#like they would just make all potential conflict complexities and issues go away.

[runepixel]

god i hate liking genshin bc if i ever had to tell anyone what i like about the game its like. well. it has potential. to be good. if the writers, character designers, gameplay designers, etc etc didnt suck ass.

[rafesangelita]

here’s my take on rafe and sofia…. if they make his character all soft and simple and straightforward it will ruin his whole character!!! rafe is this complex deranged guy with issues and it makes no sense for that all to be resolved because he suddenly gets into this relationship with someone. i also think it’s a bit off character for him to be with a pogue…. i also think that the only reason they added her is to give the viewers the idea of what it would be like to be in a relationship with rafe (cause let’s be real rafe is one of obx main money makers)

i have no doubt that the writers are giving drew a run for his money and doing fan service for us! i’ll make that very clear, because i agree that they don’t know what to do with his character now that ward is dead. BUT as for everything else that you stated, let me go one by one and tell you why i disagree.

“if they make his character all soft and simple and straightforward it will ruin his whole character!!!”

guys.. rafe is STILL rafe. he’s far from being the ‘soft’ guy everyone is making him out to be rn. is he softer? yes. but soft all the way? definitely not. (he literally collided with jj’s bike so the pogue’s couldn’t win the race, he didn’t think anything about the turtle incident and told ruthie ‘good shit!’, now he’s an alcoholic, he was talking bad about sofia behind her back, AND he’s stubborn as a damn horse and would rather have sarah talk to him first..)

“rafe is this complex deranged guy with issues and it makes no sense for that all to be resolved because he suddenly gets into this relationship with someone.”

he still very much has issues. he is still very much deranged. rafe was already changing a little bit in season three (hence the reason why he was out trying to make a deal with the cross for his family!! the only reason why he veered away from that was because ward tried to stay in charge of something rafe was already handling). we still have rafe who doesn’t know about what sofia did behind his back, so there’s that still! this idea that he’s becoming soft SOLELY because he’s in a relationship now is just incorrect tbh. he lost his dad, the main reason for him being a psycho was because he was constantly doing things for ward’s approval, let’s not forget that! ward is gone now, and he wants to have his family together again, i don’t think just because he has sofia he’s acting this way. now he has to form his own life, without his dad (AND mom, sarah hates him, wheezie is with rose and he most likely doesn’t have contact with her) ALL he has is sofia.

“also think it’s a bit off character for him to be with a pogue….”

i think they had a very specific reason as to why the writers wrote this out. conflict aside, sarah herself is a pogue, and i think when the writers wrote sofia and rafe to be together, they were setting up potential for rafe to view the pogues differently. they were setting up rafe to get the perception that pogues aren’t at all what he thinks they are, which also opens up the possibility of rafe and sarah AT LEAST being on good terms.

[mastcrmarksman]

Okay, part 1 Clint's Steve Rogers daddy issues as well as the fact that Clint is made to look like a brother of Steve. Let's first establish why Clint has these issues.

On the father side; including both added canon and retconned canon.

Harold Barton, was a verbally and physically abusive drunk/alcoholic.

Alcoholism is a condition that is somewhat genetic. aka Clint has a predisposition, and that plays some part.

( solo avengers 1987, fractions' run 2012, avengers dissambled 2003-ish aka avengers vol 3 for source examples )

An unnamed foster "father" situation was strict and implied to be abusive, verbally and potentially physically

( all new hawkeye 2015 for source is an added canon / retcon )

Jacques Duquesne aka Swordsman while posing at better than Harold Barton, since he wasn't a drunk and would not lay a hand on Clint while he was a child, was not a good influence upon Clint; repeatedly told him that he could not surprised his mentor or else he will be sorry; when Clint finds out that Swordsman has been stealing from the circus, he threatens and attempts to kill Clint. Results in Clint, who still had to have been a minor at the time, having two broken legs.

( solo avengers 1987, avengers spotlight 1989, avengers #65, and earlier avengers issues )

Buck Crisholm aka Trickshot, equally like Swordsman, was a mentor to Clint while additionally be a bad influence and negative example of what a guardian or parental figure should he to a child. Trickshot was a drunk. Trickshot liked killing and inflicting pain. When Clint, refuses to run and abandon his brother he just shot by accident, Trickshot betrays him and shoots him by pinning him to a tree with two arrows and threatens to kill Clint one day when he's ready.

( solo avengers 1987, avengers spotlight 1989, Hawkeye 2004, etc )

Trickshot and Swordsman legitimately admit to having groomed Clint, to having wanting to train him to be their minion and a tool for them to use, someone to be an accomplice in their crimes and their personal underling, each have shown that they will take their promise to not hurt Clint the moment he does something unacceptable

Now onto the brother side of things ;

Barney Barton as you know him in Fractions ina retcon the sweeps under and does not clean up or reveal the decades worth of complex canon surrounding Clint and Barney

First off, while Barney is his older brother and was a protector of Clint against his father, and is equally a victim himself and that some of these is not to fault him

When they were orphaned, Clint describes how Barney would make him and trick him to his chores and generally be the boss of him, and to quote Clint "my brother would take out his frustrations on me"

Clint did not want to run away, it was Barney, and he felt he had to follow since they were family

Barney was jealous of Clint's skill and talent with archery and the favoritism he received from Trickshot and Swordsman

Barney abandons Clint a few times as a result of this

When Clint wrongs Swordsman (discovers a crime Swordsman has a committed) despite Swordsman attack and injury he inflicted on Clint, Barney is more concerned with being angry at Clint for not seeing the opportunity to get in on Swordsman's schemes; he abandons Clint at the hospital

When Trickshot is around, while Barney is trying to persuade Clint that Trickshot is not someone to look up, he ultimately abandons Clint again and let's his brother fall to Trickshots schemes and when Clint injuries him, it is implied that Barney takes off after this

( all above from solo avengers 1987 and hawkey 2004 )

Additionally, in a few retcons, there is the conflict of the brothers never being on the same side, such as the story of Barney asking Clint to leave the circus and go into the military with him, but Clint refuses and implied bitter fallout due to this

Okay, so Barney dies, when Clint is with the avengers and he does die saving the Avengers, but here Clint finds out that Barney had been involved with a crime organization and Clint is distraught because he never got to resolve any of this with Barney

( avengers #64 & #65 )

A later retcon, will give Barney post-mortem, a redemption in a letter and will reveal to Clint that he had actually been a secret agent infiltrating the crime org, which does drudge up Clint's guilt and grief over Barney again, as well as, Clint retells how he and Barney were always going separate ways

( hawkeye 2004 )

Barney gets resurrected by Baron Zemo, and Barney would come back to life, bitter and angry, with a desire to kill his brother Clint and took up the villain mantle of Trickshot

( hawkeye: blindspot, new avengers vol 2, dark avengers )

While once again, Barney was a child and a victim, as well as an implied alcoholic himself. He knew drinking his father's alcohol was wrong, and he still drank it, ans despite knowing it was wrong, he'd allow for Clint to try as long as he spat it out. Additionally, teaching Clint to fight back, he did kick / hit him without warning than tell him to fight back

( fractions' run 2012 )

Orphanage time ; it is implied that Clint would be knocked around and "taught to fight" by the older boys of St. Ignatius Home for Orphaned Boys

( avengers forever 1998 I believe )

[ and my gripe with fractions is that kind of sweeps all of the barney canon under the rug and shows no aftermath or resolution between them after the whole death and trying to kill Clint things ]

That is where Clint's daddy issues and brother issues come from, his complex to male authorities figures. In a other post, I will try to go into some detail about Steve and Clint. With panels and sources / comics to look up and read.

The point being is that when he meets Steve, he rebels and Steve is the one who does end up tempering that, becomes the one male authority figure to which Clint respects and more importantly respects Clint back.

Steve is his true mentor, his big brother, his father, in a way. He stands for a lot and puts a lot of faith in Clint, and in return, Clint eventually has the exact same with Steve.

[thesquishypenguin]

For general stuff, 6 9 and 12! >:))

tyty ily mwuah mwuah Ship Questions redux

KiloHertz (OC) x Maxime Le Mal (Cannon)

General - 6 - How do their personalities complement each other? How do they clash?

ooooo I'm finding this one a little tricky to think about!! Particularly because so much of kHz attitude is altered by her own choice! I think initially she she comes across as distant, disinterested, cold and judge-y. She's not at all interested in people generally speaking. KiloHertz is very..'strictly business' and doesn't tend to get close to people unless she takes a particular special interest in them, which is hard to achieve with her. But a lot of this is a learned or put-in-place façade that she's just settled into. She's very good at being persuasive, demanding and downright scary - She commands respect through power I think. I don't think Maxime would have that kind of sway on people or not in the same vein, I think he'd be 'nicer' about it. He's more of a charmer. Maxime is VERY much a people person, he's extremely outgoing and charismatic and I think he could wrap most people around his finger - at least superficially and in the moment. People seem to love him and gravitate towards him...(or..he simply inserts himself into their spaces!) These bitches do both be giving off the 'I'm better than You' vibe tho. kHz has a complex about being better than others and Maxime earned it through being 'everybody's favourite' So really they've got GREAT power couple vibes!

BOTH of these idiots are MASSIVE hot heads though. Which means they're also likely to be super fiery and stubborn towards each other when one of them starts getting mad about something-or-other. I think one of them also being in an irritable mood tends to make the other irritable. I can see them having a lot of bickering and spats over miscellaneous shit or when one of them says or does something that manages to tick the other off - but I like to think they both know they don't really mean it, and there's a lot of making up (and making out) afterwards when they've cooled off. Although it doesn't happen often, they know they've struck a nerve or gone too far when the other goes silent about it and starts avoiding them to avoid more conflict. That being said I think a lot of it isn't too serious and probably only happens on occasion - likely stemming from someone's bad day.

General - 9 - Who gets jealous easier?

This has GOT to be Maxime! I feel like kHz has the potential to be..but I also feel like she's dealt with and gotten over her crush on him once, and knowing how popular he is/was it's not really a concern of hers, she expects it. If he was the kind to obnoxiously flirt with other women or something perhaps, but if Maxime's in a social setting he spends half his time bragging about her. So she feel pretty secure with him to be honest, even if he is a socialite!

KiloHertz however is a little underhanded and will employ a little flirting if it gets her what she wants. not that it comes up really all that often. I think it's more that her work has the potential to take her away from him for hours. He'll get jealous that she's spending more time with her equipment and machinery than she is him. He'll get jealous if she's interacting with the roaches more than him ('Cute little bug?' No, No! That's him! He's the cutest bug here! Say sweet things to him!!) She often has to go visit clients which can take a long time to get things sorted out before she can come back to...then spend all her time doing work for said client. Maxime gets very pouty about not being doted on constantly. Why busy her hands with machinery when she can busy her hands with him!

It's not really a jealousy out of insecurity of their relationship, more just ..he wants all her attention for himself!! But I think Maxime*is* the more likely of the two to have insecurity issues based on my HCs, I think he worries about the relationship stagnating into nothing (again) - and he sorely hopes another villain wont catch her eye more than he currently does....

KiloHertz is only really likely to be jealous or worried if something actually happens, which isn't likely. If someone else starts flirting with Maxime however? You bet your ass she's pushing them aside ASAP.

General - 12 - Do they hide anything from each other, big or small?

I feel like kHz is the biggest culprit of this one. I don't really think Maxime hides much, if anything from her. I wanna say he's pretty open about what he's feeling or what's going on because he knows she'll soothe him and make it all better. Early/Pre-relationship maybe in the sense that he's hiding his body and reluctant to show it off, but not/nothing during the relationship. I don't think either of them hide anything in the malicious sense! There's no like 'bad secrets' or unmentionable things or anything. I think if Maxime is going to hide anything from her its probably things like gifts and little pleasant surprises he has in store for her :) kHz whole thing however is masking to be the 'best' version of herself possible, whether that's with her implant or without. She doesn't like appearing weak or stupid at all, so she's the one most likely to hide if she's having problems of any kind. Which she does and is, because her implant is a fickle thing. A lot of what she WOULD hide is relating to herself and her feelings and her health, because she's extremely stubborn about all of it; even if she knows Maxime worries or would be upset that she won't share her problems with him. (For references sake, I think she's rather fooled herself with the implant. Having it off or on doesn't really change who she is, but she seems pretty convinced she's inferior in all regards without it. And I think Maxime thinks she's absolutely crazy for having such thoughts and burdens she refuses to share with him...particularly when he's bared his own to her and she's made better for him..why would she not think he could or would do the same for her???)

[kurokoros]

I hate complaining about Billy Hargrove because it gives off the impression that I don’t like the inclusion of morally ambiguous characters. And that’s not the case. I like S1 Steve because I think there’s complexity to be explored under the stereotypical 80s jock that the Duffers gave us. I like Doctor Brenner because he’s a manipulative piece of shit and the series wouldn’t function the same without him. I really enjoy Billy’s inclusion in the series in S2 and think he had a lot of potential to act as a foil to Steve and even Jonathan, to a degree. 

What I don’t like is how canon really tries to overcorrect in S3 or how the fanon attempts to read into subtext that either doesn’t exist or blatantly contradicts the subtext that does exist.

“The Hargroves are poor, so the hate against Billy is classist in nature.” But there’s no evidence to suggest this. Billy drives a nice car. We’re never shown the Hargrove/Mayfield family struggling for money in S2-3 like the way the show gives us proof that the Byers are struggling financially. That’s a core part of Jonathan’s character, it’s not a part of Billy’s. Despite watching Stranger Things several times, I’ve never once gotten the impression that Billy and Max were anything less than regular middle class.

“Billy isn’t a ‘good victim’ and that’s why people dislike him.” Until S3 there was no real indication that Billy was being abused on the regular. In the scene with Neil, Billy is snarky and makes it clear that Max isn’t his responsibility. That doesn’t make what Neil does any less deplorable, but it also doesn’t give the impression that Billy is all too afraid of talking back or pressing buttons. Parenting was different in the 80s. From personal experience, I know that there are a lot of 80s kids that are very cavalier about being physically abused for being disrespectful. For all we, the audience, know, Neil hitting Billy isn’t a regular occurrence. It doesn’t make it less shitty, obviously, but I do think that fanon attempts to make Billy’s home life more tragic than it actually was. Canon also does something similar in S3 to make Billy more sympathetic before his death, but I don’t find Billy’s writing in S3 to be very good. He’s possessed the entire time. He barely, if ever, interacts with Max, Steve, or Lucas--the three characters Billy should have been interacting with--and instead all of his interactions are with Karen Wheeler and El. It’s not a bad thing to have certain characters be sympathetic, or even empathetic, towards Billy, but the show completely ignores the conflicts between Billy, Steve, Max, and Lucas in S3 in order to make people upset about his death, rather than satisfied or plain apathetic.

I have issues with the way some people try to write off Billy being racist towards Lucas. Namely, that they try to pass it off as Billy actually just being protective of Max. Billy threatens to run Lucas, Mike, and Dustin over with his car just to fuck with Max before he has any indication that they know each other more than happening to be in the same class. There are a lot of Billy-centric meta that tries to argue that actually Billy is trying to keep Lucas away because it would make Neil go after Max, but I feel this gives far too much credit to Neil while taking responsibility away from Billy. Billy probably did get his opinions from Neil. That would make sense. But we have no reason to believe that Billy doesn’t just hold the same racist beliefs and that’s why he goes after Lucas. Attributing Billy’s behavior to an attempt at protecting Max is just willfully ignoring what’s actually happening, in my opinion. Not everything is actually subtext. Sometimes people really are just shitty without having covert motives behind their actions. Personally, I think that makes Billy more of an interesting character, with potential for growth, than if he was actually just trying to protect Max. It adds a layer of complexity, as shown in S4.

I also have issues with how the Max/Billy conflict is resolved in S2. I think the Duffers leaned too far into giving Max a cool girlboss moment instead of just allowing her to be a scared child. While it was fine to have Max try to stand up to Billy, I think the sedative being there was too convenient, and I think Billy proceeding to leave Max alone after that incident was wishful thinking.

TLDR: I think Billy is an interesting character, but the fandom and canon tries too hard to make him more tragic and less shitty than he actually is.

[hajihiko]

god the idea of all of class 77 just having this weird special bond with eachother is so special to me 😭😭 i do wonder, though- given all of them are dealing with a LOT, and recovery isn't pretty, do you think fights/kind of lashing out would ever happen? if so, with who, and how do you think the group would handle that kind of stuff?

Oh for SUUUURE I dont go into it as much, because I too love people being special to each other and the sweetness of it, but these are messy people in uniquely messy situation so for sure they're gonna clash

Like, no WAY Sonia and Souda don't have a huge blowout at some point, maybe before anyone starts waking up even. Sonia deserves to have a moment where she just fuckin yells at him and lets it all out and makes him take her seriously enough to apologize and think about himself, and then they can continue being their own weird brand of friends.

Fuyuhiko still has anger issues, even though he's trying hard to be a kinder person, so he's definitely gonna have moments of snapping at people. I think he's a little too cowed to be arguing with Mahiru, but I could see him having it out with Hiyoko once or twice. I also think things might be a bit tense between him and Peko while Peko adapts to their new non-indentured friendship.

And yeah Hiyoko still has a major attitude problem and tbh, TBH, I think she deserves to get a little smack of "Not Acceptable" consequences. I think she might have a fight at Fuyuhiko, and OOF... Mikan. I think those two just need to be kept away from each other for a while after waking up, possibly the closest thing the group gets to repeating the murder part of the game. Mahiru employed to keep an eye on Hiyoko and Hajime keeping an eye on Mikan, shit probably gets real tense.

I think Impostor is... not NOT mad at Teru, but calm about it, so there's no huge fight, just cold shoulders and awkwardness.

And then there's Nagito. Yknow. Hes a whole topic in himself, I'd imagine Teru doesn't feel super warm towards him and there's the really bad tension between him and Hajime too. Hajime *would* sort of be keeping an eye on him, but. That's not good for Hajime's own psyche, so he is forcibly replaced by various others.

That's just already-established grievances. However, based on just. Unfortunate clashing;

Fuyuhiko has anger issues, Souda has some history of abuse. They probably need to find a balance there, where Souda never actually feels unsafe and Fuyuhiko manages to let out steam without being taken too seriously. He also might clash with and need to watch himself around Mahiru and Mikan.

TeruTeru gets sat the FUCK down and told that if he crosses people's boundaries, there will be Consequences. ESPECIALLY if he tries any shit with Akane or Mikan.

Hiyoko does not get to be Like That with Mikan anymore. She tries, just as a first reaction (her attitude is probably a defense mechanism and she does feel unsafe around Mikan), but it's not allowed to go as far as it used to. Not with anyone else either. Also Mikan probably needs to keep a distance herself.

I've talked about Mikan on her own before and the potential of her being s more complex case than the rest, on account that she might remember her entire time with Junko and not just gradual bits of it. If so, I made / am making the little Eye Yoink comic bits, which would probably be the most serious conflict. I'd just imagine that she's kind of .. generally unstable, and shouldn't be left alone with anyone too long. I kind of like the idea that she like.... well if she's the only one who fully remembers what things were like in school, that's already very alienating, and she might try to intentionally trigger other people's memories (maybe not even out of malice, just desperation and wanting someone else to Get It). But that might be a big problem for people who are just not ready to remember all that stuff. People who are already a bit grey on the moral spectrum (Fuyuhiko, Hiyoko, Peko) and people who have a hard time dealing with who they used to be (Nekomaru, Gundham, Sonia... kind of everyone tbh but some are better at compartmentalizing).

FSR I've just decided that Gundham is in a physically bad condition when he wakes up, and ofc Akane. That would probably be a bit rough to deal with, two people who base a lot of their self-worth on being strong (very different ideas of strength though). That's more of an internal struggle that might have some collateral damage but still. I can see them getting frustrated and lashing out at people like Nekomaru and Ibuki, who have obvious and abundant energy and are more okay with their unfamiliar bodies.

Ryota is just generally Anxious around absolutely everyone. Thankfully Impostor is very protective of him and takes good care of him, and people like Ibuki and Akane are quick to sort of forcefully adopt him, but I'll bet there's moments where he just locks himself in his room for a couple of days because Fuyuhiko yelled at him or Hiyoko called him a smelly shrimp boy or Gundham cursed him or something.

Nagito needs to curb The Way He Talks about stuff, at least a little, because it tends to send people dangerously close to to a bad place. He only wants what's best for everyone!...kinda? But he tends to just give off the opposite energy. Also boy needs to learn some self worth. So for his sake and everyone else's, he needs some mental assistance, but the person most qualified for that is the person that he clashed with the very most. I dont know what the solution to that is lol its probably an ongoing conflict

The good thing is, there's many of them! So I think whenever there is a big fight or a lot of conflict, someone can always step up for both parties and help keep the peace, without disrupting their routine too much. No one ever needs to be left out, at least.

[dirtytransmasc]

You said in your hcs post how gnarly the Custad battle for spider will be, I don’t think it will be that bad since I’m sure the sullys wouldn’t care that bad as long as spiders not turning against them

I think it would be really nasty case both parties have been at odds for so long (but also not really at the same time, like Quaritch is a resurrected enemy, so the way time is measured with them is so weird) and their wounds runs so deep.

Jake would probably be unwilling to let Spider go to Quaritch cause he can never fully forgive him, even if he redeems himself. Jake's trauma has caused him to reactive towards any threats, real, fake, or potential. Quaritch will, most likely, never not be a threat to him. he would be more than willing to keep spider away from him if it meant his family would be safer. Neytiri would not want spider around if he went with Quaritch but knows that her kids would not likely hold some sort of animosity towards her if she sent their friend/brother away. The kids all have different feelings towards spider and would react differently to the whole situation; Kiri would be po'd about it, Spider is her closest friend, and understands what it's like to not have your birth parents (even if he got one back, he's know that pain for 16 years), she would want to keep him close. Lo'ak, in the case of losing Neteyam, would probably flip; not only is he losing another brother, but he's losing him to the man responsible for his brother's death. In the case of him not losing Neteyam (so canon divergence), he's still losing a brother and friend. He knows that this is gonna rip the family apart, and that scares him (that kid has to have anxiety and attachment issues after their childhood). Neteyam would feel slightly betrayed; he's only been taught to know Quaritch as the bastard that destroyed his home, and he can't see him any different, even if this clone of the one who hurt his family, is doing everything he can to better himself and make up for the suffering he and his original self has caused. Tuk being the youngest, would have the hardest time understanding it; all she wants is her brother, and she knows her parents don't like Quaritch, so she would feel so conflicted and confused.

Long story short, Spider going with Quaritch, no matter the circumstance, would feel like betrayal in one way or another. Jake is too protective, Neytiri has so much trauma tracing back to that man (she couldn't let Spider go to him and come back, but she can't take him away from his siblings, no matter her feelings for him), and the kids are strung between their parents and their brother.

Quaritch, on the other hand, just wants his kid. He's desperate to have his kid. I feel like if he risks everything to redeem himself, and he doesn't at least get to have Spider, he will lose it. One person can only handle so much mental weight before they snap; leaving the company that has controlled so much of your life, are basically war-armed gods, and now have a very good reason to kill, is already a lot to bare. But if you add the fact of being kept away from the one thing you gave it all up for, you'd go a little crazy. I could see Quaritch turning to rage, and desperation, much like Neytiri had.

It would not be an easy transition, no matter how it happens, at least not at first before trust is built.

also jake is kinda petty, in like, the dad way (if that even makes sense), so I could really see that tendency to be hypocritical and overbearing coming out in this situation; like, despite never being a good father to spider (more like a shitty owner at this point) he would act as though he was better for Spider then Quaritch. Despite accepting Quaritch as an ally, or at least not an enemy, he feels entitled to keep his son from him.

There's also the whole son for a son thing if we look at this from a canon standpoint.

basically, things would be very complex and chaotic, at least at the very beginning, but things getting any better would be a long and rocky road that may go untravelled.

[wc-confessions]

Hey there, moderator. I'm wondering if it's fine to ask you questions about your own warriors opinions? Such as:

favorite or least favorite character, ship, book, or arc

any unpopular opinions? something you like that most people dislike, or something you dislike that most people like

what your ideal warriors rewrite looks like

any ocs you would like to share

other people are always sending in their opinions so i'm curious about your own opinions. I apologize if you have answered some of these questions already and I didn't see

oooh thank you for sending these! i’ve actually answered most of them before in the past but as i’ve said my opinions change a lot, esp regarding favourites, so i’m always going to answer differently lol

my favourite character is tigerclaw. i don’t care what anyone says, early warriors he was a good, complex villain and every other villain after wishes they were as good as him. he had a lot of potential and i really hate how in tpb there were a lot of throw away concepts, particularly regarding his character. least favourite off the top of my head is hmm jayfeather. interesting character but his awful personality and the fact that in the end he doesn’t actually do anything major made me lose interest in him. i love him in fanon tho.

worst ship: nightheart/sunbeam makes me vomit atm. i’m a big shadowsight/sunbeam fan rn they are so gay. tnp was a pretty boring arc but had interesting ideas, and i think pot wasnt very good at all but i think the characters had potential.

unpopular opinions (?)...the prophecies begins had its issues but imo will always be the most well written story from the erins. while i don’t like the way they are written sometimes purely for annoying repetitive conflict, i do like tigerheart and onestar as characters and leaders. breezepelt and nightcloud are good characters and i love crowfeather’s complex relationship with them. silverstream didnt do shit shes literally another average love interest idk why theres intense hatred for her.

i was actually writing a rewrite for tpb but eventually it just became an original work that i really enjoy working on. but my ideal warriors, unrelated to my work, is sort of like: there’s no code so the cats being ‘wild and free’ makes more sense, the clowders are one and there are no borders. conflict mostly comes from scrapping for food, family drama, drama between families, and murder. the clowders see other cats as equals, and are mostly indifferent on kittypets but are interested in their relationship with humans as they are rarely seen in the woods. annd i think less evil dictators as antagonists.

i actually do not have any warriors ocs </3 but i will share my ocs from my story soon once i get some stuff worked out. idk if it will be on here tho or on my main

[linnoya-writes]

Things I always hear Kat*angers argue (with counter-arguments):

1) Zuko and Katara’s elements might showcase an “opposites attract” idea, but they’re the same people: both are hot-headed and stubborn and would be at each other’s throats.  Katara and Aang carry the “soft boy/head strong girl” dynamic that is more healthy.

Let’s dive into this idea that Katara and Aang compliment each other better based on their natural responses to danger/conflict:

Aang is playful and cheerful where Katara is serious and focused.

Aang is a patient and peaceful soul where Katara is quick to anger.

Aang encourages Katara to reach for the sky, and Katara keeps him grounded.

Okay-- so it’s safe to say that whenever one partner is angry/frustrated, the other approaches them in a calm, collected supportive manner... right?

Actually, look closer.  These fun-loving, playful and peaceful kid-like traits embedded in Aang’s personality are traits that Katara always had in her-- she just needed someone like Aang to remind her that she had them.  The focused, serious and disciplined traits of Katara are all traits that Aang should be adopting into his own sense of maturity as he gradually becomes more confident and determined to be The Avatar.  

It’s not so much that Katara and Aang compliment each other enough to manage a relationship together, but more that they inspire each other to become more complex, beautiful, individual human beings.  Romantic potential between them has nothing to do with that.  

This “soft boy/head strong girl” idea of Kataang doesn’t even address the way Katara always hides her dark side/emotional issues from Aang in order to be a capable “voice of reason” for him on any given moment, or the fact that Katara is always defending Aang like a mother to a son, chasing him every time he literally or figuratively runs away from problems.  The dynamic between them is an imbalance of maturity rather than a balance of character traits.

Which leads me to Zutara’s dynamic; yes, Zuko and Katara are quite hot-headed, stubborn individuals who easily get frustrated when people don’t see things their way.  They have been at each other’s throats in the past... but here’s what people forget -- they stopped fighting the moment Zuko learned the error of his ways, stood by Katara’s side without judgment when she faced YonRha, and they became an unstoppable well-oiled machine of a duo who understood, respected and trusted each other enough to lay down their lives for the other.

It isn’t to say that Zuko and Katara would never argue or fight again, but the difference here is that their shared maturity, their understanding and mutual respect for one another would keep them at bay to hear each other’s point of view.  They have seen the darkest sides to each other and would know how to approach it calmly and collectively.  Neither of them would downplay or ignore the other’s anger; they would face each other until the conflict is resolved.

And that’s why Zutara’s dynamic, despite sharing similar character traits, holds a lot more weight and power that Kataang.

2) “Their bond is so epic that not wanting them together is like not wanting Han Solo/Princess Leia to be together.”

Okay, so, I’m not completely disagreeing here.  

I do understand that Katara and Aang had a spiritual connection since the beginning (very much like how Hayao Miyazaki sets up two protagonists to have a special, unspoken bond) and the adventures/obstacles they face together make their relationship all the much stronger.  I see Katara seeing Aang as the culmination of all of her dreams come true with the revelation that he is the Avatar, and that she brought him back, and I see Aang seeing Katara as the person who not only welcomed him into this second chance to fulfill his destiny, but to also guide him as a voice of reason into this darker war-torn world that he isn’t prepared for.  As Bryke once commented, Katara and Aang are the “DNA of the show” and I interpret this as the two of them moving the story forward... taking the initiative to go from plot-point to plot-point to fulfill all the needed tasks (ie. finding Aang bending masters) in order to have Aang become a fully realized Avatar.

My argument here is, why does it have to turn romantic?  Why can’t the bond remain as a spiritual, wholesome connection between friends?  Even Roku and Toph brought up the idea of friendship being such a powerful bond that it can transcend lifetimes in “The Avatar and the FireLord”... and I think the beauty of Aang and Katara is that it was a powerful friendship that occurred serendipitously and yet perfectly, setting up the entire arc of the ATLA story.  To me there is more emotional weight in keeping Katara and Aang as life-long friends rather than making things romantic.

The problem with turning their bond into a romance is that it brings up a lot more issues.  Katara is not a nomad like Aang; she would give up her own personal wants/needs to not just be at Aang’s side but travel everywhere with him as the Avatar’s SO, when we know that she is a girl who prefers setting roots, building connections and helping people for as long as its needed (”Imprisoned” and “The Painted Lady”).  She has a strong connection to her family in the SWT and would want to rebuild her home after the war and especially train new water benders.  Her SWT culture that greatly values quality family time, a meat-based diet, clothing made by animal skins would also clash with Aang’s personal tastes-- he’s not even discreet about how much he doesn’t like SWT food.  Furthermore, Aang as the Avatar would have so much responsibility fulfilling his work to the world that he would have a lot of trouble understanding the emotional needs/wants to Katara as a partner-- especially since in the show, he’s so accustomed to seeing her be mature enough to handle tough situations calmly and collectively.  Aang has even repeatedly avoided, ignored or downright down-played Katara’s angry and aggressive outbursts, so it goes to show that he wouldn’t know how to properly “be there” for her dark moments.  Katara has gotten accustomed to setting aside her own emotional headspace to instead nurture/coddle/support Aang.  It becomes a very lonely, very unsung existence, carrying that responsibility to be “collected” one in the relationship.  It’s easy to determine that this would continue as they’d get older, and Katara would continue to carry that heavy burden of always “being there” for Aang, but not vice versa.  

The emotional imbalance in a romance between Katara and Aang would be palpable (and it’s implied in LoK and the comics that they did have problems) especially since healthy relationships are meant to express equality and partnership-- where the two people interchangeably give love and support as needed.   

So yes, Kataang is indeed an “epic” relationship in the sense of friendship, but turning it into a romance would come at the cost of the individual characters’ wants/needs and development, and the healthy dynamic that they had as friends would suffer.

3) “But... what about Aang??  He’s loved her since the beginning and would be so devastated from Katara’s rejection, he wouldn’t be able to fulfill his duty as the Avat--”

Stop.  Just-- I’m gonna stop you right there.

It is not Katara’s responsibility to be there for Aang, especially as PR/damage control for the Avatar.  She does not owe Aang a relationship just because he harbored strong feelings for her, or because he’s grown to depend on her over time, or because he has this unbelievable power of the Avatar State that he hasn’t learned to control without her influence. 

Aang is the one who must grow up, who needs to be the Avatar and understand how to manage this power and sense of duty to the world.  On his own.

Aang needs to learn to be enough on his own.

... And while we’re on this topic, it is never healthy for someone to be figuratively “stuck” or “trapped” in a relationship just because their partner would be a lost, broken wreck without them.  

That is called “codependency,” and that is not okay.

[dodo-begone]

When you Wish Upon a Star

Pairing: Karlnapity x Reader

Request: Can you maybe write some poly karlnapity x reader fluff with a bit of angst?

Word count: 1.7k

Warning: memory loss, angst, cursing, loss/relationship strain, depression (?)

A/n: haha memory issues go brrrrrr. Sorry if it's bad, i wanted angst but didn't know how-

Your world was slowly becoming a monochrome film. So meaningless and alien to what your life once was. All color and life had left and all that remained was an empty shell of what once was. Your boys were no longer sticking together, acting like the loving couple that they are. Or were. You couldn’t tell what the status of y’all relationship was. It felt like everything was falling apart. Nobody was communicating with each other and they weren’t coming home sometimes, going missing for days on end with no contact.

Now sometimes business could be rough and long, so that wasn’t an abnormal thing. No, the issue was how increasingly common this “uncommon” occurrence was. Anxiety boiled in your chest with every night that passed without your lovers. Cuddling with just one wasn’t the same as with them all. You just wished everything would return to its original state; all four of your being a giddy and affectionate couple. Back to that honeymoon stage.

Everything was becoming so different, much less vibrant. Like a depression had fallen onto y’alls happily-ever-after. You only had Sapnap for comfort, and vice versa. There was no Quackity to rely on or Karl to giggle all the worries all away. And it was painfully obvious how it was affecting everybody, yet nobody did anything to fix it.

Quackity never came to y’all for comfort. He was always at his damn casino or scheming a way to end Techno’s anarchy. Slowly he just stopped talking to y’all like he loved you. Now you and Sapnap were like a war council, but even then he wouldn’t listen to y’all advice. He’d just rant to y’all about how much he despised Techno and wanted to kill him, destroy the damn god complex the man had.

But Quackity was blind to himself; he was on a high horse and saw himself as a worthy opponent, somebody who could subdue such a savage beast. Every time Quackity came home bloody and on the brink of death, it killed you on the inside. Why wasn’t he coming to y’all about the issues? Why did he think he was so alone in his endeavor?

And you didn’t even want to mention Karl’s condition. He was acting so odd now. More forgetful and aloof. It was like he was a complete stranger now. Your interactions were slowly becoming shorter and shorter, less meaningful and shallow. From meaningful, deep and loving talk during cuddle sessions to a curt, cold and disconnected. Sapnap even tried to get information out of him, but he stayed closed and guarded like a clam. Then he’d also come home with some injuries, but there was never an explanation for why he got hurt. Quackity at least admitted to what happened, so you knew what possible dangers he was facing. But Karl? He was an absolute mystery now.

Karl wasn’t the type of person to be so mysterious. Well, cold and mysterious that is. Definitely a mystery though, but so charismatic that you could easily push that fact aside. He used to be so cute and “unsuspecting”. Now that’s the same case, but subtract the “cute and unsuspecting” part. His newfound apathy worried you to no end. It was like he was completely detached from reality.

It was such a silly thing, but you wished for the stars, asking them to help you. Please, you needed your boys back. You didn’t know how much longer you could keep living through this cycle.

Quackity’s hyper-independence and Karl’s now apathetic attitude was disheartening. And the effect it had on Sapnap was heartbreaking. He kept blaming himself for the relationship for falling apart. You reassured him that it wasn’t his fault, but you were hypocritical. Telling someone that it wasn’t their fault that a relationship was failing yet blaming oneself for the same thing? Honestly it wasn’t just one singular person’s fault; everyone was to blame. Nobody was communicating, which harmed the relationship you once thrived in.

So you begged the stars for guidance, for a chance at mending your dying relationship. There wasn’t a way you could live without your lovers.

You should’ve been more careful for what you wished for.

________________________________________________

Sapnap commed you one day, which wasn’t abnormal by any means. You two talked throughout the day multiple times. That was the only consistent thing that was still steady. A constant in your ever changing lives. But when you got on call with him, he sounded different, desperate and panicked. Your anxiety started to peak when he spoke, but the subject of the call made time stop. No way- there was no way.

You fucking chunked whatever the hell you were holding or doing out of your hands. It was way less important now. Honestly you can’t even remember what you were doing. All you knew was that you had to get to them and swiftly. No time could be wasted. Sapnap needed you right now. Your boys needed you. Everything was on the line. Well, for you it felt like that. Your boys were your everything; if one more “unfortunate” accident occurred to them, you wouldn’t know what to do with yourself. You were absolutely failing at protecting them. They protected and loved you for so long, and you wanted to protect them now.

Sapnap had begged, nearly demanding you come to Karl’s library that instant. Karl had apparently appeared there, and he wasn’t looking so good. He said he also contacted Quackity so he should be there too, but who knows if he’ll actually be there.

When the library came into sight, your anxiety both increased yet decreased, allowing joy to grow alongside it. The combination was odd, one that sounds like it shouldn’t be put together. Yet that’s exactly what you felt; bitterness and cold with some warmth hidden beneath the surface like a sun chasing the night way at dawn. You bolted into the building, frantically sweeping the immediate area for Sapnap and Karl. No sign of them. Your panic grew exponentially. Where were they? You yelled out, hoping to hear any sign of them.

Some commotion was made from your left. Walking closer to it, you caught sight of Sapnap’s shoes. He peaked around the corner to check the new visitor, and almost ran to you. The moment he stood, he hesitated. He took a step forward and stopped, looking between you and where you presumed Karl was. Ultimately he just took a few more steps toward you before turning back to Karl. When you arrived at Sapnap’s side, you dropped to your knees alongside him. There one of your worst fears faced you.

Karl lay on the ground, unconscious and bloody. He was so pale, it scared you. How long was he like this? What happened to him? Would he make it? You didn’t want to know the answer to it. Specifically, you didn’t want to know in case he wasn’t going to make it. Seeing him like this, it’d hurt too much to know the reality. You just wanted your old picture-perfect life back. Yes, it wasn’t absolutely perfect, but it was perfect for you and your boys.

So much time must’ve passed with you and Sapnap just watching Karl, tending to the wounds he had. It was fortunate that only his head showed clear signs of damage. Yet that was also a very unfortunate thing. There could be so much potential damage done and you’d never know if he was or wasn’t okay unless something happened to him.

You were so focused on Karl that you hadn’t realized that Quackity had joined y’all until he gently laid his hand on your shoulder, which shocked you out of your trance. Quackity’s eyes and face were red and puffy, tears trailed down his face and he was out of breath and panting. But he was here. You jumped up to hug him, pulling him down to the ground with you, Sapnap and Karl. Sapnap joined in the hug without a word. A sniffle left Sapnap, but you never mentioned it. This was a very stressful situation.

After a short period of pseudo peace, the exhaustion finally started to take ahold of y’all with the adrenaline slowly leaving your systems. Talking it out for a bit, after seeing how visibly tired everyone was, it was decided that y’all would watch over him in shifts. There was a small squabble for who’d be first; each of you wanted to be first to sate your guilt. It wasn’t long until a victor was declared; Quackity would take the first shift. Then Sapnap and finally you. The plan fucking pissed you off so much and there wasn’t a reason for it to. It just did, and you couldn’t pinpoint what it was. But you didn’t question it. If conflict could be avoided, then it’d be best to go along with the plan.

One moment you were blinking, trying to fight off sleep and the next Quackity was shaking you awake. You were so groggy and barely heard what he said. It must’ve been so obvious to Quackity that you just weren’t hearing jack shit, but he kept repeating- something. You actually had no clue if he was repeating something or just babbling. All you heard was noise and his mouth was moving. What could be so important that he was just fucking shaking you like a damn earthquake- oH SHIT!

Without a second thought, you jump to your feet and flop just a bit closer to Karl. You got up too quickly but you made it to your goal, kinda, so score! Scrambling to your feet, more accurately your knees, you view the situation.

All you could see was Karl sitting up and talking to Sapnap. That’s all that mattered though- he was alright. Karl was alive and thriving- okay that was debatable- but still! Your Karl was okay!

You’re on your feet in a flash once again, flinging yourself into Karl’s arms. The relief that washed over you was immense. Cleansing you of all your anxieties.

Yet he didn’t hug you back. Matter of fact, he did nothing at all. He froze up. Though it went unnoticed by you. Salty tears dripped down your face and splattered onto his jacket. Quackity joined in on your group hug, cry and babbling his apologies along the way.

Suddenly you and Quakity are shoved away, landing into Sapnap’s waiting arms. Saying you were shocked would be an understatement. Confused also couldn’t, yet they were the first words your frazzled mind could conjure.

“Who are you all?”

[alltheworldsinmyhead]

ON FEYSAND’S PLOTLINE IN ACOSF

              !!!!MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE WHOLE ACOSF!!!!

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Let’s be honest for a while, okay?

ACOCF had potential to be SJM’s best book, if not for any other reason then because of the sheer idea of it. Coming-of-age, healing story of the most complex and polarizing character she has ever created set in the time of peace, away from the familiar setting (according to the later changed concept which still remains in the snippet at the end of ACOFAS), development of her arguably most feisty and angsty love story... It could be her absolute trumph. Even with the change to stick to Velaris instead of exploring the Illyrian culture of the Mountains and with the added conflict of the Mortal Queens and Koshei, it still could work quite well. 

It didn’t. For many, many reasons, but the most important one, in my opinion, being the feysand pregnancy plot. 

Nothing about this plotline made sense. Not a single thing. From start to finish, it was an absolute disaster from the character-writing POV, from the narration POV, from every single context of it. It broke the rules of real-life logic, it broke the rules of this fantasy world setting and it completely exposed that Rhysand, while not a bad guy, is a pretty terrible partner, even worse ruler and an absolutely terrible contender for the High King title. 

Let’s break this whole mess down (and expect this post to be mammoth-sized. it’s not my fault, though, write to SJM if you have any complains):

1) Feyre, 21, decides to get pregnant, even though less than a year earlier, she expresses the delight with not being forced to bear children to her new mate and told him herself she wants to wait a while and enjoy her life with him. Feyre decides she wants a baby though and Rhysand goes along with it, even though he is aware how young Feyre is and how hard her life has been up until this point. He wants a baby too much to have an honest discussion with Feyre about it, to stop and wonder what is the reason for her sudden change of heart, to reassure her that they have a lot of time ahead of them and don’t need to rush. No. She mades a sudden decision to have a baby after A YEAR OF MARRIAGE and not much more of being turned fae, JUST AFTER having her whole world put upside down, having received a completely new title and responsibilities, surviving the wat and being mated. Great. 

2) Feyre decides to get pregnant and Rhys goes along with it less than a year after the end of the bloody war. It is politically a delicate time, everyone is still not sure how the balance will shift, some countries don;t want to sign the peace treaty, etc. There are a lot of enemies and a lot of turmoil remaining. But sure. Let’s have a baby. Perfect time to add yet another target, another weakness that can be use by the Mortal Queens, Beron or whatever else with malicious intent towards the Night Court. 

2) Feyre gets pregnant after approximately a year of trying. I know healthy people of reproductive age for whom it takes ages more than this. Fae’s pregnancies are rare af and precious and happen once in a blue moon, but ofc SJM broke the world’s rules for her darling Feyre. And again, for Kallas and Vivianne who are also expecting the baby, even though it has been a maximum of 3 years since they’ve mated. 3 years is also not a particularly long time to try to have a baby for those who have issues with their reproductive systems like Fae women. Thank you, next. 

3) Rhys has unprotected sex with Feyre in her Illyrian form when she conceives, even though he knows full well having a winged baby would kill her. He does it anyway, for shits and giggles apparently. They probably have sex in the sky above Velaris, for all we know. 

4) The baby has wings. Now, the whole explanation with Illyrian wings being bony (bc they resemble bat wings) and Seraphin ones being more flexible (bc they resemble bird ones) is so insanely stupid that it takes around 3 seconds to wikipedia this shit and find out it’s exactly the opposite. But okay, the baby has wings and Feyre will die while giving birth, along with the baby. Madja forbids Feyre from turning into an Illyrian to carry the pregnancy because it MIGHT hurt the baby. Now, remember, Feyre conceived while in Illyrian form and then turned into High Fae. The baby survived it just fine. The baby MIGHT be hurt by Feyre turning .... but it will FOR SURE die if she stays High Fae and Feyre will too. Idk about you, but I would take the risk of MIGHT instead of FOR SURE. Especially when she is already in labour and dying. Cauldron or Nesta or idk who alters Feyre’s pelvis after the baby is cut out of her for no apparent reason but to allow feysand to make exactly the same mistakes later on. How convinient. And Nesta also alters her own pelvis bc god forbid she won’t be able give Cassian babies like the little useful mate she is now. She should’ve probably done it with Elain too, just in case she decides to fuck Az in the future, because fuck consequences and fuck the stakes in the story that make the readers actually CARE about characters bc they know the author may actually kill them and not save their life every fucking time.  

5) I don’t even want to comment on the fact Rhys hid the true danger of this pregnancy for Feyre and their family went along with it. It is absolutely disgusting. And Nesta telling her and that being condemned as the act of the ultimate cruelty which is a final straw to break her self-loathing back.... is abhorrent. It made my sick, actually, phisically sick. There is no justification for it. No at all. And the fact that they did not even consider abortion sends a message that I really don’t want to think too much about it. Feyre was 2 months along when they learned the baby is winged. 2 months. 8 weeks. It wasn’t a baby yet, let’s be honest. They could’ve at least discussed it. She - oh my god, I cannot believe SJM wrote it this way, I’m gonna be sick. 

6) For the entirety of Feyre’s pregnancy, they have no plan to really help her. Labour plan? Haven’t heard if it.  They have money and power and access to the healers of the whole land. And did not figure out how to stop her from bleeding out after a fucking C-section. THIS WORLD HAS MAGIC AND THEY COULDN’T STOP HER FROM BLEEDING OUT AFTER A FUCKING C-SECTION. Didn’t even ask Thesan, the High Lord of Healing, to be present. Cassian had guts hanging out of his stomach and survived. Az was fucking slashed apart in Hybern and survived. But yeah, Feyre was on a brink of death after a C-section. Great, Sarah. Keep it up. Let’s force the thought into young girls’ heads that labour is the most lethal thing ever, why not. 

7) Also, for the entirety of Feyre’s pregnancy, Rhys keeps quiet about this idiotic bargain. He, as far as we know, doesn’t make any plans for the moment when him and Feyre and possibly their baby are dead. If they died and baby survived.. who would take care of it? Does Rhys have a conversation with his family about it? NAH. Doesn’t write any sort of plan how to keep the Court going, doesn’t inform even the closest of his co-workers how they should proceed to act after he’s gone and his and Feyre’s power go to god-knows-who. Their deaths would mean a sure chaos for the weakend and fragile Prythian and the Night Court especially and yet nor Rhys nor Feyre make any sort of preparations for it. Rhys doesn’t tell his brothers or Mor or HIS SECOND IN COMMAND they will all soon have to somehow manage without him. He was about to just leave them to their own devices and told them in the last. possible. moment. 

And this man - this man is, according to Amren, the best candidate to handle the whole country? To unite it? This fool who makes idiotic bargains, who thinks first about his cock and his own selfish desires and considers his subjects and his responsibilities as a High Lord last and least important of all? Who has so much trust in his wife, in his High Lady, the mother of his son that he doesn’t tell her she will almost surely die on a birthing bed because it MAY UPSET HER? 

This plotline was the straw that broke my back. ACOTAR, at it’s heart has always been a ya fantasy with added ‘spice’ and I was willing to bend my critical-thinking skills in many cases and forget and forgive many smaller idiotic issues in this series. But this? It is not idiotic. It is massive and stupid to the point when it becomes insulting to the reader. It was a plot straight out of a bad fanfic, not something that should be in a published book written by someone who writes for a living. You could even argue that Twilight has handled this toxic trope better.  I have wasted my money on this book and thinking about it will always be painful for me. So yeah.

ACOSF could be great. Ended up quite pathetic. 

[tomorrow-and-tomorrows]

SNK 139.5: Towards the Final Pages with no Final Answers

The final pages of the updated ending are bold, but I think ultimately more evocative than the original preliminary ending.

Even after the intensely polarized reader reception that took issue with the lack of storytelling precision and clarity when it was most needed, SNK chose to end with a decisively ambiguous symbol. In literature, a symbol is something that clearly means something -- but with the most "literary" symbols, their meaning cannot be absolutely defined; any attempted answer as to what a symbol represents has no finality or certainty, and interpretation will remain ever open to debate. A symbol both invites and resists interpretation.

Naturally, the immediate response to the symbolic tree on the final page is to try answering the invitation to the question, "What does it mean?"

One prominent answer I've seen is that it symbolizes the continuation of the cycle of war and violence either because a) of the symbolic parallel to Ymir or b) on a more literal level, that it implies the actual potential revival of new era of Titans. A reasonable interpretation either way, but also, I think, an incomplete one.

The first reason for this is that "the endless cycle of war" was already clearly and powerful represented in the preceding panels:

The cycle of war was already continuing in the decades or centuries before the child arrived at the tree. A culminating image symbolizing the persistence or resurgence of an era of war as the final panel would thus arguably be redundant and unnecessary.

Furthermore, the chapter is entitled "Toward the Tree on That Hill." If the tree were simply a symbol of war, by implication the chapter could equally be called 'toward the endless cycle of war'. But such a relentlessly bleak and tonally flat ending sentiment would be firmly incongruous with the story's recurrent conviction in the equal cruelty and beauty of the world -- a conviction that I believe it has been faithful to all the way to its end.

The Long Defeat

But while on this topic of war, let's linger a moment on the "cruelty" side and the consequence of this wordless construction and subsequent destruction of a city -- the most bold and possibly controversial additional panels that are also my personal favourite additions.

One objection that has emerged against this brief sequence of Paradis' apparent destruction is that it renders the entire story to be "pointless". Eren's 80% Rumbling, Armin's diplomatic peace talks between the remnants of the Allied Nations and Paradis, and before that, the proposal of the 50-year plan and Zeke's euthanasia plan... everything, to the very beginning to the Survey Corps' dreams of some kind of freedom; was it all for nothing? All that striving, that hope, that final promise bestowed upon Armin: was it all a pointless story? Even more radically, is the story suggesting that Eren might as well have continued the Rumbling to 100% of the earth? Was Zeke's euthanasia plan the cruel but correct choice all along? What was the point of rejecting the 50-year plan if that had a greater chance of success at preventing this outcome?

I think Isayama suddenly pulling back to such a long-term view of history to the scale of decades or even centuries into the future calls for a reorientation in attitude towards exactly what kind of story we have been reading. Yes, if the metric is Paradis' survival, maybe it was indeed all "pointless". But that's also to say that, on the broadest scale, SNK is a story about futility, that it is a deliberate representation of the struggle to make one's actions historically meaningful.

In the long view of history, all the events, from Grisha running beyond the wall to see the airships and the first breaking of Wall Maria to Erwin's sacrifices, Paradis' discovery of the outside world, and finally to the Battle of Heaven and Earth, it would all merely be a handful of chapters in the history textbooks of the future. A future in which war and geopolitical conflict will continue even without Titans. That does not mean that all paths to the future are equal -- the 50-year plan would not have put an end to Titans, and Zeke's euthanasia plan distorts utilitarian ethics into just another form of oppression; there are better and worse decisions that lead to more and less degrees of suffering, but no decision can ever be the final one.

The additional panels remind us that in history, there never exists a singular "Final Solution". The reason there are readers who vehemently support Eren to have flattened 100% of the world, and the reason the Paradisians supported the oppressive, authoritarian, proto-fascist Jaegar Faction under Floch and even after the Rumbling, is that because they want to believe that a Final Solution to end conflict exists and will work. They resist the fundamental uncertainty and complexity of the situation, instead preferring a singular, unified, and coherent Answer to Paradis' struggle to survive. I'm reminded of the scholar Erich Auerbach's theorization of why fascism appealed to many people during periods of political and social crisis, change, and uncertainty. Writing in exile after fleeing Nazi Germany, he observed that:

"The temptation to entrust oneself to a sect which solved all problems with a single formula, whose power of suggestion imposed solidarity, and which ostracized everything which would not fit in and submit - this temptation was so great that, with many people, fascism hardly had to employ force when the time came for it to spread through the countries of old European culture." (from Mimesis p. 550)

This acutely describes the Jaegar Faction's rise to power and continued dominance in Paradis. But their promise of unity, of a single formula to wipe out the rest of the world either literally through the Rumbling, or to dominate them with military force, is a false one. Even if Eren had Rumbled 100% of the world instead of 80%, history would still go on. The external threat of the world may have been eliminated, but internal conflict and violence would still continue onward throughout the generations born on top of the blood of the rest of the world. Needless to say, out of all the options, Eren's 80% Rumbling is the very epitome of perpetuating the cycle of violence as it creates tens of thousands of war orphans like Eren once was, and it would justify employing violence for one's own self-interest to an extreme degree. For the generations to come that would valourize Eren as a hero, it would set a dangerous precedent for what degree of destruction is acceptable for self-defence -- nothing short of the attempt to flatten the entire world. It is no surprise that Paradis would meet a violent end when its founding one-party rule of the Jaegar Faction has their roots in such unapologetically bloody foundations.

Neither the 80% Rumbling nor the militaristic, ultra-nationalistic Jaegar faction that come to govern Paradis are glamourized as the "correct" solution to ensuring Paradis' future. (This can also put to rest any accusations of SNK's ending as "fascist" or "imperialist" propaganda, since the island's modern nation that they founded ends in war. All nations must fall eventually, but not all do in such blatant destruction). Importantly, neither is Armin's diplomatic mission naively idealized as that which permanently achieves world peace. No singular or unifying formula can work because reality is complicated. Entrusting oneself to seemingly simple Answers is simply insufficient, even if they are ideals of peaceful negotiation; that method may work given the right conditions, but the world will always eventually complicate its feasibility.

After all in the real world, there's the absurd irony that some in the West had called the First World War "The War to End all Wars". These days, WWI is merely one long chapter in our textbooks just a few pages away from the even longer chapter of the Second World War that is followed by all the rest of the conflicts that have followed since then even with the establishment of diplomatic organizations like the United Nations. In this sense, showing Paradis' eventual downfall is perhaps the only way to end such a series that is so concerned with history, from King Fritz's tribal expansion into empire, the rise and fall of Marleyan ascendency, and finally of the survival and apparent shattering of Paradis.

From its beginning to its end, SNK has poignantly evoked J.R.R. Tolkien's conception of history as The Long Defeat. In one character's words, "together through ages of the world we have fought the long defeat". That is to say, "no victory is complete, that evil rises again, and that even victory brings loss".

No heroes, only humans

Eren's desperate, fatalistic resignation to committing the Rumbling, along with the characters' rejection of all the rest of the earlier plans to ensure Paradis a future, are merely the actions of human beings to that began with the need to find not even necessarily a Final Answer, but at least an acceptable and feasible one for the time being. But the characterization of Eren's confusion, childishness, and regret in the final chapter is startlingly real in how it demonstrates how, all along, we have been dealing not with grand heroes, but simply people who have no answers at all. SNK has always been about failures - and often ironic failures; it has always been a story about painful and frequently futile struggle.

People make mistakes, they can be short-sighted, selfish, biased, immature, petty, and irrational, and I think the ending follows through with depicting the consequences of that.

Erwin's self-sacrifice before being able to reach the basement (and his regression to a childhood state in the moments before his death), Kenny's futile chasing after that universal compassion he had seen in Uri, Shadis never being acknowledged by history despite his final heroic action, and so on -- these stories of ironic, futile failures are still meaningful in their mere striving. Eren's ending and Paradis' demise despite Armin's endeavour to ensure them a peaceful future are entirely consistent with this.

SNK certainly follows the shounen trope in which young individuals are bestowed great power and correspondingly great responsibility, and must then reconcile the burden of possessing that greatness on which the fate of the world depends. Yet it is equally defined by its representation of the state that us normal human beings confront everyday: the struggle against the apparent powerlessness to enact any meaningful or lasting change at all. Simultaneously, this helpless state does not exempt us from the responsibility to act in whatever small capacity we are able to resist oppression, ideological extremism, and the perpetuation of violence.

Towards That Symbol

That was a rather long but vital digression about the additional "construction and destruction" pages. To return to the issue of the symbolism in the final panel, here I will turn from seemingly affirming the tree as symbolizing the cycle of violence, towards what I think is the greater complexity of what the tree might "actually" symbolize.

As I've said above, I don't believe that the final chapter title is synonymous with 'toward the endless cycle of war'. In tone, theme, and characterization, SNK has always been defined by the tension between cruelty and beauty, the will to violence and the underlying desire for peace, and the rest of the contradictory impulses that all simultaneously coexist. The end of SNK as a whole commits to a similar lack of closure, ambiguity, and interpretive openness.

So far I have rambled on about only a view of the perpetual "cruelty" of history. Where, then, is the "beauty"?

In short, the "tree = cycle of violence" interpretation is obviously based on how that this tree recalls the original tree in which the spine creature, as the source of the power of the Titans, resided. But it's worth first considering, what exactly is this creature? We seem to get our answer in the chapter that most precisely crystallizes the dual "cruelty and beauty" of the world:

The spine creature might be said to be life itself. Or more specifically, the will of life to perpetuate itself, for no reason at all but for the fleeting moments in which we feel distinctly glad to have existed in the world.

The creature at the source of the Titans, and in extension the Titans themselves, is neither inherently a positive or negative, "good" or "evil", creative or destructive force. It's both and all of those at once. As with any power, the Titans were merely a tool that was put to use to oppressive ends.

So as I now suggest that the tree at the end is symbolically a "Tree of Life", I don't at all mean "life" in the typically celebratory or optimistic sense: rather, I mean it in the ambiguous, ambivalent, uncertain, and complex sense that has been evoked throughout the above discussion of the inevitable continuation of war.

The title "Toward The Tree on That Hill" is derived from its associations with Eren and Mikasa, but more specifically of course, from Armin's affirmation of existence. However, the tree as a symbol of existential affirmation is undercut with the revelation that, despite Armin's diplomatic mediation between the Allied Nations and Paradis, the island nation never escapes war just as no nation in the history of the earth has ever fully escaped war.

The image of Armin running toward that life-affirming tree by the end becomes twisted and complicated, as the image of the anonymous child approaching the Tree of Life evokes both awe at its beauty and grandeur, and a deep dread at the foreboding of its cyclical return to Ymir's tree that signalled the beginning of a bloody era.

And I think that is precisely it: Life is not some idealized, beautiful vision that we always want to run toward; it is also ironic, complicated, and dreadful. It is ambivalent. Like a literary symbol, the meaning of life cannot be pinned down absolutely. The tree therefore becomes itself a symbol of uncertainty, of an open future that is cyclical both in its beauty and war.

As a final observation, it is surely no coincidence that, the small, black, birdlike silhouettes of the war planes destroying the city from the sky is replaced by the similarly small black silhouettes of birds in the final panel.

If the birds represent freedom from war, the irony is that the immediately surrounding land appears to be one completely empty of people save for the exploring child; it is a freedom attained only without people's presence. Yet at the same time, a child from some existing civilization has reached it; perhaps it is freedom that they have reached, perhaps it is something else that they see in the tree. What is it that they were looking for? What does the tree and its history represent for the child, and what does it mean for their future? Alternatively, does the child-in-the-forest imagery negatively recall the warning that the world is one huge forest of predator and prey that we need to protect children from entering?

Rather than providing answers, this tree embodies all of the potential questions, and all of the potential answers. These possibilities will unfold themselves into an uncertain future beyond the chapters of history that Eren, Armin, Mikasa, Zeke, Erwin, and all the rest of the characters were part of and left their mark on; and whatever future this child will witness or create, it will similarly be one of the struggle against futility, as the journey begins anew with each generation in every new era. Neither - or both - hopeful or despairing, the final image of this tree, just like life itself, contains those innumerable irresolvable tensions as it gestures towards all possibilities, both oppressive and free.

[yesimwriting]

Do you think Kirigan would go for soft girls or the ones that has the same personality as him?

a/n ahh okay ik ive been bad at updating and making content on here and been on a kinda unofficial break but im doing a little better mentally so more content soon!! anyways i had to answer this the SECOND i saw it bc i have SO many opinions.

--

okay,, this is going to sound like such a cop out answer, but i think there's no wrong answer bc it depends on how you interpret his character (which i'll explain really soon) but basically, in short, my personal opinion is that he'd go for a balance but be more drawn to someone that presents as one extreme and has the opposite hidden in them,,

personally, i think he'd be drawn to someone that presents as a 'soft' girl with a hidden 'darkness' in them, i don't mean like secretly evil but someone who wants to be good so badly but something in them is just a little too hurt or impulsive to always be the bigger person, even though they want to be.

Here's why I think that personality would draw him in most (i'll also explain the opposite personality bc like i said at the beginning, i think it really depends on how you interpret his character)

- okay, so it's clear that manipulation is kinda his love language (all he did was manipulate my girl Alina and i personally do think that that was the only way he was capable of loving her, so his issues weren't an absence of love but an inability to love in a healthy way--but that's just my opinion)

- so someone in that mental state that wants to be good and for the most part is but sometimes does foolish things bc they're human and have to deal with complex emotions (emotions that remind him of his personal struggles), would be really easy to manipulate bc he's clearly not an upstanding moral guy

- so when he tells someone with those internal conflicts that he sees seeds of darkness or something beyond the exterior they show the world, that person is inclined to believe him. (like when he tells alina that he saw her power and didn't run away, but can Mal say the same?)

- and after planting those seeds, he would be quick to reap them,, what do i mean by that??

- well, a major, personal headcanon of mine is that the Darkling definitely craves the acceptance and assurance of a partner to keep away the solitude that haunts him but he's afraid/hates the idea of losing control and giving someone so much one sided power over him

- so that's why he would be drawn to someone with a softer exterior for deeper connection purposes, bc he could feel like a protector/comforter and maintain some control (i also could very easily see him having an innocence/corruption kink but we're not here for that)

- also,, i think he'd see someone like that (or just his SO in general) as super good, and there would be some level of comfort in him to be able to look at his SO and be like 'they care for me/need me so i cant be that far gone, that lost' or maybe even be like 'if someone as good as them is allowed their impulses, i should be allowed mine'

- i also feel like he'd instinctually convince himself he HATES any 'soft presenting' person he's even somewhat attracted/intrigued by bc anything he sees as pure good he'd be at least a little jealous of in a way he doesn't understand (bc keep in mind, his darkness didnt come from a place of true malice originally)

- but i think he'd bore of someone that's completely soft just bc he's attracted to power bc even when he's not working on his plans, he is,, and if the potential SO doesn't have that power physically (as in political influence/grisha ability) he'd ideally need some strength of will/personality,, which is why he likes to press on that person's fear of being 'bad'

- he'd also like to prey on someone with this personality's fear of being a bad person so that he could feel better about himself bc like i said earlier,, a small part of him would be jealous of their goodness and i think at times he'd even be insecure

- especially if his SO started spending time with someone that's a better person than him bc he wants/needs to be the person that his SO cares about most bc it's not like he cares about a lot of ppl and if he cares more about them than they do about him,, that's not a type of control he'd be willing to relinquish

now why i think ppl could believe that he'd 'go for' someone with a similar exterior to him but has a secret soft inside:

- well,, that's basically him

- i believe opposites attract way more in complex characters (which is part of the reason i lean towards the first dynamic), but he could def be with someone with such a similar personality bc two people that crave power could create such a great couple

- first off, there would be a natural challenge there, bc the two could keep each other on edge and motivated (and victory/adrenaline of competition sex would hit hard,, let me tell you)

- he'd feel comfortable being himself a little more with someone that expresses the same level of ambitions as him and that would be easier than a relationship with someone that presents as soft

- tbh i think someone with a similar personality to him as his ideal hook up but for more serious connection,, he'd connect to someone softer bc they could give him approval/assurance he needs easier

- i think that a similar personality to him would keep him on his toes and entertained which is important and someone that's as driven as him would be beneficial for multiple reasons

- they could connect to him through his struggle and validate his actions

- and if that person had a soft spot,, he'd see even more of himself in them and he'd be able to feel like a protector a little more

- he'd def like to push at that softness in order to feel like his SO is important to him, even his SO is good at hiding that part of themselves

--

honestly the reason that how you view his character is so important in answering this question is bc it depends on whether you think that motivation/being pushed while still being needed is more important to him or being validated while still feeling like he's in control is more important to him.

but yeah,, in general i think he'd be drawn to softer girls but would end up going for girls more like him bc of more assured sexual chemistry and bc it puts him less at risk at opening up to anything beyond the face he wants the world to see

[sepublic]

Speculating on Carnage...

         So you’re telling me is that all I have to do is suck Eddie Brock’s Blood like a vampire, and I’ll have my own unique, home-grown symbiote friend develop inside of my body??? Eddie pal, you don’t mind handing over a blood transfusion, do ya...? Though I guess it’s possible that Cletus has the luck of being compatible, and most people who’d try this would reject the blood and die...

         Still, the fanfic and OC potential! And I guess Cletus growing the symbiote within his own body, which I’ve always wanted to see, allows his own human form to be fleshy and fluid too, hence creating entire holes in his torso to avoid bullets!

         Which suggests that he’s mutated into a human-symbiote hybrid (a concept I’ve always been interested in ngl) rather than just a human-symbiote bond... Which could mean that he has no symbiote of his own to interact with, alas!

         But with the motif of “one is the loneliest number”, it’d make thematic sense for Eddie and Venom’s arch-nemesis to differ that way... Eddie and Venom came from different worlds and merged together as one, but still distinct personalities.

         But Carnage really IS just Cletus, his own body mutated with alien symbiote properties and abilities- I don’t think you could remove e symbiote from him, because he IS part-symbiote, his own DNA has changed to be part-symbiote!

         Human and symbiote are one to the point they can no longer be differentiated. There is no relationship, no host- Cletus has become the parasite itself, and I wouldn’t be surprised if as the film went on, it becomes more abundant that his human state is more a guise for his true, alien form.

         And while Eddie and Venom learn to cooperate, and might have their messes and disputes from that... Cletus is by himself. I could see him flaunting about how he is ‘one’ and ‘whole’, ‘pure’ and in harmony with himself, Cletus/Carnage doesn’t NEED anybody, he’s better that way! He can go solo and not he fettered by working things out with others.

         That could lead to some fun reflection about the idea of going solo for Eddie and Venom, given how this film is clearly set up to be their couples counseling. IS Cletus better because he’s alone, would the two of them be better going their own ways...? Only to realize that YES they have disputes and messy conflict, but their bond is worth it in the end, and it makes them more than the sum of their parts!

         Yeah Eddie and Venom have to deal with each other, but they’ve got each other’s backs! They have support! Cletus, he’s alone... Because one IS the loneliest number, after all! Carnage has nobody he can rely on... Maybe he’ll strike an alliance with Shriek, but I doubt it’ll turn out well.

         If the trailer is alluding to Cletus having his own past breakup, then he really would just be a bitter reflection of Eddie and Venom on individual levels, as someone who never learned to compromise with his own partner, and is bitter and dejected for it... Acts like he’s tough and better off, but even THIS creep can’t deny the humanity within him that yearns for a connection!

         And as we see with Venom, you don’t even need to be human to desire a bond with someone else... That’s a universal desire, and no amount of mutation, ‘ascension’, nor distancing himself from his own humanity will ever change that.

         Sorry Cletus, you might revel in being a freak of nature, but you’re still a person by the end of the day and will always be, with all of the needs and fallacies of one! Rewriting your own DNA with that of an alien and having powers, embracing a new name and identity, won’t change that fundamental truth...

         Because changing one’s self-perception is just even more proof that you’re a person with identity issues, defined by your loneliness and ostracization, that disconnect from others! Because I wouldn’t be surprised if Cletus, even before the mutation, played with the perception by others and himself, of ‘Cletus Kasady’ as some sort of inhuman being, a monster... An identity he embraced, especially with frustrations over not being able to find anyone else like him, nobody else twisted! 

        Which just adds to his complex in trying to latch onto Eddie with his whole “You and I aren’t so different” rambles. Perhaps, deep down... Cletus desires to find and resonate with another kindred soul, and is leaping at that opportunity. Somebody who GETS him, someone else who is also an ‘other’, but for all of Eddie and Venom’s freakiness, they still fit with others, and ‘play by the rules’. 

         I’m sure Cletus thinks he’s being very clever and independent and special, not being bound by societal obligation and norms... But he’s also very much lonely for it, and that refusal to work with others is WHY he’s lonely. 

        He’s only really pushed others away, and there’s much more difference between him and Eddie-Venom, then Eddie-Venom and the rest of society. It’s not about alien blood, it’s about a certain concept of who you ARE as a person, and Cletus is very much a different kind of person- Albeit, alas, still a person!

        ...Of course I could just as easily be completely wrong and looking too deeply into this, getting carried away with this fun idea for Carnage’s character- So we’ll just have to wait and see, and I look forward to how this film turns out, and how Venom’s arch-nemesis is handled as a true parallel/foil to him!

        I hope Carnage is a worthy villain to truly complement/accentuate the hero and vice-versa, make them BOTH stand out together! Poetically, as more than the sum of their parts, protagonist and antagonist together in a twisted dynamic, a ‘symbiotic bond’ within the narrative, so to speak. I’m sure Cletus will make note of and get off on this type of observation, and EAGERLY embrace the relationship as much as his new identity!

[shihalyfie]

The relationship between the Yagami siblings

The above line is possibly one of the most vital lines in contextualizing the relationship between the Yagami siblings, but is all too often omitted, and so it can lead to a lot of other questions about whether Hikari has dependency problems or whether Taichi has a natural tendency to be overprotective (also not helped by the fact that Hikari’s own voice actress, Araki Kae, was very fond of joking about Hikari having a brother complex). Once the proper context is applied, however, the relationship between the two ends up saying a lot about both individually!

That's the kind of girl she is! She's always thinking about other people before herself, and she'll never tell anyone that she's in pain or having a hard time, even if it kills her! The thing is, she might not have even wanted to come to this stupid world at all...But when people tell her that the fate of the world is in her hands or something, she could never refuse!... ...That's why...That's why I'm supposed to look after her and protect her...

The summary of everything going on between the two siblings at the time of Adventure has to do with the following:

Hikari is “always thinking of other people before herself” (i.e. she “doesn’t want to be a burden”, a very common sentiment among these very selfless kids in Adventure and 02), and therefore will accept massive burdens or pain on herself because she doesn’t want to trouble others. Because of that, she also will not speak out about her pain, simply suppressing it and pretending that everything is fine, while working for others’ sake.

Even Taichi has no idea what she’s thinking, because she’s so bad at vocalizing what she wants or is actually feeling that he has to guess. While he’s obviously emotionally compromised and thinking the worst of everything at the time of the above incident in Adventure episode 48, he also states that “that’s the kind of girl she is,” which implies that the above incident where Hikari got pneumonia was not an isolated incident, and therefore that Hikari has a repeated pattern of behaving like this. Hence, why Taichi has to keep stepping in -- he has to constantly assume the worst and go overboard, because Hikari will not do anything for herself if left to her own devices.

Both siblings are characterized as “dangerously self-sacrificial”; Taichi will recklessly risk his own welfare if it’s for the sake of others not getting hurt, whereas, as just indicated here, Hikari will refuse to burden other people even if it leads to her own personal destruction. This is not the only time Adventure has portrayed the negative aspects of being too selfless (it’s also a huge theme of Sora’s character arc), and it’s also why Hikari so easily offers herself up at the end of Adventure episode 36; it’s not just about Taichi! Hikari just puts others before herself by default to the extent that, while doing something for herself is hard to do, doing things for others is a no-brainer.

This is also why Hikari’s actions of “clinging” to Taichi in Adventure episode 21 shouldn’t be contextualized as her being clingy to him and wanting him there for her own sake -- remember, the point that was made is that Hikari thinks so little about what she wants that she doesn’t even consider her own wishes as an object, so the reason she bids for them to “stay” in this episode is because she knows he’s been in another world, a potentially dangerous one, and is about to go back and risk his own welfare for it. Since her attitude revolves around “other people’s sake”, it’s natural that she’s not going to be very enthusiastic about her brother and their new friend heading back to the unknown like that. (Remember, she seemed to be fine with him being out at camp and being away from her for prolonged periods of time in general.)

Which is especially enhanced when we see the context of why Taichi has his massive freakout in Adventure episode 48, and the way Hikari behaves in both the episode and the flashback:

The conflict in the episode was kicked off by, once again, Taichi being unable to tell what Hikari was thinking or feeling, and underestimating how much pain she was in, while Hikari had been suppressing it because of her selflessness. As Taichi says, he can’t tell if Hikari had wanted to come, or if she had simply come out of “obligation” regardless of how she’d felt.

And, in the flashback depicted, again: Taichi hadn’t insensitively dragged Hikari out, he had legitimately thought she was fine and misjudged her condition, and Hikari had agreed to go out without protest, only for that to be very much not the case. And when Hikari returned, she had no blame for him and only continued to blame herself for ruining his fun. So, again: Hikari doesn’t even think of herself, and only thinks about how much of a burden she’s being on others, and the incident (and presumably others) had brought Taichi into the understanding that he cannot use what Hikari says about herself as an accurate bar for how she’s doing.

The Character Complete File gives us a bit of an interesting tidbit about Taichi and Hikari’s home lives, in that, if you pay attention, you’ll notice that the Yagami siblings don’t share a room anymore by the time of 02. According to both Taichi and Hikari’s testimonies, Hikari had “constructively” kicked him out by hint-hinting that she was actually not very fond of sharing a room with him and was embarrassed by it! She does eventually admit that it’s a bit lonely without the second person around, but she’s very happy to claim her room as “my own little castle”, and, moreover, with the above context, you can imagine that she, once again, might have been self-conscious about being a “burden” on him due to both of their spaces intersecting too much.

So when we do get to 02...

The line from the second screenshot is the most commonly cited line about Hikari’s attitude regarding her brother in 02, but recall that this is from Hikari basically doing her own version of rambling incoherently. The actual context clue required to decipher this comes from earlier in the episode, when, drowning in the negative atmosphere and impact the Dark Ocean is having on her, Hikari has a vision/flashback of saying “I’m sorry” to her brother. Remembering that the Dark Ocean is heavily associated with “negative emotions”: what does “I’m sorry” mean? “I’m sorry” -- or, in other words, “I caused you more trouble again.” So when Hikari says that “my brother always protected me”, she’s basically saying “I’ve been burdening my brother by making him protect me all of the time,” and the fact that she pairs this with a statement “the next time they call me, I may end up there” is one about inevitability -- she does not like the idea of continuing to burden him, and is letting horrible things happen to her because she would rather not keep doing this to him.

This is what threads the apparent “contradiction” between Hikari supposedly being so “quiet” about certain things yet so assertive about others -- Hikari has never shown any hesitation about putting her foot down assertively when it’s about other people’s sake, but it’s always about her own sake and her own feelings when she suddenly clams up. Tailmon even alludes to it herself in the episode:

Hikari is “strong”, and she’s shown it many times -- she’s assertive, brave, and heck, in this very same episode, the moment she realizes the “Hangyomon” need help, she doesn’t even hesitate to do her best to help them even at the risk of pain to herself! But she’s not going to make it until she can accept the help of others instead of denying everything out of worry for being a burden, which is why the issue starts to resolve a little when Hikari finally breaks down and admits that she wants others to help her, including Takeru, whom she had spurned earlier during the episode.

Hence, this is why the “follow-up” to this episode, 02 episode 31, doesn’t involve Taichi at all -- but it does involve a continuation of the same thing about Hikari’s problem, and she even confirms what Taichi had said about her back in Adventure episode 48, that she won’t vocalize her own problems. On top of that, she adds another layer to it: Hikari compulsively suppresses her own problems to the point she’s outright jealous of Miyako for being able to vocalize them. Hikari’s “selflessness” problem is so bad and self-destructive that even she realizes it’s a problem and wants to do something about it, but literally cannot. This is how bad her problem is, and why none of her actions to this point can really accurately be read as her being clingy or wanting to do anything for truly selfish reasons; this problem of “self-destructive selflessness” was so bad that even she didn’t like this about herself. And, hence, why she felt like she was “burdening” her own brother while she was at it -- it was a problem she did with everyone, but since he was one of the people she knew and trusted the most (having literally grown up with him, and all), it had been the worst with him.

Therefore, Miyako is able to address this issue even without Taichi being involved at all, because the problem wasn’t really about Taichi -- but 02 is a series about the importance of relationships and accepting a need to grow with the help of other people, and therefore, Miyako addressing Hikari’s issue of being so closed-in, and encouraging her to seek help and stop accepting her own destruction just to not “burden” others, is likely to help her have a better relationship with her brother in the future.

...although, by this point in 02, this really was more of Hikari’s own issue than it was Taichi’s by this point, because Taichi treats his sister pretty “neutrally” over the course of the series -- when Hikari’s stranded in the Digital World in 02 episode 7, Iori’s the one more panicked than he is, and he’s mostly just concentrated on having an alibi for her to come back with. And he has zero problem with her flinging herself into dangerous situations over the course of the year, including the stakeout trip started in 02 episode 18 (and for what it’s worth, Hikari herself clearly had no issue flinging herself into such a situation). And when he discusses the issue of the new kids in the 02 group having to accept that killing an enemy will soon become an inevitability in 02 episode 43, it’s a pretty serious conversation with him advising her the way he would have advised any of his other juniors.

This is why context is so important! Taichi had said, back in Adventure episode 48, that he’d hovered over her because he’d had no clue what she was thinking, and would have to take extra precautions because she could easily get herself killed like that. But in 02, it’s not like she was constantly suffering a cold, and it’s a lot more obvious that her actions throughout the series were because it was what she wanted to do, regardless of the risks, so it’s her right to do whatever she wants, and therefore he leaves her to it; she’s clearly doing a much better job taking care of herself, so there’s no reason for him to step in.

Hikari also takes his advice at face value and doesn’t have any particular weirdness about it; she’d never put him on a pedestal or anything, she just still happened to have very self-destructive tendencies that were ultimately resolved with the help of the rest of the 02 group. Often submitted as Hikari having proof of putting him on some kind of weird pedestal is her reaction in 02 episode 4, when she gets angry at Daisuke for being disrespectful about an older sibling, but this omits the fact that Yamato (being a very offended older sibling) got in on it too; the point was more about the disparity between Daisuke and Jun’s more vitriolic relationship compared to the more mutual-esteem relationships between the Ishida-Takaishi and Yagami siblings, plus the fact that, even if the perspective was different, Daisuke was being pretty harsh about his wording (he outright says he hates his sister...).

This is also presumably why, when everyone is presented with illusions regarding their personal worries in 02 episode 49, Hikari’s is the only one that has no relation to her family or home life whatsoever. She has nothing to really worry about with her home life, and Taichi seems to be fine and she has no particular interest in what he does as long as she’s not burdening him further. Rather, again, her character was largely about “doing more for other people than doing anything for herself,” so of course, her “dream” ends up being about everyone else in the world being happy.

In the end, it was more about her larger issues of her relationship to “other people” versus her relationship to “herself” than anything else -- it was just impacting the siblings the most since they were, well, siblings.

[ahgaseda]

aura | three

driving me crazy, look in my eyes, follow me, come here, dance with me now, I’m gonna make you feel like that...

summary : back again at a camp for kids that can’t behave, you are still brokenhearted over your ill-fated romance with Jaebeom, until your friend Jackson offers to help make your ex jealous in exchange for helping him land the most unattainable girl at camp.

warnings : strong profanity, explicit dialogue, recurring alcohol or recreational drug use, graphic sexual content, brief mentions of illegal activities, potentially triggering elements involving toxic relationships and emotional manipulation, etc.

miniseries chapters : one / two / three / four / five / six / seven

Every step down the path was slowed by dread and anxiety. The auditorium sat on a small hill, looming over the rest of the camp, and the sight made your stomach turn each time you laid eyes on it.

Such an unassuming building and yet it still shot nerves through you.

Entering through the double doors, you were blasted by air conditioning, which was a bit excessive with the crisp morning air. You simpered when you made eye contact with a few of the other campers. It was a small group, as to be expected for these little sessions.

Then, your gaze shifted to the wall where Jaebeom was leaning back and had just looked up at the sound of the door opening.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” you groaned, wanting to march right back out. Fate was such a cruel bitch.

Jaebeom cocked his head at your reaction, following you with his eyes, and asked sweetly, “Sleep well?”

“Yes,” you replied, curt, avoiding his stare.

Jaebeom shifted closer and whispered, “Did you think of me last night?”

If only you knew how you had filled his thoughts and dreams. Those kisses in the pool still made his heart race.

Smirking with a chance to torment him, you retorted, “Not even once. My mind is full of Jackson and how good his head looked between my thighs.”

Jaebeom frowned, the blood draining from his face. Hearing about your escapades with Jackson made him insane, like being dragged through pieces of broken glass.

“That bastard,” Jaebeom huffed under his breath.

Your arrogance faded and you turned somber. Part of you realized that you were giving yourself away to spite him. It was like trying to heal a burn by directly applying more fire.

Doctor Ambrose stepped inside, greeting everyone with her signature smile. “Good morning. Are we ready to begin?”

No one was. Not one of these poor souls wanted to discuss their daddy or mommy issues in group form. But it was mandated by the camp and having been attending for many years, you were accustomed to dodging.

You and the others followed Doctor Ambrose into the main auditorium, approaching a ring of folding chairs waiting on the stage. You swallowed the lump in your throat and avoided a look at Jaebeom as you took a seat.

This was the room where it happened - where you surrendered your virtuous flower. Blah, blah, blah, you thought to yourself. Eventually, you were going to have to come to terms with the fact you were less bitter about losing your virginity and more broken at having lost your heart.

The theater was the one place no one bothered to lock after curfew since it was solely used for group sessions and the occasional motivational speech, but if someone did remember to lock up, the door code was common knowledge. Guys went there to blaze up. Girls went to sneak drinks.

Jaebeom had brought you inside. The relationship had grown and was leading to a physical consummation of your feelings for each other. You knew exactly what would happen. After all, you had snuck out of your cabin in the middle of the night to meet a boy beneath the stars.

You let him lay you down on the stage, behind the heavy velvet curtain. Jaebeom at least had the wherewithal to put his jacket down for you to rest on.

You stole a glance of the shadow behind the curtain, not too far from where you sat, and your expression soured. You could still remember the rampant beating of your heart when Jaebeom kissed you with all he had and laid you down beneath him.

The memory raced across your mind in steady bursts. Your eyes burned at how gentle he had been with you, how loving. Jaebeom convinced you that he was madly in love and that there was a future between you and him.

And you were such a fool to believe it. You were over the moon thinking you had finally found love in the most unlikely of places. With someone you trusted. Someone you considered a friend.

Taking a deep breath, you were officially angry.

The time spent with Jackson had taken off the rose-colored glasses. You were able to see your affair with Jaebeom for what it was. And though you were still hopelessly in love with him, you were mad as hell for what he had done to you.

Doctor Ambrose called your name and began, “Let’s start with you. Why don’t you tell us the behavior that warranted your presence back at camp this year?”

You crossed your legs and sang, “Oh, where to begin, Doc? I lied. I cheated. I stole. Short of murder, my rap sheet is long.”

“You’ve been coming here for many years and you know that’s not what these sessions are about,” she chided, giving you a stern look. “Skip the bravado and get straight to the real talk.”

You narrowed your eyes. Ambrose always did hit the nail on the head. That’s why she was one of the few people at this godforsaken place that held everyone’s respect. Which was impressive in its own right since you and your fellow rich, troubled kids had very little respect for anyone.

But if Doctor Ambrose thought you were going to bear your soul to a room full of people that didn’t give a damn about you - Jaebeom included - she was sorely mistaken.

You sighed and continued, “I’m sure it’s common knowledge by now that I had a terrible lapse in judgement last summer and that lapse in judgement had a lot of unforeseen consequences.”

Jaebeom was unmoving in his seat, but his eyes were heavy on you.

Ambrose gave you her undivided attention and spoke softly, “Go on.”

You shrugged, hoping to hide just how miserably the words were coming from your mouth. “I lashed out. I cycled through all of my emotions and when they were too painful, I did something bad. Something that distracted me from how angry or hurt I was. Classic reckless human behavior.”

Her response was blunt, but genuine, “It’s called self-destructive behavior and you were punishing yourself for the pain someone else inflicted on you.”

You studied her, wanting to smack this woman across the face for defining you in a single sentence. “Forget psychiatrist,” you scoffed. “You’re a psychic.”

“I know you,” Ambrose said tenderly. “And you are not defined by your mistakes.”

You rolled your eyes, though you would love to believe that. “We all are, Doctor Ambrose,” you told her morosely. Then, your tone shifted, “Now, please take the spotlight off of me before I do something bad. Like I said, it’s what I’m known for.”

Ambrose exhaled loudly, conflicted, but decided not to push you. Turning to the next participant, she called, “Jaebeom, your turn.”

Jaebeom was still looking at you.

“Why don’t you tell us the activities that landed you back for yet another summer here?”

Jaebeom grumbled, “I’m a dick. The end.”

A few of the other attendees chortled.

“Jaebeom, everyone here knows you’re more complex than that,” Ambrose shot back.

“Am I?”

She cocked her head. “You don’t think so.”

“Ask her,” Jaebeom said, waving his hand in your direction. “Everyone knows what I did.”

You didn’t dare look at him, offering no absolution. You kept your gaze firmly rooted to Doctor Ambrose, who was now glancing between the two of you suspiciously.

Tapping her pen, Ambrose ordered, “After this group session I want to see both of you in my office.”

Your heart sank and you pleaded, “But, Doctor Ambrose…”

“Moving on,” she cut you off.

You folded your arms tightly across your chest in defiance, stiff in your seat. Jaebeom stretched out his legs and braced his arms on his thighs, keeping his head low.

Tuning out the conversations going around the circle of other campers discussing their toxic and sometimes illegal activities, you could only think about how angry you were. How it was billowing and growing inside of you until it threatened to burst.

Though Jaebeom was in the seat beside yours, he felt an entire world away. What had you done to him to deserve this? And for fuck’s sake, why couldn’t you stop loving him? If you fell in love with someone, couldn’t you ultimately fall back out?

Stealing a glance in the corner of your eye, Jaebeom looked up at that same moment and your eyes met. You looked away immediately, bitter and vengeful, but Jaebeom persisted. For someone who prided himself on being set in his ways, he couldn’t stand how you spun him on his edge.

You made him want to risk it all.

When the group session ended, Ambrose twirled the pen between her fingers and said, “I suppose we can forgo my office and just speak here.”

“We have nothing to talk about,” Jaebeom spoke up, venomous.

“I think there’s plenty,” she asserted, studying you intently. “Wanna tell me about it?”

Your eyes glistened when they met hers. You wanted to tell her she was right. That you had punished yourself for a year because you fell for a boy - the wrong boy. It was stupid. It was juvenile. And you resented yourself to hell and back for it.

“You wouldn’t understand,” you finally murmured, voice shaky.

She smiled, comforting. “Try me.”

Jaebeom could see you were about to crack. He could hear the weakness seeping into your words. Running a hand through his hair, he blurted out, “It’s my fault.”

Ambrose questioned levelly, “How so?”

“Be quiet,” you hissed.

“I fucked up,” Jaebeom confessed.

“Language,” she corrected loosely.

Jaebeom frowned. “I seduced her. I convinced her I was in love.”

“And were you?”

“No, I…,” Jaebeom trailed, like he couldn’t bring himself to say it. “I don’t know.”

You glared with nothing short of loathing at the floor.

Ambrose was putting the pieces together and she didn’t hesitate to scold, “What was your purpose, Jaebeom? What were you trying to achieve?”

Jaebeom paused a moment. Then, he finally admitted, “I was trying to get her into bed.”

Ambrose clocked a glance at you and said, “I’m assuming you succeeded.”

Your breaths came faster. Your heart was revving like the engine of Jackson’s blood red Corvette. Any minute you were going to explode.

“I went too far,” Jaebeom mulled, scratching his head. “I had never gone that far before, but I was addicted. I had no idea it would… I didn’t know she would…”

“You’re full of shit,” you snapped.

Doctor Ambrose called your name, giving you the same warning about profanity.

You leveled your scowl at Jaebeom, who had already bowed his head in submission or shame, and sneered, “I will never believe a word you say. You knew exactly what you were doing. You wanted someone to hurt as much as you hurt.”

Jaebeom still couldn’t meet your eyes. Pathetic, he thought to himself, but he couldn’t face your wrath. He couldn’t see the pain manifested on your beautiful face.

“Congratulations,” you continued, rising to your feet. “I know how you feel and I almost derailed my life because of you!”

Ambrose held out a hand amicably. “Please, sit.”

“No, I’m out of here,” you barked, gritting your teeth to keep the tears at bay. “And if you plan on physically making me stay in the same room with this asshole a minute longer, my stepfather’s attorneys would love to blow this shit wide open.”

Doctor Ambrose gave you a nod and sat back down.

Your steps echoed through the frigid silence of the auditorium and you nearly knocked the doors off their hinges when you pushed them open to escape outside.

When you had gone, Jaebeom exhaled heavily.

Ambrose looked at him. She could see the guilt weighing down his shoulders and though she didn’t want to take pity on him after what you had just revealed, compassion was a cornerstone of who she was as a person.

“Jaebeom, it goes without saying, but I’m going to say it,” Ambrose whispered for his ears only. “Breaking other people doesn’t fix you.”

Jaebeom stood to full height without another word and skulked away, hiding his teary eyes behind his long black hair.

“The nerve of that bitch! I know that she knows what happened last summer,” you vented, pacing back and forth in front of Jackson as he sat on the edge of the bed. “Everyone on the east coast knows by now. I had to hear about it for the first month of school on a daily basis!”

“I know,” Jackson replied patiently.

You tried to mimic the voices of the nosy, gossiping girls back home, “‘Can you believe she spread her legs for him? Did she really think he loved her? I thought she was smart. Turns out she’s a dumb whore like the rest of us!’”

Jackson grimaced. He remembered that morning, when you told him you slept with Jaebeom. You were so happy, so sure of what you wanted. And he knew it was going to unravel, leaving you holding all the pieces. “No one said that.”

“Everyone said that, Jacks! Admit it,” you yelled.

Of course, they did. Jackson had never threatened so many people in his life. Jackson had a lot of friends, but he only had one best friend. Whenever they spoke of you and Jaebeom, it made his skin crawl. Made his fists clench on instinct.

He was supposed to protect you.

Jackson rose from the bed, grasping your arms and staring you in the face. “Who cares what other people say? I sure as shit don’t!”

You cast your gaze down, shifting from angry to sad. “And he really sat there acting like he didn’t think I would take it so personally,” you whispered, trembling.

Jackson gathered you in his arms, squeezing tight. “He’s an idiot. It is known,” he quipped dryly.

You pulled back and sighed, “Maybe we should just fuck.”

Jackson frowned, but quickly hid his disappointment with a swift, “I’m not in the mood.”

You quirked a brow. “Seriously?”

Jackson released you and teased, “Yeah, I’m not a faucet.”

You let a smirk play at your lips and reached for his belt. “What if I…”

Jackson grabbed your wrists and chided you so sternly you almost faltered, “Listen. You are more than sex. You understand me?”

There were very few occasions Jackson reprimanded you and he always snared your full attention when it happened. Swallowing the lump in your throat, you murmured, “...Okay.”

Jackson simpered. “You don’t need to fuck. You need a hug.”

You chuckled, squeaking in surprise when he pulled you to his chest faster than you thought possible. You smiled, burying your face against his neck as he enveloped you in his embrace.

It was exactly what you needed.

You set your hands to his shoulders, feeling burly muscles underneath. Jackson always radiated heat and energy, and you were content to let him hold you forever. Jackson was warmth and safety.

He was home.

After a moment, you blurted to alleviate the tension, “Can we go get food?”

Jackson exclaimed, “I thought you’d never ask.”

The two of you walked arm in arm to the mess hall. It had been ungodly, the hour you woke to attend your group therapy session, but it meant you were starving for breakfast and the smell that hit your nose when you entered the dining room made you salivate on the spot.

Approaching the line, Jackson said, “Damn it. I forgot to tell you I’m sitting with Yeona today.”

“Oh,” you replied, remembering you didn’t get a chance to talk to him much after you had pounced on him. “I take it everything went well last night.”

“Yeah, we hit it off. I’m laying the groundwork.”

You rolled your eyes. Part of you was rooting in Yeona’s corner, that she stick to her guns and save herself for someone who loved her. The other part felt guilty as hell for being part of the same scheme that destroyed you last summer.

Pushing those thoughts aside, you told him, “I think I want some alone time to myself anyway. I’ll sit in the corner.”

Jackson eyed you worriedly. “Are you sure? I can totally blow her off.”

“Positive,” you insisted, beaming at the gesture. “Go with Yeona. You two would make a really cute couple.”

“Ha. Ha,” said Jackson in mock laughter.

Together you got your food and then parted in the aisleway. Yeona smiled when Jackson joined her by the window and you vaguely wished happiness for them. Jackson wasn’t like Jaebeom. 

Maybe Yeona would be good for Jackson. She could help him work through his commitment issues. You had seen firsthand what his parents’ marriage had done to him. It was no surprise he broke off relationships as soon as they started to become serious.

Taking the empty table in the corner, you backed against the wall. Pulling a magazine out of your purse, you placed it next to your tray and opened to a random page, biting into your toasted bagel.

Jaebeom leaned against the adjacent door frame, hands in his pockets. He was sporting his trademarked leather jacket and his hair had strayed into his eyes while watching you.

He was at war with himself over what to say.

First and foremost he wanted to apologize, but Lim Jaebeom had way too much pride for that. Secondly, he considered offering you a better deal than whatever Jackson was giving you, but given your furor at the group session, Jaebeom knew better than to stoke your wrath again.

Jaebeom thought of all those times last summer when he caught himself staring at you. How could someone so beautiful and amazing be interested in the likes of him? You were confident and fearless, a little rough around the edges with a heart of gold. You were everything he aspired to be and you brought out the best in him without even knowing it.

By then, Jaebeom was in too deep. He could feel himself falling for you and he forbade himself from ever putting his heart on the line. And so he cut you loose.

Jaebeom remembered your face when he spoke those words. I never loved you. The joy left your face. The light fled your eyes. With four words, he had broken someone completely and it kept him awake at night.

Sex was a release for him. No more, no less. Jaebeom could fuck a girl and never see her again afterward, and it wouldn’t bother him for a second. After her - the woman that loved and left him - Jaebeom didn’t attach sex with emotion and certainly not intimacy or commitment.

Then, he had you. Suddenly, he wanted to wake up to you in the morning. He wanted to fall asleep in your arms every night. He didn’t fuck you… he made love to you. He felt passion for the first time in a long time. When it was over, he didn’t want to leave like he had always done. And that scared the shit out of him.

Jaebeom realized you had begun to heal him and he panicked.

Even now, Jaebeom wanted you back. He needed another chance. His first instinct was always to run when he felt emotions he didn’t understand, but he could fight back this time. He could change for you, couldn’t he?

When Jaebeom slid into the seat beside you, you weren’t the least bit surprised.

“What are you reading?” he asked nonchalantly, picking up the magazine and fanning the pages.

“Chick magazine,” you deadpanned. “There’s an article in there on Ten Ways to Achieve Female Orgasm. You should read it.”

Another snide jab at his bedroom skills. Jaebeom wrinkled his nose, but rebuffed you, “I only got one round with you. How do you know I couldn’t give you the best loving of your life?”

It was a provocative thought. You felt your heart stutter a little, but your mind was fully in control now, and you shot back, “Because I don’t think you know what love is.”

Jaebeom met your eyes and this time, you didn’t back down. “You know what I meant,” he huffed.

“So, I’m a mind reader now? Good to know,” you retorted, acerbic.

Jaebeom turned to you, leaning in and whispering, “Tonight. After curfew. Sneak out with me.”

You shook your head, mouth full of food. Swallowing, you told him coolly, “I have a regularly scheduled dick appointment with Jackson.”

“Cancel it,” Jaebeom said, appearing unaffected though it made him want to destroy Jackson a thousand times over. “I’ll have some wine. We can go to the lookout. You know, like old times.”

You scowled at him and yet, you wanted nothing more than to go back to those old times. Before you were stupid. Before you fell in love with him.

“Give me one good reason,” you hissed, taking a sip of your orange juice.

Jaebeom shifted, like the words pained him. More from pride than anything else. “I just want to talk to you. I miss you. As a friend.”

You didn’t say anything, but you shuffled your attention between him and Jackson. The latter was making Yeona laugh heartily and you felt a twinge of jealousy. Not from a place of malice, but a protectiveness over your best friend.

Jackson would tell you not to. He would tell Jaebeom to take a fucking hike.

Angling back to Jaebeom, you warned, “If you so much as grab my boob, I will kick you in the balls and leave you there.”

Jaebeom smiled, but quickly fought it. “That’s fair.”

“What time?”

“Eleven.”

You nodded. “Okay, I’ll meet you at the spot.”

Jaebeom rose and you were sad to see him go, but he added, “Nah, I will come to your cabin and get you. I don’t want you walking at night alone.”

You rolled your eyes. “Chivalry isn’t dead after all.”

Jackson stitched his brows, having listened to you recount the exchange to him back at his cabin.

“Of course, chivalry is dead,” your best friend exclaimed incredulously. “He killed it.”

“Jacks, please,” you whined. “He just wants to talk.”

“No, he doesn’t,” Jackson countered firmly and he looked a heartbeat away from combusting. “He hates that you’re sleeping with me. It’s jealousy. Plain and simple.”

You propped your hands on your hips, frustrated from arguing with him. “Wasn’t that the plan? To make him come after me again?”

Jackson remembered what had started all of this in the first place and he changed his tune. “Right, yeah, but this is just going the same route as last summer. You see that, right?”

“No, it’s not. I’m wiser now.”

Jackson approached briskly, taking you in his arms and roaming his hands around your waist. “You could just stay here with me,” he coaxed, voice a low growl. “I can eat that pussy like it’s my last meal.”

You snorted a laugh, but slipped out of his arms. “Nice try, but you were right. I’m more than just sex and I need to see where his head is at.”

Jackson sighed in defeat.

“Don’t wait up for me tonight,” you called back to him as you slipped through the door.

Jackson watched you go and stood rooted in place. Fuck, he was conflicted. Every instinct he had told him to stop you, but how could he? What right did he have to you in the first place?

He was just the guy you fucked to get back at another guy.

Jackson exhaled loudly through his nose. He could feel himself slipping, losing his nerve. Even when he sat with Yeona, making her smile and laugh, and noticing she leaned into his touches, his eyes still wandered to you. And when Jaebeom had appeared by your side, Jackson could feel his heart sinking into the bottom of his stomach.

Jackson reminded himself of the deal. He would get Yeona and you would get Jaebeom. That was it. Those were the terms you both agreed on and thus far, everything was going quite smoothly.

But Jackson was thinking of you and now he was thinking of Jaebeom touching you. And it made him want to die.

The day passed by at a glacial pace. By the time night fell, you began the long, arduous process of doing your hair and makeup. When there was a knock at the door, you had to stop yourself from sprinting across the room to answer.

Instead, you made his ass wait.

“Hey,” you greeted, stepping through and shutting the door behind you a moment later.

“Hey,” Jaebeom replied, scanning you over. “You look beautiful.”

“Thank you,” you said sweetly, noting the backpack slung over his shoulder. “What you got back there?”

“None of your business,” he teased. “Ready to go?”

You pursed your lips, watching Jaebeom turn and stride away, expecting you to follow. Which, of course, you did.

The lookout was a small patch of open field between the trees. It was the perfect spot for stargazing and late night makeout sessions. You and Jaebeom had spent many hours in this place. As did you and Jackson.

It was a place of clarity and self-reflection. Something about seeing the stars so clearly, away from the noise and smog of the city, made you feel a sense of belonging. That everything would be okay. Sooner or later.

Jaebeom dropped his backpack and began rifling through it. Reading your mind, he called, “Don’t sit yet.”

You were about to complain, but then he stood and fanned out a red flannel blanket, smoothing out the corners over the grass.

“Now, you can sit.”

You almost chuckled, but you didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. Plopping down, you overlapped your ankles and watched him take the spot beside you.

“Wow, this is actually romantic,” you smarted, monotonous.

Jaebeom popped open the bottle of wine and took a swig. “I’m full of surprises,” he quipped, handing you the bottle.

A bit perturbed he had neglected to bring separate glasses, you took a sip and countered bitterly, “Not really. I remember all the romantic gestures and sweet words of last summer.”

Jaebeom sighed. So did he.

He had taken something so precious and innocent and filled it with poison. Jaebeom could have walked away at any point. And even worse, when all was said and done, he could have stayed.

There was a lull of silence and you didn’t mind. Jaebeom studied the stars, feigning interest. You turned your head, looking at his profile alight with the glow of the moon.

“Jaebeom, why did you bring me here?”

Jaebeom swallowed and whispered, “I hate myself for what I did to you.”

You frowned. “And what about all the other girls?”

Jaebeom shook his head, remorseful only for you. “They weren’t naive. They weren’t inexperienced,” he explained, somber. “They weren’t my friends. They weren’t you.”

You narrowed your eyes. The anger was pooling in your belly again. And your next question was scathing, “So, what sets me apart is that you hurt me the most?”

“Yes,” Jaebeom said, feeling small. “And you didn’t deserve it.”

You cried, “Why me?”

“You were the holy grail. Every guy wanted you.”

Biting back tears, you whimpered, “You talk about me like I’m not a person.”

Jaebeom realized that and he looked away, mulling over if he could put his feelings into words for once. “Would you believe me if I said that looking back I meant the things I said to you - that I loved every moment we spent together last summer?”

You thought about it for a moment and then you answered, “No. It’s what I’ve wanted you to say and yet. . . I don’t believe you. Everything you said and did was the means to an end.”

Jaebeom didn’t deny it. “I thought so, too. But when I got home, you were all I could think about. I wanted to see you and hold you. I missed having you in my life.”

The tears were flowing freely now and you turned your head away.

Jaebeom came closer, cupping your cheek and wiping the tears with his thumb.

You sobbed, “Why did you do this?”

“Shh, baby,” he whispered under his breath.

“You hate yourself for hurting me. I hate myself for loving you.”

Jaebeom felt like a gaping open wound, one that refused to heal. And yet your pain surpassed his own. He would rather writhe in misery than see you crying in his arms. Knowing that he had driven you this far.

“You were right,” he choked out. “I wanted you to know hurt the way I did. I envied you. You never let anyone get to you. I thought in some twisted way I wouldn’t be alone and I could finally move past what happened to me.”

You could feel yourself falling for it again and you lowered your head.

“I’m sorry,” Jaebeom finally said.

Those words you had wanted for so long and they did nothing for you. They didn’t fix you. They didn’t numb the pain. They didn’t restore what had been taken.

You pushed his arms away and got to your feet, wiping the tears with the back of your hand. Stomping toward the gravel path, Jaebeom was hot on your heels, calling your name.

When he grabbed your arms and spun you back around to face him, you yelled, “Let me go, Jaebeom.”

“Tell me what to do,” he pleaded. “Tell me what you need me to do!”

“Break this fucking spell,” you shouted back at him. “Make me hate you. Because I love you and it’s killing me!”

That was the last thing Jaebeom wanted. He was consumed by you. There were those words again and Jaebeom couldn’t stand it. No one had ever loved him, much less fallen in love with him, and he didn’t know what to do.

So, he gathered you in his arms and melded his lips to yours. You didn’t hesitate to kiss him back hard, carding your fingers into his hair.

Jaebeom held your waist and hips snugly, trapping you to him. You pressed yourself to his chest and tugged on his hair, earning a groan. You slipped your tongue past his lips and Jaebeom made a noise at your aggression. He could taste the salt of your tears.

This was stupid, you thought to yourself. You just never learned, did you? But God, kissing him was amazing. You let your hands fall from his head to roam his shoulders, pressing your nails into his shirt. You felt so small in his arms, like you were lost in him.

Jaebeom began to move, steering you with him back toward the blanket, still kissing you like his life depended on it. You weren’t surprised when he lay you down, but Jaebeom was beyond surprised when you wrestled him to his back and straddled his hips.

You wanted to grin at the shocked expression he was sporting, but you only caught a brief glimpse of his widened eyes before smashing your lips back on his.

You just wanted to kiss him and kiss him and kiss him until you were satisfied, satiated. Maybe then you could finally get on with your life. It was senseless logic, but all you knew was he kissed so fucking good. It made you crazy. Just like everything else about him.

For fuck’s sake, you would never understand why you were in love with the one thing determined to destroy you.

“Stop. Stop,” you suddenly told him, panting and breathless.

Jaebeom looked at your hand pressed to his chest, watching you sit up on top of him, and his heart sank. He knew that look. You were about to bolt.

“I can’t do this,” you whispered, more to yourself as you brushed your hair out of your face with your fingers.

Jaebeom stroked his palms up your thighs, clad in the tightest jeans he had ever seen, and coaxed, “Why?”

You blinked, thinking of an answer. There were many, but you were trying to invalidate them on the spot.

Jaebeom sat up, wrapping an arm around your hips and rocking you closer to him. “Tell me,” he mumbled, pressing a wet kiss to your neck.

Your eyes fluttered and you felt resolve melting away each time his lips touched over your racing pulse.

“You’ll leave me again,” you cried shakily.

Jaebeom shook his head, proceeding to suck beneath your ear. “I’m not going anywhere,” he growled.

You ran your hands through his hair, hips arching ever so slightly in search of friction. Your body was heating up, excitement pulsing through your veins. You craved him. Lust was a powerful thing, and now you truly understood.

“I am,” you said firmly, pushing him back with both hands and rising to your feet.

Jaebeom slumped back, disappointed and defeated, and shook his hair out of his eyes. Watching you walk away, he begged, “Please stop sleeping with Jackson.”

You turned to face him, lips parting incredulously.

Seeing your anger, he lowered his tone to something more pliant, but definitely snide. “Give me a chance to make things right before you let him get his claws in you.”

It only confirmed what Jackson had said. Jaebeom’s newfound pursuit of you was solely from a place of jealousy. Your best friend had been right and you were too blind to accept it.

“You really are the worst,” you snapped at him, heading back on your way.

Jaebeom shouted vengefully, “He doesn’t fucking deserve you!”

You kept walking and retorted with disdain, “Story of my life, it seems. I guess I only fuck guys that don’t deserve me.”

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