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ga-yuu · 3 years ago

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~Kurama~Main Story Chapter 17~

Kurama just wants a reason to make out with her!

Chapter 16

-------Part 1-------

Kurama: “Yoshitsune will be the one to deal with you. It’s stupid, I’m not even interested in your life or death. Don’t ever stand in my line of sight again. Also.......”

(!!)

As if remembering, Kurama grabbed my hand and pulled me up.

Kurama: “This woman belongs to me. If you have a problem with that, you can tell me who owns her."

------The rest of the day went by in a blur.

Shortly afterward, Benkei and his men arrived and captured the men...

(Now, Kurama and I are the only ones....)

After a brief explanation of the situation, Benkei told Kurama to send me to my room and then left.

Yoshino: "Thank you, Kurama....for saving me. I don't know what I would have done if Kurama hadn't come along by chance."

Kurama: "It wasn't by chance."

Yoshino: "Eh?"

Kurama: "I cast a spell on your door, that would let me know when you're out."

Then Kurama told me what happened with him and Yoshitsune-sama after they left my room.

-------FLASHBACK-------

While Benkei was interrogating the main suspect in the assassination plot, Yoshitsune-sama and Kurama are discussing something else.

Yoshitsune: "We'll finish the interrogation tonight. Until then, Yoshino will be under guard. At this time of night, Yoshino will probably just go to sleep...."

Kurama: "That won't be necessary. I had already cast a spell on the door to her room. If anyone comes in or goes out, I'll know right away."

Yoshitsune: "............When did you do that?"

Kurama: "I don't trust human guards to protect my belongings."

Yoshitsune: "----All right. Now that she also has that whistleblower, I'll leave you in charge of Yoshino."

------FLASHBACK ENDS------

Yoshino: "Oh..."

I was surprised to find that I had received so much care without my knowledge.

Kurama: "It was only after you had boldly walked down the corridor that it was discovered that there were more than one assassin, and I had no choice but to chase you."

(I didn't knew Kurama was doing so much for me.)

Yoshino: "Then I shall have to thank you more and more. Thank you, Kurama for making me realize how naïve I was. And the things you said to those men."

Kurama: "It's not like I did it for you."

Kurama gives me a cold glance.

Kurama: "I wanted to make it very clear that I don't like that kind of humans."

Even though I've been told this a lot, it still hurts me.

(I felt like we were at least a little closer together, and I thought Kurama was trying to understand humans.)

(But there's still a deep rift between Kurama and me.)

Yoshino: "Is it because....they're weak?"

Kurama: "For they are not only weak but also stupid and ugly creatures. Humans easily forget their true desires and impose their distorted desires on others. I saw enough of them when I was with Ibuki."

(Shuten Doji, Ibuki!)

The name came up unexpectedly, and a memory of the battlefield flashed through his mind.

-------FLASHBACK-------

Ibuki: "Have you forgotten how well I looked after you?”

Kurama: “…..I forgot.”

Ibuki: “Why are you so cold to me, Kurama? You were so much cuter when you were a kid. Do you remember that one time, when you lost to me in a match, I had you call me ‘Ibuki oni-sama’ all day?”

------FLASHBACK ENDS------

(Kurama was so angry at that time that I could hardly ask him about Ibuki.)

Yoshino: "........Can I ask you a question about Ibuki?"

Kurama: ".................No."

------Part 2-------

Kurama: ".................No, or is what I'd have said, but I've made a roundabout promise to tell you more about me. I'll teach you about me as much as you like."

(Thank goodness. He kept his promise again.)

I chose my words carefully before I asked the question.

Yoshino: "What was your relationship with Ibuki as a child?"

Kurama: "That man picked me up on a whim and taught me how to fight."

Yoshino: "You were raised.....like a family?"

Kurama: "There was no love in our relationship. You must have seen Ibuki, too."

(Indeed, the way Ibuki looked at Kurama was that of a beast toying with its prey.)

Yoshino: "Is that why you left Ibuki? If he taught Kurama how to fight, he must be pretty strong...."

(Shouldn't Ibuki's strength be attractive to Kurama?)

Kurama: "..................."

After a heavy silence, Kurama opened his mouth in an annoyed tone.

Kurama: "Ibuki likes to torment others-----especially humans. It's a demon's instinct, he says. Most of the people he inspired have lost their core and have fallen into greed."

(....I wonder what Ibuki would do to make a human become like that....)

Kurama: "I left him because I was sick and tired of seeing him so shallow. That's all."

Yoshino: "..........I see."

(Kurama's integrity prevented him from accepting humans and Ibuki's true nature.)

(It's enough to make him leave the strong Ibuki.)

No matter who he is with, Kurama will never lose himself.

(....What do you call that feeling?)

If I had to name it, it would probably be 'longing.'

(If Kurama hadn't been the enemy,...I wouldn't have had to think about it.)

(At least I want to be a worthy enemy of Kurama.)

Kurama: "You see, I'm willing to accept stupid humans to some extend. But there is no room for your stupidity."

Yoshino: "Still, you made me realize my mistake. I didn't realize myself I was this stupid, hehe."

Kurama's gaze suddenly softened slightly as I smiled at him.

Kurama: "----Stubborn woman."

Even the slightest hint of dismay in his voice made my heart flutter with joy.

Yoshino: "It's true. If it hadn't been for Kurama, I would have been sorry for the people of the Shogunate."

Kurama: ".....the Shogunate, again?"

(Eh?)

A dark shadow of lashes fell over Kurama's eyes, which should have been softened.

Yoshino: "Kurama? Wha----"

(Mmm....mmm...)

Before I could finish my question, he covered my mouth with his hand as if he was annoyed.

Kurama: "What you need is not gratitude, but remorse."

-------Part 3-------

Kurama: "What you need is not gratitude, but remorse."

His voice is unbearably sweet....

Kurama: "How do you explain the fact that you were my toy that was about to be destroyed?"

Yoshino: "...Mmm...."

My shoulders bounced as he traced the edge of my ear with the tip of his tongue.

Yoshino: "Ku..rama....what..."

Kurama: "How can you afford to say anything else?"

Yoshino: "Nnn.....Ahh....."

After being tickled by the breath, the tip of his tongue touches again, and my whole ear becomes sensitive at once.

I tried to escape but was easily pinned against the wall.

(First, I have to answer him.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1. I didn't think it would be that important....

2. I wasn't thinking straight.(+4/+4)

3. I'll be careful from now on...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yoshino: "-----I wasn't thinking straight. I was naive."

Kurama: "I know, and I'll punish you so that you'll never forget my words."

Yoshino: "No....ah...."

A biting kiss on my neck makes my heart skip a beat.

Yoshino: "What are you thinking....in a place like this.......?"

I glared at Kurama bitterly, but.....

Kurama: "You're the only one screaming here or do you want me to shut that mouth of yours?"

Yoshino: ".......Nn......."

I shook my head desperately to indicate 'No.'

Kurama: "Then, endure it all the way."

My bewildered face wavers in the red eyes that have a fierce glint of fascination.

Kurama: "....your wrists are red. Did one of those men grab you here?"

Yoshino: "....Ah....."

Kurama took my hand and gently pressed his lips against it.

Kurama: "I'll remind you again and again. I'm the only one in the world who has the right to touch you and destroy you."

His lips and tongue traced the soft skin on the inside of my arm.

Yoshino: "Kura...ma....this....embarrassing...."

Kurama: "Then close your eyes."

(Even if I did that....)

I know there is nothing I can do about it, but my body obeys Kurama's words.

Kurama: "You're more obedient than ever. You have my praise."

Yoshino: "...........Nn..."

With a satisfied laugh, something warm falls on top of my forehead.

(Again...)

I open my eyes to the touch of a gentle kiss, just like the one he gave in my room and also in the garden....

Kurama: "I told you to close your eyes. Do you want to be punished that much?"

Yoshino: "No...."

(.....Why can't I take my eyes off Kurama when I'm being treated so badly?)

Kurama: "Yoshino."

A quiet whisper was dropped within the touching distance.

Kurama: "If you admit out loud that you're my toy, I'll stop."

-------Part 4-------

Kurama: "If you admit out loud that you're my toy, I'll stop."

Yoshino: "Eh...."

Kurama: "Forget about the war, forget all your relations with others and just beg me to love you and play with you."

Yoshino: "I won't say that."

Kurama: "I'm sure you will."

He should be punishing me like usual, but Kurama's lips twisted in a somewhat unhappy way.

Kurama: "Your pitying insistence on discipline will not allow you to fall into my hands, forgetting those of the Shogunate."

(Why do you make such a face when you're in the habit of playing with me and seeing through my heart....?)

Suddenly my body is released from the hold it had been in.

Yoshino: "Ah....."

I lost my strength and sank onto the floor.

Kurama crouched down in front of me and looked at me.

Kurama: "But you know what, Yoshino. Whether you want to be or not, you're a good toy for me."

Yoshino: "I....won't....."

(----I HATE toys!!)

I grabbed his hand with an impulse.

Kurama: "!!!"

Yoichi: "Oiii, Kurama? Are you in there?"

As if to break the stifling air, a relaxed voice came from outside the room.

(That must be Yoichi-san!?)

Kurama: ".....What?"

An annoyed Kurama calls out, and sliding door opens.

Yoichi: "Oh, Yoshino. You're still here?"

(But...what was I about to say to Kurama earlier?)

Yoichi: "Are you alright? I know it must have been hard for you..."

Yoshino: "....A-Actually I'm fine!! I can go back to my room BY MYSELF!!!"

I stood up instantly trying to pretend nothing happened.

Kurama: "Hey!"

Yoshino: "YOU TOO Kurama!!"

Yoichi: ".........................."

..........................

After Yoshino runs out of the room.....

Kurama: "What's wrong with her? I've never seen her make that face...."

Yoichi: "Hehh....hahaha..... I don't think any medicine or hot springs will cure that sickness."

Kurama: ".........! Sickness?"

Kurama, who had been looking suspicious, grabbed Yoichi's shoulder vigorously.

Yoichi: "Woah woah woah!! Don't surprise me like that."

Kurama: ".......nn........"

..................

(My face is still hot....)

I was walking in the hallway quickly so that I could avoid anyone and get to my room as soon as possible.....

Yoshino: "Hm? Who is following me?"

Kurama: "Wait."

---------Part 5--------

Yoshino: "Kurama!?"

(Why is he following me?)

I was confused, but Kurama came up to me with great speed and pulled me by my waist.

Yoshino: "Wait, wha----!?"

Kurama: "Come with me."

Yoshino: "Where to?"

Kurama: "Your room is close by, let's go there."

.......................

(Now what's going to happen to me?)

I entered my room thinking that.

Then I was cornered against the wall.

Yoshino: "Kurama, can I ask you what you're doing.....?"

Kurama: "----Are you sick?"

Yoshino: "Huh?"

Kurama sat in front of me, his red eyes flickered, fully determined as to not let me escape.

Kurama: "I knew something about you was strange, but you're a pharmacist right? So don't you know how to cure it?"

Yoshino: "Wait. Who told you I was sick?"

Kurama: "Yoichi did. He said your sickness can't be cured by any medicines or hot springs. I tried to get him to tell me, but he said if I wanted to know the name of the disease, I have to ask you."

Yoshino: "......"

(Wait, maybe....)

The nape of my neck feels hot.

(No way! It couldn't be....)

I desperately told myself that it wouldn't be 'that', over and over again.

-------Maybe it started right when I said I wanted to know more about Kurama.

(He is a scary demon, but when he's in front of something he loves, he's pure.....)

(He hated humans, but respects those he acknowledges, and he has a bond with his Rebel friends, even if Kurama himself is not aware of it.)

(He always keeps his promises and is disciplined in a strange way, and as a result he has helped me many times.)

(Noble and strong....I thought this was just an admiration for my enemy Kurama.)

But on the other hand, I've always felt uncomfortable with my feelings.

Kurama: "So? Do you have a fever?"

Yoshino: "......Don't touch me."

Kurama: "!!"

Kurama's eyes widened in surprise as I bounced away from his hand.

(If you touch me now, I'm really going to burst with emotion.)

(Without knowing what it is, and without being prepared for anything.)

Kurama: "Then, tell me what's wrong with you. If you're in so much pain that you don't want to be touched, explain it to me in words."

There was an unprecedented urgency in Kurama's eyes, which made my heart ache helplessly.

Yoshino: "Ku....Kurama will never understand!"

Kurama: "What?"

(Even if we weren't enemy, if this is love, it can't be fruitful.)

Yoshino: "Because, you're a demon!"

Kurama: "....!"

(Ah......)

By the time I thought I'd lost it, it was too late.

(I didn't mean to say that...)

Kurama's face was clouded and then he opens his mouth.

Yoshino: "Sorry----"

Kurama(glares): "-----So you've understood me really well."

He slammed his one hand against the wall behind me, blocking my escape.

He then looked down at me as to make me forget everything else.....

Kurama: "Then a demon like me should not hold back from eating your body and soul, right?"

Chapter 18

#ikemen series #ikemen genjiden #ikemen genjiden kurama #ikemen mc #main story translations #otome #cybird #cybird ikemen #cybird otome

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honeybeezx · 4 years ago

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Armor - Oberyn Martell x Reader x Ellaria Sand - Part 3

Author’s Note: Guys, gals, and non-binary pals, I give you more Prince Oberyn. This chapter really focuses on him and reader but I promise we'll get to Ellaria soon :) For now, enjoy our favorite prince!

Summary: Oberyn visits you at King's Landing

Word Count: 4.4K

Warnings: mentions of death

———————————————

“And he was pleased?” Tyrion asked as you both sat in the peaceful library of the palace. You sat in the window sill, Tyrion at a desk not far from you.

“He was.” You confirmed. A little too pleased, but Tyrion didn’t need to know that. “The prince is certainly...passionate. He doesn’t hide much does he?”

“No...it’s an asset for him rather than a weakness. He has no secrets so there is nothing for us to exploit as an advantage over him should we have ever needed one.” Tyrion said, sighing as the wheels of his mind began turning. You could always tell when he was deep in thought. His brow furrowed and he looked somewhat distant. “We do have his passion for revenge to use against him though. He wishes to seek revenge for his sister. If we can direct that revenge towards The Mountain rather than towards my father, we may escape this wedding with all Lannisters in tact.”

“You say that as if it were a good thing.” You snipped. Tyrion eyed you with contempt.

“They are still my family. As often as I think about throwing Cersei and her demon of a son in a dark cell somewhere, they are my blood as well as king and queen regent.” He reminded with a chastising tone.

You gruffed and turned your head to look out onto the city. It was aggravating when he looked at you as if you were a child. You loved Tyrion, but sometimes his intelligence and the fact that he was a bit older annoyed you. “All I’m saying is that your sister and nephew are not the most empathetic of people. They don’t rule, they just seize power. They’re no king and queen...just tiny people wanting to feel big.”

“Your choice of words wounds me.” Tyrion teased.

You rolled your eyes and gave a small chuckle. “You are twice more human than anyone in your family and you know very well that your stature does not diminish that.” You were more scolding him than complimenting him. He knew you better than that. He gave a small chuckle, amused at your annoyance only to annoy you more.

“You are very kind to say so. I wish Cersei had your compassion. It seems nowadays she points out my stature every chance she gets.”

“It’s only because it’s her only weapon against you.” You reminded him.

Tyrion gave a small chuckle. “Let’s pray she doesn’t have one against you. Your little bit of theater upon our arrival has already put you on her bad side-“

“I don’t care what side I’m on.”

“Well you should.” Tyrion retorted. He tensed before taking pause and sighing. The pressure in his shoulders subsided as he calmed himself. “You forget that Cersei is queen regent and her son is a tyrannical king. You are skilled with a bow, but you are only one person. Cersei has an entire army and she will not hesitate to use it if you push too far.”

You were finding that King’s Landing was your least favorite place on earth. Before you could pick fights with whomever you pleased and you could get yourself out of them before anyone could inflicting any harm upon you. Being silent around someone who made your blood boil was proving difficult. How could one city harbor so many people you despised?

Before you could respond, a guard promptly entered the library, looking frantically between the two of you before his eyes settled on Tyrion. “My lord, Prince Oberyn has arrived at the palace and is waiting in the gardens.”

“I should have known he’d visit sooner or later.” Tyrion sighed and got up from his chair. He was about to leave when the guard blocked his path.

“Forgive me my lord, but his request was for the Silver Hawk specifically.”

Your eyes widened in surprise as both men eyed you curiously. “Well don’t look to me! I didn’t invite him in.” You quipped, out of defense. You knew exactly why he was here. He wasn’t going to kill you. No, he’d be too bold to do so right in the king’s palace as a guest to the royal wedding, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t threaten you.

“It seems our little hawk has made a friend.” Tyrion teased, but looked to you for further explanation.

“I have done no such thing.” You huffed as you strapped on your bow and sling of arrows, as if to prove a point. “If I had to guess, he wants me to shoot for him. Apparently, his brother told him of me and now he wants to see if the rumors are true.” You lied. He was here to threaten you, or worse, tell Tyrion about your temper while with him and his paramour in the brothel. He had just scolded you for not taking heed with the queen regent, you didn’t need to hear it again over Prince Oberyn.

“I’m sure that will go over well.” Tyrion laughed. “If you don’t want to show him you don’t have to. But you must decline him politely if that is your decision. Be cordial, but you are not entertainment.”

You smiled at your friend. Sometimes you wondered if anyone else understood you so well. “I suppose I must break it to him gently then. Maybe I’ll offer him a girl as compensation.” You laughed, though you weren’t so sure he wouldn’t hold you to that.

———————————

It was sunny outside, far too sunny for your liking. Your leather armor did not suit the beating sun. You felt beads of sweat down your back, but you ignored it. You weren’t about to meet the man you offended armorless, knowing full well that he kept a dagger on him.

You wondered the gardens a bit, but he was nowhere to be seen. You kept your eyes peeled for a flash of yellow or gold, only to be deceived by the bright flowers that surrounded you as you walked the stone path.

You finally came upon the beautiful pond that marked the middle of the garden. It was captivating, tranquil. Lilly pads with little white flowers blooming on top, and little fish swimming to the top of the water only to sink bellow its depths once more, it was enough to put you at ease, if only for a moment. Not able to resist, you let your hand skim along the surface. The cool of it sent goosebumps on your skin, what you wouldn’t give to dive in, just for a bit.

“It’s beautiful is it not?”

You shot straight up and turned at the sound of the accented voice. Sure enough, Oberyn was behind you, giving a small smile. How long has he been there? Was he watching you this whole time? He approached slowly, hands at his sides, the very picture of calm and confidence. Confident you were, calm you most certainly were not.

“It is.” You agreed, trying to remain composed. “I confess I didn’t know it was here until just now.”

“The palace seems to have many hidden beauties.” He charmed with a grin.

You rolled your eyes, if only to have an excuse to avoid his gaze. “Prince Oberyn I already made it clear I-“

“I’m here to apologize.” He interrupted. His features softened. It amazed you how he could switch between the sultry, arrogant prince you thought him to be to...this. He just seemed like a man, not the prince of Dorne. “Well partially.” He laughed as he looked up to the sky for a moment, before returning to you. “Ellaria and I, we do not hide our desires. You are a beautiful woman, we do not take such beauty for granted.” He explained, his brown eyes meeting yours.

Even then you still didn’t understand.

“But,” he continued, “we...disrespected you when it was not our intention, and for that, I give my sincerest apologies.”

Part of your job was to detect liars, and although you suspected Oberyn could be a very good one, you were confident you could tell when he was being deceptive. But now...Well...You figured it would be hard for a man who was prideful and arrogant by nature to feign sincere regret. But there was no give, no sign of false pretense or acting.

You turned away from him, looking out into the water to clear your thoughts before replying. His gaze did not make it easy.

“Perhaps,” you began hesitantly, “I should not have threatened you before leaving. But I am not a prize to be wanted Prince Oberyn. I’m a soldier, and I’ve worked hard to be treated as such.”

Oberyn nodded and looked out into the water, his brows furrowed. You could tell he was thinking deeply about something, but you couldn’t tell what occupied his thoughts. “Men do not take you seriously because you are a woman?”

You eyed him in confusion. “Does that surprise you?”

“We do not define people by their gender in Dorne.” Oberyn stated simply. “Women are treated equally, they are no less capable than any man. A person is defined by their character regardless of gender. Though I should not be surprised. Women are mistreated in many places, and each time I encounter it, it breaks my heart. I think of my girls, and my sister, Ellia.”

“You have daughters?” You asked, surprised .

Oberyn smiled fondly. “I have eight daughters.”

“Eight daughters?!” You quipped before forcing your mouth shut again. Your mind raced, trying to imagine Oberyn with one daughter, but eight?! “How you and Ellaria manage to leave Dorne at all with eight daughters is beyond me.”

“They are all strong, fiercely independent women, but I worry about them. The thought of something happening to them fills me with dread. The acts of men are far too often evil, especially when women are concerned.” This particularly bothered him, and for some reason, it surprised you. You took him as the sort of man who only used women for pleasure, after all, that is what brothels were for. But the way he spoke of his children...well...no one could fake that level of sincerity, of gentleness. “They are safe in Dorne, but they all have a desire for adventure, to see lands beyond their own. I curse myself for giving them that particular trait.” He laughed.

You were stunned. Life in Dorned seemed so far removed from the life you’ve known. You had to fight for respect, to be taken seriously. Anyone who looked down on you as some little girl could be quickly silenced with a good aim and a sharp arrow. In Dorne, it seemed as if it were just given so long as the person were of good character. It seemed so simple yet imagining having such an attitude was difficult.

Not only that, but you were shocked to find that the prince seemed to agree with his land’s attitudes. It was only yesterday you thought of him as a prick who only saw women as objects of pleasure only to find that he was suddenly very open-minded and accepting.

It seemed far too good to be true.

“You are lucky to live in such a land, and your brother is wise to rule with such upstanding morals. It seems like a lovely place.” You complimented, trying your best to imagine Dorne.

“You’ve never been?” Oberyn asked curiously before you shook your head in reply. “You would like it. It is the very opposite from the North. It is warm, but lush and green. It is vibrant and warm, much like its people. Though I think you may faint from the heat with all your armor.” He teased.

Once again you rolled your eyes. “My armor protects me, especially here. No one knows who is a friend and who is a foe in this city, it’s maddening.”

“Which is partially why I am here,” Oberyn explained, looking back over to you. “Ellaria and I....we at least want to offer friendship. King’s Landing is a dangerous city, everyone needs allies. I saw you when you arrived that day, in the palace. I thought you were going to take off Cersei’s head.” He chuckled, only earning him another glare. “I do not mock you.” He clarified, still keeping a light tone. “I found it...Refreshing to see someone talk to Cersei like the queen regent she is not.”

He made it very clear that he wants to kill any Lannister that he sets his sights on.

Tyrion’s words echoed in your head and you remember the story of his sister. You didn’t dare bring it up. Not only was it none of your business, but the less he knew you knew, the better. This was the Game of Thrones, and you were a spy in the middle of it all. Friendship was not a thing you could afford, but it could be a thing you could fake.

“I’m a friend to anyone who hates the Lannisters.” You sneered while you lied right to his face. “I am loyal to Tyrion because he is nothing like his family, but that is as far as my loyalties extend. The rest of the Lannisters are terrible people who will, at least one day, pay for their crimes.”

“I’m glad we share the same feelings towards them. The Lannisters took my sister and her dear children from me and my family. I did not come here for some boy-king’s wedding.” And suddenly the charm the prince once had melted so smoothly into a fiery lust for revenge, a fire fueled by his hate for the Lannisters.

It was like looking into a mirror to see the person you once were.

“You intend on killing one of the Lannisters.” Your voice was barely a whisper. You turned to him and his eyes met yours. It scared you to see how much hate there was in them. “Seeking revenge...it won’t bring you the satisfaction you think it will, Prince Oberyn.” You warned. You weren’t sure why you cared. He was a prince who could do as he pleased. If he had a death wish that was on him, but somehow you could not shake the overwhelming sense of dread and horror at the very thought of the handsome prince’s blood being spilled.

“And you know this how?”

Too close.

“Come now, Prince Oberyn. We only just formed a truce, can’t reveal all my secrets just yet.” It was a tease laced with a warning. You weren’t stupid. Getting you to open up only to use it to betray you later, it was the oldest trick in the book. You didn’t even tell Tyrion anything about yourself for ages, and you liked Tyrion. As far as you were concerned, the Red Viper was still a threat. In another life, you could maybe appreciate Oberyn’s charm and boldness, but with all the tension surrounding the tyrannical king’s wedding, there was no time for making true friends.

Not that you couldn’t fake it, for Tyrion’s sake. Oberyn was just a pawn in this game as well, a chess piece for Tyrion to have handy when the moment was right. But if he was going to attempt the murder of a Lannister, all that would be lost. It was now you wished Tyrion was here. You had a silver tongue, but Tyrion was much better at devising plans than you were. This was his game, not yours.

Oberyn laughed and beamed at you.

It’s like the warmth of the sun settles in his chest.

“You are very wise for so young a person.”

“Not as young as you think.” You retorted sharply.

“I meant no offense.” He found himself repeating this sentence the more time he spent with you. “It was a compliment, something you clearly are not used to receiving.”

“I don’t need compliments, I know my worth.”

Oberyn turned so his whole body was facing you. You held your ground, you would not break under his gaze again. “And what if people simply wish to compliment you?”

His voice was like honey. You were suddenly conscious of your chest heavily rising and falling, aware of how close the two of you were. There was still a respectable distance between the two of you, but if felt like every slight movement was a pull towards him. You felt like a fly being lured to a spider’s web. And you thought the size of the palace made you feel small.

“Then they are wasting their breath.” You pulled yourself out of it. Now it was you who hadn’t meant to be offensive. Oberyn didn’t seem offended, he only looked at you as if you were life’s greatest mystery. You could hardly blame him, you had given him a similar look before. “I only mean that words are precious and powerful things. People should use them wisely, in the right moments, at the right times. I don’t need compliments, so you don’t have to pay me any.”

Oberyn smiled and shook his head once again. It seemed like every word you said left him deeper and deeper in thought. “And you are the decider of when is the right time and when is not?” He refuted, challenging you.

And that flash of anger you felt in the brothel came back and settled in your chest, but you buried it. You were prepared now, you wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. “I should be. I’m very rarely wrong after all”

Oberyn erupted into a hearty laugh, and even you had to crack a small smile.

“The Silver Hawk has a sense of humor! I was beginning to wonder if you were capable of smiling.” He teased.

You rolled your eyes, but there was still a small grin on your face. “Don’t get used to it.”

But Oberyn was still smiling.

Good, let him think he’s gotten my guard down.

“You are a wonder, Silver Hawk of the North. I am glad our paths have crossed, though I wish it were not under these circumstances. If Tyrion should ever relieve you of your services, even temporarily, you must come to Dorne. You would be a most welcome guest and I know my daughters would be delighted to meet someone of your skill. They are trained warriors themselves, but none of them are archers. I’m sure they would love the lessons if you were willing.”

It was a pretty thought. Traveling more, exploring Dorne, even meeting his daughters intrigued you. But it was only that, a pretty thought. “Seeing Dorne sounds...intriguing. I always try envisioning your land but I’m afraid I lack such imagination. As for your girls, I would be delighted to meet such warriors. But I am loyal to Tyrion. He pays me well and I’ve seen more of Westeros in the time I’ve been in his service than I’ve seen in my lifetime prior to being in his service. And as a Lannister, he’ll always need protection...his family has too many enemies.” You explained. That, and very deep down, you would miss him and the rest of your crew too much.

“But you are only a person. Every person longs for freedom, no?” He asked, surprised by your answer.

“I am free.” You replied more sharply than you intended. You took a deep breath and tried calming yourself. But you were not some loyal dog. You knew that Tyrion would let you leave the moment you asked him. You wanted to stay.

But Oberyn didn’t need something to use against you.

“Tyrion doesn’t keep me chained. If he did, he wouldn’t have let me speak to you so freely. I can do as I please as long as I do not neglect my responsibility and duty to protect and help him.”

“So you are free when you are not needed?”

“When I am temporarily not needed.” You retorted but calmed yourself before you could feel the flutter of anger you were used to feeling in your chest when you talked to the prince. You weren’t sure he actually meant to insult you anyhow, he was just good at doing it naturally. “With all your respect, I don’t expect you to understand. You are a prince. I don’t imagine you’ve had to fight to live or survive. You fight for your country which is honorable. We just...fight for different reasons.”

Oberyn began to walk alongside the pond. You followed suit. You’d been looking for an excuse to explore the gardens anyways. He smiled as he took in the surroundings. “I admire that, your reason is honorable as well. You fight for yourself, you honor yourself. We may not be so different as I thought. I fight for my family, but I honor myself in a much different way. To you, Ellaria and I’s advances were offensive, and again we apologize, but to us, we are simply honoring ourselves by being completely ourselves. We do not shy from our desires, life is too short to not pursue the things you want...even if things may not always go the way you think they might.” Oberyn chuckled, giving you a small nudge. You let out another small chuckle.

He wasn’t so bad.

Still a threat, but not so bad.

“I suppose there is some honor in that.” You relented. “I would only suggest taking into account who you are talking to Prince Oberyn. This is King’s Landing. Making enemies here is as easy as breathing. You almost made one this yesterday.” You joked.

“I do not care about making enemies and I care less about what people might think...until today.” He grinned at you, and your reaction was to instantly turn away. No one has ever looked at you like that. There was a gentle fondness to him that blended far too well with his confidence. You had heard only a few stories that told of his skill on the battlefield, but there was a far greater danger in his tongue than his sword.

What we’re you to say to that? He seemed to care less about what even Tyrion, the right hand of the king thought of him.

“Tell me something Prince Oberyn, and speak candidly. Why are you so interested in me? You have seen woman warriors before, your own daughters even. I have shown you nothing of my skill and even less of who I am until today. So why?” You asked before you were even sure you wanted to know the answer.

“Because you are beautiful.”

Your jaw set. Was that really it?

“And, though you are not as forward as Ellaria or I, you have the same passion, that little spark in your chest. Why do you think our sigil is a sun?” He smirked, proud of his family, his name, and his city. If you were highborn and looked like him you imagined you would have the same gusto.

"It’s alluring and I want to more. Not many people have the pleasure of meeting you. You either steal their breath with your legendary arrows or you are guarding the Little Lion. We were curious about what lies beneath your armor.”

You wanted to scream, maybe even punch him, but you remained unmoving. So this was the game they were playing. Break the Silver Hawk to get to the Lannisters. What did he take you for? A nieve girl pining for her first love?

“But-“ he continued, “the more I speak with you the more confused I am. You are a mystery, Silver Hawk, and that is your strength.”

You took notes of that. Of all things, you would believe that to be true. When you really thought about his words, you could understand what he meant. If no one knew anything about you no one would have a way to hurt you.

“And you embrace your flaws, and that is your strength.” You noted. There was an understanding between you two, an odd connection despite differences.

“Prince Oberyn.” That voice was far too familiar to you. You turned to see the golden-haired queen regent, somehow glaring at both you and the prince at the same time. “Welcome to King’s Landing. I apologize for not greeting you sooner, looks like someone beat me to it.” The queen regent flashed one of her signature fake smiles your way.

“I asked for The Silver Hawk. If I wanted you I would have asked for you.” Oberyn retorted.

Maybe you liked him more than you thought. If you couldn’t talk back to the queen, you were glad Oberyn could in your place.

The queen remained composed, but you and Oberyn were not stupid. There was rage under the calm demeanor. If there was one thing you understood about the queen regent, it was that.

“Though we welcome you to King’s Landing Prince Oberyn, in the future, the King and I will be made aware of your visits.” She addressed the prince, but glared at you.

“With all your respect,” you spat, meaning anything but, “I follow orders from the hand of the king. And I do believe Prince Oberyn made it clear that his only intention was conversing with me.”

“You have nothing to fear today, Queen Cersei.” Oberyn added.

Today...you suppressed a grin at that.

“Prince Oberyn, since you are here you must let me show you around the palace. It’s been ages since anyone from the Martell family has visited and the grounds truly are exquisite.”

Oberyn said nothing, but looked to you.

Is he asking for my permission?

“I must return to Tyrion. No doubt he’s going on about how he can’t do anything without me.” You joked, earning a small smiled from the prince. You gave a small nod towards your new companion and an even smaller one to the queen.

You turned to leave, but Oberyn’s hand clasped around your wrist. Your wild, shocked eyes met his calm, collected ones. The prince placed a small, chaste kiss to your knuckles, looking at you and grinning the entire time.

Right in front of the queen.

“Until we meet again, Silver Hawk.”

Panicked, you turned away quickly and made a beeline back to Tyrion

It was sure to go over well the next time you were burdened with the company of the queen regent.

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#armor #oberyn x reader #oberyn x you x ellaria #oberyn x reader x ellaria #oberyn martell #ellaria sand #game of thrones #game of thrones fic #got #pedro pascal #prince oberyn #oberyn martell imagine

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linkspooky · 5 years ago

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Toga Himiko’s Normal Life

Himiko looks like the most straight forward case of what pop culutre considers to be a classical sociopath / psychopath in My Hero Acadmia. Shigaraki, Dabi, Hawks were all groomed to become the way they were, but Himiko possessed a natural inclination towards blood and violence from the start. She seesm to be a natural born cold blooded killer, however in this meta I’ll argue that while Toga seems like the flip-side of a normal, good person like Uraraka, she’s actually just a normal girl herself.

1. Character Origins

Volume sixteen of My Hero Academia had an official illustration included as an extra that shows the characters Twice and Himiko drawn together in an illusion to a famous Joker and Harley Quinn illustration.

Now, I’m not going so far as to claim Himiko was based off of Harley Quinn, but one the league of villains and characters like Twice (and ReDestro) have made similiar references to the Joker before that especially with the quote “All it takes is one bad day”. There’s also enough similarities betweeen the two characters, they’re both the only female members of a crime syndicate that is mostly men, and dominated by men. Their backstories mirror each other, they were both relatively sane, normal, girls, until suddenly they cracked one day and became a total inversion of their previous presonality. There are enough similarities that I could use Harley as an example to explain a few of the important ideas present in Toga’s character.

They are also both female characters who are written with love as the central concept of their characters. Harley’s origin as originally depicted in the comic and episode for the Batman the Animated Series “Mad Love” goes as follows: Harleen Quinzell was a psychiatrist working at Arkham. Eventualy she came to sympathize with one of her patients which triggered a transformation in her from well meaning doctor, to love-sick sycophant of the joker who broke him out of prison.

A lot of Batman Villains have origins like this. The most comparable one is Harvey Dent. Proescutors, Doctors, we are told the people who hold these jobs are good and righteous people. Even Harley herself started out as someone who just sympathized with a patient too much. However, somehow they become flipped into the exact opposite versions of themselves. They go mad for lack of a better words. Harvey Dent who was once a symbol of justice, becomes nothing more than a murderer, and Harley Quinn goes from healer to the sidekick of a mad clown willing to destroy everything in the name of love.

The question, asked in both Himiko and Harley’s stories is how can good people flip like this?

Most people have a black and white view of these issues: good people are only capable of good actions, and bad people are capable of bad actions. It’s hard to swallow the fact that any normal person has the capacity to cause so much harm inside of them.

We see similiar remarks in the background of Himiko’s story. Himiko comes from a good upper class family, she went to what was most likely a good school, she was always smiling and surrounded by friends. Everyone who comments on her sudden transformation reacts in a similiar way. “She was aways so cheerful and well-behaved, I still find it hard to believe.” She was always such a good girl, and good people don’t do those things.

Normal people, good people, don’t have the capacity to do bad. That’s what makes the transformations so shocking. Therapists/Doctors are supposed to heal, Prosecutors are supposed to be just. And now we return to our old friend Jung.

The story of Harleen Quinzell and Harley Quinn. The story of Himiko Toga the happy middle school girl and Himiko Toga the serial killer is a tale told over and over again, it’s just usually told with male protagonists instead of female ones. It’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) is a late-Victorian variation on ideas first raised in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818). Stevenson’s monster, however, is not artificially created from stitched-together body parts, but rather emerges fully formed from the dark side of the human personality. In the story Dr Jekyll, an admired member of the professional Victorian middle-classes, conducts a series of scientific experiments which unleash from his own psyche the ‘bestial’ and ‘ape-like’ Mr Hyde (ch. 10). Gothic fiction had examined the idea of the sinister alter ego or double before on many occasions but Stevenson’s genius with Jekyll and Hyde was to show the dual nature not only of one man but also of society in general.

“Man is not one, but truly two.”

Robert Louis Stevenson

Both cases are tales are transformation, of the monster coming from within. Himiko transforms from middle school girl into serial killer. Harleen Quinzell transforms into Harley Quinn. Dr. Jekyll becomes Mr. Hyde. We witness a transformation into a monster that seems the antithesis of everything that person was boefre, but was inside of them all along this works because of the jungian idea of the shadow.

The shadow is the unconscious side of personality. The shadow is what exists but what we do not acknowledge. If our behavior during everyday life, choosing to smile, choosing to talk to people, choosing to use our manners is a mask then the shadow is the face beyond the mask. The conscious personality conceals, the shadow reveals. It’s the difference betewen who we are and who we choose to be. The shadow isn’t necessarily negative however. The shadow is just the repressed side of our personalities, it’s what we try to hide.

The shadow plays a role in Harleen’s transformation. While it’s present in Mad Love as well, a recent miniseries ‘Harleen’ really dives into the Jungian symbolism. There’s even several similarities in common with Himiko’s story, for example there’s a scene where Harleen is shown watching the bat man beat up joker and notice how everyone is cheering despite the fact that it’s violent.

Himiko’s interest in a boy is sparked by watching him get into a fight while everybody else is cheering for him.

The cover page depicts the change between Quinn and Quinnzel as a crumbling mask, which is the exact same imagery used for Himiko.

When she enters Arkham she chooses to depict Harley Quinn’s silhouette in Harleen’s shadow. Once again implying that the transformation is not so sudden and jarring as it seems, that Harley Quinn has always been there and is a part of her psychology the same way Mr. Hyde is inside Dr. Jekyll.

The comic even points it out. Harleen, and also by extension Harvey Dent are people who claim to be “good, righteous people’ and yet both of them end up transforming into murderers. Two-face’s name is literally two-face.

There’s also one particularly Jungian sequence in the middle of the conflict. She dreams (dreams are unconscious and therefore the realm of the shadow in Jung’s theories) about the city of gotham as a place inhabited with citizens who are monsters wearing the faces of human beings.

The idea is consistent throughout that Harleen is not really a ‘good person’ she’s merely repressed. She has had this capacity to be violent inside of her, this selfishness, all of these dark desires carried with her all along but rather than deal with them in any healthy way she repressed them until repressing them is no longer an option. Harvey Dent’s face gets half burned off, Harley’s skinn gets bleached by chemicals, the monsterous features inside of them are now worn on their faces and they have to wear their ugliness on the outside rather than the inside. They are now expressing every single thing they have repressed. However, the suggestion in both stories is that these are not special cases, that Gotham is such a repressed society that everyone is repressing the things they don’t like about themselves in that way. Harley fell in mad love sure, but love was just the reason, just the trigger, the truth is those feelings always lurked inside of her and she had no healthy way of dealing with them before that point.

That is the shadow, it’s everything you repress but it never disappears. If you ignore it, it takes on a life of its own. In some cases, like Harley’s you basically become your own shadow. Harley is the flipped upside down version of Harleen Quinzel, now her inner demons are what are expressed on the surface (desperation to be loved, violence, etc.) while her ‘normal’ self is hidden under a mask of insanity. That’s in fact how she ends the comic, Harley qalking around while Harley is trapped on the other side of the mirror because they have basically traded places. Now Mr. Hyde is walking around, while Dr. Jekyll is hidden personality. But it’s important to remember it’s not something like a split personality, Harleen Quinzell and Harley Quinn were always two sides of the same person. Even when she starts expressing her ‘bad’ traits, the good traits don’t go away. They’re just hidden underneath the surface the way the repressed bad traits used to be. Because you’re not good or bad, you’re not one side or the other. You’re both at the same time. Man is not one, but truly two.

So the complexity in Himiko comes from understanding that she’s BOTH a normal girl, and also a blood crazy yandere psycho.

2. A Normal Girl - Uraraka Ochaco

Uraraka is a pretty standard shonen heroine. She’s a cheerful girl. She’s a supportive friend. She’s the embodiment of what you’d call a good, kind, person and doesn’t seem to be any more complex than that. She lacks say the drive to be a hero that Midoriya does, the superiority complex that Bakugo has, the emotional issues that Todoroki has. She seems to always be agreeable and in a cheerful mood.

If you look just a little bit closer though she always seems to be walking on eggshells when she’s around others. She doesn’t want to join Deku and the others to try to save Bakugo from the heroes because, it might hurt Bakugo’s feelings.

When she loses in the hero tournament, she apologizes to her parents crying not because she feels bad that she lost, but she feels like she failed them. Like it was her job to win and bring money home. However, when Deku comes to check on her in the room she’s already completely hidden her tears.

Going into her backstory we learn that Uraraka is walking on eggshells around everybody due to her own parents, that she’s spent her life trying to be as small of a burden on them as possible because she could see the tired looks on their faces. She’s a child who felt guilty that her parents had to take care of her.

So, for Uraraka her entire life is devoted to making herself seem as small and inconsequential as possible. Other people’s needs will always trump hers. Other people will always have more noble motivations for becoming a hero than she has. Other people’s emotions will always be louder and take priority over hers. Uraraka sees her own emotions and needs as mere trifles that get in the way, and so she always shuts them down. We see Uraraka as a version of Himiko, a high school girl who always appears to be cheerful and well-behaved but is merely repressed.

Uraraka repeats the same unhealthy behavior as Himiko once did. Which is why Uraraka’s first meeting with Himiko goes with Himiko getting such a cold read on her.

It’s helpful to view Himiko as the flipped version of Uraraka. Uraraka hides everything that’s pleasant about her on the inside, and on the outside appears like a perfectly selfless girl. Himiko is someone who hides her good qualities and instead wears the mask of a bloodthirsty psycho on the outside. While Uraraka lives by denying her selfish desires, Himiko always chases after them and is true to them.

Traits that are repressed in Uraraka, are expressed in Himiko. Especially traits that society sees as bad in girls, like selfishness, being emotional, etc..

The way Himiko acts is especially jarring because she seems convinced she’s a normal person. She’s in her own little world, making friends, getting along with other people, it’s just her friendship just happens to involve stabbing.

Himiko appears to be a girl psychotically obsessed with blood and nothing else. A girl who only cares about killing other people and chopping them up to bits. When she expresses the feelings deep inside of herself, literally no one can make heads or tails of what she’s saying, she doesn’t sound like a girl just a bloodthirsty monster.

While Uraraka seems like she has nothing in common with what is essentially a weird serial killer, we learn that the exact behavior that Uraraka’s creation is what led to Himiko’s current state of mind.

The difference between them is not that Uraraka is a person of higher moral character, or a better person, but rather of circumstances between the two of them. It’s not the choices they made but rather things they were born into and couldn’t control. Uraraka has parents that accept her even when she fails and encourage her.

Toga had parents that abused their daughter, and then abandoned her.

Uraraka chose to repress herself, while Toga was forced to become repressed by her parents. While we don’t know for sure if it was physical abuse it’s at least emotional abuse, and it had to be to an extreme extent to make Himiko snap that hard. The same unhealthy behavior but push to extremes gets extreme results.

3. Normal Girl - Himiko Toga

Himiko did not become the way she is because she was lacking empathy or born with uncontrollable urges for bloodlust, but because of the environment around her that always forced her to repress herself. From the knowledge that her parents would never love her for who she really was. Himiko wasn’t born that way she was a response of what was done to her.

People who don’t really know Himiko always judge her this way, that she’s incapable of understanding other people, that she has no empathy for others. She’s almost literally labelled and dismissed as a one dimmensional yandere trope by the people surrounding her.

However, Himiko is in fact always doing the opposite. She’s constantly trying to empathize with others. Her maddened way of talking to both Tsuyu and Uraraka in her character introduction is exactly that, her trying to feel that kind of connection.

Himiko’s fascination for Uraraka is a desire for empathy and understanding. One that you could say even surpasses some characters on the hero’s side, because she’s willing to try to understand the world’s of people who are nothing like her. Himiko’s next most significant action in the manga is to take Camie’s place and go after the kids. While she does fight against them she’s not overly violent, just curious. Deku even reaffirms some of Himiko’s primary traits.

Himiko is always talking a lot and trying to explain her way of thinking to other people, because she wants them to understand her. However, because she’s bad at communicating this tends to come off as babble and a lot of people completely dismiss what she says and don’t attempt to listen.

She expresses two things one a desire to know Deku on a deeper level, immediately asking him very personal, and sometimes very downright invasive question and two she also notices the closeness that Deku and Uraraka have for one another.

Once again this is a repeating theme for the league. Himiko repeats the same desire that Twice has, to become a person who is trusted in the same way.

Once again it’s important to remember that Himiko is just the flipped version of a normal girl. If most people hide their bloodlust and show their good sides, Himiko hides her desire to be trusted and to empathize with other people underneath her bloodthirsty urges she shows on the surface. She positions herself as a femme fatalle, but she’s actually just a girl who’s trying to understand why other people are different then her, and why Deku and Uraraka can have a relationship mutually founded on trust when she can’t.

Himiko’s past was so repressed she never formed real relationships with people. Not only that she assumes that nobody will want the real her, because the moment she flipped and the real her was exposed everybody in her life abandoned her and she had to run away.

After her brush with Deku and Uraraka we see Himiko start to be trusted by her comrades and a marked transformation takes place in her.

We see shades of the old Himiko. A selfish girl who only exists to fulfill her whims. However, we’re shown Himiko is capable of empathizing because not only do Shigaraki’s words get through to her.

Himiko is also for the first time able to reach the emotions of another person. Remember when Himiko tries to explain how she’s feeling, she babbles, and babbles and nobody listens. However that changes and for the first time, not only does Himiko pick up exactly on what’s troubling Twice, she also comforts him the way he needs to be comforted. She tells him that yes it might be his fault that Magne died, but she sees that he’s doing his best to make up for it and she gently encourages him.

Remember how important this is for Twice. The world has never forgiven Jin for his mistakes. He hit the wrong guy on accident, while obeying the law, and lost both his job and his home. He started stealing to make ends meet, and as a result he lost his mind. When he makes a mistake it always blows up in his face but this time, Himiko notices that she’s panicking and comforts him telling him it’s okay he’s made this mistake and he can still work hard to fix it.

Not only that but she notices what the problem was with Jin, she was able to notice the symptoms of his psychotic breakdown and rather than dismiss it as just Twice being crazy was able to help him in real tangible ways by wrapping her hanky around him and covering him up like he asked. Uraraka has a very surface level kindness, she’s kind but only by walking around on eggshells with everyone. Himiko is able to see through people, but uses that to comfort people on a deeper level.

The “Himiko just can’t control herself because of her quirk” narrative is something that Himiko rejects herself. Because that’s not what Himiko wants. Himiko doesn’t want to be special or different from other people.

Himiko sees herself as normal, and what she desires to be understand and be understood by other people. She doesn’t like Curious’ narrative for her because it made her out to be a freak or someone special when Himiko is trying her best to get others to understand her as a normal girl. Himiko can’t repress herself anymore, she can’t become normal the way her parents taught her too so not permanently broken, and forced to always express herself she’s trying some other way.

What she wants isn’t to hurt other people, not really though. Those thoughts just turn violence, because Himiko is herself a person who’s endured a lot of violence. Himiko is basically a child that’s been on her own living on the streets and surviving for years, with all the dangers that entails, and also people who can shoot lasers and punch things really hard chasing after her.

The more she’s isolated and on the run, the more violence she endures, the more violent and unhinged her thoughts become. The more she’s exposed to people who accept her for who she is, the more she’s trusted by those people, the more empathic and sensitive Himiko becomes instead. Himiko’s desire isn’t violence, when she’s pushed to her utter limit she says what she wants is to become a girl like Uraraka who is just loved and trusted by others for who she is.

And I genuinely believe at the core of Himiko’s character this empathic girl exists. Himiko becoming violent and unrepressed doesn’t mean her empathy disappears. The complexity from Himiko is that she’s both the knife wielding psycho and the normal girl who just wants to have friends at the same time. If behind every normal person there’s a monster lurking is true then the opposite is true as well, behind every monster there’s a normal person.

This is an idea expressed by Twice again. One of the villains that Hawks dismissed as a bad person, was capable of showing him compassion and gentleness even when he screwed up. Toga was capable of empathy for Twice besides the use he had for others. Toga herself is shown to be capable of more empathy than Hawks, who is one of the most selfless characters in the series, and who is convinced his actions are always done in order to save others.

However we see their treatment of Twice is so drastically different. Hawks treats Twice in a selfish way refusing to listen to what Twice wants, and only ever used Twice as a tool to exploit. Twice himself thinks that now that he’s no longer useful, Himiko won’t be kind to him anymore however we see the opposite.

Twice admits to Toga that he’s the reason that everyone is in danger right now and he completely failed, and he’s not going to come save them. He admits that he’s useless and Twice himself said Toga wouldn’t be kind to him anymore. However in that moment, Himiko ignores the fact that her life is literally in danger and everything is going to hell around her to comfort Twice one final time and tell him the words he needs to hear.

It’s literally the single most empathic moment of the manga, and it’s in direct contrast to Hawks’ behavior. A hero as devoted to saving other people as Hawks, who genuinely likes Twice as a friend doesn’t show him any empathy at all and even stabs him as the back. A psycho like Toga puts her own feelings aside and notices Twice’s feelings, and gives him comfort and thanks him in his final moment because to her Twice has value as a person beyond what his use is. That Himiko is capable of this kindness, but equally capable of her monstrous actions earlier in the series is what makes her human. Her kindness doesn’t make her any less mosntrous, and her monstrous qualities don’t make her kindness go away she’s both at once, rather than either or. That’s where the complexity comes in.

Toga is a very human character precisely because we see her at her most monstrous, and we see that girl slowly relearn how to express the kindness that’s always been inside of her in healthier non-stabby way. A normal girl who learned how to be a monster to protect herself. A monster who is slowly relearning to be a normal girl.

#himiko toga #jin bubaigawara #league of villains #league of villains meta #league of villains friendship #mha meta #my hero academia #my hero academia meta #my hero academia villains

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megashadowdragon · 3 years ago

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In the upcoming The Winds of Winter many characters we've come to know and love are going to intersect with each other. Their personalities and backstories are going to collide and the result of the concoction is going to vary from character to character.

In this thread, I'm going to touch on the interactions between two individuals that, weirdly enough, don't seem to get a lot of attention from the fandom in regards to how a potential interaction between the two might go down.

These two being Tyrion Lannister and Victarion Greyjoy.

On examination, there couldn't be two characters more different than each other. In a way, they're almost perfect foils to each other. Before I get into any foreshadowing indicated in the text of the books, I think it be best if I laid down some of these differences to give you guys an idea:

Tyrion has a sharp mind and uses this to great effect in understanding people's motivations and the politics surrounding them. Victarion is described as a "dullard" and "dumb as a stump" by GRRM himself, with not much knowledge or interest in the ways of greater politics.

Tyrion uses his wit to make jokes to entertain himself and those around him. Victarion heavily dislikes humor and it's even indicated in the text that he "mistrusts laughter".

Tyrion is a small, stunted dwarf with not much in the way of physical prowess. Victarion is a tall, muscular man who is a renowned warrior with great strength.

Tyrion regularly dismisses and mocks the idea of gods existing, thinking that all the suffering in the world proves that no gods are looking out for anyone.

If there are gods to listen, they are monstrous gods who torment us for their sport. Who else would make a world like this, so full of bondage, blood, and pain? Who else would shape us as they have? - Tyrion ADWD

Victarion is an extremely devout religious man that believes that the suffering in life is the proof of a god existing.

Life is pain, you fool. There is no joy but in the Drowned God’s watery halls. - The Iron Suitor ADWD

Now, I've listed these differences to give an idea on how these two could easily be connected as foils to each other, but surprisingly there's also some similarities between the two that connects them further:

Both Tyrion and Victarion have murdered former lovers of theirs after they betrayed them by sleeping with a family member. Victarion kills his wife after sleeping with his brother Euron and Tyrion murders Shae after she sleeps with his father Tywin. Both using their own hands to do it. (Tyrion strangling Shae and Victarion beating his wife to death with his fists).

Both were betrayed by their brother and have a desire to seek vengeance against them and destroy them.

Both have met Moqorro at sea and Moqorro has stated prophecies to both of them.

Both have fought and commanded in naval warfare. Both utilising fire in a naval battle (Tyrion with wildfire at the Blackwater and Victarion throwing the first torch onto Tywin's ship at the burning of Lannisport).

Both are seeking out Daenerys to use her for vengeance against their family. Tyrion with his siblings and his father's legacy and Victarion against his brother Euron.

So, now that the differences and similarities between the two characters have been established, I'll move onto what an interaction between these two might entail and what purpose it would serve.

The Monkey Demon

“We have become swollen, bloated, foul. Brother couples with sister in the bed of kings, and the fruit of their incest capers in his palace to the piping of a twisted little monkey demon.” A preacher at King's Landing ACOK.

“The dwarf, the evil counselor, the twisted little monkey demon. I’m all that stands between them and chaos.” - Tyrion ACOK

Tyrion Lannister, the monkey demon. Once tried to save a city and gain the people's love, found none and was promptly punted into a cell. Tried to work in his family interests, even if it meant defending the crown of a worm-lipped tyrant born out of incest, was turned on and blamed for the tyrant's downfall. Tried to find love in the arms of a whore and found out whores don't play fair (or where they go). All attempts, all that effort to seek validation had blown up in his face.

So, what's left?

The game of thrones, of course. You know, the very game that produces complete sociopaths like Varys and Petyr Baelish. With every other avenue denied to him, what else would be left for our favourite pampered lil shit Tyrion Lannister?

A man who's been denied everything and who has now found a re-newed purpose in life through a game of manipulation and deception. An individual with obligations no longer holding him down. No family to support, no love from the masses to be gained, nothing. All that's left is to engage in a game where self-gratification can be bought and the chance to tear down the old ghosts that persistently haunt him.

I won't engage too much into the finer details of Tyrion's character arc, but I highly recommend reading this excellent essay meereeneseblot . wordpress . com/2013/11/22/paying-his-debts-part-i-tyrion-in-kings-landing/ to better understand where Tyrion's arc will be going into TWOW.

So, our favourite dwarf finds himself traveling (waddling) to Meeren, hoping to seek the favour of the beautiful Queen Daenaerys Targaryen. Under siege with dubious allies and dragons you want to use to burn down your family's legacy, but they're too busy swarming the air like horny mosquitos...

But.... what's this? Ironborn swarming ashore? What the fuc-... With a complete donkey-brain of a captain leading them and who's just ready to be manipulated, you say? AND he wants to use Daenarys for his own ends too?

Muy bueno.

Now, to get to the point of the essay.

The Iron Captain

The Drowned God had not shaped Victarion Greyjoy to fight with words at kingsmoots, nor struggle against furtive sneaking foes in endless bogs. This was why he had been put on earth; to stand steel-clad with an axe red and dripping in his hand, dealing death with every blow. - The Reaver AFFC

So, I've showcased that Victarion Greyjoy's character is not one to dabble in higher politics or any other high-minded thinking. He's a man bred for splitting an enemy's skull in two with his axe, not someone trying to worm his way into people's confidences with false charm to achieve their own ends. Unfortunately for him, he's about to come across somebody who is.

A monkey on the mast above howled derision, almost as if it could taste his frustration. Filthy, noisy beast. He could send a man up after it, but the monkeys seemed to like that game and had proved themselves more agile than his crew. The howls rang in his ears, though, and made the throbbing in his hand seem worse. - The Iron Suitor ADWD

The moniker that's been labelled for Tyrion of "Monkey demon" earlier in ACOK has made a comeback by GRRM in Victarion's ADWD chapters to foreshadow their relationship going into TWOW. And what that relationship will entail, I think I can safely say, will not be a positive one. Not for Victarion anyways.

The monkeys, though … the monkeys were a plague. Victarion had forbidden his men to bring any of the demonic creatures aboard ship, yet somehow half his fleet was now infested with them, even his own Iron Victory. He could see some now, swinging from spar to spar and ship to ship. Would that I had a crossbow - The Iron Suitor ADWD

So, we can see that the passage likely connects Tyrion with the "monkey" moniker by way of referencing a "crossbow" as well as the word "demonic". As we all know, a crossbow is what Tyrion used to slay his father in ASOS. The mention of a crossbow in conjunction with monkeys being described as "demonic", I think we can safely say that Tyrion is being referenced by GRRM in Victarion's chapters .

Okay, so let's assume that Tyrion is referenced in these passages. What does it mean?

Here's what I believe: Tyrion, upon encountering Victarion, would have the judge of his character. Tyrion outclasses Victarion in every way when it comes to intelligence, wit, and manipulation. The two are at the same location (Meeren) and both want the favour of Daenarys. It seems inevitable that the two characters will cross paths. Tyrion would realise that this is a man that he can outwit and use for his own ends.

The first passage describes negatives feelings felt by Victarion at the monkey's "howling". This, I believe, is foreshadowing of Tyrion's attempts to manipulate Victarion. The "howling" used in substitute and reference to the lies that Tyrion will use on Victarion and his men.

Victarion's "frustration" is telling. There are two other characters in the series that aren't as versed in dealing with manipulation and the game of thrones in general, like Victarion. Those two being Eddard Stark and Barristan Selmy, and they reacted in similar ways to manipulation used on them.

“Most likely the king did not know,” Littlefinger said. “It would not be the first time. Our good Robert is practiced at closing his eyes to things he would rather not see.” Ned had no reply for that. The face of the butcher’s boy swam up before his eyes, cloven almost in two, and afterward the king had said not a word. His head was pounding. - Eddard AGOT

“Volantis.” Selmy’s sword hand tingled. We made a peace with Yunkai. Not with Volantis. “You are certain?”

“Certain. The Wise Masters know. So do their friends. The Harpy, Reznak, Hizdahr. This king will open the city gates to the Volantenes when they arrive. All those Daenerys freed will be enslaved again. Even some who were never slaves will be fitted for chains. You may end your days in a fighting pit, old man. Khrazz will eat your heart.”

His head was pounding. “Daenerys must be told.” -The Queensguard ADWD

When Ned encounters a lie by Littlefinger when they talk to him, it's described in the text as his "head pounding". The same happens when Barristan talks to the Shavepate in Meereen. It's likely that the Shavepate has his own agendas and when Barristan hears him he has the same reaction as Ned in where his "head pounds". The implication being that they instinctively know it's a lie, but can't grasp the higher details and fully realise it.

Victarion isn't an honourable man like Eddard and Barristan, but he shares the same ineptitude regarding the game of thrones as they do. The reaction isn't the exact same, but it's described in similar negative detail that taxes him. We can also refer to Barristan's passage where his hand "tingles" during the exchange, just as Victarion's hand "throbs" from the monkeys.

So, what is Tyrion's goal and why would he even need to bother with Victarion and his crew? We can refer back to this passage in Tyrion's final POV chapter in ADWD:

“I am dancing as fast as I can.” He wanted to laugh, but that would have ruined the game. Plumm was enjoying this, and Tyrion had no intention of spoiling his fun. Let him go on thinking that he’s bent me over and fucked me up the arse, and I’ll go on buying steel swords with parchment dragons. If ever he went back to Westeros to claim his birthright, he would have all the gold of Casterly Rock to make good on his promises - Tyrion ADWD

Tyrion's ultimate goal from ADWD and going forward is to tear down his father's legacy and to wreck vengeance upon his siblings. In order to achieve this, he has to acquire power. It's my belief that he'll try to persuade Victarion's men to fight for his cause. In the same way he swindled the Second Sons with promises of riches of Casterly Rock, I believe he'll do the same with Victarion's men.

To get a better picture of the character of the Ironborn soldiers I refer to this passage:

His words drew mutters of assent. “Slaver’s Bay is too far,” called out Ralf the Limper. “And too close to Valyria,” shouted Quellon Humble. Fralegg the Strong said, “Highgarden’s close. I say, look for dragons there. The golden kind!” Alvyn Sharp said, “Why sail the world, when the Mander lies before us?” Red Ralf Stonehouse bounded to his feet. “Oldtown is richer, and the Arbor richer still. Redwyne’s fleet is off away. We need only reach out our hand to pluck the ripest fruit in Westeros.”

“Fruit?” The king’s eye looked more black than blue. “Only a craven would steal a fruit when he could take the orchard.”

“It is the Arbor we want,” said Red Ralf, and other men took up the cry. The Crow’s Eye let the shouts wash over him. Then he leapt down from the table, grabbed his slattern by the arm, and pulled her from the hall.

- The Reaver AFFC

Euron Greyjoy, the king of the Ironborn, proposes an ambitious plan of acquiring dragons to rule all of Westeros, but his Ironborn soldiers opt for the easy way out. A way that will require less effort and with the promises of quick riches. Why sail half a world away when the gold is in their backyards?

The ironmen that have sailed with Victarion, will see the imp bearing his promises, and might just decide that he's their ticket to a grander prize. Their Iron Captain is a formidable warrior, aye, but Casterly Rock would have all the riches they need, and who better to offer them than the rightful born heir of Casterly Rock?

We've already seen Victarion's men turn on him before:

Victarion grabbed him by the forearm. “Refuse him!”

Nute looked at him as if he had gone mad. “Refuse him? Lands and lordship? Will you make me a lord?” He wrenched his arm away and stood, basking in the cheers.

And now he steals my men away, Victarion thought. - The Reaver AFFC

As I've highlighted in the first two passages, the monkeys are described as being more "agile" (more cunning) than Victarion's crew and infesting "half of them". It makes sense, since it's not like Tyrion can swindle 100 percent of Victarion's crew, but at least half of them? That doesn't seem like too much of a challenge, given what we know of the Ironborn's character.

Victarion Greyjoy mistrusted laughter. The sound of it always left him with the uneasy feeling that he was the butt of some jape he did not understand. Euron Crow’s Eye had oft made mock of him when they were boys. So had Aeron, before he had become the Damphair. Their mockery oft came disguised as praise, and sometimes Victarion had not even realized he was being mocked. Not until he heard the laughter. Then came the anger, boiling up in the back of his throat until he was like to choke upon the taste. That was how he felt about the monkeys. Their antics never brought so much as a smile to the captain’s face, though his crew would roar and hoot and whistle. - The Iron Suitor ADWD

“You have a gift for making men smile,” Septa Lemore told Tyrion as he was drying off his toes. “You should thank the Father Above. He gives gifts to all his children.”

“He does,” he agreed pleasantly. And when I die, please let them bury with me a crossbow, so I can thank the Father Above for his gifts the same way I thanked the father below. - Tyrion ADWD

For half a year he cartwheeled his merry way about Casterly Rock, bringing smiles to the faces of septons, squires, and servants alike. Even Cersei laughed to see him once or twice. All that ended abruptly the day his father returned from a sojourn in King’s Landing. That night at supper Tyrion surprised his sire by walking the length of the high table on his hands. Lord Tywin was not pleased. “The gods made you a dwarf. Must you be a fool as well? You were born a lion, not a monkey.” - Tyrion ADWD

Tyrion will use his personality to amuse and charm a majority of the Iron Fleet's crew, all so he can win them over and bond them to him, but Victarion won't be amused. We've already seen Tyrion's prowess used to great effect in winning over a crowd during his slave auction and he'll do the same with The Ironborn by playing the part of an amusing fool; "dancing" and making witty jokes to the bemusement of the knuckleheads from the Iron Islands.

He could send a man up after it, but the monkeys seemed to like that game

Victarion had forbidden his men to bring any of the demonic creatures aboard ship, yet somehow half his fleet was now infested with them, even his own Iron Victory.

Their antics never brought so much as a smile to the captain’s face, though his crew would roar and hoot and whistle.

Victarion may have some vague idea that the "monkeys" are nothing but trouble for his crew, but like Eddard and Barristan, he can't quite grasp the finer details of what a game of thrones player like Tyrion is trying to achieve exactly. He doesn't see the capering little monkey as someone trying to swindle his crew right from under him. "and sometimes Victarion had not even realized he was being mocked. Not until he heard the laughter. "

Because ultimately, the joke is on Victarion. The Monkey Demon makes his japes and charms all, while laughing from above at the dumb brute who can only frown his displeasure and not realise what the monkey has in store for him, until it's too late. And Victarion, finally realising the punchline too late, will be the biggest mistake of his life.

The Glory That Awaits

"The Lord of Light has shown me your worth, Lord Captain. Every night in my fires I glimpse the glory that awaits you." - Victarion ADWD

One of the biggest constants in Victarion's arc is that he's basically a born stooge. He's being manipulated by characters superior in intelligence than him, and while these manipulations haven't born fruit so far in AFFC and ADWD, I think they'll finally bloom and bite him in his kraken ass in TWOW.

Moqorro

Euron

Tyrion

It's been heavily implied in the text that all three characters are going to use him just to achieve their ends. The only character that hasn't interacted with him yet is Tyrion, but the first two share something in common that I think will translate over to Tyrion's machinations as well. That something being dragons.

Euron gifts him with a dragonhorn and bonehead extraordinaire Victarion thinks that he'll use it for his own benefit and snag himself a dragon. As if Euron would be stupid enough to allow Victarion to do that.

Euron was a fool to give me this, it is a precious thing, and powerful. With this I’ll win the Seastone Chair, and then the Iron Throne. With this I’ll win the world. - Victarion TWOW

Interesting that the word "fool" is invoked for Euron, a man who is more cunning than Victarion by miles. After all, you don't just secure a kingship like Euron did through sheer luck.

That's what the dancing little monkey will seem like to Victarion as well. Lord Tywin, a man after Victarion's own heart because he never smiled or laughed, wasn't amused by the monkey's antics either:

Lord Tywin’s mouth tightened. “Very droll. Shall I have them sew you a suit of motley, and a little hat with bells on it?” - Tyrion ASOS

He considered Tyrion a motley wearing fool. We all know how that ended for Tywin.

Moqorro then tells him that in order to capture the dragon for himself, he must claim the dragonhorn with his own blood.

“Your brother did not sound the horn himself. Nor must you.” Moqorro pointed to the band of steel. “Here. ‘Blood for fire, fire for blood.’ Who blows the hellhorn matters not. The dragons will come to the horn’s master. You must claim the horn. With blood.” - Victarion ADWD

So, the first two characters are connected via the use of the dragonhorn. Judging what we know from Euron's character, it's extremely likely that he's pulling one over on Victarion for his own ends. Since I've established that Tyrion is also going to do the same through this essay, it's highly likely Moqorro is just using Victarion as well.

Here we see Moqorro relaying a prophecy to Tyrion:

“Dragons old and young, true and false, bright and dark. And you. A small man with a big shadow, snarling in the midst of all.”

“Snarling? An amiable fellow like me?” Tyrion was almost flattered. And no doubt that is just what he intends. Every fool loves to hear that he’s important. “Perhaps it was Penny you saw. We’re almost of a size.”

“No, my friend.”

My friend? When did that happen, I wonder? - Tyrion ADWD

Definition of amiable:

friendly, sociable, and congenial. generally agreeable

Definition of snarling:

Something used by predators before they rip your throat out.

Moqorro's label cuts to the heart of the matter, despite Tyrion's "incredulous" reaction to it.

How can the jovial, charming little dwarf be anything but a good, fun time? "Snarling"? Does it "look" like he wants to burn down all of Westeros just to get some empty satisfaction at the downfall of his family? Does it "look" like he wants to use people less intelligent than him to achieve those ends?

Yes, Tyrion. Yes it does.

So, onto the next point. Since we've established that Tyrion doesn't have Victarion's best interests at heart, there's a question we should ask ourselves here: Why would Moqorro consider Tyrion a friend if he can see that he'll just end up using Victarion? His prophecies seem to be pretty on point in judging future events and how it relates to people, so why look so highly upon the dwarf?

It's because Moqorro is manipulating Victarion for his own ends as well. If he was Victarion's true ally, he wouldn't be so chummy with Tyrion.

Considering Moqorro looks so favorably upon Tyrion, his claims to Victarion that he can claim the dragon for his own are dubious. Moqorro's prophecy for "the glory that awaits him" to Victarion may not be the glorious ending Victarion thinks it'll be. Since Moqorro is a priest of fire, the "glory" he speaks of is something that he himself finds glorious. Fire.

During Victarion's travelogue in ADWD, he starts to incorporate The Lord of Light's beliefs for his own and mixes it with his belief of the Drowned God.

He wondered if this was how his brother Aeron felt when the Drowned God spoke to him. He could almost hear the god’s voice welling up from the depths of the sea. You shall serve me well, my captain, the waves seemed to say. It was for this I made you.

But he would feed the red god too, Moqorro’s fire god. The arm the priest had healed was hideous to look upon, pork crackling from elbow to fingertips. Sometimes when Victarion closed his hand the skin would split and smoke, yet the arm was stronger than it had ever been. “Two gods are with me now,” he told the dusky woman. “No foe can stand before two gods." - Victarion ADWD

In one final, humiliating punchline, the Iron Captain will serve his two gods. But not in the way he intended.

“Might be his robes caught fire, so he jumped overboard to put them out,” suggested Longwater Pyke, to general laughter. Even the monkeys were amused. They chattered overhead, and one flung down a handful of his own shit to spatter on the boards. -The Iron Suitor ADWD

The captain could not abide lies, so he had the Ghiscari captain bound hand and foot and thrown overboard, a sacrifice to the Drowned God. “Your red god will have his due,” he promised Moqorro, “but the seas are ruled by the Drowned God.”- Victarion ADWD

The captain answered with a nod, grim-faced, then called for the seven girls he had claimed to be brought on deck, the loveliest of all those found aboard the Willing Maiden. He kissed them each upon the cheeks and told them of the honor that awaited them, though they did not understand his words. Then he had them put aboard the fishing ketch that they had captured, cut her loose, and had her set afire.

“With this gift of innocence and beauty, we honor both the gods,” he proclaimed, as the warships of the Iron Fleet rowed past the burning ketch. “Let these girls be reborn in light, undefiled by mortal lust, or let them descend to the Drowned God’s watery halls, to feast and dance and laugh until the seas dry up.” - Victarion ADWD

His plan to snatch a dragon and win the world will backfire horribly. Believing he'll become Aegon the Conquerer come again, he uses the dragonhorn to bring a dragon to him. Since the dragonhorn is at least six feet long, it'd be a pain and seem redundant to move it from the deck of The Iron Victory. Thinking the dragon will be binded to him, he'll be happy as a pig in shit when the horn gets tooted like an old lady's fart.

That is, until the dragon swoops down and opens his maw to unleash a nuclear holocaust on his sorry ass.

When he raised his whip, he saw that the lash was burning. His hand as well. All of him, all of him was burning. Oh, he thought. Then he began to scream. - The Dragontamer ADWD

It's not too far-fetched to say the passage connects with Victarion, considering his arm and hand have already been described as split and smoking. It's also isn't the first time his hand is referenced, as I've stated before in the reference to Barristan Selmy. Both references coming from the same book ADWD.

Engulfed in dragonfire, he'll have no choice but to jump overboard into the sea. That'll snuff the flames right ou-

The white roses drew back, as men always did at the sight of Victarion Greyjoy armed and armored, his face hidden behind his kraken helm. They were clutching swords and spears and axes, but nine of every ten wore no armor, and the tenth had only a shirt of sewn scales. These are no ironmen, Victarion thought. They still fear drowning. - The Reaver AFFC

None of his men had seen what became of the knight after he went over the side, however. Most like the man had drowned. “May he feast as he fought, in the Drowned God’s watery halls.” Though the men of the Shield Islands called themselves sailors, they crossed the seas in dread and went lightly clad in battle for fear of drowning. Young Serry had been different. A brave man, thought Victarion. Almost ironborn. - The Reaver AFFC

In a buy two-get-one free deal, the char-coaled Iron Captain will serve his two gods, sinking like a rock to the bottom of the ocean to feast in the watery halls of the Drowned God for eternity. The Monkey Demon laughing and capering all the while.

At least the Drowned God will be impressed with the Kraken armor.

The End

So, in a final analysis, I believe Tyrion will convince at least half, if not most of Victarion's crew to join in his cause, thinking they'll be rich beyond their wildest of dreams, not realising that they're just expendable pawns for Tyrion to fulfil his desire for vengeance.

While the exact logistics of how Tyrion is involved in Victarion's death escape me, I certainly believe he'll have a part in it. As I've stated before, Tyrion will likely be involved with Victarion and his plot for dragons just like Moqorro and Euron.

The white cyvasse dragon ended up at Tyrion’s feet. He scooped it off the carpet and wiped it on his sleeve, but some of the Yunkish blood had collected in the fine grooves of the carving, so the pale wood seemed veined with red. “All hail our beloved queen, Daenerys.” Be she alive or be she dead. He tossed the bloody dragon in the air, caught it, grinned. - Tyrion TWOW

It'd also be guesswork on my part to write what exact manipulations and lies Tyrion will utilise on Victarion and his men through dialogue, but I think my rough sketch is enough to give a general idea for the direction they'll likely take.

Considering that Tyrion is inevitably going to meet with Daenerys, and since it's not like he has any easy passage to any other location, he'll likely be at Meeren for a good while.

And since it seems highly unlikely that Victarion will just be killed off at the Battle of Fire, considering he's been chronicled and built up in the past two books, I think it's safe to assume that the two will have lengthy interactions with each other while they're stuck in Meereen.

Whether or not Victarion will be around long enough to meet the fair-haired queen of his dreams is unknown, but it's possible he'll be dead before then.

After all, wouldn't it be a worthy prize for our beloved imp to come bearing gifts of a naval fleet bonded to him to the lovely Queen Daenerys? All from him, no other person claiming ownership of them.

"The old captain? Eh, he wouldn't have been as generous as me."

Despite all of that, despite all the manipulations and deceit, will Tyrion be truly satisfied at the end result?

That night Tyrion Lannister dreamed of a battle that turned the hills of Westeros as red as blood. He was in the midst of it, dealing death with an axe as big as he was, fighting side by side with Barristan the Bold and Bittersteel as dragons wheeled across the sky above them. In the dream he had two heads, both noseless. His father led the enemy, so he slew him once again. Then he killed his brother, Jaime, hacking at his face until it was a red ruin, laughing every time he struck a blow. Only when the fight was finished did he realize that his second head was weeping. - Tyrion ADWD

#tyrion lannister #asoiaf #A Song of Ice and Fire #asoiaf victarion #victarion greyjoy #asoiaf tyrion #asoiaf theory #asoiaf meta

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itsclydebitches · 5 years ago

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Establishing an Ethical Dilemma: The Clone Wars’ “Downfall of a Droid” vs. RWBY’s “Gravity”

On today’s episode of Metas No One Asked For we’re going to talk about how The Clone Wars’ sixth episode “Downfall of a Droid” managed to do everything RWBY’s seventh season “Gravity” failed at.

(Apologies in advance for the very shitty picture quality.)

In each show we start off with an incredibly difficult situation: if Anakin and his troops leave then the Separatists will gain this area of space. If they stay and fight they’re likely all be killed. If Team RWBY leaves a good portion of a city will perish. If they stay and fight they (including that city) will most likely all be killed. Now, in comparing these episodes we need to acknowledge that RWBY is setting up immediate consequences whereas The Clone Wars is setting up long-term consequences. It feels like Team RWBY has less of an option to retreat because their immediate consequence is that a good portion of Mantle will die. It feels like Anakin has more of an option to retreat because the impact of letting the Separatists gain a foothold won’t be seen until later in the war. Those long-term, mostly invisible consequences simply don’t resonate with us in the same way that the deaths of large swaths of minor characters we’ve seen throughout the volume does. It feels worse for Team RWBY to retreat because we’ve seen the Mantle citizens on screen throughout the season. They feel more real to us than the nameless, faceless people who will die later on if the Separatists gain this advantage. But both situations require sacrifice in order to keep the war going and both situations require sacrifice in order to save the immediate people around you. Ironwood wants to save everyone in Atlas and the people he’s evacuated from Mantle. Obi-Wan wants to save Anakin, Ahsoka, and the who knows how many clones on these ships. Both situations ask the question, “Even if you’re personally willing to take a nonsensical, terrible, borderline impossible risk to save others, how can you doom those around you in the process? The people you’re speaking for - as civilians or as subordinates - do not get to make that choice for themselves. In the name of the unlikely possibility that you’ll save people in the future you’re taking the far more likely risk of killing others here and now.”

Despite taking up only six minutes of screen time (the real emphasis is on losing R2. This battle is just the setup for that) The Clone Wars manages to provide a more complex and balanced account of the ethics of this situation than RWBY managed in multiple episodes. It is made abundantly clear that, despite coming from a noble place, Anakin is in the wrong here. He’s trying to risk too much on the basis of nothing. He’s in the same position Team RWBY was in, just insisting loudly that they have to fight because it’s the right thing to do, and he’s called out for that by the story itself. Obi-Wan, Anakin’s Master and superior, tells him not to go through with this.

Ahsoka, his padawan, agrees. This is how you have a much younger, much less experienced character being better than their elders, by actually allowing them to act as the more mature party in a scene. If Ahsoka, who thus far has been characterized as equally reckless and desperate to push the war as far as she can as fast as she can, thinks this is a dumb move, you know it’s a very dumb move.

“Suicide is not the Jedi way.” We could also say that “Suicide is not the huntsmen way.” Doing the “right thing” means absolutely nothing in the face of your own death and the death of everyone following you. What have you achieved here? Satisfaction of some sort for being a Good Person? Congratulations, you can feel smug about that in the afterlife while ignoring the deaths/detriment to the war weighing on your conscious. Here Anakin’s superior and his subordinate call him out on this selfish behavior. He’s not a bad person for wanting to defend this sector but, as someone in a position of power, he does need to do better. He needs to make the harder choice here, prioritizing the lives he can realistically save over the Happy Ending he wants.

However, in the face of their criticism Anakin just digs in his heels and, to be frank, comes across as delusional at best, downright dangerous at worst. Again, despite this choice defending (some) others, he’s being selfish: “I can’t let them do that.” He’s prioritizing his own conscious over the logic of the situation and the lives of his men. And he’s appropriately called out for that too.

This is a flaw that Anakin needs to work on, not something heroic the audience is meant to praise. So far he’s in nearly an identical position to Team RWBY, insisting on a suicide mission despite everyone else around him laying out precisely why that’s a death wish and, therefore, a very bad move. Emotionally we understand why Anakin wants to fight, but the story reminds us that what we want is not necessarily what we (and everyone else) needs, even if it seems so at first glance. The generalized “defending this sector is a Good Thing” simply can’t hold up against the undeniable danger of choosing to fight. To him. To his men. To his padawan. To the war. Anakin’s noble desires mean nothing in the face of an impossible situation. He simply has no way to win.

The difference between this scene and RWBY’s - the key, crucial, AMAZING difference - is this line right here:

At the very end of the scene we establish that Anakin does have a plan. He’s not risking everyone’s lives on the illogical hope that they’ll win because they’re the good guys, he’s banking on an actual strategy he’s come up with. Now, in a show where this dilemma is more central to the story we’d want to hear precisely what this plan is and weigh it against the established dangers. However, as said this fight only takes up about 5 minutes of screen time in a 7 season show. This dilemma is only setup for the primary conflict of finding R2, so we’re able to skip the explanation and instead have the plan function as a fun reveal for the audience. How will Anakin get them out of this situation? We’ve already established that he can, now it’s just a matter of showing how. Unlike Team RWBY, Anakin is able to justify this choice to everyone around him. The people he’s asking to fight beside him and risk their lives. He’s able to prove that this battle isn’t as impossible as it seems.

Crucially though, even the audience isn’t investing blind trust in Anakin. Later on, his strategic nature is worked into the surrounding plot. We’re shown how good he is at coming up with plans, thus lending support to the audience’s belief that he’s truly come up with a way to beat Grievous here as well as providing in-world support for why others would trust him to this extent. Not only did Anakin provide a concrete, smart, doable plan to justify going on this “suicide mission,” he has a track record of using this sort of strategy successfully in almost every battle. In contrast, the last time Team RWBY implemented a plan was... volumes ago? They don’t use strategy to beat the Ace Ops. They don’t fight together at Haven. They kept hitting Tyrian head-on until they lost. The closest thing we’ve gotten to strategy lately is the Nuckelavee battle which amounted to “Hold him down so we can hit him as opposed to just hitting him.” There’s been very little lately to convince us that Team RWBY can get themselves out of tight situations via intellect like Anakin can. More significantly, Anakin didn’t just rely on his reputation as a smart guy. There was no, “Trust me because I’m just that good” which, again, is what Team RWBY demands of Ironwood: trust us despite our disloyalty and our lack of a plan. Trust us despite everything telling you you shouldn’t. Anakin has been faithful to his allies, proven his ability in the past, and - though it happens off screen - is able to lay out logical reasons for taking this risk. For all his playful arrogance, he knows he’s not going into that battle unless he can provide a persuasive reason as to why he’ll win.

Despite having a plan, despite successfully pulling it off, Anakin still makes mistakes and still needs a great deal of help from others throughout this episode. His impulsive move to go after Grievous means Rex has to rescue him and results in him losing R2, a MAJOR consequence for him. Later on, Anakin needs to be rescued by Ahsoka and Rex again. At no point does the story insist, “Anakin is capable of soloing everything because he’s one of the main characters.” Or worse, show us how much help he needs and then retconning it later (looking at you, “We don’t need adults” scene).

Anakin is not only shown to have flaws but exists in a story that continually calls him out on them, allowing him to grow. In his despair over losing R2 he starts threatening this ship captain. In a story like RWBY that behavior would be excused because the audience knows the captain is a bad guy. AKA, the sort of situation we got with Cordovin: it’s totally fine for Team RWBY to steal from her because she’s racist, attributing a connection between these two actions when, in reality, there is none. Here though, Ahsoka reminds Anakin that he can’t treat people this way simply because he’s upset/doesn’t like them. The captain acting like a slimy asshole does not justify threatening him with a lightsaber, in the same way that being a racist asshole doesn’t justify taking headshots at Cordovin and destroying her city’s primary means of defense. Here, The Clone Wars allows for even main characters to make mistakes and acknowledges those mistakes in a way that neither demonizes them nor acts like those mistakes don’t matter. Or tries to present them as heroic.

At the end of the episode we get to see precisely how much R2′s disappearance is still eating at Anakin,

but crucially he’s not risking his life, the life of his padawan, his subordinates, and the war efforts in order to search for him based on... nothing. Anakin has nothing here. Nothing to go on except his personal belief - “I know it” - that R2 survived and him hearing a droid beep on the ship. Which, as Ahsoka points out, sounded just like any other droid. Logically there’s no reason for anyone to believe that R2 survived and thus no basis for risking so much in order to find him. When Anakin is told to continue the war efforts, he does. He might not like it, but he follows orders. He recognizes that these orders are smart based on their current information. Up until there’s proof of R2′s survival, he can’t drop all his other responsibilities to go on an aimless search for him.

Why is Anakin heroic here? Because he has faith in R2 while likewise continuing his duties as a Jedi/war general. His conflict is that he wants to go looking for R2 yet knows that he can’t. He has a duty to those around him and he’s made promises he has to keep. A less responsible, less mature group - like Team RWBY - would ditch their superiors and follow that hunch of theirs, risking a great deal in the process, which the story would then reward them for by revealing that, of course, the character they assumed had to be alive actually was. But that doesn’t mean they were right to be reckless in the first place. Or that their faith was well-founded and not just denial. In the previous five episodes we have seen Anakin disobey orders, most notably in “Rising Malevolence” when he teaches Ahsoka how to do the things she believes in (like searching for survivors) without outright butting heads with her superiors. They find a middle ground. A compromise, searching for survivors in a pit-stop fashion and then agreeing to catch up with the rest of the fleet when they don’t find anything. It’s only Ahsoka suddenly sensing Plo Koon that changes their minds. Now, with evidence, they have a reason to continue their pursuit, disobeying orders in the process. Even then we end the episode with Anakin joking about how if he’s going to get in trouble for this, so is Ahsoka. Their easy-going banter implies that their superiors are level-headed people - they understand the emotional reasons why they searched for survivors in the first place and are no doubt persuaded by their reasons for staying - but they still disobeyed orders. That comes with consequences and everyone involved will shoulder those consequences together.

We get a similar situation regarding searching for R2 at all. Once again, Anakin’s personal feelings are at the forefront of his decision making. His emotional investment in R2 as an individual blinds him to the larger picture. Indeed, that investment is presented as both a flaw and a strength. Allowing R2 to keep his memory is a HUGE threat to the war effort and (again) Anakin is called out for risking so much. At the same time, Ahsoka establishes that this choice isn’t entirely selfish one - I personally want R2 to stay as he is because he’s my friend, no matter how many lives that risks - but a practical one as well. R2 having that information makes him a great asset, demonstrated beautifully when he’s chucking assassin droids out of airlocks (established as deadly a few minutes earlier) and R3, the newer model with faster computing, can’t even open a door. Admittedly, Goldie’s competence is complicated by him being a traitor. We don’t know how much was a mistake and how much deliberate sabotage. However, Ahsoka is still correct that R2 is far more competent than the average droid and that’s at least partly due to him developing via maintaining his memory. Ahsoka’s words invite Obi-Wan to weigh the pros and the cons here. Is R2′s assistance and his individuality worth more than the threat he poses if they lose him? Obi-Wan, who previously claimed he was “just” a replaceable droid, implies that it is because he doesn’t order Anakin to wipe his memory if he finds him. He may still order R2′s destruction later because, as established, they’re not on a rescue mission, but he is starting to see this droid as more than just a tool. The main take-away though is that the story skillfully creates a situation where, for a time, the same action feeds two different motivations. Obi-Wan wants to find R2 for the Republic’s safety. Anakin wants to find him because R2 is his friend. Here he’s allowed to follow orders while still doing what he feels is right and we get to see how happy that makes him.

Then when the situation changes and Anakin’s orders no longer align with his desires... he puts those desires aside. A least for a time. Because he’s a Jedi. He’s a general. He’s in the middle of a war that’s far bigger than himself. Obviously the story eventually rewards his faith/desires by returning R2 to him, but that’s not because Anakin immediately risked everything else in the process. He took no action until he had evidence that R2 was nearby, very conveniently held in the same place he was ordered to find. The end of “Duel of the Droids” is very explicit about both sides of this debate: Anakin did risk the lives of everyone under his command (indeed, two Clones died) and Ahsoka agrees that he was reckless in disobeying orders, even if it was done under the expectation that they’d finally found R2. Anakin pushes back that R2 is more than just a droid, he’s a friend, and he had faith that Ahsoka would carry the mission without him. We as the viewer can push back further with Ahsoka taking on Grievous alone and nearly dying: she never would have been put in that position if Anakin hadn’t left the mission to find R2. And on and on. They’re both right in regards to some aspects and wrong in regards to others, and still other parts have no “right” answer, providing a complex look at this highly debatable situation and allowing the viewer to draw their own conclusions. For all his (uh, rather massive lol) mistakes to come, here and now Anakin is a great protagonist, someone who is heroic while also allowed to be flawed. To me that’s far more compelling than giving us “heroes” who continually harm others in the name of “what’s right” and only get by via the grace of the plot.

TL;DR: I’ve only watched six episodes of this series and already, from a writing perspective, RWBY could only hope to be half of what The Clone Wars is

#RWBY #rwde #the clone wars #TCW #Star Wars #mymetas

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gascon-en-exil · 5 years ago

Note

Why would CF be considered bad? The devs say that it's the route about fighting for what you believe in, even if others get in your way. You may have to take down good people, but in the end her route ends with no more gods', nothing dangerous lurking anymore, etc. It doesn't seem like a bad route other than maybe killing good people.

I take it you mean “morally bad” rather than “badly written,” although the two are not mutually exclusive. I’d say that the CF we have is bad in both senses of the terms, and that a better-written CF would been have even more obviously morally objectionable but would have succeeded on that basis - a proper villain route where you get to enjoy being a genocidal conqueror (possibly with a side of your self-insert getting to sleep with your preferred flavor of villainous archetype between Edelgard, Hubert, and Jeritza).

Now, as for why it is, despite the muddled presentation, a villain route:

There are still dangers lurking in Fòdlan, and they’re called the Agarthans. CF is the only route where Thales survives, and where you make the least progress in dismantling his organization. AM gets him and potentially Myson in addition to Cornelia, while VW and SS leave out Cornelia but take care of Thales and raid Shambhala with VW additionally getting rid of zombie Nemesis and the Elites along with a handful of low-ranking Agarthans. CF kicks the Agarthans back to a postgame war waged entirely in character endings, which is neither satisfying as a player nor likely to remove the threat entirely, based on CF’s parallels with Genealogy of the Holy War (see below).

Fòdlan only has one (mainline) goddess, and she’s still alive at the end of CF. I’m not really sure where people got the impression that Rhea or any of the Nabateans consider themselves gods, but they don’t. Killing Rhea in CF causes Sothis’s Crest stone to disappear for no apparent reason (note that Rhea also dies by default in SS if you don’t raise your support with her, and yet Byleth’s hair does not revert to its original color in that ending), but Sothis herself “lives” because you can still S rank her in CF. This is two logical inconsistencies stacked on one another, the first being the bit about the disappearing Crest stone and the second being that Byleth survived its disappearance even though based on what we know of their birth their heart would not beat without the stone…meaning they should have died in that moment. When it comes to moral arguments however, Fire Emblem does not as a whole posit that the world would be any better or less prone to conflict without its gods. The “gods” of Fates and Echoes are really dragons undergoing mental deterioration in their old age, something Rhea does not show signs of except maybe in SS, and that only because the game realizes it still needs a final boss. In Radiant Dawn meanwhile, the game that evidently inspired Edelgard’s speech in the CF ending cutscene, Ike himself acknowledges the value of gods, and Ashera is not truly killed but is allowed to combine with Yune and become a complete entity again.

“Killing good people” is kind of a big deal. CF has the highest named character body count of any route, and although it lets you spare some of the people on its hit list you have to go out of your way to allow Claude, Seteth, and Flayn to live. You can never spare Dimitri, with the best you can do for him saving him from a humiliating execution at Edelgard’s hands and Dedue from becoming a Demonic Beast at the same time and letting them die together. CF Dimitri also doesn’t undergo the same trauma he experiences during the timeskip of the other routes, leaving him comparatively lucid and composed and thereby making all the route’s attempts to paint him as this violent madman who needs to be put down as little more than propaganda intended to rationalize conquering Faerghus and killing its king. Everything about CF positions it as the route of a conqueror; you invade two sovereign countries, take out their leaders, trample them underfoot (literally represented by the ending tapestry), and absorb them into a continental Empire. The bit about returning Fòdlan to the control of humans - incidentally also the goal of the Agarthans - means in this case dragon genocide, allowing you to participate in an event similar to the Scouring of Elibe’s backstory while also, like the Elibe games, forcing you to consider the ethical ramifications of such an act by giving you multiple examples of dragons who aren’t crazed monsters who need to be killed to ensure humanity’s survival.

The argument from Arvis. I went into it here, but the gist is that Edelgard’s similarities to FE’s original Flame Emperor are too significant to be ignored and notably do not make for a flattering comparison. Arvis also fights for his beliefs, a desire to unify Jugdral and create a better world with himself as emperor. In the process he allies himself with an assortment of unscrupulous backstabbing nobles as well as a shadowy cult that opposes a revered divine being and in the process commits multiple acts of murder up to and including most of the playable cast of the FE4′s first generation. He is no less an antagonist or a villain because he has arguably sympathetic ideals, and it’s only in the second generation when, broken and impotent (on account of the machinations of the aforementioned cult who only grew stronger under his reign - makes you wonder about CF’s postgame war, doesn’t it?) and with a new crop of playable characters coming for his head, he somewhat redeems himself by secretly delivering the divine sword Tyrfing to Seliph - tacitly acknowledging the inevitability of his impending death and that he was wrong in murdering Tyrfing’s previous wielder, Seliph’s father Sigurd, to advance his ambitions. Edelgard frustrates a lot of longtime fans of the series precisely because she never has any moment remotely similar to this, where her beliefs and actions are ever questioned in any meaningful way that forces her to confront what she’s doing. That’s to be expected when Arvis at the same point in his story was riding high off his triumph and couldn’t yet see how it would all unravel, but the constant echo chamber of Edelgard and her yes-men Hubert and Byleth is considerably more grating because it’s always in the player’s face. This brings me to…

CF isn’t about fighting for what you believe in, unless what you believe in is just Edelgard. The developers could make the argument that that’s the driving force behind Edelgard’s actions on any route, but choosing CF is never framed that way for the player via Byleth. It’s a spur-of-the-moment, purely emotional decision that asks you simply whether you should kill Edelgard for invading the Holy Tomb with an army and attempting to steal the Crest stones therein (which are, as a reminder, the remains of Rhea’s slaughtered kin - she’s got a pretty good reason to be as angry as she is). You’re not asked to reckon with the morality of Edelgard’s actions in that moment, and the game does its best to encourage you to forget about everything else she did as the Flame Emperor by simply never bringing up any of it ever again. This is why there are still fans arguing that Edelgard didn’t intend to have Dimitri and Claude assassinated in the Prologue, or that she wasn’t complicit in Flayn’s kidnapping, the experiments on the Remire villagers and students, and Jeralt’s death. The game refuses to let you judge her actions for what they are, even in some dialogue options in non-CF routes where you’re forced to pick one of two options sympathetic to Edelgard. Edelgard herself expresses surprise if you side with her, but there’s no explanation given for Byleth’s choice other than that they believe in her. Fates’s Conquest route has repeated moments where Corrin regrets siding with the family who raised them despite the presence of a more rational alternative (or two), as if they’re only there because they were railroaded into it by the player; Three Houses has the opposite problem, where it’s more prepared to question your decision if you take the less emotionally-driven option and side against Edelgard. To put it bluntly, the only reason from a storytelling/characterization perspective to pick CF is because you like Edelgard - possibly as an object for self-insert romance since the route itself leans hard into that interpretation even if you don’t S rank her.

#Fire Emblem #FE16 #Fire Emblem Three Houses #Crimson Flower

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gauntie-o-dimm · 4 years ago

Text

Andrew Milton | Toxic

You’re just a hostage in the Pinkerton’s plan, the Van Der Linde gang will certainly come looking for you. Andrew Milton will never be lured into your little pleasure trap. At least, that’s what he likes to think.

Word count: 2900+ Warnings: Smut, swearing, choking, hate sex

Thud.

Your head was practically drumming in pain as you regained consciousness. Every beat of your heart seemed to slam into your skull, crushing your brains. The side of your face felt warm and sticky.

Slowly, you managed to open your eyes, taking in your surroundings. Immediately, you noticed your own discomfort, body slouched against the wall in an awfully unnatural position, cold stone practically digging into your spine. You tried to shift, soon met by the sound of jingling chains that bound your wrists above you, chafing your skin with every movement.

You gritted your teeth as memories rushed back to you. The deal, the perfect plan to fetch the money from Blackwater, and then, a trap. You had been knocked out by something undeniably hard - the handle of a gun, perhaps? The darkness that had followed was in that case far from welcoming.

And now, you were taken prisoner, as it appeared. Would Dutch come looking for you? Hell, if he didn’t, Arthur most certainly would. Still, you had no idea what had happened otherwise than the failure of the plan, Dutch’s plan. One of his fucking magnificent plans. You rolled your eyes in annoyance.

The creaking of hinges made the hairs of your neck stand on end. You hadn’t even noticed the door in the corner of the room, the frame now revealing a man that you had never despised as much now.

“Mr Milton.” you mockingly greeted, voice dripping with venom. Said man entered the room, stepping closer and now you saw two other men that had joined him. They carried rifles and on their hips, revolvers. If you were to escape, you had no chance of survival.

“Miss (L/n), if I recall correctly. Or (Y/n), but that would take away all of the professionalism.”

“What the fuck happened? And what do you want from me?”

Milton chuckled, shaking his head. “Dutch van der Linde will certainly come searching for his little damsel in distress. I know what you mean to those bastards. It’s just a matter of time before we can pump ‘em full of lead on our own grounds.”

“They’re not as stupid as you are.” you taunted as he approached, his eyes boring into yours coldly, as if he was trying to see right into your soul. The gesture made shivers run down your spine. “Really, detective. I am thoroughly offended that you think that Dutch van der Linde is stupid enough to get me out of here.”

An icy stare was all you got, Andrew Milton unfazed by your words. He waved his hand to his men to leave the room, and they closed the door behind them. “Listen, Miss (Y/n).” he began, cracking his knuckles while he stepped in front of you, noses nearly touching. He reeked of cigarettes and cologne - you were embarrassed to admit to yourself that he smelled quite nice - wait, what were you even thinking? This man would kill you without a second thought while you pondered over the pleasantness of his scent - that was something that you really didn’t want.

“Dutch van der Linde is coming to save you and there is nothing you can do to stop him. Once he’s dead, well... I will most certainly enjoy killing you, after.”

“Why don’t you just kill me right now?” you questioned, eyes narrowing as you studied his face. Despite being a son of a bitch, you had to admit that the man carried a certain charm, something intimidating in a way that you had never seen before. It caused you to clench your thighs together, much to your dismay.

“Well, Miss (Y/n).” he muttered, his gloved hand touching the side of your face, an immediate sting searing through your head. “Word like that goes out way too fast. The whole trouble we went through will be for naught if Dutch called wind of your unfortunate death.” As you flinched away from his prodding into your wound, he tutted. “That’s a nasty wound you got there, Miss (Y/n). Too bad it will make a permanent scar on that pretty face of yours.”

A confident grin spread over your face. “You callin’ me pretty, huh? And you keep referencing to me as Miss (Y/n), not just (Y/n). If I didn’t know you this heartless, I’d say you have a thing for me.”

A humorless smile spread over his chapped lips, his face moving closer to yours. “And what if I did, huh? It isn’t like you can stop me from doing whatever I want to you.”

You grinned a little, leaning in closer to his face, as if you were about to kiss him. “Mr Milton, I had no idea you were able to feel things like that!”

The first strike he hit across your face was nearly painless, but the second slap he delivered was right upon your wound, causing you to hiss in pain and the previous thudding of your head to temporarily continue.

“You like it rough, huh?” you said with a chuckle, “When was the last time you fucked something else than your own fist?”

He sucked in his pockmarked cheeks, looking at your with eyes full of fury. “Oh, I am going to enjoy torturing you, (Y/n).” You widened your eyes in fake surprise, bottom lip pouting in a way to mock him. “No Miss this time? That’s no fun.” you murmured, “But I had never expected an asshole like yourself to be into that kind of stuff. Tell me, does it make your prick hard if you treat women like that?”

“You better shut the fuck up.”

“Make me.” you mused, well aware of the sexual tension that sentence held. You had seen your fair share of men in your life and you recognized the twisting face of Andrew Milton to contain confusion, anger, but all the more interesting: lust.

And thus you batted your eyelashes - if you were going to hang in here for a while longer, you might as well have some fun, and the whole idea of a man like Andrew Milton himself mustering such things towards you, well... It didn’t relieve you of the aching in the pit of your stomach.

“You are an odd lady, Miss (Y/n).” Milton spoke, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, his eyes flickering to your lips for a moment. “First you call me miss, now you call me a lady... Really, what am I to you, Mr Milton?” You were able to bring up your leg enough to softly run your bare foot along the side of his calf, enough to make the man in question let out a groan of frustration.

He shot forward, grabbing you by the collar of your shirt. You whistled through your teeth in an attempt to humor him, but you would lie if you’d say that the entire scene taking place didn’t turn you on - you were soon imagining yourself against the wall, his body against you until you were both sweaty and at a loss for words.

“You are...” Milton paused, studying your face from up close. Something stirred in his expression, something way calmer than you had ever seen him become. “You are a devil with the face of an angel, a bloody villain with eyes like heaven... Your soul is as dark as the desire you spark within me.”

You withheld with every fiber in your being from laughing pitifully, knowing that the man was serious - Milton always was. You and the gang had learned the hard way that this man was not to be messed with - but the last thing he said drummed within your skull like the headache that had been there for quite some time now.

You opened your mouth to say something, but the Pinkerton agent mistook it for something else - before you could comprehend what was going on, his tongue had already slipped past your lips, the taste of tobacco and whisky soon mixed with your saliva, the urge to fight soon dying down, the wish to kiss him back starting to grow immediately.

What you were doing was wrong, that you knew. But how could something wrong feel so damn good. Andrew’s hands were soon around your cheeks, tilting your face so he could delve in deeper and he tasted you with a hunger that made you realize that this man had been a long way from being loved, touch-starved to put it in other terms. The soft moan that escaped you was not helping to calm him down, either.

Whatever went through Andrew Miltons head was unknown to you, apart from that you were probably doing something right to turn him on - he nudged your legs apart with his knee and immediately put some pressure on the aching, searing hot spot in between. You whimpered against him, not only from the friction, but also from the lack of oxygen you soon began to feel. The man kissed you with such fury that he completely disregarded of your need to breathe.

And with every passing second, the thought of what you were doing faded away in a pool of pleasure. For a moment, you completely forgot you were imprisoned by this man, but the jangle of the chains as you tried to move your hands pulled you out of this blissful state. For the first time since he pressed his face to yours, Milton pulled back, an involuntary gasp leaving your lips as he did so.

“Unshackle me?” you said with a pout, gaze momentarily falling to his groin, that was obviously growing in his pants. His lustful eyes flickered to anger again, as if he just now realized what was going on. He gathered himself, taking in fiery breaths, brows knitting together in that same strict way they often rested upon you, or Dutch, or anyone from the gang for that matter. He radiated hate and fury.

“You fucking demon. You put a spell on me, didn’t you? Trying to glamour me, mend me to your will?”

“I think you’ve been reading too many fairy tales, Mr Milton.” you said with a smirk. “If I was a demon, you’d be long dead. For what it’s worth, I wish I was a demon right now, so I could take that handsome head of yours off your shoulders.”

As if he hadn’t struck you enough, he slammed the back of his hand against your cheek again, his teeth gritting as he eyed your unfazed reaction. “You fucking bitch! I should kill you right now!” You cocked an eyebrow.

“Then I suggest you go right ahead. But who is going to take care of little Andrew Jr, then?” You eyed at his erection. Milton was seething, face beet red and you could’ve sworn you saw a vein throb in his neck. Hm, how would he react if you pressed your lips against it?

Words seemed to fail the Pinkerton agent for once. “That’s what I thought, detective.” you murmured, pulling the man from his state of confusion. Milton spat: “You are only allowed to refer to me by my last name.”

“Or what?” you taunted, “Are you going to punish me?”

With a groan, he smashed his lips onto yours again, teeth clashing together in the roughness of the kiss, but you didn’t mind at all. He was quick to pull your pants to your ankles, leaving you butt-naked, shivering against the coldness of the prison tiles. You were able to shimmy one foot out of the trousers - that would be enough for now, anyways.

A gloved hand made its way in between your thighs and made you shiver as he gathered some of your sinful excitement on the rough material. Your confident posture was fickle now, knees soon bucking at the friction. “Look at you.” Milton darkly murmured, “Such a needy whore.” He pressed painfully against your clit, but you regained your composure and braced yourself against his fiddling. You wouldn’t fall to him, you told yourself.

But it would be a scene full of lies and deceit, you figured as Milton pushed you up against the wall, the shackles around your wrists causing the skin to break. There would be no love behind the thrusts he would make into you, there would be no sweet whispers or an afterglow. You didn’t give a fuck about it, either. All you needed was to ease the desire of your painfully aroused core, and a piece of Andrew Milton left in you. Who knew what you could do in the future after having such intimacy?

With one hand, Milton undid his belt, and his pants, and they were soon around his ankles, pooling at his boots. You licked your lips at the sight of his erection. Men with big mouths like him usually had tiny pricks, but you figured Milton was an exception. Sure, you’ve had seen bigger, but you swallowed in anticipation nevertheless.

He made no time for assuring, nor for small talk or foreplay, soon nudging the head of his cock in between your labia, coating his length with your slick. You were surprised at the sound that left his lips as soon as he pushed into you, rolling his hips in till the hilt until you felt the dark curls on his lower abdomen brush the sensitive bud hidden between your folds. You chewed the inside of your cheek at the scratch.

Your bodies fit together quite nicely, you ironically thought. The cold feeling of the wall behind you alongside the heat that came from the detectives body left you wanting more in no time. Tiny beads of sweat covered Milton’s forehead as he held you against the hard surface, pumping in and out of you with rapid speed.

The least thing you had expected him to do was to wrap his fingers around your throat and squeeze, causing you to gasp; or at least try to. The chains that bound you jangled as you tried moving your arms, slight panic washing over you as you realized that this man could literally fuck you until you were dead right here and now with no direct consequence.

The fear in your eyes seemed to egg the man on, encouraging him to only pound harder. The slap of skin against skin echoed, but he didn’t seem to mind, only grunting and panting until he opened his stupid mouth to speak.

“You’re looking so obedient right now, like a fucking dog. Fuck, the way you clench around me. I can snap your neck right now.”

You spat in his face, saliva dribbling down your chin. “Fuck you.” you sneered in between gasps for air, your vision becoming blurry.

“You are, right Miss (Y/n)? I wonder what Dutch would do if he found out about this. I would have so much fun seeing you all turned against each other.”

You struggled to breathe even more and you began to see stars. Lips turning blue, just like the spots in your neck where he was squeezing. The chains were noisy in the harshness of his thrusts and you pondered if anyone would come check up on this whole scene before you would slip into unconsciousness.

“It would be a sight to see, witness Mr van der Linde put a bullet in your skull like the treacherous bastard he is, betraying his own family, and then, I can kill him as well. Two birds with one stone... But to see that--”

He released your throat, causing you to heave for oxygen, lungs burning at the sensation of fresh air.

“--I need you alive.”

His now-free hand chose to tug your bare leg over his hip instead, allowing him to ride himself into you at another angle. This nearly caused you to lose your mind once again, but in a mixture of pain and pleasure. Whom was really controlling whom, you wondered.

And in the building of tension and unexpressed emotion, you felt an orgasm begin to form in the pit of your stomach. It began at your lower abdomen, soon spreading to lower regions. You just hoped Milton would be merciful enough to let you reach it.

But would you be able to lie to yourself? Milton was ruthless, unable to feel empathy, or anything for that matter.

Unannounced, he thrust his hips upwards in one final jolt, his length throbbing inside of you as you felt him spill himself into your depths. He grunted through gritted teeth, and as soon as his high was over - short but intensely - he pulled out of you, releasing your body like you were some kind of animal he had accidentally touched.

You swallowed your whimper at the loss of contact, not wanting to give him the satisfaction. Needless to say, you immediately felt filthy, not able to clean yourself off of him. The pleasure that had been pulsating through you faded like a thin layer of snow in the searing sun.

Andrew Milton was still panting as he reached for his trousers, putting them on again, disregarding your climax completely.

“You know, Miss (Y/n).” he stated, looking you firmly in the eye as he hoisted your pants up again, gaze as cold as it had been before, as if he hadn’t just emptied himself within you. “I certainly hope Dutch will wait getting you out of here for another day or what. After all, what harm can it do?”

He tipped his hat, his stupid bowl hat, and turned to leave the room, abandoning you utterly bothered and angry.

“Get the fuck back here, Milton!” you screamed, hatred welling up in your chest like it had been pierced with an iron bar. “Finish what you fucking started!”

It was no use, you knew. Maybe, just maybe, next time...

#andrew milton x reader #Red Dead Redemption #red dead redemption 2 #red dead redemption 2 x reader #rdr2 x reader #smut

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rocket-remmy · 4 years ago

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The Fae Step Tango||Lydia and Jax (ft. Remmy)

TIMING: Current PARTIES: @inspirationdivine, @whatsin-yourhead, and Jax SUMMARY: Lydia confronts Remmy’s demon. Words, and promises, are exchanged.

Remmy, bless them, hadn’t been altogether too hard to follow. Lydia had, with great difficulty, morphed her glamour into someone a little rougher around the edges. Thin, terrible eyebrows, crows feet that distorted the rest of her face. She had a cape with hood too, which wasn’t together all too unusual at this place, it seemed. Nor were other fae. Bells chimed alongside the uneasiness of walking through the ring. Lydia understood the violence inherent to some species was much like the chaos inherent to her, but it wasn’t inherent to Remmy, not that she had seen. But Remmy wasn’t in the crowd, watching. They were in the ring at one point, against a beast that looked like a dog and all at once nothing but. Lydia averted her eyes, but couldn’t escape the sound of ripping flesh and the roar of the crowd thereafter. She needed to find a fae that looked in charge, like they were pushing thing. She swallowed as the cage of the ring rattled as either one or the other was thrown into it. This was not her battlefield. Lydia was strongest in the halls of her home, in art galleries and fae parties. But fae were easy to find, and there was a man who watched only Remmy, always watching. When the fight was over, he turned and left, and Lydia followed, letting her glamour drop. He could feel her too, and there was no pretending otherwise as she followed him into a back room. “We haven’t met, I don’t believe. I’m Lydia.”

Jax wasn’t an altogether subtle man. For his species, he didn’t really need to be. He’d enjoyed being what he was almost his entire life. He had a power over others that not a lot could break from. And he enjoyed that power. He also had the power to feel others like him, other fae. His sharp eyes turned before he made it to his office and he faced a woman, with opulent eyes and iridescent hair. A leanen-sidhe. What was one doing here? They dealt in other sides of the fae spectrum, what possible reason did one have to be at the ring? Aside from being a spectator, but he’d never taken the more softer of their kind as one for such...extracurriculars. “Why would we have? We seem to run in very different circles, my fair lady,” he responded, his tongue quick and cool like usual. Though influence over others was something he enjoyed, it was wordplay that he truly excelled at. It was a power unlike any other. To outwit, outsmart. Outplay. And he loved a challenge. “I’m Jackson, but my friends call me Jax. What is it that you seek, Lydia?”

“So it does appears,” Lydia replied. “Truth be told I did not know that such a place existed until today.” She glanced around, a sneer apparent on her lips as she judged the room and found it lacking. “Jackson it is, then,” she replied. “Might I sit?” She asked, looking back at him, the flash of silver in his mouth. She glanced to the ground. No shadow there. This would be fun, if the stakes weren’t quite so high. “Answers, one might say. I’m curious,” she looked back to the door, and the thin din of the ring that lay behind them. “What is your role in a place like this?”

“And why wouldn’t it?” Jax said back, turning around fully now to face her. He let an easy expression come over his face, but he understood the tenseness of the situation. Motioned to a chair when she asked. “Be my guest,” he offered, choosing not to sit himself. He stayed, standing, as he came over towards the desk, leaning against it. “And whom, might I wonder, is asking? A spectator, a concerned citizen, or…” his eyes flicked back towards the door. He knew who was fighting tonight. “Someone else?”

Lydia sat. Games of towering over eachother were for human men who didn’t know how to think beyond their ego, and she’d rather focus on the man in front of her than on feeling smaller. “I’m asking. You needn’t worry, I have no intention of bringing wardens nor police to your den of delinquency.” Never tell anyone that you wouldn’t, only that you weren’t planning to, and that then your future actions are not so set. “I ask so that I could know whether you are the man I need to speak to, or whether, as I rather suspect, there is someone more relevant that outranks you?”

Jax’s grin turned into a frown rather quickly. He did not like the way this Lydia spoke to him. Clearly, she was trying to anger him. To make him feel small with her words instead of her stature, which she had none of. She only had that pretentious way that those who only had power in words carried themselves. She was below him. And so he stayed standing. “I’m afraid you’ve come knocking on the wrong doors. We don’t let just anyone into our little establishment-- brethren or not.” He pushed away from the desk, held the door open. “I suggest you leave before this gets too tough for you to handle,” a pause, so he could put enough emphasis into the word, “Lydia.”

“Cousin, I’m hurt,” Lydia replied with a smile, using the language of the mirror district with their same, eerie tone. “There is no need for such aggression. It was a simple question.” She glanced to the doors like you might indulgently to a troublesome child. “Besides, I’m not convinced there is any measure of tough you offer that I could not handle. Come, I have not played these games in a while. Perhaps you will tell me instead why some of your fighters are collared?”

“I’d love to see how your bile and spit do you in battle,” Jax said without skipping a beat. “But I doubt someone like you would make much of a spectacle in the ring.” He’d let it go, for now. “Because they misbehave,” he answered, shutting the door and standing in front of it. If she wanted to talk so bad, they could talk. That didn’t mean he had to let her go without a fight, even if it was a verbal one. They were on his grounds, now, and he would not concede so easily. “Just as a misbehaving child needs to be punished, so do misbehaving monsters.”

“About as well as your sweat and silver tongue, I’d imagine,” Lydia replied. “I’d make more of a spectacle than you most days of the week, although you’re likely right.” She watched him close the door, positioning himself in front of it. Lydia made no effort in hiding her glance around the room, aware of the complete lack of an exit. Fortunately, she’d eaten before coming, should things go that way. But they wouldn’t. Fae were better than all that. “I suppose that is the risk with letting your assets wander. Quite valuable assets they are indeed, considering the crowd I just saw. How much do you make in a night?”

He had to chuckle at that one. Lydia was a match for his own wit it seemed. “I suppose you would, with those looks,” Jax said, still standing promptly by the door, but relaxing his demeanor just a bit, as if he were softening to her. He wasn’t. “Enough to want to make sure my ‘assets’ don’t step out of line. And losing an asset, well,” he unfurled his arms slowly, put out a hand in a shrug, “I can’t go losing one of my top earners, can I? It’d be like taking your best selling product off the line. And that just won’t do.”

Lydia smiled at the compliment, preening slightly, her skin glowing brightly at his words. Pretty words could be seductive. He knew that as well as she did. That was what they did - create desire, in different forms and shapes. “Oh, that I understand better than you might believe. You need to keep the business going, and without any scrutiny, don’t you? The collars aren’t always the only thing binding them.”

He noticed the way she reacted to his compliment and he smirked in kind. Jax was a handsome man, old beyond the youth of his face, and he knew just how to use that to his advantage with humans. With other fae, however, it was a tad more difficult. But still just as fun. “Clever girl,” he said, folding his arms back across his chest, his sharp gaze trained solely on her now. She had his attention. Whoever this Lydia was, she was smart. Smarter than most fae that wandered their way into this place, either high out of their minds or looking for a release. Lydia was here with a purpose. And he wanted to know what. “Sometimes a little extra is needed, yes. Words, after all, can be very powerful. But I’m sure you know that.”

“More than most. Certainly more than your crowd back there.” Lydia chuckled, clicking the nail of her thumb and middle finger back and forth against each other idly. She looked at him, wondering how to proceed. He stood by the door, his stance chilled and closed off. She had not squirmed at the phrase Clever girl, but lord above did she want to.punish him for that. She was hardly youthful anymore. “Why do you think I’m here?”

“They’re not the smartest bunch, no,” Jax agreed, “but a smart person never makes a bad bet.” And if no one made bad bets, then he’d make significantly less money. Besides, he enjoyed being the smartest person in the room. Perhaps that was why he found himself uncomfortable with Lydia in his office. Somewhere deep down, he knew he’d met a worthy match. “I don’t do guesses. But I do know it has something to do with my star fighter out there right now, doesn’t it? A zombie is a good catch. A zombie who knows how to fight? A once in a lifetime opportunity. Well...I suppose a once in a human lifetime opportunity, but we don’t hold ourselves to their standards, do we?”

Lydia took a moment to adjust the hem of her skirt, although the end result was neither more nor less revealing. He was one of those, then, and Lydia saw a crack to wriggle his way through. Smart people made bad bets all the time, after all, but if you assumed you would always make the right bet, then, well, Lydia just needed to make herself look like the right bet. Appear to be a bad bet, and risk becoming another bloody smear in the arena. This was a den of wolves. Every twitch or ill thought word could be the one to trip her. Which was why she cursed herself when she felt her face turn in response to his guess. Lydia smoothed it and smiled. “Why would we?” She replied to his last question. “Their performance is extraordinary. They’re an asset of mine too, although in other ways, of course.”

That peaked his interest. “Oh, are they?” Jax moved forward slowly, still keeping his body between Lydia and the door, but coming close. Perhaps he had judged her all wrong, but what else was he to think, about being followed by this woman into the back of this establishment with no warning? “And how might that be?” he asked, tilting his head slightly. He couldn’t imagine what good the zombie was outside of fighting, but perhaps someone had found another way to get something out of them. And if that was the truth, he wanted in.

“That’s for me to know and you to figure out,” Lydia replied smoothly, tilting her head to look at him, uncrossing her legs and leaning a little closer, as if divulging a secret. “Let us just say that it is useful to know someone that is resistant to the charms of my kind, as it were.” She leant back again, spreading her hands out. “Of course, I assumed the collar was merely a fashion accessory, but when I found those tendrils of fae binding, I simply had to know more. It is inconvenient when someone so useful to me has to keep secrets, so I simply had to find out more. Which brought me here, to you.”

“I like a good challenge,” Jax said with a grin. His eyes observed Lydia, watching her very meticulous movements. He was no master on body language, but he understood what she was doing. “It is rare to meet those resistant to our charms, though where you find usefulness, I find a hindrance.” He shifted his weight slightly, giving a brief frown. “We did design them to look inconspicuous, so it’s good to know they’re functioning correctly. The promises were just...extra precaution. You understand, right? It’s not as if I throw my words around with just any monster. Special cases are rare, but I’m good at my job for a reason.”

Lydia chuckled. “We all respond to such things differently, do we not?” Her easy laugh was nothing of the sort. It was another thing to keep in mind, to keep this as safe for Remmy as could be. She didn’t blame fae who took advantage of other species, even if it was not her cup of tea. She did find it a little uncouth but then… so many species were so much worse. Her thoughts flicked to Orobas, briefly. “There’s plenty I understand. I just wouldn’t want my asset to be damaged irrevocably by your decisions. I’m sure you’d feel the same.”

“We sure do,” Jax said, nodding. “We sure do.” A thing to remember. Despite the buzz in his skin with Lydia around, they were here for different things. He understood that. “You can’t really damage a zombie, though, can you?” he sauntered around her a moment, clearing a path for just a second before settling back between her and the door. “As long as the head stays on,” he made motion for his throat, “they’ll bounce back. Sometimes it just...takes time.”

“I find it rather depends on the zombie,” Lydia replies, quietly seething at his new attempts at physical intimidation. “Some of them can be… so fragile.” Remmy was, and wasn’t. They were so strong, dealing with so much pain and trauma, yet Lydia saw them every day. No matter what happened here, no matter how well Remmy healed, they left a little of themselves behind on that battlefield every time they came home. “Although I suspect you’d know more than I in the physical matters of their survival. But you have no intention of losing your prize fighter, one assumes.”

“All zombies are the same,” Jax said, “once so tragically human. Now so tragically cursed to live forever.” He shrugged. “But fragile is not something they are. Unless, of course...you’re speaking emotionally wise.” His eyes narrowed a bit. “But that’s what these--” he tapped his neck again, “and these--” tapped the side of his head, “are for.” Promises kept those immune to his touch in line, after all. “I’m sure you understand how powerful a promise can be.”

A trap set, that he’d neatly avoided, and Lydia didn’t know how hard to push on preserving Remmy’s unmortality, or if it was wiser to aim for a smaller venture, especially as he left her linguistic traps of his own. Lydia drummed her fingers against her thighs. A different route might suit them better. Or at least her. “Where do you get the beasts? The aufhocker or grim or whatever the zombie was fighting just now. Those things can’t be promise bound so easily, nor do they fully understand the danger the collar poses.”

Was Lydia really interested in what went on here? Jax needed to suss that out. “Those beasts are brought in by expert handlers. We have quite a few catchers working for us. Mostly hunters. They bring us beasts, we give them money. It’s a nice exchange for everyone, and the streets are made safer. Most of those beasts don’t need collars. Not a lot of them make it past their first night, if you know what I mean.” These were, after all, death matches. Who cared if a monster died? Not him. Surely not Lydia. “We only use the collars on the more sentient of species.”

“You make deals with hunters?” Lydia repeated, her eyes narrowing ever so slightly, her bravery knocked slightly. Hunters over zombies, now that was a true, as Sammy would put it, galaxy brain take. Nauseatingly so. She stood, abruptly, and tried to make up for it with a smile. “I understand completely. It must be expensive, but then, I’m sure everyone pays for the extra excitement. Perhaps I ought to diversify my portfolio,” She looked around. “I hope I am not keeping you from more important things.”

“We employ hunters,” Jax corrected, “big difference. I hate them as much as any other of our kind, but they have their uses. Like all species. Hunter, Fae...zombie.” His eyes followed her as she stood. Was she uncomfortable with talk of hunters? “Oh really?” He didn’t quite buy it, but there was something she was angling for here. What could it be, he wondered. “Oh, don’t worry your pretty little head. If I had more important things to do, I would go do them.” His brow lifted. “Before you say yes, you do understand the...discretion we take here, yes?”

“Employment is still a deal. It is why humans make contracts for it,” Lydia replied, and she couldn’t quite hide the distrust in her voice. Mistakes, each and every hint of feeling. Patronising little prick. Far be it for her to disown any fae when her closest friend was growing soft on humans, but, god, she wanted to leave here with something of his here tonight, even if it wasn’t Remmy’s safety. “I hadn’t offered to say yes to anything yet. Although who knows, I might be able to offer one of your star fighters some inspiration for future fights. I understand entirely the need for discretion.” Lydia took a couple steps towards him, as if being friendly.

“Hmm, touché,” he said with a nod. Jax moved to lean against the door. “You offered yourself to something the moment you followed me back here. Unfortunately, it’s not the kind of place people can wander in and out of at their own discretion. There’s secrets and codes and promises for a reason.” His gaze fell on Lydia, hard this time. “Remmington has all the inspiration they need from me,” he spoke slowly, clearly. “Unless you’re speaking of another fighter. In which case, what is it that you would gain from doing this? Besides a quick meal?”

“Is that a threat?” Lydia asked, her smile nonplussed, pink teeth glinting in the light. She was certainly the opposite of nonplussed. Fae talking themselves into games of chess to resolve a problem was as old as time itself, but Lydia could feel herself losing. With every cursed reply, he cut off new avenues for her to chase him. With every minute that passed, her confidence faltered. His might not be a conversation that would end her way, and increasingly Lydia was swerving his actions more than making word traps of her own. “Fear is not inspiration, my dear, and you ought to know better. I’m sure someone has written a sonnet or two about you,” Lydia replied, “But I’m hardly fussy as to whom I might inspire.” Might, could, consider, some of the most powerful words in the fae language for how they protect one from a promise. “I can’t feed off the dead in either case.” There was another loud roar from the crowd back there. “I consider myself a rather enterprising businesswoman, Jackson. I’m sure there is plenty we could offer each other. You’ve already been ever so helpful.”

“Yes,” Jax said simply. “It is.” This place was dangerous, but Lydia already knew that, didn’t she? Outright threats weren’t really Jax’s thing, but sometimes they needed to be. Lydia was smart enough, it seemed, to understand that much. “I don’t know,” he said after a moment, “you seem like a fussy woman to me.” A smile curling his lips. “Why don’t I see you out, hmm?” He turned back and grabbed something out of his pocket, pulling a business card from his wallet. “You think about what you’re offering, and give me a call when you’ve made a real decision. I think you could be a very useful asset, Lydia, if that’s what you truly came here to be.”

“I think you’ve been spending too much time around the more violent species,” Lydia replied, with the slightest indulgent eyeroll. She pulled her cloak back on, and her glamour with it. See her out indeed. “I’ll give it all some serious thought,” Lydia said, an easy thing to be promise bound. She didn’t take the business card, and instead snapped a photo of the information with a phone. Taking it felt like a risk of a commitment she couldn’t really afford. Asset, he called her. Like Remmy. Was it really so wrong to wish someone might rip out his tongue? It felt like conceding. “You’ve been ever so darling.” Maybe it was conceding.

“Perhaps,” he shrugged. “But I don’t entirely mind.” Jax moved out of her way, finally, reaching for the door handle. But he paused, and in his moment of relishing his victory, he forgot himself. His words, and said, “But first, Lydia-- I trust you’ll keep this to yourself, yes?” And only opened the door when she confirmed. He should’ve felt it, but his downfall always had been his smugness. People rarely outwitted him, and he rarely faltered. “Don’t be a stranger, Lydia,” he said after her.

Lydia was going to have him walk her all the way to her car. In part, because as much as she played that it didn’t bother her, the threat loomed over her, and she’d rather see him until she was safe. In part because she could hear in his voice that small victory lap, and sometimes that was when it easiest to trip someone. So when she heard him say it - oh, this was nearly language class 201. He did spend too much time around the violenter species. “I will.” Keep this could mean so many things, after all. Keep what? The conversation? The room, his coat? No, Lydia only wanted one thing, or at least one thing that she could gleam from those mispoken words. Not the collar off, not Remmy safe, but something. She wanted his promises, and as they’d come up in the conversation, they were fair game. Not even all of them, just a few, so she left him the rest. “Have a good evening, Jax,” she replied, and hurried down the halls. It wasn’t until Lydia was driving home in her car that she let out the breathe she was holding, and felt herself relax. The threat still loomed, but Lydia had her own ammunition too.

------

Lydia was holding a glass of wine just a little too tight. When the door creaked open, she sprung to her feet, setting the glass down. She needed to see them. After whatever they’d been fighting, the crunch of bones, the roars of the crowd that masked much worse sounds, she needed to see them, and tell them. “Remmy? Darling, do you have a moment?”

Remmy dragged themself home after the fight, the blood of the bone dog still on their hands. They just wanted to get in the shower and then flop into bed. They shut the door as quietly as possible, but Lydia’s voice broke through the quiet house and they jumped a little. “L-Lydia, I--” they started, putting their hands behind their back. They didn’t want her to see. They didn’t even want her to see them like this, torn up and broken and covered in blood. “Can I just-- um...wash up real quick?”

“This’ll just be quick,” Lydia said, walking down the hall. “It’s okay. I know. I know. I -” Her tongue twisted into a knot. She’d celebrated too quick. The second half of Jax’s words had ensnared her. Keep it to herself. Lydia swallowed, and as her tongue slowly unglued itself from the back of her mouth, she coughed hoarsely. Not share. That was inconvenient. She could still break things she kept for herself. “Remmy, I relinquish you of all the promises you made the Gancanagh called Jackson, also known as Jax.”

Remmy tried to move around Lydia as she came nearer, but her words made them freeze. I know. She knew? And she still...could look at them like that? With soft eyes? With compassion? They blinked at the next words. “You…” it was like a weight was falling off of them. “You…” their chest felt like it was gonna burst. “I…how? You...how?” Something building inside of them. “How did you know I promised him? How did you--” the words spilling out, so quickly and suddenly, after having been held in for so long. “I’m free?”

Lydia laughed softly, putting her hands on Remmy’s shoulders, so that they could look at her and hear her. “Us fae, we’re not all that violent, usually. When we want something, we talk, until one of us trips up. He tripped.” When she laughed again, it wasn’t gleeful or proud, but the kind of laugh that might have been a sob, it was so heavy with feeling. Remmy had been here for weeks, slowly becoming needier and more isolated all at once. Their voice had been crumbling, growing frightened of even Lydia. “So did I, so I can’t… explain everything, but I followed you. I saw you fighting that Barghest or Yethhound or whatever. I felt him, confronted him.” Lydia’s voice trembled, looking down, blinking hard. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s come over me. I, no, Remmy, I’m sorry, I tried, I wanted to get you safe, but it’s just the promises you made. The collar stays.”

“But you…” Remmy started, “you got rid of the promise?” They looked at her with sullen eyes. With eyes that had seen a thousand battles and might even see a thousand more, a part of their soul left behind in each. Withering away with every hit. “I can...I don’t have to lie anymore? To-to keep secrets?” They already knew the answer, they could feel it. Blanche had once warned them about the use of the word promise, but Remmy hadn’t thought much of it at the time. The fear they’d carried after this must have been apparent. Remmy forgot about the blood on their hands and wrapped them around Lydia, suddenly. Holding onto her as if she were the only thing grounding them. “Thank you,” they said through fresh tears, “thank you.” And they’d say it a thousand more times, owe her for all their immortal life if that was what she wanted. But she had risked so much for them, and the weight, though still there, wrapped around their neck, was lifted just enough for them to feel again. To cry again.

“No, you don’t,” Lydia confirmed. “You don’t have to keep any more secrets, if you don’t want them.” She had expected some kind of response, and perhaps even this one, but Lydia grabbed Remmy as tight as they did her. She cradled them as they sank to the ground, hot tears spilling on her own cheeks. She’d made a dozen missteps in the last month, causing Deirdre grief, frightening away Regan, letting a human drag her into their messy world. Tonight too, could have gone terribly. It hadn’t, and didn’t, and for the first time in a month, she heard hope in Remmy’s voice. Moose trotted over and nuzzled at them softly, and Lydia just held Remmy even more tightly. The thanks tickled her skin and she let them wash over her. If this was what being promise bound did to them, she’d make sure they’d never feel it again. “I hope you can find a way to use it,” Lydia said after a while, cupping Remmy’s head so that they would look at her again. “Give him fucking hell.”

#chatzy #chatzy: lydia #wickedswriting #lydia #jax #the fae step tango

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thelordstears · 4 years ago

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Prepare for some dope ass writing guys gals and nonbinary pals!

“ If love is sinful, and who I am is unholy, then I'll be nothing more than myself.” - Camilla Davidson

“ He follows old scriptures and old fashioned standards of human decency, this is a whole new world, and he'll die on the wrong side of history, while I live on the side that's more loving, accepting, and stable.” - Camilla Davidson

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“ As they've always said, violence for violence is the rule of beasts, so does that make war a battlefield, or hunting grounds?” - Burke Castles

“ The leaders start war, but never pull a single trigger. They watch their pawns and brooks move across the board, we never had a King or a Queen, just ourselves and our sins.” - Burke Castles

"I'm the damned priest, the forgotten messiah, I'm just another man. How can you fault me for the sins of another? How can you condemn me, for what I did not do?” - Gusto Mellowrich

“ People use God as an excuse to slaughter, they say they shalt die on the cross for their sins, and don't realize driving nails against the condemned only drives nails into their coffins and secures their place in Hell.” - Gusto Mellowrich

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“ My dear brother has fallen far, he believes his wings clipped, his honor stolen, but if he simply climbed, and took my hand, he would find salvation is for the sinners of this world, which in theory means salvation is for everyone.” - Icarus Richens

“ Gregory is a soldier, he stands sturdy, smelling of ash and smoke, because he let the fires of love build him anew. He is a phoenix, not of light nor darkness, but of love in all of it's grace.” - Icarus Richens

"Even God, sins on the occasion.” - Alastair Sambridge

“ People walk this earth and call themselves saints whilst sinning just under the nose of the people, we've allowed the commandments to be re-written, where in the commandments did it say, "Steal from the rich?" where in the commandments did it say, "Let the rich steal?" And where in the commandments did it say, "Be sinful as long as it's for a good cause?" - Alastair Sambridge

“ You believe God loving? If any ruler in history was loving nothing would happen. Imagine what would've happened if George Washington fought violence with peace. We'd still be shackled by Britain, so tell me why it is you wish me to fight your sin, with holiness?" - Alastair Sambridge

"Ain't it the most wonderful thing, bein' able ta break a man and give ta yourself? The Hell's morals doin' in a world that don't give a fuck what happens? It'll tear ya down, push ya down several flights 'a damn stairs, the world is fucking cruel, ya gotta be just as cruel ta survive it.” - Gunther Mirowick

“ I'm only alive because other's aren't.” - Gunther Mirowick

"Isn't it better to sacrifice your life for a good cause rather than die for nothing? I imagine no cause is worth killing for, there's only causes worth dying over, and love, is something to die for.” - Vekel Kidelman

“ Love is what makes us human, the lack of it often creates monsters.” - Vekel Kidelman

"This blackhole in my mind would destroy anyone who dare stepped forth to walk into it's depths, so imagine what's happened to me, wandering inside of it every day.” - Daniel Abacross

“ Knowledge is a weapon, and I've allowed mine to pull triggers and create a cacophony of suffering and the demises of those who didn't deserve death.” - Daniel Abacross

“ I learn this world is a brutal place to live, the killings of innocent men and women is commonplace, but I survive, and when you survive such tormented things you become the very things that tormented you.” - Isiwoah Sakigowami

“ We are not in control of destiny, but at least I'm in control of yours.” - Isiwoah Sakigowami

“ I live by no moral code, because when one is in power, morals only allow the crown to be stolen from atop your head by he who's willing to cut it from your neck.” - Isiwoah Sakigowami

"To live is to die, so might you allow yourself life, so you may experience death?” - Will

“ I have found such a cold heartbeat inside my chest, I believe if one were to perform an autopsy on me, they'd find a hollow ribcage and strings attached to my heart, played like a violin, it may sound beautiful, but the meaning behind the melody is sinful. They'd find the coldest of blood and it'd flow the color of the night sky, except when my soul is involved, the night sky is starless.” - Will

“ My pain shaped me into a beast, and I'll never find the strength to put myself down, because I am no hunter, simply a scared child, trapped inside the mind of a wilder beast he once would've imagined was so fantastical that he could ride it into the sunset. But with the lenses of childhood innocence removed he sees it's bloodstained lip, it's teeth cracked and stuck between each one flesh of a fresh kill, it's eyes crazed with hunger, he'd find nothing but a wild beast, the hint was within the name wilder beast, because it twas simply a beast wilder than any other.” - Will

“ I've learned knowledge is power, but it can be misused dare one use it to harm another. If you use knowledge as a weapon, you've already failed.” - Lola Crabthorn

"If this is what it's like to feel alive, than bury me low. Sink the coffin into the hallowed soil, toss dirt upon my grave and etch my name upon the tombstone, and let this girl finally rest in peace.” - Malarie Cavafich

“ I've grown so cold on this journey to find home, they say home is where the heart is, but perhaps my heart is in so many pieces I can't possibly find home. I've pulled a trigger so many times, I simply believe I can never be whole, because I've stopped the heart beat of so many other's, I ask why mine deserves to beat for another.” - Malarie Cavafich

"Live your life fearin' change, you'll fear yourself in da futcha'. But if ya learn ta embrace change, ya ain't gon' fear da futcha', because da unknown ain't so scary when ya learn if life was predictable, it wouldn't be worf' livin'.” - Daurice Marston

“ I'm nothing to my mind but a meat sack of rotting intention.” - Faymelina Van Patten

“ Though revenge didn't help, I still see him in my nightmares, perhaps he's a haunting now. A poltergeist in my mind who throws my mental state about and crashes around the halls of my mind, creating a ricochet of death and eternal sorrow.” - Faymelina Van Patten

“ Though I wield a spear as a warrior, my heart beats that of a woman who wishes to see only peace, and sadly, peace has to be fought for.” - Nova Toria

“ The meaning of life is different for every soul, for one it might be dancing underneath the stars with the one they love, for another it could be solitude. For some the mind is most keen when surrounded by others, but for others the mind is most keen when surrounded by only their ideas.” - Nova Toria

“ You don't have to fall into the arms of another, you can catch yourself if you wish.” - Nova Toria

“ Just because something can kill, does not mean that is it's only use.” - Morgan Gaskill

"Days come and go, I keep each memory close to my tattered heart, because if I forget the little moments, I forget life.” - Journey Castlehill

“ I don't quite identify with any of the norms people have set in stone, and if people hate me for that, they aren't worth my time. They're stuck in a construct, and refuse to dig themselves out.” - Journey Castlehill

"The rule of predator and prey, the dance of gnashing teeth and ragged fur, a melody of naturality and sinful desire. Thus is the rule of life, a song of gnashing jaw and flowers of misery bloomed from sinfulness so deep not even a God could wipe it from existence.” - Ranbraker

“ She's my hero, really. Even if she's my little sister, she kept me safe from my demons, and I'll always keep her safe from her demons. We've both suffered, both thought who we were is wrong, but you know what? Screw that. If being who I am is a sin, I'll be a sinner. Because I'd rather burn in Hell for being who I am, then enter Heaven being who I'm not.” - Tristy Hem

“ In all my pain, in all my scars, I find hope. Because I still have people I need to find, people I love with all my heart.” - Hailey Fellwitz

“ Be the author of your own story, and remember, not every page is one with pain written upon it. There's peace, too. Fight for your happily ever after." - Hailey Fellwitz

"I've been drowning in the depths of my shattered soul, gulping in false promises and empty threats. And yet here I am, searching for myself when other people is all I've found.” - Tina Diamon

“ People say love is a double edged sword, but that's because you love the wrong people. If you find the right person, love isn't a sword, it's a shield.” - Tina Diamon

“ A love so beautiful can not be destroyed, though the world has tried to tear us apart, it only brought us closer together.” - Tina Diamon

“ They say what's done in the dark shalt be dragged into the light, but I'll only come into the light when I will it so. And when the sun soaks my bones, and light is all you can see, I'll grip my club and let it be the sinking of the sun, cuz when I lower it, you lower a damn coffin.” - Luga the Hidden

“ Us orcs aren't treated so well, so I think it's about time I showed em the monster they damn well created. Because here I am, nothing but claws, teeth and crimson.” - Luga the Hidden

“ I can be vile, I can be a monstrosity, and people'll blame it on my heritage.” - Luga the Hidden

"When you're broken down to nothing, and find yourself mourning all that you've lost, remember what you have. I've been stuck in the past before, but I found there's always a rope, whether it be one of love or hope.” - Thorballa Ulfdottir

“ You have to be careful, when you're in a dark place. Because your decisions could lead you straight to your demise, the path to Hell is paved in bad deeds, don't follow it.” - Thorballa Ulfdottir

"My mind is so filled with ghosts of me you could walk into it and find only a graveyard, every tombstone reading my name, and the name's of those I've slain.” - Sheriff ~~Redacted~~ (Can’t say his name, it’s a twist and my twin sister follows my Tumblr)

“ I hear a blood curdling howl on the wind and I come to the haunting realization that it came from my own throat.” - Sheriff ~~Redacted~~

“ This life, it'll throw you through the ringer and then some, but what matters is that you rise like the champion you are.” - Vasiliki Mathers

“ Family is made up of loyalty, not blood.” - Vasiliki Mathers

“ I've spilt so much damn blood that it's just another habit these days, one trigger pulled, one man dead and one bullet torn through the got damn sky.” - Oswega Creek

“ Ya'll sip on regret as if it were a cure ta your damn sinfulness. But regret can't change the damn past, it only changes the future. But when you decide ya don't wanna live in regret you keep pullin' the damn trigger and watching bullets tear through the sky on burnin' wings and bloodied talons.” - Oswega Creek

“ You better tell the whole world Oswega Creek is coming home, because peace is an option better left in the past and harsh words are best left unsaid lest you wish to end up in a pinewood box with nuthin' but the wrigglers ta give ya company.” - Oswega Creek

"Life ain't all dat bad, ya focus on da shade unda' da tree, ya'll miss da branches dat provide it. Ya can't focus on da bloodshed 'a nature when bird's sing songs just fo' da soddin' world ta 'ear.” - Daisy Gloria

"I know, you'd think a gal like me would have a pitch perfect life like in a shitty comedy movie, but that isn't the case, ya see perfect lives reside in the land of fairy tales and fantasy, while I live in the gritty reality of this bizarre world, life is a bumpy fucking ride, and you better hope you can hold onto those reigns, because sometimes you get bucked off and fall, and sometimes you fucking stay there." - Mary Adler

"Oh if they thought they'd seen the end of days, just wait til they see what happens when they utter the word, "No." - Javier Cross

"The hope of morning can't come if your mind is stuck in the night." - Dale Markus

"I hide in the shade of my deeds, but you, my friend, will lay underneath the shade of a willow." - Edgalzio Halvlies

"I'll sip on this regret as if it were a cure to the disease of my past. But all it'll ever do is poison me." - Chase North

"Jou can regret jour actions, but jou can not change zem." - Marlene Dayvrack

"The echoes of death and tragedy ring in my ears. But it's not my own." - Autumn Wolfmoon

"Sin only intensifies when the whole world is set ablaze and all ya got left is the echoes 'a normality." - Davy Blight

"Reckon we do what it is we always do. Sin as if our lives depended on it, cuz these days, the do." - Davy Blight

“ You’ll see Hell, it ain’t no man with red skin and a pitchfork, it’s me in all my vengeful rage.” - Davy Blight

"You touch 'im I swear ta every God I'll send you their way fuckin' howling!" - Davy Blight

"Life don't get that much betta' these days. It's a symphony of broke bones and spilt blood, only difference 'tween you and me is, you're the one singin' the damn song, I'm the one echoing the harp." - Lind Blight

"Life ain't a constant state of kill or be killed. There's peace, you just have to fight to achieve it." - Cago Envers

"The truth is suffocating. It's why I breathe in a lie." - Sam Dellwotfire

"I could burn alive within the hatred of my family tree and still I wouldn't find peace." - Rover Calico

"You know, I'd be who I am if it ever did me any good." - Drew Dreadful

"All I've ever been is scared, and in this new world, fear only kills everyone but you." - Drew Dreadful

"The sky bleeds golden, yet my scars bleed black, and the color of my skin, is but the troubled sin within." - Sandro Colorfeid

"It ticks the wrong direction, because it is damaging itself in the process of working how it was built to operate." - Gregeno Puley

"Ben you live in a family of heroes. Will you become one by circumstance, or will you become one the hard way?" ~~Redacted~~ (Another case of my twin would see his name)

"No one can become me, Ben. Only I hold such a torment." - ~~Redacted~~

"My curse will only be the death of you." - ~~Redacted~~

"That's where you're wrong, Ben. I am fate, I am the law, I am peace, I am chaos, I am everything, Ben. you're nothing but a speck, whilst I'm the sun." - ~~Redacted~~

"Stars can only be destroyed if they implode upon themselves, and thus I chose to implode so I could destroy the darkness I had found." ~~Redacted~~

"You're so covered in the blood of wolves you think you are one." ~~Redacted~~

"You want to be a leader, step on the podium and speak to your subjects. You want to be a King sit on the throne and wear the crown, you wish to be a subject sit still and listen. But if you want to be a God, show people that resisting your dynasty is a death sentence and all you have to do is snap your fingers to rid yourself of their treacherous ways." ~~Redacted~~

"They say we aren't our sins, but here I am, nothing but death." - Arthur Wellburn

"I looked Hell in the eyes and all I saw was myself." - Betty Shalfien

"You look evil in the eye, you begin to get a taste for it." - Destallo Starend

"Sometimes secrets are best untold, because when something's too awful for this world it is best erased from time entirely rather then brought to the light." - Yuntara

"Don't walk the path you're given, find a different way, cuz often if someone hands ya a path, and tells you ta walk it, they've got tricks up their sleeves. And they ain't card tricks." - Church Godsel

"Mr. Bundy! Killa' of men! You think you got the damn balls ta take on three devil's? Cuz I'm tellin' you now, you can slay men, but you damn well can't slay legends." - Saul Northutt

"You don't know what I've done in the dark, but unfortunately for you, it hails in comparison to what I'll do in the light." - Corvenstain Bonstellos

"I never pulled you down, Idian, your life was Hell before our destinies intertwined. I could see it in your eyes, the mark of a broken soldier, what was your battle Idian?" - Corvenstain Bonstellos

"Get off the tracks, boy. This is a revolution, and you're in our damn way. Do you wish to be a splatter across the tracks or the conductor?" - Corvenstain Bonstellos (Props go to my twin for the beginning of the line, a callback to what her character said)

"Abel! Your ambition is what's going to kill you in the end." - Corvenstain Bonstellos

"To some, I am life, to other's I am death. It is up to you what end of the blade you receive. The hilt, or the sword." - Raimundus Wolfes

"If the holy spirit were to ever meet me, his name would be tarnished." - Caldwell Ramirez

"Hunting is an art and you're a canvas to be splattered red." - Luther Woolhaun

"The hunt is all about what you do with the prey, how you stalk them and how you execute them. The hunt is a sport, an art, a masterpiece that smells of gunpowder and the tangy scent of iron." - Luther Woolhaun

"All I find in myself is the blood of those deemed weaker than me by the rule of sword." - Violincia Bloodwort

“The pits are me only 'ome. Me 'eart 'as resided 'ere fo' da longest time, and now all it beats is a thirst fo' more." - McCannon Bowitsend

"All it takes to ruin a life is one bullet. But all it took to make mine a glory to behold, was one bullet." - Ewan Hanstammer

"I'd say I'm lost in daydreams, but those are just an echo, these days." - Hanzo Sabian

"I slipped from the edge of my own ignorance." - Pedro Bonfire

“A man who spreads violence is remembered, a man who doesn’t, isn’t. It’s the curse of a hero.” - Miella Fang

"Crumble? We all did that fifteen years ago, we're the rubble of judgment day fighting amongst ourselves, difference between me and most people is, I've been fighting for scraps since I was ten. I'm fit for battle. What about you?" - Scow Wiston

#writing #author #characters #characterwriting #Iknowredactedhasalothe'scoollikethat

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joan-frias · 5 years ago

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Stages

A Gohan x Videl Fanfiction

SOUTHERN CONTINENT

Gohan and Videl were able to follow Kibito, who explained everything about the magician Bibidi and the evil Majin Buu he created, and also Bibidi's son, Babidi who lived to continue Bibidi's plan of dominating the whole universe.

KIBITO: We need to fly faster for us to catch up to them.

GOHAN: Okay... Videl?

VIDEL: Gohan, I can't go on further. I think I'll just go back.

GOHAN: Okay, but be careful. And, can you please tell my mom and Goten and the others of what is happening?

VIDEL: I will... but first, I want you to be honest with me.

GOHAN: Huh?

VIDEL: You're the Golden Fighter, right?

GOHAN: … Yes, I am...

VIDEL: And back at the Cell Games, the small kid that was with the other fighters, it was you. Right?

GOHAN: ... Yes.

VIDEL: And it's not my dad who beat Cell. It was one of your friends... your dad maybe?

GOHAN: W-Well...

VIDEL: I knew it! I should be a detective someday, don't you think?

GOHAN: Yeah... maybe.

VIDEL: You have to tell me more about what happened when this is over. Promise me that.

GOHAN: I promise.

Videl stops flying. Gohan stops as well. Kibito continues, but with the same pace.

VIDEL: Gohan, promise me that you'll come back safe and in one piece, okay?

GOHAN: I promise.

Videl looks at him, making Gohan quite uncomfortable. But for some reasons, he cannot look away. He likes looking at her like that, like he was coming through inside her soul, like she is coming through inside his heart.

VIDEL: It's okay, Gohan, to be different, to be not like everyone else. It's weird, but it's cool... And I like different...

Videl blushes as her heart beats faster because of her confession. Gohan is just staring at her, and she can't look back at him anymore.

VIDEL: I'm going now. And after all these, I hope... I hope we could train again and... probably do other things as well...

She tries to look back at him once again, before she bids her goodbye.

VIDEL: Goodbye, Gohan... See you...

She was about to fly away when Gohan called her.

GOHAN: Videl!

She turns to face him again.

GOHAN: When I come back, we'll talk. I'll tell you everything you want to know about me. I promise.

Videl smiles and nods. Gohan flies away, faster than he was when he was flying with Videl.

VIDEL: He's so fast. I know I'll just hold him back.

Gohan's figure fades away, but Videl kept on staring for a few more moments.

VIDEL: Saving the world again, huh... How dangerous has your life been, Gohan? Who would have thought that the goofy classmate of mine is the real savior of the world?

She smiles.

VIDEL: Gohan, you better come back alive. 'Cause if you do, then maybe I will consider dating you for real.

She flies back to Papaya Island.

Meanwhile, Gohan was able to catch up with Kibito. The two fly faster and were able to catch up with Goku and the others.

GOHAN: Dad!

GOKU: Hey!

The group continues to follow Spopovich and Yamu, until the two seems to have reached their destination.

KIBITO: This is odd. We've already checked this location before but found nothing.

The group stops and hid at a rock formation near the spot where Spopovich and Yamu stopped. The two waits outside a weird-looking facility that looks like a mollusk shell with the letter M on the facade. It seems to be planted to the ground.

PICCOLO: Let's lower our ki.

A guy goes out of the facility, talks to Yamu and Spopovich. He kind of looks like Freeza's second form, but is leaner and shorter. He's wearing a black jumpsuit and white armored chest plate.

GOKU: Is that Babidi?

SHIN: No.

GOHAN: The ground around the ship seems like it's been dug up.

KIBITO: He hid his sheep on the ground! That is why we couldn't find him!

SHIN: That just means one thing. He knows we're here on Earth!

PICCOLO: Why don't we attack right now before they use the energy to resurrect Majin Buu?

SHIN: They won't revive him underground, or else he will destroy the ship. Let's wait a little longer.

Gohan looks around the place. He sees some dead people who seems like their energy was drained. He suddenly feels enraged.

GOHAN: (on his mind) Are these their victims, too? How horrible these monsters are!

PICCOLO: Something's coming out.

On the ship comes two individuals - a small alien-looking guy and a demon-looking dude. Upon seeing them, Kibito and Shin are shocked.

SHIN: That's...

KIBITO: Unbelievable! Babidi has possessed Dabura!

SHIN: I didn't know he was capable of controlling him.

GOKU: Can you explain who those two are?

SHIN: The smaller one is Babidi, and the taller one is Dabura, the King of Evil.

GOKU: He seems like a strong one.

SHIN: Definitely. He is the strongest in the Universe of Evil.

KRILLIN: That sounds like a very horrible place. That means this Dabura guy is dangerous.

GOHAN: Supreme Kai, you said that Babidi is controlling Dabura?

SHIN: Babidi is not strong himself, so he uses his magic to control others and work for him. His magic powers are strong that he can control even the king of evilness.

PICCOLO: So he uses his magic to bend people to his will?

KIBITO: No. What he does is he manipulates the evil in a person's heart making them do what they have always wanted. Dabura is the perfect choice for that. That is also what he used to control Yamu and Spopovich.

GOKU: The power that they have, they can't control it because it was Babidi's.

KIBITO: Yes. If you're not pure of heart then he can control you and manipulate you into doing your deepest darkest desire.

SHIN: I did not expect Babidi to resort into Dabura. This cause a big twist in the plan.

VEGETA: Are you saying we won't win against them?

The Supreme Kai does not answer.

VEGETA: As if I'll lose to these two! I won't let them win over me and bring that Buu back into life.

GOKU: Krillin, go back now. This is more dangerous than I thought.

KRILLIN: That's right. I don't think I could be of help here anyway.

Babidi took the canister that contains Gohan's energy, and eventually eliminates Spopovich. He then asked the other guy, Pui Pui, to eliminate Yamu.

GOHAN: They killed their own men! They're terrible!

Babidi talks to Dabura a little more, then goes back inside the ship. Pui Pui follows suit, leaving Dabura outside. Dabura looks into the direction where the Z Fighters hide.

SHIN: No way...

Dabura comes flying to the group.

VEGETA: They know about us!

Dabura attacks the group. He goes to Kibito first and blasts him off, turning him into pieces. He then spits to Krillin and Piccolo.

SHIN: Don't let his saliva touch you!

But it was too late. Krillin and Piccolo suddenly turn into stone statue.

GOKU: Krillin! Piccolo! (goes to the two)

SHIN: Don't touch them! They can't change back if you break them.

GOKU: But will they turn back to normal?

SHIN: If Dabura dies.

GOKU: (smiles confidently) That one's easy.

DABURA: As if you'll kill me! (laughs wickedly) Go away! You'll never win over Babidi.

Dabura flies away.

GOHAN: Let's go, Dad! We need to turn Krillin and Piccolo back to normal.

GOKU: Let's go!

The two flies away.

SHIN: Don't come after him! This is his plan all along! Don't play with his game!

VEGETA: Unfortunately, we Saiyans are an impatient type.

Vegeta goes as well. The Supreme Kai was enraged but has no choice but to follow them.

The three Saiyans enter the door to the ship. On it is a very deep tunnel leading to who knows what. The three of them looks down and sees nothing, but even so they still decide to come down. They arrive at a circular empty room.

GOKU: What is this place? (looks around) It's empty.

GOHAN: There's a door over there. Should we break in?

The Supreme Kai arrives as well.

GOKU: So, you decided to follow, Supreme Kai.

SHIN: It's because I can't do anything with your recklessness.

The tunnel at the top suddenly closes.

SHIN: It seems that we could not come out unless Babidi is defeated.

VEGETA: We could just destroy the ship.

SHIN: If you do that the impact might awaken Buu. That is the last thing we want to happen.

The lone door of the room suddenly opens. Pui Pui comes out of it.

PUI PUI: Welcome! Lord Babidi is at the bottom floor. You can come to him, but only if you defeat me. But I doubt it, because you're all going to die here.

GOKU: I doubt that as well!

PUI PUI: (laughs wickedly) Say whatever you want. Now, who comes first?

GOKU: Hmn? Let's see. (turns to Gohan and Vegeta) Should I go first?

VEGETA: That's not fair, Kakarot! You always go first. Remember you went first during the Cell Games?

GOKU: You're right... Okay, why don't you go, Gohan?

VEGETA: No! Let's settle this the fair way.

GOKU: Okay. I agree.

The three of them plays rock-paper-scissor, to the Supreme Kai's shock.

SHIN: (to himself) Why are they acting like this is a game? Are these people really gone insane?

GOKU, VEGETA, GOHAN: Rock, paper, scissors!

GOKU: Oh, crap!

VEGETA: Ok, I won.

SHIN: You're fighting him alone?

VEGETA: Of course. He's no big deal.

PUI PUI: (to himself) Well, Lord Babidi told me to be careful because they're strong. Stupid is more like it.

VEGETA: You're the stupid one. We are the strongest fighters in the universe.

PUI PUI: (laughs mischievously) You're joking. I told you you'll die here. Your energy will be used to revive Majin Buu.

VEGETA: So if I don't get hurt, my energy will not be absorbed?

PUI PUI: That's right, but that's not going to happen.

VEGETA: Enough of this chatter. Let's start!

The two of them starts fighting. Goku, Gohan and the Supreme Kai watch as Vegeta singlehandedly defeat Pui Pui. When the latter seems defeated, the room suddenly changes. They were brought to planet Zoon, the planet where Pui Pui came from. It seems it has a different time zone as Earth as it was night when they are transported there.

GOHAN: What happened? Where are we?

SHIN: I'm not sure, but this place might be where Pui Pui can fight better. No doubt this is Babidi's magic.

PUI PUI: Ha! Now, the tables will turn! This is Planet Zoon, the place where I've been born and raised. It has ten times gravity than Earth.

VEGETA: And you think I care? Ten times gravity is nothing.

PUI PUI: (laughs wickedly) You're bluffing. Are you trying to look mighty before I crush you to death?

VEGETA: The one who's dying... is you!

Vegeta attacks Pui Pui with an energy attack, turning him to pieces. After a while the circle on the ground opens up.

GOKU: The floor opened up! This might be the way to get out of here.

The three Saiyans rush to the hole and jumps in, leaving a dumbfounded Supreme Kai behind.

GOHAN: This looks like a video game.

VEGETA: Such stupid game!

GOKU: Hey Supreme Kai! Let's go!

SHIN: Those people... So much power...

The group is transported back to the ship, but this time to another level.

GOKU: This looks like the previous room.

GOHAN: Maybe he can also turn this into something else.

GOKU: I wonder who the next opponent is.

Ten minutes has passed but there's still no sign of their next opponent.

GOKU: What's taking them so long? Hey! Hurry up, will ya!?

VEGETA: Why do we even have to wait? Let's just break the floor and go down to where that Babidi might be.

SHIN: I told you! That could awaken Buu.

VEGETA: I bet that Buu is no big deal, just like Dabura.

SHIN: What do you mean? Dabura?

VEGETA: Judging from the way he moved, I don't think his attack is strong. It's just his spit that you need to watch out for. Kibito was just careless.

SHIN: Goku, is that true?

GOKU: Yeah. Well, even if that is not his full strength, I don't think he's something we can't handle. Seven years ago, we fought Cell. Dabura seems to be the same power level as that.

SHIN: (on his mind) I can't believe how strong these Saiyans are! But thinking about it... Gohan's power as a Super Saiyan is incredible. What if that's not yet his full power?

GOKU: Hey! Hurry up! It's my turn to fight, you know!

The door opens, and a monster-looking alien comes out.

GOKU: What is this creature?

YAKON: Which among you should I eat first?

GOKU: (disappointed) You're the one I'm fighting? Uh! You don't seem like a challenge to me.

SHIN: It's... It's Yakon!

Yakon suddenly attacks Goku, and the fighting begins. In the usual Goku fashion, he fights the opponent first to assess its capabilities. Others might mistake this as Goku not being able to defeat his opponent.

GOHAN: He's pretty fast for his size.

SHIN: Let's help Goku!

GOHAN: Nah! Dad's fine. He can handle this one.

BABIDI: (voice over) Yakon! You're doing a good job. Kill them all except for the Supreme Kai. Take their energy. That will be enough to revive Buu. I'm sending you to your favorite place, the Planet of Darkness.

The room suddenly becomes dark.

GOKU: Hey! I can't see anything!

YAKON: But I can see you perfectly. (laughs wickedly)

Yakon attacks Goku, but his attacks were perfectly read by the Saiyan.

YAKON: Huh! How can you...

GOKU: I might not see you, but I can still sense you. And, there is a way for me to see you.

Goku turns into a Super Saiyan. The room is lit by the beam that's emanating from Goku.

GOKU: Now, I can see you.

Yakon laughs wickedly.

GOKU: You don't seem worried.

YAKON: Because I'm not!

Yakon suddenly sucks in, siphoning the light energy emanating from Goku. Suddenly, Goku was turned back to his normal form, and darkness came back.

GOHAN: It's dark again!

VEGETA: Kakarot turned back to his normal form!

SHIN: I remember! Yakon absorbs light energy. He feeds on Goku's Super Saiyan form.

YAKON: That was delicious, the best that I've ever had.

GOKU: You ate that?

GOHAN: Dad! This monster absorbs light energy! You should not turn into a Super Saiyan again.

YAKON: (laughs wickedly) He's right. But if you want to, do that again by all means. That light was marvelous, it's the best I ever had.

GOKU: (to himself) If that's the case... (to Yakon) Okay then. I'll feed you.

Goku turns into Super Saiyan again.

VEGETA: What's Kakarot planning?

GOHAN: Dad! Don't do that! I'll just help you!

GOKU: No! This is my fight. Stay out of this!

YAKON: (laughs wickedly) I'm so happy you're so stupid! Now I can eat your light again!

SHIN: Goku is being foolish again! He should just let us help him fight.

VEGETA: No! He's not a fool. He's got a plan. Let's just watch.

Yakon sucked in all of Goku's light energy, but instead of transforming back to normal form Goku increased his power to continuously feed Yakon. The greedy monster continuously feeds until he can't handle it anymore. He explodes.

The floor opens up once again.

GOKU: The door's open. Let's go down!

Gohan and Vegeta follows.

GOHAN: That was great, Dad!

VEGETA: (on his mind) It seems like Kakarot can turn into Super Saiyan 2 as well.

They landed on the next floor.

GOKU: Gohan, it's your turn to fight. Have you been training?

GOHAN: Uh...

Gohan smiles nervously as he scratches the back of his head.

VEGETA: He's been slacking. We might be stronger than him now. I bet he cannot be as strong as he was back then even if he gets angry.

Gohan laughs embarrassingly.

SHIN: (on his mind) So that's it! That is why these humans are very confident. It's because they can power up whenever they want, just like what Goku did. I can't believe I've been surpassed by mere mortals.

The lone door on the room opens, and Dabura comes out.

SHIN: It's Dabura!

DABURA: I must admit, I'm impressed. No human has even gotten this far, having beaten Yakon. However, this is the end of the line because I'm going to end this once and for all.

VEGETA: Babidi's right-hand man is next? Is that all he has? How disappointing!

DABURA: Enough of this foolish talk! Go fight me!

GOHAN: It's my turn. You're fighting with me!

PAPAYA ISLAND, EAST OF SOUTHERN CONTINENT

Meanwhile, Videl is now near the tournament venue. A familiar voice suddenly calls her.

GOTEN: (voice over) Hey Videl!

VIDEL: Huh?

She looks around and sees Goten and Trunks.

VIDEL: Goten!

The two kids come closer.

GOTEN: Where's Gohan? Aren't you with him?

VIDEL: I was, but I came back. They went on a mission.

GOTEN: Mission?

TRUNKS: Are our dads with them?

VIDEL: Yes.

GOTEN: What mission is this?

VIDEL: There was a magician named Babidi and he is about to unleash an evil monster named Majin Buu. Those two who attacked Gohan earlier took his energy to be used in reviving him. Kibito said that this Buu is very strong that is why their mission is to stop those two and Babidi from resurrecting the monster. Gohan and the others are all there to help them.

The two tots seem excited all of a sudden.

TRUNKS: A magician...

GOTEN: A monster...

TRUNKS: That's great!

GOTEN: Yes, Trunks! That sounds interesting!

VIDEL: (shocked) Huh?

TRUNKS: A Majin! We have to see it!

GOTEN: Yeah, I wanna see it!

The two look at the direction where Videl came from.

TRUNKS: It's over there! I can feel our dads' ki over there.

GOTEN: Let's go there now!

VIDEL: Wait! Don't do this!

TRUNKS: Let's fly fast! We might not see the Majin if we don't fly as fast as we can!

GOTEN: No way! I wanna see! I wanna see the Majin!

TRUNKS: Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

GOTEN: (nods) Uh-huh!

The two turns into Super Saiyans.

VIDEL: What!?

Without a word, the two kids fly to where Videl came from. Videl can only watch them fly away.

VIDEL: What had just happened?

She contemplates on the consequences of the little kids' descend.

VIDEL: I think I shouldn't have told them the truth.

Left with no choice, Videl goes back to the tournament venue. As she flies into the arena, the awarding ceremony is about to start, with Master Satan as the winner again.

VIDEL: What? Dad?

Videl looks around and finds Chi-Chi and the others. They are at the terrace, ready to leave. Videl flies to them.

CHI-CHI: Videl! Where is Gohan?

VIDEL: I left him with Kibito.

CHI-CHI: Who's Kibito? What's going on, Videl? Where are the others?

VIDEL: I don't know, actually. All I know is they are on a mission to prevent another catastrophe to happen.

CHI-CHI: What do you mean?

Videl caught sight of Android 18. Then she looks at the ring.

VIDEL: Why is my dad being awarded the winner? (looks at Android 18) Didn't you go fight him? Was the game canceled because the others left?

Everyone is surprised at Videl's questioning.

ANROID 18: Y-Your dad's the world champion, right?

Videl looks at the group. They are all quite surprised at how she's acting.

VIDEL: I know... I know the truth now.

CHI-CHI: What truth?

VIDEL: (looks down) That my dad is a phony.

The group is silenced.

VIDEL: I now know the truth about what happened during the Cell Games. How... how my father claimed the victory even though it was... (looks at Chi-Chi) it was your husband... who defeated Cell.

Videl feels more embarrassed as she tells them the truth. She can't look straight at them, more so as they hear the people chant for his father.

She feels a hand touch her shoulder.

CHI-CHI: It's okay, Videl. It's not your fault.

Videl looks at Chi-Chi. The latter's smile makes her feel better.

CHI-CHI: Now please. Tell me. Where is Gohan and Goku?

VIDEL: They went to stop a magician named Babidi.

CHI-CHI: Babidi?

VIDEL: They said that this Babidi is the son of a late magician known as Bibidi. They came from another planet. Bibidi created an evil monster called Majin Buu. This Majin Buu is so strong that even the gods could not stop him.

CHI-CHI: Oh, good Lord!

Chi-Chi seems to faint at what she heard.

BULMA: So Vegeta and the others, they went to stop this... monster... whatever?

VIDEL: The monster was sealed away by the Kais a long time ago. They thought it will not be awakened again since Bibidi is dead. However, Babidi took from his father and is now planning to revive Majin Buu. That is the reason why he took Gohan's pure energy.

YAMCHA: So he wants to infuse the energy to Majin Buu?

VIDEL: That's right. The Supreme Kai came to stop it. Gohan and the others came to help.

BULMA: Well at least we know that Goku is with them.

MASTER ROSHI: With Goku and Vegeta, and then Gohan, I think we're in for a good fight.

VIDEL: There's just a little problem...

CHI-CHI: What is it?

VIDEL: This is my fault. I'm really sorry.

CHI-CHI: What are you saying?

VIDEL: While flying here, I saw Goten and Trunks.

BULMA: Oh, those two! What are they planning- (looks suspiciously at Videl) Don't tell me...?

Videl nods.

VIDEL: I told them where the others are. They said they want to see the majin...

BULMA: Oh... Trunks!

Chi-Chi seems like she's about to faint again.

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linkspooky · 5 years ago

Note

Your analysis on shigaraki's worldview is 😍😍😍. Who's your fav bnha character btw, and what kind of manga are you into? (i mean as in genre, but my phrasing is terrible at times so idk how to put it all in the last sentence)

My favorite manga in the whole world are the manga that run in Weekly Shonen Jump. I read almost everything that runs in the magazine from week to week. I know that’s not technically a genre, but let’s not arguen semantics.

And now because no one asked for it, my opinion on all of the manga currently running through Jump that I read.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba usually manga in shonen jump slowly get worse over time as they try to stretch their stories out, but Kimetsu no Yaiba is a story that continues to develop on itself and improve the longer it runs.

The art is phenomenal and has a good balance of when to be silly and when to be drop dead gorgeous. It’s more of an ensemble piece tied together by a big brother trying to save his little sister, and because of that almost every character Tanjirou interacts with is fun and really immediately attention grabbing.

It’s also a pretty heavy story that deals with death, grief and loss and trying to find life beyond a world that has suffering like that. I’m actually planning to make some meta of it soon, especially with the interactions between Domi and Shinobu. My only real complaint is that it’s deep but not too deep. Usually the demons are always bad and the demon slayers are always good in the end, even if sympathy is expressed for some of the demons. Once again though it does so well in the technical aspects of telling the story it wants to tell.

My Hero Academia it’s pretty obvious that I like it. The biggest draws for me are the art style and the characters, specifically the villains. Also the idea of a reverse X men world where what are basically the mutants now outnumber normal people and dominate society is a fantastic idea for world building with a lot of options.

I’ve actually followed Horikoshi’s work for a long time. His two previous works, Oumagodoki Zoo and Barrage both ran in Shonen Jump for a short time before they were cancelled which I find really unfortanate because they both had a lot of potential as well.

I love both the hero kids and the villains, though sometimes I feel like the villains are more connected to the central conflict of the story than the heroes. It would be nice to see Deku evolve a more radical philosophy then just wanting to save people right in front of him, or protecting the status quo. The heroes should ideally act in response to the villains to create a better world and resolve a problem the villains brought up, but if say the League of Villains were wiped out now another League would be created later because the central problem of the story has not been dealt with.

Dr. Stone this is a series that almost got cancelled, but was saved by a main character switch. Senku is really likable and unique as a character, kind of a mad scientist archetype who turns out to be the good guy and the hero of the story.

He reminds me a lot of Yoichi from the writers previous work, Eyeshield 21. In that they’re both laughing mad eccentrics who seem like they have little scruples for how they use and treat other people, and yet are surrounded by friends and act as the leaders of their team. They also both have a tendency for strategy over brute strength and like to outwit their opponents.

The only thing I can say about Dr. Stone is that while the characters are a fun little group of oddballs, they rarely get any deeper than that. The most interesting thing is still figuring out the central mystery of the world and what happened to turn everybody to stone, which is why having Senku as a main character was a really smart move on the series part.

Yozakura Family This is a new series that I actually really like and hope beats canellation at the two week mark. It’s kind of your basic romantic comedy characters get married in the first chapter promise, but also there’s some really strong character writing with the older brother. He’s one of the few examples of the obsessive and overprotective brother type that was portrayed as actually abusive and damaging for seeing his younger sister that way.

The premise also reminds me a lot of Katekyo Hitman Reborn, just suddenly getting sucked into the underworld of spies and crimminals when you’re an unlucky loser with no social skills. If the character writing is as strong as it is for the brother I can definitely see a lot of improvement and staying power.

The Promised Neverland the smartest written series in Shonen Jump write now with the best ideas. The Promised Neverland is all about theme, theme, theme, theme, which is why someone like me who devours stories for their nutritious value and content loves it.

While there are only about three major characters with arcs that matter to the plot, Norman, Ray, and Emma they are some of the deepest characters in shonen jump currently and the complexity of their relationship and the way they all foil each other is superb.

It’s a story about children trying to escape a neverland where they can never grow up, and live in a world that never wanted them alive. Not only is it just about them though, it’s also about adults who are still inside the system and gave up at one point or another and decided to just live in the evil world rather than change it. It’s a deep story but it’s also undeniably shonen jump, the central theme is about not giving up even in a world that is determined to deny your existence.

Act Age If you’ve read Chihayafuru this manga has a lot in common with that, because both of them are about very singleminded girls with complex emotions that they themselves don’t understand, finding themselves completely enveloped in a niche hobby to the point of obsession.

Act-Age is a story that’s primarily about storytelling and the nature of stories themselves, with each arc focusing on an adaptation of either a movie made up for the sake of the story or a pre-written play ie, Journey to the West, Night on the Galactic Railroad. However, it’s also bout the nature of stories, as understood by the perspectie of an actor.

There are only a few major characters but they all get intensely developed in their arcs. My absolute favorite relationship is that of the main character, quiet on the surface but with deep emotions that she uses for her acting talent with her rival an actress that’s much more like a pop star or idol. Rather than having deep talent she instead uses her ability to read people to appeal to them. She is cheerful and lively on the surface, but empty inside. The way they envy each other and learn to grow from each other because each of them has what the other one desires.

Jujutsu Kaisen reminds me of really early bleach that was just Ichigo and his teenage friends fighting Hollows. This is one of the manga I definitely reccomend, because it’s one of the lesser known manga in jump currently. The art style has this scratchy look about it which really adds well to the horror aspect of the series. It’s a demon fighting anime with some of the best demon designs, more attention is put on making them look grotesque and scary then in series like KNY where the demons for the most part are pretty good looking still.

The main trio is very solid, a reckless idiot who swallowed a cursed finger in the first chapter and is continually dealing with the consequences of that, the shadowy, quiet type cool headed one who almost never talks about his past or his true feelings on the matter, and between them the cheerful girl whose a tad on the merciless side.

Not only are the characters good, but it’s one of the few series where the fights and lore are super interesting. Rather than dealing with demons directly Kimetsu no Yaiba style we deal with curses, which are generated from the human subconscious.

For exmaple one of the villains Mahito is the embodiment of the fear humans have for other humans, that is the anxieties of life, and the fear and suppressed feelings that go hand in hand with humanity. Because that he’s much like a child curse quickly learning and progressing with a human intelligence.

The fights, the powers of characters, they’re all used to further develop a really interesting world of curses and the people who live dealing with them that it feels like we’re only scratching the surface of right now and desperately makes you want to figure out the system they have in place for this entire world.

Yui Kamio Lets Loose - I find it to be a really sweet romantic comedy about a stuck up boy obsessed with appearances and what other people think of him falling in love with two sides of a girl, the uncontrollable Yui that beat him up and constantly gets into fights and trouble, and the perfect demure girl who can only ever be helpless and kind and needs to be protected. It has a feel of a lot of classic 80s high school romantic comedies. The only real problem is that it needs to acquire a plot fast, because it’s at risk for cancellation which makes it hard for me to get invested in a series that might end soon.

Double Taisei - One of those shonen manga that had a really interesting beginning chapter, but then failed to do anything with it. I think it would work well as a character piece between two personalities who act like brothers in the same body, but the characters aren’t strong enough quite yet to work that way. I do like the character design…

Tokyo Shinobi Squad - It looked like a ripoff at first but the main character is actually fairly different from Naruto, and the manga itself is uniquely its own thing. I just hope it learns to utilize it’s cyberpunk setting better, because ninjas fighting in a cyberpunk dystopia is a very tropey premise and the story needs to utilize those tropes in order to work. I do like the fact that the main character starts out pretty powerful so it’s not a typical shonen formula about a main character slowly learning to gain power, instead it’s him taking in and being responsible for a kid.

Manga I don’t read - One piece, Yuuna of the Haunted Hotsprings, Chainsawman, Samurai 8 the tale of Hachimaru, Beast Children, Miitama Security Busters.

#anime-freakchow #weekly shonen jump #shonen manga #my hero academia #dr. stone #jujutsu kaisen #act-age #the promised neverland #act age #black clover #we never learn #kimetsu no yaiba #spooky speaks #askspookies

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whirlybirdwhat · 5 years ago

Text

East Sea of Monsters - Chapter 16

Zoro has always been different than the rest - with a beast inside his chest that is howling to get out and a connection to other worlds that no one else quite has - but he doesn’t care. (He’s the Demon of the Demon Sea after all)

Read the entire series on Ao3 for better quality and authors notes! Gen, creepy, featuring all of the Straw Hats, multi-chapter story. (Tag “Ficart” on my blog should also show some fan art for this fic!)

“The East Blue has a different nickname to those in the Grand Line, and those who hail it as home have a few… unique traits.”

Paths - Zoro

In a town such as his, small, mountain bound, and old, there are traditions and rules to be followed. Be polite to your elders, be kind, do not stay out past dark, celebrate Hallowtide, give offerings of blood at the village entrance but only ever your own – and do not fight for the sake of fighting.

Zoro, of course, ignores all of this.

(They say there are many ways to walk about the world, some more dangerous than others. They say that those born on this tiny island have the vision to see them, all of them, the way the world shifts at every touch and the glowing paths of mist that show the way between worlds.)

He walks into to the town, ignoring the cupped stone hands and dagger at the entrance, and searches for the nearest dojo. His clothes are patched and dirty, a wheat straw hangs from his mouth, and eyes dot his limbs, blinking and merging back to skin within an instant. Blood drips from his lips from his latest scuffle, when an uppercut cause the fangs protruding from mouth to pierce upwards. Of course, he hit them back twice as hard.

(They would be known for it – but they are a secluded village, a secluded island, hidden deep within the East. They have walked so many paths between so many worlds, it is hard to know where home is – so they choose to remain stationary. Letting the roots of their souls sink down into the ground, cementing themselves in the earth. Their skin grows stiff and their hair fern like, waving in the wind as they watch the multitude of paths – of strings connecting each plane of reality intersecting into thousands of possibilities. A hand waves through them, and all at once a reality is destroyed)

His feet are barefoot as he walks into the dojo, not out of respect but because he has no shoes to wear. There are bleeding marks along his skin, rocks that dug beneath hardened scales as he tackled his enemy to the ground in his latest scuffle. His pointed ear is pierced – the first of three he hopes – and his sole possession besides his clothes, a single golden earring, lies in his pocket. He can’t find a mirror to put it in his ear. He shakes with every step – his last meal was three days ago, and it was only a bite of bread – but he is determined.

(Zoro, despite being from this particular island, has no vision of these paths between worlds)

He marches up to the dojo, disguises his hunger and hollow face with a snarling grin, and makes the same deal he has made at the rest.

Let me fight your students – If I win, I get a meal and a place to rest my head. If your students win, you can choose what you desire from me.

He has never lost before.

(Zoro has only ever seen one path – golden, gleaming, and right under his feet. It twists and loops and he doesn’t always follow it (where does it start and where does it end?) but it leads him to where he must be.)

He loses.

To her.

(This one path will lead him down the path of greatness, of blood, of death. It is the only path he wants in life.)

He joins the dojo.

(It is the path the planes take him to)

Zoro’s different than the other children, everyone can tell. For one – he’s never stationary, unless he’s napping, and his skin does not crawl with bark and roots like the rest of them (though his hair is by far the deepest green.)

He’s different, because there’s a fire in his chest and violence along his claws. Every action has a purpose, and every motion has direction. He’s different, because in the place of roots that grow with the environment is a beast that adapts with the world.

(That conquers the world)

There are shadows along every movement, shadow limbs that follow him (becoming more physical every day), and glinting green scales along every limb that like to merge with the shadows.

Zoro has a hard time figuring out what’s real sometimes (it’s what makes him different, even Kuina can see it.)

Kuina’s as strong as an oak, but her father likes to treat her as if she’s a flower. Zoro doesn’t get it as he spits blood from his mouth. She’s strong, stronger than him, so why? Why?

Kuina wins against him for the 2001st time, and Zoro finds a new purpose. He’s not so different, not anymore, and now he has someone to beat.

Kuina falls down the stairs, and suddenly Zoro knows why she was a flower to her father.

(But he won’t let that stop him, not now, not ever.)

The next years are a blur of training, and a final, final act that separates him from the grown people of this island.

Zoro steps forward, and does not enter the dojo.

Instead, he enters a glade of mist and blood, with golden streams all along. Instead, he steps where one with the vision of kings can only dare see, where red shores tremble underneath soft steps. Instead, Zoro steps forward and becomes lost.

(so very lost)

Its only for a second, but a second is enough before he’s back in the dojo, Koushirou looking at the spot where his pupil, dragon skinned and shadow limbed, just appeared.

“I think,” the man says slowly, like a strong willow tree waving in the wind, “That your place is not here.”

It never was, Zoro thinks, and bows anyway. He has a mission, a promise to keep, and this island, rooted in tradition and katas and sword swings with no innovation or reaching upward, will no longer help him.

But Zoro has never been rooted and the animal (demon) inside him roars with anticipation (bloodlust) as he sets sail into the mist. Zoro does not care, and the sword at his side does not either.

Behind him, the village fades, as if it was never there to begin with.

(Or perhaps, never on the normal plane of existence.)

Rumors are fickle things and Zoro has no protest. If people say he is the greatest swordsman in the East Blue, so be it, it just means more challengers.

(He’s only seventeen, how pathetic must these people be by the sword?)

(He doesn’t question the people’s other strengths, like the woman with withering grins and the men who make islands out of footsteps.

He could never fight against them (not yet at least))

The rumors are a way to get to the top.

(Wado Ichimonji is not of this sea, and it does not sing for the dark waters as Zoro does. Still, even a blade as pure as this can become corrupt, and as blood spills over and over and over its gleaming blade, Zoro hears its voice grow darker, stronger, and purer in its darkness. Like a moonless night rather than murky waters.

It is a good contrast – it helps Zoro sleep at night sometimes, when the beast inside his chest will not stop howling)

Occasionally it leads to companions – or once it did at least.

He meets Johnny and Yosaku on bright day on a nameless island. He doesn’t know where he is, and he sure they don’t know either.

“You’re the demon,” They say, and Zoro barks out a laugh. They’re in the East Blue – only cowards aren’t.

All the same, he replies. “Yeah. You?”

It’s Yosaku who answers then, dust falling off his shoulders as he moves and sand pouring out of the holes in his back. “Half – dead. Can you help us?”

“Maybe, if you pay for dinner and booze.”

Johnny smiles, revealing a glint of teeth to sharp and too jagged to be of anything but the depths of the sea and seals the promise.

“Deal.”

The year and a half he spends with Johnny and Yosaku is the best he’s lived in all the years he roamed this earth.

They roam the east for what feels like centuries, each day something new. Johnny and Yosaku have the self-preservation that Zoro (hungry for something greater, for a place at the top, a beast inside unsatisfied) could never have and he is stronger than both of them combined - they make a good team, and Zoro hasn’t gone this far without injuries in a long time.

That isn’t to say Johnny and Yosaku aren’t strong, however, or to say they make the best decisions.

(Yosaku’s of the desert and Johnny is of the sea. They oppose each other in every way but there’s something in the way they move that belies the power that everyone in the East has buried in their bones and blood and what soul they have left.

There’s a time when they stray into the dark waters off the coast of an Island and the soul of it starts boiling and spinning the water into a whirlpool of tremendous might that capsizes their little fishing boat unfit for journeys such as theirs despite the iron imbedded in its hull.

Johnny, agile in the water, is the one to kill the sea snake with a thousand limbs, saving his companions when the water boils with the blood of demons.

(The water remains the same dark hue, despite the blood pouring forth like a fountain from the split in the serpent’s neck. Zoro pours his sake in the water and does not think of the voices in the distance and the shapes in the fog.)

And there is a time that they wander onto land and become trapped in the swirling maze while hunting for a bounty. It is not the first time Zoro has starved nor will it be the last, but it is the only time that it is a purposeless hunger without solution.

(The only time his companions have become faceless and strangers to him – blood and a meal but not friends, not anymore.)

Zoro does not see it, unconscious as he is at the time, but it is Yosaku who chooses to fall into the earth not knowing anyway out (anyway to survive) in order to have a chance to save them all.

He’s the only reason Zoro’s alive today)

But they do make the burning in his chest just that much easier to bear, make the whispers quieter and the blade stronger, don’t they?

He leaves them eventually.

He’s always been different –

(a loner, some say, others monster among monsters, alone, forsaken, unwanted-) but this time it isn’t because of his scales and horns and glowing, shadow limbs and disappearing habits.

It’s because he heard Mihawk was two towns over visiting some pirate ship or other, and Johnny and Yosaku never planned to leave the East (few do – they have all heard of the Veil and how it crushes those without Will-).

It’s because Zoro has been trying to get to the Grand Line, to the Greatest Swordsman, for two years now, and he’s so close to the first step to the top.

So he leaves, and doesn’t look back beyond a casual three hand wave.

Mihawk isn’t there.

Asura, the name he gave the voice inside his chest, his head, his limbs and blood, (powerful and mighty) rages.

Zoro is alone.

(Again. Why does it hurt this time?)

(At least he has Asura)

He misses Johnny and Yosaku.

(But he doesn’t look back – the past is past.)

He cuts down more foes.

Zoro find that the limbs that have followed him since birth (shadowy, never quite present, Asura?) are now solid enough to hold a sword. And so are the faces attached to his head.

A step to the left and the world goes blue and black – suddenly he is in a forge of something other, and there are swords in the remaining limbs.

A step to right and backwards, and he’s on a dinghy in the middle of nowhere with plenty of sake in the raft.

He sends a bottle of it to the sea, and drinks the rest before shining his blades.

(He doesn’t believe in gods but he has seen what lies in the depths of the sea.)

It takes concentration to will the limbs into being, so it’s a move he reserves for fellow swordsmen of renown.

Not that there are many in the East – instead, most do what Zoro is doing now, and train their natural attributes.

The fangs in his mouth are sharp enough to pierce through dragon hide now (he’s tested) and his scales are like armor (he’s tested again).

He’s alone save for the beast in his chest, but he’s stronger than ever (he thinks.)

The gold path that he’s been ignoring since it killed Kuina is sparking at Shells Town. H

He doesn’t care, but somehow, he manages to get stuck there for a month.

Dumb kelpie.

A week passes.

Nothing changes.

Another week passes.

Nothing changes.

(Asura’s gone quiet.

He’s thankful – Wado isn’t here to balance him out.)

On the third week, a boy appears, dressed in red with blood lining his sharp teeth. He’s nothing quite like Zoro’s ever seen, but the blinding gold isn’t there anymore.

Then he’s being pestered by this boy, this wannabe pirate captain, and he doesn’t care anymore.

“My name’s Monkey D. Luffy,” he’s says to Zoro after bullets bounced off of him. “And I’m going to be King of the Pirates.”

Zoro smirks and laughs and challenges him back. “My name is Roronoa Zoro and I’m going to be the World’s Greatest Swordsman.”

“Fitting for the Pirate King’s first mate.”

“Son of the Devil.”

“Isn’t everyone?”

Zoro’s in a dinghy again, fading into the fog. Next to him is his captain, who promised to let Zoro run him through if he stands in the way of Zoro’s dream.

Somehow, watching Luffy take in the world with glowing eyes, Zoro thinks that won’t happen.

He’s doesn’t feel so different anymore, not before this man with a soul darker than his, and he doesn’t feel so alone either.

On the other side of the red line, a pirate shares the news of Axe-hand Morgan’s sudden death at the hands of an upstart pirate with a straw hat – there’s no bounty yet, but Mihawk's curious about the rumors of the Demon of the Demon Sea who follows him.

It doesn’t take long to find out the truth.

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swatato · 5 years ago

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fat. FAT. P H A T RANT INCOMING FOR ANYONE WHO CARES TO READ THIS NONSENSE CUZ @haldidoodh ASKED

That episode literally blasted the last of my serotonin into smithereens but TBH??? WHO AM I MAD AT I should have seen this coming this whole volume has been such a headache. I cant be bothered to type up a coherent rwde essay on everything that bothered me this episode so im just gonna copy and paste my earlier yelling here instead ;A;

Team Rwby was god awful in episodes 11-12. They’re so self-righteous, entitled, hypocritical and cocky as a team and it doesnt help that they all suck as individual characters nowadays (except for weiss but even she lost best-girl points this episode also lmao blake and yang aren’t even INDIVIDUALS anymore they’re just bumbleby). It was annoying at first but now its just infuriating how rwby thinks theyre always right with their uwu energy and think they can do whatever tf they want with ZERO CONSEQUENCES.

Basically any time there is a problem in this show they have Ruby uwu at it and its solved lol.

They kept giving ironwood shit for taking on this incredible burden SO THAT NOBODY ELSE WOULD HAVE TO and rather than offer any real solution they just kept going “but mantle” like okay?? But remnant??? Like obvi letting mantle rot is bad but HE WAS OPEN TO ANY HELPFUL SUGGESTIONS CUZ HES OBVI AT HIS WITTS END AND DOESNT LIKE THE IDEA EITHER but yeah they just proceed to be the fattest hypocrites by hiding secrets of their own after being all “no more secrets uwu” and WHEN THEY GOT EXPOSED THEY JUST WENT “>:[“ (yangs self-righteous little glare here pissed me off so much oof) especially when ironwood was laying everything out in the open to them from the start. AND ESPECIALLY WHEN THE SECRET WAS FKIN “OH YEAH SALEM CANT DIE LOL” They watched ironwood make every decision he did in hopes of beating Salem while KNOWING she couldnt die??? So literallY WHERE do they get off on screeching at him with their yOu doNt hAvE to Suffer In ManTle YOu doNt kNow whAt iTs liKe bs. Wtf made ruby distrust iw at the start anyway? Because he had a bunch of ships out? They kept this CRUCIAL piece of information from him because he seemed stressed out?? Like what made ruby keep the secret from him. Someone tell me.

And the fact that rwby beat the ace-ops makes no goddamned sense. The power-scaling in this show is non-existant. We finally got to meet some pro huntsmen in this universe who aren’t teachers but are actually on the job, but because we gotta move out of the way for that 👌🏽✨ Power Of Friendship✨ and ✨rwby is always right✨ they somehow managed to beat experienced huntsmen with YEARS in the field who’ve actually graduated school??? FARM BOI OSCAR WHOS *JUST* LEARNING HOW TO FIGHT MANAGED TO LAND A PUNCH ON NEO FKIN POLITAN??? Didnt neo dance circles around yang??? Yang, who punches for a living and also beat mercury and adam??? I cant yall (and the fact that he didnt even bother to sneak up on her this boi literally screamed “no!!” as he ran down a hallway and neo didnt even have time to blink??? Pls)

Ruby’s “you were the best, until you trained us :3” -for maybe 2 days before my team went dancing ruby sis shut right tf up pls my god is this line just so. UNEARNED. Training in a room for a short while does not simply grant you the years of field experience the ace ops have and whAT IS UP WITH HER TRYING TO REASON WITH HARIETT AFTER SAYING THAT COCKY LINE AND FIGHTING HER??? WHAT and also like. The entire idea of “the ops lost cuz they weren’t good friends and were bad at teamwork uwu” is just so dumb. Ur telling me this group of high ranking hunstmen who’ve most likely been working together for at least a few years didnt have teamwork down??? Learning to work together is the most BASIC concept for a team to learn!! Its like the first thing a team has to perfect!! If the ace ops are supposed to be the best of atlas you dont think the ops would have gotten something as fundemental as teamwork down?? I dont buy it. And who gives a shit if they dont hang out after work or take selfies with eachother. Being friends doesnt necessarily mean theyre great at working together. If they succeed at relying on eachother to watch their backs, to keep each other alive (in the words of hariett herself) then Id think theyd know how to protect eachother i.e WORK TOGETHER.

And for all the ✨friendship✨ and ✨going through so much with someone✨ talk rwby like to do, the show barely displays these people acting like friends. We’re constantly TOLD how great of friends this group is, but the actual CONTENT we are shown leaves a lot to be desired. Tell me the last time ruby and blake teamed up in a fight. Or weiss and blake. Or yang and weiss. What teamwork?? Yang only interacts with blake now and weiss is only ever allowed to interact with ruby. Has blake ever said nora or ren’s name out loud? Have jaune and yang ever held a conversation between just them? Team rwby just spent a GOOD DEAL of time seperated from eachother, but when they reunite their teamwork is still somehow better than the ace ops?? Honestly its easier to believe that ruby is closer with team jnpr than she is her own team. If they showed the ops messing up during rwby vs ace ops fight due to lack of communication, then it still doesnt matter. My point is that they shouldnt have lacked teamwork in the first place.

Robyn was m e h this episode “JaMes ConTinUes to UnDeresTimAte Me” *proceeds to get knocked over in .3 seconds and is then KO for the rest of the episode* also great job for starting a fight and aiming to take clovers life in a moving airship with a terrorist on board when clover was acting PEACEFULLY and qrow was WILLING TO TALK IT OUT WITH IW and potentially work on a solution, but naw robyn is big mad and shall shoot.

Qrow made zero sense this episode too. I was with him right up until he chose TYRIAN OVER CLOVER??? THE PSYCOPATH WHO CANNOT BE REASONED WITH OVER THE RATIONAL DUDE YOU KNOW IS GOOD except clover wasnt acting rational in this fight at all and ill get to that AND IS THE ONLY FRIEND YOU HAVE WHOS NOT 19????? Qrow rly looked at tyrian- a man who is literally an enemy to all of remnant and went after ur neice- and said lets get rid of this punk together u and me bro. Like screw teaming with clover to bring down the dude you ACTUALLY have a grudge with whos also a serial killer and then trying to talk it out with clover whod be willing to do things peacefully why is this show like this

and AS FOR CLOVER. where were the braincells this episode. Qrow was trying to fight tyrian-the WAY bigger threat here, but clover??? kept knocking him away from tyrian and restraining him with his hook like??? YEAH LETS HELP OUT THE DEMON SCORPION CRACKHEAD HES CLEARLY NOT THE PRIORITY ATM nvm clover deserved to die there m8

His death scene was emotional and I feel bad for Qrow but u literally sealed his death when u ganged on him with tyrian so why are you even surprised. And on the subject of fairgame, im glad it didnt happen. Qrow was in no state for romance and I was glad he finally had a friend. He just spent the last volume thinking he wasted his life away helping oz, drowning in misery, drinking til he passed out on the street and so drunk he couldnt even be of any help during the apathy situation, when up til now hes been shown to fight just fine while drunk. I don’t see this as a “bury your gays trope” because clover was never confirmed to be gay and all their scenes added up to 40 seconds of platonic friendship. These two are grown ass men, if they had the hots for eachother then im pretty sure they could openly show it and not dance around it like theyre kids. I do feel bad for mlm viewers who were hoping for some rep with fairgame/lucky charms (cuz rt only cares if ur a cute marketable lesbian) but idc for the overly entitled fans who try to force their own headcanons on the writers and go feral when they dont get what they want. You dont just get to prance around claiming whats canon and what isnt. If rep is there then great, but if it isnt, then why not look somehwere else and let the author tell the story theyre trying to tell? Shipping fairgame cuz you think its cute is absolutely fine but not when u start getting ready to casterate crwby for not catering to you. Also, rwby sucks with lgbt+ rep anyway so what were yall expecting.

The only thing that was great this episode was the chorerography. It just sucks that the animation/choreo continues to improve while the writing doesnt. Another thing that really fell off this episode was the whole “we’re friends but we have to fight” drama. It doesnt work when its only ONE SIDE SHOWING ANY DISTRESS OVER IT. Only the ace ops (marrow, clover, the vine dude) seemed to show distress over having to fight rwby (it sucks that the only 1v1 weiss has won was because marrow was going EASY on her cuz he didnt wanna fight her fr) but rwby???? They didnt give any shits. They were so quick to turn against them and aim for their heads. They were SMILING as they ran at the ace ops, while they looked conflicted. If you oppose their UwU philosophy, you’re dead to them.

I really wanna enjoy RWBY but sometimes this show (and the fndm) really tests me. Its ironic how this episode came right after last episode, which I thought was the best chapter this volume. Anyway I rate this 10/10 cuz it gave me best character ironwood and best boi marrow and I would like to give them hugs for carrying this volume on their backs. (Also tyrian and penny and winter have been great too)

#oof just oof #and idegaf about cinder yall #lowkey hoping she gets all the maiden powers so she can finally beat rwby up and HUMBLE them a little #rwby #rwby vol 7 #rwde

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impalementation · 5 years ago

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thinking about how buffy uses and depicts buffy and her strength. i’ve always been interested in those little, disturbingly real moments in which buffy’s strength feels suddenly unnatural, even profane. moments that seem intended to reflect buffy’s fears regarding her unnaturalness. that her strength is freakish and alienating. that moment in the body when buffy cracks her mother’s ribs while trying to administer cpr. the moment in the harsh light of day when spike taunts her about “bruis[ing] the boy.” the moment in dead things when she thinks she’s killed katrina with a single punch. same with ted in ted. the sad way she says “i’m gonna win” in conversations with dead people.

there’s also the reverse of this motif, where buffy’s strength is absent or insufficient and it’s terrifying. helpless, of course. her being unable to push a bully away feels uncanny. her inability to beat glory or the ubervamps using physical strength is similarly unsettling.

i’m also thinking about how we get buffy doing casual, almost deadpan shows of strength, but not so much faith. that i can remember–is that right? obviously we see faith fighting, and her accidental murder in bad girls is similar to the ted and dead things scenes. but i’m thinking more about moments like when buffy breaks that door handle in welcome to the hellmouth, leaps over the fence in the harvest, rips the phone off the wall in anne, lifts the troll hammer with ease in the gift, shrugs around giant i-beams in life serial, traps spike with a big stone sarcophagus lid in blood ties and throws riley across the room in a new man.

point is, buffy has a particular relationship to her strength, and the strength imagery seems specific to her character, rather than to being a slayer. it’s notable to me that faith is not one of the villains who is scary because she’s stronger than buffy; to the extent that faith even is scary, she’s scary because she’s as strong as buffy, but with fewer scruples or inhibitions. (seems telling that the show removes faith from helpless entirely, even if there are plot reasons for that. like her role as a foil is that unrelated to strength.)

it’s also interesting that the show has more of these strength moments in the later seasons. in the early seasons buffy being super-strong feels more expository; it’s part of her character and her character’s relationship to power and “normalcy”, but the story doesn’t tend to address strength directly as its own, season-long theme.

whereas season five absolutely does, and arguably more complexly than any other season. you have the parallel between buffy’s inability to beat glory with physical strength, and her inability to beat her mother’s illness with physical strength. both forces threaten to take family away from her. in that vein: her getting bested by the van halen vampire in fool for love, dracula’s un-stake-ability, and the april-bot (“i’ve had it with super-strong little women who aren’t me”). you also have the contrast between the way that buffy’s superior strength, both physically and emotionally, makes her incompatible with riley, makes her feel not-normal in a bad way (also: her fears of becoming “hard”, that strength equals emotional hardness), and the way that she tries to explore the origins of her power, and wants her death to be “a long time from now…like a cheetoh”. in other words, she spends the season feeling at once too strong and not strong enough. for many different definitions of “strong.”

in season six, on the other hand, buffy’s strength is very much connected to her feelings of wrongness. she no longer has something external or heroic to be strong for. just herself. she has dawn, but dawn’s not being chased by a hellgod anymore, and clearly survived the summer without buffy’s help. buffy’s revelation of the season is that she doesn’t “want to protect [dawn] from the word,” she wants to “show it to [her]”—ie, nothing that involves being a super-strong hero for dawn. the nerds are, quite purposefully, seemingly not even a threat. something that, like life, she should be able to bat away. i keep going back to that “freak buffy, too strong for construction work” line. also smashed, which goes to a monstrous feminine place, associating both sex and super-strength with destruction. that building wouldn’t have fallen down if buffy hadn’t had desire, hadn’t been strong, hadn’t felt she was “wrong.” i see season six as being about fear of growing up, fear of things like agency and self-responsibility. fear of being “weak” for not being more together, and fear that being “strong” for your own sake makes you selfish or evil. it’s interesting to me that when she breaks up with spike she says “i need to be strong about this”, and her season-ending display of physical strength is when she pulls herself out of the pit. in other words, her strength goes from being associated with shame and unnaturalness, to being associated with emotional empowerment.

season seven is outright obsessed with strength. once again, the season features villains that buffy can’t really physically fight. either because they’re incorporeal (the first), or seemingly stronger than her (ubervamps, caleb). the word “strong” gets thrown around a lot, along with the mirror word “weak”. the first is described as “evil. the strongest,” buffy is described as “the only one who has the strength to protect” the potentials, spike is described as “the strongest warrior we have.” the shadow men describe the demon spirit thing as “the source of [buffy’s] strength.” also: “weak. and you make me weak,” “chloe was stupid. she was weak”, “our whole race can be so damnably weak” etc. buffy herself uses the word “strong” a lot, especially towards the end: “you’re my strength xander”, “because of the strength you gave me last night”, “this woman is stronger than any of them.” and of course: “are you ready to be strong?” lots more i’m too lazy to detail. it all seems clearly connected to the season’s power themes. the question of what it means to be strong once you’ve accepted that being strong is okay. characters go from being afraid of their strength (i.e. power) to accepting it. spike with his vampirism and willow with her magic. buffy’s melancholy “i’m gonna win” in conversations becomes her “we’re gonna win” in chosen. the season as a whole seems to be about resolving the fear that power/strength is necessarily selfish, shameful, or isolating, and that not wanting to be alone or not being able to accomplish things alone makes you weak.

#btvs #gen

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