#if you see a rich person not using it for true compassion take their shit and trash their house

[desertdragon]

Before 2020 ends here's a hc that's been building in me for a while- Vaste toppling and dismantling the Ishgardian government piece by piece to rebuild it into a socialist democracy, later replicating an individualized version of this on the other city-states

I hate that the player is never given options to use their influence over so many high profile government leaders to actually better the lives of others and how lands are operated because the writers want the illusion of change without any of the work and most importantly without pissing off corrupt systems irl, this fake deep Stick It To The Man But Not Really is bullshit

Ishgard has an active system dating centuries that displaces and stratifies its population into rings of privilege that are inherently stacked against anyone the upper crust don't like, heretics, anyone remotely off the Model Citizen path, mixed race people & interracial couples, victims of abuse especially abuse done by nobles or authority figures, victims of police brutality, the poor especially, racial tensions built on religious and socially ingrained prejudice etc. all of which are issues the story narratives treat as the responsibility of individuals not the state or society to reform- people have laws and practices in place that corner them into desperation and instead of receiving help they're punished and abandoned for it, fucking hate how both most npcs and players conceptualize the poor & police brutality in the game's themes as largely devices to further their fantasy of being disgustingly rich playing dumbass self contained political ploy chess

Something that has forever struck me was how dirty the Astrologian questline from lvls 30-60 ended, the entire question of that story was Should People Have Universal Healthcare Regardless Of Standing? and in the end not only did the Warrior of Light never get Aymeric, the guy running the show who's part of and holds the most sway among the noble class, directly involved in helping Leveva have the legal right to make sure Ishgardians of any class dont die like animals, it ends with the player having a lesson reinforced in them that you can only help people from the shadows and you can't challenge authority and win over basic human rights issues- just be quiet and look away even when you have influence to move authority figures

So anyway continuing the actual headcanon, Vaste is from a communal society and therefore coming to Ishgard and seeing how disconnected it is from the communal sense she's used to, how it feels like everyone around her at any given moment is plotting behind her back, how the Templar Knights are unreliable, how Inquisitors can do as they please etc. would infuriate her. She'd feel so uneasy just walking down the streets, confused as to why people are so divided and don't go out of their way to help one another.

Her childhood wasn't all sweet or delicate by any means and at some point I should draw up a hc on how growing up a U impacted her in depth beyond her sexuality, but the bottom line is regardless of the coldness of the U Society people still did what they could to support each other, even their reasons for distancing from a member stem from not wanting to insult their feelings, their pride (such as in a quest you can get from U'odh Nunh where he goes into detail on the callous instruction that you shouldn't help wounded huntresses in the field beyond bringing them supplies- we learn it's rude to be perceived as coddling someone if they know how to handle themselves, even when their lives are at risk, this isn't healthy but I can understand how this mindset stems from a bond with your community- in fact much of U'odh Nunh's little characterization is about how much emphasis he places on community and protecting it)

She would make it very clear to the Fortemps family of this discomfort and ask them why they continue playing a system that has no interest in substantial change beyond keeping them and their class maintained, why if they have so much, so much food, so much money, so much land for housing, so much of anything people dream of- why are they not in the streets helping people with elbow grease and challenging anyone demanding they keep the status quo- if they are nobles why aren't they acting like it, where's the noblesse oblige? Political games are just talk with no action behind it so where's the merit in keeping up the charade and how is that compassion and helping the suffering right beyond their doors?

If Edmont really wanted to help he should've had himself and his sons and his entire staff going to the Brume and other places 24/7/365 handing out money, jobs, healthcare, food, and security, all the privilege they have access to and take for granted; if he could extend charity to the WoL & Scions, to those with political weight, he should be inviting the people socially shunned with kids to feed and no income cuz they lost their job to eat at his table too

The minute she rises up enough to have influence and respect within the state and its people come the end of Heavensward- she's kicking down doors and wrangling heads together, she's speaking over the councils full of long time rich assholes and telling them their privilege is wasted on them, she's turning over their tables and inserting herself into their business by any means necessary to ensure they not only outline a fair democratic state policy but are in the street or executing favors to house, clothe, feed, and care for everyone their society has left behind, she's literally bullying them into caring and if anyone steps out of line by the time she leaves them to their devices to help the liberation of Garlean colonies she shows up furious to enforce again and again their need to stick to change and personally checks on how they're treating the people and what's going on

She doesn't give a flying fuck if she's going over Aymeric's authority, either he and the cronies clean their shit up or she can easily take down all of them; power is always upheld at the behest of the people and can be given and taken away by the slightest whim if the people feel they're suffering injustice

[light-yaers]

Fools in the Darkness: Chapter One

Darkling x Reader

Warnings: Death, violence, drugs (Parem), NSFW and sexual content. This content is explicit and 18+ at some points.

A/N: I caved. I am a wildly stupid individual who has no control over her actions. I know I might come to regret posting this so fast and thus forcing myself into my third ongoing x reader fic, but I also just generally don’t care. I’m still working on No Saints and Sweet Esacpe, just as a slower pace due to my mental health, but this baby here floated out of me like melted butter. I’ll be alternating between uploading this fic and my currently ongoing others! I just had to get this shit out of my system about Shadow and Bone, fr. 

Fic Masterpost

Word Count - 3.4k

Chapter One

Ketterdam covered up your secrets perfectly. It’d only been a matter of weeks since you’d fled there, after travelling the exhausting journey across East Ravka until the Fold had stood before you; brooding, dangerous, a death-wish just to look at, let alone enter it.

Maybe you had to thank him for one thing, General Kirigan, because without him—

You never would have crossed the Fold on your own.

Maybe Ketterdam was made for a person such as yourself. Dark, danger around every corner, full to the brim with power-hungry men and women trapped behind silks. You’d never warmed to anyone yet, but that wasn’t a surprise—it was easy to hate people in the Barrel, but even easier to take their kruge and send them sailing upon the True Sea without another glance.

Kerch was a merchant port, stuffed with expensive clubs and those with no money troubles, armed and ready to open their pockets if they so wished. There were two sides of the docks—Fifth Harbour; the lavishly bright sector for the rich and wealthy—and the Barrel; a breeding ground for crime, killings and losing all of your kruge in one night.

You’d made acquaintances with the Barrel rats from the very beginning, hearing stories about the destruction they caused. You’d much rather not be on the side of the wealth, but the side of fear.

“I found her wandering the harbour, Kaz,” A petite lady in dark clothes spoke to her boss. She’d dragged you from the bustling harbour, flying you through the dark streets of Ketterdam. You tried to hear her footsteps across the cobblestones, but she left no footprints, like a Wraith in the night.

Kaz approached his desk then, stepping into the small lamp light of his office in the Slat. Kaz Brekker was a man that no one wanted to cross. With his clenched jaw and unforgiving stares, the Bastard of the Barrel was cut-throat in every sense of the description.

“She’s a rat, Inej. Not our responsibility—,”

“Do you see the clothes she’s wearing?” Inej cut over Kaz, stepping towards him abruptly. He stayed in place, looking at his Wraith in the eyes, unwaveringly. He regarded her for a moment, taking all of her in, before turning back to you.

His eyes skimmed you up and down, traversing the darkened and muddied fabrics on your body.

“A Kefta,” He whispered it, his eyes widening. “It doesn’t look like the usual Second Army attire,” He added. You perked up, trying to keep your expression as blunt as possible. After your journey, it wasn’t hard not to show anything—you’d been forced to endure a quiet and agonising journey for a month, while trying to stay in the shadows at the same time.

“Because it’s not,” You spoke up, for the first time since entering Brekker’s office. Kaz turned his attention to your face, stepping forward menacingly. His crow-headed cane slammed the wooden floorboards threateningly, but you weren’t scared—

You’d crossed the fucking Fold on your own. Nothing scared you anymore.

“Who are you?” He questioned, trying to keep his voice steady. Men like Kaz tried not to show off what they felt either, but the curiosity in his tone was undeniable. You cleared your throat.

“How much time have you got?”

Fjerda, 1 Year Ago

It was a risk to take, that was for sure. But choosing whether to go through the Fold or around it was a no brainer. Evidently, it had paid off so far, as you and your sister travelled through the barren coldness of Fjerda, headed for the Ravkan border.

“How much farther?” Your sister chided. She was older than you by a year, but on this mission, you’d taken charge. You shuffled into your pack, pulling out a tattered map and a compass. You set the point to North, calculating the miles you had left to trudge to safety.

Your sister wasn’t Grisha, no—you were. A Squaller; untrained, unenthusiastic about your power and utterly afraid of the Druskelle. But you’d had no choice in getting you and your sister safely around the Fold. There was no other way to go from where you’d first found asylum in Novyi Zem; going through Fjerda was the safest route to the Ravkan army.

You smiled at the map. “Five miles. Then we’ll be in Ravka,” An exhausted but relief filled scoff fell from your lips. You locked eyes with your sister, before the two of you embraced tightly. “We’ll be safe soon,” You whispered in her ear, enjoying the small warmth you got from her bare cheek pressing against your jaw.

“You’ll be safe soon,” She replied, bringing a hand to rest on the back of your neck. She pulled away then, as the tears began to well in her crystalline eyes. “You put yourself in this danger to keep me safe. I’m the older sister—I should be keeping you safe,”

“It was this, or through the Fold,” You spoke, furrowing your brows at her. “I’d rather take on twenty druskelle than step foot in that heaping mound of darkness,” Laughter trickled from both sisters, floating over the snow-covered trees and giving you hope.

You both continued forward tirelessly, mercilessly, trudging through inches of untouched snow and praying to whichever god out there who was listening. You prayed for your sister’s safety, for a safe life for her in the First Army. You prayed that you could stay with her—

A Squaller you were, yes, but over your dead body would you be taken to the Little Palace. You knew that’s where Grisha were trained for the King, you knew it was different. Your abilities didn’t define you; Saints, you barely even used them.

They were unpredictable. And you were scared of hurting those around you without meaning to. Ever since an incident when you were younger, you’d almost been afraid of your own power. You kept it hidden from those who you didn’t know closely.

Those who knew you were Grisha in Novyi Zem called you zowa—blessed, in Zemeni. It also meant Grisha, so you didn’t know if they were simply calling you what you were, or if they were commenting upon how strong your Squaller abilities were.

You’d never even met another Sqauller. You had nothing to compare yourself off of.

With a mile until you hit the Ravkan border, you stopped abruptly. Plumes of smoke rose high above the skies, coming from somewhere further on before you. You stuck your hand out, halting your sister from walking any further.

You were silent, listening for any signs of breakings twigs, compacted snow, or other indications of druskelle being near.

“Saints, you look like a fentomen,” Your sister scoffed beside you.

“Quiet,” You hit back with.

“What is it?” She spoke again, quieter this time, but not by much.

“Quiet,” You hissed.

You both waited another few minutes, silently standing like statues in the garden of the Grand Palace. You let out shaky breaths as you eventually straightened yourself once more, clutching onto your sister’s forearm for dear life.

“It’s okay. We just need to be wary,” You whispered. She nodded in response.

You both set off once more through countless trees and untouched snow. But you didn’t get far—until two druskelle spotted you. Neither of you could speak Fjerdan, and you were a fucking Grisha. This couldn’t have been any worse, when you were so close to being free.

“Hje marden,” One of them spoke. They were both tall, with broad shoulders and the white hair and blue eyes of Fjerda. Neither had beards—they were in training to being full druskelle. The trainees were always worse than their commanders, you thought. They would do anything to prove themselves to their superiors.

You tried not to shake as they circled you and your sister.

“I’m sorry, we don’t speak Fjerdan,” You said honestly. The druskelle immediately changed. Their hands rested upon their guns, ready to fire if need be. You raised your hands to the sky as your expression dropped. “Please! Please, we are just travellers—uh—we are perjenger—,”

“Perjenger? Travellers? To where?” The second druskelle spat.

You glanced at your sister quickly, knowing that if you answered Ravka, you’d both be shot immediately. Ravka was at war with Fjerda—Grisha were at war with Druskelle.

“Kerch,” You said strongly. “We have to go through Ravka and Shu Han. We can’t cross the Fold,”

For a moment, you thought it had worked. The druskelle looked at each other gruffly, muttering some words in Fjerdan. You clutched onto your sister’s arm tightly, not planning on letting her go now until you’d both crossed the border.

“Wait here,” One of the men said, as he began trudging back through the snow. He disappeared in the white landscape, leaving you with one druskelle.

You stayed quiet, feeling the warmth of your sister next to you. You glanced at her then, traversing your gaze over her side profile. Her nose, which was the same as yours; her eyes, brighter and more beautiful than your own, mimicking your mother; her hair, lighter and softer than yours. She was shorter than you, smaller than you, getting a lot of genetics from your mother, while you took from your father greatly. His height, his broad shoulders, his darker hair.

But she was your only family left, your only love and focus and everything.

And you were less than a mile from getting her to safety. You were less than a mile from being free of this Saint forsaken country, full of killers and fascists and men who only cared about power.

It was one druskelle against a Squaller. One against one. You could do that. You could beat him.

That’s what made you push your sister back, falling into the snow slowly as you brought your hands together. The druskelle yelled as he saw your movements, trying to aim his gun at you between your eyes, but it was too late—

In a flash, you summoned a storm that whipped him off of his feet. It circled him, gliding him backwards through the trees as you kept pushing and pushing, ignoring the raging winds as they whipped your hair from your face and agitated the snow on the trees.

“Come on!” You yelled behind you, as your sister scrambled up from the floor to stand beside you. She held your arm sturdily, watching fearfully as the druskelle struggled against the rapid winds that you wielded.

You thought that was it—you could both run with the time you’d bought—but that’s when the entire druskelle camp rocketed through the tree line. They yelled and boomed as they came to aid their brother, pushing back against the furious winds you were trying desperately to wield.

“Drüsje!” The commander yelled, storming through the group as he set up the largest of their guns—a machine gun, aimed and ready fire. You gasped, and for a second the winds wavered—they wavered long enough for the machine gun round to penetrate the small snow snuffed tornado that you’d created—

Until those bullets trickled over the blanketed ground, moving steadily closer and closer—

Until one landed straight through the heart of your sister.

All you remembered was that time slowed, then, as you saw the bullet exit her shoulder blade. She fell to the floor, unclasping her hands from your forearm and collapsing into a shocked heap on the floor. You remembered the way her blood dyed the snow. You remembered the way her eyes stayed open—

And then you remembered screaming.

It was a blur, as you tensed all of your limbs to the point where they yelled beneath your skin. You mustered all of your strength into this one storm; one that was merciless and unforgiving, circling all the druskelle in the clearing around you. You knew that soon all of the air would fade from within the eye of the storm that whipped devilishly around them.

You knew that soon they’d all begin to run out of oxygen and pass out, or better yet—maybe their hearts would stop. Cease to beat, drained of any energy to fire more rounds of bullets or kill Grisha for no fucking reason.

The storm was the largest you’d ever summoned, engulfing the entire druskelle camp and uprooting trees from their homes in the cold, hard Fjerdan ground. You saw them get sucked into your whirlwind, flying high, high, high until they eventually slipped out of the storms’ gusts; then they fell back down to earth, landing aggressively and dangerously on the ground below and being spat out at any random location.

You didn’t stop the storm, not even when you saw a tree fall atop a druskelle, crushing him where he’d stood moments before. The commander was the last one standing, rising above his suffocating men to look at you, face on, menacingly.

“Drüsje like you deserve to lose that which you love,” He boomed, using his remaining energy to cast you to Hell.

You wasted no time when you adjusted your stance, focusing the brunt force of the storm onto him—you decreased the eye of the storm until it flowed over him, and only him, grunting all of your strength into the circling winds that now surrounded him utterly and completely.

You collapsed at the same time that the commander did, falling into inches of snow and crawling exhaustedly to your sister. She was motionless, cold, her lips turning blue by the second as her blood continued to flow on Fjerdan soil. Dead. Gone.

Tears cascaded down your cheeks without any indication of stopping, but you couldn’t sob. It was impossible when you were already holding your breath, too afraid that if you were to breathe, only screams would pour from your coarse lungs.

The clearing was deserted, now, as druskelle bodies laid motionless on the snow-covered ground, their camp up ahead completely destroyed. Broken branches, twigs, tree trunks were dotted around, acting as just another indication of the destruction that you were truly capable of. Saints, you wanted to know if you were a normal Grisha, a normal Squaller, since those old women on Novyi Zem had looked at you like a weapon from the first day you could summon and control hurricanes and tornados at will.

Your fingers found your sister’s forehead then, swiping the hair off of her face. You cupped her cheek, laying your other hand upon her stomach. “Vaarwell,” You whispered shakily. “I’m sorry—I’m so sorry—,”

“Who’s there?” A voice spoke up from just beyond the clearing. You got up from the floor immediately, feeling a strange sense of power surrounding you. You waited silently, until First Army soldiers made their way to the clearing. A few stopped and checked the pulses of the druskelle upon the floor, before continuing forward until you were finally spotted.

A young man approached you slowly, holding his gun tightly, draped against his shoulder. “Was this... you?” He asked, looking you in the eye. His gaze dropped to the ground by your feet, seeing the blood-stained snow where your sister lay dead, before he looked back up to you.

He was joined by the rest of his crew. They slowly approached you, almost as if they were trapping you within a circle of their bodies. You stepped back once then, keeping your chin high and proud. The young man at the front was trying everything to keep you calm, you could see it in his eyes, but what he didn’t know was that you were seething—

And nothing would stop that.

Without your sister, you’d be taken to the Little Palace. Without knowing she was safe in the First Army, nothing would get you through the rest of your life—

You were dead. Inside and out. Nothing would change that.

Without a word, you brought your hands together, far too quickly for any of the soldiers to raise their weapons in defence. You ignored their begs and pleads as you circled them within in your storm, slowly suffocating the air out of their lungs and seeing the way their eyes bulged uncomfortably in their skulls.

“General!” The young man shouted, clutching at his throat as he tried desperately to suck air into his lungs. His voice echoed throughout the clearing, travelling through the trees slowly, until an eery type of silence settled into the air around you.

That’s when he arrived—his horse just as black at the Kefta on his frame, the stubble on his chin and the irises of his eyes. He dismounted, ignoring the cries from the soldiers within your raging storm as he began to approach you, step by step by step, crunching through the snow broodingly.

You knew who this man was; General Kirigan of the Second Army.

The Darkling.

He got ever closer, walking around the circular storm. The gap was beginning to bridge, and the more it did, the more you faltered. He took one more step, and you lost it.

“Stop!” You yelled. “Don’t come any closer, Darkling,” He stopped on command, keeping his arms by his sides, but the corners of his mouth upturned into a smile. “You find me amusing?” You spat.

“By the looks of this,” He gestured to the druskelle. “You were trying to get to Ravka. We’re here to help, yet you’re trying to suffocate my men,” You ignored his words, but you found your energy waning slightly—or maybe your heart was finally giving in. It didn’t really want to hurt anyone else, didn’t want to cause more damage than was already on your hands. “You’re a Squaller?” Kirigan asked, and that surprised you.

“Isn’t this how all Squaller’s are?” You asked in reply. Kirigin raised a brow at you.

“Not usually,” He said honestly. “You’ve never met another Grisha before?”

“I know what you’re doing,” You furrowed your brows at him. “You’re trying to distract me, to make me let my guard down and go with you willingly. I’d rather die than work for the King at the Little Palace,” Your breaths were getting more laborious the longer you held on to the storm. You were losing energy rapidly.

“Interesting,” The Darkling muttered.

There were a few moments then, where he was simply staring at you. Regarding you, analysing you, or perhaps— waiting for you to lose all of your energy. You were in a somewhat sticky situation, losing a grasp on your power with every passing second and feeling the intense gaze of Kirigan to your left.

“Let go,” He spoke softly. “I can see you’re tired, you don’t truly want to kill these men,”

“You don’t know anything about me,” You forced your eyelids to stay open as a wave of exhaustion flowed through you.

“And you know me?” He chided. You moved your gaze to him then, as your limbs finally lost momentum. Your hands dropped to your sides, your storm dissipating into the cold air at the Fjerdan border. Soldiers sucked in breaths noisily, gaining back their vision.

You stumbled back once, forcing yourself to stay standing despite the immense urge to pass the fuck out. Kirigan stayed still the entire time, a softness on his jaw that you hadn’t been expecting.

“Everyone knows you,” You mumbled. “I never wanted to meet you, though,”

Your heart jolted then, when the General let out a scoff. You forced yourself to move. Step by step through disturbed snow, until you were back where your sister lay on the floor. You collapsed to your knees unwillingly, as your body threatened to blackout at any moment.

You laid a shaky hand on her collarbone, curling your fingers up to her jaw. Kirigan moved slowly in your peripheral, turning towards you but staying at the distance he’d always been.

“Don’t take me to Os Alta,” You muttered. “Please, don’t take me,” You looked up at the General with pleading eyes.

“Why?” Kirigan whispered with furrowed brows, as if he was trying to work out why on earth you didn’t want a life within the royal Ravkan walls, living in luxury, fighting with other Grisha and honing your power.

Your vision began to blur then, as black spots dotted the white snow that surrounded you.

You never answered the General, your body gave up before you could—

And all you saw was black.

Tag list of those who were interested from my earlier post (tell me if you want off/on the list): @notawritergettingtherethough @rbg1993 @mayallyourbaconburn @luminous-99 

[recurring-polynya]

Once again, I am thinking about the dubious claim that people make from time to time that Renji would have gotten better character development in the TYBW arc if Byakuya had died. The thing is, though, that Renji did get excellent character development in this arc, particularly with respect to his relationship to Byakuya, it was just very subtle and I want to talk about it.

So, the first thing I want to point out is that the captain-lieutenant relationships is one of the major themes of the TYBW. A lot of this is sort of weird and awkward, but this is perfect, actually, because captain-lieutenant relationships are, for the most part, weird and clunky and awkward. Take for example, the part that I always make fun of, where the captains are told not to go to bankai, and Hitsugaya, Komamura, Byakuya and Soi Fon immediately go to bankai-- but they all do this on the assumption that they are luring their opponent into a trap to see how this works, and that their lieutenant will somehow ??defeat them anyway?? (well, except Soi Fon who seems to think she can one-shot her Quincy). There’s Sasakibe’s funeral, where we find out that Yamamoto cared far more for him than we ever imagined. Kyouraku returns Nanao’s zanpakutou to her and stands behind her as she defeats an opponent he can't. Iba carries Komamura’s body off of the battlefield as he loses the last of his humanity. Isane struggles to keep her head above her grief because that’s the burden Unohana left her with. Rose avenging Kira. Hitsugaya and Matsumoto fighting and (sort of) dying together. The Zaraki-Yachiru thing. The Mayuri-Nemu thing. Momo and Shinji actually got to have a relatively normal one, which they each deserved, but at least they got to have normal one together. Anyway, that could be an entire essay, but as usual, I only want to talk about Renji and Byakuya.

Renji’s introduction as a character happens in stages. Initially, he sort of appears to be Byakuya’s sidekick-- he's here to do the dirty work during Rukia’s arrest, while Byakuya stands by and calls the shots, but even early on, it’s clear that Renji’s a little hung up on Byakuya. He’s trying to impress him, and gets more embarrassed and self-conscious as things go progressively pear-shaped. When Byakuya finally enters the action, Renji’s thought bubbles reveal that he’s watched Byakuya for a long time, that he knows all his moves. When we get the Renji backstory reveal a few issues later, we learn that Renji’s goal is to defeat Byakuya, which he seems to feel is necessary to seeing Rukia again, even though there has never been any sort of causal link revealed between these two things. Don’t get me wrong, if Young Academy Renji had tried to continue to be friends with Rukia, I think Byakuya would have kicked him out on his ass, but it’s clear that a lot of Renji’s hang-ups are internal-- he doesn’t want to face Rukia again until he can stand against Byakuya. I think the origin of this is that he simply wants what’s best for Rukia, and he can’t stomach the idea of asking her to leave her rich, noble family for him, unless, of course, he’s somehow better than Byakuya in some dimension, and the only thing Renji’s ever considered himself good at is fighting.

Even more interesting is that he’s chosen to go about this by... studying the man’s every move and becoming his lieutenant. But for as much energy as Renji has put into learning Byakuya’s favorite combat moves, he doesn’t actually know anything about him as a person. He’s shocked when Rukia predicts that Byakuya won’t lift a finger to help her, and then horrified when this actually comes to pass. A few chapters later, as he’s running Hinamori through, Aizen comments that “Adoration is the state furthest from understanding.” I would probably classify Renji’s feelings towards Byakuya more as admiration or idolization, rather than adoration, but I think this statement is also very true of Renji and Byakuya’s relationship. Unlike poor Momo, Renji gets a little more time and opportunity to do something with this information. With a little Ichigo-forced soul searching, he realizes that he’s not going to come out the hero of this story no matter what, but if he doesn’t do something, Rukia’s not going to come out of this story at all, and even if he’s not really ready, he’s spent 40 years trying to figure out how to beat Kuchiki Byakuya, let’s hope all that was good for something.

The Byakuya-Renji fight has no direct impact on the events of the Soul Society Arc. It makes Byakuya show up to Rukia’s execution 5 minutes late and without his scarf. Renji gets healed, so it really doesn’t matter all that much to him, either. You could argue that they both wasted a bunch of energy (that they could have used to fight Aizen later) but it’s primarily a character-driven moment of them both drawing lines in the sand about where they stand, vis a vis Rukia. Byakuya wins this fight, and he wins it handily, but he’s wrong, as he comes to realize a few issues later, when Ichigo kicks his ass and tells him he’s a bad brother, a lesson that Byakuya will take to heart for the rest of the manga. Byakuya claims that the difference between Renji and himself is class, but the real difference between is the heart, and in the long run, Renji is the real victor of this fight.

The hospital scene is an interesting footnote to this. Byakuya defeated Renji, but Byakuya was the asshole and everyone knows it. There’s an expectation that perhaps Renji will quit or perhaps Renji will give him an earful and perhaps even Rukia will choose to leave the family, either to go to the Living World or to be with Renji (and Byakuya would deserve this), but instead, both Renji and Rukia give Byakuya another chance, which is not, I think, a place Renji ever expected to be.

Rukia and Byakuya building up a sibling relationship after this is fairly straightforward (although I’m sure it had its weird moments), but Byakuya and Renji now have this profoundly awkward relationship where Byakuya is obviously in charge, but he sort of depends on Renji as a personal compass because he’s shit at dealing with people and he doesn’t want to screw stuff up with Rukia again. Take for example, the part of the Hueco Mundo arc where Orihime is kidnapped and Rukia and Renji desert their posts to come help rescue her. Kubo takes to the panel-space to tell us that Byakuya has tacitly approved this. As a clan head and a captain, a person who is entrenched in the hierarchy of Soul Society, Byakuya couldn’t possibly go to Hueco Mundo-- but he can turn a blind eye while his sister and lieutenant scurry out through the Kuchiki family senkaimon. Renji, for his part, tried to go to Hueco Mundo through official channels and got shot down. We don’t know what Renji would have done if Byakuya had explicitly forbidden him from going, but it doesn’t matter-- Byakuya enabled Renji to follow his heart here, because Byakuya can’t. Rukia would have gone to Hueco Mundo regardless. She cares about Byakuya, but she doesn’t depend on him for validation the way Renji does.

I said this was going to be about the TYBW, so let’s get to that. Early in the arc, we’re shown several scenes where it’s clear that Byakuya respects and values Renji as a lieutenant, but he’s also pretty damn patronizing to him. Renji is the first one to engage As Nodt, and when Byakuya shows up, he acts surprised that Renji hasn’t taken him out yet, but then proceeds to take over the fight (real, “stand back, fives, an eleven has arrived” energy). After Byakuya then loses his bankai like a doofus, Renji wants to take point so that Byakuya can figure out As Nodt’s attack and Byakuya won’t let him... and then proceeds to get thrashed.

This has to be one of the most emotionally charged fights in Bleach. Byakuya is losing, and Renji jumps in, absolutely incensed that As Nodt would use Senbonzakura against Byakuya. Renji isn’t doing great, but he’s not doing terrible when Byakuya gets up and tries to help Renji, even though he’s a big bloody mess. As Nodt reacts by shredding Byakuya into chunks, and Renji just loses it, and if Mask de Masculine hadn’t shown up and kicked him halfway across the Seireitei, I daresay Renji would have killed himself trying to take down As Nodt.

This is where I usually make the point that if Byakuya had died to here, it would have broken Renji into little pieces, but that’s not today’s essay. Instead, everyone goes to the Royal Realm, and by virtue of the fact that Byakuya is injured worse than everyone else, Renji has to go forward without him or his approval.

In typical Renji fashion, the thing that motivates Renji here is not glory or heroism, but the desire to accompany Ichigo, the need to be with his friends in their times of trial. In fact his companionship here is absolutely essential-- at Hikifune’s, Ichigo expresses deep doubts that he’s doing the right thing, and Renji reminds himself that if he wants to protect others, he has to take care of himself first.

At Nimaiya’s however, Renji and Ichigo are split up because they must follow their own paths. The other extremely interesting thing that happens here is that Renji’s sword is reforged. Byakuya shattered one of Hihio Zabimaru’s joints the very first time Renji used them in combat. Renji brushed it off at the time, saying that he could get by without it. Even though Byakuya has long been his motivating force and his mentor, he’s also been held back by his connection to him. And at this point, it’s gone.

I really wish we got to see where Renji and Rukia meet up again, but we don’t. Unlike with Ichigo, though, Rukia doesn’t seem to need anything from Renji. They travel together, fight together as equals, wear matching outfits, like you do. Oh. Wait. After all this time, in the 493 chapters between Needless Emotions and Blue Stripes, Renji can finally see himself as an equal to Rukia. They get. bankai. Together.

I want to emphasize that it’s not really anything about Rukia herself that allowed Renji to make bankai, it’s the fact that he’s finally managed to move past the feeling that he’s not enough. Defeating Byakuya would not actually have solved this problem, and having Byakuya dying in front of him wouldn’t have either. Renji gets criticized for losing a lot of his fights, but that’s such a key to his character. He’s not always the strongest, he doesn’t always win, but he keeps fighting for what he cares about. He struggles with his need for approval, for external validation, but Renji is at his best when he doesn’t have time to think about that, when he’s just fighting by his friends’ sides against impossible odds, doing what he knows in his heart is right.

I think people tend to make a little more than is strictly necessary of the line where he tells Mask that he’s “a villain”, I think he’s most just making fun of Mask’s own self-aggrandizement. On another level, though, this is just Renji being at ease with himself. Byakuya typically enters a fight bloviating about the honor of Soul Society and “how dare you raise your sword against me, the 28th Head of the Kuchiki” and even Ikkaku had the whole deal about telling people your name before you kill them, but Renji is more like “you beat up my friends, so I’m gonna break your face,” like there’s no ego in it, just you’re there, and he’s there, and then you’re lying on the ground and he’s taking a nap somewhere. This is so different than the insecure, posturing young man he was at the start of this series and I love this growth for him.

Even after he eventually meets up with Byakuya again, something has changed about their dynamic. The group gets split up and rejoined two or three times, and Renji and Rukia always stay together while Byakuya ends up fighting alongside others, Hisagi and later Hitsugaya and Zaraki. This is cemented in their last scene together, where Rukia and Renji try to stay with Byakuya and he sends them off to fight with Ichigo by saying “your help is not needed here.” In some ways, it’s an echo of Byakuya sending them off to Hueco Mundo, but in other ways, it’s acknowledging that they are their own people, not just an extension of him.

Hitsugaya follows it up with this:

There’s more here than meets the eye, though-- Byakuya and Renji have maintained a pretty strict superior-subordinate relationship, because that’s the easiest way for them to make sense of the world, but the fact is, they do care about each other and are important to one another.

I know there would be a certain narrative satisfaction in seeing Renji make captain at the end-- he’s one of the hardest working people in Bleach, and it frankly seems weird to see Iba get the haori when he doesn’t. But Renji has never wanted to be a captain. Renji becoming captain would, in some ways, be a failure. He spends years pre-canon chasing rank and prestige because that’s what he thinks will make him worthy, and it didn’t. Instead, he found worth in being himself, in loving his friends and being there for them, in learning things from Byakuya and teaching him things in return. Renji doesn’t need to be Byakuya’s lieutenant anymore, he just does it because he likes it. It makes him happy. What better character development is there than that?

[persephonememes]

* (  THE SEVEN HUSBANDS OF EVELYN HUGO /  SENTENCE PROMPTS

people think that intimacy is about sex. but intimacy is about truth.

never let anyone make you feel ordinary.

i’m under absolutely no obligation to make sense to you.

don't ignore half of me so you can fit me into a box.

don't do that.

it’s always been fascinating to me how things can be simultaneously true and false, how people can be good and bad all in one.

sometimes reality comes crashing down on you.

heartbreak is a loss. divorce is a piece of paper.

when you're given an opportunity to change your life, be ready to do whatever it takes to make it happen.

the world doesn't give things, you take things.

you have to find a job that makes your heart feel big instead of one that makes it feel small.

please never forget that the sun rises and sets with your smile.

you’re the only thing on this planet worth worshipping.

be wary of men with something to prove.

the cruelest thing you can do to someone you love, give them just enough good to make them stick through a hell of a lot of bad.

you wonder what it must be like to be a man, to be so confident that the final say is yours.

i think you're brilliant.

i think you're tough.

do yourself a favor and learn to grab life by the balls.

don’t be so tied up in trying to do the right thing when the smart thing is so painfully clear.

you can be sorry about something and not regret it

the world respects people who think they should be running it.

if i want things to change, i have to change how i do things. and probably drastically.

people are messy, and love can be ugly.

i’m inclined to always err on the side of compassion.

you can’t tell a single thing about a person’s true character if you both want the same thing.

no one is just a victim or a victor. everyone is somewhere in between.

just go knowing you were loved, that i will never forget you.

you were my best friend.

nobody deserves anything. it's simply a matter of who's willing to go and take it for themselves.

why have i spent so long settling for less when i know damn well the world expects more?

taking pride in your beauty is a damning act.

forgiveness is different from absolution.

sometimes divorce isn’t an earth-shattering loss. sometimes it’s just two people waking up out of a fog.

if there are all different types of soul mates, then you are one of mine.

i am absolutely positive that i need you more than i’ve ever needed another living soul.

i loved you so much that i thought you were the meaning of my life.

i thought that people were put on earth to find other people, and i was put here to find you.

i don't want to be meant for someone like you.

that’s the part i was stuck in, the part where you accept the apology because it’s easier than addressing the root of the problem.

it will be the tragedy of my life that i cannot love you enough to make you mine.

it’s a hard business, reconciling what the truth used to be with what the truth is now.

you're an idealist and a romantic, and you have a beautiful soul.

i wish the world was ready to be the way you see it.

i wish that the rest of the people on earth with us were capable of living up to your expectations. but they aren't.

the world is ugly, and no one wants to give anyone the benefit of the doubt about anything.

i love you too much to let you live only for me.

i’m cynical and i’m bossy, and most people would consider me vaguely immoral.

i spent half my time loving her and the other half hiding how much i loved her.

it shouldn’t be wrong, to love you. how can it be wrong?

i think being yourself—your true, entire self—is always going to feel like you’re swimming upstream.

you could be a nobody living in a cardboard box, and i’d still love you.

i simply didn't care. it cost so much, caring. i didn't have any currency to spend on it.

some marriages aren't really that great. some loves aren't all-encompassing.

the media are going to tell whatever story they want to tell. they always have. they always will.

charisma is charm that inspires devotion.

you’re not really famous if anybody still likes you.

you should know this about the rich: they always want to get richer. it is never boring, getting your hands on more money.

the truth is, praise is just like an addiction. the more you get it, the more of it you need just to stay even.

you have to push people’s boundaries and not feel bad about it. no one is going to give you anything if you don’t ask for it.

when you’ve been bested, sometimes it’s good to recognize it and move on.

no one goes around throwing caution to the wind unless the wind is blowing their way.

the easiest lie to tell is one you know the other person desperately wants to be true.

pictures speak very loudly. in general, we can almost never shake what we see with our eyes.

we all can’t go around treating people like dog shit and then expecting that a simple i’m sorry erases it.

guilt is a feeling i’ve never made much peace with. i find that when it rears its head, it brings an army.

when i feel guilty for one thing, i start to see all the other things i should feel guilty for.

accepting that something is true isn't the same as thinking that it is just.

[edenmemes]

uncharted sentence starters

❝ if you’re done lying to me, then you should stop lying to yourself. ❞ ❝ it’s not going to be easy, you know. ❞ ❝ well, it sounds like you’re working for a nutcase. ❞ ❝ make sure that you’re safe. ❞ ❝ look, i wanted to tell you! i wanted to! but how could i? ❞ ❝ see? i’m not just a pretty face. ❞ ❝ i’m sorry for what happened to you. ❞ ❝ i think i have a bit more experience with this thing than you do. ❞ ❝ wait, wait, wait. something about this feels kinda hinky. ❞ ❝ what a warm and homey place, huh? ❞ ❝ i’m willing to forgive and forget. for old time’s sake. ❞ ❝ looks like he was killed. ripped to shreds actually. ❞ ❝ these guys have been tailing me for weeks. thought i lost them. ❞ ❝ should i be flattered, or worried? ❞ ❝ so with our luck, what’s the odds this volcano is going to erupt on us? ❞ ❝ i hope i don’t go to hell for this. ❞ ❝ i can handle this. i’m tough. i grew up with nuns. ❞ ❝ fair warning, last person who betrayed me wound up dead. ❞ ❝ you told me you’d say out of trouble. ❞ ❝ how do i know you’re real? ❞ ❝ don’t ever point a gun at me again. ❞ ❝ make sure that you’re safe. ❞ ❝ i have made a lot of mistakes. a lot. i’m not a perfect man. ❞ ❝ i had a lousy father. lousy childhood. ❞ ❝ sounds terrible. check his wallet. ❞ ❝ let's not forget who walked out on whom. you don't get to be jealous.  ❞ ❝ progress demands sacrafice. ❞ ❝ shut up. i really thought you were gone this time. ❞ ❝ i can’t leave you alone for one minute, can i? ❞ ❝ on a scale of 1-10, how scared were you that i was gonna die? ❞ ❝ i can’t walk away. i’m tired of walking away. ❞ ❝ even an enemy must be fed and sheltered. are you my enemy? ❞ ❝ we can still stop him. i can help you. ❞ ❝ gotta say, you have a real knack for breaking things. ❞ ❝ do as i say not as i do. ❞ ❝ looks like hell spit you back out. ❞ ❝ what’s your story, anyway? ❞ ❝ i don’t take big risks without a good payday. ❞ ❝ i guess it runs in the family, huh? ❞ ❝ you can’t reform the villain and save the day. it’s just not done like that. ❞ ❝ sorry, i just need to get my head back in the game. ❞ ❝ this isn’t our fight. it’s my fight. ❞ ❝ i won’t let them hurt you. ❞ ❝ skip the mind games. you don’t know me. ❞ ❝ no offense, but your ancestor was a right asshole. ❞ ❝ you’re unusually quiet. what’s up your bum? ❞ ❝ that was my last cigarette. ❞ ❝ okay, well, why don’t you just walk away? ❞ ❝ why this obsession? i’m just worried. ❞ ❝ i can’t...i can’t breathe...i just...can’t breathe... ❞ ❝ don’t touch me. get away from me. ❞ ❝ if you let these bastards win - after this - i will never forgive you. ❞ ❝ you’ve got your pride all tangled up in this thing. it’s making you reckless. ❞ ❝ any trouble you shoot first and ask questions later. ❞ ❝ dangerous to be out so late.  ❞ ❝ easy now. look at me. ❞ ❝ my leg! don’t touch it! i know it’s broken! ❞ ❝ are you going to join me, darling? ❞ ❝ this is my gig. you want your share, you play by my rules. ❞ ❝ we don’t get to choose how we start in life. real greatness? it’s what you do with the hand you’re dealt. ❞ ❝ i always felt that we were destined for something great. ❞ ❝ you should relax. you’ll live longer. ❞ ❝ i taught you better than that. ❞ ❝ so that’s a no? felt like a no. ❞ ❝ quit acting like you’re gonna lie down and die, all right? ❞ ❝ i have a spare bed.  ❞ ❝ is there no bottom for your ignorance? ❞ ❝ even cornered dogs bite back.  ❞ ❝ that one is my favourite. it makes your eyes twinkle.  ❞ ❝ admit it. you’re gonna miss this ass.  ❞ ❝ you think i’m a monster, but you’re no different from me.  ❞ ❝ how many people have you killed? how many?  ❞ ❝ you will not stand in the way of destiny.  ❞ ❝ you stick with me, i’ll teach you a few things. ❞ ❝ well, if you’d like, i can tell you where to stick it. ❞ ❝ face it, genius, you’ve been played. ❞ ❝ yeah, keep smiling, asshole. ❞ ❝ i got nothing to prove. ❞ ❝ don’t hand it to me. i’ve had everything handed to me ❞ ❝ you don’t know when to give up, do you? ❞ ❝ you stick your neck out, you’re asking to lose your head. ❞ ❝ oh, and now you’re blushing. ❞ ❝ just so you know, it’s not my first lost city. ❞ ❝ are you always this clever? ❞ ❝ i was trying to rescue you, as a matter of fact. ❞ ❝ you know, at this point, i’ve run out of words. ❞ ❝ what do you say we really ruin this guy’s day? ❞ ❝ whether you die or not, i don’t really care. ❞ ❝ i thought you...i saw you get shot. ❞ ❝ it’s like a camera. you just...point and shoot, right? ❞ ❝ god, who’s being unprofessional now? ❞ ❝ i always knew you were gonna make something of yourself one day. ❞ ❝ let’s just pretend i skipped all of sunday school. ❞ ❝ oh no you didn’t do that. that’s not funny! ❞ ❝ save the world, triumph over evil. ❞ ❝ are you trying to kill me? ❞ ❝ know what i love about partying with a bunch of crooks? nobody cares that you smoke indoors. ❞ ❝ you gave me a goddamn heartattack. ❞ ❝ i’ll die a thousand deaths before i let you win.  ❞ ❝ i didn’t tell you because i was afraid...of losing you. ❞ ❝ what ever happened to just living a normal life? ❞ ❝ even if you think you’re protecting me, you don’t have a right to shut me out like that. ❞ ❝ i mean... thanks for saving me. ❞ ❝ en garde, dickhead. ❞ ❝ i love you. ❞ ❝ come on! we can get out of here together. ❞ ❝ everything i touch turns to shit. ❞ ❝ how did you find me anyway? ❞ ❝ i’ve got my eye on you. ❞ ❝ you were going to sell me out, weren’t you? ❞ ❝ love to know what you’re thinking. ❞ ❝ well, well, well. get it? ‘cause you know, it’s a well. ❞ ❝ it’s a shame we’re leaving empty handed though. ❞ ❝ okay...yeah...how do i look? ❞ ❝ thank me after we get out of this alive. ❞ ❝ you’re lucky that i found you when i did. ❞ ❝ they’re just saying that because it gets to you. ❞ ❝ look, if you’re into shady stuff it’s totally cool. ❞ ❝ ha. that’s my girl. ❞ ❝ i made a promise that i was done with this life. ❞ ❝ listen, sunshine, the world doesn’t care. ❞ ❝ well, that’s it. now you know everything. ❞ ❝ don’t even think about not coming back. ❞ ❝ you know, i shot the man who told me that. ❞ ❝ i thought that i’d be satisfied. instead, i’m left with this strange feeling of emptiness.  ❞  ❝ as thrilling as the next adventure may be, in the end, you’re always left with that same feeling. ❞ ❝ you know, i didn’t think i could trust you either. ❞ ❝ i almost lost you once before. i just can’t do that again. ❞ ❝ don’t even think about not coming back. ❞ ❝ that’s it! no compassion! no mercy! ❞ ❝ sentimentality in this line of work will get you killed. ❞ ❝ i need your help...and you need mine. ❞ ❝ i kept your tears in a jar. ❞ ❝ i expected you to have my back.  ❞ ❝ tell you what. when i get back, pizza’s on me. ❞ ❝ death. it smelled like death. ❞ ❝ so they have beaten you, eh? your quest’s over?  ❞ ❝ you listen to your mum, okay?  ❞ ❝ trust me - your ego will mend.  ❞ ❝ i hope i live to regret this.  ❞ ❝ these men were all shot.  ❞ ❝ be a lot easier just to let go.  ❞ ❝ what? no witty remark? nothing clever to say?  ❞ ❝ seems like i am always saving your ass. ❞ ❝ i never asked for any of your bloody heroics. ❞ ❝ the guys in prison used to say, ‘you can steal to eat or you can steal to get rich.’ i say, why not both?  ❞ ❝ you were never a chocolate and flower kinda girl.  ❞ ❝ i don’t have your luck. people like me know when to walk away from the table.  ❞ ❝ appreciate the update, captain obvious.  ❞ ❝ you made your choice.  ❞ ❝ don’t tell me you’re buying all into that supernatural nonsense.  ❞ ❝ i couldn’t sleep last time i saw that.  ❞ ❝ it’s actually nice working with a woman for a change. ❞ ❝ i’m lucky you’re on my side. ❞ ❝ do you really think all this really could be true?  ❞ ❝ you know, it’s kind of romantic down here.  ❞ ❝ just wish i’d brought something to read.  ❞ ❝ you can relax. we’re safe here. ❞ ❝ i am surrounded by traitors and fools.  ❞ ❝ just don’t get us killed. ❞ ❝ what are you shaking for? ❞ ❝ parents must be worried about you. ❞ ❝ i wonder what you’re really scared of...not bullets, or blood, or broken bones... ❞ ❝ i don’t need your bullet-ridden-corpse on my conscience. let’s go. ❞ ❝ yeah, i’m fine. oh, but - you’re bleeding. ❞ ❝ i do seem to attract the scum of the earth. ah - no offense. ❞ ❝ all this grandeur, hidden away from the world.  ❞ ❝ if we don’t make it out here, i just want you to know - i hate your guts. ❞ ❝ i’ve got a bad feeling about this place. ❞ ❝ that’s my blood. that’s my blood. that’s a lot of my blood. ❞ ❝ you should play the hero more often. it suits you. ❞ ❝ eyes ahead, don’t look down. ❞ ❝ here - grab my hand. ❞ ❝ no matter what it is, you’re supposed to come to me so we can work it out together… as a team.  ❞  ❝ you know nothing is ever truly destroyed. just purified and reborn.  ❞ ❝ you just - totally crushed that moment. you know that, right?  ❞ ❝ you’re a selfish dickhead.  ❞ ❝ i do speak a little bit of ____, you know. wait, what did you say? ❞ ❝ i know you. you’re no hero.  ❞ ❝ i wish you could’ve been there. ❞ ❝ hey, are you happy? ❞ ❝ you’re not gonna pass out on me or nothing, are you? ❞ ❝ look, i...um....i’m not good with the whole people thing.  ❞ ❝ i’ve had worse nights, believe me.  ❞ ❝ let’s find somewhere a little more private. ❞ ❝ hey, take it easy. you’ve been out for almost half an hour.  ❞ ❝ to rule people, you first must sow chaos.  ❞ ❝ it’s not stealing if it was mine to begin with. ❞ ❝ take me with you. ❞ ❝ i’m left with this strange feeling of emptiness.  ❞  ❝ anyone ever tell you, you have a funny idea of romantic?  ❞  ❝ it’s nothing that years of therapy won’t fix.  ❞ ❝ no. it’s my turn to walk away.  ❞  ❝ nothing about our lives have been fair, but we’ve made it work. ❞ ❝ your people will beg me to save them.  ❞ ❝ we’re not on a first-name basis.  ❞ ❝ you know nothing about me.  ❞ ❝ do tell. maybe over some drinks?  ❞ ❝ we must keep to the shadows.  ❞ ❝ hey, you cool? ‘cause i need you to be cool.  ❞ ❝ you must be tired of these lectures. i know i’m tired of giving them. ❞ ❝ here, take this. you’ll catch a cold. ❞ ❝ is that a sin? i think that’s a sin. ❞

[mgsapphire]

Ethics and morality... and how they're not the same...

Weird title, and I don't even know if I'll properly approach this one with all the topics I wish to this discuss in today's The Devil Judge essay, because a lot of things peaked my interest, I was debating on doing a separate post for each subject, but I'll do them all in here:

Starting simple

I know we're only 4 episodes in, but I want to break down the things that I often look for in a new show:

Cinematography

Soundtrack

Character building

Plot devices

Social commentary (sometimes)

Of course, these are things most people would consider basics, but I find that a lot of TV shows don't have enough balance in them. Also, cinematography and soundtrack are pretty up there for me because when a plot gets slow, or something like that, I stay for those two (biggest example: King Eternal Monarch).

The soundtrack in The Devil Judge is amazing and the cinematography can be a character of its own. They really get me hooked and are used as tools to properly tell a story. And I'll get into that further down this post.

The onlooker will never understand the actor

Experience is your best friend not only applies to job hunting, but it's true in the real world too. You can't truly weigh in on something unless you've experienced it yourself, you can give it your judgment and everything, but when bad things happen to someone, you'll never truly understand their pain. Am I bringing up because of the difference of mind in Judge Kang and Judge Kim's opinions? On how the public treated the minister's son? No. I'm talking about a very specific scene, where the cinematography told me to think that way and not the dialogue (it's that easy for my mind to be swayed). In episode 3, when the rich are about to dine right after the foundation's commercial for a better future, we see this aerial shot:

What's interesting about this? The seclusion and the enclosed feeling it conveys as a counterpart to the poverty shots we were just shown. Yet, these are the people making ads for a better future, what do they know?

They live comfortably behind concrete walls with no windows to see what goes on apart from the bubble they live in. This idea is further enforced at the party in episode 4, where they're not even a part of the donations, and watch and mock from afar as spectators. Yet, these people call the shots. They even call it commenting, as if they were watching the pain of others on TV.

The intriguing personality and the duality it encites

Now, this was a costume and wardrobe decision, but it was also very well thought of:

Judge Kim wears white and Judge Kang wears black. One is morally perceived by viewers of the show as morally good and the other is perceived as morally dubious at best. However, besides the costume and wardrobe thought put into this, we also have to think about the delivery of this scene and how it may further affect my detailing of this section. Judge Kang brings down the coats, and hangs over the coat to Judge Kim, he's the one who is making that annotation: You're pure, I'm tainted. This can have one of two interpretations:

Either Judge Kang believes Judge Kim to be pure and innocent due to his status as a rookie in the field

Or he believes Judge Kim to be morally white and himself morally black as he's looking at his brother's face and not at Judge Kim's heart.

Because most of the back story we're unveiling is through Judge Kim's perception, there's also an inherit bias we're having as well, because in Judge Kim narrative, he believes he's doing what's right and believes Judge Kang to be evil. In being served information about Judge Kang through Judge Kim's eyes, our bias is inherently skewed.

Another thing is that, when they put on the coat, they're standing in front of the other, as if the producers of this series are telling us they're two sides of the same coin.

The duality is made in more deceitful ways, which include:

A difference of classes that implies one has suffered while the other has not.

A difference of experience that implies one is more tainted while the other is pure.

A difference of age that implies one is a sly fox while the other one is is bunny about to be eaten.

A difference of temper that makes one erratic and the other logical.

Power dynamics

This one, in this one I could make a whole thesis based on just a couple of scenes in the drama. And you know I have to mention it: director Jung being the puppeteer.

It may not be as unexpected at first, nevertheless it brings forward a lot of things I've wished to touch upon for quite some time now. A woman being a puppeteer of an old man in the portrayed dystopia that The Devil Judge is painting makes much more sense than more common demonstrations of these dynamics where it's either a:

A man of power being controlled by a bigger man of power.

A man of power being controlled by a seemingly man of a lower status.

A woman being controlled by a man of power.

Although, there's nothing wrong with those power dynamics, and if they were to be used, a message could also be conveyed, this one in particular works as a megaphone.

A subversion of power in such a way can be interpreted as a true indication of the weak overcoming the powerful. Why? It is not that woman are naturally weaker than men, but that in society, patriarchy has been a big factor in taking voice away from women in order to give it to men.

In order for Director Jung to achieve her purposes, it's smarter for her to do it under the pretense that an old rich man in power is the one calling the shots.

This is better exemplified by her stance when the old man tries to excuse his behavior, and what her moral compass is. I'm not saying I agree with her unethical conduct, but that her morality is directly impacted by the perception of the public of her as a weak woman:

Just because a dog bites a human does the person get dirty?

This is telling on how she perceives the actions of the old man in gropping the waitress. She didn't do anything wrong, even if you touched her, you are the dirty one.

While she's evil, it's a refreshing and deep evil.

The public's opinion and how there's actually logic in the show's portrayal

The public opinion can make or break a person, even if it's not on a public trial like this. While "cancel culture" barely works in today's society, a person's reputation is forever tainted. The show does tell that, but it also exhibits the scary downside of it, by showing how easily it was to make people accept flaggelation as a fitting punishment.

There are many experiments that have tried to test the effect of societal pressure on an individual's decision and the effect of the authority's enforcement of power in the outcome of these decisions. Furthermore, theories based on analysis of human behavior not necessarily relying on experiments can also help break this down. What do I mean? Here's a small attempt at explaining:

Milgram Experiment on Authority: which measured the individual willingness to carry out actions that go against their conscience due to an authority's approval.

Argument from Authority; The idea that people are more likely to use an authority's opinion on something as an argument for their reason. This is often seen in science, where trusted authorities have done the research and offer it to the public. In here, authority bias also plays a role, as we often believe, at first, that an authority must be right.

Moral disengagement: basically speaking, because this is evil or bad, I'm not part of it and I most probably am not actively participating in it. One may disengage by moral justification, which means that before engaging in something that has been previously perceived as immoral, I'm changing my stance on it based on what I tell myself to be logical arguments. This particular form of moral disengagement is very effective in changing the public opinion. I'll be touching on another form further down this post.

Other factors played a part, but these ones in particular came to mind when public flagelation as a form of corporeal punishment was wildly accepted. First, an authority is the one telling them it's correct, to go ahead. Secondly, another authority (the minister) had previously shown approval to such unusual punishment. Thirdly, they are not the ones to be engaging directly in the act, and even if they were, it would be acceptable because an authority has told them so. They may even believe the punishment to be a necessary evil for the greater good.

In fact, the minister's son was actually correct when pleading his case, they were accepting it because it wouldn't affect them directly.

Regarding the cinematographic descent of the public opinion regarding the situation can better be exemplified by the old man we've seen through the episodes.

Does suffering justify misdeeds?

Today I came along the difference between excuse and reason. You may give a reason for your behavior, but it doesn't excuse it.

Not because I've suffered through shit, means I have to make you suffer too.

I may explain myself, but it's on the other side to excuse me.

Why I hate the unreliable narrator and why I love it so much

This story has been told mostly through the eyes of Judge Kim and what he hears and sees regarding Judge Kang, if anything, the narrative is very close to that of the narrative we've seen in The Great Gatsby. An enigmatic man is being narrated to us from the eye of a man who hasn't known him for a long time.

How is that an unreliable narrator? The narrator has their own set of bias and moral standards which function as lenses through which they see the world.

Another way of putting it would be the way teenage romances are often written in a first person narrative where either of the two teenagers is the narrator, so the author can sell to us something as simple as offering a pack of gum as the most romantic act on earth. We're perceiving interactions through rose tainted glasses.

In this case, we're seeing the interactions through Judge Kim's eyes who doesn't trust Judge Kang from the get go due to his own preset bias.

The narrative becomes even more unreliable as we're not exactly sure if what Judge Kang disclosed himself is a fact.

The reason why I love this narrative is because it leaves a lot of space to make simple plot twists to a narrative and make them seem grand, and can elongate a story without making it obvious.

The reason why I hate it is because sometimes, in tv shows mostly, we as viewers can see the other side of the story and grow increasingly frustrated with the main character's prejudice and misunderstandings (I'm looking at you my beloved Beyond Evil).

Also, because I have to wait for a long time before I actually have a clear picture of it.

[katie-writes24]

Fell Into The Same Arms Pt.2

Pairing: Thomas Jefferson x reader

Warnings: Language, angst, a pinch of fluff, ANGST, suggestive material, mentions of drug use, sad sad sad

Part 1

I’m starting to believe I will never just get straight to the point? But it’s whatever. This wasn’t even suppose to have a part 2, but everyone hyped it up which was super shocking to me? And luckily for you I write a lot when I’m in need of a vent soooo yeah! Anyways, let me know if you want to be tagged! Feedback is always appreciated! Enjoy!

It was cold, the wind a lot stronger this morning because of last nights storm. The window was open.

Thomas always left the window open, no matter how many times she complained.

"What if a bird flies in? What if someone climbs up and breaks in? And I don't like those bug noises!"

"What bug noises?"

"Like crickets and just little noises- I don't know but they creep me out!"

"I get too hot when I sleep, you know that," Thomas shrugged as if it wasn't a big deal, climbing into bed and folding his arms behind his head.

"Yeah, well I get too cold now," Y/N gets in on her own side, proving her point and wrapping herself in the blanket, making Thomas chuckle.

"Come 'ere, I'll keep you warm!" He wrapped his arms around her torso, cradling the back of her neck and breathing in the sweet scent of her shampoo. Y/N curled in and let out a blissful sigh, finally recovering some warmth.

"Don't let me go," She whispered before nodding off to sleep.

"I won't, I promise."

He was keeping his promise.

She should get up and go back to her own apartment, tell Hercules about everything and beg him not to tell anyone because she didn't want to hear the much deserved I told you so's. She should maybe stop at the drug store and pick up some pain meds and concealer, at least try and make the bruises fade. When Angelica calls her and asks where she is, she should tell her that she had a rough night and can't make it to work. She should leave this bed...

But she can't fight the warmth of Thomas's chest, can't seem to remove the covers and face the world just yet.

Lost in her own thoughts, she soon felt a hand run up and down her spine slowly. He was hesitant, and he had every right to be. They shouldn't indulge themselves in this, they both know that it will only hurt them later.

Last night, she let herself fall, both in her own beaten head and in Thomas's arms. She let him fix her up and tell her that it would be okay, and he let her rest in his bed because he knows that she always enjoyed the soft, fancy foam. Thomas didn't call anybody because he knew that Y/N didn't want that.

None of this would've happened if she just stayed home last night. She knew exactly what she was getting into when she opened her mouth and fought the fight that wasn't hers.

"You're thinking too loud."

He was one to talk, really.

His fingers found her scalp and started to massage it gently, and there was no resisting the feeling. It was a moment of peace, something she hadn't gotten in a while.

"When's the last time we were in bed together?"

Just like that, it's gone.

Y/N quickly removed herself out of his embrace and folded the covers back. Thomas only sighed dramatically, "Don't get so sensitive, Y/N."

"Yeah, that's rich. I think you should just be proud that you managed to bring me upstairs in the first place." She was being bitter, she knew it, but he sounded too smug about something that didn't even happen last night. Turning to face him, she could feel tension forming in the air.

"You're right, excuse me for trying to be a nice host!"

"Is that what you would call it? Because you had that dumb look on your face where you think you know exactly what you're doing, but you really don't. It's so...ugh, it's so practical of you to think last night was a whole thing!"

"May I remind you, that you're the one that broke this off." It was a stab, and again, she deserved it. But she didn't want to get into it right now, not when she was sore from a viscous beating from the previous night.

"I don't have time for this, Thomas-"

"When will you have time? We never even- we never sat down and talked about it!" Thomas was out of bed now, pacing the room and looking at her with narrowed eyes. "Will you ever make time for me? Do you even want to try and fix this?"

"If I wanted to fix it, then I would've when it happened!"

Thomas snapped his jaw shut, staring at her in disbelief. Y/N sighed, rubbing her forehead and looking up to meet his eyes. "Look, I know that this is all my fault, everything is my fault! I shouldn't have came here last night, I shouldn't have moved in with you, I shouldn't have said yes, and I shouldn't-"

"You shouldn't have said yes? Really? So...so-what, you just never loved me at all?"

"Of course I love you Thomas! I should've never gotten involved with you in the first place, that's the problem! I shouldn't have brought you into this fucked up life I have. I don't even remember why you liked me in the first place. I was in AA, and I obviously wasn't getting any better! And look at me now, look at my arm-" She thrusted her arm in his line of sight, making him flinch backwards either at the motion or the scrapes and bruises that layered her skin. "There's no helping this, Thomas."

The silence that came afterwards was deafening, both of them standing still, looking at each other. There was nothing more she could do to patch up the hole, there was no saving them.

"I thought you were getting better," Thomas was barely above a whisper, and the quiver in his voice made her feel guilty.

"Yeah...well, so did I." She felt calmer now, there wasn't a reason to be, but she felt like it was pointless anyway. "It's been a rough week. Too many tasks, too many problems. This guy at work....he said that they would help me sleep. I don't know really...what they do, but it's definitely not sleep."

"So, you're taking without knowing what it is? That's just...that's great-"

"I'm not here for a lecture, Thomas."

"Then what are you here for?"

Shockingly, she wasn't expecting that one. There was more to it, a long story that revolved around Alexander and John, one about Eliza telling her to go back to group, one that ended all contact with Lafayette. There was even more to the story of last night, but she was afraid if she told Thomas all of this, he would never open that door again to her, not even if she banged on it crying for help.

She was here because when she fell hard on the cement last night, she thought that it was the end, that she finally lost the battle and it would all be over soon. The first person she thought of was Thomas; if he would come to her funeral, if he would keep in contact with her friends, if he would ever think positively about her again?

There was even a sliver of hope that maybe he would come rushing down the corner, see her and help her. Luckily, the worker taking out the trash across the street saw the scene, started yelling, making threats about calling the police. Even though the threats weren't at her, she couldn't risk it, and she fled.

Looking over at her ex, and seeing his eyes all watery, she then realized she said all of that out loud.

"I always regretted it," Y/N clears her throat, trying to fight her own tears. "Always wish that I could take it all back, never even step foot in that club and take what was offered. I really do, Thomas. If I had just done that, maybe we would still... be together."

And what could you say to that? Thomas was always one to make it known when someone was in the wrong, would always correct someone when they said some asinine shit that he knew wasn't true. She could name three times that he called her out, one time that he even called James out, and she couldn't even keep count on how many times he told Alexander off for being absolutely wrong.

Her last statement..there was nothing wrong about that, because even he knew it was the truth.

She let drugs and people and lies overcome her, and it took a toll in their relationship. They both knew the last time they were in this house together that years of built up trust, compassion and love was destroyed in one minute.

Just when she was about to grab her keys and walk out, out of his life for good, for the better, he scoffed.

"You said love," It was barely above a whisper, but she could hear him perfectly.

Still, she played dumb. "What?"

"When I asked if it was real? If you ever loved me? You said you love me...present tense."

Looking up at his wide eyes, she could remember the nights where she would stare into them like they never ended, like there was a tiny galaxy in his pupils. It made her warm, and he would never look away.

Right now they look hopeful, the stars shining a bit brighter than before.

Y/N gestured small, not really knowing what to say or do. She'd either lie to Thomas or lie to herself, and she had lied to him enough, hasn't she?

Thomas crossed the room, placing his big hands against her arms. Their foreheads touched, and he was too close, it was bound to get ugly. It was bound to fall back into the same cycle if Y/N let him stay this close.

"We shouldn't," Y/N whispered, voice cracking and not meeting his face until he tilted her chin up. There were his eyes again...

"You're probably right," Thomas huffed and licked his lips.

She didn't like the sound of that, she even shook her head to convince herself that this was all just bad bad bad.

"I need help, T."

His thumb swiped against the water on her cheek, shushing her. "We'll get you help. We can do this, you can do this, Y/N. Just let me be there when you do it."

It was tempting, so tempting.

“You know, maybe it’s not exactly fate...but Y/N I know that you were on my doorstep last night for a reason, let it be yours or not, who cares.”

There’s a thought. Maybe if she didn’t show up, she wouldn’t be in this situation, with Thomas so close that she could just selfishly take what she wants. The temptation was right in front of her and yet it wasn’t hers to have.

“Let this be our second chance...please.”

Thomas was begging, he never begged, not like this.

"I can be there, by your side. I will be...just let me in."

“Your relationship was doomed from the start.”

“Don't think about it too much. Things happen.”

“He doesn't need you, not when you're falling apart and breaking from the seams.”

Y/N leaned up and met his soft lips, grabbing the back of his neck and pulling him as close as possible. Thomas wrapped his arms around her back, kissing back just as firm.

Call it cliche, but it felt like Y/N was back home, like this whole time she was on a ridiculously long getaway, except that she had never meant to getaway in the first place. This connection was what she needed all along. Or maybe Y/N just needed to be around Thomas, just talk to him. Maybe they were meant to fight and scream and argue and just be. Maybe she was meant to get hooked again only to show up and have Thomas take her into his arms willingly.

Their lips moved against each other with the same rhythm as before, with passion and skill. Thomas massaged her tongue with his own, only pulling back when he was out of breath.

They weren't sure what the future would look like, if Y/N ever would get better, would actually try to. Maybe she'd break Thomas's heart again, and it would be a lesson to him. Maybe they would both take it slow and learn how to build up from here without damaging one another unknowingly.

Good or bad, they were willing to give it a try, no matter how many of their loved ones told them how terrible it was to go back to the one that hurt you most.

Let me know if you want to be tagged!!

Jefferson tag list: @notebookgirl30 @dontblinkumightmiss @tinywhim @checkurwindow @einfachniemand @daveeddiggsit @ohsoverykeri-blog @astralaffairs @i-know-i-can

[dormats-town]

Pls Go for it, Town 👀

thank you the one they call tori

tw heavy topics, mentions of colonialism, shit like that.

so lets do this section by section i chronological order. because i said so.

we start off with bo, telling us how the world works. similar to how those in typically the earlier years of the elementary (more like kindergarten though, to be honest). it's simple, explaining that nature is perfect and that is apparently our world.

(side note: perfectly parallels that one line that every angsty ass tiktoker has been using recently, " you say the oceans rising like i give a shit. "* the world isn't working as perfectly as was due to the affect of humans/cooperation, which is another way i couldve gone over to the next part)

then socko is introduced.

socko speaks about the world's more human/corrupt side of things in a cheery tone. namely oppression and such. then we get to the more speaking part and GOD it is so so good.

essentially, bo asks socko what he could do to help. socko says to educate himself due to the fact it is incredibly exhausting to, yknow, unpack all that shit. then the following dialogue goes on and god it is so so good.

" I'm sorry, Socko. I was just trying to become a better person "

" Why do you rich fucking white people insist on seeing every socio-political conflict through the myopic lens of your own self-actualization?

This isn't about you!

So either get with it, or get out of the fucking way. "

and im just. holy shit bo burnham, white ass guy, got it. he got it. i am so familiar with situations like this where like, instead of focusing on learning- the one who doesn't experience that kind of oppression ends up not focusing on the information given. no, they're only thinking about being a better person and its like. he's right! it isn't about them. it isn't about them seeming like they're woke, its about the oppressed facing oppression.

and then. bo (in the song) tells socko to shut up for telling the truth. to shut up for being angry. to shut up about feeling frustration. to bo, socko can only express his frustration when he can educate people. once the truth starts actually offending him? he wants socko to stop. so, socko is threatened into behaving as bo sees for. yet, at the end of the song.. bo still punishes him, no matter what.

as a person of color, it is frustrating to experience time and time again people who do shit like this. not only by white people, but by other poc as well. most times, people will focus on the person who feels bad. who feels guilty of racism. not the poc. not the one who has a right to be frustrated. because that's how the world works. despite how progressive people are willing to be- it's not for the oppressed. it's to seem like a good, decent person. because for them? that's enough, so they don't continue their compassion and understanding further.

there's this one lyric i like from an AJJ song, that sounds completely unrelated, i know, but let me continue. People II: The Reckoning is honestly such a good song and it has really good lyrics, but this verse especially? good shit.

" But there's a bad man in everyone, no matter who we are.

There's a rapist and a Nazi living in our tiny hearts.

Child pornographers and cannibals and politicians too.

There's someone in your head, Wait to fucking strangle you "

holy. shit. let me just agahhgmgmgm. its so good. because it's true. we live in such a european based world. we let rapists influence how we think and be leaders. we let shit politicians control what we are taught and what we aren't taught in school. some live where the colonizers actually lived, and most lived in places that were colonized.

of course we're going to be bad people. there's so many conservative places where they spoon feed children that shit, and those kids become teenagers. then they become adults.

that's why unlearning it can be hard. that's why unlearning it can be difficult, but you shouldnt burden poc who are more in touch with their issues and their community in order to become a better person. educate yourself, because now we have the internet. sure it does take a lot of digging but for the love of fuck do not throw a fit for someone trying to point out something problematic that can be undone with work.

anyways thats enough of that, bo burnham's how the world works is art and bo burnham is one of the only white men ever.

(* this is not meant to offend anyone, though i stand by everything else i said)

[mrs-nate-humphrey]

you’ve talked a little bit about this wrt dan, but i’m curious: what are your favorite seasons/arcs for the main gg characters? (serena, blair, dan, nate, jenny, vanessa) cause everyone’s personalities tended to uh, shift a bit from season to season and storyline to storyline, and i’m wondering which eras of those characters were your favorite?

oh, so i sat on this question for a very long time, and spent a ton of time thinking over it. here we go! 

i loved the way serena was written in s1 and s2. she was so full of joy despite all the difficult things she’d endured, so bubbly and warm and... lively is ALWAYS the adjective that comes to mind for serena, despite how it’s a terrible pun. but yeah! she had an energy to her that was very childlike & genuine, and i loved that about her - despite the things she’d endured, she was so full of light (?? how do i describe this.) i know that serena’s arc gets notably more tragic s3 onwards, but i feel like the way she was written lost a bit of depth s3 onwards as well. she had a sharp wit, and a good sense of humour, she was playful and... most notably, she had this little giggle? that she literally NEVER does in the later seasons, which makes me sad?? she stopped laughing like a child at the age of, what, 19?? idk. in s1 & s2 serena had so many layers, and i feel like as the seasons went on they tried to, uh. keep only the surface layers? they didn’t really do justice to the character they started out with.

my answer for vanessa is actually the exact same, with slight modifications. vanessa’s energy in s1 and s2 was unparalleled. literally the best. i loved her and the way she was critical of everything and YET so ready to learn. compared to all these rich, privileged, white people... her presence was just SO good and so important to me, because the way she was so critical of the uber rich was something nobody else really was, and i think that perspective WAS valuable and should’ve remained, haha. idk what it was about s3, but i feel like they didn’t keep the crux of who vanessa was? it wasn’t a BAD vanessa season as much as an incomplete one. i felt they could’ve done so much more with a character like vanessa.... she’s so vibrant and full of life! and the way s3 was for her was very surface. and then in s4 they just demolished her character entirely. i’ve said it before, i’ll say it again: what jenny, juliet and vanessa did in 4x09 was TOTALLY out of character for vanessa. she would never, ever do that. and by the time s4 came around... someone else said this, i don’t remember who. but they said that vanessa was basically being used as a plot device more than as a character. notice how she’s always in the right place at the right time to overhear the right thing? it’s a travesty, because vanessa was just..... so significant to me. like her being there added so much value & even changed the tone of the show imo.

my blair feelings are very complicated. i think she’s fascinating, and i love leighton & her performance. i love book blair so much more than show blair, and idk why or how to explain it. i mentioned this in that post where i ranked the characters, but while watching blair in high school specifically i can’t EVER forget that she would probably hatecrime me, and even when she’s out of school she is still supremely racist at times. i actually liked blair best in s5 - and i know she was going thru ~tragic~ stuff (i think they dialled the tragedy too high actually, like, blair had TOO MUCH on her plate and from a storytelling point of view it was... ambitious, to say the least, to hope to bring all out of that out on tv) but like, keeping her tragedy aside. her capacity for kindness and care really shone thru while she was with dan, and i liked how the d/b relationship took her out of her comfort zone and her “but im a Waldorf!” bubble and let her, idk, be a person. i liked her in s4, too. i feel like blair is a really good, nuanced, fleshed out character as blair, and the way she clung to being a waldorf combined with her rich-white-girl privilege got kind of boring after a while because like. she’s not like louis? her character has so much depth. her character doesn’t need to be reduced to a title, because she’s SO much more than that.

i feel like i need to do a lot more rewatching when it comes to dan because i CANNOT be objective about him. he reminds me far too much of myself!!! down to his flaws and his mistakes and his issues –  i was a precocious little shit in high school at times in very similar ways to dan, i like to think i’ve grown out of that (& am perpetually making an effort TO grow out of falling into those patterns) & that’s what i want for dan, too. dan’s arc feels real to me, because a lot of it is my arc, too. feeling lonely, out of place & unaccepted in high school --> being a popular kid in college… that hits really close to home. s1 & s2 are important seasons to me because i’m extremely protective of awkward, trying-his-best high school dan (he can be awful at times, but he can be earnest and sincere, too!) i feel like s4 is actually the best dan season – took me a while to get here, but halfway thru my s2 rewatch that’s how i’m leaning. but dan’s arc was very interesting to me, and i wish they’d kept his heart. trying to retcon him as evil fell absolutely flat to me, like. who are you convincing! one of my friends and i were joking about how georgie blackmailed dan into pretending to be gossip girl (she obviously has dirt on him that nobody else does.) anyway. dan’s arc felt pretty true until the end of s4. i wasn’t a big fan of how he was written in s5, i felt like something had been taken away from his character, but i don’t know how to say it better. you’re right though, i have gone over this a lot! so i’m not going to break my head over it, ‘cause we’re already a thousand words in and i still have nate and jenny to go.

speaking of jenny, though: i think dan’s storylines REALLY needed more of a big brother arc. the way he was characterised, especially in s1, was very “i would kill a man for my baby sister” and i have NO idea where that went or why they got rid of it. (actually, i do have some idea. fucking chip wiskers apologism & elevation of chair over literally anything else. sigh)

okay, now speaking of jenny in terms of jenny. i liked her s1 arc, like, her trying to make friends with these people & trying to keep her morals and realising she can’t do both was interesting. i think that should’ve been that with her clashes with girls in constance, though. and afterwards, either nothing happens, or she transfers out of constance, etc. jenny’s s2 arc makes me sad – she was exploited and treated like dirt in so many ways :( the jenny/agnes was interesting in s2, though, and there’s no way to interpret it that ISN’T lesbian. i’ve always felt like jenny’s feelings for nate in s2 are very comphet. jenny’s s3 arc made me even sadder than her s2 arc- she was alienating all her friends one by one, making everyone hate her, and just…… spiralling. she really needed a better support system. her s4 arc made no sense. like. why did she come back in the city to fuck with serena like that? it didn’t feel right.

yeah, all that said… i feel like there are many super intriguing elements of jenny’s storylines and arcs, like, even within canon events if things had been executed differently, it could’ve been actually good/empowering. but the writers hated jenny. and this show was never a feminist show.

ah, so… nate. he started out as a flake in s1 & s2. that’s his whole thing. he doesn’t know who he wants to be / how to get what he wants / how to get where he wants. he takes people for granted. he isn’t dependable or reliable, he lets people down (most notably, blair & vanessa.) and he means well, sure! but his life is like amber and he’s trapped in it. he doesn’t follow his heart, he’s too busy trying to please the wrong people, etc etc. in s3 he’s suddenly so ready for commitment, which always breaks my heart because vanessa!!! but anyway. s3 has a shift in his character, possibly him getting dumped at prom and realising that high school is over and one thing that tethered him to his family (being a kid, being a high schooler, being a minor, whatever) –  one big thing that held him there is gone. so it makes sense that he starts trying to be his own person. i like s3 nate, and s4 nate. we see nate sort of gradually try and be a moral compass, and it’s interesting to me. when i write d/n fic something i really focus on is dan finding nate dependable, and i think that’s a value that builds in nate over time. nate of season 1 is not dependable, nope, no way. but nate of s4 seems like a decent friend to have. in s5 and s6 they more or less threw his entire arc to the wind and gave him so many shitty storylines (sage spence, wtf? nate would not do this. he’s been on the opposite end of this before, he would not carry the pattern forward, ffs.)

idk. this almost hit 1.7k, LMAO. i hope it made some amount of sense!

[jacks-jester]

Mine.

[Jerome Valeska x Reader]

Words: 2,136

Warnings: Extreme aggression, someone gets the shit beat out of them, murder, toxic jealousy traits

Requested? Yes / No

Summary: After your childhood best friend and long time crush is broken out of Arkham alongside you, and a few other inmates, you have to adapt under Theos watchful eyes. What will happen when one of the female escapees becomes a little to close to Jerome for your comfort?

A/N~ Thank you for the request! Anon I’m definitely am willing to write smut for Jerome, I’ll just need a bit of time to sort it out since I haven’t dabbled in smut quite yet. I’ll definitely keep that other request in mind though!

Autumn leaves, the type that crunch underneath your feet in the most satisfying way, their fiery colors blinding your vision yet so beautiful you can’t look away. Thats what always came to mind when you thought of your best friend Jerome Valeska - the spunky, albeit a bit psychotic, ginger, carnie kid. You and Jerome had both grown up traveling with Haly’s Circus, the two of you becoming friends the moment you met each other. Your parents were acrobats, you and your mother specializing in Lyra aerial work. You and Jerome could always be found causing mischief around the carnival grounds: loosening a few safety net ropes, loosening the board for the knife throwers Wheel of Death, sharpening the sword swallowers knives a bit too sharp.

You were kids, and kids liked causing trouble, you and Jerome both craved attention. So often were your parents the center of attention, it was rare they’d pay you any mind at all aside from aerial practice. You hated your parents, maybe the hatred was undeserved but nobody could deny that they were neglectful to say the least. Jerome on the other hand, he had every right to be livid with his mother. She was a whore, a drunk, and abused Jerome to no end, even letting her brother get it on the action occasionally - Jerome's uncle preferring scalding soups and oils to the hitting Lila normally took up when harming Jerome. You and Jerome never separated form each other, always there for each other through thick and thin.

When news broke of Jerome's arrest, you went totally, and completely ape shit, blinded with rage at the fact Lila and several others could get away with abusing Jerome and yet Jerome, when he defended himself, was arrested and charged. It was in that moment you decided you were without a doubt going to burn this corrupt, and wretched city to the ground one day, no matter the cost. You later on got apprehended after word broke that you assisted Jerome in hiding the body and were planning on helping him dispose of it. You didn’t know he was going to do it, but when you found out what took place you were anything but mad, instantly assisting Jerome in the clean up. Apparently conspiring to hide a murder and sticking up for a “madman” gave you a one way ticket to Arkham Asylum in this city. 

You and Jerome hadn’t been locked up for long when the break out happened, blue gas being the last thing you remember from the asylum. You and seven other inmates were broken out that day, though only seven of you made it through Theos “orientation”, if you could even call it that. Jerome and you had adapted the quickest out of the group, the two of you bouncing off the walls at the newly found freedoms Theo had given to you. Overall you didn’t mind the other inmates, aside from one of them, she was the only other inmate you and Jerome's age. Her real name was Dixie Smith, about as bland as you can get, she gave herself the nickname of Trix however. 

Imagine the most arrogant and obnoxious person you could imagine, the obsessive and clingy type, like a leech that just continued to fester and  thrive off your energy until you were nothing but a sorry shell of the person you once were. That was Dixie, you called her Dixie purposefully to get on her nerves, Jerome even joining your petty little game of annoying the annoyer. Dixie was in Arkham for the murder of her tutor, apparently she’d gotten fed up with her math work and stabbed the teacher with her compass needle. She was a stuck up, rich, daddy's girl who was supposed to spend a two weeks in Arkham with the help of Daddy's money. She was just in these for a rebellious spurt, wanting to prove she wasn’t like every other millionaires daughter apparently. You couldn’t stand her.

✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧

It was the day of the Maniax media debut, Jerome painting the teams name on the outfits of a few shipyard employees and tossing them off I roof. The images on the news were incredible, the police were all over the case but weren’t getting anywhere near the team. Only four of the members went out to finish the media stunt, Jerome being among those four. You and the to other girls stayed at Theos instead, Dixie whining continuously the entire time the group of boys were gone. She kept going on about how she missed ‘Her Jerome’, though she was sorely mistaken if she believed that to be true. 

It was a few hours before they returned, having to be careful to escape any stray police officers. Jerome as always was grinning like, well... like a maniac when he came back, instantly taking a seat at the head of the large dining table, his legs and arms sprawled in a relaxed posture. You were about to approach him with some clever quip when you were shoved out of the way by a hyperactive cockroach of a girl, Dixie immediately making her way over to Jerome and plopping herself down in his lap, her arms wrapping over his shoulders. 

You could feel you blood boiling as she sweet talking to him, though you were disappointed he wasn’t shoving her off or at least detesting her actions. However, what caused you to snap wasn’t Dixie, oh no, it was Jerome. Rather than continuing your inside joke of calling Dixie by her name, he said something that made you wish he’d just said he nickname. “Long time no see Trixie. Miss me much dollface?” You could feel your vision go green with jealousy as you entered autopilot, your body moving on its own accord. You stormed over to where they were sitting, your hand gripping Dixies obnoxious braid and roughly pulling her off Jerome and to the ground.

Jerome didn’t move, his lips only quirking into a smirk as he watched the scene unfold before him, amusement sparkling in his intense gaze. Dixie shouted in surprise, a yelp of pain emitting from her mouth as her hair was tugged on. “What the fuck was that for you fucking bitch?!” Dixie looked at you with rage in her eyes, outraged at the thought someone would dare lay a hand on her. You shrugged, glaring her down, “Is the princess hurt? Daddy isn’t gunna buy you out of this one ‘dollface’.” You spit the pet name out with venom and disgust, as if it were poison on your tongue. “Next time think a second before touching things that aren’t yours, that must be hard for you though.”

Dixies eyes made eye contact with y/n, embarrassment and frustration clear within them. “Bite me.” Y/n only chuckled in response, “Is that all you’ve got princess?” Dixie let out a scream of annoyance, flipping out a concealed blade and holding it out to y/n in a threatening matter. “Try me.” Y/n looked Dixie up and down for a moment before impishly grinning, “Alright.” Without a moments hesitation, y/n darted towards Dixie, carefully dodging each unplanned swing the cockroach made. Dixies skills with weapons were honestly laughable, devastatingly uncoordinated in comparison to the carnie knife throwers y/n had grown up around. Y/n ducked as Dixie swung wildly at her, y/n bringing their leg out which caused Dixie to tumble to the ground, the obnoxious girls knife gliding across the floor and away from her. 

Y/n quickly found herself perched atop Dixie, straddling the smaller girls waist as she began laying blow after blow on the tanned girls skin. Welts almost instantly formed as y/n layed it on her, blood seeping out of Dixies clearly broken nose and busted lip. The girl underneath y/n was now screaming and sobbing at this point as her face became nearly unrecognizable. Only with Theo stepping in did y/n climb off of Dixie, stepping to stand beside Theo as the beat up girl tried to stand trying to run off without a word. Y/n decided to have one last jab as the girls back was turned, attempting to retreat to her room. Y/n leant down and picked up Dixies discarded knife, “You forgot something princess.” With that y/n put her knife throwing practice to use, the knife quickly flying across the room and embedding itself in Dixies side.

Y/n watched as Theo let out a small hum of amusement as Dixie collapsed on the staircase. Theo slowly made his was over to Dixie, quickly picking up on the fact she was still conscious. “My apologies Ms. Morgan but you’ve confirmed me and Tabitha's fears, you’re not cut out to be a part of our... operation. And you know to much which unfortunately leaves us with only one choice.” Without so much as another word, the delirious and sobbing girl was dragged out of the room by Tabitha. Greenwood began capping slowly from the opposite side of the room, “Nice work, I call dibs on her when Tabitha's done. Its been a while since I’ve had fresh meat, pork hasn’t been up to par lately.” Despite the joking tone of Greenwoods words, you knew he was serious and cringed a bit. 

Your eyes flick to Jerome for a moment before looking away, instead opting to go to your room. You were only stopped a way down the hall, familiar arms wrapping around your waist from behind and spinning you around. “Gunna just ignore me after I was gone all day?” Y/n turned and glared lightly before continuing their walk, Jerome catching up to walk alongside you. “Ahhh.. the silent treatment, I only know one cure for that.” Without another word, Jerome flipped you around to face him, his lips immediately clashing against yours. It wasn't the first time you and Jerome had kissed, just in the past it was teenage curiosity induced by stolen alcohol or simply out of boredom. The way his lips moved passionately against yours, his teeth gently nipping out your bottom lip was different than the innocent kisses from before. 

You pulled away slowly, your e/c eyes meeting his dark brown, nearly ebony eyes. You caught your breath, both from the kiss and the intensity in which he was now staring at you with. His signature smirk decorated his face as he looked down at you, “ That was quite a show you put on out there doll.” You and Jerome always had a strange friendship, walking a fine line between best friends and romantic. He had always called you doll or dollface, knowing it flustered you, which you supposed is why you had snapped when you heard him mutter the pet name to Dixie. You didn’t respond, only turned away in annoyance and embarrassment.

 His fingers found their way under your chin, guiding you to turn and look at him. “I like when you're possessive, you always have this fire burning behind your eyes when you get mad. What's was it you said to Dixie?” Jerome feigned mock confusion and thoughtfulness for a second to annoy you. He clicked his tongue as it ‘came to him’, “Think a second before touching things that aren’t yours’ wasn’t that it?” You glared up at him as he continued jesting at you, his eyes aflame with mischievous amusement. You rolled your eyes lightly, only reconnecting with his when he spoke up again. “Doesn’t sound to bad does it? We could probably be the most badass, freakish power couple there ever was. I can see it in the headlines now: J and Dollface: Homicidal maniacs murder thousands.” You knew he was joking around but couldn't help the butterflies that fluttered around your stomach at the implication of you two being an item.

You let out a soft sigh and looked away, your arms crossed across your chest, “Don’t joke about that stuff J.” He quirked an eyebrow at you before his smirk returned, “What if it weren’t a joke, then what dollface? I only messed with here to get a rise out of you, get your attention.” You looked at him with confusion, trying to see if he was telling the truth or not. “What do you say dollface?” You didn't say anything, instead opting to pull him into another deep kiss, his hand immediately finding your waist. It seemed like you were kissing for an eternity before you pulled away, your foreheads pressed against each other, your lips staying only a few inches part. Jerome squeezed your waist lightly, pulling you flush against him. You flushed lightly as his next word came out a low, raspy growl, “Mine.”

You couldn’t help the smile that quickly made its way to your face, only replying with one word in return, “Mine.”

✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧

[I’m gunna try to time my rights from now on.]

Time: 1 hour, 33 minutes

Not grammar reviewed yet so apologies for any typos. 

[geekgemsspooksandtoons]

Why Bioshock Rebirth Part 3 won’t be a thing for a while

Guessing that title will work. I think considering now and on this day. There isn’t much else to do. I’m finally gonna talk about this. This is gonna be a long one. I’ll think about adding a keep reading thing as I make this. 

If any of you are a Bioshock fan or follow me. Or whatever else. I have this reimagining AU named Bioshock Rebirth. It has people who like it. There are mainly three parts on my mind. 

Part 1 and 2 basically deal with Rapture. Which are basically a reimagining of the main stories of Bioshock 1 and 2. With the events of Minerva’s Den being the epilogue. Part 3 from my mindset would deal with something outside Rapture. But I’ll talk about that later.

Yet I feel like to me. The reason I am not wanting to make a part 3 as soon as possible. Because it’s really tricky for me. I think I’ll just make the points and what my plans possibly were. Including I am gonna publicly reveal what my version of Zachary Hale Comstock would of been. Which is may be the most craziest decision. Whether people like it or not.

Now I just finished this post. I’ll put the tag after I write this. I will reveal I have a Bendy reimagining AU on my mind. But I want Dark Revival to come out soon. Which is why I don’t wanna focus more time on part 3. Along with other things. I feel proud or so with my work on Rebirth. I’m glad people love this AU/reimagining of Bioshock I made. :) So I will add the keep reading option. Now here is my detailed development of part 3. Not everything about it is there. But it’s a lot.

1. Part 3 would of taken 5 years after Bioshock Rebirth parts 1 and 2. Parts 1 and 2 took place in 2002. While part 3 takes place in 2007. Meaning the character ages have changed.

Basically Archie Wynand is 28. Elizabeth Comstock is 24. Brigid Tenenbaum is 40. Eleanor Lamb is 22. Even though Archie/Jack and Eleanor had her their ages sped up by people. With Archie being 10 and Eleanor being 12. But again there ages were sped up. Also the Little Sisters and Big Sisters that have been rescued have grown up too.

It depends on what characters would return. Like Delta/Johnny being 42. Daisy being 34. Booker being 43. Considering it’s not in Rapture. I don’t know if many characters would of returned. Yet that’s because I didn’t start writing possibly the main story for part 3. In case if anyone is worried. Many of the Vox Populi are fine. They must of moved on with their lives with Rapture sadly being a mess.

2. From what I get. The main story again was outside of Rapture. I seemed to be going with my old ideas I had for this AU. A public Rapture or the idea of Rebirth’s version of Columbia.

Considering Rebirth was born from the mistakes and retcons of Burial At Sea breaking the multiverse. Basically me disowning, shaming, yet acknowledging that DLC. So the idea I seem to be going with is that Columbia is the aftermath and America trying to make their own kind of Rapture. A public Rapture in a way for tourists. Something kind of like Jurassic Park.

Yet I don’t think it would be fully in the sky. It would be an island on water. With possibly Rapture under it. They built it over Rapture. 

Again Columbia is like America’s pale imitation of Rapture. With Rapture being discovered by America. Basically making profit off of it. Despite how tragic the results of Rapture of.

3. More on the main story. I think what it would be or as of now is Archie, Elizabeth, Brigid, and Eleanor going to Columbia or America’s public Rapture to stop Comstock. Considering this city has become a mess. The original idea is that it some how became worse than the tragedy of Rapture. 

With Big Daddies and Little Sisters being legalized. And Splicers or so possibly becoming more I guess crazy. With an old or possible dark idea of a Splicer eating out of a Little Sisters neck. Yet that’s really dark and just me showcasing some how this place became worse than the original Rapture.

4. Vigor’s in Rebirth would of been America’s knockoffs and pale imitation of Rapture’s Plasmid’s being reworked by Jeremiah Fink to make them more accessible so that you don’t have to inject them into your wrists. You could just simply drink them. 

Basically again they are strangely knockoffs and pale imitations in a way.

Shock Jockey is Electro Bolt. Devil’s Kiss is Incinerate. Bucking Bronco is Telekinesis. While some are again knockoffs. But some are original being the other Vigor’s.

But considering an idea from my anonymous friend who has helped me with this AU. With them mentioning well I’ll copy what they said instead. I’ll put the “ around it.

“Ironic considering the stereotype about most of the world's products being inferior knockoffs made in China. I can imagine that Fink's imitation of Rapture's products might be even more unscrupulous and dangerous compared to the original versions in Rapture, as the greater capitalist system intersects with the small-scale capitalism of that city.”

5. To be honest and I want to get this out of the way. The reason I am not making part 3 right away. Because I want to see if the leaks about Cloud Chamber’s Bioshock 4 are really true. Spoilers.

Basically the leaks being about that Rapture seemed to have been discovered. Now London is at war with ADAM being used. You play as a character named Lucas with other characters like Eleanor Lamb joining you. I want to see if this is all true. So I can see how Cloud Chamber interpreted of how the world would react to a city like Rapture. 

While there are folks who have made criticisms about people discovering Rapture being the end of the world. Basically being critical about the Bioshock series going in a Resident Evil like direction. Which I can totally understand.

But I’m gonna be honest. I want to see what Cloud Chamber are doing. Yet this horrible thing I’m gonna say next. As someone who’s.....opinions of their planet and maybe species is I guess low....I kind of don’t care. Because I want to see the chaos of the consequences if a place like America discovered Rapture. 

It’s maybe my darker side and my action junkie side having the best of me. I am strangely interested to see Hell on Earth all because governments got fucking greedy with ADAM. Again my opinion on my planet and whatever else is tricky.

Fuck it like we as a species deserve it. But I’m sounding pessimistic. I want to see war torn London destroyed by ADAM junkies.

5. My direction for part 3 I feel is weaker and not as powerful as parts 1 and 2. Because the general idea of part 3 seems to be, “America is fucking stupid. Because it empowers young rich pricks like Zachary Hale Comstock and makes shit like Columbia. Our country needs to be fucking better if really are the land of the free” It feels less original and been done before.

Compared to the first two part’s stories of humanity, found family, love, forgiveness, empathy, and compassion. Along with other stuff.

While I recall my inspiration for this idea long ago was this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXjJOmRkN6s If I recall it being like an example of....America’s thought process of it thinking it’s awesome or whatever the Hell. I wanna say stupid thinking. But that video is awesome. Amazing what that person did.

Also my version of Comstock I feel is less threating and less interesting than the likes of villains like Andrew Ryan, Atlas/Frank Fontaine, and Sofia Lamb. Unless I really tap and dig deep into his character.

There’s also the other thing part 3 I feel unless I decided. It doesn’t deal with dimension travelling and all that crap.

6. There’s another thing is that I used many of the major characters from Infinite and incorporated them in Rapture. Such as Elizabeth, Booker, Daisy, and the Lutece twins. I haven’t done much with Annabelle because she sadly died before the events of parts 1 and 2. Also Bluto is practically Rebirth’s version of Songbird when he was in Rapture. He was the Proto-Daddy.

Fink and Comstock are the only major Infinite characters I haven’t used.

7. Bluto’s robotic corpse would of been found by Fink and Comstock. He would of been rebuilt into Songbird as being the supposed mascot and guardian of Columbia.

It’s also a way of torturing Elizabeth mentally. Because two men practically took her protective older brother’s corpse and rebuilt him as something else. With the added angst that Songbird still have memories of Elizabeth.

8. Another reason why I don’t feel so highly of part 3. It’s because it just seems unrealistic. Which may sound stupid. My ideas of America’s own Rapture like place becoming somehow worse than the original Rapture seem crazy.

Along with things like legalized Big Daddies and Little Sisters seems crazy. Despite how stupid my country is. The idea of taking human beings and turning them into that under an American government seems like bullshit. Unless they didn’t know. 

Yet it seems to be dissing on America. Considering the direction of Comstock I’m going with is more like, “We’re America and we are great.” Yet everything goes to shit.

Along with the crazy idea of the place being built in 5 or maybe 4 to 3 years. Which is why I wanted to give it a timespan.

Also it’s a fun easter egg that it’s the time span of the original Bioshock’s development. Unless I make part 3 in 2013. But don’t think I should.

9. There’s been a recent idea of Lucas being an antagonist. Something similar to the Arkham Knight from Batman Arkham Knight. But I should wait and see if this Lucas character is seriously real. Yet what I have read about him, he reminds me a bit of Booker.

I’m guessing and even was thinking a bit more in detail. Lucas being a US Marine who was born in 1981. He’s 26 during part 3. Possibly being an anti-thesis to Archie’s character. Now I’m thinking he may of met Arch during possibly tours. Even though they weren’t really friends but knew each other.

With Archie being an earnest and kind man. Now this makes sense. Lucas being jealous of Archie’s position as, “The Demon Of Rapture” and, “The Killer Of Fontaine”. Lucas being a bit more angry and less honorable than Archie.

Man these ideas make more sense than Comstock being an anti-thesis to Arch. Yet we also have Frank Fontaine and Booker Dewitt being anti-thesis to his character too. But the idea of Lucas is strangely perfect.

The ideas I am having are he’s Columbia’s poster boy of a super soldier. But without the horrifying results of Archie’s origin possibly. Since Lucas I’m imagining is more equipped with stuff(Again thinking of Arkham Knight)....fuck this is strangely perfect. 

Man we haven’t gotten more info on this who I am calling Lucas Parkside....fuck I thought of more of him being a deeper character or so.

10. But again about Bioshock 4. Considering Rebirth is the result of Burial At Sea and also Infinite breaking the multiverse. It combined the worlds of the main universe(Bioshock 1, 2, and the Rapture novel if you want to include that) and Infinite. Which resulted in a timeline where Rapture was made later during the cold war. Along with characters like from Infinite being more connected to Rapture because of the events of Burial At Sea.

Yet Bioshock 4 or those Parkside leaks. I question if I should put them in here too. Because it’s unknown if well the events of 4 happened yet in the main universe. Unless we take into the good ending being canon. With 4 taking take in the 70′s what I read.

I’m rambling, I’m sorry about that. Basically the events of the novel and first two games happened. But the events of Infinite and Burial At Sea disturbed the main universe. And whatever I’m using some weird comic book logic. 

Again I hope sometime but soon I want more information considering Bioshock 4. 

11. I guess I’ll just reveal this now. Including I called him a young rich prick. I gave a hint early on. In fact this character was hinted at in memes. But him combing in Comstock was something I was surprised by long ago. Yet I felt I guess could be genius or whatever.

Only two friends of mine know. The anonymous friend. And also @feckinatlas

Zachary Hale Comstock in Bioshock Rebirth would of been the Mark Zuckerberg of Bioshock.

While there was the idea of making him the, “Radec” or something similar to make him more threating. But Booker is already that. Including the Mark Zuckerberg angle is something I’m interested in.

Yes Comstock is Rebirth is younger than his main universe counterpart. He’s also not Booker and possibly not related to him.

One of my original ideas was that he’s a year younger than Elizabeth. But I changed that and may make him possibly 30 or so. Or even Archie’s physical age or 29.

An old idea I even told Feckinatlas that him being Fontaine’s kid. But Frank never knew about him. Practically making even more of a terrible father. Yet I don’t know if I’ll go with that idea. Yet it seems better than Comstock being a kid of Booker. Which I don’t like. I was trying to keep the Booker and Comstock connection. I’m still wondering now.

Yes I think that’s all I’ll reveal now.

Edit I forgot this one other important thing. Oh crap two actually.

12. Considering Ava Tate survived and escaped Rapture. She would of been one of the villains in part 3. Basically she sided with Fink and Comstock. Ava is kind of like that character who might not care what side she’s on. Despite she has redeeming qualities in her.

13. Even though this wasn’t part of the main story. To be honest there are ideas that one of Elizabeth’s looks is like her Burial At Sea look. Yet she’s not a femme fatale. Basically it was the idea of her and Archie going undercover. With Elizabeth trying to pose as a femme fatale. Which in reality she isn’t. She’s still the same joyous girl that people love. It’s something a bit more strangely adorable.

Also Brigid tried to teach her some stuff of trying to act different. I remember talking about this with my anonymous friend. It’s mainly silly and adorable stuff before meeting her seeing Ava. Like Arch being pouty that he may have to put on a tux. When he’ll put on something like maybe Clark Kent would wear. He doesn’t wanna look like a rich prick and would rather have black ops gear on. While Brigid and Elizabeth find it adorable and funny he doesn’t wanna dress like Ryan and whoever else. Despite they would kick him out if he looks very normal.

But again Brigid teaching her some tricks. Along with Elizabeth trying to smoke to look cool. But she coughs and again it’s adorable. XD

This idea is like before the main story. But I should develop it more. It could still be before the main story. I wanted to share this because I forgot about it. 

[arcticdementor]

Kayfabe is a treasured part of pro wrestling culture. Kayfabe refers to the commitment of everyone involved (the wrestlers, the refs, the announcers, and to a certain degree the fans) to maintaining the shared fiction that pro wrestling matches are unscripted. (Wrestling is real, in the sense that the athletes are taking real punishment and risk really getting hurt, and there is a degree of improvisation, but the outcomes are predetermined.) Kayfabe has had a kind of mythical importance to many in the pro wrestling community: you keep kayfabe no matter what, even in the event of serious injury, out of a sense of sacred commitment. Crucial to understanding kayfabe is that it is not an attempt to deceive the audience. Modern wrestling is in some ways perfectly open about the scripted nature of the matches. Fooling people is not the point. If every fan signed an affidavit saying they knew the outcomes were predetermined the wrestlers would still keep kayfabe, out of commitment to the culture. Kayfabe is a mutually-approved illusion. It is artifice, but it is mutually agreed upon artifice, a consensual fantasy.

Our current political culture is kayfabe.

The illusion that we pretend to believe is that we are in some sort of uniquely politically fertile moment for progressivism and social justice, that we are experiencing a social revolution or “Great Awokening.” Further, we keep kayfabe by acting as if we believe that certain policies like police abolition or abolishing border enforcement (or if you prefer utterly meaningless sloganeering, “abolishing ICE”) are tangibly viable in anything like the near future. I say that these are kayfabe to emphasize my belief that most people who endorse these beliefs are well aware that they are not true, and to underline the sense in which the commitment to unreality is mutual, an expression of a strange kind of social contract. Most thinking adults comprehend the current moment and understand that the hand of establishment power and the influence of social inertia are as strong as ever. (Why would you feel otherwise?) But because people have understandably been moved by recent righteous calls for justice, they feel they must accept the fiction of a new awakening to show solidarity with the victims of injustice. This is emotionally understandable, but strategically counterproductive. And indeed one thing that has defined these new social movements is their relentless commitment to the emotional over the strategic.

…

Living in a culture of political kayfabe is a strange experience. It feels the way that, I imagine, it feels to live under a truly authoritarian government, where you’re constantly having exchanges where everyone involved knows that what they’re saying is bogus but you push right through the cognitive dissonance with a smile on your face. Only you’re not compelled by the fear of torture or imprisonment but of vague-but-intense social dictates, of the crucial priority of appearing to be the right kind of person. So often political conversations today have this dual quality where you feel forced to constantly evaluate what your interlocutor actually believes even as propriety compels you to take seriously what’s coming out of their mouth.

A major negative consequence of our commitment to kayfabe lies in our acceptance of behaviors we would ordinarily never accept, under the theory that this is such a special time, we need to shut up and go along with it. Take our broken discourse, as frequently discussed in “cancel culture” debates. My experience and my intuition tell me that almost everyone in the progressive/left/socialist world knows that our discourse norms and culture are totally fucked up. Trust me: most people in liberal spaces, Black and white, male and female, trans and cis, most certainly including people in academia and media, are well aware that we’ve entered into a bizarre never-ending production of The Crucible we can’t get out of. They’re probably just as sick of Woko Haram as I am.

But they’re either empowered and enriched by this state of affairs, and don’t want the party to end, or they’re holding on for dear life trying not to get their lives ruined for speaking out of turn. Look past self-interest and self-preservation and you’ll find that everybody knows that the way left spaces work now is horribly broken and dysfunctional. The problem is that thinking people who would ordinarily object don’t because they’ve been convinced that this is some sort of special moment pregnant with progressive potential, and that is more important than rights, compassion, or fairness. So we maintain a shared pretense that things are cool the way you go through the motions on an awful date where you’re both aware you’ll never see each other again.

If I say “cancel culture,” normies indeed don’t know what I’m talking about, because they are healthy, adjusted people with a decent set of priorities who value their own time and lives too much to get caught up in all of this horseshit. But if I say “cancel culture” in front of a bunch of politics-obsessed professional-class shitlibs they will pretend to not know what I’m talking about. They’ll put on a rich fucking show. They do an impression of Cletus from The Simpsons and go “cancel culture?!? Hyuck hyuck what’re that? I’m not knowing cancel culture, I’m just a simple country lad!” These are people who have read more about cancel culture in thinkpieces than I read about any topic in a year. But pretending you don’t know what cancel culture is happens to be a key part of the performance, a naked in-group signifier, so they pretend. The “I don’t know what cancel culture is” bullshit performance is kayfabe at its most infuriating. I know you know what cancel culture is because you’re currently using it to demonstrate your culture positioning by pretending you don’t know what it is. You fucking simpleton.

People say and do weird shit and it’s all wrong but you just pretend like it isn’t. Who wants to be the one caught making waves? When you’re in a group of people and someone engages in something patently ridiculous - when, for example, someone says “AAVE” in an ordinary social situation with no academic or political reason to use jargon, even though everyone there knows the phrase “the way Black people talk” is more elegant, useful, and true - and the moment passes and there’s this inability to look each other in the eye, when everybody starts studying their drink and clearing their throat, that’s life under kayfabe.

Getting to this is not normal. It’s not a healthy state of affairs. It can only happen when people come to believe that self-preservation requires pretending things are OK.

…

It is at this point that people say that “defund” does not mean “abolish,” which is true, and Defund the Police indeed does not mean “abolish the police.” Defund the police means nothing, now, though I’m sure that the people who started using it had noble intentions. At this point it’s a floating signifier, an empty slogan that people rallied around with zero understanding of what semantic content it could possibly contain. If it’s meant to be a radical demand, why use the vocabulary of an actuary? If it’s meant to mean a meaningful but strategic drawdown of resources, why use it interchangeably with “abolish”? I cannot imagine a more comprehensive failure of basic political messaging than Defund the Police. Amateur hour from beginning to end.

I take the political concept of alternatives to policing seriously, in the same way I take many political ideas seriously that are not likely achievable in my lifetime. I know there are deeply serious people who are profoundly committed to these principles and who have thought them through responsibly. I appreciate their work and become better informed from what they say. But their ideas did not reign last year. A faddish embrace of a thoughtless caricature of police abolition reigned, pushed with maximum aggression and minimal introspection by the shock troops of contemporary progressive ideas, overeducated white people with more sarcasm than sense.

Policing will not end tomorrow or next month or next year. And whoever you are, reading this, you are well aware of that fact. The odds of police abolition in any substantial portion of this country are nil. Indeed, I would say that the likelihood of meaningful reduction in policing in any large region of this country, whether measured by patrolling or funding or manpower, is small. Individual cities may reduce their police forces by a substantial fraction, and I suspect that they will not suddenly devolve into Mega-City One as a result. (Though I can’t say initial data in this regard is encouraging.) I hope we learn important lessons about intelligent and effective police reform and more sensible resource allocation from those places. But the vast majority of cities will not meaningfully change their policing budgets, due to both the legitimate lack of political will for such a thing - including in communities of color - and broken municipal politics with bad incentives.

…

Living under kayfabe makes you yearn for plainspoken communication, for letting the mask fall. The professed inability of progressives to understand why woke-skeptical publications like this one keep succeeding financially is itself a slice of kayfabe. They know people are paying for Substacks and podcasts and subscribing to YouTubes and Patreons because it’s exhausting to constantly spend all of your time pretending things that don’t make sense make sense, pretending that you believe things you don’t to avoid the social consequences of telling the truth.

When you’re someone who spent the past several decades arguing that the American university system is not hostile to conservative students, that it doesn’t try to force extremely contentious leftist views onto students, and then you watch this video, how do you react? I think many people, most people, even most people committed to the BLM cause, see that video and wince. That is not how we get there. Browbeating 20 year olds for not parroting your politics back at you is not how racial justice gets advanced. But if you’re caught in this moment, how do you object? Acknowledge that, yes, in fact, it is now plainly the case that many professors see it as their job to forcefully insist on the truth of deeply controversial claims to their students, berating them until they acquiesce? Well that would be an unpleasant conversation with the other parents when you pick up your kid from Montessori school. So you just choose not to see, or keep you mouth shut, or speak in a way that maintains the illusion.

I mean there is the absurdity of what she’s saying to contend with - the now fairly common view that policing was literally invented in the antebellum South purely to enforce slavery, because in ancient Rome if someone came in your house and stole your stuff you’d just be like “oh damn, that sucks.” Is there a relationship between modern policing and slavery? Of course. Does the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow infect modern policing at every point? Sure. Should we make political and policy decisions that recognize that historical influence on policing, especially given the racist reality of policing right now? Yes. But what good does it do anyone to pretend that the concept of “the police” is 250 years old? Why on earth would we get the correct shit we do believe tangled up with this bizarre shit we don’t believe? (The professor in that video does not herself honestly believe the police were invented to support African slavery in 18th and 19th century America.) Because this utterly ahistorical idea is being promulgated by people who claim to speak from a position of justice, we are forced to assign seriousness to it that it hasn’t earned, seriousness that it could never deserve. Because we live in a world of mutual delusion. Because of kayfabe.

…

And the fact that some will wrinkle their noses about this piece and its arguments, go about their days of progressive performance art, and pretend they don’t believe every word they just read? That’s kayfabe, my friend. That’s kayfabe. And we’re trapped in it, all of us, you and I. You know it’s all bullshit. Will you keep the code anyway? I’m willing to bet that the answer is yes.

[kingofdirtandnothing]

@polyfacetious big ass Christmas Drabble Extravagaza: Day Nineteen

George has a damned fine voice. And it’s a good thing that he does, because the man talks about boring shit more than anybody that Atticus has ever known. 

Like now. He’s been droning on about chemical reactions for god knows how long. If they weren’t naked in bed, Atticus would get up and walk off. Go make a cup of tea or something. It wouldn’t deter George at all. He’d just keep on talking. 

Because it wasn’t really about having a captive audience. George just did his best work thinking out loud. God only knew how much chatter that little assistant of his heard. Hours upon hours would be Atticus’ guest. 

But you didn’t get to be one of the best chemists in the world by being white bread and butter normal, now did you?

Atticus waits for a lull in the onslaught of words, giving it a full three seconds before he speaks, just to be certain George had wrapped up his thought. (He’ll never admit to thoughtfulness out loud. That would ruin his reputation.)

“I’m getting leave again at Christmas.” George shifts onto his side, head resting on the upturned palm of his hand. He’s not what anyone would call beautiful, but there’s something about him that makes Atticus’ blood run hot. (He’s not a looker himself. Atticus figured that out young. He also learned that personality could get you the same bits with just a little more work.)

There’s a moment where George’s eyes are far away. Atticus waits, as patient as he ever is. You had to give the man time to come back to himself from wherever those rambling thoughts were. But there’s a blink and those clever eyes zero in on him, because George is clever, and he sees what’s being offered. 

A holiday. Together. 

Neither one of them had any family to speak of. Atticus had the crew, and George had his work socials and his bored rich housewives, but beyond that, there wasn’t really much to do on a holiday. 

Unless one of those bored rich housewives could sneak away from her family on Christmas day. Which if a woman could handle that, Atticus would concede his spot in the bed, because that’s some fucking logistics and deep lies to accomplish. 

“I could swing ‘round this way.” An offer. Because they’ve been doing this on and off for years, but it’s never been Official. It’s never been just the two of them and no one else. Atticus don’t mind it that way. He’s not jealous of saggy breasts or diamond earrings. A man had his urges. 

But there was something about asking to spend a holiday together that felt intimate in a way they tended to skate away from. Atticus was head over heels, there was no denying that truth. He’d been in love with George for a long time now, and he’s confident enough to say it’s mutual. But mutually in love and mum about it was a hair different than mutually in love and spending Christmas together like a pair of old queens. 

He brushes his fingers along the corded muscle at the back of a strong neck, his breath a sharp exhale when George clambers on top of him. “You aren’t exactly light as a feather here, Georgie.”

And that gets him an elbow right to the ribs for his trouble. “I’m perfectly shaped for all my activities, I’ll have you know.” George had a voice that made your toes tingle. It’s what drew Atticus in, back when they first met. Sitting a few blokes apart at the bar, nursing drinks in the quiet of an early morning. 

All the partiers were gone, the lightweights sleeping it off against the bar top. All that was left were the lonely men and the alcoholics. And when Atticus heard that raspy, dry paper grumble of ‘another, damn it’, his dick was already on board and half hard. 

There wasn’t much courting, then. But neither one of them were the type for romance. (A lie Atticus perpetrated because if George saw his notebook full of poetry, he’d never let him live it down.) Atticus had simply moved three stools down, knocked back the rest of his pint, looked over at George and said ‘I’ll jerk you off in the bathroom if you’ll do the same for me.’

And they’d been meeting ever since. A slow and steady escalation, because despite the drugs and the booze, George was as steady in spirit as he was in hand. Hand jobs in the bar bathroom became back alley blow jobs. Back alley blow jobs became backseat fucking in George’s car. Fucking in George’s car became a short drive to whatever hotel that Atticus was scrimping out to get him through leave. 

All to get them here. Legs tangled like mad drunk grasshoppers, fingers tracing muscle and ink. (George had a fondness for tracing the lines of the compass tattooed on the top of Atticus’ head. He said it helped him think.) Talking about spending the holiday together in a hotel room just like this. 

“Well.” The word is snapped off at the end, though the rasp of it is teasing. “If you’re going to be staying more than a day or two, it stands to reason that you should sleep at my place. That way, you can spend your money on getting me a proper gift.”

Another escalation. Atticus knows where George lives. He’d gotten the address back when they were still fucking in the back of the car, fogging up the windows like teenagers. He’d used it only to send the bastard postcards, though. Atticus liked to fill them out with useless facts about things he saw when they were out and about. The biggest thing he saw in a place, and the smallest. What the oddest local cuisine was. Atticus liked his little facts.

And he liked an excuse to keep himself in George’s thoughts, since the slimy git had a habit of taking up space in Atticus’ thoughts, whether he wanted to or not. 

But being offered to stay at George’s place? That was a big deal. Because it made this holiday bit even more serious. It wasn’t two men sharing take away on a shitty motel bed with A Miracle on 34th Street playing quiet in the background on an out of date TV. 

This was a proper Christmas. At home. In George’s home. For at least three or four days. 

“You’d do that?” It’s a stupid response, and Atticus sees just how stupid it is by the way that George is looking at him. 

“I wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t want to.” And he had a point there. It was like moving mountains to get George to do things he was indifferent about. Atticus couldn’t imagine what it would take to make the bastard do something that he really didn’t want to do. 

“Right.” Atticus murmurs, tracing the crow’s feet wrinkles where they crease the skin at the corner of George’s eyes. Some people said you could read those lines, the same way you read the lines on someone’s palm. But Atticus can’t be sure if those were lines of laughter, or lines of squinting behind goggles in a lab. 

He hopes it’s more laughter than anything. 

Atticus saw a fortune teller once, a little old woman set up on a blanket at the fringes of a bazaar in India. She had taken his hand and pointed out the lines to him in broken English. His life line was long, a few close calls written into the cracks in the line along his hand. His fortune line was more like Morse code, and Atticus felt like that was pretty true to life. 

But most of all, she earned those rupees when she pointed out his heart line. ‘Late’, she said with an all knowing nod. ‘Strong.’ 

It’d be years more before he met George. The old bag had been more right than Atticus could have guessed. Late meant he was in his forties before George Cholmondeley. (And another year plus before he could spell the bastard’s last name.) 

Strong wasn’t the half of it. 

Nothing was ever going to keep Atticus from being out at sea. But George was enough to lure him back to land more than he ever did before. This was the first year that Atticus was actually going to use up all of his leave, instead of having it converted and put onto his pay. 

“Right.” George agrees, and that’s the end of that. There’s a light in those clever eyes that says ‘argue with me and lose hours of your life and still do what I say’ and Atticus can’t argue with those facts. 

Arguing with George was like trying to shove a camel through the eye of a needle. You’d work up a sweat, you’d get pissed off and tired, but you’d be no closer to your goal hours later. 

No, it was settled. 

“And what does a man such as yourself want for a Christmas gift, hm?” Because Atticus has no earthly idea what to get him. He knew all the stupid tidbits, things that George liked to eat, the things that he loathed. What movie he’d roll over to watch, if it was on the television when they were done fucking. 

But none of those things equalled out to Christmas gifts. It’s not like Atticus could buy him a tie or a nice pen and call it a day. 

“You to figure it out.” And Atticus should have seen that coming. George was contrary, often just for the fun of it. And even more often, just for the amusement of watching Atticus get pissed off trying to figure it out. 

“Bastard.” He drops his head back against the overly starched hotel pillowcase and sighs, eyes on the ceiling. There were no stains up there, which was an improvement from the last time that they met up to spend the night together. But it was that popcorn style that reminded Atticus of being a little boy, spending his nights staring up at the ceiling in the boy’s home. Right out of the 1970s, it was. 

“You like it.” And again, Georgie isn’t wrong. Atticus loves the holy hell out of the bastard, not that he’s going to say that out loud any time soon. His silence is rewarded with George easing down into the crook of his left arm, cheek pillowed against Atticus’ chest. 

He wasn’t exactly a chiseled Greek god, but it was easy to not feel insecure about the softness of his belly when George was running his fingers through the soft, downy hair there. 

“A notebook is cheating.” Because he knows that George is going to buy him a gift too. There’s a huff of offense that blows warm air against his chest, and Atticus grins. “If I don’t get the easy out, then you don’t either.”

His notebook did need replacing, though. It was a battered old spiral bound number. In a few more weeks, it’d go in the bottom of his trunk with the other full ones. But he wasn’t going to carry around some expensive leather wrapped thing. Hell, just last week he dropped his notebook in the toilet. 

Not going to risk doing that with something that cost more than a pound or two. 

“Now you’re the one who’s being a bastard.” George’s irritation always has such a lovely bite to it. Atticus likes getting him riled up, though he doesn’t try too often. It wasn’t easy. But it was always worth his hard work, as evidenced by the blunt nails dragging deliciously down his belly. 

It’d be awhile yet before he was able to go again, seeing as they’d just finished fucking about ten minutes ago, but the spirit was really fucking willing right about now, regardless of what bullshit the flesh was on about. 

“Yeah. But you love me.”

And yeah, it was very much mutual. 

[forkanna]

[AO3 LINK] [WATTPAD]

Sorry about the long delay in updates. My life's been a bit up and down of late; good things and bad. Hopefully things will settle soon. Either way, I hope you enjoy the new chapter!

CHAPTER NINE

This was definitely a new one on Rise Kujikawa. She felt like the world had turned upside down — again — and she was supposed to navigate her way without a map or a compass. Where to begin?

"What… are you- oh come on, liking girls doesn't make you a boy. Has that really been worrying you all this time?"

Ai blinked across at her for a few seconds. "What? Oh, yes, but… Rise-chan, I'm trying to tell you something pretty major. Aren't you paying attention?"

"Come on, you're not a boy! Regardless of why you think you are, so like, you can cut that out right now. Okay?" She reached over to take up her hand and squeeze it firmly between both of her own, trying to ignore the way Ai whimpered. "We're friends. If you never want to kiss me again, that's okay, but just wanting to kiss me a couple times? Does not mean you're a boy, or messed up, or me and you have to move to Ni-Chome, or anything. It's all good."

Ebihara remained quiet for a second, simply holding her friend's hand. Looking more than a little lost. "Well, Ni-Chome is right around the corner from here… and that's where… people like us go. Right?"

"Hey! There's no 'people like us', we're just people!"

"Ugh, I know," she burst out in irritation at herself, suddenly standing up and pacing back and forth in front of Rise. "I know! It's so stupid that I get in my own head about this, but I can't just enjoy anything. Why am I like this? Do I have no chill?!"

"Guess not." When Ai stopped to glare at her, she rolled her eyes. "Well, you really don't! I'm not saying it's bad or you're bad, but you do need to learn how to relax."

But she kept pacing. Rise had just about given up and assumed that was the end of the discussion, and that she should go back to trying to find another song to sing — when Ai suddenly knelt down in front of her, hands gripping the sofa on either side of the idol's hips.

"Wha- hey, what are you doing?!"

"Getting your attention, girl. I need you to really hear me."

"God, I hear you just fine! We just got done agreeing you don't need to make a big deal out of every-"

"My birth name was Aihiko," she pushed ahead stubbornly, such a fierce determination in her eyes that Rise had to fight down the instinct to cower. Even drunk, she could be a real force of nature. "And I always knew that didn't fit me. It just took me until really late in elementary school before I figured out why.

"What I told you and the others before was true. I was always bullied, always called 'Piggy-hara' because I was fat. Because I didn't fit in, anywhere. No matter how many times I looked at the sports clubs, at the manly men I was supposed to look up to, my parents told me I would become someday… I didn't want to. I wanted to be Taeko Ohnuki, or Utada — I wanted to be Sailor Moon. All the other boys would fight over being Red Hawk when we played Featherman; I was too happy to be Pink Argus, when nobody else would want to touch that character unless we were playing with another girl. My whole life, I knew… I just didn't have a word for it. Not until… Ikko."

When she didn't continue for a moment, Rise cleared her throat to prompt quietly, "Ikko?"

"The talk show host. Trans and fabulous. I could see right there on my television screen, in front of my crying eyes thanks to another day of bullying and shame, a woman who was born like me — living her truth, live and in colour in front of the whole country. And sure, those talk shows are a little corny, but to me, as a little boy who thought he was just going to be broken for the rest of his life? They looked like hope."

"Oh… Ikko, yeah. Think I've seen her on Shin Domoto Kyoudai, and um, Onee MANS. Yeah." Rise was struggling to keep up mentally. She felt like any second now, the whole thing was going to come crashing down around her ears…

"Believe me, I know this is a lot to take in," she said with a sigh, brow creasing in concern for her friend. Which Rise thought was encouraging. "But once I realized who and what I was, and we were now suddenly filthy fucking rich, I asked my parents to help me be who I always was. Ironic that my mother was against it and my father was only too happy to help, but I mean, life is weird. And I have never really looked back… until now. With you."

"With me? Wait, wait… I feel like I'm losing my mind a little bit here. Do I have this right? You were born as a boy — which there's no way I can believe, just look at you! But because of some talk show host, and a bunch of mean kids who were jerks to you, you decided you didn't want to be a boy anymore?"

Ai grimaced. "That is… an oversimplification, but essentially, yes."

"And now you think you made the wrong choice because…" A hard swallow. "Me. Because you like me." Ai gave a small nod. "Whoa."

"You don't believe me." Her head fell forward until it was resting on Rise's shoulder. Now that they were so close, she could feel how badly her friend was trembling. "I should have known. Stupid. Why do I always think I know better, and things will go differently? Do I have brain damage? Maybe that's it, maybe it's brain damage and I need to be admitted to some kind of facility with padded walls and electroshock."

"Shut up already, wow…" Her hand came up to gently caress over Ai's hair. "Listen... It's not that I want to be skeptical. I can tell you aren't just screwing around, but come on, how do you expect me to believe any of this? You are gorgeous! And Ikko, she's also really pretty but I can tell she was born a boy. You? No way. It's just too crazy to be possible — and if you only knew some of the things I've seen, you would know I don't say that for no reason!"

Ai nodded glumly. Defeated. That was really the only word for it, and Rise felt awful, but she also couldn't flick a switch and suddenly not have that healthy dose of skepticism. Who would believe a story like this right out of the gate with absolutely zero proof right in front of their eyes?

"Sorry," Rise finally whispered in a small voice.

"Why? Nothing to be sorry about. In fact, I know you won't get it, but you really helped me today."

"Huh? How did I do that? By not believing you?!"

"Exactly." Standing up again, she brushed off the front of her long skirt studiously. "If it's so inconceivable to you that I could have been a boy in a past life, then I guess that means I'm not crazy for pursuing my dream — living life as who I am inside. So I guess… thank you."

That sinking feeling swirling around in Rise's stomach was getting stronger. Maybe Ai wasn't kidding. But that was insane! Sure, Naoto had been able to hide her gender for a little while, but it wasn't as easy going in the other direction. If Ai were a boy in disguise, she would be doing things to hide certain aspects of her anatomy. Such as…

Such as a frilly lace collar around her neck. At all times.

"Is… what's… under here…?"

Her fingers barely came in contact with the collar when Ebihara took a step backwards — and literally tripped over the coffee table, sprawling on her back on the carpet with a ghastly yelp. Rise hurried around to crouch over her.

"I'm sorry! God, I'm really sorry, are you all right?!"

"Y-yeah," she groaned, even though she was holding her head, which indicated that no, she probably wasn't.

"I just wanted to ask about that collar," Rise said while helping her sit up. "But I didn't mean to scare you, I probably should have asked before I reached for it."

"Yeah, you should have. But it's no big deal." The phone buzzed again. "Ugh. It's getting late, we probably shouldn't ask for more time. This way we can maybe slip back in before final period and avoid catching hell."

"Hah! No way can we make it back in time, I really don't think so. But keep dreaming."

"Always," Ai offered with a slight smirk.

                                      ~ o ~

But as her friend answered the phone and she started gathering up their things, Rise's brain was swirling with far too many thoughts. They followed her out of the karaoke establishment and all the way back to the train platform, into the car itself. At least it wasn't as crowded as it would be if they caught a later train, even though they still had a good hour and a half left in their trip. Her poor young mind was plagued by a thousand questions, anxieties, and just random thoughts that were so unwelcome but wouldn't seem to go away for anything.

Could all that craziness actually be true? No. It was so impossible and ludicrous. Yet Ai had said every word with conviction, and no trace of uncertainty. Either this was one of the most convincing scams of all time, or…

Could she really be a boy?

Just glancing over at the flawlessly beautiful profile of Ai Ebihara was seemingly enough to put that possibility to death. Impossible. Even though Rise knew that there were women out there who had been born different, and she very vaguely understood the concept, she didn't know any of them personally. Any she had seen in popular media were various degrees of feminine and pretty, but still obviously not born the way she was; there were readily apparent differences. None of which she observed when looking at her new best friend. How was she supposed to believe such a wild story?

But she couldn't completely let go of how earnestly Ai had looked at her when confessing about her alleged condition. If she really were full of shit, she probably would have never tried to sell it so hard; what did she have to gain by it? Anything? Not as far as she could tell, no matter how she tried to look at it. There was no impetus for her to make up such a wild tale.

So then… crazy as it was, if she had nothing to gain by lying…

'No way, though!' she screamed internally, clamping her eyes shut for a moment as the train bumped along toward Yasoinaba. 'She's so perfect, she's prettier than me. Why is she doing this to me? Why lie? I don't know what to think anymore!'

Her thoughts were interrupted by a hand slipping into her own. Rise peeled open her eyes to see her friend, this beautiful woman who she was suspecting of horrible lies, smiling gently over at her with a concerned expression. Her heart melted. It didn't clear up any confusion at all, but she couldn't pretend this girl was being cruel to her for no reason. Not when she looked at her like that.

"You okay?"

"Y-yeah! Great! Why wouldn't I be?"

"Because I'm a horrible bitch for dropping a bombshell on you," Ai supplied quietly. "You should be pissed."

"Nope. I mean… okay, I do have a question." When there was no reply, Rise continued, "Why didn't you just show me?"

"Show you what?

"You know…"

Ai blinked at her friend's reddening features for a couple of seconds until she got it, and her lip curled. "Oh, what the fuck? You want me to just flash you?!"

"NO!" A few people turned to look at the two of them, and she double-checked that her hat was hiding her trademark hair again. "Not here! And I didn't say I wanted you to, I'm just, y'know… wouldn't that have been the easiest way? To prove what you were telling me?"

"Yeah, I guess so, but that seems really gross. Besides…"

When she didn't finish her thought, Rise nudged her with her elbow. "Hey, c'mon, don't chicken out now. We literally just made out so I don't think there's any reason to be shy anymore."

"I mean, okay, but it's not about feeling shy. I was going to say I had hoped you would believe me."

Damn. That really cut her to the core. But she couldn't even get upset about it, because as Ai said, she hadn't been holding back because she was shy. Obviously, she wasn't sure it was kind of her to issue a pseudo accusation like that. Her own fault for digging.

"Y-yeah. I can see why you would think that, but I mean, I've just never thought about anything like this before. It doesn't have anything to do with you! Yukiko or Chie could tell me the same exact thing and I would be just as skeptical. Does… I mean, do you hate me?"

"No," Ai whispered with quiet urgency, gripping her hand tighter. And Rise gripped back; she needed the comfort, and wanted her bestie to know that none of this meant she was going anywhere.

"You're sure?"

"Really, really sure. I'm sad you didn't believe me but I can't deny you have a point; as great as it is to know I look good enough to pass even when I'm telling you about it point-blank — seriously it's a huge relief, you will never know — I guess this is the one downside."

Rise tipped to the side until her head was resting on Ai's shoulder. She still felt dizzy. This was a nightmare and a dream, and she just wanted to go back to yesterday. Before she had been told impossible things that had to be true, because it was actually stranger that they be lies. It was like some kind of…

Magic.

"I'm being stupid," she finally breathed aloud as the revelation hit her like a bolt out of the blue. How could she have been looking at this so backwards?!

"What?"

"Nothing," she whispered. "Just… I've seen some pretty crazy stuff in my life. You wouldn't believe me if I told you." Ai definitely wouldn't believe her. "And I'm sitting here, thinking it's too weird that you might have been born a boy? That's so dumb!"

Clearly taking that in a slightly different manner, her friend chuckled and said, "There you go. I mean, you were in the entertainment industry."

"It's not like it is in the west, Ebi-chan. Like… a little, but when I toured the U.S.? Lots of people like that, all the makeup artists, and… you know, that Lady Gaga?" Ai shook her head. "She's really big over there, I have one of her albums somewhere."

"Bring it over, then. I mean, if she's queer, I want to hear her."

"Well, I don't know she is, but she has this whole… you know, dressing like a drag queen, big feathers and meat dresses! Crazy stuff!" They both laughed together, relaxing into the closeness. Like it should be.

"Either way, bring it," Ai said, interrupting her weird stomach-upside-down moment of realising what she had just been thinking. "I mean, don't expect me to choose her over Mariya, but…"

Rise giggled and whispered, "Or me. Because you're not a fan of my trash music."

"HEY! Shut the fuck up, I never said- UGH, you are a pain in the ASS." An airy sigh as she kissed the top of Rise's head. "You're lucky you're so cute."

Full blush. Rise was glad for her sunglasses and hat or she would have died of embarrassment. Biting her lip, she reached up to pull Ai closer, almost snuggling into her as best she could on the uncomfortable train seats. All she wanted was for the world to fall away, leaving them to revel in the escape from their reality. Their escape into each other.

"I'm scared."

"Me too."

"Really?" Rise whispered. "I'm… I don't even know… what to think. Are we lesbians? Or, because you were a boy, is it just…"

"Honestly? I don't know, either. That's why I was freaking out earlier. But now, I…" She cleared her throat and said, almost fearfully, "I think 'lesbian' could be the right word. Though I did really like Yu… ugh, I'm a lost cause."

"No," she snapped at her, looking up into her eyes. "Hey. You're the number one hottie of Yasogami High. Everybody says so."

"They say I'm a bitch, too."

"So? You've earned being a little bit of a bitch for a while. But I do think it's time to put the bitchy-pants away and start being Ai Ebihara again. Or, um…" Then she laughed in embarrassment.

"What?" she asked, brow furrowed in preemptive fear.

"I forgot already. Your real name; you told me, I just… you're Ebi-chan, I can't remember it."

"Oh. Well, it doesn't matter, because that's not really me anymore. Like you with 'Risette'; you cringe every time anyone says it. Even just now."

"Huh?! No, I didn't!"

"You so did, Rise-cheese."

The pop star puffed out her cheeks angrily as she glared up at her best friend. Then she pouted extra hard. "You can't make fun of me. It's mean."

"Thought you said I earned the right to be a bitch," Ai teased with a half-smirk.

"Not to ME! And I also said you can stop now! Hmph." Then she turned away from her, folding her arms over her chest as she glared away into the compartment.

"Oh wow, dramatic." But when Rise didn't turn back after a minute, she grabbed her upper arm and shook it slightly. "Come on… you can't really be this mad." More silence. A little desperation began to enter Ai's voice. "Rise… wait, wait, you're pissed off because I called you 'cheese'?!"

"I'm not cheese." But she did peek over her shoulder, and saw Ai looking legitimately conflicted. So she laughed awkwardly and turned back around, raising a hand to smooth over her hair. "Sorry… hey, I'm sorry. I was just messing around."

Ai dipped her head, expression just as conflicted as before. "This… is hard. Wow. I knew it was dumb, and you were being dumb, and I wanted to give you more shit, but my heart just started hurting, and…"

That was quite a wealth of feelings. Rise felt a little worried; would Ai really be able to handle what they were getting themselves into? Would either of them? Unable to hold back anymore, she threw her arms around her and pulled her in for the tightest hug she could manage.

"Ebi-chan… we'll be fine. Don't be so down, don't… don't lose track of what's good between us. How we fit together."

"Yeah?" she asked shakily. "You mean, how we have nothing in common, and didn't know each other before the past few weeks, a-and… and why would you even like me?"

"We have a lot in common. We like singing, and daifuku, and Korean dramas. And we both know what it's like for people not to be able to see you for who you really are; to make a lot of assumptions about you based on your appearance." Her brow furrowed, even while she was speaking. "Oh… and I guess that was even worse for you when you were a kid, huh? If you were a boy… and you felt like a girl inside… is… I mean, did I say that right? Do I know what I'm talking about?"

The softest chuckle floated out of Ai's lips as she pushed her face against Rise's neck. The nose and lips felt warm, and soft, and a little moist where she was speaking against her skin… creating goosebumps in the wake of the breath. "You're saying everything right. You always do. Probably an idol superpower."

"Maybe," she admitted with a light laugh, some of her anxiety beginning to melt away. "But I promise I'll only use it for good. I'll do my best!"

"God, you can't even turn it off. So gross!"

"You don't have to call me 'gross'! That's not nice!"

"Hey, I'm totally nice. What would you do without me being so 'nice' you want to punch a baby?"

When Rise pulled back, the most horrified expression on her face at that last bit of imagery, Ai burst out laughing so hard that she had to double over, arms wrapped around her middle. The mirth was catching; Rise giggled until she snorted like a pig, then was covering her face with both hands in shame while her supposed best friend guffawed openly at her. And she wouldn't have had it any other way, mortifying as it was. At least it meant the worst was over.

Wasn't it?

                                       To Be Continued…

[quakerjoe]

Dear Biden Bro Rape Apologists

This includes you politician motherfuckers backing Biden right now.

A CUPPA JOE for CINCO de MAYO, 2020

During all this time you spent bashing me because I supported Tara Reade, I’d like to point something out at this time that clearly y’all missed in your ever-glorified shit-slinging fest defending your GOP insider, Joe Biden.

No ONCE did any of you motherfuckers ever ask one simple question of me and it was this:

“Do you actually BELIEVE Tara Reade?”

Rather an important question, isn’t it? Here’s what separates me from you shit guzzlers who are so fucking terrified and scared of trump that you’re willing to back any piece of shit just to be rid of him. 

You see, dumbasses, my answer would have been “I don’t know; I wasn’t there.” But like most feckless twats, you all missed the point and now it’s too late for you all. The train left the station. That ship has sailed. The point was that we needed to take the accusation seriously, for the sake of all women and all Survivors and investigate the matter because it would have been the right thing to do, not ignore and scorn her and try to cover it up. I’d expect that of the GOP, but come on, Democrats! You were supposed to be better than that! EPIC FAIL ON YOUR END HERE. 

Since clearly you left-wing trump-tards-for-biden types need it spelled out for you:

Whether of not Reade’s story is true or not is, at present, immaterial. What matters is your conduct and the conduct of the fucking assholes in the DNC and the party, and you all failed at being decent human beings.

You failed to take the accusation seriously when it was YOUR guy while not that long ago you were all screaming for justice to the victims of people like Bret Kavenaugh, trump, Cosby, and Weinstein to name but a few rich and powerful types who adhere to trump’s “philosophy” of how you can grab ‘em by the pussy and get away with it when your famous.

YOU FAILED. Not me. You.

What’s worse is that good people like Al Franken had their careers burned for far less. You failed him, and not you’ve shown that you’re willfully ignorant, selfish cunts, just like trump supporters. JUST LIKE THEM.

You see, there’s supposed to be this process when it comes to vetting people for things. Employers tend to do a general background check before hiring employees. When I joined the Navy over half a lifetime ago, my life was thoroughly put under scrutiny because I’d volunteered to serve on submarines. They looked into every detail of my life from my family to my schooling to my jobs to interviewing my friends to get a feel for whether or not I was trustworthy enough to work on classified equipment, also checking my finances to ensure I wasn’t vulnerable to things like being tempted to be a traitor by selling secrets to foreign adversaries because I was in a tight spot. They wanted to make sure there was no dirt anyone could have on me that might compromise me in some way.

Trump got ZERO of that. I was only an enlisted fuck serving on a sub. Why is it we do not hold the Commander-in-Chief to an even higher standard when he’s going to have the “football” within reach at all times with nuclear codes?

As I’d mentioned, the investigation involved looking into character. Biden is a CREEPY CHARACTER, but clearly like trump supporters, you Biden Bros are fine with Biden being creepy and possibly even RAPEY. But the point is we’re talking about an outright RAPE here. RAPE. Biden is accused of cornering and then digitally penetrating a woman’s vagina against her consent. Does that mean ANYTHING to you? Especially you women who are betraying your own supporting this fucknugget! Where’s the concern? Where’s the desire to delve into the vetting process and enact this “DUE PROCESS” you once screamed for?

I don’t know if Reade’s story is true or not. However, where we part ways is that I, for one, took it seriously. I firmly believe, in good conscience, that Biden’s got enough going against him as it is that that Due Process will either vindicate him enough that people like me might be able to choke down the vomit long enough to force myself to vote for him OR he’ll be proven to be a rapist and should, by rights, step out of the way for someone that’s NOT a rapist.

You assholes backing him FAILED. You failed not only women everywhere who are Survivors, you betrayed MeToo, TimesUp, the already weak and tarnished reputation of the Dem. party, and overall and most importantly- your country.

You FAILED to be a decent human being. So, to end this, you clearly need me more than I need you or Biden. If you can’t represent what I hold dear and adhere to a code of conduct becoming a representative of the US Presidency, then I won’t be bullied by you or tolerate you forcing me to betray my code of decency. You won’t tarnish my moral compass. But, in the end, you’ll still need me.

Like trump supporters, you need what I represent- “The other”. I’m the one you’ll blame in November when Biden tanks and we get 4 more of trump because somehow in your addled brains you equate MY lack of support as support for the other side. I support neither because to me, they’re one in the same all working to promote the GOP agenda of utter shittiness. None of my values are being represented by Biden except by way of paltry lip service in order to get elected to his likely one term where he promised to literally change nothing. Yay. A real go-getter to save the working class and save the world from disease, poor education and climate change. Woo-hoo!

So don’t you worry. I’ll be here for you to blame. I know you will because taking personal responsibility for your loss is just what trump supporters do- deny mistakes and blame someone else; trump style, but you know what? I don’t give a flying fuck in a rolling donut. I for one as will others like me will know that the fault is yours for not standing up to the fuckery of the DNC and always taking a knee to bow down to corporate/establishment Democrats who truly don’t give a fuck about you. I’m here for them too; the Great American Scapegoat, that’s me. You people will never learn and you’re no better than the GOP, trump, or his dumbass supporters. Blame me and my kind all you want because we’re not only not afraid to stand up to trumplefuckstick, we’re also not afraid to stand up to Democrats and call them out on their bullshit, either. You Biden Bros had a simple job- sell us on Biden. Earn our votes. Convince us in a meaningful way. Instead, you’ve demonstrated that you’re pieces of shit like trump’s cultists.

It’s not MY JOB to vote for someone, especially if I don’t believe him or if he represents NOTHING I want from my representative in the White House as POTUS. It’s THEIR job to convince me to HIRE THEM because this is a big fucking job interview, not a round of fucking Candy Land. So far, I am about as impressed with the Democrats as I am with the GOP and you’re not helping. To me, you’ve gotten to be more of the same than you were back in 2016. It’s as if trump has actually set a new standard so low that Dems are racing them to the bottom.

If Democrats want my vote, they’ll front me at least SOME of what I want in a POTUS. Biden offers ZERO for me, and if you weren’t so terrified to trump like scared little children, you’d get your heads out of your stupid, well laid asses and see that Biden’s just not into you either.

~Quaker Joe

[camillemontespan]

hope you’re good up there [drake walker]

Just a one shot I thought up and broke my writing break to get this down. Now, writing break, re-commence!

Fluff, angst, fluff. Hope you enjoy. 

@jovialyouthmusic @fromthedeskofpaisleybleakmore @pug-bitch @sirbeepsalot @moonlightgem7 @emceesynonymroll @burnsoslow @i-bloody-love-drake-walker @of-course-i-went-to-hartfeld @gardeningourmet  @katedrakeohd @be-still-my-aching-heart @rainbowsinthestorm @stopforamoment @dcbbw

****************************************************************************************

Hey dad. Hope you’re going good up there. Bet in your heaven, you’ve got a glass of whiskey in your hand and you’ve got Clover at your feet. She was a good dog, wasn’t she? 

So, I’m back in Cordonia. College didn’t work out.. I know what you’re thinking, ‘what the hell, son?!’ 

I’m back because of Liam. He needs me. He was targeted in an assassination attempt and I was in a fucking lecture about economics. As soon as I heard, I packed my bags and now, here I am. 

I know you wanted me to forge my own path; get away from Cordonia and live life my way. But you can’t always get what you want, dad. Sure, it would have been nice to get a degree and an apartment and just be normal, but you know me and Li. We’re like brothers. I’m more of a brother to Liam than his own blood. When he feels pain, I feel pain. When he’s happy, I’m happy. It’s crazy. So I can’t leave him, I refuse to. He needs support and I’ll be damned if I go back to the states, back to college and find out that he’s gone while I’m learning about fucking economics. 

Sorry for the swearing. I’ll put a euro in the swear jar like mom always told us to do. Didn’t stop us though, did it?

             *****************************************************************

Hey dad. Hope you’re doing good up there. You know how you used to say that the court is cruel and you have to look out for yourself? I get it now. As soon as the court found out I was back from college, they went back to treating me like the social pariah I had been when I was ten. Why are they all assholes, dad? Were they assholes with you? Did you ignore them? Did you put them in your place? 

I’m just going to keep to myself. I’ll stay in the shadows, I’ll drink their shitty wine while secretly I want a whiskey - I’ve started drinking whiskey because of you, I can see why you like it- and I’ll just treat them with the contempt that they treat me with. Why not, huh? Why should I go out of my way to be nice to them when they act like I’m the shit on their shoe?

Olivia and Madeleine are the worst. Since Madeleine got engaged to Leo, she’s been all high and mighty because she’s now the future queen. Fuck her. I know you hated her too, well guess what, she’s still the mean girl she’s always been. 

Olivia is still glued to Liam’s hip, laughing at his jokes and trying to get him to fall in love with her. It’s pathetic. Meanwhile, she keeps bringing up how I’m a commoner riding along on Liam’s coat tails. 

I hate this life, dad. I know I shouldn’t complain; I have my own room, I get free meals and I don’t want for anything. I just feel so out of place. I don’t belong here. I just wish I had someone here to tell me, ‘this is how your life should look.’ Why aren’t you here to do that? You were my compass, my one true north. I listened to everything you said, absorbing everything, so keen to be you. Well, tell me what to do. Please.

Sorry, that was a bit heavy. You’re probably sat in a chair right now with a whiskey and Clover, shaking your head, muttering, ‘Jesus, my son is a wuss.’ 

I’ll deal with it. 

       **************************************************************************

Hey dad. Hope you’re doing good up there. So, Leo’s abdicated. I know, right? He just suddenly announced this morning at breakfast that he didn’t want to be king anymore. It was like word vomit, he just burst out saying it and everyone went quiet and stared at him. Liam was beside him and god, his face. He looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights.

Liam’s next in line now. He doesn’t want to do it. He wanted to just be the spare but come on, you remember Leo right? Leo acted like the spare more than Liam did- he never acted like a king in waiting. He was always going out, getting drunk, cheating on Madeleine. If it wasn’t for the fact Liam now has to be the king in future, I’d say good riddance. Cordonia would have suffered under Leo’s rule.

I can hear you laughing by the way. I know, I’m so knowledgable about Cordonian affairs ha! Someone give me a microphone and a stage, I can sort this in seconds!

I’m obviously joking. Since I’m on the sidelines, I find that I watch everyone closely. I know everyone’s agenda and they aren’t aware of it; they forget I’m there. I’m in the shadows, like a ghost. 

Let me guess, you’re calling me Casper now.  You are, aren’t you? Fuck off, old man. You’re the one who’s dead.

Oops. Sorry. Bit harsh. Yeah, I’ll put a euro in the swear jar.

     *********************************************************************************

Hey dad. Hope you’re doing good up there. Okay, so picture this for me, okay? You died before reality TV became big but there’s a show called The Bachelor and it involves a rich guy with all these women who are competing for his love. 

Sounds really sexist, doesn’t it? Really archaeic?

Yeah, well, Cordonia is holding a suitor competition to find Liam a wife. All the Duchesses are taking part. 

I can hear you laughing your head off. I know! How ridiculous! It’s such a fucking farce.

Sorry, swear jar.

Anyway, yeah. We’re in New York now, about to go out to this bar as part of Liam’s ‘bachelor party.’ He isn’t even married yet and he’s having a send off. Jesus. He’s begged us to take him somewhere normal where nobody knows who he is, which I get. 

I’ll get him drunk, don’t worry dad. 

   ********************************************************************************

Hey dad, hope you’re good up there. I know we spoke last night but I kinda need to talk again? Right, get a whiskey. 

Our waitress at the bar is coming to Cordonia to take part in the competition. 

A waitress. She’s not noble. 

Dad, she’s going to be eaten alive! I’m not noble either so I think I have the authority to say that she is going to be torn apart by these duchesses and she’s going to wish she never came. 

Her name’s Camille. Camille Montespan. French name but she’s from New York. She’s really pretty. Like, my type. Caramel skin, dark hair, these huge gorgeous brown eyes that have gold flecks in them like an owl. 

Fuck, stop laughing at me. 

Swear jar, got it. 

Anyway, she sat on the plane and she looked so calm about the whole thing? Like, ‘sure, I’ll get on a plane with these random guys to compete for a king’s hand in marriage! Spice it up a little!’

I didn’t talk to her. If she said anything to me, I’d look away or respond sarcastically. 

Why? Uh, because she’s fucking naive and doesn’t get how awful this is going to be. Also, looking at her is painful because I feel like she should be with me. 

Did I say that out loud? Fuck. 

Well, we’re both American. She’s beautiful. She’s fun, she is good conversation and I just think.. she’s the first normal person who I’ve come across in years. She’s not noble. She’s refreshing. Just would’ve been nice to get to know her, you know? But Liam’s got her now. He really liked her at the bar. He wouldn’t stop talking about her when we got back to the hotel and I stayed quiet. This is his competition, his girls. Fuck.

Four euro. Damn it, you’re really emptying my wallet, you know that right?

***********************************************************************************

Hey dad. Hope you’re good up there. I can’t sleep. I may be a little drunk. I’ve started drinking whenever she appears in my dreams. Like, I dream we go on a date or we kiss or we get married or we have fucking babies, that kind of shit. Call them nightmares. They’re nightmares because my mind is taunting me, showing me what I’ll never have. 

I watch her dancing with Liam and I want to stab a fork into my eye. 

She’s always near me though. When Liam’s busy entertaining the other ladies, she is with me. We started talking more, joking and now we’ve got inside jokes. Fuck, inside jokes are what get you. I keep trying to push her away, call her by her last name so she can’t get close, but it doesn’t fucking work. She is too good, she keeps bringing down my walls and I try and build them back up. I know it’s not healthy to keep walls up but it’s the way I am now. Nobody can hurt you and the fact is, if I let my walls down for Camille, she will be chosen by Liam anyway and I’ll have hurt myself for no reason. 

So excuse me for not wanting to be all cosy with her. 

I need another whiskey. Yeah I know, swear jar, fucking got it. 

  ********************************************************************************

Hey dad. Hope you’re good up there. So things have changed.. a lot. Um, so long story short, I may have kissed her in the Beaumont study and now we’ve been meeting up in secret and kissing some more and being all angsty and shit, but fuck, it’s so good? Yeah, I’m a little drunk again, you can’t judge, you loved a whiskey. 

We’ve danced together at the balls and I hold her close and pretend she’s mine. She smells like coconut; my own personal paradise. 

I found out today that this is 20 years since her parents died. She was in her room, drinking whiskey - I know, I taught her well- and she begged me to make her feel better. I know she wanted.. well.. you know. I kept trying to say no but she got more upset and eventually, I just gave in. 

She told me that I’m the only person in court who knows about her parents. She hasn’t even told Hana or Maxwell. I feel like I have to keep her safe. Keep her protected, keep her together. I want to be there for her. 

Cheers dad.

*******************************************************************************************

Hey dad. Hope you’re good up there. So, the suitor competition is over. Camille.. Camille chose me. Liam proposed and she said no, she loved me. 

I can hear you celebrating, stop it. I’m a bad friend. 

Seriously, stop cheering, it’s fucking deafening. 

I am really happy though. She chose me. The woman I love - yeah, I love her- chose me. She was offered a life of luxury, diamonds and prestige and she chose me. 

I will never be good enough for her. I know I won’t. I keep thinking she’s going to turn around and tell me she made a mistake. But if she stays with me, I’ll never stop trying to prove my love for her. I am going to worship that woman and make her feel happy and safe. Us against the world. 

I’m really happy, dad. 

*******************************************************************************************

Hey dad. Hope you’re good up there. Have you got a glass of whiskey to celebrate? Okay well, I’m married. 

I married Camille today. 

I know! I’m a married man!

We married at the ranch. The jetty by the lake. Where me and you used to set off fireworks on 4th July. That jetty. I married the love of my life on the jetty in front of all of our friends. 

She’s taken our last name. Camille Walker. 

I told her to keep Montespan for Duchess stuff -oh yeah, I’m a Duke now. She’s a Duchess. Stop laughing. Please stop laughing. Dad, stop it or I’m gonna come up there-

Fucks sake, anyway. She’s Camille Walker. She suits it. She was so happy when she started saying her new name, testing it out for fun, the Walker rolling off her tongue. 

You’d love her, dad. She’s got this throaty laugh and she’s just so kind and caring. She likes football, though she’s a Giants fan, and she has even gone camping with me and enjoyed it. 

I’m feeling good, like everything is falling into place.

 *********************************************************************************

Hey dad. Hope you’re good up there. So, I’m raising my glass to you right now to congratulate you on becoming a grandfather. Well done, you. 

Lily was born yesterday morning at 5am. Camille’s exhausted but she was such a trooper. Seriously dad, I’m not gonna complain about being kicked in the balls again. 

I have a daughter! She’s the miniature of Camille, she’s gorgeous. Downy dark hair, big brown eyes with the gold flecks. 

She’s got my smirk though. Sorry, our smirk. 

I’m happy but terrified. Actually terrified. What if I break her? What if she doesn’t sleep enough? Seriously, I sat up for three hours while she slept, just watching over her. I’m never gonna breathe easy again. 

I hope to be a dad like you were. You were caring, you were fun and you were brave. You showed us how to appreciate the simple things like campfires, smores, sunsets, all of the stuff that most people don’t bother with. I’m so glad you instilled that in me. I hope to pass it onto Lily. She’s half Walker- she needs to learn this stuff!

So yeah, just thought I’d check in and give you the good news. We’re home now and Lily’s sleeping, hopefully sleeping nice dreams and she’s all cosy and warm. 

I did it. I’ve found my place. It’s with my wife and daughter. Thank God, right? 

Hey, look at that. I didn’t swear. 

Check in with you soon, dad. Love you.

   ***************************************************************************

‘Drake?’

Drake whipped around to find Camille standing on at the door, watching him out on the balcony. She looked confused. ‘Were you talking to yourself?’

Drake chuckled, embarrassed. ‘Um.. talking out loud?’

Camille stepped forward and wrapped her arms around his neck. ‘Trying to make sense of the world now you’re a daddy?’

‘Actually.. I was talking to my dad.’

He held his breath. He had never told anyone that sometimes, he liked to sit outside and talk openly up into the sky, pretending he was talking to his dad and that Jackson Walker himself was listening. 

Drake bit his lip. ‘It’s just something I do when I want to.. sort things out in my head. It helps. I know its stupid, I’ll stop-’

Camille placed her index finger on his lips. ‘Shut up, Drake,’ she said quietly. Her eyes glimmered with tears. ‘Don’t you dare stop talking to your father. He’ll be listening, trust me.’

‘Nah, he won’t. It’s just something I started doing after he died-’

‘Please, Drake,’ she whispered. ‘I love that you talk to your dad. Don’t stop doing it. He’s still part of you, okay? He lives on in your memories and when you talk to him, so don’t stop now because you feel embarrassed. Got it?’

Drake nodded mutely. Camille gave him a smile and kissed him softly. ‘Coming in to watch a film?’

Drake squeezed her hand. ‘Sure thing.’ 

Camille then threw her head back and hollered, ‘Hi Jackson!’ 

Drake let out a surprised laugh and shook his head when she looked at him, her eyes now dancing. ‘Come on, let’s snuggle up on the sofa,’ she said. ‘Lily’s asleep but she’ll be wanting my boobs in an hour, I bet. Still feels so weird!’

She took his hand and dragged him back into the manor. Drake cast one last look at the night sky and the stars twinkled above.