#moonlight teresa

[mylegendaryicons]

[cherryblossomshadow]

Juan and Chiron

[cherryblossomshadow]

tbf tho moonlight still hits me hard as just a queer guy/masculine ish person having their masculinity devalued bc of their queerness #moonlight #moonlight movie #kevin and chiron #chiron #kevin #fuck why is this film so good #please everyone should watch it #barry Jenkins #barry jenkins highkey was cooking with this film (comment and tags courtesy of OP)

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#yes this all this!!! #moonlight 2016 #the story of him coming to grips with his sexuality felt so realistic to me at least /because/ he didn't have a big coming out scene #like. that narrative feels like it's supposed to happen cause that's always what happens in tv shows and movies where there's a queer #--character. they were only allowed to exist in stories to tell the “coming out story” #like they'll have other stories involving them but they have to have a coming out story #and that's just not how it works for every queer person #some of us just have to figure this shit out and then deal with it and not come out because our parents are homophobic #and some of us probably have a story like chiron #but yeah moonlight isn't just a story about sexuality #it's got multiple facets #and there's so much character work we didn't see in those tine skips #such a great story (tags courtesy of @suibianworks)

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“female representation”

I mean, this reminds me of the Bechdel test getting weaponized against Fire Island (2022) :(

Idk if ppl know how stereotypes work? A character is a bad character, not bc they are similar to a stereotype but bc they are JUST a stereotype. Those female characters put in the work

And on the subject of "well written female characters," not every character can be deep. Those characters did what they needed to do, and they weren't just agents of the plot, they were ppl who loved Chiron. Well written characters dont have to be deep, they just have to make sense

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“being bullied for being gay without explicitly coming out”

"at the core queerness isn't its main focus"

Exactly, OP! Kinda envious that some ppl think you can only be bullied for things you tell the world. Moonlight is intersectional as hell and all the sexier for it. I don't think you could separate Chiron from his blackness any more than from his queerness. In our cisheteronormative patriarchal and racist society, these ideas of masculinity and sexuality and racial identity and power are all bound up together. The reason ppl get bullied rarely has anything to do with what ppl SAY they're being bullied for. I think it is really valuable that stories like this embrace the "contradictions" and shit that makes life messy

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“wanting to shed his hypermasculine image for a more vulnerable one”

hell fucking yeah lets gooooooooooooooooo

Pls bear with me while I pontificate about queerness. Queerness is a whole thing bc of the way our society is. It's about how ppl treat you (outcast), about how strong you have to be for yourself (determining to stay true and PROUD in the face of hardship and hate), but I really think that, at its heart, being queer is about love. In a less hateful world, maybe the trappings of hate and self-determinism would drop away and no longer be associated with queerness bc no one would give a shit who you love

TL;DR: Being queer is bundled with so much meaningful stuff specifically in this hateful world, which isnt necesarily a bad thing. But imo queerness is, at its heart, about love and therefore vulnerability. Coming out doesn't have to be ostentatious and "look at me and repent for how you've wronged me" (tho it DEF deserves to be in some cases)

Coming out can feel like coming home

im insane for moonlight

this rlly is jsut me ranting so spoilers for the film pls guys watch it its so fucking good i swear ITS SOOO GOOD GUH oh and there's gonna be mentions of stuff like homophobia, sexism, bullying, ect but its bc i saw a review on the movie moonlight (2016) saying abt how female representation only amounts to 2 female characters playing stereotypes, and how chiron's queerness wasn't properly explored bc contradictions and shit like how chiron was bullied for being gay without him ever explicitly coming out like

okay

1. this movie is LITERALLY about a black man struggling with his masculine identity bc of his culture and his environment, no SHIT it only focuses on the older more parental female figures in his life

2. his mother and teresa weren't stereotypes at all??? his mother struggles being a single mom and turns to drugs as a way to cope and ends up abusing her son which yeah absolutely tragic but the movie makes a point to say she still does care abt her son even when she doesn't show it when needed (literally her forgiveness scene hello??)

and teresa is the motherly figure in this case yes but its almost nice how her char is subverted in the sense she's not blood related but still cares for chiron like her own which is very neat !! also she has more of a noticable impact on chiron during his teenage years and letting him feel a sense of self and freedom whenever he stays over imo those are two very well written female characters

(will say teresa could've had more depth but yk)

3. queerness and weakness are viewed to be the same in hypermasculine cultures idk how u couldnt get that one tbh

he gets bullied bc people around him expect him to be a more masculine more tough ver of who he is now, devaluing his innate character

honestly i get why people would watch moonlight and view it as a "queer film" but at the core queerness isn't its main focus, it's how black kids deal and cope with their masculinity in a toxic environment. chiron's queerness is only a fraction of what makes up his issues with his masculinity, but because of how being queer is used as an insult when he gets bullied and abuse, that ending scene just hits harder like that bc he finally lets go of his tough exterior, and admits to his queerness as a substitute/symbol for what he truly means, which is him wanting to shed his hypermasculine image for a more vulnerable one with kevin and its just GAHHHHH

[pharawee]

深深的一段情

our time of deep affection

叫我思念到如今

has made me miss you ever since then

[hug-kiss-marry-kill]

[admireforever]

Janelle Monáe, Moonlight

[thisautistic]

okay so. this song is so beautiful it hurts my heart.

not only is it gorgeous but it is also a cover! and is VERY important to the chinese diaspora around the world.

it was one of the first 'popular' songs in chinese history!

here is the wiki for the original song and a youtube vid of the most recognizable version.

i love it. SO MUCH.

[sapphorarelyreads]

i immediately recognized the song playing in the background. Its the moon represents my heart by Teresa Teng and is also by favorite rendition by Leslie Cheung, yes the Hong Kong Cinema and LGBT Icon

[characters4comfort]

It’s all love and all pride in this house.

[respectthepetty]

Sun x Moon in The On1y One

I wrote briefly earlier about the “looking at the moon” scene in episode eleven of The On1y One, but regardless of how this cookie crumbles in the last episode, I think this conversation was excellent.

The boys are the sun and the moon, which I wrote about at the midway point of the series.

Wang is sun-coded. He is yellow and orange. He is openly friendly to his peers and warm toward them.

And the show has stated that he is the sun like when Wang was teasing Tian about the love poems he marked in the book, all the love poems were about the sun!

A girl's shyness is like a tender cherry under the sunlight; 16- and 17-year-olds are like fruits in the morning sun, sparkling

Therefore, the love poems were about Wang.

Tian is moon-coded. He is blue (and black). He isolates himself from his peers and is cold toward them. And now the show is stating that.,

But just like the book of love poems that revealed how Tian feels about Wang, we get an indirect glimpse of how Wang feels about Tian through this conversation.

It doesn't matter how good or bad the subtitles are because the focus is that Tian views the moon as something bad.

Life has it's ups and downs just like the moon waxes and wanes. It feels like everything connected to the moon is sad and full of regret. The moon shines on Earth every day, but only lights up half of it. Is that half kind of an eternity?

Tian thinks of himself and his life as sad. Everything that is connected to him, he thinks is full of regret. And he only allows people to see his outside by never letting others in. Yet Wang started this conversation off by stating his mom loved the moon and the Teresa Tang song, which we all of know since it was also featured in Moonlight Chicken!

"The Moon Represents My Heart" is an extremely popular Chinese song:

You ask how deeply I love you And just how great my love is My affection does not waver And my love doesn’t change The moon represents my heart

So not only has Wang established that he was raised to love the moon, but he also mentions this song which declares that he feels very deeply for his love and the fullness of the moon represents that love, which is probably why in the fourth episode, he was on the moon when his rocket ship came to get him.

In response to Tian's comments about the moon, Wang offers his take on the moon:

I don't agree with that. I think the moon often symbolizes light and hope, so even if it's only half, or just a moment, a second, as long as it's imprinted in your mind, it's eternal.

The conversation began because Wang's mom would ask his dad to pick between the moon and the sixpence, and in this, we see the great debate of love versus money, the future versus the present, and the abstract versus the practical. The moon is far and can't be held yet the sixpence is close and can be held. The moon would take time to get to, but the sixpence is within reach. The moon is a thought since it holds no value that can be seen, but the sixpence is money that can be used! And that's why the moon is love. And that's why Tian is the moon.

The Eclipse, Big Dragon, and Moonlight Chicken are just some BLs that gave us this sun and moon,

And the thing that they all get right is that the moon isn't the negative while the sun is positive.

The sun can burn. The sun can blind. The sun can harm. So it isn't always the positive entity that people tend to make it out to be. But the moon offers light in darkness. The moon guides the water in and out of the shores. The moon gives hope and guidance to those struggling.

So Wang's mom wanted him to pick the moon because she wanted him to pick love. She wanted him to see the possibilities rather than settle for what he had, which wasn't much. She wanted him to look to the future instead of worrying the present. She wanted him to not fear the distance, but instead know that the moon would guide him toward it. She wanted him to have hope.

And Tian gave him all of that.

So the conversation is lasagna. It has layers. It's about all these different things, but all these different things are the same thing. It's about Wang's mom. It's about the moon. It's about Tian. It's about love.

And it's about hope because regardless of what happens and no matter the distance, the moon always shines in the darkest of times, and guides those who are lost.

So even if everything looks bleak and all hope is lost, the moon will guide you home.

[mystic-writings]

remember the nights | chapter eleven — o, atlas, pt. i

WORD COUNT — 2,154

WARNINGS — angst, depression

NOTES — god this chapter just. ugh. (also sorry for the late post i forgot to queue it last night)

previous chapter | masterlist | next chapter

You haven’t been able to look Thomas in the eye for almost a month.

It’s been just a few days short of three weeks, and you were finally in the classic, snowy December that you’d waited all year for. The snow had begun to fall the day after the party and had let up very little since, as though the weather was linked to your mood. 

Before you’d moved, you wondered exactly what Woodstock would look like during the holiday season — covered in snow, twinkling under the moonlight and lit up in color with decorations on every house. You were correct, of course, and despite its beauty, you didn’t have the energy nor the emotion to properly admire the town for all the beauty it displayed under the constant cover of snow. 

While the morning of the first snow was hard, it hadn’t gotten any better. You woke up that morning and went through your usual motions, the ache in your chest feeling like a gaping void that swallowed up all of your happiness. Your first decision that day was to let it consume you, but after you cried all over again after folding up Newt’s jacket and tucking it away in your closet, you knew that feeling it all the time would only make things worse for you. Especially when you realized that if Newt was serious about what he said, it was almost a certainty that the jacket would never leave its place in your closet. 

After that, a constant cold — and even colder silence — seemed to blanket the house in the same way the snow did. Because not only could you not look Thomas in the eye without feeling a surge of anger, but you couldn’t stand speaking to him, either. For the first few days, he tried his best to talk to you, to explain himself, but once he realized you were serious about not talking to him anymore, he gave up. 

Maggie and your dad seemed okay, and you were thankful that their relationship wasn’t as altered by the change in yours and Thomas’, but the concern that rolled off of them in waves when you were in their presence was so strong that you could barely be around them, too. 

Chuck was the only person who didn’t treat you any differently than he did before. He still persisted, inviting you into his room to play video games or watching movies on your laptop in your room. He was an entirely welcome presence in your life, and a very welcome distraction to whatever thoughts were lingering in your mind. The silence within the house was growing to be suffocating, and if it weren’t for Chuck, you wouldn’t know what to do with yourself. He was the only person in the world right now who didn’t look at you with that gleam of pity in his eyes, and for that, you were thankful. 

You did your best to ignore the lingering thoughts in your mind. Thinking about what happened — and all the possibilities of what was happening to everyone else after, or what else could have happened instead — just made that aching void worse. Because the group that had once welcomed you with open arms, the one that had so quickly become your family, was shattered. And it was partly your fault. 

Thomas and Teresa stuck with one another, that much was expected. Newt, as he’d said, wandered off on his own, opting to spend all his free time with Frypan. Brenda, though, was determined to not leave your side. She had been one of the many front row witnesses at the party, and had reminded you several times that she believes both boys were at fault and overreacted, whereas you didn’t deserve any of what happened. 

Minho and Gally, ever the peacekeepers, had spent the past few weeks on a rotating schedule of spending their time with each of you separately. Sonya and Harriet did the same every so often, but aside from Sonya coming over every once in a while and reminding you that she was on your side, they had gone off on their own, too. 

You stopped sitting beside Newt in chemistry class. Brenda had forced Clint, the boy who used to be her lab partner, to switch seats with you. It gave you a little peace of mind, sitting across the classroom from him. But it made the ache worse, too. You still saw him at his locker every day, though. And there was no way you could get around that. 

Despite the sudden temperature drop, you stopped going to school with Thomas and Teresa. You’d either walk, occasionally take your dad’s car, or ride with Brenda on the days she risked driving her beat up, barely road safe, 90s Dodge Neon to school — without snow tires. Anything was better than stewing in the obvious tension between the three of you.

Everything felt like too much. You could barely manage with the aching pressure of your emotions, of processing and living with what happened — but lately, you were being pressured into college applications, figuring out what you wanted to do for your entire future, and it was all too much to handle. 

At first, Brenda tried taking you to Mickey’s one Friday evening to see if it would help to take your mind off things, but you could barely stomach walking through the door. Frypan spotted you through the order window, and you saw the pity flash through his eyes — and within seconds, Newt had walked out of the bathroom, and you knew you wouldn’t be stepping foot back in the diner anytime soon. You were just lucky enough that he didn’t see you before you left, because you wouldn’t have known what to do if he did. 

She’d ordered it for you once, too, a few days after that evening. You appreciated that she was trying, but no matter how much you wanted it to work, it didn’t. The bitter taste of regret burned your throat as you swallowed each bite, and it reminded you of Newt, of the willow tree and how you were able to trust him so quickly to tell him about your childhood, and him to do the same. 

All it did was remind you of how Newt was the first person you were able to talk about your mom to since Amina and Fernanda. About how you told him things you hadn’t even told them. 

With every day that passed, you wished more and more that you could get rid of every painful reminder — which seemed to be embedded in everything that surrounded you, into the very fiber of your being — and to get over it. But you couldn’t. You wanted desperately to move back to the city, to the floor-to-ceiling windows you grew up with. To have sleepovers with Amina and Fernanda again, to eat frozen yogurt with them and throw pieces of pizza to the pigeons in the park again. To go back to before you ever crossed Woodstock’s town line, so you could forget you ever knew the boy called Newt. 

So you could relieve yourself of the constant heartache. 

But, like most things in life, there was nothing you could do to change how things were now, let alone go back to when things were better. All you could do was live with it, bear the pain and hope that, someday, you could let go of it, or forget about it. That you could get back to how things used to be, or build a new version of it, at least. 

Sitting at the kitchen table, in the dead of morning, you appreciated the quiet that settled over the house. It was different to the suffocating blanket that covered everyone during meals; it was peaceful. 

You were wide awake despite it being dawn on a Saturday, but you just couldn’t sleep. With your laptop and an ocean of papers in front of you, you decided it was the perfect time to drown in college applications. 

Even though you were entirely clueless on what you wanted to do with your life after high school, you were sure that college applications were a must. It was the one thing that was enforced constantly throughout your time at school, so they had to be important, right? Besides, you could always figure out what to do after you got accepted somewhere, right?

You lifted your ballerina mug — practically filled to the brim with coffee — to your lips as the sound of feet shuffling down the stairs caught your attention. Looking over your shoulder, you spotted your dad turning from the stairs into the kitchen, sporting some of the worst bedhead you’d ever seen. 

“Whatcha doin’?” He asked, voice gravelly from lack of use. 

You sighed, looking back at the ominous spread of papers and glaringly bright computer screen. “College applications,”

Your dad nodded and came to stand at your right side, now holding his own cup of coffee. “Where were you thinking of going?”

“Not sure anymore,” you shrugged, picking up a piece of paper and skimming over it. “Maybe Syracuse? They’ve got good programs.” 

“I thought your friends—the girls, I mean—were gonna go to NYU together? What about that?”

“That was when I could do everything from the condo, and I didn’t have to worry about paying for accommodation.” You told him. “But that doesn’t really matter anymore, since I’d have to pay for some sort of dormitory no matter where I go, now.” 

Your dad took a sip of his coffee before placing a hand on your shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “Don’t worry about any of that, kiddo. We can cover it no matter where you go, okay? Hell, if you wanna run off to Australia for school, we can cover that, too. Just pick somewhere that you’re gonna enjoy, okay? Do what makes you happy.” 

You smiled and looked up at your dad, ignoring the slight build of tears along your waterline. “Thanks, dad.” 

“Don’t worry, kiddo. We’ve got this.” He pressed a kiss to the top of your head, squeezed your shoulder one last time, and headed to his office to finish up some of the projects he’d been working on. 

Even with Brenda at your side at practically every hour of the day, making dozens of attempts to distract you with whatever came to her mind, school never felt as lonely as it did now. Everyone else still ate their lunches in the cafeteria, but you and Brenda started eating in the computer lab with some of her more casual friends. Thomas and Teresa still took their spots at the main table, but Newt and Frypan began occupying a small corner space by the windows. 

You’d stopped participating in all of your classes almost immediately after the party, and you were sure that word of what happened had gotten to everyone in the school by now — and what little amount of people didn’t know could likely see that something was wrong — but you didn’t have enough energy left at the end of the day to care that much about it. 

You were lucky in your old school, with class sizes large enough and teachers stretched thin enough that not participating was something you were easily able to get away with if you wanted to, but in a school this small, you were practically out in the open. Your teachers were forgiving enough to let you keep your head down most of the time, except for Mr. Henley. It seemed that his failing marriage made him apathetic to everything in the universe, and utterly horrible at his job. 

It all just felt like too much. Everything took too much effort, too much energy. Energy you just didn’t seem to have, even if you have been sleeping ten hours every night. 

You didn’t even have enough energy to focus on doing your homework anymore. Instead, you’d opted for clearing the snow off the roof in front of your window sitting there for hours every single night, staring up at the night sky until your fingers went numb and dried tears made your cheeks feel like ice. 

But every time you came back inside, you passed by your desk and everything on it. The wall behind it, covered with Fernanda’s drawings, sticky notes scrawled with reminders from months ago, and the photo strip from the mall. 

You could barely stand to look at it. 

No matter what you did, somehow, everything around you had become a reminder. A reminder of what you had, of what you lost, and of what could’ve been. And every time you remembered, it felt like you’d become Atlas, bearing the weight of the world, of a thousand mistakes that you didn’t even make, on your tired, aching shoulders. 

And there was nothing you wouldn’t give to let someone else take over.

series taglist: @heliads @ghostofscarley @badbatch-simp24 @virginia-peters @third-broparcelicito @lamolaine @yes-fangirl-things (open!)

[simpel-is]

ranting abt moonlight again bc holy FUCK THIS FILM IS SO SMART AND SO GOOD WITH ITS COLOR

this hyperfixation will drag me into the ground and i will happily go along

spoilers for the movie (if u havent seen it go watch it mf its pride month) also discussion about religion (kind of), homophobia, black masculinity identity and culture, ect ect

no because how tarell mccraney and barry jenkins used the color blue as a symbolism in this movie is SO FUCKING GOOD i feel like in almost every scene u can see a color being used in a symbolic way

in my interpretation at least, blue here represents both vulnerability, security with one's identity but also masculinity (in the sense how blue is used in society to represent men and masculine gender roles, the expectations that come along), and which meaning of the blue is used is colored (ha get it) by the context of the scenes

at the end we reach the conclusion that masculinity and vulnerability can co-exist without contradicting each other in the final sequence of little in blue moonlight but WE WILL GET TO THAT IN A BIT

in the beginning chase sequence little is getting bullied and chased while he wears a blue backpack -> the blue here represents the vulnerability, and how it paints a target on chiron to get bullied by other kids

even in subtle details like how juan drives a blue car but doesn't wear blue on himself, how teresa wears blue through-out the movie, how there's hints of blue in juan and teresa's home (in that scene where juan has little sitting with his front to the door but back to the blue, but we the audience can see it, smth tells me its supposed to be how juan is trying to put up a front to act as a reliable older figure for little which GUH JUST SHOWS HOW MUCH HE CARES), his house's walls and mother wore blue at the beginning scenes which shows when he was younger he could feel and project vulnerability into his own home at one point

during the little section, after the chase sequence little is shown wearing a red shirt while other kids, including kevin, wear white and blue. white here is sort of used as a neutral color of uncertainty and perhaps innocence, while red is the opposite of blue; it's invulnerability, but also insecurity and femininity (which lines up with how chiron's mother wears red in the scene she yells at him), and it shows how chiron is outcasted with the kids, bc of his quiet nature

during the chiron section, the bully wears red and black, contrasting against chiron's mainly light colored outfits. i thought a long time for what the yellow could stand for, and maybe it's there to represent whenever chiron feels love towards another character (teresa, kevin, in specific scenes with his mother) or that sense of escapism (when he was running to the beach at night), his shirt for 80% of this section is a plaid shirt with yellow blue and white sort of mixed up together and a blank white shirt inside

before and during the betrayal scene, he wears a white shirt with blue lines, no yellow anymore bc it felt like he doesn't need to imagine kevin's love for him only exists in dreams. it's reality now, and it makes things more clear for him and his identity (THEIR SHIRTS EVEN MATCH LIKE THEY COMPLETE EACH OTHER IM GONNA CRY.)

also it might be to distinguish when its masculinity or vulnerability but the shade of blue used during the revenge scene is a more teal blue while the moonlight blue is like a natural real blue without a tint of green (i could yap on abt how green is used but this is getting too much)

now during the black section of the film, yellow is first used to represent anxiety for chiron when he wakes up from the nightmare; that escapism and affection he felt for kevin and his mother now reminds him of what happened years ago. it still haunts him. and it also haunts kevin shown in the scene when he calls chiron to apologize (but at the center the lighting is blue. he calls in vulnerability)

as black travels back to confront his past and familiar ties, his mother now wears light blue which is contrasted against chiron's darker shade of blue shirt in the forgiveness scene (they're on different ends of the spectrum, but they're slowly healing, both on the same page of what they wanna do; heal from the past)

as the movie continues, the yellow in scenes slowly turns to represent familiarity and affection instead of anxiety, but the yellow doesn't look warm or as bright as before; there's still tension, things left unsaid. but at the centre, the focus point of these scenes, there's blue, and it isn't tinted by another color (the car drive scene, how blue light peeks in through the diner scene, when kevin changes into a blue shirt)

and the scene where black fucking says "you're the only man who's ever touched me." good fucking god.

he looks at kevin's shirt. he wants the blue. he wants to share the vulnerability with kevin.

when kevin holds chiron, the lighting is dark, and the yellow now is warmer, it represents familiarity and affection again. a lot of things are still a mystery to them, a lot still left unsaid, but everything feels familiar again in a new way, in a more intimate way.

and that fucking scene where little looks back in the blue moonlight, showing how chiron's vulnerability and masculinity don't have to contradict one another; he reaches security with his child self. he finally heals.

this movie is so, so beautiful.

[heliads]

I’d like to request a modern day AU one-shot where Newt is Venom, the female reader is Spider-Woman and Newt’s girlfriend, and Janson is Carlton Drake. Newt fell off his bike when he was a kid and broke his leg, and the injury didn’t heal properly, so he walks with a limp. When Newt becomes Venom, the reader becomes Spider-Woman. I don’t have an explanation for how this works, but Newt’s injury disappears when Venom takes over and returns when he regains control.

accidentally got way too invested in the worldbuilding for this. if you guys want a part 2 lmk bc i would actually be interested

'wckd is good' - newt

masterlist / part 2

It’s no longer light out when you leave to save the world. There was a time during the lovely summer months when you could depart the relative safety of WCKD headquarters and still find yourself in the last vestiges of golden hour. It was easier to believe in the cause then, somehow, as if even the idea of a billowing honey-colored curtain of light could shine down on the blood you’ve shed and make it better, make it all better. No pain is too terrible if it is dragged out for a good cause.

Now that the days have veered past autumn and towards the start of winter, though, you no longer have the comfort of light to protect you. Your shifts are at night, always; no hero will be discovered and no rest will be yours. The moonlight, although sparkling, lacks the strength of sunlight in its ability to ease your conscience.

You knew this was coming, though, it happens every year. You were young when you decided you wanted to change the world, we all are. Only the naivete of youth lets you believe that you can do something about the terrors of the city around you. Once you grow up, you realize there’s no point and you stop trying.

While you’re young, though, you think there’s still a chance. That’s how they get you. That’s how WCKD got you, to be specific. They still have scientists and soldiers believing in that greater cause, but the heart of their crusade is carried on by the kids. They say that’s the way it’s always been. Perhaps it’s true. How would you know otherwise?

The secret is always kept pristine behind glass. WCKD said no boundaries, no lies, so they told you everything from the moment you joined. You were young and foolish; they said jump, you asked how high. It made perfect sense to you. There is a problem in this city, in this world. You could fix it. Why wouldn’t you?

You were one of the first to join. Teresa was the very first, if you’re going by technicalities. The two of you believe in it the most. Even when the others started having their doubts, when Thomas gave up his shield and ran away, when Minho let the civil war of heroes get in between himself and his desire to protect the world, you and Teresa were the ones who stuck with it.

It’s worth it now. It always has been. Times are getting darker, villains more treacherous. Mutants appear out of the woodwork like flies, and it’s your job to cut them off before they can grow too powerful. Every night, you stop mass robberies, save lives, confiscate stolen tech. The city walks a narrow line between peace and destruction. You’re there to keep winning the war.

That’s why you agreed to the experimentation in the first place. Admittedly, it wasn’t WCKD’s finest moment when they asked young teenagers to step into their labs for the greater glory of the world, but it’s worth it now. They injected you with radioactive spider venom and you were the best fit for the program, or so they tell you. If you were to guess, though, you’d say that you were the only subject who survived. Now, you get superhuman abilities and a cool moniker:  Spider-Woman. Isn’t that worth the blood you shed in a pristine white cell?

Teresa was never a subject like you were. Instead, she was trained in the deadly arts as a Black Widow. The two of you are sent out on missions together, but not as often as you’d like. Instead, WCKD always seems to keep one of you behind while the other is out there in the world, supposedly for security reasons. If two of its finest soldiers were taken out in the same doomed-to-fail mission, who would carry on the cause?

No, it’s better if you do it alone. You saw Teresa today, at least, running through some surveillance footage from a few nights back. There’s a Right Arm stronghold somewhere nearby, you can tell because some of the inhumans you leave for dead have started disappearing before the WCKD research division can collect their bodies, but you just don’t know where they’re sent to. If you can cut off the head and do it cleanly this time, perhaps two more won’t grow back in its place.

That’s the WCKD rhetoric, at least. Do the job properly and you won’t have to do it again. Repeat trials are cumbersome, and often fail before they can reach their true potential. If you do what must be done, no matter the cost, everyone will benefit. Not just the city this time, but the country. The world, even. Crime and violence only strengthen in numbers. If you can purge this city of its sins, perhaps the rest will follow suit.

Darkness has its biggest stronghold here, though, which is why WCKD set up headquarters. It’s why you have a specific time of day to leave behind the white polished walls and piercing fluorescent lights of the WCKD facilities to go defend the night against itself.

Tonight begins like most others. You don your armor and take the elevator to the top floor of WCKD’s skyscraper. From there, you stand for a moment on the darkened roof, buffeted by the strong winds that only circulate when you’re this far removed from the streets below you, then dive off the edge in one simple motion.

You were scared of heights the first time you did this, as anyone would be when faced with the task of jumping from a skyscraper. Even though you knew you would be able to catch yourself, you’d never done it before so you weren’t one hundred percent certain. You’d asked to start off on a lower level so you could get a better feel for it. Instead of answering your plea, the head of your little operation, Dr. Ava Paige, pushed you from the roof herself. You can still remember how it felt, tumbling through the dark night sky, watching her foreboding silhouette disappear the further you dropped.

That night, you had learned to trust only yourself. You had also learned that WCKD wants what’s best for all of you, and even if you cannot see the silver lining at the moment, it’ll come to you eventually. As you fell, mind wracked with terror and betrayal, you first learned to do what has now become reflex:  you flung out your arms and made a web.

Your web shooters work well, they always do. WCKD tech doesn’t fail. You don’t have to see the synthetic web latch onto the spire of a nearby building to know that it will be secure enough to hold your weight as you swing from one towering skyscraper to the next. It’s a far faster method of transportation than just walking, and it gives you a better view of what’s happening down below you while you’re at it.

Your brow furrows beneath the protective cover of your mask, looking for something, someone causing trouble– there, down an alley, a shadowy figure looms over a terrified couple. You disengage the web you’d been swinging from, hurtling towards the alley like a dart. You land easily on a nearby roof, rolling for a moment to disperse the energy of your impact before dropping neatly into the alley.

You wait a moment before stepping out from the shadows so you can best gauge the situation. The thing you’re fighting– it’s not a man, not really, although it stands on two broad, muscular legs and gestures at the mouth of the alley with a dark, clawed hand. It seems more like living tar, a roiling mass of shadow and ink somehow made muscular. It’s a monster, to put it plainly, and you kill monsters. You’ll kill this one.

You lunge out from the shadows, grabbing the couple around the waist and pulling them towards the entrance. They sob in relief when you’re in between them and the dark thing, and immediately start running once you put them down again.

Now that the innocents are safe, you turn back to the monster. Massive white eyes split its skull, and a long, blood red tongue peeks out from rows of jagged teeth. It stalks towards you, each footstep sounding like a crack of thunder, and says, in a grating tone like a thousand earthquakes, “I saved them already.”

You stare at it. The monster doesn’t attack, strangely enough. In fact, it comes to a stop once it’s a few paces away from you. It’s just looking at you, although it keeps twitching as if it would like to do more than just stand around. 

“No, I did. I got them away from you.” You tell it.

You spit the last word out like a curse. You’re supposed to be emotionless while you do this, cutting away at the city’s lost souls with a surgeon’s unsympathetic precision, but WCKD taught you its prejudices early, and it’s a difficult habit to shake.

The monster, however, doesn’t take kindly to being insulted. “Already saved them. You only took the credit.”

It gestures back towards the alley behind it with one massive hand. You follow the direction with your eyes to see the slumped forms of what appear to be gang members. You recognize their faces from a news broadcast a few days ago; the police have been unsuccessful in tracking them down despite a warrant being out for their arrests regarding a string of murders. They must have been ready to add that couple to their list of victims, but this thing got in the way of that.

You stare back at it, confused. “If you saved that couple, why were they screaming?”

This time, when the monster speaks, it sounds a little less monstrous and more almost like a young man. “I tend to be a little frightening. I’m sure you can understand.”

You draw back, one hand on your belt. You can use your webs to attack and defend, obviously, but WCKD policy states that killing is best done cleanly. That would involve the guns and knives they ply you with before every patrol. “I understand how this usually goes.”

The monster leans towards you, bleached-white eyes leering. “Are you going to kill me, Agent? You’re one of those fanatics from WCKD, aren’t you? That’s what you all usually do. Are you going to kill me without even bothering to ask why I saved them? Or who I am?”

You meet its gaze coolly, but on the inside, your entire mind is at war. This is not the way it’s supposed to go. You’re meant to eliminate a threat and move on. This is a monster. It doesn’t get more simple than that. Except– except usually, the shadowy demon creatures don’t save lives like you do. Except they usually don’t try to appeal to your morality, because most, including you, assume it’s already gone.

“Fine,” you say slowly, “Who are you? Answer quickly and honestly, it’ll be better for you.”

It makes a sound that could be a laugh, but it’s broken over with a deep roaring sound, almost as if there are two creatures laughing at you right now, a human and a monster. They’re not entirely in unison, not anymore, which gives you the impression that they could be separated.

And, before your eyes, the inky blackness starts to peel away just a little bit, revealing a boy’s face within the monster’s skull. It’s supporting him, you realize, giving him strength and power. Only half of his face is visible right now, and when he speaks, you can see a normal human mouth moving on one side, grotesquely parodied on the other with that horrific fanged mouth.

“If I give myself away, you’ll kill me, won’t you?” He asks. “Isn’t that what WCKD’s toy soldiers do best?”

You scowl at him. “Depends on if you make me.”

“Well,” the boy says frankly, “I don’t want to die. Let your conscience be clear for a second and don’t shoot me in the head, now, will you?”

You nod once, before you can stop yourself, and he seems to take this as a good sign. The rest of the shadow pulls away from him, and then it’s all gone and there is a blond boy standing in front of you, idly brushing dust off of his hands as if he’d been taking off a heavy coat instead of a monstrous shield.

“Who are you?” You ask weakly.

The boy grins. “Name’s Newt. Though I’m assuming you’ll find that out soon enough. WCKD’s always particularly good at their research, aren’t they?”

You narrow your eyes. “How would you know?”

His smile slips, gone in an instant. His eyes go unsettlingly dark, and you realize that, although he may have taken the monster away, that doesn’t mean it’s not inside him still. “I had a friend, once. His name was Alby, and you took him from us. He was only eighteen, and WCKD decided he should die because he committed the grave sin of not entirely being like the rest of you. You hunted him down and slaughtered him. We never even had a body to bury.”

Newt stalks forward as he says it. You’ve faced down far more intimidating threats, but you can’t help inching back in the face of this boy’s fury. You can handle someone trying to kill you, or a thug shooting at your head, but Newt’s grief is a far more palpable weapon than anything before it.

“Did you know him?” Newt asks in a harsh, shuddering whisper, “Were you there when he died?”

“No,” you whisper, and you couldn’t be more grateful for the truth. “That was someone else. Really, it was. They told me about it afterwards.”

Specifically, Teresa had. You remember the ways her hands didn’t stop shaking for hours afterwards. She’d hidden in a corner of the WCKD base, and you only found her because you had the benefit of years of friendship telling you where to look. When you stumbled upon her, she was curled up into a tight ball, repeating as a whispered mantra, “WCKD is good,” as if saying the torturous phrase even one more time might make it true.

Afterwards, though, Teresa was more focused than you’d ever seen her. She was determined to make the ends worth the bloody, bloody means. Anything for the city, or so she’d tell you. Anything for the world.

“It wasn’t me,” you repeat. “But you haven’t always been like this, have you? The monster. It came afterwards.”

Newt nods, a tight and barely controlled jerk of the head. “I needed help. I found Venom.”

“Venom,” you whisper cautiously. Black ink flashes across Newt’s eyes all of a sudden, disappearing through his veins just as quickly. It makes you flinch. He seems almost glad of it.

“I wanted a way to keep the rest of us alive. Venom makes me strong. It’s in me. It is me.” Newt’s words grow in intensity until he’s almost shouting.

Shouting you can handle, though. It’s easy to break down the pieces of Newt’s argument like that. He’s furious that your organization is responsible for the deaths of his friends. He’s taking it out on you because you have their logo on your shoulder, because you were going to kill him like the rest. Are you now, though? How can you murder this boy like the rest?

Newt must see the war going on in your head, because he smiles again, sickeningly slow. “Are you going to do it? Are you going to kill me? I don’t even know your name, but you know mine. Are you going to shoot me before you tell anyone who you are?”

“Y/N,” you force out through lips pressed thin.

His smile grows lighter. “Y/N. Pretty name. Pretty girl.”

Is it madness to call your would-be killer a pretty girl? Is it madness to let a monster into your skin, to embrace it like this? Is madness thinking that you have ever had any other choice but this.

“I don’t want to,” you murmur, “Kill you.” The killing is the worst part. Always has been. You lack Teresa’s stomach for it. That’s why they made you the lab rat. WCKD knew they had to rearrange at least a few of your parts to make you more willing to complete the tasks they assigned you, and it still didn’t even work all the way.

Newt considers this for a second, his head tilted to the side, then holds out a hand. The contrast of his pale skin against the darkness of the alleyway seems to stand out to you like a neon sign. “You don’t have to do it. You can still leave them, you know.”

This makes a thousand walls slam down in your head. “I can’t,” you grit out, the product of years of trying, “There are too many people they could hurt. I can never leave, Newt. Never.”

Something almost like pity touches his eyes. You decide you hate it. “You know,” he says softly, “That is the worst part of the monster, I think. I asked for it. It might not leave me if I tell it to, but in the beginning, it only came for me because I wanted it. You know what that’s like.”

“I do,” you tell him.

Newt nods. Smiles again. You’ve stopped seeing the flash of his teeth as a terrible thing. The likelihood that he could sink them into the soft skin of your neck before you even had the chance to blink is alluring. It does not seem like as much of an undeserved punishment as before.

“You can always find me,” he tells you. “If you need help, you can find me. I have friends, good ones. They could get you out of there. We can pull you out. It’s never too late.”

This makes you draw back in earnest. “It’s already too late.” 

You want to scream it at him. There is no going back for you, not now. Not after all you’ve done. Newt has the luxury of thinking he can fight back. For those of you on the inside, though, the only way any of you will be freed from the burden of your work is when it finally kills you. Teresa knows that. Even Dr. Ava Paige knows it. You will all shoulder the mantle of your twisted crusade until it drags you under.

You turn and vanish back into the shadows before Newt can stop you. You wait for a moment, crouched on the rooftop out of his sight, and listen to the even rhythm of his breathing before finally turning away again. This is the first time you leave him. Somewhere inside your head, within the last vestiges of pinkish matter that still belong to you, a voice whispers back:  It won’t be the last.

requested by @thornyrose463, i hope you enjoy!

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[how-to-be-a-tree]

"I'm a mosaic of everyone I've ever loved" - @viridianmasquerade

And

Little/ Black/ Chiron, Moonlight (2016)

Juan, Teresa and Kevin's impact on Chiron, visually struck me during the glimpses of his life in Atlanta,

Let it be his accessories

Let it be his use of words

Let it be his kindness

And I'm NOT OKAY at all!!

[megalizardon4736]

Zoe Patel Makeover 💜

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