing the literal meaning of his words, you knew your parents saw the underlying tone of them. Their son being stood up for by Light Yagami. It must mean Light cared for him. Another step towards the future they have been quietly planning, so they smiled, and you wondered if Light saw through it just as easily as you did.

He and you never sat down and had a conversation about your parents’ expectations. Whether it was reluctance or the pure awkwardness of it all, it never came up when you were together. It didn’t matter, though, because if you could avoid it, which you could easily with your training, you would. At all costs. You did not have the time for that and would not for anytime soon.

After dinner, Light and you were pushed to do the dishes, as you always were if you were present. He washed, and you dried and put them away. In the midst of the sink running and the clinking of dishes, you found yourself with the desire to properly thank him outside of the small look you gave him before, but thought twice, three times about it at risk of looking too thankful and soft. “Just say it,” he spoke instead.

“What?”

“You look like you have something to say. You’ve glanced at me twenty-three times in the past seven minutes.” Despite the small grin on his face, you still couldn’t help but consider saying “it’s nothing,” which he would undoubtedly disbelieve, and let it blow over. Knowing him, though, he would twist it out of your system anyway, like a lawyer rinsing the truth in a cross-examination.

“Just—uh thanks, man. For before.” Light laughed, scrubbing in the curve of a bowl.

“You don’t have to thank me for something like that. You’re the type of person society needs, and to have someone talk down at you for being excited about your dreams is wrong. I was only doing the right thing, and I’d do it again.” You avoided his gaze as he explained, suddenly invested in drying the utensils one-by-one.

“Well, yeah, means a lot.”

Was Light’s smell always so nice? Yes, you weren’t going to fool yourself that this was the first time you’ve noticed. You’ve been nearby during one of his heats, and you remember nearly falling out into your own primal senses because of it. If it weren’t for your own reluctant self-control, you’re not sure where that night would have gone to. You’ve managed to deduce his smell to be some sort of chestnut, brown sugar mix. Intoxicating, but undeniably would foster an unwarranted reaction from you if you were too close during those times.

Not to mention that you’ve noticed Light’s good looks sporadically throughout the past. While he plays tennis, focuses on a particularly confusing calculus problem, biting his lip and twiddling the pencil between his digits, or just smiles at you from across the hall at school, you’ve acknowledged it, but never let it grow to anything else. You didn’t want to. Sure, he was handsome, but you had a million other things to focus on than to be tied down by any sort of relationship. Besides, if worse comes the worse, your self-control is unmatched from your countless hours of training. No single individual could sway you from your path.

“It’s really nothing. Like I said, don’t mention it.” And you didn’t plan on it. Light stayed to finish up homework as well as teach you a good two-thirds of the material before telling you he was heading out on his short walk home after you returned from a quick bathroom break. It was getting close to the bedtime that enabled you to get your full eight hours before 5am.

The closer the championship came, the less you saw of people. You ate breakfast and left earlier, came to school right from the gym, (yes, you resigned yourself to shower in the disgusting stalls) went back to the gym after school, and got home later. It gave you less time to do homework or hang out with anyone that wasn’t your trainer. Good thing you had your good friend Light who insisted it was fine to stay late in your room and catch you up on what you were behind in.

It only made sense, then, with your exponentially increasing schedule that things started to become hectic. Of course, you were missing more of what you usually missed, but most recently you’ve begun to misplace things. A t-shirt you knew you had in the drawer, your go-to nighttime sweatshirt, a pair of shorts. You figured some might be at the gym or dropped in your transit from one place to another, but your sweatshirt never left your house and you sure as hell never left it in the hamper to get washed.

It was just your busy schedule, you and your parents agreed. You needed to step back and relax if you were beginning to lose things. Plus, you were hardly sleeping with your anxiety building for the coming fight and the late nights you were practically forcing Light to pull with you.

“You don’t have to do this with me all the time,” you mentioned one night. “If I’m messing with your schedule or anything, I know it’s probably super inconvenient for you to do this so often. I never asked—.”

“You didn’t have to,” he answered. “It’s no trouble. I offered, after all. It’s not like I see you much outside of these sessions anyway. Even at school, you seem to always be in a hurry. I’m actually pretty worried about you. How much sleep are you getting? Are you eating enough? Drinking?” You waved him off.

“You know I always do. I have to eat and drink enough to do this in the first place. I don’t carry a gallon bottle around for the gains, after all.”

“And your sleep?” You glanced towards your window.

“Needs work these days.” A small whack resounded off your temple. Surprised, you watched the weapon be flipped between the assaulter’s fingers in front of you. “What was that for?”

“Don’t be stupid. I get you want to work hard for your match coming up but killing yourself with all this hard work and no rest will undoubtedly lead to your defeat. It’s common sense. You should know that more than anyone.” You set your pen on the desk, the fatigue weighing your eyes down. “Even your dark circles are even showing.” You relaxed your shoulders. “You don’t have to put up your tough guy front with me.”

“You don’t have to put up your perfect student façade either.” You paused. “Sorry. Uncalled for. You’re right, as usual. I love it though. I want to be the best, and this guy I’m coming up against? He’s a maniac. This is the first tournament he hasn’t gone below the belt or spit on an opponent. Who knows when he’ll start, though? I have to be quick. This fight cannot last long, or this guy will injure me. I can’t afford that if I’m moving on to Koyanagi.” You laughed. “You’re really right. You know I’ve been losing stuff left and right? Old shirt here, that black sweatshirt I wear all the time? Gone. No idea. Some tape in my bag. It’s like some leprechaun is stealing my stuff.”

“They’ll turn up. Maybe if you get a proper night’s sleep tomorrow and train only in the afternoon, you’ll remember where you left them.” You groaned, stretching in your spot and allowing yourself to slouch against the wall you leaned against and to shut your eyes. “Hey, at least finish this last problem and sleep in your bed.”

“Don’t want to. I’ll sleep right here.”

And you did, because Light Yagami was too weak to lift you up.

A sore back and neck now healed, you found yourself wrapping your hands for the long-awaited match in the locker room. Heart already beginning to pound, you tried to find solace in the silence around you, but all you could hear was the rhythm against your ribs.

“You ready, kid?” Your coach asked from the entranceway. “Two minutes.” You nodded, reaching into your bag and finding odd space in there. No fucking way. Though your old boxing gloves were present, your current ones were not. God, another thing my dumbass lost. There was no time to sit and shit on yourself. I just lost the fucking match for myself, damn it! You didn’t think about it long before you exited the locker room and into the blur of voices and music on the other side. Your opponent stood on the other side of the room, taller and wider than yourself. “Size ain’t nothing kid. Put your confidence into work too here. Don’t forget the mental part of the fight, ya hear me?”

You didn’t. In the crowd, you saw your family and the Yagami’s looking either nervous or excited. The camera crews around swung cameras across the area of the mat. As your name was announced and you entered the ring, the lights began to move around you. The crowd cheered and yelled in excitement. Your coach encouraged you from behind you.

Sweat, blood, and tears. It is what has gotten you this far, and it will continue to bring you higher. You did not train and work to lose right where you should be beginning. As your opponent entered from the other corner, the familiar sense of adrenaline rushed your veins. Yes, you could do this.

Ten

Nine

Eight

Seven

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Five

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Three

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One

K.O.

You woke up in your bed the next morning. A white ceiling, white walls beeping a steady heartbeat around you. Then, it all came coming back. The elbow, all the dirty moves used against you pounded in your skin. Out of everything, your head ached the most. Tiny explosions cascaded your brain as you rolled your head along your pillow.

“You’re awake!” It was your father. “Your mother’s worried sick. That stupid asshole. Why they didn’t disqualify him after the first dirty hit, I’ll never know, but you had a fair fight.” You squinted through the migraine.

“…Did I win?”

“From a DQ, yeah. Hardly counts, and I’m sure you hardly feel like it. The guy was a nutcase. The kind that takes out their aggression through the sport rather than respecting it. You’re gonna be out for the count for a while, you know that, right? Grade three concussion. You’re going to have to take a break. Me and your trainer already called every gym around and put you on the blacklist—,”

“But dad—,”

“Nope, I’m not going to hear it. You are not allowed to even think about working out or training. We are going to keep our eyes on you at all times because we all know how you think and what you’re going to try to pull. Recovery is the most important part of an injury. If you don’t take care of yourself, you’ll never get better in time for the invitational. Got it?” You guffawed.

“You can’t keep eyes on me at all times.”

“Not me, personally, but there is someone with a similar schedule to you that you happen to go to school with and happens to live around the block.” You glared at the man.

“You recruited Light into helping you, didn’t you?” He shrugged and took the steps forward to stand at the foot of the bed.

“It’s more so he volunteered. He knows just as well as the rest of us you need to be watched or you’ll train at some faraway gym or secluded area. It’s for your best interest. You’ll go to school with him and he’ll take you back to their place until we get home—.”

“I don’t need a goddamned babysitter,” you bit out.

“On the contrary, would you not sneak off to train despite your condition?” You shook your head. You were in no condition to be having an argument, yet you stood your ground.

“It’s the lack of trust for me.”

“Yeah, we don’t. Not when it comes to putting your health first. Light was even telling us about how you’re behind in school too. With a concussion, you’ll need help anyway. Discussion over.” If your headache could get any worse, you were pretty sure it would have.

Not that you thought that he was kidding, but you weren’t expecting the doorbell to ring so early as you brushed your teeth, a towel wrapped around your waist from your shower. Spitting quickly, you left wet footprints across the wood floor as you approached the door.

“By god,” you muttered, opening the door. “You really were enlisted, huh?” Light shrugged.

“Well, by the looks of it, you didn’t go out earlier to work out than usual in order to look like you didn’t, unless you’re showering from a quick one between when your parents left for work and I got here.” You rolled your eyes, opening the door wider and stepping aside to allow him room to enter.

“Funny. No, I just got up. Guy really did me in one, and you don’t actually have to listen to my parents. You know I’m not going to go do anything that can put my recovery at risk.” He slid his bag off his shoulder and set it on the couch.

“I know you, and the second you don’t wake up in pain, you’re gone. Sitting back and doing nothing kills you, after all. I don’t need to have known you my entire life to tell you that.” The side of your lip quirked.

“Yeah, whatever. Let me get some clothes on,” you turned around and returned to the bathroom. Putting on the folded clothes you left in the corner, you grabbed your bag from your bedroom and met with the boy digging into his bag. “Ready, babysitter? I’m going to call you that all day, by the way. No matter who we’re with.”

“Great. I can’t wait.” …

It wasn’t so bad, having a sitter. You mean, you were with Light when you weren’t training, anyway. Going to his house every day after school was even normal, mind the odd words being thrown around the school by the observers. No one confronted you about it, which came as no surprise. Who was going to confront a boxer about those kinds of rumors?

Light didn’t seem to mind, either. As one of the top bachelors of the whole school, you were sure he had to be aware of them. Just like your parents’ desired future for the two of you, you never spoke of it. Perhaps he was as nervous to bring it up as you were, or at least as reluctant. Still, nothing would change. If he would not speak of it, neither would you.

You never suspected, however, for that dam of silence to ever break in either of you. …

It was nearing the end of your recovery when the only thing between you and getting back in the ring was a doctor’s okay. Your parents and the Yagami’s were going out for a “night on the town,” quote-on-quote. Sayu was at a sleepover, and your parents ordered you to make your way over to Yagami household.

“It’s getting close to you being cleared. No point in ruining it now, Y/N. Just go. You probably have work he has to teach you anyway.” You glared at your parents as they stood adamant. “Go. We will have him drag you there.” “As if he could,” you muttered.

“Let me in!” Two minutes of knocking, you resigned to lifting up the third rock from the right and grabbing the key from the underside. After you broke in three times in a week at age seven, you would think they’d change the key’s location.

You set your possible overnight bag on the couch. On the main floor, it was quiet, which wasn’t all surprising. Light has been spending more time in his bedroom than ever. That was saying a lot, itself, because he was always in there in the first place. Perhaps he wasn’t expecting you. You grinned.

Footsteps light, you tiptoed up the stairs and turned the corner. There were small noises coming from the other side of his door that you could hear from the far side of the hall. As you creep closer, you couldn’t necessarily distinguish what the noises were. Nonetheless, it was clue enough he was too preoccupied to notice the huge scare you’re about to give him.

Hand on the doorknob, you turned it and screamed as you entered.

Though, turns out you were the one that got more scared. Not in fright, but of shock. Light, however, remained composed as ever despite the position you caught him in.

His smell overpowered the room. You nearly were kicked back from it. Back bent upwards off the bed, his mouth agape with small guttural moans and breathless gasps escaping it, all while his hand worked every so slowly stroking his cock. His other hand fisted what you recognized as your lost sweatshirt covering his nose and mouth. Above the material, his eyes were trained on yours, head rolled to the side as his motion continued.

“Jesu—what? Is that my…” Looking around the slightly torn up room, you recognized t-shirts, tape, and even your current pair of boxing gloves lying around the room or on his bed. “I-I don’t…” His fist threw the sweatshirt to the side as the hand came down hard on the bed.

“You don’t—mmh—what? Get it? I know you’re not the sharpest knife in the drawer at times, but you can put this together, can’t—uh—you?” His grin grew wider and more wicked as he took in your reaction. “I’ll say, you have an unspeakable amount of willpower, but I think—ah—I’ve had enough of it.”

“What do you mean? Did—did you plan this?! To trigger my fucking—ugh.” He rolled his eyes. Whether it was from pleasure or annoyance, you couldn’t tell, and your mind wasn’t really in a state to think about it under the current conditions.

He had you trapped. His smell corrupted the very air around you and seeped into your skin. It was overpowering. You could feel your rut, your ever so clandestine, rut-stained self, emerging from its thick chains. You couldn’t even take a step backward or turn to open the unlocked door. All of your nerves screamed at you to take him. To make him scream so that all he could say, all he could even think about, was you, but you couldn’t. You couldn’t.

Because this isn’t what you wanted. You didn’t want to be linked with him outside of your parents’ desire for you and him to be wed one day. This was the path to that future, the future that distracted you from your goal.

Light shifted to stand above your lack and bent form that was on its last legs before the rut would take over. A hand softly stroked your head, as a parent would stroke a child’s, and set itself under your chin. It nudged upwards, forcing your gaze to his. At such close vicinity, the scent, his scent, him, it was all you could perceive.

“You really are the worst. The epitome of holding yourself—your desires—back. I know you don’t want what our parents want. I know the thought of something tearing you from your dream kills you. I know that you think that this,” he motioned between the two of you, “would be the exact definition of a distraction, so you’ve pushed it all down. Never acknowledging its existence. Well, do you acknowledge it now?”

You didn’t answer. You were nervous about what would come out of your mouth if anything did. Your willpower would die with the next exhale you took. Annoyed with your last stand, he dragged his hand from your neck to your shoulder and shoved your weak state down so you were on your knees. He leaned down so his breath ghosted over your lips.

“You really put on a show for me, you know. Answering the door with only your towel on back then. Deep down, I think you want this too. Deep down, you know that this was bound to happen. Just like your pain in a fight, you ignore it. You’re not a complicated individual to figure out. Just give in. What’s the harm in letting someone else take the reins for once?” He stared down at you, you felt it, but you refused to meet it, choking on shallow breathes in order not to inhale his scent too much. You remained silent, using your leftover strength to power onto your two feet.

“Not going to talk? Fine. Your mouth could—,” you didn’t even allow him the time to finish the sentence or pull through on what you knew was going to be his statement as you rushed to shove him rough enough to force him to fall on his ass on the floor next to the bed. He looked up at you from his seated position, eyes wide and excited. You seemed more shocked than him and took a step backward towards the door. His eyes, yellowed and urgent, followed your movements.

Swallowing, you willed yourself to extend your hand down as a form of apology: one you were unable to voice in current conditions. Light’s hand, soft and delicate, grasped is softly at first, allowing you to lift him to stand just over the bed, then squeezed, brought his other hand to your forearm. and tugged your unsuspecting form onto the bed with him, so you unwillingly straddled his legs.

He was quick to surge upward and lock his arms around your neck. Meeting his lips was kissing the devil himself: everything about it was all-consuming, hot, wrong. Light did not start out slow, just as he was with everything else. With guns blazing, his tongue tore open your lips and invaded your now open maw with vigor and power your conscious self could not meet. He brought his hands to your ass and tugged you forward to push your bodies tight together. Breaking only to breathe and begin to force your shirt up your abdomen with his cold fingers. You helped. God, you shouldn’t have, but your clothes were getting so hot. As soon as the article was off, Light latched to your neck, teeth quick to bite. You gasped, tilting your head back to reveal more skin to him. He brought his hand up and tugged on your hair, eliciting another groan from your lips.

“For someone who abhorred the thought of us together, you seem to be enjoying yourself.” His mouth continued down your form, biting the skin, and then licking the newly affected area. By now, you could feel your length suffocating even under the looseness of sweatpants. The undeniable urge for relief, for him, the one who was adjusting you to stand in front of him. An obvious, wordless request to rid yourself of your confines. “Go on. I’m waiting,” he said, leaning back to show his nude-self off. His cock glistening with a delightful mix of slick and precum. Inviting. Warning. Waiting. Jesus, you needed your fucking pants off!

Hurrying to get your legs bare, you allowed your own slick to make its first drops onto the floor. Light did not make any moves, only locking his eyes onto yours. A silent argument, but you were in no mood to trifle in such affairs with your mind clouded. Surging forward, you would have been able to straddle him once more would it not be for his hand solidly placed on your abdomen. “I said, I’m waiting, you sex-craved beast. Tell me how much you need this. How much you want to be mine. To follow the path carved for you with me. I have enough here to get me through my heat, but you don’t get ruts too often, do you?” Why and how this twig held so much authority, you would never know.

“Just let me—,”

“Let you?” He laughed. “Do you think you’re the one in charge here? What? You think because you’re physically stronger, because you’re an alpha, that you get dominance here?” His eyes, though yellow, spoke true on his words. They demanded compliance. “Now, be a good boy, and beg to fuck me. Beg to stick your cock inside me.” To stress his point, he ground upwards ever so slightly. You hissed at the contact.

“God, please just let me—please just—fuck. Light, I need to fuck you. I need to take you, to mate you, to—fuck—I want you to scream for me, and only me. I want your throat raw from how loud and how much you scream for me.” You gripped the headboard above him while your other hand trailed down his lithe body coated in sweat until it reached his hole. His slick dripped from there due to his heat so that your finger slipped right in. Light moaned. “Fuck, you’re so tight. Please,” you slipped a second, then the third digit in. Light’s teeth dug into his bottom lip as his back arched to meet the thrust of your fingers.

“Shit, it feels so good, Y/N, alpha. Go on. Mate me. Be mine forever just as I’d be yours.” You adjusted yourself to settle comfortably between his legs and used your hands to lift them, bending him in half to expose himself to you. You hissed as his first squeeze around you before you continued to sink in. Shared moans filled the room as you cursed out for each other. “Yes, feel how tight I am for you, how your cock was meant for me.” Heat shot through every nerve fiber of your being, and you did not bother to begin your thrust languidly. Instead, you rushed to build to a quick, pounding pace. Your rut pushing you to go deeper, and faster as he tightened around your length. Your hips met his groan with an audible smack, and, at a certain angle, Light cried out. “What are you… waiting for…? Bite… me. Claim me, you beast.”

You could barely hear his words through your focus, your feeling, and, after a short while, even Light could not manage words. Only gasps, moans, and a few small screams escaped his lips and you sought your release. Closer, and closer, and closer… fuck. You ground your pelvis into his.

“Shit, I’m gonna—oh, fuck,” you whispered, a quiet worship into the air as you allowed yourself to empty within him. You pulled out slowly, watching small amounts of liquid viscously drool out. Light’s skin was flushed deeply red, sweat glistening off his skin, and cock red, pulsing, and heavy against his torso. His labored breaths from his wide, open mouth forced his stomach to rapidly grow and shrink before he quickly regained himself and focused his eyes on you.

“What? Do you think I’m done with you?” He smirked, still breathing heavily, chest rising and falling. “Come here.” You let his legs go to allow him to surge forward and capture your lips with his own. “I’m still rock hard. Why don’t you do down there and do something about it, hm?” Light supported his point by guiding your hand to grasp his cock. “Go on.”

His scent was all-consuming. Your nose trailing the skin of his cock as it followed your tongue up and down his length. You swirled your tongue around this head while your hand worked the base of his cock. “Eyes on me, alpha. Eyes on your omega, now.” Yellowed eyes dared you to look away. “Go on, and take me in.” Light gasped as you swallowed him. “Fuck, fuck, yeah. Now, suck. Yes. Just like that. Bob your head—just like,” he grasped your head and guided your movements, “that, yes. Damn, you’re a terribly slow study with math, but fuck, you learn to suck cock quickly.”

You followed his instructions, hand lightly teasing his balls, mouth taking him deep then pulling back, until you began to move on your own volition. “Oh, yes. I’m gonna- fuck. You better fucking swallow all of me. I don’t want to see a single drop on the bed.” Light watched with sick delight as you struggled to take his spend in. He was quick to reach down when you retracted your mouth, sealing your jaw shut with his hand until he saw your adam’s apple bob. “Oh, good boy. Now,” ignoring your painfully—once again—hard cock, he pulled you back up, “claim me. Bite me, alpha. Do it.”

“N-no, I can’t.”

“You can and you will. Go ahead.” Light moved his locks and stretched his neck out to you. There was nothing more you wanted to do than sink your teeth into the smooth stretch, to have your scent follow him as he walked around the school every day. “Bite me, Y/N. Do it now,” and you did. Light howled in pleasure as copper filled your mouth. You licked the raw skin before sinking you teeth in deeper and sucking what you can.

“Light,” you pulled back, eyes blown wide. “I—,” he shushed you by tightly gripping your cock with a wide smile.

“It all worked perfectly,” he said, beginning to stroke your length in tandem with his words. “I thought replacing your gloves would cause you to lose, to grieve, to stay here, but when I heard of your opponent and talked with him just a bit before your match, angering him about what kind of person you were, I had to. I had to.” You bit your bottom lip, unable to articulate words as he picked up his pace, tightened and loosened his grip, and brought in his other hand. “It hurt to see you injured, but I had to what had to be done. I needed you to make me yours. You don’t belong with anyone else besides me. Your dreams, your work ethic, your body, your mind, they’re all mine, and now, with this,” he motions to the raw, bloodied skin of his neck, “my plan has come to fruition beautifully. It’s like the universe deemed it so.” Your breathing escalated. His thumb moved to tease the head of your cock. “You’re all,” he laughed, “fucking mine.”

He met your lips the same time your release spilled into the open air. “Now,” he leaned back, “let’s keep going, hm?”

#light x reader #yandere light yagami x reader #m!reader #x m!reader #death note fic #yandere death note #Light Yagami #death note #tw yandere #tw: yandere #tw: dubcon #tw dubcon #tw: a/b/o

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shinidamachu · 3 years ago

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Do you have thoughts on the Aang/Ozai showdown at the end?

Zuko: please. The real hero is a random rock the Avatar.

The final battle was amazing, from an animation poin of view. The colors, the fighting sequence, the symbolism, Aang finally mastering all elements. Just very exciting and satisfying to watch, because it was something that the audience was hoping for since episode one. And they delivered it.

From a writing point of view, though? It was less of a showdown and more of a cop-out. See, I'm not saying, by any means, that Aang should have killed Ozai. Quite the opposite. Not only because it was a children's show. Not only because Aang was a traumatized, non violent, 12 years old. But also because it made sense for the character and for the core themes of the show.

Don't get me wrong, Ozai one hundred per cent deserved to die. Aang himself stated that the world would be a better place without Ozai in it. I just don't think he should be the one to do it. At the same time, is on his hands that Ozai's fate lays and no one else can make that decision for him.

So if killing Ozai off could turn him into a Fire Nation martyr anyway and Aang refuses to do so because of his pacifist principles, what's the other option to defeat the guy and end the war? The authors went with energy bending and, honestly, I thought it was brilliant for a series of reasons.

First, ending Ozai's life seems like the obvious choice, an easy way out. I love the concept of Aang refusing to do what's expected of him and choosing instead to finish the war on his own terms, without compromising who he is, because in theory, that would mean he would have to go out of his way to find a different solution, in a perfect shout out to Bumi's words in The King Of Omashu: "you must master the four elements and confront the Fire Lord. And when you do, I hope you will think like a mad genius."

Second, in a show where bending is intimately related to one's very being, the questions begs to be raised: how much taking someone's bending away is better, more ethical or less cruel than actively killing them? Because it's a fundamental part of who they are, of their soul. Ty Lee had the abiliity to block chis, temporarily making people unable to bend. And it was a terrifying thing for the people she used the technique on.

Lastly, it ends the "killing Ozai would turn him into a Fire Nation martyr" for good, because (ATLA COMICS SPOILER ALERT) Aang let him leave without his bending and a significant amount of people still worshipped the guy to the point of planning coups on the down low and sending Zuko death threats left and right, so we basically got the same result, but Ozai remained an ever present threat to the peace Aang fought to achieve.

The problem, as people smarter and more eloquent than I have pointed out countless times, wasn't the energy bending solution, it was the way it was introduced and then executed.

Aang: hey! Look at these weird Lion Turtle things.

Looking back now, this scene from The Library was obviously foreshadowing the finale, so the Lion Turtle reveal wasn't pulled out of thin air. It had a purpose. Considering that this episode, from Book Two, mentioned the Lion Turtle, who would later teach Aang how to energy bend and that The Guru, also from Book Two, introduced the arc of Aang having to let go of his attachment to Katara in order to master the Avatar State, I can only assume that the original intentions of the writers were very clear:

Aang doesn't want to kill Ozai but he also doesn't want to let go of Katara. That's the catch! To "energy bend" his way out of murder, he has to master the Avatar State. His conflict here, is much greater than before because now Katara is a factor in the equation as well. He either kills Ozai, keeps his attachment and gives up the Avatar State or he masters it, defeats Ozai by removing his bending but has to let go of Katara in the process. It's awesome because it's the hardest possible choice a character like Aang could be forced to make. And we knew he would ultimately do the right thing, but regardless of what he decides, he still loses something important to him, he still has to make a huge sacrifice.

Of course, none of that happens. This was the first and only time the Lion Turtle was brought up. The “letting Katara go” arc was unceremoniously killed alongside Aang the second Azula shot that lightning in Ba Sing Se, but differently from the Avatar, whom Katara ressurrected, it was never brought back. And it’s a shame. Because The Library was the perfect episode to expand on the Lion Turtle and energy bending mystery.

And the finale? It was the perfect episode for Aang to do what he failed to do in Ba Sing Se: to let Katara go and achieve the Avatar State by his own merits, sacrificing something he wanted for the greater good. The way he hid into a cocoon of rocks? It would have been a great call out to the little crystal tent he made in his fight with Azula when he decided to give the Guru’s advices a try. And it would also symbolize rebirth in the same way Katara breaking him out of the iceberg did. Because now he had finally reached the other side of the river and he is no longer the same person he once was.

But the narrative decided, instead, to rob Aang from any growth, from any substancial change, from any interesting arc. They went with the “love is the most important thing” approach to justify him honlding on to Katara. And I could have bought it if they hadn’t been so dishonest about it.

First: if you love someone, you let them go. Attachment and love are two very different things. No one ever told Aang to stop loving Katara. He was told to let her go. And it makes sense because he was attached to her in a way that wasn’t healthy for either of them, and was keeping him from achieving his full spiritual potential, something he should care a little more about, given his upbring.

Second, in the person of Iroh, arguably the wisest character in the show, Aang is told that he is right for choosing love over power. But this is a false equivalence because it’s not what Aang is doing. The scene makes it look like he is seeking power for the sake of power. That’s not the case. The Avatar State is an inherent power, meaning Aang already has it. It’s part of who he is. He just needs to unblock it and learn how to control it. And he has to do that not for personal gain, but to put an end in the war.

A war that took almost everything from Katara, the person he loves. Aside from Aang himself, she is the person who would benefit the most from him learning to control the Avatar State, since she is the one who has to calm him down every time he accidentaly triggers it and winning the war is a very personal goal of her. Now, this is just conjecture but I firmly believe that even if Katara was secretly in love with Aang (which I don’t buy), she would be the first to tell his it’s okay to let her go. But alas, she wasn’t even aware of this conflict. A conflict she played a key part in.

That being said, I do think that the Ozai dillema was introduced too late. It should have been explored before the Day of Black Sun, giving Aang plenty of time to search for a different solution. It also never made sense to me why killing Ozai wasn’t a problem then. Apparently the explanation that I was supposed to stick with is that Aang was naive. He didn’t know people expected him to kill the Fire Lord until Zuko asked him what he would do when he faced Ozai, since violence wasn’t the answer. But I honestly struggle to accept this because, yes, Aang was naive.

But not that naive. Not at that point. After episodes like The Siege of the North and The Avatar State, I just don’t buy he didn’t know what people wanted him to do. Plus, Aang has an evasive fighting style, based on always being one step ahead of his opponent. To do that, he has to plan beforehand. What was his plan to confront Ozai in the Day of Black Sun, after everything he went through? Talk to him? Arrest the guy? If that’s the case, shouldn’t it at least be discussed with the gang? It’s never addressed.

Then comes the finale. Aang’s moment of truth. The event we’ve all been hoping for. The one that will turn him into a legend. And Aang is losing. He can’t win without killing Ozai or controling the Avatar State to take his bending away. What will he sacrifice to become a hero? His morals or his attachment? Answer: neither! Because the writers decided he should have everything without give up nothing. So they miraculously make a convenently sharped rock hit the exact right spot in the perfect time unblock his chakra, allowing him to enter the Avatar State.

I’m not even gonna talk about how this is most definitely not how chakras work, because it’s not really my place. But I am gonna talk about the tragic (not to say hilarious) fact that, by trying to make Aang have his cake and eat it too, the writers ultimately made a fucking rock the responsible for Aang’s success. Not his cleverness, not his hard work, not his altruism: a rock. If that rock wasn’t there, in the right place, at the right time, then what? Would Aang finally have done what he had to do, or would he be killed, allowing the war to continue?

That’s my issue with it. That, and the fact that they had no trouble addressing delicate topics, but didn’t have enough courage to let the 12 years old protagonist end up alone. Because, of course, children can’t understand the hero not getting the girl. Right?

RIGHT?

Aang managed to defeat Ozai and get the girl even though there was a whole season dedicated to build up an arc in which he would have to let her go to succed. Even though their last one on one interaction before their last kiss was Aang screaming at her and storming off, while Katara reprimended him for walking away from the issue. Even if he had been acting more and more possessive and entitled when it came to her affection. Even if Katara had shown no real interest in him that way before she suddenly does. But what do I know? Maybe she was hit by a magic rock too.

Aang and Katara happened at the cost of Aang’s character development. Fandom might think the rival ship was harmed the most by it, but that’s not true. Aang was. And it’s really sad. He is an amazing character and he deserved to be the hero of his own story, to have his beliefs tested and to come out of his journey irrevocably changed, not locked inside a plot armor.

#ATLA #Sidmailing #Avatar The Last Airbender

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carol-effing-danvers · 3 years ago

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Steve Rogers is a Monster

Yeah, that’s a hell of a title, isn’t it? Strap in, it only gets worse from here.

(click here if you’d prefer to read this on AO3)

Forewarning, if you enjoyed the epilogue for Endgame, this particular essay is not for you - and no, I am not bashing the Steve/Peggy shippers, you are beautiful human beings who make the fandom brighter and I’m happy that at least someone in this fandom got the ending they wanted.

Additional warning: if you expect this to be another Civil War debate, you will also be disappointed. There has never been a measurement invented that can adequately describe how much I loathe the verbal dick measuring contest that seems to pass for human interaction between Tony Stark and Steve Rogers in this franchise. It’s not funny or entertaining - it’s exhausting, uncomfortable, and frankly it’s rather lazy writing.

This is about the very specific way that the epilogue in Endgame completely changed the way the character of Steve Rogers can be interpreted, and I don’t just mean the very illogical and contradictory way that time travel is explained, both in the movie itself and the fact that the writers and directors have two completely different views on how that worked out.

I mean that the choice made by Steve Rogers in the very last minutes of that movie alters the way I view each and every one of his actions starting from The First Avenger and that alteration is exactly what I want to talk about, because whether you view it as deserving or not, what Steve does at the conclusion of Endgame was the most selfish thing humanly possible. Time is a thief, but somehow Steve managed to steal even more than Time.

Side note here: I understand that I am a completely biased Stucky shipper, a friend to Barnes and Noble, a Starbucks aficionado - sorry. Anyway, I’ve always believed that Steve and Bucky were destined blah blah blah, but I was never expecting a Stucky ending. Disney wasn’t going to do that, and I knew that, I wasn’t bothered that Steve and Bucky weren’t doing the smoochies by the end. But Bucky’s facial expression during those last minutes was gut-wrenching. Like...I have no idea what kind of cues the script and directors gave him, but in the future, please don’t ask Sebastian Stan to look sad unless you want soul-crushing devastation. It’s not Seb’s fault, his features are just arranged that way - but the fact that the editing staff allowed Sam to be sad though elated to be entrusted with the Shield and Bucky looked like his soul was being physically torn out of his body was an… interesting choice.

Other side note: if you’re writing about time travel, I’m begging y’all to get your facts straight. Or just don’t write about time travel. It almost always sounds better on paper than it does on screen and it means that you’ve opened doors to more questions than you’ve probably got the answers for. I know this was about trying to set up the idea of the multiverse, I get that, but there were better and less messy ways to do that, and I know that because I’ve done it before. @Marvel: Let me write you a six-way orgy you fucking cowards~

By going back in time, Steve robbed Peggy of the future that would have been hers - not only that, he’s robbed her of even the chance of making the choice between those futures, because you honestly could not tell me with a straight face that Steve told her the complete truth of what he had done and she would be okay with him alternating the very course of the future. It doesn’t help his case that he has a history of not disclosing truths that he knows will be painful or inconvenient for other people in his life.

He robbed his loved ones - Sam, Bucky, Wanda - of the years they would have spent with him. Sure, he ‘came back’ after Peggy passed away, but they are adults in the prime of youth who knew him sixty years ago in his own time and he is an old, old man who has lived an entire life completely separated from them. He is practically a stranger with a name they know, but a history that no longer belongs to any of them - not even his oldest friend. They have him back, but judging from his age, they’ll be lucky to get even ten more years with him. Assuming of course, that any of them can stand to speak to him - I certainly couldn’t blame them if they tell him to go to hell and take his dad jokes with him.

Steve has stolen away their friend and dropped off an elderly and dying near-stranger in his place, and this is treated by the writing (and the majority of the acting) as a wild and unexpected but not tragic event.

Is it really that unexpected, though?

I recall seeing a Game of Thrones essay on Daenerys across my dash (I’m sorry, love, I don’t recall who you are since it’s not a fandom I’m in, but if someone knows who wrote that, please post the link!) which detailed how her ending in the series was foreshadowed many times by her penchant for bloody killings and her habit of surrounding herself with her own fawning friends.

Months after reading that, I had the thought: though Steve is never really shown thinking about Peggy after Civil War, except in a few scattered scenes in Endgame, was this foreshadowed? Whether you believe that his actions are justified or not, what Steve does is still, in the end, selfish at its very heart, and Steve Rogers is not a selfish person.

Oh no, my dear friends and readers. Because taking this action has solidified and clarified Steve Rogers as the biggest and most selfish asshole in this whole universe.

Steve does not do the right thing, Steve does the thing that will most make him feel better. The fact that this often happens to be the right thing in the end is more the result of happy coincidence than any special sort of moral authority that the man holds.

Rescuing Bucky Barnes and his fellow captives in a prisoner of war camp from being experimented on by an insane Nazi eugenicist? That was not a moral stand, that was endangering himself, Peggy Carter, and Howard Stark because he couldn’t handle the reality of his best friend being killed in war.

Sacrificing himself by putting the Valkyrie down in the Arctic Circle? That was not about sparing human lives, that was about Steve seeing his friend die right in front of him and not being able to deal with the grief. There were ways he could’ve prevented the plane from killing people without killing himself.

Trying to make Bucky remember who he was? And later on, saving him from the government agencies who wanted to hunt him down? Although, arguably, that last one is also just good common sense - Steve was already shown that government agencies could and were corrupted by HYDRA and he’d also seen how dangerous the Winter Soldier could be when unleashed.

Steve did, I think, truly believe that this was the right thing to do, but it was also about keeping his connection - his very last, since Peggy had descended into dementia caused by Alzheimer’s before she ultimately died - to a past that for him, was only months or years ago, rather than decades. In some ways, this is completely understandable - Bucky might be the very last person left alive who truly knows who the real Steve Rogers is, because the rest of these people only know Captain America and we are consistently shown through multiple movies how uncomfortable this makes him.

This gets...considerably less and less understandable as we are shown Steve’s growing relationships with Natasha, Sam, Wanda - even Sharon, though she barely gets any screen time and they share the most awkward kiss I’ve ever seen - and indeed, what might be the most uncomfortable kiss in cinema history.

Side Note 3: This is made even more awkward by the director’s choice to have two of Steve’s friends watching them the whole time - seriously, who even does that? Why would you make them do that? Only sociopaths make out with their friends staring at them like that. It’s so fucking creepy - and don’t even get me fucking started on the fact that she’s also apparently his own niece. AHHHHH!

But we are shown, over and over again, that Steve is capable of building close meaningful relationships with people in the present. They don’t know his whole history, but they do know Steve Rogers rather than Captain America and they care about him deeply.

Side Note 4: Notice that I don’t count Tony Stark among those people - despite this strangely persistent narrative that the various writers and directors tried to sell to the audience, Tony and Steve were not friends. They were never friends. They were colleagues at best, but these were two men who neither liked nor understood each other very well, but had to work together. And sometimes that’s okay, too. (Oh dear, I just gave the Stony fans a fit too, didn’t I? Sorry, guys. Enemies to Lovers is a great trope, I support you!)

But let’s set aside Steve’s gross betrayal of the people who loved him. We’ll also ignore the question of whether the motive for these good actions has tainted the actions themselves. Because even without questioning these, the conclusion of this story arc still transforms Steve into the biggest monster this franchise has.

The very fundamental way that the writers and directors can’t agree on how the time travel mechanics in their own story work mean that Steve has just done one of two things and they range from shady and very questionable to absolutely fucking horrific.

The first, that he’s created his own alternate universe to exist in, is morally dubious at best. Even the people who support this theory and liked the ending seem to feel that it wasn’t necessarily a ten out of ten on the moral goodness spectrum. They’ll say things like ‘he deserved to have his happy ending’. Even that phrasing seems to acknowledge that doing this was the opposite of the right thing. It just considers doing the wrong thing as being justified rather than horrifying.

But let’s examine this first idea for a minute - even this, the more innocent of the two implications, means that rather than really processing his grief or dealing with the repeated tragedies and losses that have occured in his life, even as he was running group therapy sessions and grief counseling, Steve Rogers chose to escape his current life by creating an alternate universe that specifically allows he himself to live out his own fucking fantasies of the way his life should have turned out.

That, in case you are not aware, is wildly fucked up. I thought I was playing pretty fast and loose with Steve’s characterization when I turned him into an extremely polite serial killer but as it turns out, I clearly just wasn’t setting the bar high enough, because that’s somehow even more fucked up than being an undercover child soldier with a small sadistic streak.

Hm, and now I feel I should have been more creative there...

The second, and even more horrifying option, is that this older Steve Rogers has been in this world the whole time, watching as things unfolded just as we’ve seen over the past decade, taking ‘the slow way’ through time.

Side Note 5: I do kind of understand why you would do it this way, because that’s really cool and shocking when you say that! Until you think about it for longer than three seconds and suddenly you realize…

Everything that has happened here, every tragedy and downfall these people experienced, happened because Steve Rogers lived his happily ever after with his beautiful wife and did absolutely nothing to stop it. He got to fuck Peggy Carter and watched as his wife built an empire of intelligence networks, knowing that her efforts were completely in vain because her agency was rotten to the core and he never told her.

Every horrifying act committed by HYDRA under the guise of SHIELD was permitted through Steve Rogers’ negligence. And that’s just the wider big-picture worldview, large and shocking, but not personal.

What about the people that Steve claims to actually care about?

This means that Steve lived his whole life in contentment with his wife and children while his best friend was physically and psychologically tortured for over seventy years and just...let that go.

He allowed one friend to murder another in the nineties, when the Winter Soldier was sent after Howard and Maria Stark. Then their child was being advised by a greedy self-interested warmonger who paid terrorists to drag him off to be tortured and slaughtered, and Steve did nothing about that, either.

Bruce Banner was exploited, experimented on, and made into a monster against his will in the failed pursuit of recreating what was done to Steve, resulting in billions of dollars in damage and dozens or even hundreds of lives lost, and Steve allowed that to happen, too.

Like Bucky Barnes, Natasha Romanov was physically and psychologically tortured for others to use her as a living weapon - except that this was probably happening to her since early childhood, and a man her future self loved and trusted implicitly did nothing to save her from this upbringing.

The Maximoff twins are shown to have not wealthy but loving parents who are murdered in front of them and they both endure days of laying in the rubble of their ruined apartment, wondering if the bomb in their living room would go off and kill them. Later, they are taken in by HYDRA, experimented on, and recruited as child soldiers to the cause when they show signs of having supernatural powers. They start a series of events that result in the destruction of a major city and the loss of what is probably thousands of lives. Pietro is murdered while trying to help the Avengers to stop this, and Wanda suffers the loss of the very last living person she loved. None of these things seem to have bothered Future Steve.

Steve “I can’t sit on the sidelines when I see a situation go sideways” Rogers, planted himself on that fucking sideline and observed for nearly eighty years as friends, colleagues, and his own wife were lied to, brainwashed, tortured, vilified, and hunted down like animals.

And then there Steve Rogers himself - not the Endgame Steve Rogers, the Steve Rogers who brought down a Nazi plane and will lie beneath the ice for seventy years while everything he knows disappear (mostly) innocent of these horrors, the life he would’ve lived stolen from him by a stranger with his name and his face from another universe.

What I’m saying here is that if you consider this idea for any amount of time, it took Steve Rogers less than ten minutes to become the most evil and disturbing figure in the entire MCU, only (not really tho) contested by Thanos himself.

Gross and poorly reasoned libertarian ethics aside, Thanos genuinely believes that he did what he did for the sake of the entire population. It’s made fairly explicitly clear that Steve didn’t do this for anyone but himself.

Call me crazy, but if everyone you know needs to suffer and multiple planet-wide devestations have to happen in order for you to get your happy ending, you might be the bad guy.

Maybe I’m just old-fashioned?

#forever bitter about what they did to steve #steve rogers #captain america #the avengers #marvel

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silvadour · 4 years ago

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Attack on Titan: The End of an Era - Final Chapter Review

Disclaimer: This blog post contains MASSIVE spoilers towards the ending of Attack on Titan as well as the greater series. If you wish not to be spoiled on certain story aspects and character revelations, I kindly suggest reading the manga or waiting for the 2nd half of the Final Season to be released in Winter 2022. Furthermore, if you are not caught up with this and read this post anyway, kindly refrain from spreading information presented here as not to spoil the experience for other readers and watchers that have yet to see the very end of the story.

And now without further ado, let is begin with the blog post.

Well, we’ve reached the endpoint, we arrived at that scenic view. Attack on Titan’s story has finally ended and if I’m being frank with you…I’m satisfied with it.

I have to say it’s always a weird feeling of coming to face the truth that a story you like and have invested many years reading has finally come to an end, there’s just an underlying feeling that you wanna deny the reality of it but you also can’t deny that sense of closure you gain from it either. While the series started way back in the year 2009, I did not get invested in the manga’s story until late 2013 when the anime’s first season finished airing. And my experience with AoT has been a strange one. As a young teen, I was impressed by the action on display so much that I began craving more of it like a crack-headed squirrel; this, in turn, led me to read through internet message boards and forums for possible new information on the stories developments which unsurprisingly led me to find spoilers of later events (particularly the case with Reiner and Bertholdt’s identities) However, even by the time I reached that revelation in the story in the existence of the Coordinate plot element came into play, I was aboard for the dramatic thrill ride ever since. And by the time I was reading it and the story shifted from fighting humanoid monsters to actual humans in the Royal Government/Coup d’etat arc, I started thinking of Attack on Titan as a rather niche series that only a few people could understand even with its ridiculous surge of popularity in the early 2010s, and I never could have anticipated back then on how emotionally attached I would be to this series nor how well it portrays a morally grey story where both participating parties of an ongoing war suffer from the circumstances of their character and nature.

The opening page to the series

As a modern monthly shonen series, I can say that it’s certainly a step above other manga of its type in how it re-frames familiar shonen archetypes in much more grounded and grim settings, and I find that it’s because of that grounded feeling found in its writing and setting that Attack on Titan has garnered such a large following for the elements in the story make themselves easier for audiences to distill themselves in similar situations, the narrative creates a sense of audience inclusivity that allows readers to imagine themselves in situations of survival. However, once I heard the series would end at 139 chapters apart of me was wondering if the series would have enough time to address aspects of established lore and give character arcs a fitting conclusion, and suffice it to say, the series accomplished that though some feelings on them I’m still processing. So knowing this I think it would be best to tackle the ending of Attack on Titan by discussing each of the established themes and characters one at a time, starting with the theme of freedom and liberty.

“To either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain”

Freedom and Liberty:

One of the major recurring themes in the story of AoT is that of the nature of finding true freedom. Freedom as a concept is described as the ability to speak, act or think by one’s own accord; freedom can be individual yet it can also be shared with various individuals. The story always made the best attempts at portraying both the positive and negative aspects of freedom in a morally grey manner. While the idea of wanting to do something of your own will, it all becomes a different story altogether depending on what the actions initiated from that free will end up being. One person’s freedom would naturally come to blows with the freedom of a collective group and trying to determine who is more rightfully just in their expression is never given a clear cut answer, case in point Eren’s yearning to be free of a world where he and his people aren’t demonized or viewed as cattle comes to blows with the antagonists’ (the nation of Marley) yearning to freely put him and the other Subjects of Ymir in their place as the two parties eventually engage in a long-standing war that has spanned for centuries. In an essay by John Stuart Mill, he presents an argument for the nature of human liberty that frames it as a double-edged sword; while it may stand as a tool to defend oneself from oppression and tyranny, it in of itself can be used as a tool to enforce other individuals into compliance and agreement should they not initially comply to certain established schools of thought. The expression of freedom is never displayed in an absolute black and white morality as each of the opposing parties have valid justifications for their expressions of personal freedoms (the nation of Marley’s long history being under the terror of the old Eldian Empire, and the island of Paradis being constantly invaded by Titans from Marley due to their history), rather the expressions freedoms are made due to self-interest.

Zeke describing Marley’s plan of action in order to ensure its future as a world superpower.

This is seen numerous times throughout the series, Ymir (104th Cadet) being used as a scapegoat for the cult that took her in, Erwin’s planned scapegoat execution during the royal government arc to ensure the original monarchy’s total rule over the population within the walls, the world nations following the bandwagon of Eldian discrimination as a political tactic of gaining advantages for the development of their nations through the extortion of the many Eldians around the world. Even with the characters that are standing on the “good” side still hold feelings of seeking self-interest as they are allowed so, solely due to the fact to want and something and act upon is part of their birthright just like any other human; case in point Eren and Historia at their most standout moments before the time-skip which would eventually coalesce with Eren’s meeting of the Founder, Ymir Fritz. This now brings me to the man himself, Eren Yeager.

Eren Yeager/Ymir Fritz:

When I first got into Attack on Titan, my opinion on the writing for Eren, especially in the manga’s early run, landed generally around middling. However, over time as I got further invested in the TV adaptation, I made attempts on doing retrospective rewatches to see whether my opinions on certain aspects of the story had changed; and during this time I found that my opinion of Eren changed to that of a more positive one. Throughout the series I saw this driven teenager coming to terms with his situation as a potential key for his people’s future, learning to quell his anger, as well coming to face the reality of his various failures all to eventually crack under the weight of the expectations he has placed onto himself, finally re-discovering his self-worth through the relationships he’s made with people closest to him only to have his reality crash right into his face when he finally discovers the truth of the world which bruises his idealistic nature.

To many of the fans that have seen Eren’s exploits in the latest season, his change in character might have come as a jarring shift since he has shifted to focus on eradicating the Titans to now eradicating the invaders of his home island. While the shift to different targets might seem like a strange change on the surface, fundamentally, Eren Yeager is still relatively the same character he was initially portrayed as, the only difference is that some of his more notable traits such as his anger, his battle tactics, and self-expression have just been more hardened due to the nature of his and homeland’s circumstances.

Eren is a prime believer of freedom, that any person is entitled to live free without feeling as if their freedoms are being imposed by others, solely on the basis that they were born into the living world. Should someone pose a threat to his freedom, he will not hesitate to steal freedom from others. And from the beginning till the very ending of the series his character writing remains consistent. Eren is a man lashing out against a prejudiced world that views him and his people as pure evil, he lashes not just for the sake of his freedom but for the freedom of those he cares for. However, throughout that lashing and emotional hardening he becomes something different from how he initially perceived himself.

For most of the manga’s final arc, Eren’s detached demeanor he presents onto his friends serves to highlight how he faces his challenges; he is more of a person that suppresses his grief and other vulnerable emotions because he has no choice but to appear strong and move forward when he cries out the world for something he wants, as a person ostracized by the world, his actions are indicative of the world telling him that he is not allowed to be viewed as a human being. His repeated fighting against Marley and the other allied nations can almost be interpreted as a cry for help. And throughout these actions, Eren was always consciously aware of his actions and the consequences that would be brought upon them, but he would never reveal his true feelings until he reached his two final goals, Ymir Fritz and his ultimate fate. When Eren first encountered Ymir Fritz he saw her as the absolute ruler of the Power of the Titans and wished to use her to finally make his true ambitions become a reality, however, during that process Eren realized that Ymir was so much more than a divine being. In his embrace of the Founder and in seeing her past through the Paths realm, Eren came to realize that Ymir was simply a human that much like him was ostracized and forced to harden her emotions out of fear of being further abused for appearing as weak; who trapped herself in ethereal realm due to her misguided understanding of “love” she had for her abuser, Karl Fritz I.

In recognizing her as a human, Eren sets Ymir free to finally act upon her own will for the first time in over 2000 years.

Personally, in this particular moment of Eren embracing Ymir with a hug and telling her the words she always wanted to hear “you are a human being”, I feel as if those words themselves are what Eren wanted to hear from someone who truly understood him and his reasons for going as far as does. Eren fights because he wants to end all fighting in the world, but he doesn’t know any other method besides fighting, much like Ymir, Eren needed someone to free him from himself. I find that Kenny Ackerman’s final words resonate with this scenario very strongly in retrospect: “We humans, are all the same…every last one of us. All of us had to spend our lives drunk on something or else we’d have no cause to keep pushing on. Everyone was a slave to something” (S03E10)

Eren’s “freedom” upon reaching that scenery he foresaw in his future visions.

At the moment of that embrace, Eren was fundamentally just like Ymir, a human child unable to cry due to repressing their emotions, Eren was only able to reach his external and internal goals in the final chapter through his relationship with Mikasa and Armin in their final interactions in which he imparted his freedoms and his dream to the two people he cared about most in the entire world. That being said in his fight for obtaining the ideal freedom for himself and his people, Eren only realized in his very last conversation with Armin that the freedom he sought after wasn’t only his. Armin’s final heart-to-heart made him re-acknowledge that the weight of his dreams for an ideal world shouldn’t be his to bear, even if ended endangering him and his loved ones. By refusing to entrust his dreams onto others, Eren was becoming a slave to his ambitions (in fact his appearance as the Founding Titan portrays him as a marionette), only to be finally set free (and possibly reincarnated as a bird, a common symbol of freedom in literature) by his best friend when he comes to understand him and offer him peace for all he has done for the sake of his people.

In his final meeting, Eren’s true self as the boy who lost all things he cherished in the beginning of the series confides with his best friend Armin on the actions and choices he has made, as well as finally reciprocating Mikasa's feelings of love.

Closing thoughts:

Overall, I find that Eren’s motivations and his character arc met my expectations of how I somewhat imagined the series would end. It didn’t end on a completely misanthropic note, but rather a bittersweet hopeful one. As even though the island of Paradis establishes a new military under Eren’s splinter cell faction, the Yeagerists, there is hope found in Armin carrying out the role that Eren always saw him, a hero and a purveyor of peace, as he, Jean, Connie, Annie, Reiner, and Pieck now taking on the role as ambassadors for the remaining population of Earth, embark to Paradis to begin peace negotiations. Whether the treaty succeeds is left entirely to the reader’s imagination (or Isayama adding more context in the volume edition of this chapter), but what I find truly beautiful about this ending of a series with clearly morally gray divisions, is that the people of those same divisions finally came to the realization that they are simply just people. They are not devils or angels, they are simply just people; not that much different from one another and willing to try and exist in a better tomorrow with each other. And what I love about this ending, even more, is that it finally bookends some goals and declarations that were said in the first half of the series: Eren wanting to eradicate the existence of Titans became a reality, after Eren’s death Armin took responsibility in claim he killed in turn that leads him to be viewed as a hero and purveyor for peace, Eren wrapping his scarf around Mikasa, all of these character declarations coming back in some unique form makes me love this series even more.

Your heart and soul to the cause.

Some may complain that this ending is not that great for it still doesn’t explain certain aspects of the story such as the nature of the Power of the Titans or the identity of Historia’s baby daddy or just general lack of presence in the final arc, but personally, I am content in not receiving a clear answer to some of those aspects, mostly because they either don’t matter or are already narratively complete, plus their open-ended-ness just offers me more chances to think about some aspects of the story and promote discussions around it. And while the use of mental time-travel ala Seers from Game of Thrones that were displayed by Eren’s use of the Attack Titan’ innate ability in the Paths realm, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t unsure or somewhat conflicted by the existence of mental time-travel; especially when time-travel as a narrative concept is INCREDIBLY easy to mess up. However, aside from these minor gripes, these were my overall thoughts towards the ending of Attack on Titan, we have reached the end of the story where Eren, Mikasa, and Armin’s respective character arcs came to a narratively true and satisfying conclusion. This is definitely a notable end of an era in the world of manga and pop culture. And without much left to say, all I can do is offer a salute to the author Hajime Isayama for his dedication to this story.

Thank you, Hajime Isayama.

#Attack on Titan #manga #AoT spoilers #AOT 139 #snk spoilers #text post #long post #shingeki no kyojin #thank you hajime isayama #Eren Yeager #Ymir Fritz #Armin Arlert

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