#it doesn’t make him less dangerous. it’s his intentional play to look less threatening

[day-night-darlix]

<<star rail oc>>

zelalem

• a man who treads destruction for the sake of preservation.

after seeing his home world have its culture, people and language nearly eradicated for resources three times within his short life, he resolved to completely destroy any force that would dare meddle with his home. to further his pursuit, he is currently posing as a history fictionologist to help a real fictionologist destroy his own planet.

[sepublic]

I remember hearing that Dana was inspired by True Crime, amongst other things and people IRL, when writing Belos. And it seems that contrary to the notoriety of True Crime fans, she actually understood the assignment.

Because she opted to demystify the serial killer as this dark, unusual psychology that operates outside of societal borders and rules, disturbed by some secret reason, and instead literally pull off the mask to reveal he’s just some white manchild who hates women and minorities to a violent degree, because he feels threatened by them and their ability to say No in his entitlement. There’s nothing special or unique about his motives.

He’s no exception to the status quo, he is it unmasked of the veneer of civility, he’s the lynch mob and the cop (all of whom inherit the violence of white supremacy and colonialism) and fittingly a lot of serial killers were clocked by women and PoC as dangerous, but cops —largely white men— dismissed their claims because look at this dude, he seems like an upstanding citizen! And that’s really how he got away.

And because his victims were people the system was less likely to believe because they both operated on the same biases, you see why a lot of cops who commit brutality are drawn to an institution where they’re given violent power over brown and/or queer communities who are labeled as ‘suspicious’, because they enjoy easy targets they know the system doesn’t care about, and are enraged by body cams and accountability.

It doesn’t matter if they’re intentionally bigoted, their support of an inherently bigoted institution makes them the same; Internalized biases and “I don’t see race” and all that. You see how Philip wanted to be a witch hunter —the prototypical cop who is not exclusively violent towards women but still has a clear slant— or colonial savior so bad, because his violence could be legitimized by the authority of the state.

He leans into it hardcore when he feels threatened by the presence of an outside girl who challenges the Christian narrative of Gravesfield, to the point of violence; It’s a position that validates killing anyone who doesn’t agree with him in general, hence Caleb and the Grimwalkers, but of course his and society’s biases slant towards women and PoC. And while it ultimately doesn’t matter whether he’s intentionally racist/misogynistic, it’s worth addressing that he very much does have the intention due to his blatant Conservative backdrop.

And seeing how charming Philip is and the portrayal of him as a little kid playing games in his youth, a perception Caleb might’ve still had which led to his death, I can see the direct line to families who find out their sons are school shooters and are in disbelief because he was such a nice kid! While ignoring the obvious Red Flags because white men are allowed to express these without being immediately scrutinized by the community, by having it brushed off. On some level cops don’t suspect him because he’s the same type of guy as them.

Part of that denial comes from the fact that he’s not an “unfeeling sociopath” who’s wired differently. Philip can feel empathy and guilt like anyone else, but he’s still a hateful prick and these aren’t mutually exclusive; Not when people can be perfectly selective about who they extend these feelings towards, or even do things in spite of these feelings, because other ones —anger and pride and hatred— exist and they choose to prioritize those. There’s an assumption that empathy and guilt inherently make you a good person, but they don’t; That ultimately comes from what you do about it, not how you feel.

You could even say Dana and the other writers wrote him too well, because true to life, we have a similar issue but on a micro-scale via the abstraction of fiction regarding a very dedicated fan base who loves to romanticize him and his actions, attributing his issues to some secret trauma in childhood, a young man failed by society! While also scrubbing him of his racism and misogyny and reliance on the status quo, to make him ‘apolitical’ and you can see the same not just with fans but also in society.

Because society doesn’t want to acknowledge serial killers as just the truth behind their white sons and the system that absolved and encourages them, because that would require them to admit their guilt in how they’re structured. Rather, they’ll say these men reflect some dark truth inherent to humanity, and don’t exist within a certain sociopolitical framework.

And so he was a ‘loner’ whose problems can be pathologized via mental illness, his trauma can be traced back to a specific incident in his youth he just couldn’t get over. So you see how school shooters are made into victims, how serial killers are also made apolitical and even alien to distance them from the status quo.

And then you can lean into how unusual they are by writing characters like Dexter or Hannibal Lecter, you can not just defend the system but feed into it via the commodification of their violence as entertainment and consumption, and thus fuel the white supremacy train by letting their violence towards women and minorities be praised as something fascinating and interesting and conveniently clean of bigotry. This is the dichotomy of the hypothetical, romanticized Fantasy Serial Killer, and the banal IRL Serial Killer.

Thus we have the same cycle of white men’s violence being praised and validated by the system, and white men feeling entitled to this fame as a delusional fantasy. Because you’ve never heard of a black serial killer; Because black people are violent, that’s just the way they are, right? But if white men are violent, this is sensationalized as somehow unusual and fascinating and worth dedicating countless books and shows and movies towards. Obviously.

And even going back to witch hunters, sometimes I wonder about the constant consideration of, What if witches did exist? What if they were evil? Things like The VVitch or The Conjuring series, which have some framing of the Salem Witch Trials’ IRL violence towards women as legitimate in another universe, because of Satanism’s genuine predatory threat towards women, and how evil women sacrifice theirs or others’ God-given gift of a child, and now threaten another white Christian family.

And again there’s the the demystifying of the real life witch hunter too when we have a historical reenactment declare verbatim that IRL witch hunters were motivated by economics and other banal factors, not by any genuine belief in the dangers of demons; And even in a setting where the demons were real, they were not the predatory threat IRL witch hunters made them out to be, and so their very real biases and ulterior motives still apply in cumulative insincerity.

Hence, the Titan correcting Luz by explaining Belos as someone who only cares about being the hero in his own delusion; The fascist wet dream of a hidden invader here to corrupt even young white men, an outside monster to vanquish and whose destruction justifies the state, when in reality the monster IS the state, and before he was even presented as a witch (much less the human truth), his system’s destruction was called for.

Ultimately, a lot of True Crime and similar narratives are criticized for focusing more on this apparently inevitable mystique behind the perpetrators, who warrant far more attention than their victims. So when the villain is an example of True Crime, it’s worth noting how the show is so much more focused on the ‘weirdoes’ he targets, on women and/or PoC. The lives of Luz Noceda and her friends, them getting along and their psychologies, are just so much more important, and it really isn’t about that guy, who is informed as much as he needs to be.

But again, the True Crime fans dilemma; People genuinely salty at the show for not focusing on their favorite serial killer and his troubled backstory, his tragic motives and Puritan repression. The framing of his murders and motives isolated through the lens of his violence on undeserving white men, and not on the out-group he is specifically targeting and has committed much more violence on, esp if you look at the narrative’s actual framing of his impact on our protagonists, but also other victims who are witches or demons, and even his own self-professed motives; Hence, ‘Fratricide Georg’ as a joke depoliticized of his colonial violence, a violence that is not just adjacent to but fulfilling racism.

Because he hallucinated only those white men out of guilt, but that’s his biased perspective and priorities; And so you see how this is contrasted with a refusal to empathize with people like the Collector or Luz, who are put into the same situations as his white male victims via shared cinematography, yet are just as rejected. Luz is only put into this situation as convenient to Belos’ narrative, the closest replacement to a white male human he can get, but again if this girl of color says No, he tries to murder her and even does.

Yet again, people take genuine, personal insult at the creator for finding Belos to be her least favorite character to write, while ignoring that she still found him necessary to the story she was trying to tell; She just found the framing and focus should’ve been shifted to his actual victims’ deep and meaningful lives, how they matter. So people hate that S3 cares more about Luz Noceda’s relationship with her parents of color, as well as her female mentor and demonic brother, or her queer relationship with her girlfriend, etc.

And even when they get a bone of white boy Hunter, it’s still not enough; Fans inevitably gather themselves into an almost frenzied state of personal victimization, rallying into harassment of PoC who criticize their portrayal and discussion around their colonial serial killer fave, organizing dedicated trends and months to giving their white men the focus they ‘deserved’, because this is just White fandom in general.

Look at the entitlement campaigns regarding Ben Solo or Billy Hargroves deserving better, these young white men violent to women and minorities. It’s just the same thing but on a micro-scale, at least filtered via fictional characters. But Jesus you see how internalized biases bleed into everything. You’ve never heard of a black serial killer and fandom doesn’t fight for characters of color.

[xxavengingangelxx]

Graves Defragged 2/?

Part two, y'all! Prepare to have your mind blown. Mine was. That is all :) Also keep in mind that this is how I see Graves based on my psych and criminology degree. You all might see and likely see him differently and that's okay! I'm guessing here. I'm not sure if what I'm speculating about Graves is correct.

Here we go! Not proofread :( I'm really, really tired tonight. Triggers for mentions of non-con and torture.

Item 11: Promiscuous sexual behavior = 1

C’mon, Graves is full of himself and narcissistic. He can have anyone he wants. I am hesitant to even give this a 1 given we have no idea what his sex life is like but I’m familiar with men who have similar personalities and they definitely bed whoever they want. Now, I happen to write Graves as heterosexual because that’s just how my mind created him (a lot of the story in Long Way from Home and Somewhere Only We Know were taken from some old stories I wrote where Warren Kole played a sheriff who was also a serial killer). But I sure as hell love reading him in all types of relationships!! 😉

Look at that man and tell me he and his men don’t get around they can’t get who they want. Sexy af.

Image credit: Call of Duty Wiki

There is a good (but dark) fic written on Ao3 that involves Graves non-conning a female citizen who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Given the picture I have of Graves in my mind (he’s a monster!) I wouldn’t put it past him. But that's my point of view. Remember my version of Graves is dark, hence the warnings on my darker fics!

And KEEP…IN…MIND…his Shadows or most of his Shadows have no issues with war crimes. There’s NO TELLING what his Shadows did to female citizens in the homes they invaded. ☹ They’re nameless and faceless which is part of what makes them so terrifying (they’re also huge, okay? Maybe in more ways than one).

Item 12: Early behavior problems = 1

This is another tough one. We don’t really know anything about his childhood. But based on what we have seen with Graves I wouldn’t doubt he at least had issues managing his anger when he was a child/teen. His lack of morality might suggest that it’s something he’s had his whole life. A lack of fear, common in psychopaths, can also lead to early behavior problems because a psychopath’s limbic system is malfunctioning. It’s not built right. This in turn causes a lot of psychopaths to have no fear. No fear or acknowledgement of danger and certainly no fear of punishments.

This is similar to what we talked about above in the sections about lack of remorse and empathy. It’s NOT that Graves feels fear and ignores it. He cannot feel fear. His brain is not wired for it.

So let’s say you’re captive with Graves. Swinging at him doesn’t work, threatening doesn’t work, and actually hitting him only gets him to hit you back hard enough for you to at least lose partial consiousness or balance. If Graves is not afraid of you, not afraid of the repercusions of taking you, what the hell can you do to at least somewhat control his behavior so he at least shows more stable mood and hurts you less?

Positive reinforcement. Rewards. Psychopaths respond to rewards. Positive reinforcement means adding a desired stimulus. OC figured this out in one of my longer fics (although subconsciously) and gave  in to sleeping with Graves. As OC became more and more compliant, Graves’s behavior became less unpredictable and less violent. If she were to act out again in the future, however, he wouldn't hesitate to at least smack OC maybe even in front of their son.

Positive reinforcement, guys and gals! Give Graves little tidbits of obedience and information. You’ll be playing him and he won’t even know it. But Graves is hella good at figuring out hidden agendas/intentions. So when he does (no, not if, when) find out, he’s gonna hurt you.

Negative reinforcement is the removal of an undesirable stimulus. This works with psychopaths but not in the way positive reinforcement does. So you can stop hitting him and calling him names but it won’t work as good as you providing Graves with positive reinforcement.

Remember Graves responds to money! That is a positive reinforcer.

Item 13: Lack of realistic, long-term goals = 0

Here we have another one that does not apply to Graves. Graves shed his Marine skin with a goal in mind. It might have sounded unrealistic but Graves pulled it off. He’s a billionaire with a PMC staffed with some of the most dangerous men on Earth.

Item 14: Impulsivity = 0

We touched in this earlier when we talked about behavior controls. Graves is meticulous, thorough, detailed, and precise. The big decisions are made with painstaking order/detail. We have talked about (and we can see) that Graves might have issues controlling his actions when he is angry. Piss him off enough and he’ll smack you (Whether you are male or female! Remember he was almost giddy when he was about to torture Valeria, a woman), I can almost guarantee it. At the very least. Piss him off enough enough and he’ll put you on the floor. Piss him off beyond that, you might have to spend a few nights in a hospital.

But Graves is certainly not impulsive when it comes to big decisions. He didn’t get to be a billionaire in charge of his own PMC with contracts left and right by making a habit of being impulsive with important decisions.

Item 15: Irresponsbility = 0

At least in my eyes! You don’t get to be where Graves is, as successful as he is being irresponsible. A business as successful as his is not one built on impulsivity nor irresponsibility.

In relation to this, I’m willing to be a whole paycheck of mine that Graves vets his men better than the FBI.

Image credit: Call of Duty Wiki

These men are so loyal they died for Graves without so much as a second thought while in Las Almas. Remember that I also touched on the fact that their loyalty for Graves goes past humanity and morality. I tried to illustrate this in a fic where Graves’s men have no issue torturing a female POW.

Look at that they did in Las Almas! They murdered citizens to include women and children. And like I mentioned before, there’s no telling what those men did when they invaded those homes before they killed their victims.

Graves didn’t like the limitations of the Marines. So why would he pick men with those moral limitations? Answer is he wouldn’t. He’d pick men who would do whatever he ordered them to do to whomever he wanted it done to. The only way I could see Graves maybe having some men with some morality is for SAR or search and rescue missions. He certainly does not want his ethically untoward men rescuing someone only to victmize said rescue subject on the ride back to the US.

Yikes.

Item 16: Failure to accept responsibility for own actions = 2

Graves is a pro at this, ain’t he? Remember the missle crisis he was indirectly responsible for? Instead of admitting it a whole clusterfuck of consequences cascaded because Graves and Shepherd tried to cover up what they’d done wrong.

Remember Congress? When Graves said he did not put 141 in danger? But you did, Graves (don’t tell him that…he might try to swing at you)! Your men shot first. Now, yes, Alejandro lunged at Graves. But nonlethal force should be met with nonlethal force. Graves’s men are loyal to a fault. When someone so much as steps too close to their commander, they shoot to kill.

And of course Las Almas! Those were hardcore war crimes being committed. And like I’ve mentioned before, I wouldn’t doubt that Graves’s men took a few liberties with individuals they found attractive in the homes they invaded. Not everyone might see it like that but remember the actions in Las Almas were meant to intimidate.

Image credit: Dan Allen Gaming on YouTube

And in some of the fics I’ve written where Graves victimizes OC, Graves blames OC for the torture she suffered, telling her that if she had just given him what he wanted to begin with (homing beacon codes to find 141) she wouldn’t have suffered at all. That’d she’d have no scars on her body and no mental trauma from what was done to her. He ordered his men to carry all that out and he watched it happen but OC, the victim, is responsible. According to Graves.

I think a lot of people really underestimate how dangerous and cruel Graves’s men can be. And yet, we Graves/Shadow Company fans have a certain affection for them 😉 Because to be honest, with all the shady stuff they do, who knows how many times they’ve saved the world. All without getting thanked for it.

Image credit: Shadow Siege Limited on Blizzard Entertainment

Item 17: Many short-term marital relationships = 0

We have no proof Graves has ever been married. It would be somewhat reasonable to conclude that Graves could be involved with quite a few sexual partners. But for marriage…we have absolutely no idea!

Item 18: Juvenile delinquency = 0

And let me tell you why. Graves was in the Marines and some positions in the Marines require a top secret security clearance. Graves’s involvement in military contracts certainly requires a top secret clearance and perhaps maybe a SCIF clearance. You cannot have any significant juvenile delinquency and be trusted with one of these.

Item 19: Revocation of conditional release = 0

None. He hasn’t been arrested (see above for my reasoning for no juvenile arrests). And if he was, I’d be willing to bet some highups in the military, CIA, and NSA would make his charges disappear.

Item 20: Criminal versitality = 2

Oh boy, if there was one item that described Graves it would be this one! This refers to the variety of criminal activity Graves is involved in. Well, we know he’s involved in some shady contracts that involve taking lives. He’s a mercenary after all. Technically, what Graves is doing, killing people for money, is illegal. Essentially invading another country and wiping a town off the map is highly illegal. Shooting to kill at 141/SAS is illegal! So not only is he involved in several types of crime but he is involved in crimes across countries, across the world.

With the money he makes, he hires nameless, faceless men with no moral compass who will then do whatever twisted deeds he tells them to and more. He also buys weapons intended to take lives for money, which is, of course, illegal.

Phew! So what does Graves score on the Psychopath Checklist?

A mere 20! The requirement for psychopathy in the US is 30 and in the UK 25.

According to Canadian psychologist Robert Hare’s research (and he’s done a lot) Graves does not quite rise to the level of psychopath. However, remember that we have very limited information. We essentially have no information about Graves’s childhood or early adulthood other than he enlisted in the Marines. With more information, his score could have gone up, remained the same, but it would not have gone down.

You’re probably like: ummmm…WTF?

And I’m with you! :D I fully expected for him to at least meet the cutoff! These posts I make are discoveries I’m making with you. I had no idea he would score so low!

Is Graves a questionable human being? You bet! Would you jump for joy if he showed interest in you (we all would haha)? But for real, he’s dangerous, he’s callous, and he can be really cruel. Just because he does not rise to the level of psychopathy does not mean he lacks remorse or lacks empathy. Those are still very real things that are part of who Graves is. This applies also to his lack of fear and his responsiveness to positive reinforcement.

Graves’s brain might look a little something like this:

Image credit: Quora (functional MRI or fMRI that takes images as the brain is working and seeing what lights up)

There is a lack of activity in the prefrontal cortex but that activity is not totally absent. Graves might let his emotions get the better of him when he’s one-on-one but overall he’s not impulsive. I'd expect to see a little more activity in his PFC actually. You’ll also see a lack of activity in a part of the brain called the amygdala. That is part of the limbic system, a more primal part of the brain. The amygdala processes negative emotions, which explains while men like Graves do not fear punishment or danger. He will, however, respond to positive reinforcement which increase endorphins, dopamine, and other feel-good neurotransmitters.

You can also see it below! There is high activity in the frontal lobe of the control as well as reasonably high activity in the limbic system. Jim's brain shows a lack of PFC activity as well as a lack of activity deeper in the brain in the limbic system.

Image credit: Rice University, Inside the Brains of Psychopaths

ONE FINAL BUT VERY IMPORTANT NOTE:

Psychopathy DOES NOT equal psychotic. They don’t mean close to the same thing. Psychopathy is mainly dictated by a lack of remorse, empathy, and fear. Psychotic means someone who is out of touch with reality. Think hallucinations, delusions, and so on. Psychotic people do not make good criminals. They’re sloppy and tend to get caught fairly quickly. A psychopath is super in touch with reality! The pick up on details and cues we do not. They do not feel fear and don’t care who they hurt, allowing them to move on with their lives. So if someone says: Graves is psychotic! You can say: ah-ah! Psychopathic :D

Y'all I'm very tired lol I hope you enjoyed. I FUCKIN LOVE talking about this stuff and I can talk about it forever! I can post soooo much more on Graves if y'all are interested :)

[starcunin]

@softersinned sent: [ 𝐠𝐫𝐢𝐦 ] : sender has killed someone who threatened disrespected the receiver.

He watches intently, his crimson eyes wide and gleaming in the dim light of Moonrise Towers. Stori’s hands are drenched in blood——Araj’s blood——and her lips pull back in a snarl, animalistic and feral. The wet sound of her teeth sinking into the drow’s throat echoes in the hollow silence, and for a moment, the whole world feels suspended. The others stare in horror, but Astarion barely registers them. They fade, insignificant in the shadow of her brutal, radiant violence.

There’s a bitter taste in his mouth, like copper and fear. But it isn’t fear of her, not in the way it should be.

No, he’s utterly, completely enthralled.

It’s the way she moves——graceful in her savagery, a predator’s elegance. She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t hesitate. Araj barely has time to choke out her last breath before Stori rips it from her. And the sight——gods, the sight——of her drenched in blood, eyes blazing with a dark, unholy fire, sends a shudder through him.

She’s perfect.

His stomach twists, a sickening churn of awe and something far more dangerous. The hunger in him rises unbidden, not for blood, but for her. Not in the way he’s been playing it——his carefully crafted manipulation, the slow seduction to make her fall under his spell——but something real. Something sharp and jagged, with teeth of its own. He’s always prided himself on reading people, understanding them. Using them. Stori had seemed like such an easy target at first——broken, amnesiac, and brutal. A perfect shield, someone to manipulate, to mold. To protect him. But the way she just tore through Araj——merciless, unflinching, and all for him——is so far beyond what he ever expected. It makes him want to kneel, to bare his throat to her, to let her rip through him next. He would let her.

But she doesn’t want that. No, he realizes, watching her now, she would never want that. Not weakness. Not submission. She loves him——or at least, she thinks she does——and he’s not sure what terrifies him more: the possibility that her feelings are as real as the blood on her lips, or that they’re built on the lies he’s so carefully woven around her.

How long has it been since the lies started to unravel? He can’t even say when, exactly, the shift happened——when the manipulation gave way to something real, something fragile and painful. He’s been pulling her strings for so long that the thought of confessing now, of revealing the ugly truth, makes bile rise in his throat. He’s lied to her, toyed with her, and now——gods help him——he’s fallen in love with her.

She stands over the corpse, her breath heaving, blood dripping down her chin, and all Astarion can do is stare. His hands twitch at his sides, fingers curling into fists to keep from reaching for her. He wants to kiss her, to drag her to him and press his mouth to hers, still wet with Araj’s blood. All he can think of is how alive she looks in this moment, how utterly, devastatingly alive.

And he’s dead. He’s a corpse wrapped in flesh, and yet here he stands, wanting her more than he’s wanted anything in his miserable existence. The others are murmuring, but their words are lost in the rush of his thoughts. He swallows thickly, his throat dry despite the taste of blood lingering in the air. He needs to say something.

His lips part, but no sound comes out. His mind races, trying to reconcile the brutal beauty of what she’s just done with the crushing weight of his own guilt. He could tell her, right now. He could bare the truth——admit that everything he’s done has been a lie. But the thought of her looking at him with anything less than the burning devotion he’s grown accustomed to makes his chest ache.

Coward.

Instead, he watches her, his breath shallow and uneven. His eyes trace the curve of her lips, the sharp line of her jaw, slick with blood, and something dark and tender twists inside him. He forces a smirk, though it hides his emotional turmoil, it’s genuine in its dark affection for her, ❛ You are a thing of absolute nightmares, darling, but you are the woman of my most delightful dreams. ❜

[amlao]

Day 292 of Being Single for the First Second Time in My Adult Life

I’ve compared every connection for so long.

With Logan, our early interactions felt sexy and dangerous. I was so drawn in, but there was arguing, there were red flags, and I was dodging feeling threatened and coerced. Everything felt so intense and memorable because my senses were heightened to scope out the darkness hidden between waves of his affection.

I met him in an era where I had so much pent-up aggression. I wanted to wage a war, and I waged one on everything plaguing our relationship.

I remember the sinking feeling of knowing he wasn’t over Alice, and instead of recognizing it as the red flag it was, it energized me to make me want to prove my love and devotion to him.

I was IN LOVE and I wanted to FIGHT and I wanted to MAKE EVERYTHING BETTER even if it KILLED ME.

But there is no comparison here.

It’s as passionate as it is effortless, and it is both objectively easier and objectively more passionate.

There’s no threat, there’s no power struggle. There are no demands for me to prove I want to be with him. There doesn’t have to be. He reads between the lines of me being guarded and I can tell that he knows I adore him.

Shawn says things to me, and he doesn’t even know me well enough yet to understand how insanely perfect they are.

He’s confident, he’s self-assured, he’s transparent and peaceful and patient.

He knows he’s attractive and desirable, but makes it abundantly clear that what he feels for me is unrivaled. What a breath of fresh air from someone with severe body image issues whose need for external validation is an endless sucking chest wound.

He is SO quick and witty without a inkling of condensation.

The chemistry is palpable without a semblance of toxicity.

Having someone who is such a good communicator instantly puts me in a mode to strive to be better. Playing mind games isn’t an option when someone is so clear and deliberate about their wants, needs, and intentions.

Every moment with him makes me look back at previous relationships with men and feel appalled that I ever entertained anything less.

It almost feels silly to me that I placed so much overwhelming significance on someone, just because they kind of got me and we had decent chemistry when the relationship wasn’t explosively toxic. Like…that was the bar for four years of longing?

The last time I looked back at the chat, I saw my younger self try to communicate with Logan that I didn’t like jokes about him not loving me as much as I love him, and he responded with, ‘I guess I just shouldn’t joke with you at all. You’ve made me feel like a horrible person.’ And like, LOL what a classic idiot man move. If a guy ever attempted to come at me with that energy with me now, I’d tell him to take a fucking hike.

“You will find a love that dwarfs this love and you will be so happy that you chose Later You,”

I’ve been telling myself this for so long, but I finally believe it now.

[sith-shenanigans]

Next, the styles of the players.

They’re out of any semblance of order, for some reason—not the order you recruit them to play, not the order you bribe/threaten/??? them into giving you information, not the order they eventually play in. I suppose it must be seating order. But I’m rearranging them slightly, to satisfy my esoteric desires. The original order was Fiacre, Manager, Virginia, Pages, Monkey, Topsy King.

This bit is very nice despite being optional; it gives the whole thing much more of a sense of ongoing play.

The stat checks are also fairly high—I’m pretty sure my base Watchful was already 200 here, plus 50-60 from gear. It’s immediately clear that this is the beginning of the endgame.

“As though they might abandon the table of their own volition” just makes me glad we’re not playing in Polythreme. And also, I have a very vague idea for a fanfic plot now.

I’m convinced that the Marvellous is some sort of unholy combination of poker, Magic: the Gathering, and that one party game where the cards you play change the rules.

I enjoy Tristram so much. His writing is so hit-or-miss, but the good bits… ough. The fact that he seems a bit more scared and vulnerable away from the Flit, the place that respects him whether he’s in possession of his mind or not. The fact that he’s a dangerous player even when he’s visibly thrown off. Later, if the PC faces him (which Amias will), you don’t actually beat him on your own merits—the checks determine how well you’re doing, but you always make the agreement.

I’m not inclined to say that that means the PC couldn’t have won “honestly,” I tend to be skeptical of analysis that chalks a PC’s ability up to plot armor—even (or especially?) in a game like Fallen London, where the PC is clearly deliberately written as a larger-than-life figure—but I think it means it would have come down to luck in a way that doesn’t suit the plot.

(Thank you, FBG, for not supplying routes that let us potentially have to redo 80% of the ambition, I know people would take them and it would be a terrible mess for everyone.)

Virginia is the anti-Fiacre. I don’t have that much to say about how she plays, but I read a fairly convincing argument on the Discord that the Marvellous deck knows that what she would ask for is based on a lie, and so luck is quite literally against her because she doesn’t have a valid desire.

I don’t think that’s the intent—as far as I know, this text doesn’t change if her ex actually is loose—but I like the interpretation that the Marvellous works that way, so I’m willing to subscribe to the idea that it’s true when it’s true and not when it’s not, even if both routes have the same result.

I don’t usually analyze media that way, in most cases I find it a much less interesting explanation, but I think the FL setting lends itself well to that kind of “the event is the same but the reason depends on player choice” explanation.

I think it’s interesting that Pages plays the other players. It’s definitely a good player, but since this is the only time we see it play a full game (rather than a two-hand fiasco), we get the impression that it’s more dangerous in a game like the Honour than one-on-one. And a good look at its competence in playing the other players. No, it rarely gets other people as people, but a zero-sum competition where all that matters is benefit and loss? That’s its element.

Which I think points to why the Ministry of Public Decency is so much of a presence—they seem to be doing an outsize amount of the Neath’s law enforcement, maybe especially in the earlier writing. Like, Pages is… actually one of the most competent and dangerous Masters, I think, even if it’s also a wet cat of a bat that hides in attics when it doesn’t want to do its job. It’s in charge of propaganda for a reason! It’s good at controlling and influencing people! It might not be able to tell when someone lies to its face, but it can pick up on behavior very well. Because it’s a giant spaceborne predator and actually pays attention.

I do wonder if we’re supposed to read that it’s not really trying to sabotage us that way. A second-person narrator can’t fade into general groupiness the way a third-person narrator can. And you’re not mentioned as being affected, so…

This is it. The Honour begins. As usual, below the cut are spoilers for Heart’s Desire. This one will probably be a long one—I’ll probably have to spread it across multiple posts. (I don’t know when this turned into me just liveblogging the ambition, but I like having it all in one place like this. I enjoy rereading my own playthrough.)

I don’t think Amias likes Arbor very much. Which felt odd, at first—they like Parabola in general just fine, in a “not my actual wheelhouse” sort of way—but I think I just put my finger on why. Arbor isn’t dangerous enough. Everything is roses and smiles and false utopia where the lower classes literally can’t see the world their “betters” live in, and where the upper classes are forbidden from doing anything mildly unpleasant even when it would improve their quality of life in general (getting these snakes out of here). It’s beautiful and dreamy and stagnant. They loved the aesthetics of it—and the novelty of it—when they first visited, but the more they see of it, the more they feel like they would hate living there. And even when they try to enjoy it, that sours the dream.

Done of the Rose! That sounds—

—oh. Okay. Apparently “husks” are a thing here. I have even more concerns about Arbor’s everything, can we back up a step?

It’s very pretty, though. And very full of spectators. Given that Heart’s Desire is a Tournament Arc, I am pleased that at least the opening round has spectators. It seems like the sort of thing that should.

Ohhh, she hates us. Understandably. I love her for it, though. I think she’s going to hate us even more when she inevitably finds out that her ex-Prince ex is still safely sealed away. It’s one thing to be threatened horribly, and it’s another thing to be made a fool of, and I think I know which one devils consider worse.

I wouldn’t have been late if I’d been able to draw Arbor! Don’t blame me, blame the opportunity deck, it’s the desire sensor’s fault.

… I think the Marvellous is the desire sensor. Are we using the opportunity deck to play poker? Is that what we’re doing?

Does the Debauchery of Fourth require excessive drunkenness? I kind of hope it does.

Also, I thought that prevarication was the point of this kind of game.

And, as the little ambition icon says, the game begins.

[smhalltheurlsaretaken]

Hondo Ohnaka has never been a mere comic relief character, and of all the bad takes, what he has been reduced to in Rebels and in the public mind has to be the worst offender.

This is Hondo’s introduction. It’s unsettling. It’s off-putting. It’s intimidating, almost.

In the midst of brawling, stupid pirates, Hondo is immovable, steady, and calmly playing with a mask presumably plundered from Dooku’s ship (which has to be relevant symbolically - Hondo’s true self is hidden away under layers and layers of dramatic antics, and even physical goggles obscuring his eyes, the window to the soul, and very thick skin making his expressions harder to read. Everything he says or does is a performance for the benefit of whoever he’s talking to, in the sole goal of making a profit). From moment one, he’s set apart as different - as someone not driven by his emotions, and very self-assured. Someone not to be messed with.

Dooku’s height generally makes him the intimidating one in any interaction, but Hondo’s refusal to be impressed - and the way his goons immediately flock around him when he starts talking to Dooku - sets the audience on edge. 

Who is this guy - who just refused to answer Dooku’s question, who just asked Dooku who he was - and how powerful is he, to be so at ease? Dooku has mopped the floor with Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker, why is some weird scavenger presented as any sort of threat?

Hondo goes on to immediately reveals his two foremost characteristics: his shrewdness, and his greed. (His third most significant trait being his gigantic balls.) Hondo immediately fishes for information while circling Dooku like a shark, and that information of course has to do with profit. (“Your solar sailor is very beautiful. It’s a pretty rare ship, very expensive. ...What are you doing all the way out here?”) He tries to confirm what he suspects while never directly voicing his own intentions but dropping hints => shrewdness. His mind immediately goes to money => greed. He asserts his dominance by letting his monkey lizard climb on Dooku => gigantic balls. If we’ve seen the whole episode already, then we know Hondo is aware of Dooku is (since he later confidently identifies him as the leader of the Separatists even without Dooku saying who he is), which means he’s deliberately toying with him, which is all the more troubling when you realize it works. Dooku has to play along because he doesn’t know how much of a threat this new variable might be, and Hondo gets to keep the upper hand because of it. 

Then, the show further establishes that Hondo is not just ‘some guy.’ 

See this? His men - the undisciplined, brawling scrapers - put themselves at attention without a single word or gesture from Hondo. From his clothes to his hat (=crown) in a sea of mostly bare-headed men and women in simple tunics, everything about him screams ‘pirate king’ or ‘crime lord.’ Hondo throws the mask away, showing that he’s not interested in trifles. He’s here for some serious business.

Which is why he immediately puts on the act and goes into that goofier side we expect of him when we’re familiar with the character. They need to ‘settle his fee.’ Just a ‘little something to cover his expanses.’ Dooku is ‘so obviously wealthy’ (again fishing for confirmation, baiting Dooku). He makes himself look far less threatening - on purpose. By putting his (very real) greed on show, he reassures Dooku about his motives, making Dooku blind to just how far that greed actually goes. Dooku thinks it’ll just be a matter of throwing some money at a foolish, petty crook before crushing him - because by pretending to show his hand prematurely, Hondo is hiding the sheer magnitude of his plans for profit. 

He shows how clever he is again by greeting Dooku with an actual army (with people on the ground and in the fortress - that way, Dooku is completely surrounded and would be taken out by one of the snipers on the walls before he could kill the ground troops). 

He shows how dangerous he is because he managed to pickpocket a freaking Sith Lord. And he didn’t just steal from him - he stole Dooku’s actual lightsabers. Seriously - how?! How did he even manage that?!? Did the lizard steal them or something?

He shows his gigantic balls by again circling Dooku while chatting about his plans, and by being thoroughly unimpressed with Dooku’s attempt to strike fear into his heart. 

He shows how intelligent he is by immediately refusing to let Dooku contact his own side and choosing instead to sell him to the Republic. When he says “you don’t survive in the Outer Rim by being stupid,” we’re meant to take him seriously. 

Finally, he shows that he is entirely motivated by profit. Greed is his most easily exploitable weakness, because while it doesn’t make him stupid, it makes him extremely bold - a good way to get himself burned when playing with Sith fire like he is. Ultimately, Hondo’s plan fails because he captures Anakin and Obi-Wan instead of just honoring his deal with the Republic, hoping to triple his profit - it’s his greed that does him in, not his antics, not his performed goofiness, not his excesses (food, alcohol and women being the biggest offenders) and not his presumed stupidity. 

That’s our introduction to Hondo Ohnaka. 

He goes on to survive - and best - Maul and Savage, he gets traitors to beg for their lives, he makes ‘friends’ with Obi-Wan and profits from most of their encounters, he dated Aurra Sing and was friends with Jango, he tortures Obi-Wan and Anakin for fun, he’s ready to kill children over kyber crystals, he almost sells Ahsoka to an unknown bidder, he kills circus members who bore him, he wants to cut out the tongues of people who betrayed him, he rackets farmers (and again, it’s his greed that does him in, because he could have accepted Obi-Wan’s offer and walked away without issues, but he wants more money), he suffers no consequences for trying to rob a Jedi ship, and almost anyone he’s ever crossed paths with makes the mistake of underestimating him because of the act he puts on.

Hondo is smart, ruthless, cunning, powerful, in control of himself and of his men, and hopelessly in love with money. He can talk his way out of pretty much anything, can talk his victims and enemies into pretty much anything, and ultimately survives time and time again, because he was never a bumbling dumbass.

[plainbrunettelbl]

ABO HC How (A) Todoroki, (A) Bakugo, and (A) Hawks would react to finding the (O) Reader held hostage:

Word count: 3199

Warnings: Cursing, violence, mentions of blood, and assault.   

Title: ABO HC How (A) Todoroki, (A) Bakugo, and (A) Hawks would react to finding the (O) Reader held hostage:

Summary: Your Alpha walks in on you being tied to a chair and he is not happy. 

Prologue: 

You had been a well-kept secret from the public. No one knew that your famous Pro Hero Alpha was courting an Omega or even in a long-standing relationship. Your Alpha was too paranoid about your safety to let any of the news outlets find out about your existence.  

You supposed it would have been beneficial for the public to know now that you were in this situation. Surely if the villains knew they would come across an Omega, resting in their nest, they wouldn't have tried to rob the Pro Hero’s house. 

You put up quite the fight once you smelled unfamiliar Alphas near your nest. One hard knock to your head had you subdued. You didn’t dwell over your quick loss considering one Alpha was nursing his swollen balls. 

You got in one good kick before the painful hit fell on your head. 

Now here you sat, tied to a chair, while the robbers argued with each other and what they should do now.

Shoto: 

🧊🔥-“I told you we should have checked the place out before we robbed it! I would have never tried to rob the place if I had known a freaking Omega was here!” The brunette Alpha growled, glaring at his blond friend. 

🧊🔥-“What’s the big deal? So what if the little icy-hot freak has a girlfriend? We will be out of here before he even comes home.” The blond scoffs, shoving expensive silverware and china into his black bag. 

🧊🔥-“You should know how Alpha’s get around their Omegas! He is gonna hunt us down! I don’t want a Pro Hero on my ass.” The brunette seethed, glaring at the goose egg on your head. “Especially since you decided to hit the poor thing! We will be lucky if he doesn’t skin us alive!”

🧊🔥-“The bitch hit me in the balls! Of course, I thumped her one on the head, serves the Omega slut right!” The blonde huffed, sick of hearing his partner complain instead of ransacking the place. 

🧊🔥-“Mmh.” You mumbled, your eyes blinking open to a fuzzy view. 

🧊🔥-“Fucking shit! They’re waking up! I’m not dealing with a weepy Omega.” The brunette cursed, going into Shoto’s office to avoid the whole situation altogether. 

🧊🔥-“Well, if it isn’t Miss nut-cracker.” The blond chuckled darkly, walking over to your tied up frame.

🧊🔥-You didn’t back down and just glared at the dumb fool. 

🧊🔥-“Aren’t too smart, are you? What type of shitty criminal robs a Pro Hero? Dumb ones, that’s what.” You spit, narrowing your blurry eyes at him. 

🧊🔥-No doubt you would need to go to the doctor after this whole ordeal. Not like you would have a choice. You were sure even if they didn’t lay a hand on you that Shoto would have insisted on one. 

🧊🔥-“You dumb little bitch!” The blond lifted his ring covered hand to hit you again. You tried not to flinch as it came down to strike you. 

🧊🔥-The brunette stood in the office doorway, his bag filled with expensive clocks and other expensive desk items. 

🧊🔥-“I got everything in the office. Did you...” The brunette didn’t get to finish his sentence. 

🧊🔥-The front door was busted open. Shoto had smelled two Alphas on the other side of the door and he was not pleased. He was even less pleased when the door slammed open to reveal his battered Omega tied to a chair. 

🧊🔥-His mismatched eyes turned dark. The temperature in the room both dropped and elevated at the same time. His tired body was instantly filled with murderous intent. 

🧊🔥-A loud growl shook the room. 

🧊🔥-How DARE they lay a hand on their Omega! His vision tinted red and his fangs dropped. 

🧊🔥-“This will only take a minute, Y/N. I’ll take out this trash.” He calmly said, his tone was so cold you felt yourself shiver even knowing his silent rage wasn’t directed at you.

🧊🔥-“Yes, Alpha.” You responded, making sure voice quivered a little. You may have been glaring right back at the intruders before he came but you wanted them to suffer so you played the scared Omega role. 

🧊🔥-They lost your sympathy as soon as they pulled you from your nest. 

🧊🔥-The robbers, who were frozen in fear by the intimidating Alpha’s entrance, shuffled into action. 

🧊🔥-The brunette was quick to give his partner up. “He hit her, not me!” He said, before running down the hall, looking for a way to escape. 

🧊🔥-“You fucking asshole!” The blonde shouted, trying to run out of the room as well. 

🧊🔥-He didn’t get far, ice trapped his feet and his lower body soon followed. Shoto made sure to form it in a way that sharp icicles tore at his skin if he so much as moved half an inch. 

🧊🔥-He wanted to shoot an icicle into his leg for good measure but he didn’t feel like cleaning up blood off his floor. He wished to burn the skin off his bone but you had forbidden him from using fire in the house. 

🧊🔥-He had accidentally caught one of your favorite blankets on fire and was banned for life. 

🧊🔥-“We didn’t know she was here! If we had known we wouldn’t have come!” The blond groveled, panicked at the feral look in Shoto’s eyes. 

🧊🔥-“You could have left after you saw my Omega was here, but you stayed and decided to hit her too. You should be lucky I didn’t just kill you on the spot.” He growled, cutting the blond’s cheek just a bit with an ice shard. 

🧊🔥-The blond just whimpered and passed out. Shoto was quick to hunt down the other and give him the same treatment. He had made it out of the house so he was pleased to release his burning anger out on him. 

🧊🔥-Once they were out of the way, Shoto ran to your side and burning away the binds holding you down. 

🧊🔥-“Are you okay, my Dove?” His voice was soft, his cold hand going up to your head and trying to soothe the aching bump. 

🧊🔥-“Yes, I’m just a little dizzy. Everything’s a little fuzzy right now.” You leaned into his gentle touch. 

🧊🔥-“I’ll call someone to deal with those two. Let’s get you to the hospital, my Dove.” He hurriedly lifted you and carried you to his car. He treated you like glass when he sat you down in the passenger seat. 

🧊🔥-You leaned your head against the cold window as he dashed around to the driver’s side. Your head hurt too much to look out the window so you kept your eyes closed. 

🧊🔥-Your Alpha made sure you didn’t accidentally slip asleep. 

🧊🔥-You let out a small whine when a thought crossed your mind. 

🧊🔥-“Alpha my nest is gonna smell like them.” You sniffed, opening your teary eyes to look at him. 

🧊🔥-Shoto’s hands went white on the wheel, his face contorted into a snarl. He couldn’t wait to visit them again at the station. He had friends there that wouldn’t hesitate to turn a blind eye. 

🧊🔥-His anger instantly simmered when his eyes met your glassy ones. 

🧊🔥-“Don’t worry, Little Dove. I’ll buy you more. We can even go shopping at that blanket store you like so much.” He assured, taking one hand off the wheel and clasping it in yours. 

🧊🔥-Your eyes lit up. “Really! It’s kinda expensive though, I don’t need new ones. I am sure we can find some nice second-hand ones.” You squeezed his hand, bring it up to your lips to place a kiss on it. 

🧊🔥-Your exhausted brain choosing to ignore the specks of blood on his hand. 

🧊🔥-“My Dove, what have I said about me spending money on you?” He gently reprimanded, his eyes still soft. 

🧊🔥-“Accept it and say thank you.” You repeated without delay. 

🧊🔥-“Exactly, I won’t hear any more about it.” He ended the discussion, his eyes focusing back on the road while his hand remained in your grasp. 

🧊🔥-If your head wasn’t killing you, you would have been bouncing in your seat. “I can’t wait! They are coming out with some pretty fall blankets soon! Oooh! We have to get some cute Halloween ones too!” 

🧊🔥-“Anything you want.”

Bakugo:

💥-“Why did you have to hit them!? Ground Zero is gonna come after us now!” The brunette cried, desperately holding ice to your head in hopes that the bump on it would go away. 

💥-“Shut up! Get back to robbing the damn place instead of taking care of the freaking Omega.” The blond hissed, throwing a plate at the panicked Alpha. 

💥-You sat back in the chair not knowing how to process the situation. You knew dating a Pro Hero was dangerous but you thought villains would be your main concern, not petty burglars. 

💥-“If you leave now and don’t take anything, I’ll tell him I tripped and fell.” You wouldn’t, but they didn’t know that. 

💥-“See! Let’s just leave. We can go rob some other place.” The brunette pleaded, already trying to untie you. 

💥-The Omega in you wanted to feel bad for the whining Alpha but then you remembered he messed up your nest when he dragged you out of it. You Omega was fuming. 

💥-I just got the nest just right! She huffed, pacing around in your head.  

💥-She didn’t seem threatened by the Alphas in the room. She knew her Alpha was coming home any minute and he would take care of them. 

💥-You, on the other hand, was slightly panicking now that the situation sunk in. Katsuki was gonna rip them to shreds. You Omega was already smugly licking her paws at the image, while you shuddered at the thought. 

💥-“You should go. I don’t want to be mopping up your blood all night.” You urged, looking anxiously at the door. 

💥-“See! We need to go!” The brunette cried, trying to tug his friend towards the door. 

💥-“Shut up! We can leave once we get everything valuable.” The blonde growled, shoving off his partner. 

💥-The jiggle of keys at the door made everyone in the room stop and hold their breath. The doorknob turned and the door was pushed open. You looked at the chair you were tied to, the robbers, and back at the door. 

💥-There was no way to play off the situational. I don’t want to be mopping up blood. You whined, praying your Alpha wasn’t going to go too berserk.  

💥-“Hey, Spit-fire! I got us, your favorite curry you were wanting. I made sure to get it extra spicy.” He walked in carrying a bag of takeout. 

💥-He paused in the doorway once he got a whiff of unfamiliar Alphas in the house. His ruby eyes viewed the scene before him. He growled at the sight of the two Alphas. 

💥-From your point of view, his eyes didn’t look red anymore with how big his pupils dilated at the presence of Alphas near his Omega. His hand instantly dropped the food to the floor. 

💥-The sound of the bag hitting the floor heightened the tension. 

💥-His fangs instantly dropped when his nose picked up a faint coppery smell, his eyes zeroed in on the small trail of blood on your head. The growl that ripped through his chest shook the room. 

💥-“Alpha, please, no blood in the house.” You pleaded, shifting against the ties holding you in place. 

💥-“No promises, Omega.” His voice was so dark that you didn’t even recognize it. 

💥-“The brunette didn’t hit me. He even tried to ice it. Go easy on him.” You said, knowing his control was waning. 

💥-The veins on his neck looked ready to pop, his arms straining to hold themselves still and not plummet the Alphas standing before him. He eyed the patio door that was pushed open, most likely where they entered in from. 

💥-That would solve the blood problem. 

💥-He grinned viciously, “How about we take this outside?”

💥-He rushed the two Alphas, grabbing them by the backs of their necks and throwing them out of the house and over the balcony. He laughed darkly as he followed them, jumping from the balcony. 

💥-You wiggled free from your restraints and made your way to the front door, you picked up the takeout bag and brought it to the kitchen. 

💥-“Suki will be hungry after beating those two up.” You hummed, making him a plate and then making yourself one. 

***

💥-“Is the water too hot?” His voice was raspy from all the yelling he did earlier. 

💥-You sat with your back leaning against his chest in the bathtub. The warm water and the heat of your Alpha calmed your stressed body. Being tied to a chair was as comfortable as it looked. 

💥-“It’s fine, Alpha.” You hummed, delicately washing his bruised and bloody hands. 

💥-“I’m sorry, I wasn’t here sooner Omega.” You smelled a hint of sadness in his scent. 

💥-“Don’t worry, Alpha. I knew you were coming. I wasn’t scared one bit.” You reassured, bringing his hand up and planting delicate kisses on it. 

💥-“My strong Omega,” he purred, nuzzling his nose into your hair. He flinched when he picked up the faint smell of another Alpha. He snapped up the bottle of shampoo and poured half the bottle on your head. 

💥-“Got to get this disgusting scent off you, Omega.” He growled, gently scrubbing your scalp. 

💥-“Alpha! That shampoo is fifty bucks!” You gasped, picking up the half-empty bottle. 

💥-“I’ll buy you another one.” He assured, rinsing of the soapy suds and giving your head another sniff. 

💥-“Much better.” He hummed, pulling you tighter against his chest. 

Hawks: 

🍗-“You shouldn’t be here.” You whimpered, trying to curl in on yourself, the ties preventing you from doing so. 

🍗-“Why the fuck did you have to hit them? You know I can’t handle weeping Omegas, my Alpha hates it.” The brunette growled, trying to awkwardly pat your arm. 

🍗-You winced away from his touch, another Alphas touch was too repulsive. You felt your skin crawl as his fingers grazed your arm. The thump on your head making you more nauseous than you already were. 

🍗-“So what if your Alpha is a pussy. Unlike you mine enjoys their cries.” The blond smiled at the tears dripping down your face. “The bitch deserved it anyways.”  

🍗-“Whatever.” The brunette scoffed, rolling his eyes and going back to robbing the place. 

🍗-“You guy’s really shouldn’t be here...” You tried to warm them but you were too late. The door creaked open, your heart warming and racing at the sound. You knew it would be a bloodbath once Kei realized what was going on. 

🍗-“Baby bird! I hope you are already in comfortable clothes, I’m ready to cuddle in our nest.” His soothing voice causing you to relax in the chair. 

🍗-“Alpha.” You cried, your head still throbbing. 

🍗-The silence was enough to tell you he spotted the two Alphas in the room. 

🍗-“Omega.” He growled, his eyes bleeding red, the sight of blood trailing down your head sent him into a frenzy. 

🍗-His wings puffed out, the room suddenly flooded with crimson feathers. You felt two feathers sailing your way and cutting the bonds holding you. You swiped them up in your grip and clutched them to your chest. 

🍗-The soft texture of them calming you down some. 

🍗-A feral roar sounded throughout the room. You ignored the harsh thumps coming from behind you, the sound of one of the robber’s heads getting bashed into your kitchen counter made you wince. 

🍗-You wanted to get up and get away from everything but your body was in shock and it wouldn’t let you do anything but clutch the crimson feathers to your chest. Your other hand was rested on your stomach. 

🍗-You tried to warn them. Nothing was more dangerous than someone harming a pregnant Alphas mate. You were still pretty early along so they might not have been able to smell it in your scent. 

🍗-You Alpha was sure able to, the instant he got a small whiff of it he was chirping happily against your stomach. You had a hard time getting out of his ruby wings that day. 

🍗-“You DARE harm my mate and chick!” You felt the pure rage behind his words. 

🍗-The blond was already passed out on the floor, his front teeth knocked out. The brunette was about to pass out with him, your Alpha choking him with his shirt. He made sure to use his feather to cut up his arms and face. 

🍗-His wings behind him puffing up and flapping angrily.

🍗-“Didn’t know...” The brunette slurred, his head bashed in as much as his friend’s head. 

🍗-If they wanted to hit his Omega on the head then he was all too pleased to return the favor. The brunette finally succumbed to his injures and blood loss, he went slack in Kei’s hands. 

🍗-Kei dropped him to the grown without care. 

🍗-“Pathetic.” He hissed.  

🍗-His head snapped up in your direction once he heard your tiny sniffles. He was at your side in an instant. 

🍗-“Oh, baby bird.” He cooed, lifting you from the chair and wrapping his arms and wings around you. 

🍗-“Alpha, I told them to leave.” You whined, snuggling into his chest. 

🍗-“I know, baby bird.” He soothed, breathing in your scent, checking on the baby chick in your belly. They seemed well. He was still gonna fly you to the hospital. He made his way to the balcony outside and spread his wings, without a second thought he jumped. 

***

🍗-“Don’t worry, Omega. I already ordered some new blankets. They should be here by tomorrow. I hope you don’t mind the guest bedroom for now.” He hummed, he was curled around your balled up form. 

🍗-You didn’t even build the nest surrounding you, Kei delicately dropped you down on the bed and instantly began building the nest. He would angrily chirp if you so much as lifted a finger.   

🍗-Everything was fine with you and the pup, or chick as Kei liked to call them. As soon as you arrived home Kei refused to leave your side or let you out of his sight. 

🍗-You were not to roll over on your side without his permission. 

🍗-“Thank you, Alpha.” You thanked, nuzzling your head into one of his soft wings. 

🍗-“I also called a security company, they will be here to set up a new system tomorrow.” He informed, nuzzling into your hair. 

🍗-One of his hands was tangled in your hair and the other was snugly cupping your stomach. 

🍗-“No more Alphas in the house.” You sniffled, shaking your head. 

🍗-“Of course, baby bird. I told them, beta’s only.” He reassured, kissing your head. 

🍗-“I love you, Alpha.” You whispered, almost lulled to sleep. 

🍗-“I love you, too baby bird.”  

First HC I have done in a while, also the first time writing for Hawks! What did you think of him? I hope you enjoyed it! Please be sure to leave a comment and like! I really enjoy hearing your reactions. 💕

[ddarker-dreams]

Yan Diluc, Childe, and Venti HCs.

i’ve been into genshin impact the past month so it was just inevitable at this point

Diluc:

Diluc’s descent into obsession would be a slow one, characterized by doubt and distancing. He’s journeyed the world, exploring the darkest corners, coming out a different person for it. Change doesn’t always mean improvement. Underneath a carefully crafted façade of composure, is the fear that he’ll lose you too. 

His mind becomes a battleground, logic versus emotion. Diluc is aware of what his impulses mean, that it’s immoral, and how he shouldn’t entertain them any longer. Entangling himself in a romantic relationship would serve no practical purpose. He tells himself this, unable to look away when you’re in the room. His thoughts don’t align with his actions. 

Diluc is mindful of his actions and surveillance of you. He can’t get too close -- not yet -- while there are still people who’d seek to hurt him by any means necessary. So for now, he contents himself in making small but meaningful contributions to your life. 

Not one to flaunt his wealth openly, Diluc would be surprised how much of a crutch it becomes in his pursuit of you. Mysterious gifts from an unknown admirer become the norm in your life. He’s displeased with himself at first, but being as inexperienced in courting as he is, it feels like a good place to start.

Your interactions are curt yet pleasant. When Diluc isn’t working, he tends to avoid people but is always open to discussion with you. He allows you to carry the conversation, asking open-ended questions with the hopes of learning more. Any troubles in your life that you share with Diluc will seemingly disappear overnight. 

The only time he’d ever take drastic action is if you were somehow in danger. That’d be a tipping point, one he’d never bounce back from, crazed at the idea of you being harmed. What he ultimately will depend on you. Should you welcome Diluc into your life, under the guise of keeping you safe, all will seem well on a surface level. 

It’s when you refuse the limitations he “suggests” following your life-threatening encounter, that Diluc changes his methodology. He’ll explain, in a calm voice, that your physical well-being will come before your happiness.  

Childe:

Childe, while not malicious for the sake of it, has shown he’s willing to accomplish his morally ambiguous goals by any means. This means that nothing in the pursuit of winning you over his off the table. Bribing, intimidation, kidnapping; whatever it takes is his motto. 

He’ll initiate a give and take relationship to ensnare you. The phrase “too good to be true”, is evident with Childe. You don’t meet the standards for a loan with the bank? Oh, you poor thing, leave it all to him; he promises to take care of everything. Childe disguises himself as your savior when in reality, he’s anything but altruistic. There comes a time where the debt will be repaid. 

It won’t come down crashing down at you at once. No, it’ll be a slow yet steady plan to trap you, and an effective one. Childe will hint at suggestions on how to keep him on your good side. That he’s done oh so much for you, more than anyone else would. Why not give him a chance? 

If you deny him what he wants outright, you won’t see the consequences immediately. Childe will sigh, muttering something about how unfortunate your decision is, but that he thinks he can change your mind eventually. All said with a tight-lipped smile. 

That’s when you feel the ripples in the water. Any business that you’re associated with will be met with fierce competition from the Fatui, rendering them obsolete. This extends to your family as well, financial pressure unrelenting from all sides, a clear agitator in your mind. 

You know it’s Childe. He knows that you know. And god, if he doesn’t love every second of it, watching how you’re forced to come crawling back to him. Or maybe he’ll pay you a visit, under the pretense of checking in. Whatever the case may be, you’re presented with a single out. Devote your life to him as he has his to yours. 

Childe promises you, that all will be forgiven, that he’s willing to put it in the past. So don’t look at him like that, he is being more generous with you than he would be anyone else. Don’t test that benevolence any longer. Giving yourself to him isn’t an unreasonable request, he assures. 

Venti: 

Venti isn’t held back by rules and obligations like most. He does what interests him, whether it be traveling or recounting legends to captivated crowds. Trivial matters, or more precisely, human matters such as love were never given credence. This leads him to be unsure of his approach to you. 

He plays it as naturally as he can. Venti makes random appearances in your life, popping up at the most opportune times, intent on seeking out your company. Even if you’re busy, he’ll still be by to chat you up. There’s no ridding yourself of him. Venti is everywhere you are. 

You might be left with the impression that he knows more than he lets on. That beneath the carefree smiles and singing, there’s ancient wisdom being drawn from. Venti knows a little too much -- more than any man could -- and doesn’t seem to care much that you pick up on it. If anything, he hopes that it’ll impress you. 

Venti believes that the winds will lead you to him. Even if it’s just for a moment, he omits the knowledge of how immoral this is from his mind, guiding you on a path with a single destination. Venti reassures himself that such minor interference on his behalf is trivial. 

Venti’s surprised by much he enjoys physical contact. Even if it’s just resting his head against your shoulder, it’s thrilling, unlike anything he’s experienced before. He has numerous methods of getting information on you, but none can compete with the pleasure of close physical proximity. He’s very touchy, shrugging it off should you ever point it out.

When he can no longer suppress his obsession with you, it bleeds into every aspect of his life. Venti’s lyrics and ballads will consist solely of love stories, a stark change in tone from his normal adventure-based narratives. Some might gather that the young bard himself fell in love by how personal the stories sound. 

One thing’s for certain, Venti will remain ever-present in your life, no matter what measures you take. Mondstadt and beyond, the winds will always bring you back to him. He’s more than happy to remind you of this with a thrilled tone. That it’ll be far less painful should you cave to his whims. 

[ayamturd]

end│dreamwastaken

summary: dream was once your everything that you would do anything for; what happens when you finally confront the reality of his manipulation and sadistic destruction?

prompt: “we’re both at fault here, and now we both have to pay the price.” 

warnings: descriptive manipulation, a single curse word, angst

pairing: in-game c!dream

a/n: this is my entry for @sleepysoupi​‘s 1.8k event! it goes without saying how late i am considering she’s currently working on her 2.0k event, but still a huge congratulatory to her amazing success and obvious, well deserved recognition <33 we love soupi in this household, nothing less of the fact *^*

also i know the prison doesn’t work exactly like how i wrote it, but let’s pretend for the sake of this fic

wc: (1.6k) - m.list

“Don’t do this, y/n.”

The air was sticky and heavy. As the lava bubbled behind you, it felt as if the heat could reach out and smother you entirely; the subtle warmth that felt insufferably suffocating in the tight space was a large contrast to the dark, opaque walls. 

Although you stood in front of him by your own desire, habits quickly fell to place as he stood proudly above you. Chin raised, Dream’s shoulders were relaxed while he spoke to you. His words were firm, and with clenched fists, you swallowed harshly from his mocking tone. 

You could practically hear his condescending grin without looking in how belittling he addressed you, and you hated how familiar the speech was. 

“After all I’ve done for you, and you want to throw it all away?”

Despite all attempts, you unconsciously bowed your head down. Whether in unjustified guilt or the internal rage from his lies, you couldn’t say yourself. He noticed nonetheless, and played into your vulnerability further. 

He was the one defenseless in this scenario, yet he held all the power in the small cage between the two of you. 

“We made promises! ‘Till the very end, right?!” He began to raise his voice and feigned some form of heartbreak, taking a step dangerously closer to you while you stood there in frozen fear.

Staring harshly down at your feet, the weight of gravity pulled at your tears as they trickled down sparsely. This was different than when you originally confronted him mere hours ago. Here, you were alone and with no backing, no one to reassure you that you did the right thing. That he was a monster that had you blinded for so long.

That you were justified for betraying Dream. 

“Don’t play stupid with me now. You can’t act like I did this all alone. That I’m not the only sick fuck in the room who enjoys the-”

“Stop it,” you whispered with closed eyes. While your voice was small, it echoed so loudly and threw Dream off guard. He shook his head and with a dark chuckle, sneered disparagingly. 

“You really th-”

Your eyes opened as you unexpectedly interrupted him.

“No. For once in my life, I mean it. Shut your egotistical mouth for one goddamn second.”

Everything was in a frozen stand still as you snapped. 

Course tears ran steadily down your cheeks, yet your eyes held more strength than Dream could had ever perceived in that moment. It had been so long since you had lost your voice. Lost your confidence, your fire that drew him in in the first place. It had been so long since you felt like yourself again, the person you once were before he teared you down completely to his mercy. 

You swallowed sternly in exposed anxiety; when was the last time you saw his face like this? Saw his face at all, at that. 

The molten lava radiated the room, it being the main source of light in contrast to the faint glow of the lanterns built into the walls. When you had originally requested to see him one final time before he was officially locked away for good, you had no idea what you expected to see. You didn’t see anything, actually, since you couldn’t bring yourself to try and meet his eye line the entire time. 

Until now. 

As the magma shaded the room in a warm shine, his dull eyes gleamed a faded hue of ash green. His dirty blond hair was visible without his signature hoodie, his previous clothes stripped away and replaced with an attired uniform instead. He hid behind a mask for so long, it was surreal to see him as something so mundane and human.

Your mouth felt so dry from seeing him again. He almost looked like when you first laid eyes on him, that beautiful day when you thought you had fallen in love. How nice the sun felt, and how crisp the wind blew. The summer day was fresh and the sweet smell of honey pervaded the air. To think it was by mere chance he approached you in the white flower field, hidden in the depths of the forest with a charming smile and gentle hand.

How cruel reality liked to play with you and give you false hope that such love could truly exist. 

The memory brought a smoldering rage that made your heart race in return. Back straight, you dared a step towards him with a quiet, yet firm declaration. 

“I’m done making excuses for your lies. For your actions, for the hurt you cause, for you.”

Dream could barely register your words as you continued in growing fury. It was like the floodgates were open and you felt free to speak your truth. 

You were riding this new found wave and would hold nothing back anymore. 

“I let you get away with so much because I truly believed that I loved you. That my love could fix you, or change what you are.”

You stepped forward again, your finger shakily pointed at him. His mouth opened to respond but you spoke before he could try. You weren’t going to give him anything, you thought, he doesn’t deserve your silence.

“I went against everything I believed!” you suddenly yelled, “everything I stood for, everything I thought because of you!”

Your vision was a blur as your raw emotions came loose. You screamed from the top of your lungs to the point where your voice cracked with a head lifted high. 

“I let people get hurt! People I love and care for because I prioritized you over everything I had!”

Another step forward, your voice shook with quivered lips as a result of an ached and long scorned heart.

“To think I used to be so proud to say it, to say you were my everything and my world.” With a trembled exhale, you gathered yourself before finishing your thought. “Maybe I am stupid, but trust me when I say my ignorance was your freedom and my considered love a blind devotion.”

Dream’s face softened considerably, for he was at a loss for words and didn’t have anything to probe at anymore. It was his turn to suffer in a lost acceptance.

“I…”

Shaking your head, you scoffed with your head tilted in disbelief. Smiling darkly, you knew then and there you regained the power of the room and your self-assurance over him. How the turn tables.

“Funny how things change when you have no where to run. When you’re the one helpless and reliant.”

Standing strong with your arms crossed, you stared at him with such distaste. Dream’s brows furrowed with a clench jaw as he stepped even closer to you. He was now mere inches away and glared down at you from his given height. Even then, you wouldn’t back down any longer.

“I do love you, y/n. Everything I did, I did for us. You can’t leave me like this.” He gazed down with such intensity that your past you would have wanted to say something just to appease him entirely; you weren’t that person anymore, and you wouldn’t let him drag you down more than he already has. 

Dropping yours arms before stepping back, you messaged Sam without wavering your eye contact from him. 

“We’re both at fault here, and now we both have to pay the price of it alone.”

The sounded mechanics from outside the box indicated the lava dropping, signifying the end of your visit. Dream grew agitated at the thought of you leaving and dropped his eyes down in resent, a huge contrast to your relaxed and calm state. 

You moved backwards until your back threatened to be burned by the heat. 

“Here’s to loosing all those attachments you mentioned.”

Dream’s head snapped up from your words, but before he could attempt anything further, the Netherite divider rose and separated you both. The lava parted as you approached the platform, Sam visible from across the entrapping moat. He watched closely in regard to your safety and anything Dream might try with your back currently turned. 

Approaching the stone platform once deemed safe, you turned to face him a final time as the contraption slowly pulled you away. Your chin was raised, and your tears were dry in satisfaction to your found closure.

“You were right,” you affirmed, “we did make promises, and this is our end.”

Bonus:

Tommy had been tormenting Dream for the past few minutes or so, his obnoxious taunts a sign of recovery from all the trauma he had dealt with from his young age. He hid behind his humor, but was strong when confronting his abuser with no uncertainty then. 

“Who do you miss the most?”

Dream paused from fiddling with the leather of the book covers from the simple question. His hand began to curl around the thick material, and he drowned out Tommy’s rambling from behind him.

A familiar scent filled his senses, an old and precious memory uncovered from the oppressed depths of his mind. He pulled the book in hand open to a random, but intentional page, his callous fingers tracing over the stained ink.

He wasn’t an artist, and it easily would have been passed for messy, nonsense doodles, yet the drawing practically burned the paper as a reminder of his failed objectives.

The innocent azure bluets insulted him despite being his own creation.

Dream was done playing into Tommy’s confidence, and spoke lowly as his head turned further away from the boy.

“… I think you should go, Tommy."

[yes-these-obsessions-are-healthy]

One of the Silco scenes I hold close to my heart is where he’s in Marcus’s house and is found to be playing with Ren because it reveals a lot about Silco’s ability to be affable, and possibly also reveals his feelings about fatherhood and the extremely different childhoods that Piltover and Zaun children have.

One of the obvious more indulgent reasons is because, as I stated in another post, he flexed his power and established how threatening he was to Marcus through entirely non-violent means. He doesn’t say or do anything to upset or make Ren uncomfortable except at the very end when he destroys her tower. He speaks completely in metaphor when talking shop with Marcus. He even tries to explain the situation to Ren in G-rated terms (‘Vander’s daughter..she was about your age when he went away on a very long trip.’) And he even makes exaggerated story-telling faces, though a part of me feels he just wants to indulge and ham it up a bit because his audience is young. But he is charming and engaging. He makes Ren privy to the conversation by speaking to her as a way of speaking to Marcus. She is the intermediary, which Silco expertly uses to keep her engaged and present, because what child doesn’t love being spoken TO about important grown up things, not simply ignored? Child psychology, our man is savvy.

It is also Silco’s way of dangling Ren in front of Marcus, as if to say ‘Yeah, she’s involved now. Watch me work.’

To be honest I don’t know how old Ren is. Silco states that Ren was around Vi’s age when he went away, but Vi was clearly a teenager in Part 1, so that is either a mistake in the script OR Silco is shifting Jinx’s circumstances (she was 10) to Vi in a small lie. So Ren could be 10 here. Despite her room looking very nursery-like, given that it’s Piltover and it’s insulated from economic hardship and bullshit, it might simply be that rich Piltover children grow up much slower, they’re babied for longer.

And IF Ren is 8-10, a part of me also wants to interpret Silco talking to Ren like she’s 5 years old to be intentional. He is mirroring her child-like surroundings and the privilege she has of being able to be in such an environment by talking to her like she’s a toddler. Children of Zaun do not have the luxury of living blissfully ignorant and happy, surrounded by toys and soft colors. Any toy with metal fixtures were likely smelted with Zaun labor, the pastels in her room made with dyes that poison the water supply of the Undercity. Even at her young age, she benefits from the exploitation of Zaun.

And if it turns out that Silco’s mention of age is also just a fabrication and Ren is indeed around 6 or so, it doesn’t change the fact that Silco is talking to her like she’s in pre-school. He’s still condescending to her, but in a weird way he’s being genuine about it to keep her out of the loop. No need to scare the kid. It’s less of a hassle to deal with a screaming child. How thoughtful.

But in any case, Silco’s behavior toward Ren is fascinating. His voices and facial expressions feel fluid and natural. His child-friendly side doesn’t come off as forced at all, or something he needs to really dig for, for him to muster up. There are tons of villains that hate kids or have no frame of reference in how to speak or act around them, or they treat them like how *they* were treated growing up. But Silco is pulling out all the stops to come off as a man that is comfortable around kids, wholly competent. Either he is an astounding actor, which I doubt because he can barely stifle little twitches and *looks* that give away how he feels, or this is familiar territory for him. The part of the human brain that recognizes children as “tiny people to handle and treat carefully” certainly isn’t missing from his. It shows he possesses quite a bit of pedagogical finesse, perhaps a bit of that ‘Father’s Brother’ energy that makes kids feel comfortable around him.

(It could also be that Piltover is so safe that stranger danger isn’t something that is taught to kids, OR Ren is age-appropriately naive and simply believed Silco when he told her he and her father were friends and thus let him in. It could be all three.)

Speaking of Silco being child-appropriate, I think him destroying Ren’s tower was his child-appropriate way of conveying to her “I’m bad news, kiddo. Remember that.” It is obviously another way of taunting Marcus by showing him that his dirty cop business has now come home to roost in his own damned house.

Another reason I love it is I know Silco doesn’t care about Pilties, but I feel that narratively speaking, this scene also functions as Silco subtly scolding Marcus for being an irresponsible father. Marcus is working with HIM, a criminal possessing a squeaky clean record because of Marcus’s corruption. He can visit Topside if he wants. He’s not banished to the shadows like some two-bit thug. Marcus thinks he can get lazy with their arrangement or hold out on Silco and not see any consequences? He wants to jeopardize his daughter’s safety like that? Silco hates liars, fence-sitters, and irresponsibility. You take care of the people that trust you. You do not gamble with that trust willy-nilly. Ren trusts her father to not bring anything bad back home, but that’s exactly what he did. Silco’s mere presence in Marcus’s home is him saying: “Newsflash, fucker: You let a snake into your garden years ago. You thought I’d stay in the bushes out of sight? You think I wouldn’t find my way into your house? Think again. I go wherever the fuck I please. What the fuck are you thinking? Do you have any idea how arrogant and stupid you are, playing me like this? You think I wouldn’t hurt your daughter? By my own grace I *choose* not to hurt her now, but I can only speak for myself. Were I any other criminal in the Undercity, you’d be receiving her hand in the mail as a *warning*. You are fortunate I am more dignified than that. Get a goddamn grip before I have one of my boys here personally schedule an early drop-off at the orphanage.”

Maybe I am just riding Dad Silco train very hard, BUT CAN YOU BLAME ME? I would 100% have trusted this man with a child before the Betrayal. You cannot tell me he didn’t babysit or bottlefeed at least one baby belonging to a fellow member of the resistance in his youth! You can’t!!

[yesimwriting]

playing vices

“A/n a blurb bc ive been working on my novel and ive missed writing for Kirigan :))

--

I am a fool that has played into her vices enough to make them addictions. That must have been Kirigan's plan. He knows that I don't agree with his methods. He is also much too aware of the fact that I am beyond attached to him. He plays into that fact often, lulling me to him whenever he feels that my conscious is in danger of driving a wedge between us.

Which is why I have become accustomed to falling asleep while running my fingers along his skin as he whispers things much sweeter than anything he would say while fully awake.

But now it's late and he's not here. I sit up, kicking the comforter off of me slightly. It seems Aleksander has been more and more absent these days. When he's not with me, the odds that he's doing something that hurts people are high. His absence is also starting to make me feel like he's losing interest in me. It would make sense considering the fact that he looked twice at me in any capacity has never seemed logical.

Maybe that's why we've never indicated commitment to each other. I don't know what commitment would be with him. He seems to grand to be considered a 'boyfriend', but there's something more than friendly about how he holds onto me. I've never cared for labels until I started feeling displaced.

"You're still awake."

I press my lips together, trying to seem a little calmer. "Couldn't sleep."

"Troubling thoughts?" The question is more weighted than it should be. Everything with him is. 

“Has anyone ever called you dramatic?” 

His lips quirk upwards, hinting at a smile. Warmth pools in my stomach, the way it always does when he lets me see the slight glimmer of light that’s still in him. Sometimes I think he only shows me this softness when he feels that I may pull away. It may be rooted in manipulative intent, but I know that it’s real. 

“Only you would have the gall,” he says, voice low yet not dark. 

Kirigan’s easiness coaxes a smile from my lips. A small one, but I can feel the way the crack in my tension feeds his confidence. He takes pride in slipping past the walls I only try to create when cautious or irritated. Today I’m both but I need to pretend like I’m neither. The more resistance he senses, the more forward and effective his advances become. 

I keep my expression neutral. I’m sure Alina could get away with calling him that. I wish she was more unlikable. It would be easier to hide my irritation if I could blame that displaced feeling in my chest on two people. But of course Alina is wonderful, beautiful, and his equal.

Whatever. It’s not like we’re really anything. Every time I see him I wait for his betrayal. There’s nothing worth using me for, and somehow that makes me feel worse. He should have never looked at me twice let alone encourage whatever strange relationship we’ve created. 

My silence seems to displease him because he approaches my bedside easily in quick yet patient strides. Now that he’s close enough to touch I feel some of the ice I managed to solidify melt. 

Kirigan lifts a hand and places it on my knee easily. I stiffen instinctually, he runs his thumb over my skin to fight my resistance. “Who’s upset you?” 

I breathe, forcing myself to ease. “No one has.” I don’t have to meet his gaze to know he doesn’t believe me. That’s the core source of our attachment, we can read each other with less than a look. “I’m just getting a headache,” not a full lie, “I’ll feel better after some sleep.” He squeezes my knee slightly, a soft way of asking me for more. “I don’t think I’ll be good company tonight.” 

His hand leaves my knee, fingertips barely grazing my thigh as he moves his hand to hold beneath my chin. I still as he turns my head so that I have no choice but to meet his gaze. “You don’t need to be good company when what I want is your presence.” 

I press my lips together to avoid melting into the promising pools of warmth that make up his irises. He spent all day with Alina, took Zoya’s side in an argument I had with her earlier this week, and now he comes to me late at night. He seems to only want to acknowledge me when we’re alone, and it’s not like I want more than that. I just don’t know how long my heart will be able to teeter the line between nothing and something. I’m a fool for having let it go on this long. 

The only problem is that his steady stare is chasing away all of my rationality. “I’m sure you’ll be able to find someone more in the mood to offer their presence.” 

My curtness leaves something behind his expression dull, the hint of a smile that was growing on him has now vanished. I am met with a stoic disposition I have never had directed at me. 

“They’re not you,” he counters, voice edged by something I don’t understand. 

That’s the point. They’re not me--I’m average. I can’t offer power and my relationship experience is basic at best. I don’t want to have this argument, not when I’m basically fighting for him to let me go when that’s not what I want. 

I’m making it easier. If it hurts this much when I was only on the cusp of something, imagine the pain I’l feel if I let it continue. I turn my head away so that he’s no longer holding my chin. “Not a bad thing.” 

“To me it is.” He doesn’t hesitate, my chest swells. His thumb brushes against my cheek, soft and comforting. “I’m tired,” he says this like it’s a confession. His admission hangs in the air for a long moment, as heavy and weighted as my heart. “If you’re angry, wait until morning.” 

Something in my heart cracks. “I’m not angry.” My gaze drops, my thoughts struggling to come together. “I’ll be nicer to deal with in the morning.” 

“Y/n,” his tone twists from distant to warning, “the last time you asked me to leave was when you discovered something you didn’t like.” 

I almost wince at the way he’s worded it. When I found out what his real plans were, I told myself I had to leave. He skirted past all of my reservations and walls, twisting my doubt away through coddling whispers and shy brushes of fingers.

“This isn’t like that.” Not a lie. 

He exhales slowly, the sound dangerously sharp. “Then what is it?” 

“Why did you come here so late?” The question leaves me too sharply. I’m exposing too much but I can’t help it. “If you don’t want to answer, that’s fine.” My voice is flat. “I’m sure Alina will be happy to fill me in.” I can’t bring myself to take in his reaction. “And if she can’t, I’m sure Zoya will be able to.” 

He’s silent for a long second. “Unwarranted jealousy doesn’t suit you.” 

His confidence sparks something angry within me.  “I am not jealous.” The most blatant lie of the night, but I don’t care. I turn my head to glare at him, “and don’t just tact on ‘unwarranted’ before something that’s true just because it’s easier for it not to be.” 

I watch his expression cautiously until the slightest tilt of his lips adds to my anger. He’s enjoying this or he did this intentionally or both. “Darling,” he hums, voice soft, “you are the only person that makes me feel peace.” 

My stomach flutters, the sensation threatening to break my weak resolve. “I am not particularly powerful,” I breathe, voice stiff, “or particularly...” How do I explain this all to him? “Anything.” He’s everything, and I am nothing but average. “I’m average at best, there’s no reason for you to want anything to do with me, and that’s fine--but don’t lie and pretend that that’s not true.” 

The sentence is barely out fo my mouth before I feel myself pulled towards him by the collar of my nightgown. His lips are on mine before I can question where this is going. I kiss him back too quickly, but any effort I expend is returned fervently.

He pushes me back slightly as quickly as he yanked me forward. He doesn’t explain. I don’t ask him to. I should demand an answer and shove him away from me or pull him back towards me. But I do nothing. I just stare at him as he stares at me. 

When the weight of the silence threatens to break something in me, I force myself to speak, “Kirigan--”

“Aleksander.” The name is soft and so fragile I worry it will shatter in the air before it can fully reach me. “You know there’s much I’m not ready to say, but that,” he exhales, the sound so sad I want to reach for him, “that is the one name I have not given to myself and I want you to have it.” Something conflicted crosses his features. “I would never give that to someone average.” 

Emotion swells in my chest, heavy yet not painful. “Aleksander.” I’m not sure if I’m trying to call to him or if I’m just trying to feel his name--his true name--on my lips. 

His eyes widen, something unbearable behind them. He moves the hand holding the collar of my nightgown to my cheek. I lean into the contact like a fool as his eyes flutter shut. “Say it again.” 

I don’t hesitate, “Aleksander.” I lift my hand, fingers hesitant to find their place on his cheek. “Aleksander.”

He sighs into both the contact and the name. “You’re the first thing I’ve allowed myself to want,” his eyes open, but I cannot bring myself to meet his gaze, “I should make you feel like it.”

Something about the way he says that is sad. “I think that if it’s fair to say you were a little distant, it’s just as fair to say that I was a little jealous.” 

Aleksander smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’m tired,” he admits, “I’ll enjoy my victory in the morning.” 

I roll my eyes, but scoot over to give him a place by my side regardless. “I’m not sure you won, I think it was more of a draw.” 

He takes the space I offer quickly, never letting the contact between us disappear as he settles himself against my pillow. I let him pull me towards him. “This feels like a victory.” 

I try to ignore the warmth in my chest. “You’re lucky I’m tired enough to find that endearing.” 

I relax as his fingers trace shapes I’ll never know about onto my back. “I agree.”��

[delimeful]

(dont) take this the wrong way (5)

warnings: injury, blood mentions, past psychological&emotional&physical abuse, ptsd, sickness

-

Virgil woke up, which was only unsurprising for the few moments it took him to 1. realize that his head was pounding and 2. remember the two very large reasons why.

His eyes flew open, and he found himself half-submerged in a shallow pool of cool water, surrounded by flat ledges of dry rock. The sound of ocean waves lapping against the cliffside echoed around the cavern, which was dimly lit by overhead cracks in the ceiling.

In one of these beams of paltry light, Logan was slumped over on his side, glasses askew. Virgil’s relief at seeing him was instantly overshadowed by terror at what could have happened to the human after Virgil had gone and gotten his skull knocked against rock.

His headache worsened, and he lifted a hand to press against the sore spot, pausing when he found more of those stiff bandage strips wrapped around his head.

The soft sloshing of water seemed to be enough to startle Logan into wakefulness, and the human brightened slightly at the sight of him. “Virgil. It’s good to see you awake. Are you feeling any pain or nausea?”

“What happened?” Virgil replied in lieu of the real answer, which was ‘everything hurts’. “Where are we, I thought we were dead for sure—!”

“Take a few deep breaths,” Logan advised, shuffling closer to the pool and offering a hand. Virgil took it gratefully. “We’re not currently in any danger. I believe we’re at the home of the seal-hybrid mer, if—“

“We’re what?!” Virgil’s voice dropped to a horrified double pitch, his grip on Logan’s hand instantly turning crushing.

“Ow,” Logan said in a pointed monotone. Virgil eased up before his claws could turn the human’s palm into bloody ribbons. “Let me finish, please. I’ve managed to work out a rudimentary method of communication, and as far as I know, we’re not currently at risk.”

“From the giant mer-eating monsters that literally kidnapped us, you mean?”

“Yes, that was the potential risk I was referring to.” Logan pulled Virgil further upright, reaching out with his free hand. “More importantly, you’ve been out for some time. Will you allow me to take a look at your injury?”

Virgil shuffled a little closer, allowing the hand to make contact with him. He had traversed currents of all temperatures, but in chilled still waters like this, Logan’s warmth was more than welcome. “I dunno how that’s more important than our inevitable, rapidly-approaching deaths, but sure, fine. Knock yourself out.”

“I will not? You are already dealing with a likely concussion, I see no reason to double that number.” Logan squinted at him like he was concerned that the head wound had taken a worse toll than he’d thought.

“No, it’s-- it’s just an expression. Don’t actually pass out, or I’ll freak out.”

“Ah,” Logan acknowledged, his hand twitching like he wanted to grab something before returning to carefully peeling the bandages away. “My apologies. Colloquialisms are not my strong suit.”

Virgil blinked back at him, because five syllable words were a little much even when he wasn’t concussed. “No worries?”

Logan continued to gently probe the back of his head. A sharp pang made him jerk away with a muted hiss, his vision blurring with pain as the sharp motion only agitated all his other cuts. He waved off Logan’s apology before it was fully formed. “S’fine. What’s the damage?”

“The bleeding has stopped, which is a good sign. It’s swelled significantly, but the cool water is hopefully helping reduce that as well. The best course of action now is for you to rest and recover in a dark, quiet place, ideally for at least two full days.”

“Yeah, but that’s not happening unless we get away first,” Virgil shot back, irritably twitching his fins down as Logan rewrapped the injury. The human let out a slow breath.

“Virgil. I believe the situation isn’t as dire as you think.” He settled back on his heels, back stiff as he spoke. “Our captors have shown no signs of aggression or hunger, even with the significant bleeding from your head wound. It’s possible--”

“It’s not possible!” Virgil cut him off, scowling fiercely. “That doesn’t mean anything. They’re playing some kind of sick game the way they always do, and if you let them trick you, you’re going to lose!”

Logan looked back at him inquisitively, still not getting it. “What evidence are you basing this off of? I was under the impression that you’ve spent only marginally more time in their company than me. Have they attempted to trick you in the past?”

“Yes, no, I mean--,” Virgil groaned, pulling at his bangs. “They don’t have to say it. That’s just how giants like them operate. We’re smaller, they can do what they want to us, we don’t get a say in it. You escape or you die.”

“Yet, we’ve been in their admittedly less-than-ideal care for over 24 hours, and they haven’t hurt us or made any indications they intend to hurt us.” Logan gestured expansively, his hand a bit wobbly. “That’s a rather long time to pretend, and for what purpose? If it was what they desired, we have been easy targets for a meal from the moment they relocated us.”

A rather long time to pretend. Virgil swallowed down a hysterical laugh, feeling dizzy. If a day of false niceties was all it took to buy his trust, he’d have never gotten away from his first encounter with a giant mer. “You’re— you’re human. You don’t know anything about this.”

Logan frowned. “I may be human, but that does not make me an idiot. Even with a language barrier, body language and expression are invaluable tools for communication, and I’ve been doing very little but observe them while you were unconscious. Virgil, if you just tried talking to them—“

“No!” he snapped, curling in even as his fins flared wide and threatening. He wouldn’t do this again, wouldn’t be subjected to the world’s most torturous game of catch and release, wouldn’t be lured back into too-tight hands by false promises and meaningless apologies. He couldn’t do that again.

Measured, rhythmic tapping on the back of his hand slowly brought him back to the present, cool air and Logan’s steady voice by his side. His throat was closed-up-too-tight, his gills too far out of the water to switch lungs— but the rhythm was counted out over and over, breathe in, hold, and out.

“There you go,” Logan said as Virgil took in another long, shuddering drag of air. “Well done.”

The air smelled like iron. He realized that somewhere in the past few minutes, he’d dug his claws into the soft sides of the human’s hand, drawing blood. He pulled away as though he’d been burned.

Logan didn’t even twitch, still searching his gaze intently. “Are you with me?”

Virgil nodded stiffly. “Yeah, I— fuck, I’m sorry.”

“No, I shouldn’t have pushed you. I didn’t realize— but I should have.” A deep, resolved breath. “It’s okay. I’ll find you a way out that doesn’t involve interacting with them.” Logan’s gaze went distant and hazy with thought, and Virgil hesitantly drew closer, pulling a bandage free to wrap around his bleeding hand.

… He was really warm. Clammy, too, and he’d been sitting in a cold, wet cave for hours, hadn’t he? Had been completely drenched for even longer.

“You’re sick,” Virgil said, and Logan took a moment too long to refocus on him. How had it taken him so long to notice? “That’s why you need me to talk to them. You need to get home.”

“My illness is no more severe than your injuries,” he deflected, adjusting his glasses clumsily. “Right now, the priority is getting you away from triggering circumstances. If my suspicions are correct, I will be fine regardless.”

Right. His suspicions, based on his willingness to trust his own abductors. He’d trusted Virgil, too, back in those tunnels. He’d known that he might be abandoned and he’d freed Virgil anyways, taken his hand anyways. Gotten hurt for his trouble.

He’d get hurt worse if Virgil left him here.

“... Yeah,” Virgil said, tucking the edge of the bandage in carefully. “But you should sleep for now. We both should. You said they haven’t done anything yet, right?”

“Yes, but…,” Logan’s brow was furrowed slightly, as though he knew something was off, but wasn’t quite sure what. “I mean, you do need rest. If… If you’re sure.”

“I am,” Virgil replied, curling against the edge of the pool and pillowing his head on his arms to hide their shaking. “Get some sleep, Specs.”

—

It was early morning when Patton woke to the splash of something small dropping into the water from his air room.

The room wasn’t overly large, being designed only for occasional use when he needed some extra oxygen in his system. It was also quite a few caves up above his sleeping den, but with two delicate little guests staying over, his senses were on high alert. He disentangled from Roman, who had been clinging to him for extra warmth, waking the shark mer in the process.

“Mwha’huh?” he asked groggily, and Patton chuckled at the way one side of his hair had been pressed into a tangled bundle.

“I think they may be awake!” he reported quietly, and Roman perked right up. They had originally hovered in the room over the two of them, only leaving after the human-- busy tending to the tiny mer’s wounds-- had gotten too fed up and used charades to shoo them away, leaving them with nothing to do but sit around and think about how badly they’d messed up. As such, they were both more than eager to start fixing things.

Upon popping up into the air room, however, they found only the human, lying completely still apart from the slow rise and fall of his chest. Deep in sleep, with an empty pool at his side.

Roman and Patton exchanged a panicked look, and ducked back underwater to search through his home and see where, exactly, the injured mer had gone.

It didn’t take long to spot him. The mer had practically every fin and frill puffed out, even the ones that were still injured. The threat display as eye-catching as they got.

He was hovering in the opening of a vent crevice, one that helped circulate seawater through the caves. It was small enough that if he vanished through it, they wouldn’t be able to stop him or see where he was headed. He knew it, too, staring them down with sharp defiance rather than absolute terror.

“Don’t move,” he said, as though they hadn’t both frozen at the sight of him. “I’m going to-- to make a deal with you.”

“A deal?” Roman asked, and received a sharp, wild-eyed glare for his troubles.

“Yeah, a deal. The other one is sick,” a slight jerk of the head toward the air room, “so he won’t last long here. Probably already too far gone to even play a single game.”

Patton was torn between concern (the human was sick?) and confusion. Game?

“But I’m fine. I’ve had much worse than this.” The mer drifted back slightly, closer to the crevice. “If I leave now, you’ll never find me, and then Lo-- the human will die, and you won’t have anything to play with.”

A creeping sense of dread overcame Patton. He still didn’t know what was going on, but it was sounding more and more like something was seriously wrong here.

“So, a deal. You take the human back to where you found him, and I’ll stay-- I’ll stay here,” his voice cracked painfully, but he ignored it, staring at them with a desperate sort of intensity. “With you. I won’t try to get away or anything. I-- I swear.”

“Get away?” Roman asked, his voice going high with the same sort of horror that currently swamping Patton. The mer ducked back at the sound, gaze flitting between them, some of that terror returning.

“I will! I’ll leave, if you-- you can either have one or none, that’s the deal, I’m not kidding. I’m not!” His fins flared wider, blood beginning to leak from some of them. “He’s human anyways, he can barely even swim, you don’t want him--”

“Kiddo,” Patton cut in urgently, raising his hands peacefully and trying not to wince when the mer flinched, “if he’s sick, of course we’ll take him back to where he can get help. No deals necessary, okay?”

The little guy didn’t look reassured at all. “I want to watch. I have to see you put him back, where other humans will find him, or else the deal’s off.”

He didn't believe them. Patton exchanged a helpless look with Roman, who finally nodded.

“Of course,” the shark mer said, “You are more than welcome to accompany us back to the mainland where Patton found him, provided that you’re not exacerbating your injuries.”

The mer hissed at him, a tiny, reedy sound. “And whose fault is that?”

“Irresponsible human fishing vessels?” Roman tried, and then wilted under both Patton and the mer’s looks when the joke fell flat. He cleared his throat. “It is, of course, mine. I wanted to apologize for the way I manhandled you before. Regardless of my intentions, it was unbefitting behavior, and it hurt you. I am truly sorry.”

He bowed with a little flourish, moving slower than normal. The mer stared at his bowed head apprehensively, and then covered the look up with a distrustful scowl.

“If you’re sorry, get Logan out of this place before he gets any worse,” he finally replied, and Patton nodded and went to retrieve the human-- Logan, presumably.

Glancing over his shoulder as he left, he could see the way the tiny mer’s fins had settled just slightly, not quite as frantically overextended as before.

It was a start.

[along-came-atsushi]

The way Dazai protects Atsushi

When we imagine someone who is protective, mostly it is a person who bursts into a fit of rage or someone who heroically and willingly throws away their own life if it means to protect others. A good example for this would be Kunikida’s actions on several occasions. Dazai is less a person to obviously show rage or to heroically throw himself in front of someone.

Which doesn’t mean that he doesn’t care at all, it’s quite the contrary. And it’s sometimes very subtle and tricky, because he always has plans within plans and tries to achieve several goals with a single plan.

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I will only focus here on Dazai’s actions that solely have to do with Atsushi. I’m not going to bring up every single hidden agenda or goal Dazai is also trying to achieve.

In addition, this post has been tagged as #Dazatsu just to be safe. But of course it can be read from a platonic POV.

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Beware: Spoilers starting from chapter 83 and for 55 Minutes!

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How Dazai gets Atsushi into the ADA

Dazai practically tricked and then it may seem like he pressured Atsushi into joining the ADA, even after Atsushi already said that he doesn’t want to join:

The reason for Atsushi’s refusal was not that he didn’t want to join, because he just simply didn’t want to join. But because he lacks the self-confidence in taking a task like this. He doesn’t believe in himself and his abilities and thinks he isn’t fit for the job. This lack of self-confidence together with the fact that Atsushi constantly gets pushed by either people around him or his circumstances to keep relying on himself rather than others runs like a red string through his story.

Dazai on the other hand sees a great potential in Atsushi. In the moment where Atsushi saved him from drowning, he already planned to team him up with Akutagawa. Not only because of their abilities and their compatibility in battle. But because Atsushi would be the person to “teach Akutagawa how to put that sword away”. In other words: to value life. Which is something that Dazai wasn’t able to teach Akutagawa (I covered this in another meta and won’t explain it here any further).

Another reason is that the things Dazai states above are simply the truth: If Atsushi doesn’t join, then there is nothing the ADA can do to help him (or it would be much harder and complicated for them). He needs to do everything a normal adult in society has to do, which is harder for Atsushi than other people, since he has been abruptly kicked out of his orphanage without any further help or assistance. Not to mention that he is perceived as a monster and not in control of his own ability, and therefore a wanted criminal and dangerous ability user. This could lead Atsushi in either getting killed or falling into the hands of other shady organizations who have far worse intentions for him. Saying the above is less Dazai trying to manipulate Atsushi and more him just telling what would happen and to be realistic.

Having Atsushi join the ADA for Dazai does not only help Atsushi to live a safer life and make it easier for Dazai to keep an eye out for him, but also to give Atsushi the chance to safe other people in the progress.

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The Entrance Exam

Since Atsushi refused there was no way for Dazai to have him join the ADA the easy way and then only later testing if he really was worthy of being a true member. Just like it has been the case with Dazai’s entrance exam (Dazai freely joined the ADA after being recommended and was perceived as a new member immediately. Only during his first case with Kunikida was he secretly being tested of being worthy, which he succeeded). Therefore, a plan under a pretext was needed in order to test Atsushi and convince him to join.

During the ADA’s meeting for planning Atsushi’s entrance exam (which is told in the first part of the ‘Untold Story of the ADA’ novel) Dazai anticipated that Atsushi would either convince the bomber (played by Tanizaki) or somehow defuse the bomb himself. Neither of his predictions happened, instead Atsushi was willing to sacrifice himself so that he could protect others. This selfless action honestly surprised Dazai, which not many people are able to achieve, because he always predicts their actions:

Since it’s been hinted by Dazai that he already lost other people close to him in his life, even before Ango’s betrayal and Odasaku’s death, Atsushi’s action probably could’ve served as a trigger for him. He had to realize that there is a possibility that Atsushi would sacrifice himself to protect others. Especially since he doesn’t deem his own life as worthy and has been told many times to be useless and to “just die in a ditch somewhere.”

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“Stalking” Higuchi

Dazai immediately recognized Higuchi to be a PM member and that she’s contacting the ADA under disguise for ulterior motives. The scene with Higuchi is a good example that Dazai does many things which either annoys other people (flirting with her) or are seen as him just being lazy and/or fooling around (listening to music and singing), while in reality he is already following a hidden plan.

Flirting with Higuchi distracts her and everyone else from Dazai slipping a wiretap in her jacket. It helps him to let everyone just act naturally without the possibility of revealing anything by accident. Furthermore, it makes people underestimate Dazai, because for everyone else he was just fooling around.

Due to the reason that the PM contacted the ADA under disguise as soon as Atsushi was their new member could have been already suspicious for Dazai, suspecting that it has something to do with Atsushi and was not just a regular attack on the ADA. Later on, this gets confirmed when it’s been stated that The Guild set a bounty on Atsushi for some reason.

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Is Dazai following Atsushi around?

When Atsushi accompanies Ranpo on his murder case Dazai surprisingly shows up:

This meeting could be just a coincidence, of course. After all it’s just Dazai fooling around again (or in this case, trying to commit suicide again). But since the case with Higuchi has shown that Dazai loves to pretend to do something else, when he in reality is following a hidden agenda, it might be that he showed up there on purpose. Maybe just to see how Atsushi was faring and to eventually intervene if something serious would happen (like he did when Atsushi and Akutagawa were fighting for the first time). Especially with the PM on Atsushi’s tail now.

In chapter 84 it has been revealed that Dazai indeed does have an eye on Atsushi. When he can’t do that himself anymore, he makes sure to ask Akutagawa to keep an eye on him instead:

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Going far for Atsushi’s sake

After getting to know about the bounty, Dazai lets himself get captured by the PM on purpose, without informing any other ADA members, and stays inside the prison until seemingly a right time draws near. He is willing to do this, even though he knows full well that he is perceived as a traitor and that certain people will not welcome him with open arms.

When Chuuya mentions that he suspects that Dazai must be here for a certain reason, Dazai then states that he does all of this mostly for Atsushi. He even goes so far as to provoke a second punch in the face from Akutagawa, by belittling him in saying that Atsushi is a better subordinate than him, after Akutagawa threatens to kill Atsushi.

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Probably the most visible scene where Dazai openly shows anger and shock towards someone hurting Atsushi (or hurting someone he cares about in general) is during the incident with Q:

He doesn’t act like this again the second time when Atsushi brings him the doll to nullify Q’s ability, even though the whole city is in chaos. He’s also less concerned about Naomi and Haruno in that moment and more focused on Atsushi during this. Which doesn’t mean that he doesn’t care at all for others, knowing that Naomi and Haruno are able to handle their situation (which is confirmed by them later). But it also shows that Atsushi is his main priority.

Throughout the story Atsushi slowly notices this himself. At first he is hesitant to believe that he is Dazai’s “most trusted subordinate” and worries that Dazai might be mad with him should he go overboard with something (e.g. during 55 Minutes when he was able to surprise Dazai who was hiding in the trash can).

He only ever claims to have Dazai’s trust, if it means to provoke Akutagawa (which he does for a different reason, but I’m not going to expand on this here). Later, he even wonders how Dazai would react/look if Akutagawa came back with the news of him having died: 

Which means that Atsushi’s former mentality of people not caring should he die gets replaced by having someone actually be mad/sad about this.

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Hiding his “dark side”

It may not be that visible in the anime, since some scenes are either left out or interpreted for the sake of jokes. But the manga makes it clear that Dazai struggles with guilt because of his own past (e.g. when Atsushi asks the other ADA members what they’ve done before joining the ADA, aside from everyone else Dazai looks away. This suggests that this question and the closely related memories of it are uncomfortable for him. Another example is his reaction when he asks Kyouka how many people she has killed).

Dazai is well aware that he can’t hide his past from Atsushi forever and that he sooner or later will find out. This is then almost immediately revealed to him by Akutagawa.

However Dazai still tries to hide his “dark side” from Atsushi. Apparently, he doesn’t want him to see that he’s capable of being cruel or that Atsushi may become too aware of anything that could reveal more of Dazai’s past and the things he has done. During certain situations Dazai purposefully doesn’t let Atsushi go or stay with him:

1.) When he pushed Atsushi out of the room to “interrogate” Kouyou:

2.) When he pretended to need to use the bathroom, because he knew they were being followed:

3.) When he meets Ango:

(Even Kouyou comments on how Dazai lets Atsushi out of certain business.)

The reasons for this may be that he’s afraid to reveal this “dark side” of him to Atsushi and that he doesn’t want to drag him into the business of the underworld. It could also be that he’s afraid that Atsushi might see him in a different light and that he’ll turn deprecating towards him. As of now Atsushi doesn’t know the full extent of Dazai’s past and actions. But due the fact that he’s aware that Dazai was a former PM member (an executive even), he must also be aware that some answers will be frightening. Furthermore, he must also already have some ideas about Dazai’s past.

Throughout the story Atsushi has been shown to be sympathetic with different characters, trying to understand their actions or the reason that drives them. Even when these characters fought against or tried to kill him in the past (Kyouka, Lucy, Akutagawa, Fitzgerald, Sigma). Therefore, I doubt that Atsushi will see Dazai in a different/negative light, should his past be fully revealed. But this is something Dazai may not anticipate, since he doesn’t see himself as a good person and as someone worthy of redemption.

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Dazai believes in Atsushi

Dazai has an overwhelming believe in Atsushi and his abilities. He reassures and compliments him from the very beginning:

“Nice, Atsushi. You’re like a real detective already! It’s such a joy to see you grow up so fast!” [After being send back in time] “Ha-ha-ha! I never thought you’d be able to scare me like that! You’ve grown Atsushi!” – 55 Minutes

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“Oooh!” Dazai squealed in excitement. “Look at you, Atsushi! Impressive!” – 55 Minutes

Contrary to Atsushi, who struggles to acknowledge his own self-worth and has little to no faith in his own abilities.

This is the reason why Dazai sometimes pushes Atsushi (not only literally but also figuratively) to do things on his own, whenever he realizes that Atsushi is hesitating. He’s throwing him in at the deep, in order for Atsushi to learn more self-confidence:

He sends him on several missions alone (e.g. sneaking into the Moby Dick) or with other people (e.g. Akutagawa), because he knows that Atsushi is able to do this, even without him:

“[…] It’s up to you to prove the detective agency’s innocence and set us free. You can do it, right?” Atsushi knew – Dazai only asked people if they could do it when he was certain they could. – 55 Minutes

Atsushi’s actions get firmly planned into Dazai’s predictions, knowing that he will choose the right decision:

This great believe in Atsushi gets also noticed by other people (e.g. Mark Twain and Akutagawa):

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In return

Dazai’s positive influence on Atsushi also has a positive effect on his psyche: The headmaster’s voice and image inside his mind – the person who always drags him down, tells him to be useless and that he will “not make it” – slowly gets replaced by Dazai’s voice and image – the person who cheers him up and tells him to believe in himself:

It’s no doubt that Dazai was the person who helped Atsushi to live a better life and he is perceived as “the man who saved me” by Atsushi himself. For this reason and his self-confidence Atsushi admires Dazai and is grateful to him.

But on the other hand, Atsushi was also willing to save Dazai despite his dire situation. Not only does Atsushi put Dazai on a pedestal, it is also Dazai who puts Atsushi on a pedestal and who sees him as the person able to help, protect and maybe even change others.

[shihalyfie]

A guide to the 02 kids’ personalities and overall demeanors

I’ve already covered the deeper details of each 02 kid’s character arc and development throughout the series, but I figured I might dedicate a more specific post about the complexities of their outer personalities, and their behavior patterns on a day-to-day basis. 02 is the kind of series that doesn’t really spell out what the characters tend to do or don’t tend to do, or what boundaries they will and won’t cross, which means it can be a bit of a challenging task to track their behavior over fifty episodes and figure out the patterns. Fortunately, these characters are written remarkably consistently over said episodes, so we have a lot to work with!

Disclaimer before we continue: In general, all of my 02-based meta is specifically written for the Japanese version in mind, but this especially applies to this one, because the majority of the nuances of the demeanor and personality traits described below were not retained in the American English dub at all (please see this post for more detail). As a result, please understand that if you’re working from the perspective of having only seen that dub, and the contents of the below post sound completely different, that would be why.

Daisuke and V-mon

Believe it or not, I would say that Daisuke is actually the most difficult to nail the nuances of out of this entire cast. This is probably a really weird thing to hear when the usual fandom mantra is that he’s “flat” or “lacking in development”, but I think the deceptive part is that while he’s simple-minded and himself doesn’t think in complex terms, analyzing his behavior as a whole and how he approaches things actually involves a lot of very delicate balances, and getting that exactly right can be very easy to mess up. Daisuke’s not a rude jerk who looks down on anyone, not in the slightest -- but he’s also not a saint who can do no wrong, either!

I think the easiest analogy (which I’ve brought up several times on this blog already) is that Daisuke is like a puppy, but not just any puppy -- a tiny puppy that barks very loudly at anything it perceives as threatening (regardless of whether it’s actually threatening), makes its feelings very clear with obvious likes and dislikes, and can do some phenomenally stupid things in a bid to please others, but in the end means no malice and only wants you to be happy.

This is to the point where I’m just going to have to bullet-point this, because there’s so much going on at once:

Excessively emotional: One of Daisuke’s earliest profiles refers to him as having “an excessively large range of human emotions”, and really, a lot of the humor surrounding him has to do with the fact he has incredibly dramatic, overblown reactions to nearly everything around him. So if he gets a little annoyed or suspicious of people making fun of him, he tends to get really dramatic about being upset, and when he experiences only a minor setback, he acts like it’s the end of the world, and when he’s emotionally hurt, he sometimes even gets set on the verge of crying (you can especially hear this in Kiuchi Reiko’s delivery). Even Daisuke himself doesn’t tend to get caught up in it for too long and gets over things surprisingly quickly, so you can take it as him just constantly being too wrapped up in the mood -- but when it really is a serious situation, he gets truly emotionally invested in it, too.

Too easy to read: Because Daisuke wears his heart on his sleeve and is dramatic about everything, he’s awful at hiding anything. Any attempt at trickery or trying to disguise his intentions quickly blows up in his face because he’s too simple-minded and too transparent.

Not malicious: Daisuke only ever lashes out or gets angry at others when he thinks others are doing something he disapproves of, or when he thinks he’s being attacked; he’s very warm and kind to everyone otherwise (even in the earliest parts of the series, when he’s at his roughest, you might notice he’s very soft around Chibimon, as if understanding that his partner is now in a very small and delicate form and needs to be treated accordingly). In other words, Daisuke is very quick to get defensive, but he has no malice or reason to be condescending towards anyone otherwise, and he’s perfectly friendly with people even when they’d provoked him earlier (because he doesn’t really hold grudges). He doesn’t attack people without reason; even when he voices dissent against what someone is doing, he very rarely, if ever, insults a person or their character directly. Even when he’s trying to state his opinions (such as when he bids for the others to accept Ken), he never forces them down others’ throats and accepts that they disagree with him, even if he’s clearly not happy with their disagreement.

Easily critical and suspicious: Daisuke is a very bluntly straightforward and honest person, and he seems to get most set off by people who act suspicious; note how his early-series outbursts towards Takeru tend to be when Takeru’s acting evasive, and in Hurricane Touchdown, he catches onto Wallace’s shady behavior even before he starts flirting with Miyako (Daisuke’s own method of trying to seem attractive to others involves just “doing something cool and hoping it’ll impress others”, so he seems to dislike the concept of flirting as a whole). Because of that, he catches easily onto “things looking off”, so he tends to call it out (even if sometimes he’s overdoing it and there isn’t actually anything significant to be upset about).

Supportive and adoring of others: Other than the moments when he gets set off, fundamentally speaking, Daisuke likes other people, is perfectly willing to acknowledge them or heap praise on them when they do something awesome, and generally cares for their well-being. He’s easily defers to others when he understands they’re better than him at something, and he even has a decently realistic scope of his limits (see how he’s perfectly aware he’s likely to lose the soccer game in 02 episode 8, and figures he might as well enjoy the experience). This is even taken to its logical conclusion in the Kizuna drama CD when he “credits” his friends for giving him amazing and insightful advice when all of it was actually pretty ordinary stuff they’d done offhandedly. It also means that, given his penchant for getting emotionally invested in everything, he has a huge emotional stake in making sure his friends are doing okay, and supports them accordingly.

Deferential to seniors/elders: Tying into the above, you may notice that Daisuke takes a properly respectful and soft tone towards his elders and seniors in nearly all occasions, even to the point of occasionally using proper polite-form language around them. All things considered, Daisuke is a pretty well-behaved kid.

Constantly getting strung around: As much as Daisuke looks like he’s aggressive, in actuality, it’s very easy to get him to back down if you argue against him strongly enough, and since he has such a “the heck is that?!” attitude all of the time, you can see him constantly getting strung around and at the mercy of things happening around him. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have enough will to put his foot down when it becomes a really important subject (especially in the second half of the series), but it’s very often when he’ll be talked down by others around him and shrink with an “oh...okay...” In fact, this is why a lot of his actions aren’t nearly as reckless as they might be otherwise; as much as he’s a bit hot-headed and likes to lead the attack, he also has a sense of self-preservation and intimidation when things look a bit too dangerous, and will only push forward in such a case when there’s something he really believes in at the other side of it.

Lacking in self-awareness and insecure as a result: While Daisuke doesn’t have any signs of persistent self-hatred (on the contrary, there are times he arguably comes off as overconfident), it also seems that he has practically zero awareness of how he himself is doing -- which means that he ends up rolling over like an idiot trying to get others’ approval and trying to impress them, even when it’d be clear to anyone else that he already has that approval. This also likely ties into the fact that he’s perfectly capable of acknowledging others’ accomplishments and skills (see above), so you might even think that the problem isn’t so much that he thinks he’s bad as much as he keeps comparing himself to people he perceives as being that much more awesome. (Perhaps symbolic of this, he apparently has a complex over being shorter than Takeru and Ken, despite the fact that he seems to be of perfectly average height for a kid his age.) It seems that his only bar for how he’s doing is dependent on everyone’s reactions around him, hence why his ridiculous antics are significantly less pronounced when he has proper emotional support and friends to keep him in check. It’s also important to consider that this applies to his apparent crush on Hikari as well; his crush mainly manifests in wanting her approval very badly, and it’s mostly visible in terms of him losing a ton of brain cells in her presence and bending over backwards to please her or impress her. He never actually says in words that he’s interested in her, nor does he ever show signs of intending to seriously ask her out, so it’s something that’s only apparent because of this behavior, and it’s very likely he hasn’t even seriously thought through what would happen if she actually accepted him in return. You can basically see this as an extreme version of the way Daisuke tries to get approval from everyone else, and this trait of his noticeably dies down whenever there’s more important things at hand, or when he seems to be in the midst of getting proper validation from those around him.

Simple-minded and pragmatic: What’s usually referred to as Daisuke being an “idiot” comes from the fact he doesn’t play well with complex thinking, tends to settle for very simple explanations or answers, and more thoughtful types like Ken or Iori will often have to fill that part in for him. However, because Daisuke is so simple-minded, he’s sometimes the most pragmatic person in the group, because he doesn’t overthink things or get principles of theory caught up into everything. So if Ken is clearly not showing any indication of doing bad things anymore and is actively working to help, Daisuke believes he should be allowed to help regardless of what he’d done in the past, and if they’re dealing with the situation of potentially having to kill a living enemy, Daisuke points out that hesitation would have resulted in even more casualties. In essence, in a situation where everyone’s running mental loop-de-loops, Daisuke will usually be the first one to snap them all out of it and go “uh? Guys?” Moreover, this trait of his makes him very good at spotting glaring threads or asking questions about the elephant in the room, because since he works best with things that are right in front of him, he can’t not notice it.

Enjoys the little things: Because Daisuke is so simple-minded, it’s very easy to please him (this is why his chosen career path is something as simple as ramen making). Daisuke likes his friends, and appreciates even simple things around him, so he’s happy with even simple pieces of happiness -- hence, why he’s fine with potentially losing the soccer game in 02 episode 8, because he’s ready to simply just savor the experience of getting to play against a respectable and formidable opponent.

Note that the main reason Daisuke never seems to bring up any of these issues with himself within the series proper is simply that he doesn’t seem to be aware of them -- he’s too simple-minded to understand what’s going on with his own behavior in depth, and hence, this is how he can say he’s not worried about too much by the time of 02′s finale, especially since by that point he has a proper support group that’s already helping him deal with most of his issues anyway.

Daisuke also has the roughest speech pattern out of any of the 02 group (similar to Taichi and Yamato in Adventure); he has a tendency to shorten words a lot and use “rough” variants of words (for example “-nee” instead of “-nai”).

Mischievous, friendly, and playful, V-mon is pointed out even by official sources to be much like his partner (far more so than usual), and it’s likely a byproduct of the fact that Daisuke himself is very honest and straightforward about his emotions and thoughts, and so since he has nothing to hide, V-mon is pretty much exactly like him -- with the major difference being that he’s a little more outwardly friendly and less likely to lash out angrily. So he’s effectively Daisuke without that very thin abrasive exterior, and because both of them are so like-minded and friendly, they get along extremely well (albeit with quite a bit of comfortable bantering on the way there).

Ken and Wormmon

Ken is the more intellectual type that Daisuke isn’t, and even after his stint as the Kaiser, it’s clear that he’s still quite studious and naturally interested in studying things. Looking closely at his style of dress and way of carrying himself (note how he lays down his chopsticks in 02 episode 36) indicates he’s also a rather tidy person in general. Being someone who’s capable of thinking things thoroughly, this makes him able to have a lot of deep insight into both intellectual and emotional issues, but because he takes things too seriously sometimes, he can sometimes come off as a bit overly stickler or insistent (note Daisuke and Ken’s Shopping Carol, where he subjects Daisuke to a long-winded lecture about the history of Christmas, because, really, he’s a nerd), or lead himself down the wrong direction when he’s having a hard time being straightforward (such as when he comes up with some very flimsy theories about why Jogress might be dangerous in 02 episode 28).

In fact, Ken’s disposition could be considered to be the opposite of Daisuke’s in many ways; while Ken is much softer and more conciliatory on the surface, he’s actually much more assertive and strong-willed by default, and it’s made clear that, even after his reformation from the Kaiser persona, he could still be vicious if he wanted to, he just doesn’t enjoy it because he doesn’t like it and it goes against his belief system (note that he even offered to "dirty his own hands" in lieu of the other kids if push came to shove and Archnemon had to be killed in 02 episode 29, even though he clearly wasn't enthusiastic about the idea). In fact, he has a very strong sense of responsibility and believes heavily in making up for what he’s done -- recall that 02 episodes 26 and 49 involved snapping him out of it by reminding him that there were things that needed to be done, and that he himself still had many things he wanted to do that wouldn’t be addressed if he’d stayed fixated on his past. Thus, Ken doesn’t deny nor avoid anything he’d done, and he isn’t even all that prone to self-pity -- it’s just that his tendency to put too much responsibility on himself means that he also takes a while to accept everyone’s support, too, because he doesn’t like the idea of putting burdens on others.

Because Ken is actually one of the more straightforward people in this group and a fairly honest person (at least, as long as he’s not lying to himself), he might hold himself back a little bit in order to not be rude, but he doesn’t do it nearly to the same degree Takeru or Hikari would and is much more willing to speak his mind when he has an opinion he wants to voice or needs to sort out his thoughts on something. Conversely, he’s not nearly as cold as Iori can get when criticizing things (he’ll certainly be firm, but not as incisive). Most post-02 materials also indicate that he’s not above being a tease or even a little mischievous (see Armor Evolution to the Unknown, Diablomon Strikes Back, Daisuke and Ken’s Shopping Carol).

Ken uses a speech pattern that’s slightly more casual than Takeru’s, but not nearly as rough as Daisuke’s. While anime will often have speech patterns substantially change between different personas of a character, other than Park Romi’s delivery of a more condescending tone for the Kaiser and a significantly softer one for Ken, nothing about his speech pattern is substantially different between the two personas (not even the first-person pronoun), indicating that, in the end, they’re really the same person after all, just manifesting the same personality traits in different ways.

Wormmon is affectionate and clingy, unfailingly loyal to Ken, and his biggest advocate during a time when Ken is trying to relearn how to love and accept himself -- meaning that he ends up very important to providing Ken the initial support he needed before Ken allowed other friends into his life. Wormmon isn’t all nothing but clinginess, though -- he has some insight about the weight of his experiences when prompted (02 episode 46), and in fact is more than capable of calling out Ken’s behavior when he’s being unreasonable or throwing himself into denial (see 02 episodes 27, 30, and 49).

Miyako and Hawkmon

Miyako approaches everything she likes with an attitude that makes her come off as constantly having bubbles and hearts around her. When she likes something, she says so. When she doesn’t like something, she says so (and she will go off when she’s on a roll; see 02 episode 14). In fact, part of the reason she so infamously voices her opinion on people being cute is, quite simply, that it’s her honest opinion. (Note that she never actually tries to ask them out or anything -- she just wants to make it very clear that they’re attractive.)

For the most part, she adores the people around her, and, like the others in the 02 group, she’s perfectly respectful towards elders.  She also loves poking her nose in others’ business and trying to be as helpful as possible, which is good in that she ends up being a huge help to others, but also not good in that sometimes she overdoes it a bit (when Hikari calls her out for being a “handful” in 02 episode 31, the word she uses is one that literally means "a little too overly involved in others' business").

Miyako is the one who gets everyone up in high spirits by being cheerful, and whose cheer rubs off on everyone else around her (see her cheerfully leading the charge into the Digital World with her “Digital Gate, open! Chosen Children, let’s roll!” catchphrase). This is something the rest of the group catches onto very quickly, asking her to supply the “usual cheer”, and the later episodes of the series especially drive home the fact that her presence and antics bring happiness to those around her.

Miyako has a similar “chaotic, sloppy, and straightforward” demeanor to Daisuke, but there are some key differences. Unlike Daisuke, who’s bluntly honest about his opinions mainly because he doesn’t really hide things in general, Miyako’s opinions will be out of her mouth before she can control it. In other words, she has a nasty case of foot-in-mouth syndrome. In addition, while Daisuke tends to have a very thin skin and lashes out defensively out of instinct, Miyako takes things much more at face value and doesn’t blow a fuse nearly as easily, but because she’s significantly more assertive and aggressive, she’s much more prone to doing what she wants on her own whims instead of backing down to anyone. In fact, Miyako is significantly more emotionally sensitive in the long run, so while Daisuke tends to blow a fuse more easily, he’s also able to shrug it off and move on more quickly, whereas Miyako has a thicker skin, but when she does take emotional pain, she takes it much more deeply and harshly. She also tends to get overwhelmed easily by stress and panic, which makes her one of the more prone to running around in circles and doing frantic things in the midst of it.

One thing you might notice about Miyako is that she’s actually more critical of herself than anyone else in the group is; most of the time they act with mild exasperation at her antics but don’t tend to criticize her directly, whereas Miyako is very aware of her own shortcomings and is constantly either criticizing herself or comparing herself negatively to others (see: 02 episodes 10, 14, 18, and 31 especially). If she slips up and does something that stepped on someone else’s toes, it doesn’t take her long to realize that she’s messed up and want to do better. So while she generally tends to act the most in-your-face and aggressive, she also doesn’t necessarily want to be this way, and suffers from self-confidence issues and a poor opinion of herself.

Miyako uses a feminine speech pattern that’s a bit more casual than Hikari’s (she noticeably is willing to use the word anta for “you”, which has a bit of a connotation of being abrupt and in-your-face, especially with Daisuke). She’s also the most likely to physically manhandle things, both in the affectionate (hugging people) and aggressive (grabbing things and jumping on them in order to attack) senses.

Hawkmon is repeatedly referred to as being like Miyako’s “knight”, since he has absolute loyalty to her (in spite of her ridiculous antics often meaning he gets strung around by her) and is effectively in charge of minding her so she doesn’t get too out of control. While his overly polite and gentlemanly demeanor initially seems like a sharp contrast to Miyako’s aggressive and messy personality, you might also notice that, at their cores, the two aren’t all that different -- both are unfailingly loyal to others, and both also have a penchant for dramatic theatrics and being a bit overly proud of themselves.

Iori and Armadimon

The key thing to know about Iori is that he’s not stoic because he’s not feeling fervent emotions, but rather because he’s constantly holding them back (this is especially apparent if you look carefully at his facial expressions and Urawa Megumi’s delivery, where you can tell his facade is often “slipping” even when his words would indicate otherwise). Since Iori is trying to live by the ideal of being a model citizen, especially under the very formal environment he was raised in, he comes off as mature for his age, but it’s very important to not forget that, underneath all that, he’s still an impressionable nine-year-old child with the wide range of emotions and immaturity of one, and when he does emotionally fall apart, everything tends to burst out (see 02 episodes 16, 44, 47, 50). In addition, Iori is never condescending about the fact he usually acts more mature than the others; the impression is that he’s much more strict with himself than he is with others, and in fact still does look up to his elders in the 02 group even when they’re obviously a lot messier than he is.

The “need to be a model citizen” is something looming over Iori’s head at almost every moment, and it’s the easiest way to understand the way he acts in a nutshell. Iori is focused on the idea of “becoming a proper adult”, which means that he’s adhering to all of these principles because he feels they’re necessary to live a proper and honest life as per the formal manners that his family background trained him into. But like a young child who insists “you have to do this because those are the rules!” all of the time, Iori is over-applying all of this, and even his own grandfather advises him that he really needs to chill (02 episodes 5, 24). In short, he struggles with thinking flexibly and understanding that life isn’t all that clear-cut, because he’s a young child. Since he also tends to bring out these things in relation to “what my father would do/say”, it’s implied that he’s basing all of this off of having only hearsay to work off of in regards to what his father was actually like, to the point of aspiring to an impossible, saintlike version of him he’d created in his head.

Note that Iori’s “rules” have less to do with institutional rules (that would be more of a Jou thing) and more to do with self-imposed personal rules; for instance, he doesn’t mind sneaking into school during a holiday when it’s obviously not hurting anyone (02 episode 6), but he struggles with things like wasting food (02 episode 3) or not formally introducing himself to an elder (02 episode 5). So in other words, his adherence to principles has heavily to do with “the right and proper way to live” more than anything, and what he believes is the right thing to do in a given situation.

Iori’s journey in 02 is largely fueled by the fact that, as an inheritor of sorts of the Crest of Knowledge, he has a sense of “I want to know and understand more” whenever he sees something that makes him curious, but unlike Koushirou’s desire to learn more about the world around him in terms of its technical workings, Iori mainly wants to know more about people. The reason he begins to let go of his inflexible mindset is that he has the humility to understand that he still has a lot more to learn and understand, and when he sees behavior from others that doesn’t make sense, he does his best to learn more about it -- hence how his aggressive probing into learning more about Takeru allows them to reach an understanding and eventual Jogress, and how he’s able to eventually reassess his own view of human morality and emotions.

Iori sticks out in that he almost always uses the formal variant of Japanese in most situations (nobody else in the 02 group does this). However, formal in this situation doesn’t necessarily mean polite; Iori doesn’t believe in flattery and will bluntly state his opinion in said formal tone, and will be very cold towards something he sufficiently disapproves of or doesn’t have any respect for, which can make him even come off as passive-aggressive at times. (Noticeably, while he still asserts his own opinion, he does refrain from criticizing the others in the 02 group too much, presumably because he respects and looks up to them a lot as his elders, regardless of how chaotic they can sometimes get.) In addition, because a lot of his demeanor comes from him restraining himself, when his emotions are sufficiently pushed over the edge, he loses grip on the polite form and starts “lapsing” back into the casual one.

Because Iori was so young during 02, and because the events of its story ended up really upending his view of the world, the huge eight-year gap between 02 and Kizuna makes it difficult to predict certain things about his demeanor at the time of Kizuna (especially since his own voice actor commented on the difficulty of conveying the nuances of Iori’s character, thanks to only being able to work with the limited time frame of a movie that doesn’t put him in the kinds of emotionally drastic situations that push him to his limit). That said, everything we’ve seen of him in the movie itself and the drama CD makes reasonable sense; now that he’s much older, he comes off as having much better restraint on his emotions and coming off as genuinely calm, but he’s still not one for flattery, and you can still see very minor slips in his facade every so often.

Armadimon also initially seems like a sharp contrast to Iori in terms of demeanor, in that he’s much more casual and laid-back, and he’s indeed a huge factor in reminding Iori to chill once in a while -- but, much like Iori, he prods and asks questions about anything he’s curious about. This initially seems to be out of simple-mindedness because, being a Digimon, he doesn’t understand human society that well, but his very basic questions often end up snapping Iori back to reality in realizing that he’s getting hung up on things that don’t actually make practical sense. Urawa also felt that Armadimon fills in some of the void that Iori’s late father left behind, in that he provides Iori with unconditional love and helps guide him.

Takeru and Patamon

Takeru is the kind of person who seems to dislike major disruptions to the status quo, so he doesn’t say anything inflammatory that’ll rock the boat. It’s very difficult to get him to talk about serious topics related to his deeper personal feelings (02 episode 17, 35, Spring 2003), and even when it’s clear he might have more misgivings on the situation, unless it’s an urgent situation where it needs to be brought up, he won’t voice his misgivings too clearly for the sake of not causing trouble (hence why Daisuke is so unsure what to make of him in the early episodes of the series, because Takeru constantly fails to clarify his own position in favor of a “good for you” or “sure, you keep believing that if you want” attitude). This also makes him the most likely to awkwardly change the subject or try to distract with small talk, and it means that, even when he’s saying cheerful, pleasant things, it’s very likely there’s pain or uncertainty under that initial facade. (Note that while his suspicions of Ken during 02 episodes 25 and 27 aren't nearly as vicious as Iori's turn out to be, we learn that he's still willing to quietly accuse Ken of working for his own self-satisfaction in the latter episode, but he never brings this up to anyone but himself.)

Because Takeru isn’t  necessarily doing this to be consciously dishonest, it does mean that he also has positive applications of this tendency to take everything in stride and keep the peace, because he ends up keeping the more extreme personalities in the rest of the group in line and acts as an effective mediator. You could say that he has a pretty high amount of tolerance and a capacity for taking everyone’s points of view in mind. However, since it’s also very difficult to tell what he himself is thinking, his use of this as a poor coping mechanism for his personal trauma leads to a tendency for him to suddenly explode in a mess of emotions whenever something gets too personal, leading to sudden conflict, and with others at a loss in terms of how to deal with him (the most extreme example being 02 episode 19, but also present in 13, 11, and 34). This “two-sidedness” is why it ends up having to be the more consciously methodical Iori who steps up to try and understand him better as his Jogress partner.

Fortunately, Takeru shows signs of becoming more straightforward in the aftermath, although you can see that he still has a penchant for mild flattery and “trying to hold back for the sake of not being rude” all the way up to Kizuna (but, again, this can’t be said to necessarily be a bad thing when it means he has a valuable skill as a mediator).

Takeru has a fairly neutral speech pattern that comes off as casual but not too aggressive or assertive (not as absurdly polite as Iori’s, but slightly less assertive than Ken’s).

Patamon initially still seems to be “immature” in the same way he was in Adventure, which initially seems to widen the gap in personality between him and Takeru, but looking closer reveals that the differences aren’t as big as they seem; Patamon seems to have gained a capability for slyness and active trolling behind his playfulness (see 02 episode 7), not entirely like Takeru starting to use his evasiveness in a teasing-like manner. Moreover, Patamon does actually seem to have gained a bit of proper maturity in the meantime; see how he instructs the Baby Digimon on convenience store food in 02 episode 3, and in general seems much more willing to take independent action in ways he didn’t always in Adventure. Noticeably, Takeru’s difficulty with his own convoluted feelings means that he can’t even have a proper heart-to-heart with him about it on the situation (most glaring in 02 episode 34, where it’s implied that Takeru would rather leave Patamon to be happy right now instead of bothering him about it), especially because he’s clearly having difficulty even working it out with himself. However, despite their ostensible differences in mentality, Takeru and Patamon have no difficulty getting along at all in 02, and, other than Takeru pampering Patamon a bit, there isn’t all that strong of an impression of them being so mismatched -- perhaps because, in the end, they really aren’t all that different.

Hikari and Tailmon

Taichi stated in Adventure episode 48 that Hikari has a problem where she's so selfless and thinking of others that she'll never speak up about her own problems. Hikari states in 02 episode 31 that she compulsively cannot speak out about her own feelings even if she wanted to, to the point she’s jealous of Miyako for being able to be more open (even if it means being overkill at times). As a result: if Hikari’s talking about “the right thing to do”, or something for everyone’s sake, or something that’s relevant to other people and what’s best for them, she will be extremely vocal and quick to act, and she’s not above even chipping in with criticisms (see: 02 episodes 19, 32, 44). In fact, she’s fully capable of being playful or toying with others if she really wants to (see how she casually manipulates Daisuke into calling a lunch break for everyone in 02 episode 6).

The moment the issue at hand is about herself, though -- her own feelings or pain, or something that might hurt others’ feelings (hence the presumable reason she dodges Daisuke’s affections rather than proactively doing anything about it), or something that would put a burden on others for her own sake -- she completely clams up and refuses to do or say anything, and when bad things start happening to her, she resigns herself to her own fate and concludes she can’t do anything about it. Hence, why she takes such a defeatist attitude towards the Dark Ocean swallowing her up in 02 episodes 13 and 31, and why it’s such a big deal if she even so much as asks for help. 02 episode 31 indicates that Miyako reaching out to her is an important step in breaking her out of her shell, and the Kizuna drama CD -- which has Hikari assertively declare something she personally wants -- heavily implies further that Miyako was instrumental to this becoming possible.

Hikari is compassionate for others to the very end, expresses pity for BlackWarGreymon as early as 02 episode 31, and catches on quickly to Ken’s feelings on himself in 02 episode 37 (and even back when she’d been more skeptical about him in 02 episode 25, she never seemed to have real personal distaste against him as much as she still wanted to make sure he was trustworthy first). But although she’s one of the most compassionate in the group, she’s also one of the most assertive in the group. This leads to something that initially seems like a paradox: she’s actually more fervent about the need to fight than the more aggressive Miyako is. Miyako is, ultimately, emotionally caught up in everything and briefly falls apart at having killed LadyDevimon in 02 episode 44 (even despite knowing how horrible of a person she’d been), but Hikari is the one who points out that there would have been more victims if they hadn’t. 02 episodes 25 and 43 had made it abundantly clear that Hikari didn’t like it at all, but she states in 02 episode 37 repeatedly that they need to prevent there from being victims -- meaning that she values the importance of protecting all lives, including those who would be hurt in the process, and thus has some of the more resilient guts when it comes to the prospect of fighting to save others. Again, her hesitation only comes into play at its worst when it has to do with herself; working to save others is a no-brainer.

Hikari uses a casual feminine speech pattern that’s less in-your-face than Miyako’s, but she’s still a bit more casual than she was in Adventure, when she used the more polite watashi instead of atashi. Interestingly, Tailmon herself seems to have mirrored this as well, presumably because now that she’s had more time to recover from her miserable life under Vamdemon, she’s able to enjoy her life a bit more freely. This means that, while Tailmon is still the most mature and put-together of the Digimon partners in the 02 group, she sometimes acts a little more casual and playful in a similar way to Hikari, and while she has a certain degree of stuffy personal pride (see how she wasn’t very amused at how frivolously the other Digimon were playing around in 02 episode 3), she’s still open to enjoying herself a little more freely. Hikari, for her part, becomes surprisingly like-minded with her during those times -- see them in 02 episode 12 -- and, as stated earlier, it’s not like Hikari isn’t up for making tough decisions when they’re needed, either.

[beau-draws-and-cries]

Caged Bird, Songbird - The Owl House fanfic

Summary: Raine plays their violin and Hunter likes to listen to it.

Rating: General

Tags: Raine Whispers, Hunter, Golden Guard

AO3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33734356

 Raine liked to play the violin alone.

 That was a fun experience, they couldn't lie, just get their violin and let all the complex feelings inside their mind become beautiful notes into their instrument and fill the air around them as a pleasant song instead of a mess of thoughts. Music always calmed them down since they were a baby to this moment, and it was an easy escape when they needed it.

 It was something they would do since their school days: get the violin, hide in the forest and play until their feelings were in place again. This time they were near the Emperor’s castle, later they would have a little reunion about plans for the day of Unity, and Raine was putting feelings about it out of their chest. They felt awful about the stuff they had to do to get so close to the Emperor. They didn't like that, but it was necessary. They were trying to convince themselves that the actions were      needed     so they could stop whatever the Emperor had planned for the Boiling Isles.

 The notes had a sour touch to it, mixed into a more hopeful, calm melody.

 They strummed the strings, touching the lower part of them with their bow, with maybe more strength than they were supposed to, but they were full of bad feelings that needed to go out somehow, or  else they would accumulate in their chest until they exploded, and a meltdown was everything Raine would like to avoid when trying to convince the Emperor that they were the most wise choice for Coven Head.

 They didn't notice the teen approaching slowly, with their eyes closed, feeling the notes going out and the song, until they finally stopped,opening their eyes to see the Golden Guard sitting nearby and looking at him, with their mask on.

 "G-golden Guard! I-i-i didn't see you there!" Raine became a blushing mess, stumbling on their own words and trying to keep what was left from their dignity in front of nothing less than the Emperor’s Coven head, and Belos favorite soldier.

 "There's no need to stop playing, I was enjoying it." Their tone and affirmation were the only giveaway that they were liking the song, because the face was hidden behind the owl-like mask, as ever. Raine didn't know why, but hearing such a young voice sound so tired would give them chills. Something was deeply wrong about that kid. "Please, keep playing."

 "I-I.... I-I-I am not as good with an audience." Raine muttered, putting the violin down "But I can try."

 Hunter only nodded, seeing Raine play the first notes, a little rushed and jumbled, but as the song progressed, they forgot that the Golden Guard was watching, and the song started to have a more bittersweet tone to it. They heard that the Golden Guard had to keep an eye for Edalyn Clawthorne, and Raine felt a bitter taste in their mouth to think that being a Coven Head meant never being able to meet Eda as a lover again.

 They remembered their last fight, both drunk in their house.

     "If you don't want to be with me, just say it! And leave me alone!"    Raine had yelled, and Edalyn's face was surprised, afraid. Afraid that they would leave her at that moment. At any moment. They abandoned her, after all. The song acquired somber notes, lingering on the feeling of sadness. They had to suppress their tears as they let out their feelings. Guilt, sorrow, longing.

 They tried to go to other feelings, but it was impossible, their mind always circling and then coming back to Eda.

  When they stopped and opened their eyes, the Golden Guard had taken off their mask, staring at Raine with an empty expression. The bags under his eyes would make Raine feel an urge to hug them, to scold them to sleep eight hours a day, to tell them to eat healthy. Why such a young kid was a coven head and looked so tired---

 The scars and nick was what more startled them, a kid shouldn’t be that hurt. Those were tears streams? Raine didn’t ask, looking down, face burning from the thought of playing a song about their ex in front of the Golden guard.

 (Not that there were any words to it, and the Golden Guard could guess the subject, but still made Raine anxious.)

 "I-I-I am sorry, it's not my best work, Golden Guard. I.... I will make it sound better if I just play something I already know."

 "You can just call me Hunter." Hunter said, a bit emotionless. "I hope to see you playing more often, Raine.”

 Raine nodded, seeing him shift the position they were sitting, from a rigid stance to a more teen-like way, sitting on one of his legs.

 “Sure, sir. I mean, Hunter. Just as a curiosity… How old are you again?”

 “I am sixteen.” He said, a bit more defensive now. Raine felt how tense he was.

 “Oh, that’s an important age! Have you gotten your own Palisman yet?” Raine smiled, trying to just treat him as a teen, and not, Golden Guard, Belos right hand.

 Something about the scars, the tired expression, the lack of emotion… Made them shiver. When they were sixteen their biggest scar was from an accidental cut and their biggest problem was asking out Eda to go with Grom together. Not leading an entire coven. Definitely not going on dangerous missions for a tyrannical emperor.

 “No, not yet. I got my staff from Emperor Belos, I don’t use this kind of wild magic.”

 “Oh… That’s fair, I imagine Belos doesn’t like wild magic.” Raine said, looking at Hunter. When he didn’t answer, they felt like they touched a delicate subject. “Want to hear another song?” They tried to distract the teen, standing closer to him.

 “That would be lovely, Whispers.” He said, looking at the mask on his lap.

 Raine started to play, mindlessly strumming the strings, just feeling the mood. Hunter seemed to be enjoying it, and some tears streamed down again, but Raine didn’t comment on them, yet. They didn’t feel like Hunter would actually answer if they asked why he was crying. When they finished, Hunter had put the mask on a while ago, but Raine could tell he was holding up sobs, by the way his breath was uneven and the chest moving in spasms sometimes.

 “Music does that to you. Especially a Bard’s song, even if it isn’t my intention to use magic while I play.” Raine reassured him “Brings feelings you didn’t know you had. Bring out smiles and tears. Sometimes all I do is play music and my feelings take over me.”

 “Feelings are a weakness.” Hunter affirmed, a voice cracking in a way that made Raine be sure he still was crying.

 “Everyone has feelings. I know they can be hard to deal with, but it’s healthy to feel them, and sometimes.... Just cry to a song you liked.”

 Raine started to play again, now they remembered about  Raine’s Rhapsody and they were letting the song soothe them, using the bard’s magic to make the objects float around “And talk about it with someone you trust. Like your parents, or a friend, or nice adult. No one can keep all of their feelings to themself and feel good.”

 “... Wouldn’t this be awful? I mean, why would someone want to hear another person’s feelings?”

 “Sometimes, they’re friends. And friends do that for each other.” Raine stopped playing the song, Hunter’s words had set off many red alert lights on their brain. “Did you never… Tell your feelings to someone?” They asked, worried.

 “Well, I ramble about them alone on my bedroom and on my notebook--”

 “No, a real person.” Raine interrupted, with a worried look “With a real person that can hug you when you start to cry and that can pat your back, and bring you some water when you’re feeling like shit.” Raine struggled to say the last word, but they thought that would be more relatable to the teen. Teenagers liked cuss words, right?

 “That would be hard, I am always feeling like shit.” Hunter laughed, but Raine didn’t, making him go silent.

 “Do you… Need to talk about something?” Raine asked carefully, trying to sound the least threatening possible. They tried to put care into their voice, as well as an welcoming tone. Having the right tone on their voice was treated like getting the right tone on a song: One wrong tone and you could end up ruining your whole performance.

 “I… It’s just that… You know, all of-- All of this--” Hunter was trying to say something, but stopped himself “No, I      DON’T     need to.” Hunter’s body language changed from leaning closer to Raine to tense and alert in a matter of seconds, and he stood up quickly “It was a pleasure to meet you, Mx. Whispers. But I got to go. I have more pressing matters to attend to.”

 Raine nodded, noticing they crossed a boundary there, but they were okay about it. They noticed Hunter’s sudden shift of body language, and that would only make sense. Raine was a teacher, and it wouldn’t be the first time they offered comfort to an abused kid. Reaching for them on days they were beaten up, asking how they were feeling, if they needed a hug or just to chat. Show that things could get better. Get one of their hidden candy and give it to them as a promise that someone cared for them. It wasn’t the first time that an abused kid told them they didn’t need help and drifted away. They knew some parents would double the abuse on the kids when they discovered they had been snitched to another adult.

  It would only make sense for Hunter to dodge any questions and any comfort. It didn’t make it less okay, though. Raine made a mental note to offer comfort in other ways.

 Hunter stopped a bit and turned to Raine. He took off the mask, to show a face with many streams of tears that were already drying out, and an even more exhausted expression.

 “It was nice to talk to you. I hope to hear your violin again.”

 “No problem, Hunter. And I mean, you can reach out if you just need to spend time with someone. I can just pretend you aren’t there and play.”

 “That… That would be nice, actually.” Hunter muttered, putting the mask on again “Goodbye, Raine.”

 He slowly walked away, tired. Raine sighed and got their violin again.

 Maybe it was time to plan how to help that poor kid.