#like...PROBABLY?! MAYBE?! but again...its not something she's exposed to all the time so where would the desire even come from?

[fratboykate]

Wait how Russian is KYFB AU? Because like all those little gremlins had Russian names and Yelena spoke Russian to the babies. Does Yelena in the other speak Russian to her kids in the Step mom AU?

FBAU!Yelena is HELLA Russian lol. I felt like that was obvious??? haha. She doesn't have the accent because they moved here when she was really young, but she grew up with two very Russian parents, a Russian extended family, Russian culture, visiting Russia all the time, etc. She's very much culturally Russian through and through and she's proud of her heritage. It's why she insists on the "Russian Rule" for their names. They're going to be "Bishops", but they sure as hell won't be able to hide their Russky with names like fucking Alexia Yekaterina, Maksimilian Leonid, and Karina Sonechka. Ain't no running from that lol and that was intentional on Yelena's part.

MAU!Yelena lost that connection multiple times. Melina dies and Alexei goes to prison when she's still in elementary school, so that's her entire direct line gone. Then she finds another little vestige in Natasha and that is eventually ripped away too. The impetus to move back also had a lot to do with finding those roots again because she didn't feel like she had them.

As far as the language...can MAU!Yelena speak Russian? Yes. Is it part of her daily life? Not really. It's trickier to want to talk Russian to babies in a house where a third kid doesn't speak the language. It would alienate Ereka. It's easy in FBAU because it's a thing Yelena does with ALL the kids and the only one who doesn't have a clue wtf is going on half the time is Kate. Kate doesn't have an issue with it, so it's okay. But it'd be weird to me if Yelena taught the little ones Russian and not Ereka. Not to say that Ereka couldn't/wouldn't learn, but I don't see Yelena wanting to impose that on her and then by default, it would fall by the wayside with the little ones. If there were a scenario where Ereka would WANT to learn it, then I can see Yelena integrating it into the household just so the little ones have the knowledge, but unless the desire came from Ereka, I don't know that it's a discussion that would be had.

[natalievoncatte]

Alex worked the skin of her forehead with her fingers, angrily kneading the flesh in a vain attempt to suppress a pounding headache.

“I’m telling you, I’m fine,” Kara insisted.

She was not fine, damn it! Kryptonite exposure was serious, even if it had no apparent, immediate effects. The little chunk of vibrant purple rock was currently in a lead-lined chamber where Brainy was mercilessly prodding at its secrets, trying to figure out exactly what it did other than make Kara sweat profusely when she was within ten feet of it.

“I don’t feel sick. What’s the big deal?”

“Red Kryptonite didn’t make you sick at first, either,” said Alex. “You’re not leaving the Tower until I’m certain you’re not going to track down Cat Grant and fling her off the nearest roof.”

Kara, seated on her hospital bed in the med bay, crossed her arms and pouted theatrically. “That was one time.”

She sounded a little brittle, probably because they didn’t talk about that. Well, they did -Kara cried for hours- but afterwards the whole thing became a sore spot and it was clear they they weren’t going to talk about it again. Alex could hear the little crack in Kara’s voice, the touch of strain that signaled how on edge she was.

“Running off and hiding won’t make it any less real, kiddo,” Alex sighed. “Once we’re sure you can go, but no Supergirl for at least a week. I don’t know if what that stuff did to you, but I don’t want to risk your powers shutting off while you’re thirty thousand feet up, or something.”

Kara huffed. Fine.

It was an abundance of caution, to be sure, but the others could pick up the slack. Kara had taken breaks before, and the world didn’t fall apart. Sometimes Alex wanted to just grab her and shake her for all the good it would do. Kara deserved some time off. She deserved to be a person too.

“What’s going on?”

Alex looked up and tried to conceal her relief as Lena walked into the room. Alex liked this new Lena a lot more, the Lena who ran a charitable foundation and didn’t straighten her hair anymore and wore hoodies most of the time. This Lena was friend-shaped, as it were, and put her at ease.

Almost.

“Kara was exposed to a new form of Kryptonite, and…”

And she was off the bed.

Kara was already on her feet. Her pupils were so dilated that her eyes were almost black, the blue almost absent. She was staring at Lena with such an intensity that Alex was afraid she was about to attack her.

Lena looked panicked, but not by the Kryptonian staring her down. “What? Where is it? I need to see it right now, what if…” Lena trailed off, her face going slack for just a moment.

Alex stared at her. What the fresh hell was this?

“Guys?” said Alex. “What’s wrong with… you…”

Kara stalked forward, walking in a hip-popping sashay that would have made a Victoria’s Secret model blush, surging into Lena’s personal space, and… sniffed.

Then sniffed again.

Kara was smelling her.

“Uh,” said Alex.

Lena looked up at her -in flat shoes she was noticeably shorter- and sniffed back. Alex’s jaw went slack.

“Okay,” said Alex. “I’m going to need one of you to explain why you’re doing… that. Like right now.”

They both ignored her. Lena slipped in close, ducking under Kara’s chin, and sniffed at her again. It looked quite a bit like she was about to press her mouth to Kara’s throat, which was both shocking and… seriously, five fucking years of these idiots shooting and missing was bad enough, but right in front of her?

“Hey,” Alex said, taking a step towards the door. “Uh, we good?”

Kara wrapped Lena up in her powerful arms and nuzzled her nose into Lena’s hair, her chest thrumming with a loud purring sound.

“I’m in the room,” Alex deadpanned.

“Alex,” Brainy called, rushing up the hall.

A powerful… scent, or maybe an odor, washed over Alex and she nearly gagged. Whatever it was, it was making Lena try to climb Kara like a tree. The moment Lena popped one of the snaps on Kara’s cape and it fell halfway off her back, Alex bolted for the door and yanked it shut behind her as she stumbled into the hallway.

Brainy was outside, snd Nia was with him.

“Alex, I have good news. The radiation from the lavender Kryptonite sample appears to be entirely benign, although curiously it seems to have activated some anatomical peculiarities that appear to be, so to speak, left over from the evolutionary ancestors of Kryptonians.”

Alex groaned. “Such as?”

“Scent glands, and a peculiar ability to-“

“Guys,” said Nia. “What is that noise?”

Brainy paused, focusing. “I believe that Lena just addressed Kara as…”

“Did she say ‘daddy’?” said Nia.

“Shut up!” Alex barked, slapping her hands over her ears. “I am not hearing this, tralalalalalalala I’m going to the bar!”

“Yeah, I’m coming too,” said Nia.

Brainy turned, listening.

“Evidently, so is Lena.”

“I hate my life” Alex muttered.

[murdrdocs]

INTERVIEW 022. ART DONALDSON murdrtober oct 8th. cheating roleplay

One day you'll quit Art. But today is not that day. You just hope today also isn't the day your husband finds out. aka a continuation of this 900+ words MDNI 18+

This is the wrong place to be. 

Not just here, in the basement bathroom and away from the main event, but here in this home. 

You knew as soon as you stepped foot into the Donaldson’s house, you would fall back into this same trap. You knew that no matter how many times you told yourself that this should end, that you should at least attempt to have a normal marriage even though nothing about being Mrs. Zweig is normal, that only time and your actions would tell. 

And your actions have exposed you. 

You try to make up for the way you willingly followed Art down here with resistance, but Art knows you. Maybe better than your husband does. He knows this is the exciting part for you, the part that gets you wettest. 

As if he’s testing it, he cups your mound and slides his hand up, copping a feel of the arousal soaking your panties. 

You turn your head away when Art goes to kiss you, but he takes a detour and places his lips on your neck instead, behaving as if the taut skin was your lips. His hands are so assertive as they push under your dress, fingers hooking in the thin waistband of your panties. Just as he goes to pull them down, you stop him. 

“Wait, Art,” he hums, but he doesn’t stop his mission.

You think he’s aiming to leave marks so you hook your left hand into his strawberry blond curls, finally growing out longer than it's been within the past five years. He says he grew it out for you, that he knows how much you love having something to pull on, that he knows you think he looks prettiest when his curls frame his face. You grinned at the time, allowing that fluttery feeling to spread throughout your chest, until you wondered how his wife liked his hair best. 

“Art,” you start again, “we shouldn’t do this.” 

This gets him off of you. His hands stay where they are, but he pulls his head away from your neck, your hand still stuck to his hair. You think a few strands have gotten stuck in your wedding ring, but you don’t try to undo your hand and find out. Not yet. 

Art stares at you, swollen lips still pursed, blue eyes unblinking. In this light, the speckle of brown in his eye is noticeable. It reminds you of the red-orange that you can see in Patrick’s eyes at a certain time of day, usually when he’s facing the sun and staring down at you. 

Art doesn’t respond for a second. But eventually he does. “Does he know where you are?”

You blink up at him, swallowing in an attempt to ignore the way your heart beats in your chest. Instead of directly responding, you say, “Do you know where she is?”

You both know that for every party involved in this square, the location of the other spouse isn’t the current concern at the forefront of your minds. And whenever the thought does make its way to the forefront, excitement will follow on its tail, for not knowing where your spouse was meant they were probably in a position similar to this. 

This arrangement is so convoluted and messy, each side of the square touching with lines that have been crossed to get there. You wanted everyone and no one all at the same time. You wanted to be desired, yet you wanted to be left alone. It confuses you. Maybe that’s why you continue to crawl back to what you know: the form of structure that came with laying with the perpetrator behind this entire arrangement.  

Art shrugs as if he doesn’t really care, the corners of his lips turning down in tandem with the movement. “Probably outside with Patrick, don’t you think?”

He leans in, his breath fanning over your lips as a sardonic smile spreads across his lips. “Or do you think they’re like this? Tucked away in the guest bathroom upstairs, maybe in the master closet against my suits, fucking each other like rabbits.” The tip of his nose nudges yours and it’s embarrassing how you follow the movement. “I bet they’re not resisting, so why should you resist?”

You flick your tongue over your lips and Art is so close that you feel his bottom lip against the tip of your tongue. “You don’t know that they are, though. We can’t really know.”

“Can’t we?” He starts to urge your panties down your thighs, slowly but surely. “We know them. They’re our spouses for God’s sake. We know their routines, their likes, dislikes.” Your panties are down to your midthigh by now and if Art lets go, they’ll fall to your ankles. He doesn’t let go, though. He holds them in his hand, leaning just that much closer until you can feel the ghost of his lips against yours. 

“If you really think Patrick won’t put his dick in my wife by the end of the night then you can leave. Walk right out that door and I’ll join you back outside in a few minutes. We can pretend none of this happened.”

You can’t think straight, not when you’re so close to what you really want. 

Closer. You want Art closer to you. 

You can feel the imprint of his cock in his slacks pressing against your thigh. You remember what it feels like for him to kiss you, to fuck you. The sounds of his moans woven into whimpers as he fills you up. 

Art pulls back just enough to stare down at you. His top lip quirks up when you don’t move, and then the corners repeat the movement until he’s smirking down at you, the look of pure cockiness. 

“Okay.” He releases his grip on your panties and they fall to your ankles.

[strawberrygiorno]

So Joyce and the Paledriver both seem to experience Shivers or, at least, something similar to it

[ID: A screenshot of Disco Elysium dialogue taken from FAYDE. It reads:

JOYCE MESSIER - "No. We asked East Motor Tract to raise the drawbridge. The road company is a partner of one of our subsidiaries. However..." She pauses, looking to the sea.

JOYCE MESSIER - "This is a limited-time opportunity. Once the complaint has been processed by the trade committee they'll have no choice but to lower the drawbridge -- and the operation will continue." She looks north.

JOYCE MESSIER - "Thousands of litres of raw ingredients will pour onto the streets of Revachol. Not the East, across the river, but the West. The vulnerable, the weary..."

SHIVERS - A cold breath rushes in from the bay, making its way down the alleyways and potholed streets -- from Martinaise to Jamrock. In the traffic you hear the clinking of glass vials, concealed beneath tarpaulin. Or is it just your teeth chattering in the cold?

YOU - (Shiver.) "Fucking misery."

End ID]

[ID: A screenshot of Disco Elysium dialogue taken from FAYDE. It reads:

JOYCE MESSIER - "No. I would say the apes were *neutral*." She looks at you, her gaze sharp.

YOU - "They're *good* apes, actually."

JOYCE MESSIER - "I don't know about that..." She turns north, to the bombed out buildings lining the waterfront, then shivers slightly.

End ID]

[ID: A screenshot of Disco Elysium dialogue taken from FAYDE. It reads:

PALEDRIVER - "Lomonossov's Land. Udachnaya Zemlya. The Western Plain..." She nods and closes her eyes again, letting her mind submerge...

SHIVERS - A terrible cold comes over her. Rattling her teeth, as she stares inward.

PALEDRIVER - "The Trans-Katla Magistral. U41-A. As Estradas do Mirador. All the good ones. The deep trenches. Where the bluebirds fly." She opens her eyes again and shudders.

End ID]

Joyce will compare her over-radiation to Harry's deal, and Harry can compare his deal to the Paledriver's over-radiation. Shivers seems to grow stronger the closer Harry is to the church (the check to find the coat, the check to find Ruby at the Feld building, Revachol speaking to Harry, etc). It seems pretty clear to me that Harry's weird psychic abilities and memory loss are symptoms of over-exposure to pale.

This makes it even more interesting that Harry has had similar blackouts before and had an interest in entroponetics. It sounds like he was probably exposed somehow even before he ended up in Martinaise, maybe even knew of another hole. It all raises so many questions!!

[stabbyfoxandrew]

I hope I made it in time for wip Wednesday!!!! I'd love some of my darling angel neil please!!!

WIP Wednesday (4/24) | Guardian Angel Neil AU (Part 176)

When they get to the seasonal costume shop inside the mall, Andrew is a bit dismayed at the oodles of costumes still clinging to the racks. Because, knowing Nicky, it means they’ll be here all night. He sighs and follows the others inside, picking through the disaster area and finding nothing at all. 

Until his hand grazes a horribly-textured piece of white fabric. He pulls it out by its hanger, wondering what on earth it could possibly be. The photo on the tag shows what it’s supposed to look like and Andrew laughs so hard fears he might piss his pants.

Because... It’s an angel costume. 

A short, toga-esque thing made of shitty polyester, meant to be coupled with a pair of mangy wings and a plastic halo stuck on a headband. Each sold separately, of course. Oh, it is horrendous, funny as it is.

Andrew can’t imagine Neil… 

Oh, wait. He can. Andrew freezes solid at the thought of Neil wearing nothing but this glorified hand towel. Oh shit. It would be short enough to show off his legs and— Andrew glances back down at the photo— it would also expose half of his chest. Fucking hell. 

Andrew shakes his head. He’s not sure if he’d be able to function if his angel dressed like this. Maybe it’s a good thing that Neil is a hoodie-and-jeans sort of guy.

“Oh my god! Is that a sexy angel costume?” Nicky squawks beside him, breaking the daydream and surely doing permanent damage to his hearing.

“I suppose it is,” Andrew shrugs. It would be, but only if Neil was the angel in it. He goes to put it back where he found it but Nicky snatches it up before Andrew can blink. 

“Oh, shit. It’s too small for me,” Nicky pouts, dropping it onto the rack. The relief that flood Andrew’s entire being is short-lived when Aaron pops up behind them.

“They probably have other sizes. Just go ask.” Aaron suggests. Oh, the betrayal. Andrew wants to throttle him for the way Nicky’s face lights up.

“You’re right! I will,” Nicky beams and floats over to the checkout where a girl has been flipping through a magazine since they came in. Nicky returns a moment later, disappointed. “She said all they have is on the floor. No sexy angel for me.”

“Oh pity,” Andrew lies, thanking whatever higher power just saved him from being forced to see Nicky parade around in that getup at Eden’s. He shuffles away from his relatives to see Kevin looking at something that must be a vampire cape. It’s black and lined with red satin, fitting for a Raven. 

However, Kevin will never be a Raven again despite his tendency to gravitate towards their colors. As if reading Andrew’s mind, Kevin drops it like he’s been burned and even wipes his hands on his pants. Andrew gives his quiet approval and goes to find something cheap and simple for himself. He finally finds it in a bin marked $5. And he checks out quickly before leaning against the wall and watching the others scavenge.

[dinodogs]

The rwby post about sexualized designs has significantly damaged my brain tissue. And surprisingly, its not even from weird incels thinking a 16 year old should show her tits on screen or something.

Its from people who just...haven't seen women and what they wear on the regular?? Like I'm sorry but people wear skirts. People wear full body suits, people wear leggings and stockings. That is literally just something women (& people in general) wear to go grocery shopping.

Just because the rwby girls don't wear baggy clothes doesn't mean they are sexualized. They don't even wear like super form fitting, tight clothing. Blake wears a black body suit in her v7 outfit and thats the closest they get, and considering she's in a place thats so cold you will freeze to death in a a couple of hours it makes perfect sense. Attention is never drawn to it. It is never once used to show off her body, if you for some reason think that they are showing her body off you're just really horny im sorry.

Yangs v1 outfit has her showing a fair bit of skin, but again, that is not something they draw any attention too. Girls just living her best life. Monty took not sexualizing the girls extremely seriously, if you don't know he had a skirt rule that would prevent any upskirt shots. He took it seriously and put a lot of thought into it to make sure these 15-17 year old girls weren't being objectified. Showing skin isn't exactly sexual either. Sure, people do show skin with the intent of it being seen sexually but that doesn't mean every instance of a girl exposing her stomach or legs is meant to be seen that way.

This goes for the men too. Sun walks around with his tits out for the world to see and again, thats not inherently a sexual thing. Men walk around shirtless all the time if you're focusing that much on some shirtless dude then you're probably just really horny. I know its not super common in colder areas but I see dudes sitting on their porch, walking their dogs, jogging, biking, or doing literally anything shirtless. Its hot as fuck here! And its hot as fuck where Sun comes from too, makes perfect sense for the guy to just have his abs and his boobs out.

In conclusion: Just cause you can't keep your dick down doesn't mean rwby characters are sexualized. Calm down and maybe go outside and see what regular people wear.

[biscuits-of-bagend]

DnDoc, Space Band #2 - Rogue's Place

Part 1

Previous story: DnDoc, Coming Home

---

"Right, come on." The Doctor bounded to the door of the TARDIS and beckoned for Rogue and Ruby to follow.

   Rogue whispered to Ruby. "Do you think he's forgotten I was dead on my feet an hour ago?"

   "Um, it's closer to ten actually," said Ruby, as they followed the Doctor out into the park. "You were asleep for a long time."

   "Oh," said Rogue.

   "But like, if you need him to slow down, just say," said Ruby.

   Rogue grinned. "Not a chance."

   The Doctor was waiting for them anyway, probably because Rogue's ship was cloaked again and he needed Rogue to show him where it was. Rogue led them to a copse of trees but wasn't sure if it was safe to uncloak. The Doctor was right; people were starting to trickle back in via the various paths and lawns. This happened a lot though, so his key had a stealth setting. But his key was in his coat, which was back in the sickbay.

   When he explained the problem the Doctor got his sonic screwdriver out of his own pocket and said, "Mind if I break in?"

   "Sure, why not," said Rogue. "Just try not to cause any permanent damage."

   "Like the sonic would be that blunt." The Doctor scoffed.

   He pointed the screwdriver at the spot where Rogue indicated the door-handle would be, then with a high-pitched whirr it wound up the particles around the locking mechanism until the door clicked open. Rogue led them inside and closed the door quickly before the gap in the air was noticed by the clusters of families and kids running around in their octopus-free city.

   There was another burst of screeching sonic noise as the portal, which had been hanging out in Rogue's ship ever since he got out of the dead forest, zipped towards the Doctor.

   "Woah, steady," the Doctor called. He lifted up his screwdriver. "Sonic cloud, meet sonic screwdriver. Sonic screwdriver, this is a sonic cloud."

   "A what?" Rogue moved in from the door to stand level with him. Ruby had looked like she was getting ready to snoop around Rogue's messy desks and cupboards and haphazard exposed wiring, but she looked up and waited for the Doctor to elaborate.

   "So, I think the thing in front of us is a sonic cloud," said the Doctor. "A bunch of sound that's clustered together, like a raincloud, and what we're hearing is its rain."

   "Oh, does that mean it's going to rain itself out at some point?" asked Rogue.

   "And how come it worked like a portal?" said Ruby.

   "Hm… the portal thing is new to me. Maybe I'm wrong," said the Doctor. He looked at a readout on his screwdriver. "No, the readings are what I'd expect so I'm pretty certain that's what it is. And I think left to its own devices it would have spent itself eventually. It must have been absolutely enormous to begin with though, if it lasted all the way through that corruption."

   "Aw, I quite liked having it around," said Rogue. "It kept me company while I tried to find you."

   The Doctor put up one hand. "Now, hang on, there may be something we can do. Did you sing to it at all?"

   "I… um… I might have joined in with it a couple of times. But I didn't like, sing it lullabies before bed or anything," said Rogue.

   Ever so subtly, the Doctor smiled. How the hell did he communicate I bet you'd sing a good lullaby with such minimal facial muscle movement?

   "Well, I bet that's been helping anyway," said the Doctor. "Putting music back into the sonic ecosystem."

   "Like recharging?" asked Rogue.

   "Can you recharge a cloud?" asked Ruby.

   "Okay, okay, not a perfect metaphor," said the Doctor. "But you get the idea, right? If I can tempt it into wrapping around the sonic screwdriver, I bet I can charge it up using the TARDIS, if you're alright with that, Rogue."

   "I appreciate you asking, Doctor," said Rogue. "But it's got a mind of its own. If it's hungry and the TARDIS will feed it, who am I to keep it here."

   The Doctor nodded and started fiddling with the screwdriver. "Why don't you put something on just now. There, there, little sonic. You rest for a second." He looked up at Rogue. "Something to tide it over, yeah?"

   Rogue nodded and gestured to Ruby to come with him over to his sound system. If she wanted snooping, what more could he offer than his music library?

---

Part 3

@off-traveling-in-the-stars @casavanse @monster-donut (let me know at any point if you no longer wish to be tagged in each post)

[lollytea]

Re pen featherington, I love (and love to hate) just how messy the whole thing is. Everything she does for good intentions is also tarnished by being just as self serving, it’s sooo not black and white. Like yess, Colin should know what he’s getting into marrying Marina, but to air the whole thing out to the world?? When Pen KNOWS that Colin is the type of guy who’d agree to be a dad to a non-bio kid. And the fact that the breaking point for exposing eloise was eloise saying she’ll pose as lady whistledown? Like girl the final straw was not protecting your friend it was your own reputation??

(I just really love the juxtaposition with her and eloise though. That "at least I did something" really did hit home. Oof!!! But at what cost??)

But genuinely I DO NOT KNOW how she can pull off peacefully entering the bridgerton household with all the scandal and heartache she’s put them through, especially with one of them already knowing her secret. And it’s almost the Marina situation for Colin all over again!!! You can’t stand by your decision to out Marina to protect Colin and then expect Eloise to not out your secret to protect him too. Karma is alive and well in the ton!!!

(I'm sorry you sent this a while ago but I forgot to answer it!!)

I admire how realistically flawed both Eloise and Penelope are. Eloise is self centered and arrogant and judgemental and whiny. Penelope is cowardly yet impulsive. She's scathing and cruel and she has too much power and she uses it flippantly to hurt other people. They're both just teenagers who are in WAY over their head. They kinda suck. But they're still so young and so sheltered, despite being already advertised for marriage. Because of the society they've been placed into, they've both donned such nasty armor to protect themselves. Little girls who are expected to perform as adults. It's made them terrible people. But unfortunately, I don't think the narrative itself views it that way, which makes it frustrating. I'm perfectly okay with the show having its main characters do awful things, but I'd appreciate it if said awful things leave an impact.

I think what Penelope did to Marine was probably the vilest thing she has ever done. I don't really consider the Eloise thing half as terrible. At least it was at least somewhat of a "frying pan or fire" situation that Penelope felt like she had to choose for Eloise. Meanwhile, with Marina, Pen should have just minded her own damn business.

Like. Colin would have been FINE. He's a man. A rich man. Getting married to a woman who lied to him would not be the end of his life. At worst, he would have been a bit unsatisfied. Meanwhile if Marina did NOT marry Colin, she could have been on the street. The girl lied and manipulated for the sake of survival. And I frankly don't care if she did. They're really going to create a society where women are held at the mercy of men and NOT expect the women to start getting all gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss about it? Fuck yourself. Maybe the men should just be smarter.

It's debatable if Penelope really understands the complexity of the situation. Or if she even realizes just what could become of Marina if her secret is revealed. After all, she is only a teenage girl at the time. And a sheltered one, at that. However, Lady Whistledown proves that Penelope, for all her sexual unawareness, is exceptionally intelligent and has an extensive knowledge of social norms. So it's like....iunno? Did she fully understand the consequences of her actions? Did she care? Did she regret it? Or was she just a stupid lovesick girl who only cared about a boy who barely looked at her.

I think I'd really just like Penelope to talk about it. Explain what was going through her head at the time. Allow this action of hers to be held with significant weight by the narrative. What pisses me off is that it was just waved off as irrelevent once Marina was written out of the show. Its like they're scared of delving into it because the show loves shying away from what a messy character Penelope is. At the moment, it feels like they're ignoring it in favour of making her a misunderstood tragic angel.

ALSO YEAH it makes me so sad. I saw a few gifsets of the scene where Colin announces their engagement to the family and Violet and Francesca and Hyancinth are so wholesomely delighted and they swarm Penelope with affection. They love her. They love her so deeply. Meanwhile she has caused this family so much pain. And she did so deliberately. What will they think of her once its revealed? What bothers me is that I fear that THEIR feelings are going to be glossed over as unimportant.

But COLIN'S feelings too!!! How the fuck are you gonna do that?? Like even if he wasn't in love with Marina, she was still an innocent girl in a difficult situation that he had quite a lot of affection for. And then he finds out that his current fiancée ruined her life. How is he supposed to react to that? And his sister too!! His sister who he loves deeply. Colin is supposed to be kind. I really can't imagine him feeling anything but disgust. But I KNOW the show is gonna have him way too heart-eyed over Penelope to really care to the extent that he SHOULD. He MIGHT be angry but it probably won't last long. And there definitely won't be a satisfying reason for his anger to subside. Probably just because Penelope looked at him with her big puppy eyes.

AND YKNOW I wouldn't even care if Penelope and Colin were simply acknowledged as shitty people. But they're not. Penelope is a messy morally grey queen but the show is scared of getting into the thick of it. They've made her do too much awful shit and now they're scared to unpack it. Now she's their special little princess <333

UGGHH. YKNOW???

[lightandheatao3]

The Bunker - Criminal Minds

Chapter 10: The Truth

Summary: Spencer Reid wakes up in a locked bunker to find half the current BAU and two of its departed members unconscious on the floor. The old team is back together but the reunion is not what any of them would have wished for. An Unsub from their past has decided it's time they all stop keeping secrets, even if it means exposing them by force.

Hotch and Derek have been pulled back into a world they tried to escape. Emily, Rossi, and JJ are doing their best to keep it together. Spencer is falling apart.

AKA a found family is reunited and forced to go through the most nightmarish version of family therapy imaginable.

Set months after the end of Criminal Minds: Evolution. Evolution referenced, but not necessary to understand the story.

Chapter Summary: The gang play a game.

Read chapter 10 on AO3 or under the cut. All comments and reblogs are extremely appreciated <3 I would love to know what you like about the story :)

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9

Spencer had been half convinced that the brown paper bag was going to burst open with a billowing cloud of fine white powder containing spores of deadly anthrax. He couldn’t get the image out of his head.

There had been too many times in his life where he was fairly certain he was about to die, and the anthrax exposure had honestly not even been the most harrowing, all things considered. He hadn't been restrained, or beaten, or drugged, or alone.

But something about the insidiousness of turning his own body against him was sticky. It adhered to his nervous system in a different way to acts of violence.

Hours after the bag had revealed its contents as six bottles of Ensure, he was still flinching at specks of dust.

The vital nutrients from the ensure- including the protein that had been desperately lacking in their all fruit diet even prior to the outright starvation- were working their magic. He had some semblance of energy again.

He had hoped that the return of their food supply would restore his capacity to feel, but no such luck. The best he could summon up was vague irritation.

It was getting harder and harder to tell when he was dreaming or awake.

The Unsub had left them to starve just long enough that they were all convinced that she was going to let them die like that. He wasn't so sure that this was better.

They all speculated on the likelihood of the next delivery reverting back to fruit. The Ensure was certainly the better option for keeping them from dying of malnutrition, but a liquid diet had its own concerns. The lack of door on the en-suit toilet continued to be a crushing blow.

“I feel like we should be doing something,” said Emily. “Like planning our next move.”

“Agreed,” said Derek, who had been tapping his foot non-stop for one hour, three minutes, and 28 seconds. Spencer had been counting the seconds in his mind because... well, it was something to do. “We need to force her into making another move.”

“We’re still recovering from the last move we forced her to make,” said Hotch. “I agree we need to take action, but right now we’re all too weak to take the physical strain of what happened last time.”

Emily looked like she was about to argue, but after a second, she just said, “Maybe. Let’s see if these deliveries keep coming and reassess when we know for sure that our food supply is consistent.”

“Or we could take more extreme measures,” said Derek.

There was a chill that rippled through the room.

“Like what?” asked JJ cautiously.

Derek opened his mouth to speak, but hesitated. His eyes flickered over all of them. They caught Spencer’s for a moment, and he knew instantly what Derek wanted to say, because he’d had the same thought himself.

They probably all had.

If the Unsub was determined not to let them die, they all knew what to do to provoke her.

Still, they stared questioningly at Derek in a façade of ignorance.

“Never mind,” he said. “Emily is right. We’ll reassess when we know more.”

He'd hoped that getting food would feel like a victory.

The second delivery came sometime later, maybe 12 hours, maybe days, he didn’t know. The third delivery came some time after that. This one brought a return of the fruit, but retained the bottles of Ensure. The fruit and the shakes combined to make a relatively sustainable diet, actually. It could theoretically be maintained for a long, long time.

It did not feel like victory.

They were alive. They were going to stay alive.

For what? For an endless fluorescent day? For mind-numbing tedium? For four walls and an unpredictable cycle of humiliation and discomfort?

The worst of it was how quickly the routine set in.

They went back to sleeping all at the same time to imitate night and day. They went back to daily exercise. They structured their lives around the food deliveries.

Soon, they had a delivery with a little bottle of soap. A reward for good behavior, presumably. He was genuinely grateful for it, which made him feel physically ill to realize.

When was the right time to make a move? How long would they need to endure this before they considered drastic measures?

Nobody wanted to be the first to bring it up.

Spencer found himself longing for another note. Another shocking reveal. Anything, anything at all. Sometimes he would stare up at the vent and fantasize about seeing gas leak out just to feel the adrenaline rush. He wanted to get high. He would do anything to get high.

“Reid.”

His head snapped around to the sound. Rossi was clicking his fingers from across the room, trying to get his attention.

“What?”

“It’s your turn, kid.”

“Why do we keep doing this? You can’t possibly believe it’s actually making a difference.”

“What the fuck else do you have going on in your busy schedule?” shot back Rossi.

“Closing my eyes and pretending I’m alone,” he said irritably. “I was enjoying it.”

“Come on Spence, you know if Rossi doesn’t get at least an hour a day to pretend he’s at a high school girls sleepover party he chucks a tantrum,” said JJ, leaning her head back against the wall behind her and looking as if she’d find reading the dictionary less boring than this.

“So, you can force us all into yoga and go on and on about keeping us healthy, but god forbid I try to keep us sane, that’s just taking it too far,” said Rossi sarcastically.

"Can you all just shut the hell up?” snapped Emily. “We all get one activity. That’s the deal. Spencer, I know you're annoyed that we won't just let you sleep 24/7, but stop bitching for one goddamn second and take your turn.”

“Fine. Dare.”

They all groaned. “You can’t pick dare every time,” said Derek.

“I don’t recall that being in the rules,” said Spencer.

It was round four and he’d already had to try and do a handstand (he couldn’t), see if he could hold his breath longer than Derek (he could but he nearly passed out doing it), and put on a spirited performance of Lady Macbeth’s ‘out damned spot’ monologue (which sounded less spirited than completely monotone).

“The rest of us are playing properly. You have to as well,” said JJ prissily, despite her earlier criticism of Rossi behaving like a teenage girl.

“No, because I already know what you’re going to ask,” said Spencer. “Just give me the dare.”

A chorus of boos echoed in the concrete room. “Come on Reid, if I had to tell you all that story about my disastrous first date with Hayley, you can have your turn,” said Hotch with an amused smirk.

“Yeah,” said Rossi. “You don’t know what we’re going to ask.”

Spencer huffed but relented. “Yes, I do. But whatever. Truth, if it will get you to stop being assholes about it.”

They all looked at each other, barely a second passing before they came to a silent agreement.

Emily threw her hands up to indicate that she wasn't a part of this, but even she looked liked she wanted to see how it all played out.

“Why did you start using again?” asked Derek, like he could trick Spencer into talking using the rules of the game.

He groaned, crossing his arms over his chest. “I already told you-”

“Yeah, yeah,” interrupted Derek. “Addicts relapse, there’s no rhyme or reason for it, yadda yadda yadda. I call bullshit.”

"How would you even know?" he snapped.

He wasn't really upset, honestly. He'd have to be able to summon stronger feelings than mild annoyance for that to happen. But fighting was something to pass the time. They all did it, but him and Derek made into something of a sport.

It was strange. They had never fought before in any meaningful way. Prior to being in the bunker, Derek was possibly the person he trusted most in the world to be calm and even handed with him no matter what. Maybe that was why it was so easy to prod at him: because he knew it could never break anything between them.

Or maybe it was because Derek felt so betrayed and hurt by him that it was already broken.

Either way, it was something to do.

"Because I know you," said Derek. "Something obviously happened, man, we can all see that."

They all nodded in agreement. Hotch's brows were furrowed and he had dropped the playfulness he'd had only a minute ago, but he hung on every word of the conversation. Even Emily shrugged apologetically, not disagreeing with their assessment.

"Now who's full of shit? You don't know anything. You didn't even know I was using."

Derek opened his mouth to bite back, but JJ beat him to it.

“Come on, Spence. We’re all stuck here. Are you really never going to talk about it?” asked JJ.

“That’s the plan,” he said petulantly. “Since every time I do talk about it you all think you know better, anyway.”

“Fine,” said Rossi. “If you refuse to tell us about whatever made you relapse,” he said, refusing to consider Spencer’s stated position that there was no dramatic triggering event, “we will ask you a different question.”

Derek and JJ looked at each other, both seeming very unwilling to let the subject drop. With a gentle "Come on, guys," from Emily they finally acquiesced.

"Give us a minute to think of a new question," said Rossi diplomatically, as if it would be rude to skip his turn.

"Whatever," said Spencer. "I need the bathroom."

He got up and they all politely focused their attention on each other and away from the doorless bathroom. They raised their voices while he relieved himself, and he pretended they weren't there.

It wasn't an ideal system, but they all pushed through.

After washing his hands, he paused a moment. He reached down to the bolt that was just under the right side of the metal sink, helping to affix it to the concrete wall.

While there was no door, the sink was recessed, not visible to the camera. He fiddled with the bolt silently while the others continued to pointedly not look his way. It was loosening a little more each time he went in there.

He hadn't mentioned it to any of them yet, and nobody else seemed to have noticed it.

He entered back into the main room and retook his position on the floor.

"Good timing," said Rossi. "I believe we have reached an agreement," he said, like the foreman of a jury.

"Don't worry," said Emily with a half smile. "It's nothing too objectionable."

"What-" started Rossi, before he was cut off.

“Why do you do it?”

It took a moment for Spencer to process who had spoken.

Everyone turned to stare at Hotch, who was in turn scrutinizing Spencer. He’d seen that look before, many times since waking up in the bunker.

Hotch was looking at him like he was trying to solve a puzzle with impossibly high stakes.

"Do what?" he asked, not following the train of thought.

Hotch hesitated. "Why do you use drugs?"

"I..." he looked at the others, hoping one of them might explain what he was missing, but they all looked just as baffled as him. "We just went over this-"

Hotch interrupted him. “I'm not asking why you relapsed. I'm asking why do you keep using? What do you get out of it?”

Spencer squirmed. There was something heavy in the way Hotch spoke that broke through the numbness enough to make him feel self-conscious. “Come on Hotch, you are- were- a profiler. What can I tell you that you don’t know?”

The rest of the group was looking back and forth between the two of them, dead silent, leaned forward like there was nothing in the world more important than hearing what both of them had to say.

“I know the science and the psychology, sure. I’m not asking about why people use drugs, I’m asking why you do it.”

There was something in the tightness around his eyes. In the rigidity of his posture.

He needed this.

For whatever reason, Hotch needed the answer to this question.

For the thousandth time, he wondered what had happened to this man in the years they'd been parted.

There was a time, after Tobias, where it could have changed everything for him if Hotch had just sat him down and spoken to him like this. If he had really cared to know the answer.

Was that what this was? Some kind of guilt for all the conversations that didn't happen when they should have?

No. There was something else. He didn't know what it was, but it was important.

As he studied Hotch, he thought about that young, terrified version of himself that wanted nothing more than for someone to force him to confront his demons before they grew too big.

Maybe they could both get something they needed, even if it was far too late to make a difference for either of them.

“Okay,” he said. "Let me think."

The others all held various expressions of shock. JJ’s eyes widened. Derek looked him up and down. None of them moved, almost as if they were afraid to spook him. Like one wrong move and he would never speak again.

How could he make this make sense to any of them?

They all approached his substance use like they approached a profile. They had to find the root cause, look for patterns, identify triggers. They didn’t understand that none of that mattered.

Whatever it was that Hotch wanted from him, he decided, he would try to give it to him. They were all probably going to die down here anyway.

He started with a deep breath. “When I was a kid, I never understood why my mom wouldn’t get treatment or why she would always go off her meds,” he said softly. “She was functional when she was on them. It made her life easier, and it made my life easier. I knew they had side effects, but even then, I couldn’t comprehend how she could choose to be unwell even though she knew how much damage it was doing to both of us.”

He paused. Took another breath. He was glad to be numb. He hoped his capacity to feel deeply never came back. The others looked at him with soft, sad eyes.

Not Hotch, though. Hotch was looking at him like his students did when he was giving a lecture on a topic they knew would be on the exam.

He blocked the rest of them out, focusing all his attention on his studious pupil.

“I think I get it now,” he said. “Despite the paranoia and the agoraphobia and all the awful parts, she used to talk about these incredible things that she would see and experience that nobody else could. Like she knew a secret the rest of us weren’t privy to. Sometimes… that’s how I feel with all of you,” he admitted. “When you tell me you don’t understand why I use opiates, it’s like you’re telling me you don’t understand why I eat or drink or breath. And I get it now. I get why she couldn't fight it. It's exhausting, having to fight something that's such an intrinsic part of you."

"But you did fight it," Hotch pointed out. "You were clean for years."

"Sure. But it was never easy. I spent a lot of that time thinking about what I was missing."

Hotch frowned. "And what is that?"

Spencer bit his lip, not sure how to explain it. "The thing about IV opioids is that they feel pretty great," he settled on, and it felt like telling a small child that the thing about the sun is it's pretty hot. "Whatever you're imagining, it's far better than that.”

The response sounded flippant, he knew, but what the hell else was he supposed to say?

Hotch was nodding as he took in the words. His thoughts were inscrutable to Spencer, so all he could do was wait for a reaction.

From what little he knew of Hotch's youth, he wouldn't be shocked if he'd at least dabbled in narcotics before straightening out as a teenager. He sincerely doubted that any of that rebellion had involved needles, though. It was hard to compare. IV narcotics were a world away from the experiences that any of the rest of them had, and it was hard to articulate how different it was.

How could he explain it? Hey guys, have you ever known true peace for the first and only time in your life? I don't believe in god, but I'm pretty sure I experience divinity every time I shoot up?

“Can it really feel good enough to be worth what it costs you in all other parts of your life?” asked Hotch eventually. It was the obvious question, really. “Good enough to be worth the withdrawal symptoms? The risk to your career? The strain on your relationships? Or the hundred other problems that come from being in active addiction?”

“It’s not like that,” he said simply. “You’re looking at it the wrong way.”

“Okay. Then what’s it like?”

“When you're clean, you have a hundred problems. When you're using, you have one problem, with one solution.”

“It’s a pretty big problem,” said Hotch.

“It’s also a pretty spectacular solution.”

Hotch stared at him for a long time this time. There was silence, the kind you could hear your own heartbeat in, but it didn’t feel heavy. It felt like they were alone in the room.

“Dare,” said Hotch.

Spencer tilted his head, trying to decipher what he could possibly mean.

Hotch broke eye contact. He looked at the rest of the room. “It’s my turn, isn’t it? I pick dare.”

At once, the spell was broken.

Whatever Hotch had been looking for, he'd apparently found it.

Spencer leaned back against the wall, pulling his knees up and resting his arms on them. Derek put a hand on his shoulder for just a moment, a small gesture of support, but otherwise they let him be.

The others breathed out their stalled breaths and put their heads together to brainstorm a dare for Hotch to do. For about the length of time it took to drink a bottle of Ensure, they kept glancing at him with varying degrees of curiosity and concern, but eventually the atmosphere shifted from forced nonchalance to genuine play.

The game continued on, and they all went back to bickering and snapping at each other as a way to stave off boredom as much as any kind of genuine irritation. When it came to his turn, they silently skipped over it.

Apparently, he’d finally done enough to be left alone for a while.

During one truth for Derek, which left him telling an elaborate story about the time he got kicked out of a nightclub after a friend spiked his drink when he was 20, Emily leaned over and whispered to him.

“You okay?” He didn’t say anything, but he bumped his shoulder against hers in an attempt at reassurance. She looked around to make sure nobody was paying attention to them, and whispered again, “Thank you. For telling us that.”

He leaned in and whispered back, “Whatever is going on with him, I hope it helped.”

She squeezed his arm. “Me too.”

She turned her attention back to the game.

He tuned out once again.

One big problem: Escape the bunker.

One spectacular solution: Force the Unsub to reveal herself somehow. Put them in a position to make a move.

She didn't want them to die. It was the one thing they could be really certain of. Whatever she wanted, it involved keeping them alive, likely for a long time.

They needed to create urgency. They needed something so dire, that she would be forced to enter the room and intervene before she had time to knock them out with gas.

The tedium, the daily trudge of survival, these things were not his strong suit. People who can function like that don't do heroin. People who can endure hardship with grace and fortitude don't stick needles in their arms.

But finding the simplest solution to the direst problem, no matter the risk to himself?

He was an expert at that.

He could break her. He knew he could. It was just a question of if he could do it without breaking everyone else.

[duhragonball]

JoJolion Ch.18-22

So, this scene with Yasuho idly touching her tongue to her own elbow has always bothered me. It has nothing to do with anything, and why is it even in this story?

The only explanation I can think of is that this embodies the ability of her Stand, Paisley Park. It guides Yasuho in the right direction, and finds ways to progress to a goal. This is a reflection of Yasuho's own talent for research and investigation. She gets interested in a mystery and just refuses to let it go until she can find out more.

So I guess she found out once that it's physically impossible for a human to lick their own elbow, and she put her mind to it and found a way to pull it off. But realistically, the only way that can work is if she's got hypermobility in her shoulders, or a really long tongue, or both of those things.

Anyway, this is the "Shakedown Road" arc.

Quick note: In chapter 18, Josuke contemplates Yoshikage Kira and decides that he must be a somewhat decent guy, since he apparently snuck into the Higashikata home and removed Kyo Nijimura's name from their copy of the family tree, so that they wouldn't suspect her when she infiltrated their home as a maid. This is probably why Kyo went after Josuke in the previous arc, because she found out he looked at the family tree, and worried that he was going to expose her identity.

Although, I find it odd that Kyo would have bothered infiltrating the Higashikata home at all, if Yoshikage could sneak in and out that easily. Although it seems like the two of them didn't compare notes much, even though they're on the same side.

As for the Higashikata Family, they're all having breakfast in their swimsuits, because they were planning to take a trip to Hawaii this week, but had to call it off because Hato never got her passport. This is because Hato didn't know Hawaii was part of the United States. At first I thought she didn't know anything about Hawaii, like maybe she thought it was a Japanese territory, like the British Virgin Islands or something. Or she thought Pearl Harbor was the end of World War II, and Japan got to keep Hawaii.

But no, I think it's more like... she just didn't know where Hawaii is? Like she just thought it's one of the islands in the Japanese archipelago, like Iwo Jima or Okinawa. Or maybe she just thought it was in Tokyo or something. Like, that's really dumb. Hawaii's a pretty famous place, and you'd think she'd know her own country a little better than this. "Oh, yeah, we're all taking a vacation to the Honolulu Prefecture."

Anyway, they all wore their bathing suits to at least simulate the experience of a poolside breakfast. This seems pretty sad. I mean, they have beach resorts in Japan, don't they? I mean, if I were one of the idle rich and my trip to the Bahamas fell through, I might fly out to Miami and try to get something similar.

Oh, and Joshuu isn't playing along because he never would have gotten on the plane in the first place. This is because he's an atheist, so that means he doesn't trust... planes? He also complains that the milk is a day over the expiration date, and he refuses to take chances, even over something so minor. I feel like that's not now atheism works? It's not like people only trust planes and milk because they believe that a higher power is the only thing keeping them safe.

But then again, Joshuu's an idiot. Like, I really don't get the point of this guy, aside from just putting an unlikeable, obnoxious person in the story for its own sake. Joshuu does get some consequences for his bad behavior, but most of the time he's just a complete shithead who makes an ass of himself and everyone sort of endures his presence. There's no joke, no lesson or moral. Joshuu never does anything or learns anything. He tries to act like he's a rival for Yasuho's affections, but literally no one else believes this.

Josuke wonders if he's a Stand user like Daiya, and his moronic act is part of his Stand Power. But no, he's just an idiot. And yet, the rest of the family also act like idiots, but they do have Stands and they're more dangerous. So I can see why Josuke stays on guard around him.

All right, so let's talk about Shakedown Road. In this arc, Josuke declares that he wants to go to school, and he wants his own cell phone. This is partly so he can have more freedom of movement to investigate his origins, but also he's thinking about his own future. Now that he knows he's a chimera of Yoshikage Kira and some other person, Josuke realizes that he has no past of his own, and no place where he belongs. So he needs to find a place for himself, and he figures he can discover his own talents and interests in school.

Norisuke tells Joshuu to take Josuke along to his own classes, and Joshuu decides to take a trip down "Shakedown Road". He warns Josuke that he's had money taken from him every time he's come to this place, but he insists that this time will be different. It's like he's counting on Josuke's presence to resolve the problem for him.

At first, it seems pretty unassuming. It's not like there's a bunch of muggers everywhere. Just Ginkgo trees and seemingly ordinary people. But then a woman complains to Joshuu that he stepped on her daughter's toy and demands he make restitution. Joshuu never came anywhere near the toy, but one of the stickers from it got onto his shoe, and his shoeprint is on the broken pieces, so the evidence is clear.

Joshuu explains that this was how it happened the last time he came here, but it wasn't the same woman back then. Josuke is intrigued and they use the camera on Joshuu's phone to record their movements along the road.

Then this old man accuses Josuke of breaking one of the aquariums in his shop. The collision fatally wounded an exotic turtle in the water tank. He says the turtle was decapitated, but its body was still moving around after the accident. We don't see the turtle, but this makes me sad, because there was a cool turtle in Parts 3, 4, and 5, but the Part 8 turtle has met with a tragic end. Rest in Power, Part 8 turtle. I'm sure you kicked ass.

Josuke wants to review the footage on Joshuu's phone, but Joshuu pretends he didn't hit the record button. In fact he caught the whole thing. Josuke was walking along, then he stepped on some gingko leaves, and was impossibly flung into the turtle tank at super speed. His elbow hit the tank, breaking it and killing the turtle, and then he got jerked right back where he was. And it happened so quickly that Josuke never even knew he had moved.

So Joshuu figures out that the gingko leaves have something to do with all of this, but he plays dumb so as not to clue Josuke in on this. Josuke, for his part, believes that there's a Stand User at work here, but the old man seems oblivious to Soft and Wet, so he can't have a Stand of his own, or he'd be able to see other Stands.

This is kind of a weakness with Part 8. Stands had been a fixture in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure for over twenty years by the time JoJolion started, so it's probably fair that Araki assumed the readers could keep up with the rules. Indeed, this scene where neither Joshuu, the old man, the dog, nor the cell phone camera can perceive Soft and Wet pretty much spells out how this one rule works.

Still, Parts 3 through 7 each did a much better job laying all this out for new readers. Part 3 had to get it right, because that was where the Stand concept was first introduced, but in Parts 4 and 5 the main characters had their own Stands, then learned that there were others with the same kind of power. Also, Parts 4, 5, and 6 all featured characters who developed Stands during the story, so there was a learning curve for the audience. And Part 7 was a reboot, so the idea literally had to be reintroduced on account of this.

Part 8's problem is that Josuke has amnesia, but he appears to understand his Soft and Wet powers implicitly. Either he came out of the ground immediately knowing how to use his ability, or he sorted it out while he was in the hospital in Chapter 2. The problem is that he really doesn't have anyone else to explain it to, and the battles with other Stand Users are essentially ambushes with no time to process the details.

I sort of wonder how Part 9 handles this issue. My impression is that the main characters start the story already familiar with Stands, sort of like Bruno's team in Part 5. Maybe there's a viewpoint character they can explain it to, or maybe there's a wall of exposition somewhere. Well, that's a problem for another time.

I'm a little confused on this part, but some shady-looking characters notice Josuke and Joshuu and try to use them to complete a transaction on Shakedown Road. They coerce Josuke into delivering a package to a nearby woman, and receive her handbag in exchange, I think. Joshuu realizes that the people who understand Shakedown Road can use its mysterious properties to conduct this sort of illegal business. There are undercover cops nearby, but it doesn't matter. The crooks do some tricky stuff with the gingko leaves to make the swap without getting caught. Also Josuke gets yanked at super speed so that he accidentally hits one of the cops. So while they search him for the package, the crooks all walk away, their transaction seemingly complete.

While Josuke is tackled by the cops, he notices a bunch of little creatures under the gingko leaves, and that's the Stand he was looking for. This is Les Feuilles, and the Stand's user is the gingko trees themselves? I guess?

Anyway, Joshuu managed to grab the handbag, thinking it's full of money, and runs off in all the confusion.

But the crooks catch up to him pretty easily, using their experience with the gingko leaves to zip and fly towards him. Joshuu gives them the handbag but it's empty, so they're all set to fuck him up, but then Joshuu's own Stand activates. It has the power to disassemble people and objects. In this particular situation, it just gives these guys a scare, but once Joshuu escapes the effect wears off and they decide not to pursue him. I think Joshuu's Stand is more useful than this, but he absolutely sucks, so I'm pretty sure we never see it reach its full potential.

As it turns out, Josuke managed to foil the crooks from the start. He didn't know where the Stand was or exactly how it worked, but since none of the people involved were the user, that allowed him to use his own Stand to trick them without anyone realizing it. He used Soft and Wet's bubbles to switch the money with gingko leaves, or... something. I'm a little confused to be honest. The point is that the handbag was empty, the crooks didn't get their money, and Josuke can't get pinned with anything because having money on Shakedown Road just proves you're clever, not a thief. As for the woman who got the package, Josuke tells the cops to go chase her down, so it's fair to assume that she didn't get very far.

Josuke tries to call Yasuho on Joshuu's cell phone to meet up with her, but it doesn't work because Yasuho blocked Joshuu's number. She tracks the phone's location to Shakedown Road, which is close to the Joestar Jizo, and that gets her interested.

Jizo, also known as Kṣitigarbha, is a bodhisattva revered as the patron deity of dead children and aborted fetuses. He's also revered as a protector of travelers and firefighters. The Japanese are quite fond of Jizo, and so there are a lot of statues of Jizo in cemeteries and roadsides in Japan. The idea is that the statues serve as a memorial and a sign of Jizo comforting and watching over the dead.

In this case, the Joestar Jizo was built to honor the death of Johnny Joestar, an American who died in an accident in Morioh. I guess the death of a foreigner in a foreign land was particularly sad for the locals, so they set up the Jizo to express their condolences to Johnny and his family.

Of course, we know Johnny Joestar as the hero of Part 7, Steel Ball Run. Part 8 is set 120 years after Part 7, so Johnny's death is kind of a no-brainer, but how did he die, and what was he doing in Morioh?

This sequence here is one of my favorite scenes in JoJolion. There's a certain rite of passage in JJBA, where the hero of the next part will have some sort of connection to the previous Jojo. In Part 2, Joseph never met his grandfather, but he looked just like him, and he was surrounded by people who knew Jonathan and his legacy. In Part 3, Jotaro teamed up with Joseph to track down Dio. In Part 4, Jotaro finds Josuke and informs him of his Joestar heritage. In Part 5, Giorno Giovanna is ignorant of the other Jojos, but Koichi Hirose, who has met several of them, recognizes in Giorno the same noble qualities. In Part 6, Jolyne reconnects with her estranged father, Jotaro. Part 7 was a reboot, so Johnny couldn't meet any of the previous Jojo's, but that's okay.

What I'm driving at here is that Josuke has a predecessor in Johnny, but the gulf of time between them is too vast. Josuke can't meet Johnny or anyone Johnny once knew. Josuke is all alone in Morioh, with no family of his own and no place to belong. He thinks that no one can possibly connect to him, then he sees the Joestar Jizo, wearing the same hat he has on, the same hat Johnny wore during his time in Japan.

The connection wouldn't mean anything to Josuke. He recognizes Johnny as the ancestor of Yoshikage Kira, but he doesn't see himself as part of that family. Nor would he understand that he and Johnny are part of the same college of shonen protagonists, along with Jonathan, Joseph, Jotaro, and the rest.

But we know, and in this brief moment, Josuke briefly connects with his fellow hero, and it's a beautiful thing. He's not alone, the universe tries to tell him, and he can't hear it, but maybe his heart knows, somehow.

The old man from earlier shows up and tells Josuke the legend of Johnny's death. He claims this is just a fantasy, and the library is full of other interpretations, but this is the only version we get, so it might as well be the true final fate of Johnny Joestar. So after the end of Part 7, Johnny met and fell in love with Rina Higashikata, the daughter of Norisuke Higashikata I. We saw all three of them together on the ocean liner. Norisuke was heading back to Japan with his prize money from the race, and Johnny was heading to Naples to bury Gyro Zeppeli. Eventually, Johnny and Rina married, and they lived happily for a time, until Rina came down with a strange illness. It kind of affected her mind like dementia, and Josuke wonders if it has anything to do with the condition Holly Kira has, but this is never explained. Physically, the disease does something weird to her skin, turning it rock hard and with these creases, like you'd see in origami.

The Jojo fan wiki refers to this as the "Rock Disease" and this is as close to an official name as we'll get. Johnny decided to move to Morioh so Rina could live out her remaining years in her homeland, but as her condition grew worse, he made a fateful decision.

The plot of Steel Ball Run revolved around the "Saint Corpse", the remains of a holy figure with supernatural properties. At the end of SBR, the Saint Corpse was locked away in a vault so no one would ever use it again, but Johnny knew where it was, and he chose to return to New York to steal it and use it one last time to cure his wife. The American authorities tried to stop him, but he managed to give them the slip and made it back to Morioh.

The problem is that the Saint Corpse doesn't actually perform miracles. Rather, it simply transfers fortune from one to another. Johnny's hope was that the Corpse would shift the Rock Disease from Rina to some other person, someone he didn't know. He was ashamed of doing this, but he loved Rina so much that he was willing to consign someone else to death. But the equivalent exchange backfired on him. Rina was cured, but the Rock Disease was transferred to their young son, George Joestar.

So Johnny mounted up with his son and the Saint Corpse and started riding away from their home. He didn't want his wife to see this, you understand. Realizing that he could never use the Saint Corpse to get rid of the Rock Disease, he used it one last time to transfer the disease from George to himself.

I'm a little confused about how this worked, exactly. In this scene, Johnny uses the Golden Spin to activate Tusk Act IV, which he uses to shoot a hole in his son's head, and then it bounces back onto him. I don't get it, but then again, I didn't understand Tusk Act IV in Part 7, either.

Johnny falls off his horse, and while George is cured, he shows signs of the Rock disease. Also, something about all this triggers the Les Fueilles Stand. I don't know if it was already active back then, or if Johnny's little stunt with the Saint Corpse somehow caused the gingko leaves to develop their own Stand. What I do know is that when his hand touches the leaves, they cause a giant boulder to suddenly fly in from somewhere else, and it lands right on Johnny's head, killing him.

Initially, the Morioh authorities treated this like a homicide, and even arrested Rina as a suspect, but later it was found to be an accident, and they let her go. The town built the Jizo in his memory, and I think that this whole incident might be what caused all these people to develop Stand powers in Morioh whenever they go near the fault lines. It might also explain why the land on the Higashikata estate can combine things like the lemon and tangerine from Kyo's demonstration.

At one time, I assumed that the Saint Corpse was still in Morioh, and its powers were behind everything, but that's not the case. In the old man's version of the story, the Americans finally tracked down Johnny after he died and they recovered the Saint Corpse.

Meanwhile Yasuho has independently researched the Johnny Joestar legend, and has come to the spot where he died. It's pretty close to the Higashikata mansion, as well as the spot where she found Josuke.

Yasuho also learned of another news item from the same day as Johnny's death in 1901. A small boy, no more than 2 years old, was discovered on the coast near the same area. No one ever found out who he was or where he came from, and apparently this never comes up again in JoJolion. I looked him up on the wiki to see if I might have missed something, but he's just listed as "Mysterious Boy" in the list of minor characters.

It's possible that the story of the Mysterious Boy was just a way to get Yasuho to poke around in this area, so that she would find a hole in the base of a certain pine tree where the boy was found 110 years ago. And once she gets close enough to it, someone grabs her and pulls her inside to set up the next arc. So the Mysterious Boy may never have been a plot point or a clue at all, just a curious mystery that would bait Yasuho into getting captured. Either that or the Mysterious Boy is the main villain of Part 9. Whatever.

[peaches2217]

Aquamarine

AO3 link!

"Everything will be alright."

Mario’s head snapped up. Surely he’d misheard her.

But Peach, meeting his gaze evenly, repeated herself: “Everything is going to be alright, Mario. This will pass, however painfully, and then we can rest, rebuild, and return to life as we know it. I have faith in that.”

Mario knew better. An all-out war raged around them, and they were both being pulled into the fray, in opposite directions. People were dying. They very well could die too. He knew she was scared. And he was almost certain that she knew he was scared, too. How could she say something so… so foolish, so false, now, of all times? It wasn’t like her.

Yet the resolve in her voice was unwavering, and determination burned red-hot in her eyes, and as quickly as he’d been confused, he understood. Acknowledging what might happen — what was probably going to happen, if either was permitting full honesty within themselves — was counterproductive. They could agonize over their circumstances, over the many outcomes, over the plenitude of things they wished they’d said and done if only they had known there might not be another opportunity. But where would that lead them? 

Falling into despair would only guarantee their demise. Hope would give them a chance. No matter how miniscule that chance or how false that hope, they had to take what they could get. She understood that, and now she was inviting Mario to join her in reclaiming what might be their last prospect of victory, or at least survival.

How often he wished he could be as strong as her.

But before he could accept that invitation and return her assurances, something in Peach’s expression flickered… and it was gone just as quickly, squashed down and set alight with an internal force that only a goddess could possibly possess. Her fingers fumbled with the brooch on her chest for a few seconds before she freed it from her dress and pressed it into Mario’s hand.

“This jewel has been in my family for at least a hundred and fifty years,” she said, guiding his right hand with her left so that the brooch sat exposed in his open palm. “My mother had entire outfits designed around it; it’s my sole reminder of her. So it is, without a doubt, my most valuable possession.” 

Mario regarded it as well as he could in the dull light. He recalled seeing it on past queens in the old paintings lining the castle’s entrance hallway, but it certainly didn’t show its age. The aquamarine gem matched her eyes in color and almost matched them in intensity, exploding into fragments of light whenever the sun caught it just so. He’d always thought it suited her.

Carefully, she folded his fingers over the brooch, resting her small hands gently over his. “I absolutely can’t lose it,” she added, quietly. “No matter what.”

He heard the intent all too clearly. He was being trusted to guard her most prized accessory. Therefore, he had an obligation to return to her.

I can't lose you, she said in all but words.

“I… I’ll keep it safe,” he promised, and the few seconds he pulled away from her to pocket the valuable were torturous. Taking her hands in his made everything feel right again, gave him the boldness he needed to match her resolve. “And once this is all over, I’ll give it right back. I’ll even have it polished so it looks good as new! You have my word, Princess.”

The cacophony outside grew louder. They were running out of time.

“Good. I’ll make all sorts of pastries as thanks,” Peach said, and her smile looked truly heartening for the first time since all of this nonsense began. “We’ll stuff ourselves on tiny cakes and endless tea and coffee and talk all day and all night. Or at least until Toadsworth comes to complain about having a visitor over so late and shoos you off.”

Mario couldn’t help but laugh. She was right; Toadsworth became more strict past ten or so at night, flustering himself over the princess’ wellbeing because a proper princess simply must remain well-rested, Your Highness! Maybe they could pull the “We just survived a catastrophic war” card, or at least get Toadette to cover for them so they could sneak out after hours (which would hardly be the first time).

Those thoughts slowed to a halt as Peach joined in, giggling quietly. The sound echoed off the barren walls hiding them away, delicate and pure; she blushed a sweet shade of pink, and her whole face glowed so achingly softly. It was as beautiful as it was haunting.

She truly believed what they were saying. And for a moment, Mario had believed it too.

I can’t lose you.

“Run,” Peach finally urged, a beacon of stability in the madness encroaching upon them. “Run, and hurry back to me. There’s still so many things I want to tell you, Mario, so don’t keep me waiting too long, alright?”

Mario’s breath caught in his throat.

I can’t lose you.

A rush of impulse surged through his blood, and he didn’t have the strength to fight it off.

“Ti amo,” he whispered, pulling himself into their conjoined hands. “Ti amo tantissimo, Principessa.” He bowed his head over her knuckles and screwed his eyes shut, trying and failing to control the trembling that overtook him — he wanted so desperately to remove their gloves, feel the imperfections of her skin against his, or kiss the silk separating them, kiss her, tighten his grip and run with her until all of the mayhem was far behind them or they were cut down where they stood. He didn’t care, so long as he didn’t have to leave her side.

“Mario…”

He stiffened.

“...What does that mean?”

For a fleeting moment, there was no war. Looking up didn’t reveal any fearsome resolve or half-suppressed fear or dread within her eyes. All he could see was affection, tinged dark with sadness.

This wasn’t the end. It couldn’t be. He would ensure that or die trying.

“It means…” Squeezing her hands one final time, he forced himself to smile. “...I will see you soon.”

He let go before he could register how painful it was, and he turned and ran, until a dozen doors and countless layers of stone separated him from her, until he stepped into the fray and acrid smoke filled his lungs.

Pausing in the final doorway, he snaked his hand into his right pocket, his fingers caressing the aquamarine brooch tucked safely within.

Images of tiny cakes and golden hair and clear afternoons full of laughter and sunlight flickered through his mind. He let them pass, he took a breath, and then he charged ahead.

[fromsaudades]

| ROBERTA COLINDREZ & THEY/THEM | Congratulations, ALEX FLORES survived another night. The town would certainly feel less safe without a them close by. Not to mention, we can’t lose another ELECTRICIAN, plus they’re only THIRTY-EIGHT. Crazy to think, it’s been FIVE YEARS since their arrival, though in a place like Oblitus it can feel much longer. Good thing they’re staying at the MOTEL. Almost like it happened yesterday, they still remember BROWNSVILLE, TEXAS, and where they came from. It’s no secret, they were RUNNING OUT OF GAS FOR THEIR MOTORCYCLE when they came across the tree, and is still keeping them up at night. Truth be told, they’re awfully ALERT and UNRELIABLE, but they’ve survived this long. Well, it’s almost day light again, maybe they’ll play I BET ON LOSING DOGS by MITSKI this time. Welcome to another night in Oblitus, please don’t open the doors. (jer, 34, she/he/they/any ) -no triggers

FULL BIO — TAGS — PINTEREST — PLAYLIST

what is their biggest regret since arriving in town?

"Probably not trusting anyone sooner, and not keeping in contact with the family that saved me." The family members were a curious mix, almost too perfectly aligned with the unsettling nature of Oblitus. The matriarch’s eyes seemed to pierce through your defenses, searching for the cracks in your façade. The way she moved—deliberate and graceful—made you feel like a stray dog being evaluated for adoption; she saw every flaw, every scar. Then there was the son, whose laughter echoed with a hint of madness. He possessed an infectious energy, yet it felt like a thin veneer covering something darker. You often caught him staring out of the corner of your eye, his gaze lingering a moment too long, as if he were sizing you up for some unspoken game. Sometimes, when you passed him in town, his expression would shift to something resembling pity, making you feel exposed, as if he could see the tangled threads of your past laid bare. The daughter, meanwhile, had a way of drifting in and out of conversations, always observing but rarely engaging. Her silence felt heavy, as if she carried secrets so burdensome they could bend the very air around her. Their presence in town served as a constant reminder of the familiarity of your circumstances, each interaction laced with an undercurrent of tension. You knew, deep down, that you owed them your gratitude—a debt that remained unfulfilled. "When I rolled into town, I thought I'd be fine just keeping to myself—stay under the radar, do my job, and get out. But there are people here I could’ve connected with, maybe even trusted. I should've let my guard down a little. But now… it feels too late." The weight of regret hung in the air, a reminder of the connections that could have been, now lost in the shadows of your isolation.

describe your character’s first day/night in town?

“It’s all a blur.” But you remember some things. You arrived just as the sun began its descent, casting a golden glow that kissed the horizon goodbye, your motorcycle sputtering and yearning for fuel as the lamplights flickered to life, illuminating a town that felt both inviting and ominous. Rushed in by unknown hands, you found yourself ensnared by a family whose presence was more chilling than comforting, their eyes brimming with a knowing dread that sent your heart racing. They seemed to possess an uncanny foresight, predicting the crows and the gnarled tree that lay on the side of the road, their frantic explanations wrapping around you like a shroud of anxiety, igniting the flames of paranoia deep within your soul. “I remember running out of gas, the air feeling wrong.” You stood on the threshold of their home, a rustic structure that felt as much a part of the town as the very trees surrounding it. They welcomed you with open arms, but beneath their warmth lay an undercurrent of unease that made you hesitate. You recalled how their kindness enveloped you like a warm blanket, yet something in your gut urged you to remain guarded. You couldn’t shake the feeling that their benevolence was entwined with their secrets, and you had learned the hard way that trust was a fragile thing. In those early days, you grappled with your mistrust, convincing yourself that their intentions were shrouded in hidden motives. It wasn’t until much later that you recognized the depth of their care, the way they shielded you from the night’s terrors, drawing you into a fragile sanctuary amidst the chaos. But even now, as you reflect, the memories of your hesitation linger like an unwelcome shadow, reminding you of the connections you could have embraced and the warmth you could have allowed to seep into your heart.

[the-californicationist]

Guardian (excerpt from Chapter 4)

König stood outside of his quarters, shifting his weight from boot to boot, trying to decide when to knock. He shuffled around, walking back down the hall, feeling too close to the door and then too far from it. Maybe he should leave the food and retreat entirely? Would she find it before Horangi did?

“Klopf einfach an,” he muttered to himself, too loudly.

“König?” Her voice was dampened by the door panel, “Is that you? One second.”

He heard her jostling around in there. She turned the handle and pulled the door away from him. Seeing her standing there, dressed in what he had given her - along with a borrowed pair of socks that went all the way up to her knees - he thought he might pass away. The huge top extended past the nylon shorts, making it seem as if the shirt was her only covering. He could smell her. His shampoo. His soap. His scent lingered on her with his stare. The bedsheets were rumpled. She had been snuggled up in them, dressed in his clothes. He couldn’t move.

“Gott im Himmel,” he breathed the lowest, deepest growl of a whisper as he exhaled the breath he was holding.

He tried to recover as quickly as possible, smiling like an idiot as he handed her the sandwich and drinks. Even though he could hold all of the bottles in one hand, she had to awkwardly carry them in her arms as she tried to take them from him. She was saying something, thanking him perhaps? He couldn’t tell. He couldn’t hear anything except his blood rushing in his ears. A bottle fell to the concrete floor, and before he could get his head back on his shoulders to help her, she bent down away from him to retrieve it. 

Her shirt rode up, loose as it was, exposing her bare lower back. The shorts were small, even for her, and they left none of her thigh to the imagination. To his delight, freckles were littered all over them like a spattering of breadcrumbs leading directly up to her thick -

“König? Are you okay? Are you upset? What happened?”

The fear had returned to her voice. He was acutely aware that he still looked like a literal demon, and he tried to dismiss himself as quickly as possible,

“No, no. Everything is alright, Mauschen. Just wanted to fill you - feed you. Feed you food, and I will go…I will do paperwork, now. Right now.” Freud would be proud. 

“I thought you’d be able to stay here. Can you do the paperwork here?”

He was a wolf with its leg in a beautiful claw trap,

“Ja, natürlich.”

“This is so good, mmh,” she dug into the sandwich, getting a little mayonnaise on her cheek.

He sat in his tiny chair and opened his field desk. She licked a knuckle that had been smeared with tomato juice, sticking the finger into her mouth and sucking it clean. He found what was probably a pen and a piece of paper. It didn’t matter, since all he could think about was her. She finished one of the halves, sticking the crust past her lips and using her pink tongue to try and catch falling crumbs. He crushed the pen between his fingers.

“Scheiße,” he cursed under his breath. He found another pen.

She took no notice of him, too interested in her meal. He began his report. How do you begin a report? She moaned mid-bite,

“Oh, my God! I don’t know if it’s just the fact that they only fed me cold rice or what, but this is amazing.”

König was in physical pain. If she moaned like that again… He jotted down the date and time, along with a few bullshit facts about his recent insertion, and signed it at the bottom, sloppily. 

“I need to deliver this to the captain. Do you need anything else, Maus?”

She shook her head, her mouth full of chicken.

“Lock the door when I leave, bitte. Don’t open it unless it is me,” he paused, “or the captain.”

She nodded, visibly swallowing. Her throat - No. Stop it.  

“Where will you sleep? I’m so sorry to put you out,” she lamented genuinely.

He stood to leave, leaving her question unanswered. Towering over her, he peered down at her and saw that she still wore a small hint of mayo. He removed a glove and took her face in one of his hands, slowly rubbing the sauce away from her soft mouth. She gasped,

“Oh, shit. Mayo? I’m a mess, apparently.” She allowed him to clean it off fully, keeping her chin in his huge hand, blushing from embarrassment, “Thanks.” 

“Wenn ich länger hier bleibe, werde ich dich vögeln.” If I stay here any longer, I will fuck you. He smiled down at her, his eyes crinkling under the mask.

“Sorry, I don’t speak - is it German?”

He nodded, releasing her face, “Ja , Boarisch. But, still Deutsch, I guess. Just wishing you good night, Mauschen. I will come wake you for breakfast tomorrow.”  

He fled, closing the door tightly behind him, crushing the report in his ungloved hand. He didn’t leave until he heard the lock click. It wouldn’t keep anyone out, but it would make her feel safer at least. His boots pounded into the floor of the compound as he made his way to Captain Price’s office.

FULL TEXT ON AO3

[accirax]

Disventure Camp All Stars Power Ranking (Round 15)

Can you believe this is my 10th round of doing these Power Rankings? Despite the ups and downs of the season, it's been super fun to see this through throughout the entire season. Let's hope that my 10th ranking will bring a 10/10 score! (Or, rather, a 6/6.)

In case you haven't seen my previous power rankings, the Power Ranking Format is essentially a way of ranking how well each player is doing in the game. So, in essence, this is a long form way of predicting who I think will be eliminated from the competition in the next episode. There will be spoilers for last week's episode (obviously) and its power ranking, so make sure to read that first if you don't want to be spoiled on how I ranked our last boot. If you want more clarification on the rules, that first post will help you out as well. Furthermore, I'm going to be spoiling the preview for next episode, so if you want to go in TOTALLY blind, save this for later. Let's go!

Recap - Aiden's Elimination

Current Score: 65 acquired/97 total

(Points versus @venus-is-thinking: 16 acquired/23 total)

Seems like it was finally Aiden's time to go. Although, really, it should've been Jake's time to go (in universe), he just won immunity. Still, Aiden has gotten so much spotlight these past few seasons that the end of that focus felt inevitable. I'm not too mad that he was eliminated in this way, only upset that I didn't put him lower on the list. Damn you, Grett, and making it sound like you would vote with the heroes...

I still don't completely understand the logic behind Grett making this move (as I elaborated upon at the end of my initial thoughts), but I'm way less confused about this than I was about, say, Aiden's plan to expose the kiss, or even Magenta's choice to eliminate Hunter way back when. I think it'll make for a more exciting finale either way, so it's probably for the best. Again, only mildly frustrated with myself that I didn't call it better.

Trailer Analysis

Okay, so this definitely seems relevant to the challenge. Given all the other stuff we've seen, I'm guessing it's the end?* Go through a bunch of obstacles; first person to zipline to the flag gets immunity. Seems simple enough...? At least Aiden doesn't have to once again face his dubiously remaining fear of heights.

What a surprise that they're fighting again. They're in their pajamas, meaning that this is probably at camp near the beginning of the episode.

Emily is real again! Seems like they may be plotting their revenge this episode, as opposed to actually carrying it out. Or, this could be Trevor changing his mind about revenge in the first place.

Connor giving Riya the silent treatment. Good for you, king.

Okay, I wouldn't normally put this in, but given that they put it in, clearly there's something to be gathered here. This really seems like it would be a non-team challenge, meaning there's probably only one challenge tester? If so, then I think the relevant piece is that neither Derek nor Trevor is testing the challenge. My guess is that Derek is exempt via Kristal, but Trevor may have ditched in his rebellion.

Okay, so sandbags are part of the challenge, and it appears Connor and Alec reach them first.

There's also rock climbing.

Riya is potentially sabotaging Yellow? From the previous shot, it looks like Alec is blue, so it's not him. Interestingly, Connor also seems to be running past Yellow, so it's not him. It's also not Grett, as she's shown as Orange in the thumbnail. Maybe Jake is Yellow? Or maybe Riya is just picking up her own bag.

More of Riya using her feminine wiles.

Ally is black, and *it seems like that wasn't the challenge endpoint after all.

Ally and Jake's fighting will get physical, as well. Given that we don't really see Ally's hair messed up elsewhere, maybe the rock climbing is the end of the challenge? Although then, where did the bags go?

Riya's trying to kill people again, including her (former?) allies. Typical. (Alec is the question mark; Connor is clearly a former ally if you even count him as ever being an ally at all.)

"Don't mind him. He's just moody~"

The malewife-ification of Alec continues. Riya has definitely gone mad with power if this is how she's treating her only real alliance. I feel like Alec's gonna snap sooner or later.

Power Ranking

#1: Connor

Venus and I talked about this one a bit after last week's episode, and, it would be way too sad if Connor was taken out in this time in this way, right? He literally directly vowed that this time, he would be the one to take out Riya (and win), and he even has a totem now. If he went home with an idol in his pocket, that would be devastating, and totally go against all the positive momentum he's been building up to this point.

Now, it's certainly possible that Connor will have to play his idol this episode if he wants to survive, but that still means that he wouldn't be going home this time. Especially with Grett potentially giving him a tip-off about what the vote would be, he really shouldn't fail in this regard.

Now, I'm still torn about whether Connor will be a finalist or not, and I don't think he'll win. Or at least, I hope he doesn't, because other contestants need the money way more than he does. And, you can't even really argue that he played the best game, considering that he literally got voted out once before and only managed to get back into the game with Ashley's help. I think Connor could be a losing finalist, or get eliminated at final 4 or 5. However, I don't think he's headed home just yet, so he's at #1 for me.

#2: Ally

Perhaps it's Ally's fate to ping pong across my list, this late into the season. Or, maybe just pong. That's the video game version.

As Grett pointed out, Ally is now in a swing vote position. It'll be up to her and Grett to determine whether one of Alec and Riya or one of Jake and Connor is going home. Therefore, there really shouldn't be any reason why Ally would be going home this time. Sure, Jake might want her out, but him choosing to either A) convince Alec and Riya to work with him and Connor to take out Ally or B) convince Grett to likely send it to a 3-3 tie both seem incredibly implausible. I guess the 3-3 could work if Connor planned to idol Ally out by protecting himself/Jake, but still, it's a bad idea to let Grett in on schemes to eliminate Ally, even if Jake might not know it.

From a narrative perspective, I also don't think it would make sense to eliminate Ally here. She has more decisively turned towards the villainous, but all of the heavy plan-lifting has been left to Riya or Grett. I'm not necessarily saying that Ally needs to herald a scheme of her own before she's eliminated, just that sending Ally home as collateral damage to one of them feels like an underwhelming end to her character. All of this arguing must be building up to something big, right?

#3: Grett

She's here along with Ally as a likely swing vote who has a scheme up her sleeve that seems like it's going to play out. One question you may be asking, though, is why I have Grett below Ally. Grett is a strong winner choice, and the one driving the plan. She probably has more options than Ally does, due to a longer history with the villains and a better relationship with the heroes. Shouldn't that make her more invincible?

Well, as I explained for Ally, I think that Grett going home as a result of her own plans is a better narrative ending than Ally going home as a result of someone else's. Make no mistake, I still think that Grett has been building up to at least one win all season (even if it isn't actually winning the season directly), so I suspect that whatever her plan is will work for the time being. However, she did have a really nice bookend to the pull-up thing last episode. Was that a feather in Grett's winner edit cap, or was it a signal that Grett's character arc is done, and so is her time in the show?

While I'm not relying on it as much as last time, I do think that Grett's going to be pulling the strings this time around. There's a chance that she could yank too hard, and wind up cutting hers instead. That's unlikely enough for now, though, that she's here at #3.

#4: Jake

I definitely struggled with whether to put Grett or Jake higher, as I'm expecting that neither of them will go home, but could see scenarios in which they could. I wound up putting Grett higher, because I think that the high likelihood of her plan working is more important than the longevity vibes I get from Jake. However, I think that Grett also has the more compelling reason to go home, whereas Jake's is more... bleh.

Basically, I see Jake going out if Riya wins immunity, and Grett and Ally decide that it's better to work with the villains for another round (and still be able to 3-2 them later with Connor) and take out Jake. In this scenario, they don't tell Connor to play his idol on Jake, and he doesn't figure out that he should because he just assumes that Riya will want to eliminate him first and foremost. Basically, this is another "the narrative stalls for an episode to set up bigger conflicts later" option.

It's logical enough-- keeping Riya, Connor, and Alec in the game means that they can keep working on their little trio relationship together, while Grett and Ally stay in the game together to continue strategizing. Jake does have relationships with Connor and Ally, but his elimination could cause Connor to become even more firm in his need to play his idol correctly, and Ally to see how she feels once she finally got what she wanted.

The issue is, the whole plan sucks for Jake's characterization, including the fact that he'd go to the Loser's Motel and see Tom several episodes before the dedicated time in which we could see them talk. This option only works if the writers decide they don't care about Jake anymore, and given how much focus he's gotten, I find that unlikely. Still, with this few people left, that still puts Jake in the bottom half for now.

#5: Alec

Sort of similar lines as Jake, but this time if Riya wins immunity and Grett and Ally choose to simply switch villain targets (at least, as I see the setup in my mind). Alec is still a challenge threat, on both a physical and intellectual level. Riya by far has more power now-- including over Alec-- so she's the bigger threat. But, still, it took Miriam, Fiore, and Ellie working together last season to keep Alec out of a Final 3 he probably would've won. If you have the chance now, it could be a good idea to take him out.

It'd be a sad ending to Alec's story, but so has, like, everything in recent memory. I could see them striking a balance where Alec is still mostly "punished" for his villainous actions overall, but is able to reconnect with Connor (much like he already reconnected with Fiore) before his elimination. Alec and Connor seem like they'll be on good terms this episode, running and climbing together, so I could see that going down.

I've mostly just been stalling before the main event, though. There's no way it's not #6... right?

#6: Riya

I also talked about this with Venus last Saturday, so I already know that we're both going to have Riya at the bottom. There are, like, a bazillion reasons why it makes the most sense for Riya to go down next. Okay, maybe not a bazillion, more like four. But still, here they are.

Riya is, overall, very threatening. It's true that she's not that strong, and she doesn't really have allies (in or out of the game) other than Alec. Still, she's a villain who will absolutely cheat. I wouldn't want that in the finals with me.

Riya was a finalist in Season 2, landing in second place. Under the assumption that the writers don't want any repeat finalists, she is going to go home in the next three episodes.

Connor, once again, literally told us directly that he was going to take her down. Connor is a hero, and Riya is a villain, and we're meant to root for this happening. It feels too late in the season for this to be a subversion where the heroes(?) bounce back after Connor fails. Who would fill his shoes to finish the deed, Jake? How is Connor meant to have any more time to turn his story around?

We've also seen a lot of evidence of Alec's mounting frustrations with Riya. Literally no one wants her in this game anymore, other than maybe Ally.

The bigger question in my mind is whether Connor will need to use his idol to take her out or not. There are some nice parallels to be had if he does, both with him taking extra steps to take her out this time instead of sacrificing himself to keep her in, and possibly with an idol successfully being played on Jake at the final 6 instead of it being wasted like it was in Season 1. But, I really feel like it has to be Riya's time to go. If it isn't, well... I hope the rest of my list holds up well enough.

That's all for now! Being confident always scares me, because sometimes you turn on the episode and you just instantly know you're wrong, y'know? And that feeling is terrifying. Needless to say, Venus and I will be on a wild ride if Riya does win immunity or whatever. I'm hoping that we'll all see Riya take a massive L this Saturday... for the sake of my rankings, of course.

[a-mag-a-day]

MAG 41 - apple cutting

So Prentiss happened 29th July, now it's the 2nd September, 5 weeks.

Martin giving Jon the ashes of Prentiss, so cute… Well, um, the thought counts!

"and the archive looks remarkably like it was never attacked at all. Unlike me." / "I’m told it’s unlikely the scars will ever truly fade" - The first of many more scars :´(

"but I don’t think the boredom was good for me." - I like the consistency of this. Jon doesn't like boredom. He didn't like it as a kid, he didn't like that about Bournemouth at all and he still doesn't like it.

"Martin wouldn’t hear of it. Almost threw me out of the archive. Is he hiding something? Heh. No, of course not. He’s probably just legitimately concerned for my health." - He says this with such fondness in his voice that I find it hard to believe sometimes, that JonMartin was NOT planned from the start. (I know, Martin's crush was planned from the start, but not them actually getting together.)

"It’s been a couple of weeks now. From before I was officially back. If you listen to this, Martin, I am sorry. I’ve gone behind your back to explore the tunnels on… several occasions." - see above.

"Then I came to the trapdoor. If Sasha hadn’t thought to clearly mark it with hazard tape, I’m not sure I would ever have found it again, but there it was. It took several minutes of fumbling before I was able to figure out how to lift the concealed handle and expose the lock" - So what do you think the trapdoor looks like? Does it just do a very good job at blending in with the other floorboards? It is in Jon's office, right? The Head Archivist office. Why? Was it already there when Gertrude got the job? Did she have the choice to make this room her office? Or did she somehow make the entrance to the tunnels herself, so she'd have a quick way to escape the Watcher's gaze? Leitner probably could have used the Seven Lamps of Architecture to get an entrance exactly to her office. Or maybe she had other ways, she and Dekkar really liked concrete, maybe they knew a few people in construction xD

"Have you ever left a crowded room, and literally felt the silence as you walked out into the night? It was something like that, a sudden, quiet absence." - Like when you feel being watched for hours on end and suddenly that weight is taken off your shoulders?

"I didn’t even have the excuse of the corridors all looking the same, as they varied significantly in height and construction." / "This place, it felt more organic in its unpredictability, as though it had been intended to be used, to be travelled, but had gotten twisted somehow." / "I found spaces that seemed intended as rooms, but without doors. Elsewhere, there were doors that seemed simply attached to the walls." - Like they have been shuffled around?

"I found myself wondering whether that was where Martin had found her." - Thinking quite a lot about Martin there, eh?

"Inside the circle, the stone was… wrong somehow. Solid, but oddly wavy, like chocolate that’s melted and then rehardened." - So even though the ritual never could have succeeded, it did at least something to their reality.

"I had done what research I could on Millbank. First proposed and designed in 1799 by Jeremy Bentham, a philosopher who wished to test his theories of the panopticon prison, where cells would be arranged in a circle around a single, central, guard tower, so all cells were observable at once." - First time Panopticon name drop! That is something which to this day I find one of the most remarkable uses of… basically anything that exists… for this story. I didn't even know what a panopticon was before that! And it fits so well with Beholding.

"That was when I heard the noises again. They could have been footsteps, I suppose, but if so they were soft, quiet. Was someone running around those tunnels barefoot?" - … I will send you the post in a separate ask^^ You know what I'm talking about, right?

"I am not a brave man. I believe I am starting to come to terms with that fact, but I am, in certain circumstances, a very stubborn one." - No don't say that, you are so very brave! T.T

"Only an empty wine bottle, the label all but rotted away, but the year was still legible as 2003. The passages here were more pronounced in their difference than the ones further up, some being so irregular and seamless as to almost seem organic, while others were almost unnervingly square and regular, with sharp angles and precisely laid bricks." - Okay hear me out, Jurgen Leitner home makeover show! Does it spark fear?

"I turned back, and immediately noticed that the wall opposite me was closer than it had been before. I took a step back in shock, and my feet hit the wall behind me. The passage was getting narrower, though I could not see any movement." - Effect of the Seven Lamps of Architecture

"I heard a single word, clear as day: “Leave.”" - Leitner returning from his nightly visit to the loo finding the stupid new Archivist standing in the middle of his bedroom…

At this point I don't know which of the two I find funnier, Jon or Leitner xD

Jon spending hours and hours of his time exploring the tunnels, preparing for the excursion, making a 20 minutes statement only then to go "Supplemental. I don’t care about the tunnels, or the secrets they might hide." You're lying to yourself and you know it!

"If you’re hearing this, I assume you’re my replacement, following my death or disappearance" - crying

"Trust can get you killed." - crying even more

Okay, so I was veeeery happy about the fact that this season would contain more story about the archival team aka the supplemental parts! The statements of course were cool, but they felt very distant to the story. They weren't directly endangering our characters here, or only on rare occasions and then it led to the story being focused of the archival team.

Jurgen Leitner being the sneaky mystery in the tunnels puts everything terrifying Jon is experiencing in such funny context I bet anything that Jon later on thought back to these scary memories and either face palmed or choked from laughter

[vizhi0nw]

Benevolence

Chapter 1/?

Ao3

Main Blog

Miles Quaritch/Original Female Character

Words: 1.1k 

Summary: Sh’aena did not come from a benevolent people. She came from a resourceful people. And oh, what a resource this halfling would be.

Miles remembered the first time he’d truly felt pain. 

These were not his memories, of course. They were the memories of…the other guy. For some reason, it was easier for Miles to remember it that way. He’d been back on Earth, back before everything had truly gone to shit. He’d been young. Five or six, maybe. He’d been climbing a tree out behind his house, hauling himself up its trunk like a banshee at the instruction of some older kids he’d liked to hang around with. He’d been trying to impress them, most likely. Show them that he, too, was strong and powerful and brave

(He’d be the only one out of the group to become a Marine and traverse the stars, later.)

He’d made a gross miscalculation and had slipped, his arms coming free from where he had it hooked around a flimsy branch. The fall had felt much, much longer than it probably was, and the subsequent impact of meat against dirt had popped his shoulder clean out of its socket.

Pain.

He’d have plenty more painful experiences after that, being in the military, being a mercenary on Pandora. He supposed dying was the only thing that had topped it.

Now, in his new body, he was getting to feel what pain felt like for the first time. 

And it was happening all over again.

                                                           ~ ~ ~

Miles must have been delirious, at this point.

He’d lost his earpiece during his fight with Sully. He was most likely concussed, and it had taken half an hour for his nose to finally stop bleeding. He could barely keep hold of his Ikran, and he could tell that the creature was getting tired. Without any basic communicative tools, they were lost. 

The sun was going down.

Pandora was a different beast at night. It was as if the planet grew an extra pair of claws - Miles had been briefed many times about the dangers of being out at this particular hour. The forest never slept, he’d been told. Never. Despite the fact that he still had his pistol and his knife strapped to his thigh, he still felt naked. 

It took over an hour for him to find somewhere suitable to rest his head, and in doing so, he exerted far too much of what little energy he had left. His Ikran had long disappeared, most likely to find something to eat - the big creature still had a mind of its own, and Miles was nowhere near having him fully tamed. 

“Well, shit.”

Miles’ words echoed throughout the forest. Something chirped, in the distance, while something else scurried across the forest floor. Miles was tucked away in his little alcove, beneath the massive, winding roots of a tree. It was inconspicuous enough, though he still felt somewhat exposed. 

“What a fucking predicament,” Miles murmured. He deftly slipped his knife from its sheath, twirling it around in his fingers in a fit of boredom. 

Is this how you go out? Lost in this god-forsaken forest, wandering until you drop dead from exhaustion or dehydration or…or…

Miles scrunched up his nose. He didn’t want to think about that, not right now. He - the other guy - had survived worse. Miles remembered his human self and the tours he’d done in Africa, the Middle East. He’d escaped death even before venturing to Pandora. Even if he was entirely out of his element here, it didn’t matter. He’d survive. He’d…he’d..

Miles drifted off.

                                                         ~ ~ ~

“He has the demon’s fingers.”

“Careful, Sh’aena”

Sh’aena hissed. Her brother’s tone was overly-cautious, a bit prodding. He had the spear leveled at the sleeping halflings throat. He would be the one to protect her, if the halfling decided to awaken and attack. 

Such an event didn’t look as if it would be the case. The halfling was asleep, curled up around himself like a babe. In such a state, he looked harmless, but Shae knew better than to judge a sleeping enemy. She could see his coiled, thick muscles and broad shoulders. He was a warrior, no doubt. 

“I told you it was a mistake coming here,” Shae added. It was rare that she followed her adventurous brother out into the forest, and it was specifically for this reason. He always seemed to find trouble, and trouble always seemed to find him right back. 

“The party won’t leave without us,” Fewi replied. “Besides, we’ll be back in their good graces if we bring them something interesting.” 

“This is not interesting. This is dangerous - it,” Shae gestured to the sleeping Na’vi, “is dangerous. You have heard the whispers, brother.”

Fewi frowned. He tapped the butt of his spear against the forest floor. He thought for a moment, before turning to face his sister. Then, a grin split across his face.

“I’ll poke him awake. Then we’ll see whether or not he’s truly as dangerous as the rumors say.”

“Don’t you dare!”

Despite her hushed outburst, Fewi moved closer. Shae could only watch her brother, a scowl on her face, as he made soft footfalls across the grass towards the sleeping halfling. He led with the end of his spear, getting just close enough that he could reach out and -

The halfling lunged.

The action startled Shae, and she shrieked. Fewi leaped back in alarm, but the halfling had already grabbed the end of his spear and yanked it clean from his grip. Unarmed, Fewi could only back up, hands raised in placation. 

As Fewi stepped away, Shae took the time to observe the halfling. Tall, broad. The clothes he wore were not of the Na’vi, and he had a symbol etched into the skin of his left bicep. He looked…disheveled, as well. His eyes were unfocused, his steps wobbly. He was injured. 

The halfling's eyes snapped towards Shae.

“You,” He spoke a broken form a Na’vi, though he spoke it with unusual confidence. “Your arm.”

Shae shivered. 

“What about her arm?” Fewi replied. 

The halfling was staring so intently that Shae thought he’d bore holes right through her. It was the first time a Na’vi had inquired about her arm with something other than pity or disgust. The makeshift prosthetic, which had been crafted out of pieces of scrapped parts from the sky people’s war birds, had become such a part of her that she usually forgot she was wearing it - until someone brought it up to her.

Like now. 

“You made it?” 

“I…I did.”

The halfling let out a grunt. He looked between Fewi and Sh’aena. He took one heavy step forward, and then his knees buckled. He fell as if he were a rag toy, landing unconscious in the mud. 

Sh’aena glanced over at her brother, her lips pursed. Neither siblings wanted to speak, but they both understood what it was they needed to do. If they left him out here, the creatures of the night would gnaw on his flesh. 

Sh’aena did not come from a benevolent people. She came from a resourceful people. And oh, what a resource this halfling would be.

“Tie him up.”