#like honestly at this point FUCK remembrance day and all its trappings

[mangled-by-disuse]

when over ten million soldiers (mostly teenagers and men in their early 20s) and at least as many civilians were being blown to pieces and their twitching, bloody bodies were being carried off the battlefield over a muddy morass made up mostly of dead men and horses

how many of them d'you think thought "hey, this sucks, but it's going to make a SICK lawn ornament"?

Don't think for a second, I'd forgotten about Poppy Watch.

Displays like these are outright disrespectful, and there's a whole new industry around producing these appalling silhouette cutouts that didn't exist when I was growing up.

[garglyswoof]

At the Seams

Happy holidays Kamille / @songof-thelark​! I hope you enjoy this fic. I lightly used your prompt of her telling him about her brother, but i definitely used it as more of a connection between them than a deliberate scene. I hope you still like it!

She feels guilty that she’s not fully bought in to Nelson, Murdock and Page. Don’t get her wrong, the concept is there in spades, and every once in a while when Foggy’s talking on the phone to a new client in that jocular way of his that still manages to be professional, or the office is quiet as Matt listens to legal briefs on the joke pair of Beats Karen had picked up for him, she is content. Moments of an almost aching joy she wants to trap in amber; fossilize Foggy’s laugh, Matt’s intoxicating smile.

But there’s so much in the way of these moments. Read here or on AO3

Karen stands and stretches, needing a break from the glare of the screen she’s been glued to since 10 am. Foggy looks up from his desk with a soft smile and her heart clenches at the easy acceptance in it. That’s Foggy, Champion of Good, way moreso than Matt if she’s being honest.

“Your eyes crossing?” Foggy teases, winging a pen back and forth between his fingers.

“Just a bit,” she responds with her own smile. They have a surprising caseload, though it really shouldn’t be considering Foggy’s fifteen minutes of DA fame. She’s just thankful their payment is in both casseroles and cash these days, the terrifying financial noose of the original firm’s run just a memory.

���Karen,” Foggy says, his eyes serious, and the suddenness of the change points to a thought long harbored. “What’s up with you and Matt?”

She grabs an elbow, continuing her stretch. Foggy’s pen is still. “Fog,” she mutters with a sigh, “we’re fine. As we can be.”

“Can I get more than that? You know I don’t like butting in, but something feels wrong. We’re a team, Karen. I’ve wanted this my whole life, and when you came into the picture it’s like you were there all along. So please spare me the ‘we’re fine’s. Can I help? What can I do?”

Karen rounds her desk and perches on the edge of his, the glow of the banker’s light Foggy had stolen from his old office pooling on his desk. “I honestly meant it- we’re fine. Look, Matt and I, what we were starting, that’s never going to happen.” She looks down, staring fixedly at the blotter on his desk where he’s adorably doodled ‘Marcy’ in six different fonts. “I really, really liked him, Foggy. So there are times now where I remember that feeling and I get pissed off at what he did. It’s just going to take time, time and a bit of awkwardness when we look at each other and forget.” She laughs. “Or remember.” She reaches over and squeezes his hand, sliding off the desk, cocking her head at Foggy’s sad smile. “It’s ok, really.”

“I guess I’m still stuck on the dream of it all. My best friend in love with my new best friend. But I get it. Just-” Foggy searches her eyes, “you would tell me if it was more than just that, right?”

She responds with a nod because vocalizing a lie seems so much worse. Because the “more than just that” is wrapped up in both Murdock and Nelson. And her brother. And Frank Castle, if she lets herself open that door. She pulls her lips in, brushes her hands over her skirt, and heads back to her desk, wondering when this dream will shatter too.

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

He’s not fully bought into the rural lifestyle, but it does have its perks. The crisp snap in the air, the quiet disturbed only by the susurrus of the wind through the pines, the community in this space where the land seems to stretch out beyond normal confines. He’s made a deliberate choice to get to know his neighbors, to try to begin to gain a sense of normalcy. God, it was like the transition of military to civilian life but thousands of times worse.

Because how do you become human again when you’ve lost your ties to it? He’d tried living with his demons, waking up with sweat beaded at his temples, his hands bloody from the slide of the sledgehammer’s grip, the smell of Maria’s perfume somehow still in his nose.  It hadn’t worked.

So that’s why he’s here talking to Marjorie, who lives across the way in a tiny cabin with the most carefully tended garden he’s ever seen. The tract of land has houses built from stone and timber in the early part of the century, and no electricity lines mar the sky, only unbroken towers of spruce, the occasional maple tree flashing its bright fall plumage. His eyes crinkle at the corners at something Marjorie says, and he takes the casserole from her age-spotted hands with care.

“Thank you, ma’am. You set on firewood?” He says this with a tease - last time he’d chopped wood it seemed that Marjorie’s entire female friend circle just so happened to come by to chat.

“Young man, don’t begrudge them their simple pleasures,” Marjorie says, her voice a rasp to match his own, smiling and waving her hand idly at him as she turns to head back inside. “You going into town anytime soon?”

It had been weeks since he had. Despite Marjorie forcing him to kick his eating-out-of-the-can habit, there wasn’t much he needed out here. Time and books and the sweet company of an elderly woman telling tales from her past, the occasional visit from the taciturn old homesteader who brought his battery-powered stereo and blasted Springsteen to the skies. The guitar he stole from Lieberman. He shakes his head.

“Well, I’ll be heading up tomorrow. Need to keep up to date on what’s going on in the world since it’s all going to hell,” she says, the screen door slamming though she pauses for his response after, and he laughs, ducking his head.

“Yeh,” he mutters through the flash of his grin, that vocalization that’s more out of habit than an actual response. “Yeh, it sure is.” The smile drops and he can see Marjorie’s face soften through the screen.

She invites him for dinner and tells more of her stories. He finds himself returning the favor, stories of Frank Jr. and Lisa in trade for her own grandkids’ tales, and he heads back to his cabin with his heart a little bit lighter. It’s comfortable and safe and he knows it’s a respite, but holds on to his time here all the same. He hasn’t read papers or watched the news or even listened. It would just be fodder for a new list of takedowns, and he’s not ready for that. What he is ready for is realizing that his fight isn’t over. Just how he does it is. He’s always toed the line that is the brutality of death, but the emotion powering his vendetta confused things.

He is not like Red. He is fine with being judge, jury, and executioner. He doesn’t see it as playing god, if he even believed. It’s making a choice, and it is a deliberate one, and it doesn’t come without penalty.

He is just willing to do it.

Will there always be some criminal to fill the gap, come up the ranks? Of course. Thousands of years of human nature and the shit associated with it say a resounding yes. But he sees it like he saw all military work - to support a cause you believe, others may need to die. And he believes in getting the deep rooted conspiracy of scum out of their holes and into the streets.

He thinks of Lewis then. Thinks of the military and what it produces. Billy and Curtis and Lewis and him. Each with their own sense of order, instilled through military. He thinks how he shouldn’t have been there in that hotel, that it made no sense for him to be there, but he had been. Because talking with Lieberman, hell even Sarah, cemented it. Karen’s a sort of family now.  He thinks of her, wonders how she is. Wonders if she’s safe. It’s ok to just wonder.

He dreams less often.

----------

She wonders if he’s ok. Today’s daily thought devoted to Frank Castle comes as her hand grips her keys, eyes tracking her surroundings in the mall’s meager parking lot. She hates driving in the city, but had needed a new desk, and schlepping that on the subway all the way to Queens had not been on her list of fun things to do.

She hasn’t seen nor heard from him since the elevator, the memory of it foggy and displaced from the adrenaline and her injuries at the time. She sometimes touches her forehead unconsciously when she thinks about it, sees his eyes and the confused openness in them, the pain and adrenaline stripping everything away.

Where the hell is he? Where had he been when Fisk was raining terror on her and everyone she loved? It’s not like she waited for him to rescue her, she hadn’t expected that with Lewis either, but part of her...yeah part of her is still surprised he wasn’t there. That he didn’t show up, pumping a shotgun and unloading it in Dex’s heart.

It would have saved a lot of trouble. An agent’s life. Having to hear those desperately frustrated words from Matt’s mouth - god - that still hurt. She unlocks the car door with a flinch of remembrance, slides into the cracked pleather that needs a new layer of duct tape. There’s an old Jeep Cherokee staring at her accusedly from a space in front of her, a mirror image to the one she wrecked. She sighs and lowers her head and breathes, trying to remember what her thankfully-sliding-scale-therapist told her to do to quell the anxiety.

She remembers the look in both Foggy and Matt’s eyes when she’d told them. It had been what she expected, that mix of pity and incredulity and that judgment from Matt and an earnest attempt to understand from Foggy. She also remembers how it felt to tell Frank without saying a word. Because isn’t that it? Isn’t that why she’s held on to Frank, forgiven him with two hands clasped around his back in that hug she didn’t even know she wanted until he’d turned to leave?

All those unspoken conversations.

God, where the fuck is he? Her phone buzzes an interruption, juddering in the console where she’d stashed it.

“Karen Page,” she says, old habits from the paper dying hard.

“Ms. Page, free for dinner tonight? I know it’s a bit last minute but Lily’s been asking you to come visit for ages and I’m making Chicken Parmigiano and the kitchen smells fantastic and I thought of you.” A pause. “And that sounded incredibly wrong. But the offer stands.”

Karen smiles at Ellison’s awkward delivery. He’s really trying to regain her friendship, and the warmth of that realization suffuses from her heart through her chest.

“I would love to smell like Chicken parm,” she teases and checks the console’s clock. “What time?”

“An hou-”

She interrupts him. “And no matchmaking this time, right? I want to make that perfectly clear.”

Ellison laughs without a hint of embarrassment. “I promise I’ll give you fair warning if I try to set you up again. Though I have to say Karen, I thought you and Jason were gr-”

“OK yep, see you in an hour. Gotta go!” She cuts him off brightly and shifts the now-warm car into gear. It’ll take her most of the hour to get through Manhattan’s tangled streets, and she turns on her radio, grateful she has control courtesy of the free stereo repair from one of their lower-income clients.

Ellison greets her at the door with searching eyes and she pastes on the most sincere smile she can manage. It’s exhausting having people care, she thinks, then lets out a real laugh at the thought. It seems to appease Ellison as he takes her coat, the sound of Sinatra floating through the hall.

It’s just as comfortable as last time. She tells them about Nelson, Murdock & Page while Lily browbeats Ellison for letting her go, Ellison pulls a serious face as Lily brings out the dessert, “Tiramisu, from Geno’s. Mitchell can’t make desserts worth a damn.”

“What’s that face for,” Karen says suspiciously and Ellison leans over, fingers steepled below his chin. He stares at her for a moment as if composing what to say, so when he barks the words out, Karen jumps with their suddenness.

“Freelance. You up for it?”

She freezes and cants her eyes down, folds in on herself, hunched over her dessert. “I won’t tell you who he is.”

“I will never ask you that, not anymore.” His voice is warm, understanding, and she lifts her head to catch the softness in his eyes. Lily pushes back from the table and busies herself in the kitchen.

“I won’t give you Frank Castle either,” Karen says, steel in her voice, emboldened by his reaction.

“Karen, the attack on the bulletin messed with me hard. He attacked my family, in my home. A home as real as this one,” Ellison says, spreading his arms wide. “It put my trust in you to the test, because I know what I saw and heard and I know your tendency to-”

“To what?”

His mouth is open, lips moving to find the words. He knows he’s said the wrong thing and looks away to compose himself. “Karen, you’ve got a heart bigger than any I’ve known, and courage in spades, and you put yourself on the line for a story.” He shakes his head with a scoff. “That sounds like a hallmark card. Let me frame it another way. You are ruthless.”

Her eyes widen and her head shifts back, the words a blow. “Wh-what?”

“You’re ruthless in pursuit of a story. In protection of a source. In trusting in someone that’s earned it in your eyes despite evidence that would send someone else running.” Sinatra croons about flying to the moon as Ellison’s eyes catch hers. From the kitchen comes the smell of brewing coffee and Karen closes her eyes. “It’s a good thing. But it’s also a terrifying thing. It’s high stakes to trust you.” He holds up his hands in defense at her expression. “But I do, and I’m sorry that I didn’t show that. I’m showing it now. No Daredevil, no Frank Castle, no whomever comes next because apparently you’re a superhero slash villain magnet. Not unless it’s on your terms.”

Her whole body sags with relief and Ellison’s lip twitches in a half-smile hidden by his beard. Lily comes back to the table with freshly-brewed decaf, Karen smiling over her mug and trying hard not to think of diners and busted faces and what came after.

Where the hell is he?

It’s close to eleven when she finally heads up the stairs to her apartment, fishing out her keys from her purse as she sings Sinatra in a soft, out-of-key lilt. She’s at the stairs, the faint sound of music filtering down from her floor, which is a bit of a surprise. It’s usually pretty quiet, the building mainly full of retirees. She’d inherited the rent-controlled apartment from her grand aunt - there was no way in hell she could’ve paid Matt’s rent on top of a normal New York rent, even living out in Queens.

♫No matter who you are♫

Her step stutters and she dives a hand in her bag despite what the song playing must mean. Has to mean, right? She rounds the stairs and it’s there, sifting out from her apartment.

♫ Shining bright to see ♫

It feels a dream, and her steps are measured, one in front of the other as she approaches the door like it’s going to warp her to another dimension. Her hand lifts as if to knock before she shakes her head at the ridiculousness and places the key in the lock, the scrape of it echoing down to her toes. She pushes the door open, eyes scanning, her view of the living room frustratingly blocked by all her bookcases, but she doesn’t have to wait.

Her name is a rumble in his throat and her heart quakes.

“Karen.”

“Hi Frank,” she says in a clipped voice. “Drink? Oh, you’ve brought your own.” There’s a bottle of domestic she’d never buy in his grip. His hair is longer, not quite as full as his hipster ‘do, but definitely not the close shave she associates with The Punisher. His beard has made a return, close-cropped this time, and she knows these things are a conscious choice on his part, a way to separate himself.

“So what brings you by? I don’t work for the paper anymore so can’t help you as much these days.” She pulls her lips in, tucks an errant lock of hair behind her ear. Turns off the stereo god that song. Fidgeting. Pissed.

“I’m sorry.” It’s unexpected, this apology, and it breaks the floodgates of her thoughts.

“Where were you? Fisk fucked up so many lives. A good agent died. Many good agents. Blackmail and death. I thought this would be prime Punisher territory or is it because it doesn’t connect with your fam-” She stops. Too late.

He stands, his hurt and anger propelling him out of the seat. His voice is an open wound. “Guess you missed the memo when you became family, Karen.”

“I’m sorry, i had no right to say that. It’s not even-” she pauses, closes her eyes, her mouth stuttering as she tries to form her thoughts. What did he mean? “It’s not what I really think. I’m just angry, and I have no right to be. I have no claim on you.”

“But you do, Karen. You’re family. And I should have left some way to get in touch. I went off the grid, trying to figure it out, trying to change, trying to put that past behind me.” He’s at her bookshelves, scanning the titles. The window Matt uses to break in is to his side, the lights of the city bright and crisp in the fall air.

Her voice still holds tension, her question tight. “And did you?”

“No.” It’s as long of an answer as he’s willing to give right now, and she shakes her head in response, breath blowing out her nose.  He abandons the shelves, scrubs a hand over his face. “I- I’m glad you’re safe Karen.”

She’s staring at him, her eyes hard with the weight of emotion, and she launches herself at him. He’s prepared this time, his arms circling around her, hand up to touch the silk of her hair, feeling the rabbit pulse of her heart against his chest.

She pulls back first and he’s reluctant to release her. She turns and sits on the edge of the couch, fiddling with something on the coffee table’s burled wood. Her laugh is self-deprecating. “My old boss called me ruthless tonight. And I thought, ‘you don’t even know the half of it’.”

He crosses the room, avoiding the spot that always trips her, where the rug curls up. He always knows where he is, moving with a grace that belies his bulk. “Maria used to call me that.” He laughs. “Ruthless. Said I focused on one thing so hard I forgot what else was around.”

“Do you think she was right?”

“Depends on what you define ‘one thing’ as. What she meant it as? Nah. I disagreed, didn’t tell her that though.” His face is in shadow and she reaches to turn on the light. He squints until his eyes adjust. “Things were rocky those last couple tours. I was taking it home with me. So I just kinda took whatever she said. She was a real ballbuster, she was.” His smile is far away and he shakes his head like he’s shaking off a blow. “Didn’t mean to interrupt. Just reminded me.”

“It’s ok.” Her voice is soft. She spins her bottle on its edge, studying the condensation ring on the table. She’d forgot to put coasters out.

“What is it, Karen?”

She laughs once, an unhumorous huff, and then the words scratch out of a warring throat. “When I was nineteen, I killed my brother.”

--------

Frank had missed the city, the sounds and horrid fucking smells and the people and the sheer controlled chaos of the streets. So he feels at home in this weekly cash-up-front rental, his police scanner a low murmur in the background, the sirens and accented shouts are the background to his thoughts.

He’d swung by Curtis’ place, the man’s face still bearing the scars of Lewis’ brutality, and Curtis had tried to pry in that subtle, vet-meeting, questioning way which Frank had mostly dodged. He was getting soft, all these deep conversations and heart-to-hearts, swear to god. But Karen, she-

He’d known there was something, a darkness in her that called to his own, however goddamned sparkly vampire that sounded in his head. Just something off, then. Simple as like calls to like. He’d been wrong about her and Red. He wouldn’t be able to hold on to her, not with the pedestal he’d put her on.

Sometimes you’ve gotta recognize the darkness in others so you can understand it. It was something he’d started to teach Lisa, when that asshole bully at school tried to make her life miserable. He’d taught her how to recognize it, and at the right time, to use that understanding to make the bully stop. Her face as she ran off the bus that first day she’d stood up to him, running up into Frank’s arms with that grin so much like Maria’s it hurt, god.

So many things in that smile. A darkness in its own right.

He shook his head, picked up the book Karen had let him borrow, a gesture that made him smile himself, now, because it spoke of tomorrow. She’d joked that she’d put flowers in her window when she wanted the book back.

He hadn’t been sure if he was fooling himself with her friendship, not with the deaths on his hands, but she’d all but screamed her acceptance at him, and who was he to argue when it felt so good to feel connected to someone?

He isn’t stupid. She is a beautiful woman and they are clearly attracted to one another. But it isn’t why she’s family.

She’s family because she is ruthless, and so is he.

------

The new modus operandi of Nelson, Murdock and Page isn’t much different than the old one, they’re just more obvious about it. They still help those who aren’t getting a fair legal shake, and with that comes the inevitable investigation that uncovers the seedy underbelly of Hell’s Kitchen and beyond.

It’s a system that works surprisingly well. A dream scrawled on a napkin come to life. She looks into the cases, digging deep on the angles and motives. Matt does nighttime reconnaissance and rules the jurists’ box with compelling arguments. Foggy quotes legal precedent like it’s a Jeopardy category he’s just won.

And while they’re doing good work, a part of her wonders if they could do more, especially when they begin to realize something’s horning in on Fisk’s old territory. Something big. There’s whispers of it in the Kitchen, talk of a crime family with deep pockets and an even deeper streak of violence. She takes her work home with her, files she’s pulled from legal records, info from The Bulletin’s database. There’s a whiteboard in her kitchen that looks like a conspiracy theorist’s dream.

She brings it into the office, expecting Foggy to laugh, but he just calls them Team Awesome and moves a pushpin around.

“Seriously Karen, I’ve dreamed about this moment. You-” he points at her, “are helping Foggy Nelson realize a life’s dream.” He puts his hands in his pockets and leans back, observing. “Wow. It really does make things clear. I resolve we have this at all future Nelson, Murdock and Page meetings. By the way - we’ve got enough petty cash to pay for your investigator’s license. We should make this legal, huh?”

Matt smiles at her pleased surprise. “You’re part of our dream now, Karen. You didn’t think you’d escape did you?”

And despite all the bs between them, the shadow of his lies and those months where they’d presumed him dead and that desperate hopeful act of paying his rent, her smile at Matt is real, and the gleam in her eyes is too.

“Yeah, so,” she brushes the front of her skirt, motions to Matt, “when you got that name a few weeks ago, Blackwing, that broke things open.” She points to an article pinned in the upper right. “We’re dealing with the Maggias. An international crime organization that saw an opportunity in a Fisk-less New York. But look here,” she points to a picture with two strands of yarn leading from it. “This girl. If we get to her…” She trails off at their expressions. “What?”

“You are not going to directly involve yourself in this, Karen.” Matt’s the first to say it, but Foggy’s looking at her with the same stern face.

“Wait, what?”

“You can’t pull a Fisk on us again, we have to let law and research and Matt’s reflexes build our case for it.”

She’s pissed her actions have become a noun and says so.

“Look Karen, it’s hard enough to let a guy with supernatural reflexes out there and not worry to death,” Foggy’s saying, but she’s tuning him out. Because it’s what she expected from them, this overprotectiveness that will result in saving her life and hurting others. But she nods, they deserve her at least making the effort.

And so she does, tries to work on another angle for a few days, but the dangling possibility of investigating the crime lords’ mistress holds too much promise. She leaves work early, feigning cramps, a sadly still relevant way to avoid any questions from the boys.

She’s home in forty minutes, and is a whirlwind of activity, grabbing a notebook, pulling out some spare ammo from a drawer. When he speaks, her heart leaves her body.

“Going somewhere?”

She explains.

“Do you have a death wish Karen?” He asks as if he already knows the answer.

“No. Yes. Not really,” she answers and he nods, because it’s the truth. The question is the wrong one. It’s not about having a death wish. It’s something tangled up in a lack of self-preservation and her own sense of self-worth. Add a dash of genuine rage. Stir.

“Matt sees it as selfish,” she says suddenly. “I know he does. He said the same to me when he had to rescue me at the church. I blew his chance at Fisk because of my own bravado. God Frank, he was so mad.”

Frank stands during this, stalking towards her with an angry set to his jaw. “It sounds like me and Red need to have a talk.” He grabs her hands, holds them up so her palms are facing the ground, fingers pointing down in his grip. “You don’t have a death wish. And you’re not selfish. You follow your gut. You’re ruthless.”

Her eyes shine at this reminder of their talk, but she’s not ready to let go of her thoughts just yet. “But part of me thinks he’s right. When I go with my gut, people die. My brother. Ben. Father Lantom. So maybe I go, and i don’t involve anyone.”

“Is that what this is?” He lets go of a hand, circles his own in the air in reference to her frenetic packing. “You going off on your own? It didn’t work with Lewis, it’s not gonna work here.” She pulls from his grip, and he’s surprised at the anger on her face.

“So I just sit here, while the Maggias slip into Fisk’s shoes?”

He holds her gaze while shaking his head slowly. “Never said that, Karen. Wouldn’t say that.” The groove between his brows deepens and he cocks his head to the side, considering. He starts to say something, but his thoughts haven’t caught up to his voice and it comes out a low murmured rasp.  “You...Karen.” He pauses, his eyes darting around the room as he thinks. “You’ve got this thing about you. Like a pitbull. You don’t let go. And yeah, maybe it’s like Ellison says, you’re ruthless. You’ve got the killer instinct.”

She watches him without expression, her arms clasped across her body. A door creaks and slams closed nearby and she wonders at how normal it feels, Frank in her apartment. She stays silent, unsure if it’s more because she’s afraid of what he’ll say or that she needs it so much.

“Could your law friends dismantle this in a few years? Sure. Could Red beat up and threaten folks in the Kitchen until he gets lucky? Sure. But waiting means more people die. And you get that.”

Karen looks up sharply and Frank’s gaze narrows on her own. “Sometimes you gotta do something crazy to get results and you-” he breaks the stare, his teeth flashing in a smile that crinkles the corners of his eyes, “you don’t even pause to think about it. You just do, Karen.” He turns back to her, his brow clear, his stare piercing. “Now how’s somebody gonna say that’s selfish? Here’s the thing. You’re always left with the aftermath, but what if you hadn’t made your choices?”

“My brother would still be alive. Ben.”

“Bullshit. Your brother would be dead at your boyfriend’s hands, from what you told me. Ben might be alive but Fisk would’ve killed someone else. You uncover stuff, you worry it between your teeth. Pitbull, Karen.”

She smiles at this. “I’ve always loved dogs.”

“Heh.” Frank walks back to the couch, takes a pull off the beer sitting there. “So what’s this plan that’s got your lawyer friends in a tizzy?” He says the last word mockingly and circles the bottle in the air, an encouragement to speak.

She relaxes into another sort of tension, borne of facts and research. Turns towards the kitchen, grabs a Fat Tire from the fridge and sits down next to Frank. She watches his profile as he takes a drink, his throat working beneath the sharp cut of his jawline.

“The Maggias are divided right now. A bunch of hot-heads scrambling for power left in the void Fisk’s arrest made. And-” she says this last word like it’s a revelation, “two of them are after the same girl.”

Frank is nodding. “The mistress angle. Nice. She’s gotta be under a helluva lot of protection then.”

“Maybe,” Karen concedes, “but she’s not part of the family. From what I can tell she has no idea what they’re into, so if she has protection it’s well hidden. I want to talk to her. I want her to start asking questions. I want her questions to scare them into making a false move.”

“Is she...with both of them?”

“No. Neither. I think she senses something. But they’re obsessed.”

“That makes it easier to convince her. But what’s after that? Let’s assume she tells them, and they spook. So what?” He turns his body towards her, raises his bottle and ducks his head. “You acting as bait? That’s not gonna work with these guys.”

Karen looks down, her hands tangled in her lap. “Do -” she pauses, takes a sip of beer, “do you want to help?”

He stares at her and the silence stretches. She ventures a glance at him, and his eyes are tracing the planes of her face, his mouth open, his head nodding in a rhythm that speaks less of an acknowledgment than a means to think.

Frank breaks the silence with a croak of laughter, his head ducked down and that flash of teeth shining and it surprises her into her own laugh, though she’s unsure why she is.

“Just thinking last year I’d tell you hell no, I work alone. But maybe this is the new me. The new Frank.” His eyes dim for a moment. “I don’t pull punches Karen. If I help you, people will die. That part of me isn’t gone, never will be. But you know this. Right?” He looks up at her and there’s a vulnerability there that he’d deny if she pointed it out.

And that’s part of both of their stories, she thinks. Reaching out unconsciously to someone who just might understand. It’s human nature to want connection despite what terrors your own mind commits. And Frank may think his are on a different level - maybe they are - but she doesn’t see it that way. And she tells him so.

His face hardens for a moment in that inexplicable instinct to deny acceptance freely given, but his brow clears at her fierce expression. “Shit, Karen, you’re a firebrand,” there’s a smile in his voice. “So then,” he sets his beer down, holds his hand out. His fingers slide up her wrist when they shake and she shivers, unbidden.

“Partners?” He says and darts his eyes away, and her mouth curls up in the lightest of smiles as she responds.

“Sounds like a plan.”

[robininthelabyrinth]

Fic prompt: as a kid, Len inherited his maternal grandfather's books. Old, valuable books. When things started getting worse, he would seek refuge among their pages, reading things meant for far older, wiser men - such as instructions in how to make a golem... Many years later he still hasn't found a way to tell Mick the truth...

for the magical creature bingo board, square: author’s choice :)

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He shouldn’t have done it.

Len knows he shouldn’t have, and feels almost bad about it, almost, and he doesn’t feel bad about anything anymore. Hasn’t for years, ever since he started helping Dad out at age five and got his ass kicked for asking about why stealing wasn’t wrong like they said on the TV.

He doesn’t really regret doing it, but that doesn’t change that he shouldn’t have done it.

He shouldn’t have stolen his grandfather’s books, to start with. They weren’t his to have: his grandfather would never have given it to him. Not the grandfather he spent most of his time with when he could, his father’s father, the kindly old man with the ice cream truck and the sad eyes and the deluded hope that his angry son would be content with his father and his wife and so spare his son, but the other one.

He called him grandfather, but he was Len’s mother’s uncle, since her father was long dead; the tall, stern Rav Eleazar, who smiled rarely and did not approve of Len’s mother but insisted on teaching her son Hebrew and the little scraps of Jewish faith he could fit into the one week a year he spent in Central. The one who Len worked so very hard to please, learning Hebrew even on his own time in the library. The one who, when Len read out a whole prayer by himself for the first time and beamed from the sheer pride of it, laughed softly and said, “You remind me of her.”

“Her?” Len asks.

“The Golem of the trenches,” Rav Eleazar said, and his gaze was distant and soft. “I met her in the Great War, where she stood tall among the men, with stars on her brow and truth on her tongue. She fought with honor and with love for all mankind, and walked freely through No Man’s Land where bullets could not touch her.”

It took some time for Len to put it together, the rumors and the stories and the legends, before –

“You met Wonder Woman?” he marveled. “For real?”

“Oh, yes,” Rav Eleazar says. “She is one of our own, you know – a long-wandering Jew taught her mother the tricks of it and stood by her as she formed her out of clay, wrote the shem of God in her mouth and on her brow, and now she is the guardian of mankind.”

“You met Wonder Woman! The superhero! She’s a legend! Tell me about her!”

And Rav Eleazer did.

But he told his tales too well, to a growing thief like Len, because Len couldn’t help but want to know more.

So Len stole his grandfather’s oldest diary.

The one with the stories of his time in the war.

The one with the secrets.

He meant to give it back, he really did, but his mother died a few months later and his grandfather never again returned to Central.

So he carried it with him.

Carried it when his father beat him for questioning his judgment about a job.

Carried it when that job went south and his father hung it all on him.

Carried it through the trial, which no one came to watch.

Carried it to juvie, where no one stood by his side.

Carried it to the hospital, a stab wound bleeding in his side from a shiv no one was there to defend him from.

Carried it through his stay there, with indifferent nurses and doctors barely even looking at him.

Carried it back to juvie, teeth gritted and eyes burning red with hate and hurt and loneliness, to be beaten again and again and again, for the color of his skin and the tenor of his faith and even just because, until he just couldn’t take it anymore

And he pulled out that book and he went to work.

The juvie catered to both of the Gem Cities, but it was located in a far off suburb of Keystone, where the streets had all but faded to rural fields and there weren’t enough people to complain and keep the juvie out, so it was Keystone soil Len went for, thick and strong, warm between his fingers and filled with life already.

He built himself a man, big and tall and strong, with a back strong enough to take the hurts of the world.

He shaped fingers to be clever and quick, shoulders to help support him, strong legs to brace himself against any onrushing force.

For his brain, he put a scrap of lettuce from lunch, to represent growth, and stolen lighter, to represent destruction.

For his heart, Len worried at his own lip until it bled, and he spat that blood into the mud that he mixes with the last few tears he has within him.

Defend me and be by my side, he wishes, with all of his cold little heart. Be mine always.

And he carves the name of God, the shem, into his man’s rib, where it will be safe, and puts the name of truth upon his brow.

And then Len sits back, fury spent, energy gone, nothing left, and closes his eyes.

Please work, he thinks.

He won’t be able to take another disappointment.

If his grandfather lied, if his grandfather’s stories were no more than stories –

It would break his heart.

Please work.

Please.

A warm hand touches his elbow and Len sighs, an exhale of breath. He’d hope to escape notice long enough to complete his task, but apparently that wasn’t to be.

“Hey, kid,” a gruff voice he doesn’t recognize. “You okay?”

Len opens his eyes.

His man of clay looks back at him, open concern in his gaze.

It’s been so long since Len has seen anyone look at him kindly, look at him with concern, that he’s almost forgotten how looks.

“Hi,” Len whispers, unaccountably shy, and smiles, just a little.

And his man of clay smiles back.

Len can’t bring himself to regret that much. Michael, Len called him, named him, and the system recognized him as Michael “Mick” Rory when he followed Len back in – a boy with no family, no home, a pyromaniac whose family burned in a freak accident that he blames himself for.

Len has no idea if Mick Rory actually existed before his Mick walked back into juvie with him, and honestly, he’s too scared to look.

That’s not what he regrets.

What he regrets –

What he regrets is never having damn well explained any of this to Mick.

He should’ve done it from the start, he knows that, but he was scared. That’s explanation, not excuse; he played dumb when Mick asked him what he recalled about Mick’s past, pointed to the story the institutions gave them, avoided any reliance on proof, let Mick learn it and re-learn it until even he thought that was his real past, until he woke up at night dreaming of faces of sisters and brothers he never had.

Or maybe he did; what does Len know of golems? Maybe those dreams are of faces of other golems – Prague, Vilna, Themiscyra – far away.

Maybe Len’s been keeping that from him, too.

Fuck, Len’s fucked this one right up.

And now it’s too late.

Now Mick knows.

It was the fire that had revealed everything.

Len crafted Mick with a lighter in the center of his brain, a pulsing, beating core that thrummed with a remembrance of its love of fire, and it manifested as pyromania. Len was able to help Mick manage it well enough most of the time, but then - the job in Shreveport.

The whole room went up in a rush of flame.

Len scarcely escaped.

Mick, trapped by his love of fire, did not, and the flames consumed him.

But Mick is no mortal man, and fire cannot kill him. He is a golem, made of clay, and you know what fire does to clay?

It hardens it.

Len goes and finds those that turned the warehouse into a trap and kills them, only crumbling after the deed is done, falling to his knees and bowing his head in sorrow and regret.

That is how Mick finds him. His skin is glossy from the heat of the flames, but his face is cold.

“You knew,” he says. It is not a question.

“Yes,” Len whispers.

“Tell me everything.”

Len tells him all of it.

Not just the beginning, born of pain and desperation and a terrible fear that no one would ever love him, but the rest of it, the sickening pangs of guilt, the growth of love, the wrench of knowing that he should speak but finding he cannot, the understanding that he betrayed Mick every day with his silence -

Mick listens, his face closed, his body uninviting.

When Len finishes, cracked open and empty, Mick says nothing.

There is nothing but silence.

Finally, Len can take it no more. “Mick,” he says - more a plea than anything else - but finds his well of words has run dry. “Mick -”

“I need to think about this,” Mick says, and his voice is flat and unfeeling.

Len nods, numbly. That makes sense. That’s reasonable. Mick can think as long as he likes, as long as -

“Alone.”

Len bows his head, the little spark of hope that had been kindling in his chest abruptly extinguished.

It’s only just that this be the result. It doesn’t mean he likes it, it doesn’t mean it isn’t ripping him apart, gutting him, but he understands it.

It is fair.

It is awful, terrible, all-destroying, but it’s fair.

Len brought this on himself.

On them both.

Mick leaves.

After a while, Len leaves, too.

The next year goes by in a terrible blur. Len runs heists, same as always, going through the motions with a dull heart and an empty mind. He gets money and dumps it into bank accounts and turns around and keeps going. He has to keep going.

He knows if he stops, he will fall apart.

He goes - and goes - and goes -

It’s all nothing without Mick.

Len worries about him.

Oh, he knows it’s ridiculous. He knows Mick is all but invulnerable - bullets, knives, blunt force, fire, water, it’s all the same to him. But he has one vulnerability - that mark of truth on his forehead, right between the eyes where it can be mistaken for the wrinkles of stress.

If anyone changes a single stoke of that mark - erases truth and makes it death, a mere letter apart in the original Hebrew - then that’s it.

Dust to dust, ash to ash - clay to clay.

Len wakes up in a cold sweat on a regular basis to images of Mick, his beautiful Mick, dissolving into clay. He’d always known of this risk, but somehow it had not terrified him quite so much, in such a bone-deep manner, as it did now, with Mick gone who-knows-where. Gone where Len cannot protect him.

Even finding a superhero wasn’t really enough to break Len’s apathy. Oh, it’s nice; it’s a challenge. Len spends the whole time thinking wistfully of how he would enjoy this, if he remembered how to enjoy things without Mick.

His heart is gone.

He adds the heat gun to the pile of gifts for Mick that he has no opportunity to give.

He starts planning the next heist - either Keystone or Coast City, since it’s all the same for him right now - when there’s a knock on his door.

Len’s heart throbs for the first time in a year. Anticipation.

He knows that knock.

Len wants to dash over to the door, but his body is seized up. He walks to the door, slowly and surely, and opens it.

It’s Mick.

He looks good.

“Mick,” Len whispers.

“Len,” Mick says, and smiles.

Len suddenly needs to sit down.

Mick catches him as he falls, luckily, and guides him to the couch.

“What the fuck,” Len says groggily.

“Sorry,” Mick says. “My fault. I didn’t realize - you never said - about the distance. You should’ve said.”

“Distance? What about it?” Len asks.

Mick rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. “Of course you didn’t know; that’s why you didn’t tell me. I should’ve known. Len, to make a golem, you have to put your heart and soul into the making or it doesn’t work.”

“Okay..?”

Mick taps his chest. “My heart beats with your heartbeat. When I go away from you, your heart is gone as well. But I’m back, now.”

Everything is in color. Len hadn’t noticed how dull it was the last year, how everything was dull, how even his lovely, sparkling Lisa seemed flat and uninteresting, though he loved her just as much as ever.

“I think I know what you mean,” Len says. “But you don’t have to stay just because of that.”

“I don’t have to stay,” Mick agrees, and there’s a stabbing feeling in Len’s chest. “I want to.”

The feeling fades, replaced by a steadily growing glow of irrepressible joy.

“I’ve learned a lot,” Mick says. “About golems, about humanity, about life, but most of all, I learned that I don’t want to be apart from you.”

Len smiles.

He gives Mick the heat gun – he gives Mick all the gifts he saved for him, anything he thought Mick might like – and they go together on a heist, then on a supervillain spree, because they’re back together, and no one can stop them.

They even go travelling in time, but it doesn’t suit them, and they try to pull out of it. Len has a strict code, so they have to finish the mission first, but they want out. They want out.

Out doesn’t come the way they would have wished.

“The Oculus explosion will kill even you,” Len hisses to Mick’s ear. “This isn’t a fire. This is a nuke!”

“I know,” Mick says, and his face is beauteous in its calm. “But that’s my duty, in the end. I’m here to protect you. I will do it.”

“You will not,” Len says, and takes his place.

Sara carries Mick away, surprised by how light he is for his strength. She does not know that he is clay, and Len does not tell her. Mick’s secret will die with him.

Len braces himself, and wishes Mick well.

A glowing gold rope wraps around his arms.

“What,” Len says, a second before he’s quite literally lassoed into a glowing portal that appears right by his side.

He stumbles out onto a beach, surrounded by a lot of women.

Very tall, very scary women.

“Um,” Len says. “Hi?”

“Welcome,” one of them says, stepping forward.

Len’s never met her before, but he knows her on sight.

“Holy crap, you’re Wonder Woman,” Len blurts out.

She smiles. “Call me Diana,” she says. “After all, you are my brother-in-law.”

Len opens his mouth, then closes it, then opens it, then closes it again. He feebly gestures his lack of understanding.

“Mick is a golem,” Diana clarifies. “As am I; and so he is my brother. And you have married him, which makes us kin.”

Len tries to say something and fails.

“He speaks very highly of you,” she says.

“Well, Mick’s the best,” Len finally says. “None better.”

There are approving smiles all around him, which is a surprise – Len never makes a good impression on anyone – until Len realizes he’s still wrapped in Diana’s famous lasso of truth.

Well.

Mick is the best.

“Unfortunately, I cannot find him right now,” Diana says apologetically. “Will you stay here until I can?”

“Sure,” Len says, a little dazed.

He was expecting a few weeks.

It’s a whole year.

Not that it’s bad – Len doesn’t mind being on an island entirely composed of women, even if his movements are somewhat limited for religious reasons. He finds enough to keep him busy, though they do make him give back everything he steals. They don’t mind that he steals, mind you – they seem to think of it as a very clever game, and that he’s remarkably good at it – but they like the way they’ve distributed things and he doesn’t get to rearrange that at will.

Actually, he ends up becoming rather good friends with Hippolyta, who created Diana all those years ago out of clay with the help of some wandering sailor, and who is the only person who understands why Len’s vitality dims and his world goes grey the longer he’s away from Mick. Diana carries her heart with her; Mick has Len’s own.

“He knows you live,” Hippolyta assures Len. “He knows, deep inside, though perhaps not consciously – do not worry. You will be reunited, in time.”

Len waits, and waits, and waits, even when he sees cracks in the timeline – helpfully laid out in the every-shifting tapestry of Arachne hung up next to but not inside the temple of Athena for obvious reasons – and worries about Mick.

Even when he collapses as his thread is plucked out of its line in the tapestry, and wakes a few weeks later with a new set of memories and a newly intensified hatred of brainwashing.

At least he can assure himself that he only shot Mick through the heart, which would not have killed him, and at any rate, that future was averted.

Still. That was awful.

“I really need to find him,” he says to Hippolyta, Diana having gone out on mission. “I really need to find him. He’s suffering.”

“You’re suffering, too,” she says. “Soon.”

“I’d really appreciate a timeline,” Len grouses. “You’re literally centuries old. Your ‘soon’ and my ‘soon’ are not the same ‘soon’.”

Luckily, it turns out to be closer to Len’s ‘soon’ than Hippolyta’s.

In fact, it turns out to be during a massive universe-crossing invasion.

Diana makes an appearance.

“Ohmigodohmigodohmigod,” Cisco hyperventilates. “It’s Wonder Woman.”

Barry is vibrating with excitement, quite literally. Iris is just making squeaking noises and waving her hands frantically. Caitlin is frozen in place and attempting to communicate her excitement through blinks.

Even Oliver Queen, master of the unimpressed face, has stars in his eyes. “It’s an honor, ma’am,” he says, shaking her hand. “I mean – that is –”

“Diana is fine,” she says, and smiles, and Oliver looks like he needs to sit down.

Len gets that. He’s amused, watching; he’s not expecting to be recognized, what with the armor he’s currently wearing while the resupply lines go and grab his gear from Thermyscia. He’d been training when the call came, and at any rate, you can’t wear a leather jacket or a parka in a Mediterranean island.

Not even if you have a theme.

But his heart is beating strong and the world is in vivid color once more.

The Legends have arrived.

Sara is out first, flanked by Ray and Firestorm.

“Oh my god, it’s Wonder Woman,” Firestorm says. “I mean. Wow. I idolized you growing up. We did. Both of us. I mean – wow, this is embarrassing.”

“Think nothing of it,” Diana says, laughing. “I am honored.”

“Ditto to what he said,” Ray says, looking dazed. “Wow – like, so much ditto. Wow.”

Sara looks like she’s been hit by a truck. It’s not uncommon when people meet Diana. “Yeah,” she says. “Seriously. Wow. And you and your Amazons will be working with us on this? Wow. Now that’s an honor.”

The other Legends follow – Nate and Amaya and Zari, which Len has seen in the tapestry, and Mick.

Mick.

Len would go to him, but his feet are frozen in place.

(Karma for being amused at Caitlin’s plight, no doubt.)

“This is so cool,” Nate says, while both Zari and Amaya seem to be bouncing up and down in a fit of excitement too intense to actually permit them to speak. “I’m going to go say – Mick, what are you doing?”

Mick ignores him and continues walking straight up to a distracted Diana, reaching out for her.

“Mick!” Sara squawks, echoed by Ray and Firestorm. “Stop!”

Diana turns, sees him, and embraces him warmly. “My brother,” she says warmly. “I hope you are well. I have him for you.”

“You’d better,” Mick says, looking relieved.

Nate attempts to insert himself between the two of them. “You’re just amazing,” he gushes, ignoring Mick entirely despite the way they’re intertwined. “I mean, you’re Wonder Woman – Mick, let me talk to her, you had your moment –”

“Buzz off, Pretty,” Mick says, pulling back and making a face at his crewmate. “I wanna talk to my sister.”

“Mick,” Nate hisses.

“Perhaps we can speak later, Mr. Heywood,” Diana says politely, her kind smile unaffected. “I have not seen Mick for quite some time.”

“Wait, you guys have met before?” Ray asks, looking between them. “For real?”

“Did you miss the whole brother-sister thing?” Mick asks dryly.

“We didn’t miss it, we were just stunned,” Firestorm says. “Man, Mick, why didn’t you tell us you’d met Wonder Woman?”

“Didn’t seem relevant.”

“How is that not relevant?” Sara asks, then shakes her head. “Don’t answer that. Really cool, Mick. How did you two meet? And what did you do to get called Wonder Woman’s brother?”

Diana laughs. “He did not have to do anything,” she says, squeezing Mick’s hand. “He was born. Is that not the typical way of it, with brothers?”

“She’s older,” Mick says. “In case it wasn’t obvious.”

“Wait,” Cisco says. “Wait, wait, wait. You’re literally siblings? Mick’s from Thermiscyia?”

“How?” Ray asks. “I thought they were women only.”

“I’m from Keystone, idiots,” Mick says. “She’s still my sister. Listen, we’ve got something really important to discuss – more questions later.”

“Agreed,” Diana says. “If you will be so kind as to excuse us…?”

The crowd parts like the Red Sea, and lets them pass, Diana leading Mick back towards the Amazons. Of course, as soon as they’ve left the group, and the Amazons have close ranks around them, blocking them from view, frantic whispers and gestures erupt in the group left behind.

Len would normally be wallowing in amusement, but his focus is elsewhere.

Mick.

He pulls off his helmet.

“You,” Mick growls, and lunges forward.

Len is moving at the same time, and they crash together, arms around each other, holding each other close. Len feels the wave of dizziness, the feeling of heat burning in his chest, and he knows enough now to let it flow through him, from Mick into the rest of his body, and when he regains his ability to stand, Mick still has him held tight.

“I won’t do that again,” Len promises.

“You’d better,” Mick says. “I won’t let you.”

They stand in silence for a few more minutes.

After a few minutes, Len says, “How do you feel about threesomes? There’s a list of interested Amazons I’ve been collecting.”

“Yeah, I’m in,” Mick says, rolling his eyes but unable to keep the smile off his face. “Maybe after the current crisis?”

“If you insist.”

“I think I do.”

They grin at each other.

“Cisco rebuilt your gun, you know,” Mick says. “Caitlin’s been using it.”

“Trust me, I know,” Len says. “I’ve been watching Arachne’s tapestry.”

Mick blinks at him.

“Long story.”

“No, I know what it is, but it’s only supposed to be readable to – you know what, never mind. Let’s go fight.”

“You can’t leave it at that!”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m happy you’ve developed a functional form of immortality by becoming an Amazonian prince –”

“Don’t be absurd!”

“Technically, my dear, you did marry the brother of the princess,” Hippolyta says mildly. “You qualify. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.”

Len’s reintroduction to the Legends and the Flash turns out to involve some unattractive gaping on his part, because his friends are all awful people, but it still works out somehow. He only has to punch a half-dozen of them or so.

Besides, he has a new job.

Namely, protecting Mick from avid fans trying to convince him to get Diana to give out autographs.

Len minds exactly not at all, as long as Mick’s by his side.

And in the end, they go back to where they ought to be.

The Gem Cities just aren’t the same without their golem.

[owl-eyed-woman]

Attack on Titan Season 2 Episode 36 Analysis Part 5: An Ode to the Ensemble

AOT has always been a type of ensemble show, incorporating dozens of characters, several competing factions and so many weird sounding names that you can’t possibly remember all of them. This large and varied cast is crucial for creating a sprawling, complex world filled with countless people who, alongside our main characters, are struggling with the same, trying circumstances. At least, that’s the intended effect.

The downside of having such a large cast, however, is that you actually need to develop them or they might start to seem like extraneous titan fodder. AOT has definitely fallen into this trap before.

To be fair, fixing this issue is not as simple as just developing every single character into multi-dimensional human beings; this would just bog the story down with superfluous detail. Still, far too often, interactions with this expansive side cast have used them as cameos not characters, relying on weird quirks to differentiate rather than authentic characterisation.

Thankfully, this season has clearly recognised this shortcoming and started to shine a light on thus far overlooked and underutilised characters. We’ve moved away from Eren, Armin and Mikasa and have instead focused on the secondary characters in the cadet corps. With this shift, AOT has truly begun to excel as an ensemble piece.  

In the context of this season-wide reframing and refocusing, however, this episode is actually a bit of an outlier as it re-centres a lot of the action around Mikasa and Armin. But fear not, the side-characters have their time in the spotlight!

Obviously, a lot has happened in this season which, may I remind you, has spanned less than two days. There’s a lot to process and with barely a second to rest, everyone is undoubtedly struggling physically, mentally and emotionally. With this in mind, this episode grants our precious side characters a chance to finally address the most shocking twist of the season: Reiner and Bertholdt’s betrayal.

AOT has spent several episodes examining (and re-examining and then re-examining again) the various nuances of Eren’s emotional fallout from this betrayal, but the questions still remains: what about the other cadets? They, like Eren, trusted Bertholdt and Reiner unconditionally, counting them as comrade and companion through thick and thin. It only follows that their emotional fallout is just as cutting and devastating as Eren’s.

So as Sasha, Jean, Connie, Armin and Mikasa converge atop Reiner, surrounding the encased Bertholdt, it becomes a type of twisted family reunion, where past resentments and remembrances are dredged up and brought out into the open. How is everyone holding up?

Well, unsurprisingly, they’re confused and hurt! Who’da thunk? Each of them express this pain differently, coping in their own flawed ways. Sasha is simply in a state of disbelief. Connie, my sweet, dense boy, almost seems in a state of denial that they could have lied to them for so long whilst Jean’s snarky rejoinders hide his obvious distress.

There’s a lot these characters need to express openly in order to truly start healing and moving on from this betrayal, more than can be said in this brief conversation. Jean’s words cut to the heart of the matter as he vehemently tells them that they can’t just, literally and figuratively, run away from them and the three years of friendship they shared. It’s a desperate and raw attempt to appeal to Bertholdt and Reiner’s humanity that they now fear was only a façade.

They all desperately want to understand why this has happened and find some type of explanation for their betrayal after they’ve trusted them for so long but there is no satisfactory answer. In the end, while this brief conversation does allow for some emotional catharsis, it ultimately remains one-sided, unsatisfying and futile. Reiner and Bertholdt remain unmoved.

In the scheme of this episode, this is only one brief exchange, but it still shows us the genuine effort AOT has made this season to add depth and complexity to initially flat and simple characters. But after all this welcome effort, one character still remains obscured: Bertholdt. I’ve often joked that I only know two things about Bertholdt: 1. He is quiet and 2. He is tall. But honestly, there’s a lot of truth in this ridiculous, reductive statement. Who is Bertholdt? What motivates him? Why did he commit such horrific acts as the Colossal Titan?

Despite Eren and Mikasa’s virulent insistence to the contrary, AOT has been hinting heavily that Bertholdt and Reiner are more than just two irredeemable monsters who hate all of humanity; there’s another side to their betrayal.

We know that Reiner has struggled with his crimes, splitting his personality in twain just to cope with the guilt, but Bertholdt’s position has remained mysterious throughout this entire affair. Not even his friends’ desperate pleas are able to elicit any reaction or explanation from Bertholdt.

Interestingly, it’s Mikasa’s brutally pragmatic dismissal that gets a response out of the consistently aloof Bertholdt. Unlike the other cadets, Mikasa never seemed particularly close to Bertholdt or Reiner, and now, after what they’ve done, she couldn’t give two fucks about either of them. She doesn’t care about any purported humanity or moral nuance. In fact, she actively rejects its existence and rejects its relevance. They are her enemy now and that’s all she needs to know.

It’s this blunt dismissal that challenges Bertholdt to prove his humanity, to prove that they aren’t just monsters to be vanquished. As tears stream down his face, Bertholdt finally reaches his breaking point and reveals all. It is at once heartbreaking, humanising and horrifying.

He has no delusions about what they did, no declarations of moral righteousness, no smarmy excuses; just a soul-crushing awareness of the evil, disgusting crimes that they have committed. Like Reiner, Bertholdt has been consumed by guilt and self-hatred because of their atrocious actions; he’s just better at hiding it. He knows they deserve to die for what they’ve done.

It’s honestly a relief to have explicit confirmation that they didn’t want to kill all those people. I know AOT is a story about literal monsters, but I guess I don’t want to believe that someone could happily murder so many innocents unless they were literally inhuman. Then again, maybe that’s naïve; AOT’s central government forced its citizens into a suicide mission in order to cull the population. Such atrocities are the order of the day for human society as a whole. But I digress.

Significantly, Bertholdt also admits that he sincerely cared about his comrades during his time as a soldier in the 104th cadet corps, even if it was just a reprieve from this guilt. Their years undercover weren’t just part of the job, but rather, a brief refuge from the reality of their deeds. In the end, Reiner and Bertholdt were so good at playing make-believe soldiers because they desperately wanted to believe they were just innocent soldiers, if only for a while.

It’s a potent reminder that though Eren may dismiss them as monsters, even the most despicable people are still human beings. It’s easy to completely write off people after they do evil things or betray us but if we can’t acknowledge the humanity in our enemies, we’ll never truly comprehend our own innate potential for both cruelty and kindness.  We’re all complicated, we all contain multitudes and if AOT has taught us anything, we’re all capable of terrible things.

With that said, there’s only so much sympathy we can extend towards those actively trying to eradicate countless human lives. Yes, this distraught assertion of humanity and admission of guilt is genuinely moving, but Bertholdt and Reiner still made the choice to commit these crimes and stain their hands with innocent blood. I’ve been hard on Mikasa in my past analysis, but her to-the-point demand for Eren’s return is ultimately the correct response to the situation; any sympathy is pointless if they are still trying to destroy humanity.

This episode didn’t have to give so much runtime to these minor characters; it could have simply coasted on its action and gore and twists and turns. But still, in this single, tiny scene, AOT manages to do so much and is so much stronger for its inclusion. I truly appreciate this show’s continued effort to imbue its characters with complexity and humanity. This is why I’ve spent 5 whole posts analysing, or, if we’re being honest, rambling on about this single episode.

If you’re interested, I’ve linked to my other articles below expanding on other parts of this episode.

Links: Part 1: Why I Love this Show Part 2: Ymir and Christa Part 3: Mikasa, Co-dependency and Morality Part 4: Armin and Sacrifice

[ibrahim-obadiah-blog]

What happened at EverGreen College? (and any other college like it)

  So I'm pretty liberal as they come, I believe everyone should have fair chances, a fair piece of the pie of life. Even if they are down on their luck and self inflicted. I'm also fairly naive, someone who may suffer from Asperger Disorder and worry over how one would be perceived or treated by that. So i find my self royally confused of the events at the EverGreen College of Washington and similar situations involving the liberal ideal of political correctness. Now mind you, I want to "confess" on how I'm seeing this and how I just don't understand the lack of knowledge and evidence of biases regarding all this, so it may come off view-able as racist and biased all my own, which is not my intent at all, so here we go.   So I do understand the events that have taken place at this college, a day of remembrance of the importance of black people (from a play of some sort) and how they should be appreciated in the culture of the time after slavery was stopped. We wanted this ideal to hit home that despite your racist attitude toward black people, they have 'something' to offer, and we would have not progressed with out them, in mind and physical construct. And the school would always bring this up, every year (as we're told), to always be reminded of the fact. In fact, some students may have been encouraged to make this an actual thing, not come to school. Sure, seems a little strange, miss class because you want to appease this tradition, but to my understanding, people are suckers for tradition.   But this year, the/some students wanted to change this up, have white students leave instead of black student. Seems fine, really drive the tradition of this event to flip flop it so that we can remember the importance. I mean, the values of tradition and expectation always dissolve over time into obscurity. But one teacher felt this was missing the point, felt that the students shouldn't have white students leave because that maybe the black students were being unfair and just wanted white students to leave just because (i.e. being raciest). And this is where all hell broke loose, the students congregated together to really show their upset feeling toward this teacher. Yelling and chanting and this incessant need to be right, to really drive home how one’s opinion can effect another.

   Now most everybody already knows of the videos of these students attitudes and anger that took place, becoming one-sided either for or against the situation. I my self have some reservations for this nonsense, but getting stuck with who I should be siding with. On one hand, the students acted like teenagers, hormones so tight that anything rational would be looked as the devil trying to make the most obvious of requests seem credible. On the other hand, the teacher came off as making a huge assumption that the black students wanted white people to be removed because it was deserving. I just think this whole situation IMMEDIATELY made assumptions from both sides. The teacher thought the students racist and the students thought the teacher/event racist.

   But this is strange to me, trying to weigh in the severity of one form from another. The teacher (as well as every other person against this) made the assumption that the black students (probably not just exclusive to black students) wanted white students to leave because their is this mentality of an eye for an eye situation. Because of all the horrible history that black people have suffered from the hands of “Whitey” that the tables should be turned. It is now the white mans turn to suffer, so some how this event of pushing out white students will  be a decent pay back. But quite honestly, (at least from a lack of evidence) we don’t know the tone of the this request. It could have been a suggestion of changing the tradition or an actual raciest expression, I can only believe that nobody would willingly admit a racist thought to an email, especially if its to address on a school email.

   However, The teacher took great care in presenting his case. He articulated it in a VERY well meaning manner that we should not let our senses escape us. We are adults of education, we can not let assumptions rule us, because it is too easy. (okay, I am playing it up here a little, but that’s the over all feeling that came from his response). But despite that, the students cornered the teacher and faculty with their response, shouting and repeating their concern of what it feels like to be a minority/ black/ mistreated student.

   Okay, so we have students not happy with the teachers response, and a teacher not happy with the students response. Mixed feeling with how one should feel about the over all feelings, should we side with the teacher or the students? I see it as the teacher made a huge impact with his words while the students make ever changing small words that ruin their own reputations as well as the colleges reputation. Okay, prepare your self, because their is some bias gonna be taking place, but I just need to express my own feelings and how I think about all this, please keep an open mind.

   On one hand, (siding with the students) I think the teacher made a huge assumption on the students character. Sure, it is common place that this SJW’ism has taken a strong stance on how people should think and degrading Society as a whole because they believe their feelings should come first. It becomes so easy to cry wolf when it has been shouted so many times before, it becomes a trap to everyone when traps are laid out everywhere. And the situation could have been avoided if we had not been so serious when tradition has been disrupted. What student wouldn’t be hyped to skip a day of class, (ESPECIALLY WHEN IT’S VOLUNTARY) One day of this would NOT have made a difference or made major changes. And for basically believing this was a racist thing, and calling the students out for.

   But on the other hand, again, the teacher presented him self so FUCKING well that I can’t see how anybody would argue it. The risk of the racist card being pulled out WAY TO FUCKING OFTEN can cause a lot of damage. And he didn’t want that to happen to a school he attend longer than most of the students have, see it come crashing down. It is also wise to call out people of their bullshit when it becomes very prevalent. Because bullshit is toxic and can not linger, it has to be removed. Even during his time being hung by the students, he was still able to remain calm and collected. Because I’m sure he has years of experience of dealing with students who’s emotions are running wild.

   I’m sorry, but I can not side with the students on this one, their attitude and explanations for the excuse to rally are completely unjust. The history of the past and the issues going on today do not tie into the events with this college and should not be, or any other college.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD KEEP AN OPEN MIND, I have hung ups about this as well, but I could never use some these points to justify my actions.

   What the students kept shouting and telling over and over again (not just in this situation) is the racist attitude that the United States have had on black people for ages. Controlling and dictating, how a black people should act, should present, should live and has scared so deeply that the children of children still feel it. (almost quite literally). And when one is reminded of these facts, it because extremely intolerable to listen to. It’s like a collective pain that strikes at any moment, for any reason, for who knows how long.

   Even though slavery ended a long time ago, and the events of Martin Luther King Jr., the sting is still reborn a new. The past does still take hold of black society today because there are those who just won’t let go of the idea of black people having power, rights and freedom of will.

BUT...

   (breaths in)

   I don’t think these can contribute to the events of the EverGreen College tantrum or others before it. When it comes to fairness, inclusion into a group, or equality, one must be open to objection. You must expect the fact that others may not listen or just disagree to your facts or intentions, regardless of where you come from.

   And it’s all based on the search for the truth. Sure, finding others who agree with your ideals is one of the greatest feeling ever, but to know that you are included to be challenged of your thoughts and ideas is far more rewarding than full on inclusion. The challenge to bring your A game to the table is an exciting experience, and will cause others to do the same. So when you have two high stacks players, the challenge goes beyond winning, it becomes something else that I can’t describe. (sorry for the cope out, but I’ve only tasted it once)

   I’ve heard people try to make the argument that slavery and segregation was so long ago that nobody could say they lived it and that kids these days are just acting out what their parents held in for a long time, but bigotry is still a thing in many black communities, so I would only be making my own assumptions. But I just do not agree with the eye for an eye mentality. (which is the over all feeling of the protest of these students) I’m trying to take a high road of self satisfaction. I mean, I very well want revenge on someone who would murder my family. But I can not hold the children or grand children of my murderer responsible for their actions.

      So that’s how I feel about all this, how it comes off as. Students acting like children (or not bringing their A game) and trying to get revenge for something that can not be put on white people of today. I do not see racism coming from the teachers mouth at EverGreen College or most the colleges that have spoken out over this whole issue of racism. Their is just very little evidence that forces me to believe the students point of view if their protest and act for termination of the teacher. (AND ANY OTHER TEACHER CAUGHT IN THE SPIDER WEB OF INTOLERANCE) My own race, knowledge, or feelings do not get to say to others how I should be treated. My actions are the only things that people pay attention to. (though most of the time is confusion because I suck as verbal communication and understanding emotions) And if you want to move on and not give me the time of day. that’s okay to. I’ll just brush it off and try better next time if I really wanted to talk to you.

   (If this post really made you upset or confused or pure hatred toward me, please bring your A game, I some what take things literal and might misunderstand what you mean. Its a fault all my own, but hey, whys shouldn’t you give me your best shot?)

[magneticmaguk]

Fancy Dress is For Children, Stop Wearing it in Nightclubs

Funny, isn't it, how the fears and anxieties you develop in early childhood follow you until the day you die? Well, it's less funny than utterly, abjectly, life-ruiningly awful really, but you get the point.

The things that rationally or otherwise take you out of the blissful amniotic bubble of your first few years and thrust you unknowingly and unwittingly into the pain and horror of life after the age of about six or so don't just vanish or dissipate; they fester and rot and keep you awake night after night.

Now, I know, you're reading a dance music website rather than a peer-reviewed psychoanalytical journal, but bear with me, because I'm about to join the dots between psychosocial development and clubbing.

Ever since I can remember, and who knows what pre-remembrance memories have been repressed deep into recesses of my unconscious, I've found the concept of fancy dress parties terrifying. Part of that fear, I assume anyway, stems from a moment in time that arrives when I least expect it, broadcast in crystal clear Ultra HD. I am at a fifth birthday party, dressed as a pirate. The party is taking place at the house of a childhood friend who lived on a farm. On that farm in a barn. We are playing hide and seek and I'm hiding from the seeker in that barn. The air smells like grass and fire and broken engines and I am grasping my plastic cutlass, eyes tightly shut, heart pounding. No one has come to find me yet, and so I explore the barn, taking tentative steps into the darkness. Here in the dark, my hand rests on something. That something is, to all intents and purposes, a severed head. I am shuddering and screaming and I want to be found right this second because as soon as I am found I can ask to go home, to get out of this pirate outfit, to thrust my head under the warm water of the bath, and let this day end.

Of course it wasn't actually a body-less skull. The thing that had inspired such world-changing fear was, in fact, one of those heads that hairdressers train on. Nevertheless, over two decades on, the very thought of fancy dress sends me back to that primal encounter, an encounter which left an indelible mark on my person: I will always associate the act of dressing up with a supreme sense of terror.

Yet recently this irrational fear has mingled with the horrors of the real world. In an attempt to stand out in a market that's saturated beyond belief, promoters and venue owners have to think of innovative ways to sell their club nights. With actual innovation being quite difficult to come by, we've seen a resurgence across clubland of legitimized, actual fancy dress parties.

Now, obvious point here but dressing up is an inherent part of the clubbing experience. Even the uniform that we attach to the Oceanas of this world (the striped shirt, bootcut jeans, and school shoes look) is a means of using a wardrobe for the purpose of reinvention. Nightlife lets us pretend we really are more than our jobs, whether or not that's the case in reality, and that pretence is usually rooted in a sartorial basis. In a thousand different ways, most of us find ourselves dressing up to let our hair down, weekend after weekend.

There is, however, a massive difference between dressing up and dressing up. The italicized version is an abomination, a dullards way of disguising their own lack of, well, anything. The chances are that any party you attend after the age of say, eleven, where the majority of the room are in some form of costume, whether it's Super Mario or Mario from Big Brother 9, Jean-Claude Juncker or Jean-Claude Van Damme, will be terrible. There are a variety of reasons for that.

The first is that fancy dress is a perfect signifier is the epitome of forced fun. As soon as a nightclub has to tell you to have fun any chance of actually having fun evaporates into the air, atomising alongside the stilton-scented vape-smoke.

"YOU," these clubs and festivals scream through tannoys disguised as pineapples, buoys, or medical waste wheelie bins, "ARE GOING TO HAVE THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE."

How—you shout back over the deafening din of a Patrick Topping set and the yammer of a thousand blokes dressed as Borat howling "YEAH MATE JUST NEAR THE FRONT MATE," into their phones—how are you going to ensure that I get my money's worth from another dismal day party thrown in an unusual London location that just as usual happens to be in a convention centre with a decent sized smoking area.

"WELL," the disembodied voices yell back, "YOU'VE GOT TO LEAVE THE VENUE AND COME BACK DRESSED AS EITHER FREDDIE MERCURY, CARMEN MIRANDA, OR THE ALLEGED WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE CHEAT, MAJOR CHARLES INGRAM."

I don't want to dress up as Charles Ingram or Carmen Miranda or Freddie Mercury, and I cannot begin to imagine why anyone

would

. Surely, I reason from up here in my ivory tower, being at a festival or in a club is enough fun as it is, without needing to constantly be reminded of the FUN FUN FUN FUN FUN FUN FUN FUN FUN I'm missing out on from not donning a silly wig and a pair of cowboy boots and shooting myself in the face with tequila on Snapchat. And surely I'm right. This is fun designed by committee, fun for people who need perpetual pointers as to what fun actually is.

The rise of the fancy dress party hints at a broader sociological phenomenon that's threatening to see an entire generation obsessed with negating reality via a dismal return to an imagined childhood, a sea of people doomed to a life of shitting themselves in front of old episodes of Tracey Beaker as they run their furry tongues round the sites where their now-disintegrated teeth once where—a truly devastating descent into infantilism.

Believe it or not, there is a time where childish things need to be put away, and not just printed onto a onesie or whatever the fuck it is students wear these days. Fancy dress is one such thing. Think about it: what kind of self-respecting adult actually engages with fancy dress? It'll either be some red-faced systems analyst who likes to have his own tie stuffed down his gob by a matron at that creepy school dinners place just off Oxford Street, a bloke in a panda-suit giggling his way through Rochdale town centre en route to meet the region's five other fur-fanatics, or two lads in flares shaking a leg down the front at of Magic Door.

Each of those iterations says the same thing about the costume-wearer: I am pained by the idea of existing in the present and thus willing do anything and everything I can to return to the womb. A nightclub, with all its illusions about inclusion and warmth and communality is enough of a womb, thanks.

There is also a more serious point here, that of cultural appropriation. When elrow, for example, throw another Bollywood themed party, what do they actually want from it? Honestly, what is the intention? Is it, as I suspect they'd claim, nothing more than a harmless bit of fun, no worse than, say, wearing a string of onions and a beret or a matador's cape and a pair of castanets? A cheeky wink at the world and it's many cultural variances, all of which are allegedly ripe for repurposing as a costume for an unimaginative business studies student desperate for an excuse to do a few bumps of a Sunday afternoon in mid-summer.

Well, no, it isn't really, is it? It's rank cultural imperialism masquerading as banter, a modern update on an office joker donning an afro wig and doing his best Jim Davidson impression. The idea that having a good time, or creating a "fun loving vibe" or however else these parties sell themselves to potential media partners, is permission to run riot over cultural identities is a self-evident fallacy. How do we tally the sight of white dancers dressed "Bollywood" gear with the idea of inclusion that we so often come back to when we try and justify clubbing as anything more than an enjoyable diversion from work? We can't. There is no way to do so.

And that's the problem with fancy dress in general: in a perverse way it imbues going out with a sense of genuine importance. You might not think that as you slide into a Danny Zuko style leather jacket ahead of another day party, but it's true. You've made a financial and emotional investment that didn't need to be made. You've fallen into a trap set for you by wily promoters. You've lined their pockets yet again. Oh, and you look like a twat. Sorry.