#none of these are even operators bruh

[000yul]

things the game does not tell you this relic also works with:

- ling’s s3 summons getting absorbed

- shamare’s doll disappearing

- skalter’s seaborn disappearing

wtf

[kafkaoftherubble]

把死人给带回来？ 难道...?！

// If They Are Bringing Back the Dead...

This post contains spoilers for Chapter 184.1 of To Your Eternity.

It also contains speculations galore. This is NOT a meta essay.

Shoutout to my homie branetheory in Discord!

Thanks to them, I was reminded of what Parts of My Brain had wanted to talk about:

Bruh. I can't believe ToFu made me so high last night that I forgot to talk about this.

Honestly I regret nothing Okay, memory water.

A little Kafka Aside: I'm gonna have to consciously ignore how... not-there the scientific backing for this is. Honestly, this Memory Water thing reminded me of the New Age/Pseudoscientific idea of "water memory" or Masaru Emoto's "water consciousness" thing or DNA teleportation. However, this is a story where weirder shits have happened, so suspension of disbelief willingly and gleefully granted. I just need to get this out of my head first.

To reiterate, Kaibara's experimental procedure involves

Extracting cells from a person's body

"Turn" it into water (how?)

Make a "clone" drink it (who?)

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

Who could these clones be?

The only clones we know so far are the Mizuha clones. Their existence seems to imply a similar purpose to Hayase's descendants—they are supposed to inherit Hayase's Will, which is 95% "get injected with a tumor we call the Left Hand Nokker."

But Nokkers have long become invisible and fully integrated into this ecosystem. In the Future Era, they are embedded in tag chips, and they grant the bodies they possess all sorts of abilities and augmentations.

What would an inheritance of Hayase's Will even look like here? At first, I thought it would be similar: a tag chip with the Left Hand in it. Mizuha's, uh, possession (for the lack of a better word) manifested through the same mechanism other Nokkers used, after all.

However, the story gradually told us that the clones had all been massacred via an unknown operation for yet-untold reasons. Why would they do that?

Were these clones failures?

If they were failures, then it would make sense why Kaibara treated them as disposable; after all, in the past, the Guardians always exalted Hayase's Descendant(s) no matter how incompetent they were at their mission. Failure to secure Fushi's seeds I mean love never made them disposable enough to be killed, right?

So, as branetheory (crediting my homie even though they might not see this ahahhahah) also thought—

Could it be that Hayase herself has been successfully reincarnated in the body of one of these clones? (8)

I assigned this hypothesis an 8, or "80% confidence level."

Is she who you're gonna see, Bon?

Why would Kaibara need so many Mizuha clones in the first place? They only need one Descendant. They only have one Left-Hand Nokker...

Unless these clones were made specifically for bringing back Hayase. They were all experiments. Few experiments ever go right at the first trial. But this? Experiments this challenging and important as "recreating our legendary progenitor, Hayase?"

It will definitely require a lot of trial and error. So these clones were made to be expendables.

Honestly, who would name their offspring with numbers if they weren't meant to be seen as expendables?

----

There is an interesting point to note: Memory Water only works if one has a Nokker implanted in them. Remember how Abel can't drink it and instantly know the answers to their stupid-ass questions?

So do all clones have Nokkers implanted in them? They all own a tag chip, after all. But there is only one Left Hand Nokker, and that bitch seems deadset on possessing only Hayase's appointed heir (or in this case, Hayase herself).

Does that mean

all the clones have their own Nokkers, but none of it is the Left Hand, until the Experiment? (3) OR

all the clones have empty tag chips until the Experiment, in which the Left Hand Nokker is then implanted inside before the subject drinks the Memory Water? (6) OR

other hypotheses I could not think of at the moment? (1)

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

Doro and Her Sisters: Were They Trying To Stage a Rebellion Against Kaibara's Highest Echelon? (7)

Assigned (7); "70% confidence level"

Could this scene actually depict a failed experimental result, where #32/Doro was the subject? After all, she didn't look like she died in a massacre. She looked like she died alone, leaving her sisters behind..

Doro liaisoned with Fushi in secret. So secretly, Tonari didn't know it happened.

Why would she do that? Way back then, me and the Discord gang had speculated some sort of clash between Doro and the rest of Kaibara. At that time, I think our speculation was that it had to do with the Wish-granting Orb specifically.

But now, with this new information in mind...

Could it be that the liaison was part of the clones' planned rebellion? (6)

Assigned 6; "60% confidence level."

It could be that, in addition to passing vital information about Kaibara to Fushi (who is still not exactly forthcoming about what they know so far), Doro was also trying to ensure that the Wish-granting Orb will never fall into the Highest Echelon's hands.

Was her conviction formed out of concerns about what Kaibara might do with the orb?

Or was her reasoning more pragmatic—she didn't want Kaibara to have the power to crush her rebellion?

----

Back to the number-as-naming convention. What if these weren't names, but the assigned turn of each clone for the ultimate experiment (6)? If that's the case, then Doro is the 32nd experiment that failed.

That's a lot. And the fact that she failed would mean the experiment will keep going. The clones will keep being bred to be used for these experiments. It's a conflict ripe for seeds of rebellion, right?

And so, there are extra hypotheses as to why the clones were massacred in the first place:

Hayase has been successfully reincarnated (8)

The clones' rebellion plan has been found out (7)

Hayase has been successfully reincarnated AND the clones' rebellion plan has been found out (5.6; 8/10×7/10)

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

Dolly's Purpose(s)

While Doll's original purpose might have been for amusement and fun—Doro rescued it from some trash heap and just engineered it to be a playmate—I had always found its ability to dish out powerful punches suspicious. Why would a playmate be good at granting people concussions in the first place?!

And it was good enough to take out mercenaries, right?

I'm quite confident that Doll's punch is a defensive ability to guard whatever's stored in its memory (9).

I should review what Previous Me had speculated:

Doll holds Doro's brainwaves or consciousness

Doll holds the Left Hand Nokker within it

Doll is a combination of Doro's consciousness/brainwaves and its original AI

There is also the speculation that Doll is the Wish-granting Orb itself, but I think the confidence level for that hypothesis has gone pretty low... at least to me, personally. It sits at less than 10%.

Now, I want to add new hypotheses and rearrange them from most confident to least:

Doll's memories include Kaibara's top secret: key infrastructures, their real master(s), their experiments, whatever information they have gained about the Wish-granting Orb, their master plan to counter Fushi, and the like. Things that could give rebelling clones an edge. (8)

Doll holds Doro's brainwaves/consciousness integrated within its original AI (7)

Doll holds Doro's brainwaves/consciousness AND it is Doro's consciousness/memories that possess knowledge of Kaibara's top secret (5.6; 8/10×7/10)

Doll holds the Left Hand Nokker (less than 2)

The first (and by extension, the third) hypothesis can be supplemented by the fact that Kaibara really wants the Doll. Why, if not because the Doll holds vital information regarding the entire company?

They could go after it for Doro's consciousness, sure, but the priority would drop a lot more, wouldn't it? ...Unless the third hypothesis is true!

The second hypothesis can be partially supplemented by Abel's dedication to possessing the Doll; he really cherished Doro, and to him, the Doll could lead him to her again. He also claimed that Doro "is still alive," though when pressed, he gave no evidence.

Was it wistful thinking, or could he have been privy to Doro's experiment to transfer her consciousness into Doll? Did he really know nothing about Doro's death?

There is also the "Now I am human" line Doro uttered while blindfolded. Given we now know what the clones are used for, Doro might see her existence to be inhuman/subhuman because of her real purpose. Maybe, to her, she could feel more human by being a doll than in her human body.

Hell, who knows? Doro might secretly envy Abel's humanness—a guy who was likely born from normal copulation and couldn't fit in with the rest of the Tagged society, yet all the more a genuine human being than the rest of them.

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

What is the nature of Doll's Brainwaves?

Could it have been a digital transfer, or could it have used a similar mechanism to the Memory Water?

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

Miscellaneous Implications of Memory Water Bringing Back the Dead

Bruh I swear if they reincarnated the Nameless Boy to torment Fushi I will fucking sever my friendship with Left Hand Nokker and nuke their Paradise. Oh hi Left Hand, nothing over here.

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

And that concludes my hypotheses round-up, updated to only Chapter 184.1. Remember! Y'all are always welcome to reblog and add your own thoughts to it!

Fuck, I will be so honored if y'all Fushi-fied my writing by adding absolutely anything.

Thank you for reading my ramble. Rest assured, I have prepared just the right image for the moment I clown myself by having most of my hypotheses come out spectacularly falsified:

(Hi everyone this is Kei from Ajin)

[starwalker03]

I realized WMLP Dick’s position in that army unit is similar to his early experience with the team. He’s the youngest has a lot of experience and skills his squad mates don’t, among peers for the first time in a while, hiding his true identity, gets pushed out of his comfort zone by the people he was with. Expect this time is was true war. And he came away without bonding with his team and looking down on them. Would this experience effect how he views his memories of The Team?

Huh. Actually that's a good point.

It would definitely make him remember how unprepared they were for That Whole Situation, just thrown into missions having never worked together except for the Cadmus mission which ended with an exploded building like. Bruh. I know they weren't giving the league many options but also what the fUCK guys y'all just sent them off on their merry way like that. The fact they didn't die in episode three is a miracle.

But then also he's so aware of the difference between working with people who are fighting because they're genuinely good people with a desire to help others, as opposed to... Well. People who wanna shoot guns, had no other options, want the military to pay off their degree, et cetera et cetera so on so forth. Like this team is so different to his old one it's almost distracting. It's almost problematic. It's almost enough to snap Dick out of the constant unrelenting need to do as he's told and question Slade because 'uh hey yeah what the fUCK is up with these people'

Dick has to force a level of indifference between himself and his new team because if he doesn't he can't focus on the task at hand. He can't help but think about the fact that these people should not be running around armed with thousands of lives in their hands.

It doesn't help that they're all unaware of half of the shit that goes down in the world. Even Dick's superiors have only the smallest understandings of figures like Count Vertigo and Gorilla Grod and none of them have any idea who Vandal Savage is. Queen Bee? Uh you mean the dictator of that small kick of desert in the middle east?

(CW for conversations about the "war on terror" ahead)

Oh my god. I didn't even consider that if Bialya and Qurac are middle eastern countries they're surprisingly close by during the wars of the early 2000s. Like I've hand waved and said 'yeah going off timeline Dick probably got sent around the middle east' but completely failed to realise he might have even been in Bialya or Qurac for missions.

I wonder how those countries engaged with wars in the area in lore. It's apparently north of Saudi Arabia and Iran in wider DC lore? But YJ isn't specific?

Here's a Reddit thread I found where people start getting into nitty gritty details:

Essentially they're depi ting Bialya and Qurac as west and east Iran, respectively. And also offering theories as to how those countries could have come to be.

If I continue to use Australia as the example (which I suppose I should cause I've essentially canonized it in the fic at this point), Australia was only particularly involved with Afghanistan and Yemen I believe, but I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge.

Bialya and Qurac could, possibly, border operations in Afghanistan. Young justice lore states that Bialya is a part of the UN and therefore may not be particularly open to military operations but very well could have housed a few bases on the borders.

Jesus. Getting this into the lore of YJ feels so strange and I'm honestly not sure if it's inappropriate or not. I could believe Queen Bee being involved with the war on terror, whether it's a part of Savage's plans or not, just because she enjoys conflict. Moreover it helps with the anti-Quraci thing she has going. From what I can tell of the show, Qurac seems to be a majority Islamic country? So I could see her manipulating the image of things to benefit her attempts to take back Qurac.

Well this spiralled. Uh I might end this answer here actually.

[tomomiisasleep]

This is the last note on HtN

“You lied to us, John,” she said.

And, with a sob in her voice: “There is a perfect Lyctorhood … a perfect Lyctor process that preserves the cavalier, and you let us think there wasn’t. You let us think we’d cracked it … You let us think it had to be a one-way energy transfer … but nobody had to die. Alfred, Pyrrha, Titania, Valancy, Nigella, Samael, Loveday, Cristabel … You watched us kill our cavaliers in cold blood, and none of them had to die. You had already done it yourself. But you had done it perfectly!!”

In the end.... the cavs where what they did every for. they'd never mock Harrow like Ianthe did. They'd understand, why immortal beings would do anything for a dead soul.

The Lyctor said, “The Resurrection Beasts—”

“Can’t kill me.”

“You acted afraid—”

“Acted is operative.

the fuq? so the Lyctors and cavs were all jokes to him? they spent ten thousand years of immortality fighting the nightmare stuff. what the hell

WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!

ok. so I thought he was like, uh he had two personalities or something. bruh. so it was Pyrrha going like"my love", wtf groooosss

and Augustine's gonna try to push God into a hell-hole,ok. So by the end of this book, he actually could be dead. murdered. then what..?

“There’s a difference between keeping a shred of dance card,” said Harrow Nonagesimus, “and saving the last dance.”

you tell her Dulcie

ok what the hell? at this point I have finished the book, and the ending does not make any sense to me. but this is still gonna be my favorite book of all time, just for broken Harrow.

and in the end, they didnt even get a reunion. uhhhgggggg. I need to look at some fanart with my eyes reduced to fear-of-spoiler slits before I have the mental strength to read NtN.

[itsohh]

Christmas Observed

A/N: G/N reader, looks over to Monty and Smoke who are both mourning the loss of their s/o because of me and roughly kicks a broken Ace bruh I love angst, there is of course different types of angst. Fun fact: my mother actually has a birthday very close to Christmas, she recons the worst part is only getting one gift.

Word count: 951  

Warnings: None

AO3

Most operators went home for the Christmas break, and only a few remained, Shuhrat being one of them. He had much to think about on the device in your hands, it being similar to his own but had since retired for the night leaving you alone at the workshop, a few lights above you. At the clock struck twelve, your mind wasn’t on it, didn’t even notice the clock as you hummed.

Suddenly a pair of arms wrapped around you from behind, lifting you up. A squeal left your lips as you clutched onto the explosive in surprise. A rumble of laughter vibrated through your body as whoever held you seemed rather amused by your reaction. These arms you knew rather well as they continued to squeeze your body. “Alexsandr!” Your voice came which only caused him to press his face against your back.

“I’m holding explosives!” His laughter roared up and he gently placed your back on the ground. The device was placed back on the table and you turned to face the man, lightly slapping his chest. “That’s so dangerous, hasn’t anyone ever told you not to pick someone up while they're working.” His laughter settled down but he still had a big grin on his face.

A huff left your mouth before you spoke up. “What are you even doing here? I thought you went back to Russia for the holiday. Spend time with the kids? Remember? You spent like four weeks raving about it.” You leaned back on the table. Alexsandr paused.

“Well yes I did but I came back, I wasn’t going to miss your birthday.” He spoke in a matter-of-fact tone.

“Oh! Right, I uh, kinda forgot all about it.” Your shrugged, scratching the back of your neck.

“You forgot about your own birthday?” His eyes playfully widened in disbelief.

“Well yeah, ma and dad are both doctors, the Christmas season is one of the busiest there is and then I get lost in my work so-” Another squeal of surprise left your lips when he once again scooped you up into a hug and lift you into the air.

“I get to have you all to myself.” He squeezed you tight before slowly placing you back on the ground. “I was glad to get here in time, my flight was rather delayed.” His lips pressed against your forehead for a moment before he turned. It seemed he had already left his suitcase back in his room but there was a rather decently sized gift behind him. One which he turned and placed on the table. “Ah, I’m just glad you never found this in my room.”

“Christmas gift?”

“Net, we can do that tomorrow. Birthday gift. Happy birthday.” You froze at him as you absorbed the situation.

“Open it, then we can go to bed, I’m not surprised your still awake, always the one to keep working. But you're going to need your rest for the morning.”

“What's going on in the morning?”

“The second half of your gift.” Your eyes fell to the box and your fingers brushed against the carefully wrapped box. You picked up the flathead screwdriver next to you and ran it over the tape which kept the blue wrapping together. It slowly came apart and you picked up the object inside. It was a rather heavy and large coat, one made for far harsher weather than what you were used to. It was black and long, one to cover your entire body. Slowly you put it on, and it fit as if it was made for you.

“Ah, I had worried that it wouldn’t fit.” He grinned and nudged the rest of the box to you again. You peered into it and found an envelope. A card? No, you slipped it open to reveal the two tickets. Your brows narrowed as you held them.

“Spend the break with me at home.”

“This is for today?” Your lips parted and he gave you a single nod.

“Later in the day.”

“But you already took a flight to get here, you want to take another one back?”

“It’s only four hours, besides it will be with you this time. I’m sure we can find some way to entertain each other.” He winked.

“Alex…”

“They have little movies and everything.” He wrapped an arm around you innocently and you rolled your eyes at him. Dodging out from his arm your hands when to the half-disassembled gadget in front of you.

“Let me safely put this away and then I’ll join you for bed.” Your eyes focus back on the gadget. Alexsandr's hand came on your shoulder.

“Perhaps this would be best used later?” His hand came to the coat and your paused before he allowed to take it off you, draping it over his arm. “I’ll wait for you.” His eyes went to the gadget in front of you, one he knew you would once again lose yourself in again. “Just as bad as Jordan.” He chuckled as you started to tidy up. A chuckle left his lips as rubbed a hand on your shoulder before his lips pressed against the back of your head. “Happy birthday.”

[thekaijudude]

What's your stance on the whole secret identity thing for all the previous series so far, especially in the context of the host/human form being in an official government military group ? How would you recommend it to be executed?

Oh this question is so nostalgic, I rmb people always asking me this during the early years of my blog (bruh it's been 7 years holy)

But I maintain my stance that its been a staple frustration every series because imo, it wouldve been far more logical if the hosts were to make their Ultra identity known within their organisation. Not counting those that are purposely undercover for various reasons, but especially those that were totally inexperienced in whatever they were doing.

Let's talk about more recent examples with Trigger and Decker. With Trigger being the worst case example ive ever seen. I believe I've ranted aplenty that it literally dosent make sense for Kengo to hide his Ultra alter-ego when literally the Chairman and scientist himself alr knew about his identity. So wouldn't it be beneficial for everyone else within GUTS-Select to know about it as well so they could better coordinate and support Kengo? And since this knowledge was also accessible to high ranking members, wouldnt Kengo also receive the proper security and guidance as well?

Decker would be the average example of this, with few to none knowing, thus having less of a reason to reveal his identity, but still the same reason why he should reveal, so that he can receive the proper security and guidance, as well as better coordination and support from GUTS-Select

But tbh, this obviously blatant aspect of most series is implemented on purpose. Because of the same reasons why they should've revealed their identity earlier.

Literally because it'll make things ALOT more easier. Think of the different times that a host's henshin item gets stolen, with the extra protection and enhanced security, literally most of these staple plotpoints wouldn't even be possible. And the lack of communication between the host/Ultra and defense team is basically a detriment to joint operations as it basically falls back to how the defense team can interpret what the Ultra is planning to do on the fly.

That's actually why you see that the reveals usually happen during the final arc, because the proper coordination and planning would literally make things far more easier.

But it'll also make episodes far shorter and more boring

And it's more suited to delve into ideas such as the mistrust of the Ultras from the humans/government, politics as well as intricate alien invasions that involve downplaying, misrepresenting or create discord between the Ultra and humans, which we do occasionally see with main series content like Mephilas etc

But since the main series' intended audiences are for children, such ideas are probably way too complex for them to appreciate, so this is literally just there to make things easier to understand for them

Tho, a good example would be what we literally saw with Shin Ultraman with Shin Zarab and Shin Mephilas

For Shin Zarab, he literally sowed discord between humanity and Lipia via Fake Ultraman of course. But also simultaneously, he demonstrated very clear understanding of politics and manipulation of Japan's position in the international stage and we saw the ramifications and political impact with the deal he made with the PM.

For Mephilas, it was a bigger scheme with a deal with the entire humanity itself, essentially intending to have the entirety of humanity as a potential army

And we see how Lipia manoeuvred around all this by selectively revealing his identity to small groups of people as they were necessary to get him out of a pinch. Now this is realistic cause unlike in the main series where defense teams are equipped with Specium ray guns, metallic dragons powered by Absolutian energy or literally kaiju bioweapons, it takes into account the technological level of the real world and on another hand, its Lipia's own decision to go undercover to learn what it means to be human, which is also what we see him trying to slowly figure out throughout the movie

Gosh it was such an AMAZING movie just because of how dense it was with international politics, psychology, Lipia learning how to be human, clash of ideologies between Zoffy and Lipia as well as humanity grasping their own fate and having both the confidence in themselves and Ultraman to overcome adversity

But it's also the same reason why people that didn't like ShinU or found it boring based on people that I talked to, cause they simply weren't used to just how sophisticated and thought-provoking the movie is, as well as Anno's characteristic cinematography skills as they were expecting more of the main content standard, which were literally targeted towards kids

Honestly, so long as the target audience of the main content series aren't targeted towards young adults or above, I literally don't see this changing at all. Which is why even tho it's a really frustrating aspect of the main content, I'm kinda used to it at this point

Thanks for the question!

[iamnot-theboynextdoor]

OFMD EP2 REACTION

at least stede and co. have clean clothes and bedrolls now...

and of course buttons is sleeping upside down like the Creature he is

stede's lying there thinking about the "you wear fine things well" scene i'm-

ed's stede-barbie is covered in flecks of black paint skfjhdkjfsfjh has he been holding it against his face???

and there's little ed-barbie i am obsessed. maybe he's been making them kiss

HE MADE THEM BOTH JUMP OUT THE WINDOW NOOOOOOO

oh god what if he thinks that stede is dead for real.

BUTTONS X THE SEA 5EVA

zheng's crew calling "good morning!" back to her like a class of children awww... at least that's a step up from stede trying to do flag arts n crafts with his gang of preschoolers

"the sea is restorative, isn't it?" "YES QUEEN!" i love buttons

buttons is getting INTO the tai chi

the swede found his place with jackie... is buttons going to stay with zheng? aw man are we going to lose all the crew? :(

"we're tender as hell"

"there is one other man on board" LUCIUS LUCIUS LUCIUS

YEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAHHHHH

PETE TACKLES HIM TO THE FLOOR AND EVERYONE COMES OVER

"men are so fucking emotional"

"i thought you died!" "i think a lot of people did" BRUH

awwww pete and lucius!!!!!!

and the whole gang is watching lmao

"rat boy, what's that about?" "i think it's like a lunar calendar thing..." yeah right it's cause you got scooped up like a drowned rat

"what exactly happened to you, lucius?" ohhhh stede you are not gonna like the answer to that question. and by that i mean you are going to be surprisingly okay with it because you're insane

"...i fell" LUCIUS DON'T COVER FOR HIS ASS

"i'm overqualified for towels!" stede baby i think towels are all you can handle

"sea witch... i have looked for you far and wide..." oh my god? well he can talk to birds...

buttons x zheng's first mate x the sea 5eva?

oh no. seeing the revenge fills me with dread

ed's smiling. this is not a good sign

"no more booze, no more drugs, and more importantly, no more izzy" sdfskdgjhsgkjsh

"you did kill him?" he knows. he knows frenchie fucking wouldn't.

we all thought jim and frenchie would be hiding lucius in the walls. turns out they're hiding izzy. what a turn of events

"KILL ME YOU FUCKING COWARDS" aww it's the most normal izzy's sounded in a while <3

archie gives me big gideon nav energy and i love that

OH GOD JIM AND ARCHIE HAVE TO CUT IZZY'S LEG OFF

"are you even gonna ask how i am?" yeah stede, tighten up mate

"FUCK YOU that's how i am" aaaaaand here we go

"you broke him when you left and then he broke me. everything that's happened since has been YOUR FAULT." watch how fast stede can internalise that

"i see you've adopted the form of a humble man, sea witch"

therianthropy??? BUTTONS SELKIE REAL???????

ed jumpscaring frenchie "heyyyy :)" you know what i'm on board with stede the atrocities ARE okay if a man with big beautiful brown eyes does them actually

"how'd you kill izzy?" HE KNOWS

"you're left-handed. you just used your right." ed and his fucking mind palace as he slowly backs frenchie into a corner with that humorless smile FRENCHIE JUMP OVERBOARD

"do you think i wouldn't know the smell of my rotting former first mate?" WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS THERE ED

the operation was a success...?

why's jim got gauze shoved up their nose. did izzy kick them in the face

"he'll live?" izzy in the background looking like a corpse

jim's still holding the leg

"he seems like a bit of a dick" "he is, but he's our dick" EXACTLY JIM

jim and archie kissing over izzy's severed leg... how touching? at least put it on the floor jim

"our eyes lock as we're holding hands and we can't help but kiss over [izzy's] not once, twice, thrice [fucked-up leg]"

OH FUCK ED'S HERE

"leave me, all of you. ...take the fuckin' leg."

"he was your friend." loyalty is everything to jim

ed staring completely still and emotionless at izzy's presumed dead body... fuck

uh oh. olu seems to have relinquished the brain cell.

...none of the revenge gang knows what china is. why am i even surprised

"you can't file to save your life, and i'm pretty sure you broke the abacus" "yeah i fucked that up" sdjfghsdkjgh olu what did you do to the abacus...

"but you're calm, and you're smart, and... i actually really liked it when you visited the soup stand" SLFGHSKJGHADKJGAH DOES ZHANG HAVE A THING FOR OLU

(listen i'm not freaking out about olu/jim 'cause they don't even know if the other one is still alive or not. they're allowed to kiss other people)

and that was such a cute moment

zheng: this is my boyfriend, and this is my boyfriend's partner, and this is my boyfriend's partner's girlfriend

roach x soup 5eva

lucius and pete are sitting Far Apart now and THAT worries me

"we eat, but how often do we taste?" i'm glad roach gets to have a ratatouille moment

lucius smoking a cigarette and fucking hating stede with all his might... this boy is so fucking traumatised...

"i used to chew the old tobacco leaf when i was young and edgy!" stede for the love of god shut up and also you were never edgy in your fucking life

"my spicy little rat boy" "NEVER FUCKING CALL ME THAT" oh yeah lucius has fucking PTSD

"what happened in towels?"

ed waking izzy up i am not ready for this conversation

please subtitles please cover up the pretend amputated leg i am begging you

"up in Leg Heaven"

"i just popped down to say a proper goodbye" (pulls out pistol) I AM PUTTING ED IN A STRAITJACKET

oh no he's making izzy hold the pistol and point it at him

he wants izzy to kill him sooooo bad he wants izzy to do it

and izzy's laughing humorlessly because he can't fucking kill ed, no matter what ed does to him

"you scared, eddie? too scared to do it yourself?" they are both lunatics please for the love of god get divorced and nobody die!!!

"clean up your own fuckin' mess, i'm not doing it, i've been doing it all my fuckin' life" delivered like a housewife cheerfully telling her husband to pick up his own socks

A GUNSHOT

BUT ED HASN'T BEEN HIT

I KNOW IZZY CAN'T HAVE KILLED HIMSELF. BUT THAT'S CLEARLY WHAT HE WAS TRYING TO DO

ed, without turning around to look at izzy: "i loved you. best i could"

i'm chewing on the walls there is something soooo wrong with both of them

poor frenchie! "do you wanna do this here, or at the bottom or the ship, 'cause i can just jump over and make it easier" BABY NOOOO

you call that CLOSURE ed??? BRO.

"do me good to be at the wheel for a bit" ed is going to blow this whole fucking ship up and take everyone with him

taika delivers each line SO casually and never before has such a laissez-faire attitude filled me with such horror

"don't keep it bottled in! i get that you're angry, so be angry at me, don't take it out on pete" "oh, stede bonnet's giving me relationship advice?"

"don't be like me" stede... i really can't help but love him...

"one has to do horrible things to survive... there was this rat terrier named pepper... THEY ATE HIM! AND THEN I HAD TO CATCH THE RATS! WITH MY TEETH! THEY WERE WEIRDLY FINICKY ABOUT THAT." dear god "THEY HAD THIS GAME CALLED THE HUMAN PUPPET, THE HAND WENT WHERE YOU'D THINK" thank god zheng rescued lucius from the pet-eating and fisting boat what the fuck

"some maniac got rid of the wheel!" ed you'd have better luck just ASKING someone to kill you instead of doing whatever crazy shit this is

"i want you to fight her to the death!" "that's a bit misogynistic, man" priorities, archie "yeah, probably" add misogyny to ed's wanted poster "ALL LOVE DIES I'M JUST HASTENING THE PROCESS" ED FUCKING JESUS

so love = death to ed. smarter people than me could write so much meta on that. but that's why he wanted izzy to kill him

jim: "leave it man, we're not gonna fight to the death!" archie: (punches jim in the face) ARCHIE!!!!!

HUGE gideon nav energy

love a woman who is also a himbo

stede is still doodling on the wanted posters

"i talked to pete... he got nauseous and kind of started crying" seriously was it calico jack's old boat lucius ended up on???

lucius: look at all of ed's red flags

stede: red's my favourite colour so what it doooo baby

"maybe the time he spent with you is the best it's ever gonna get for him" and stede starts shaking his head OOOOOFFFF

jim refuses to kill archie, who has a remarkable lack of self-preservation (HUGE gideon nav energy seriously if there is ever a locked tomb movie/show... madeleine sami for gideon)

"you were gonna do it anyway!" [drive into the storm and kill all of us] "i was!" STRAITJACKET

someone shot ed to stop him from destroying the mast

IT WAS IZZY

IZZY'S STANDING

HE TOURNIQUE'D HIS LEG AND HAULED HIMSELF ONTO THE DECK AND SHOT ED

OH MY GOD THEY SHOWED HIM PUTTING THE GUN TO HIS OWN HEAD????

HE JUST GRAZED HIMSELF. HIS SKULL WAS TOO THICK. NO BULLET CAN KILL HIM

FANG TACKLES ED, JIM PICKS UP A CANNONBALL TO SMASH ED'S HEAD IN, AND ED JUST SMILES IN RELIEF AND SAYS "FINALLY"

no music just rain over the credits

aww olu being cute with zheng <3

[rainbowloliofjustice]

I think it’s safe to say regardless of how someone feels about loli and shota shit

You have no place trying to propose a ban on it when you haven’t even dealt with or probably even investigated the child sexual abuse that your own peacekeepers do. 

[eerna]

Hello again, I have come uninvited because just now I’ve finished Crooked Kingdom and I’m,,,,,,, I probably am not anymore. It was great!! Wylan’s backstory?? Colm Fahey?? You were right, this one felt even more packed than soc. The bathroom scene? Chef’s kiss. All of them gathering to give the brooding tulip more tulips for the Good Boy he is?? I mean... that’s how it went, right?...

(Jokes aside, I did go into this fandom knowing Matthias was going to die. Did I also know I was going to love him as much as I do? Probably. Still, I didn’t know how or when it was going to happen, somehow I managed to wiggle my way around it in the tags so when it happened... I was baffled. For the most part, I trusted your posts about the grishaverse cause that’s what got me into it in the first place, but when it DID happen? I. Was not. Having it. NONE of it. I get the symbolism of him almost literally dying at the hands of his reflection, like mentioning the guy is afraid, unsure, a baby druskelle who hoped that was the right thing to do, but Matthias noting that he’s unarmed which makes for good irony with the whole druskelle thing I guess?? But it doesn’t feel earned. I mean, I don’t think Matthias should have died in ANY way, but maybe MAYBE if it was during the brawl, or to protect one of them, idk? I mean. Okay. Knowing he was gonna die beforehand could be making me say this, but the whole time I felt like LB was dropping the ball. As great as I think she is, IMO she either didn’t know where to take him after the cathartic oath to Nina at the end of soc, or she knew he was going to have to die. The imagery his nightmares were painting? BRILLIANT if at some point there would be more hurt; scared voices alongside Nina’s. Like other grisha that he’s been hunting. The wolves? Make their howling louder, almost like a beckoning, both sides louder with each new mention of the dream. And then let him properly choose, let Matthias realize how the druskelle are trained almost like the wolves they use and that there’s hurt and there’s injustice he wants to set out to correct. Don’t keep reiterating that his nature “can’t change overnight” when there’re only so many pages we have in his pov. His death isn’t retribution to me and it’s tainting the helnik kiss, when Nina at one point says something like “great, duty, AGAIN”. That was good imo, because Matthias should’ve gone beyond duty, should’ve chosen for himself what was good. I don’t what happens in the new duology apart from basic knowledge of Hanne, but it’s just.... idk if this is her plot, but Nina trying to save Fjerda without Matthias is just,,,, it would’ve been ambitious to have them tackle it together, but LB could’ve done it. I believe she could.

And i know I’m 100% clowning but like,,,, if they could level up sab in the show, couldn’t they... level up this too? When and if they adapt it, I guess :’)) I mean, CK is really just chef’s kiss otherwise, but since they already made Nina kind of betray Ravka when it conflicts with her book counterpart,,,,,, idk man watching cal die is gonna be even worse and if you’re going to have them survive soc LIKE THAT then you should have them tackle Fjerda together LIKE THAT. Yeah, idk, Matthias’ development was just kind of slow this time around and compared to things like the equally cathartic and heart wrenching bluff with Pekka’s son, I just want better for the Fjerdan!! His death and Nina “reviving” him was also so rushed and glossed over.........

“We were all supposed to make it” well GODDAMMIT WYLAN YOU REALLY WERE)

Anyway good day and thanks and sorry for coming to my ted talk

WOOO I'M GLAD YOU ENJOYED IT~~~~~

Bruh, your take on MAtthias' plotline is SO valid!! You said it so well!!! LB just didn't know what to do with him which is ridiculous bc he was only at the beginning of his redemption. She operated on the "the character realized they were wrong and dies doing something good" cliche, except she did it for 300 pages so it wasn't as jarring as it could have been. Reading the Hanne plot, there could have easily been Matthias. No sweat. We could have had NIna and Matthias going to Fjerda together and doing it all hand in hand. It sucks ass. I too hope they change it, but I don't think they will bc LB seems super convinced it was the right thing to do... Ah welll, the books are great otherwise, and we have that!!! I'm glad you enjoyed the ride and updated me on it, have a great day~

[moonlit-mizukage]

Chapter ten: Is he not fucking dead?

Summary: Y/n and Tendou are deeply in love. Living on the other side of Tokyo now, the Monsters are still up to their old shit. They even opened a few businesses for Tax reasons. Even though it’s been almost three years later, Y/n still has never been able to understand how they have avoided the law several times. When Tendou’s Mother reappears in his life, Y/n is confused as Tendou claimed she is dead. Finding out Tendou is being forced to take over the family business by his Mother, she soon learns the truth behind Tendou’s reason he never gets in legal trouble is his family business. His mother is quick to decline Y/n as his future wife and tries to set up Tendou with someone she sees more fit. What will happen to Y/n and Tendou? What will happen to Tendou’s “family business”? What does this mean for the future of the Monsters?

TW: Swearing, mentions of kidnapping, traitor, mentions of past violence. mentions of future manipulation 

An> Sorry I am a mess mbvfhdvbsh I am uploading the last horror chapter from a week ago in a few hours and some more intros soon!! The links will all be fixed by tomorrow at 9pm est as well!! 

______________________________________________________________

Third person POV (Sugawara and Daichi side)

Arriving back at the headquarters of the north side's base, the two were greeted by the leader's right hand man.

“What the hell happened to you Daichi? You look like you got roughed up.” 

“The fucking monsters found out it was me who ordered the hit on Kenma.” Daichi said.

“What the fuck how?” The man asked in front of them. 

“I think Kenma did, Kageyama.” 

“Is he not fucking dead?” Kageyama slammed his fist into the wall. 

“Guess not. They have a pre-med student on their side so I can only guess he stitched them up.” 

“Fuck we need information and we need it now. With these new members they may actually pose a threat to us. Call Tanaka and Nishinoya and tell them to get the fuck back now. We need to have a group meeting.” With that kageyama stomped away. 

“You have to tell him about the informant Suga.” Daichi said. 

“I want to wait till we are in the meeting. He gave me a run down on the new 8 members besides himself.” 

The two called the others and headed into the main hall where they held their meetings. 

After everyone arrived but the boss and Kageyama, Sugawara looked around. A loud chatter could be heard as Kageyama slammed open the door. 

“Shut the fuck up!” He yelled as he sat down. Right behind him Hinata came into the room and slammed the door shut. 

“Boss you are back. Good to see you again.” Asahi spoke up. 

“How was brazil? Bang any hot chicks sir?” Tanaka asked. 

“Shut up. None of this is important right now. I had to come back early as you can see. The south side Yakuza has become too powerful and has a chance of wiping us out. As you can see I called only the people I trusted to come here only. It seems the leader is stepping down and her son is taking over. Sugawara and Daichi went to high school with a few of them so I want all the information you have on them. Nothing is too small.” 

“Sir, if I may.” Sugawara spoke up. Hinata nodded for him to know it was okay for him to continue. “I have gotten someone to switch over to our side from their close circle.” 

“How do we know they won’t fuck us over you idiot!” Kageyama yelled. 

“Well, I took something that is of importance to him, and he is the one who informed me about Kenma.” 

“So what did you take from him first off and how do you know something like this would even work?” 

“Easy, he already gave me a way to get the leader to crack AND how to go through with it. I took something precious to him, don’t worry about it okay?” Hinata chuckled. 

“You really are not that weak fuck I met two years ago are you?” He laughed again. “So what is your plan after all Sugawara?”

“Tendou is their new leader as we know. He’s the son of the current leader and also the one who was the leader back in high school as well. He runs a money laundering bike shop down on the corner of main street I guess. I found out he has only one week spot and we need to use that against him.” 

“Let me guess his mom?” Tanaka said clearly bored.

“No, it’s definitely not his mom. It’s his Fiancé, Y/n. I was supposed to take her on a date back in their last year of school but they hijacked my date.” 

“Okay but Y/n is dating Tendou, so it’s safe to assume she’s also a little crazy you know?” Asahi spoke up. 

“But that’s where Hinata comes in.” Hinata glared at him, “Sorry I mean boss comes in. He’s still quite new after the death of Ennoshita, may he rest in peace, but Boss has only been seen in Brazil and he does play a good role as a soft sweet guy often. Y/n works at a restaurant so we send Boss and Asahi in as they both play innocent roles almost too well. You befriend her, gain her trust, then we get Tendou to come get her for a price, but we kill her in front of him.” Sugawara said. 

Hinata stood up and walked over to the window to look out dramatically. 

“One day this city will be my kingdom. With police in my pocket over the south we already have a head start. Plus with Tendou’s weakness being put out on the line, well that’s another advantage point for us.” Hinata turned around now looking at the other six men around the room. Daichi, I will need you to find out every bit of information on Y/n as possible from the police system. Sugawara please find out when Y/n works and more specifically where. We start this sting operation in one month. We need to space it out so no one gets suspicious of why two kind strangers want to befriend a student at a random restaurant.” 

“Should I let the informant know our plan then?” Sugawara asked Hinata. 

“No, just in case he crosses us, we keep our side secret, we just want his cooperation right now anyways. If he finds out we are after Y/n and has been feeding us false information, then we will get caught before we start.” 

“He said Tendou’s mom doesn’t seem to fit on y/n being his fiancé.” Hinata gave him a sadistic smirk. 

“Well we can’t have that old hag interrupting our plans now can we?” He let out a deep laugh as Kageyama stood up and marched over to Sugawara. He grabbed his collar as it pulled him from his seat making the chair slam onto the cold floor.

“Who the fuck is your informant? Why are you not telling us?!” He spoke with poison dripping from his words.

“Hanamaki Takahiro.”

_______________________________________________________________

Previous | Masterlist | Next 

AN: Not Hinata being the mafia boss HVDBHVLC I jut thought buff dom personality Hinata was to hoy not to add uwu

Taglist:  @satan-ruler-of-hells @atria-avior @freakydeaky226 @ems1des @idontknow-whatto-callthis @maer-333 @bruh-kill-me @elianetsantana @tanakasimpcorner @babyshoyo​ @ash-levi​​ @ifilosemyselfagain @wisteria-wooseok @ashytoes101 @fantasycantasy @angstyclowns @johnnysactualgf @putmeinyourdeathnote @sunflow3rbab3 @black-rose-29 @sageinlove @mykuronekome @mus1caln0tes

[leverage-ot3]

notable moments from The Radio Job

leverage 4.17

Nate: “We’re” not going anywhere -- I am. It’s personal. (leaves)

*later, hardison has information pulled up on the monitors. the screen literally reads: “where nate is going”*

Hardison: I’ll tell you where he’s going. He’s headed to the United States Patent Office in Alexandria, Virginia. Nate even cleared out his browser so we wouldn’t know. It’s adorable

- - - - -

Hardison: Uh, what doesn’t he want? A cure for the common cold, warp drive, a water engine. People, everybody knows the government is sitting on futuristic technology at the patent office.

Parker: They are?

Hardison: Oh, damn straight, girl. Under the invention secrecy act of 1951, the US government has sealed away over 5,000 patents that they say is a threat to national security. It’s all just sitting right there chillin’, locked away in a super-secret vault.

woah that’s fucked

Parker: Is there a time machine?

Eliot: There is. Yeah. Yeah, not so much a machine as probably a portal, though. You don’t really sit down as much as --

Parker: I’m gonna go get that portal, and I will go --

Sophie: Okay, okay, Guys!

okay I LOVE how enthusiastic the ot3 gets over this

- - - - -

Sophie: Fine. Off to the U.S. patent office, then. Let’s go steal a –

Parker: Let’s go steal a time machine.

Eliot: No, you don’t steal –

Parker: I’m gonna steal the time machine.

Eliot: Messing with this damn time machine, man!

Hardison: That’s just on TV. There’s no real time machine, is what I’m trying to say.

this is such a chaotic ot3 moment I love it

- - - - -

the ENTIRE rappelling scene

Hardison: This is the plan?

Parker: Uh-huh.

Eliot: Mnh-mnh. (heads back up the stairs)

Parker: Get ba—

Eliot: Hey, hey. Eliot: Get back down here!

Parker: Go get him.

Eliot: Damn it, Hardison!

we love ⅔ of the ot3 being exasperated by the other ⅓

(A few minutes later, Hardison is strapped into a climbing rig and attached to a rope with Parker and Eliot checking his harness)

Hardison: Why y’all always pushing me off of stuff? Don’t I get a say? I vote no!

Parker: We don’t have a lot of room for error.

Eliot: You can do it if you stop squirming, man. Just stand still.

Hardison: Hey, hey, hey. Where’s Nate, okay? Frank Petrino, arson investigator, was a rock-solid alias.

Parker (to Eliot): It might be easier if he’s asleep.

Eliot (to Parker): Want me to put him to sleep?

Hardison: Hey! I’m standing right here, okay? It’s not my fault y’all can’t spoof a CCTV.

Parker: Relax! (grabs his shoulders) We’re gonna lower you really slowly, but if you bump into anything, the walls, the windows, anything, you will set off the alarms.

Hardison: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it. It’s like the game “Operation,” except I’m the tweezers. Look... Whatever you do, do not drop me. Come on. I’m tired -- I’ve had it. Being pushed off of damn buildings and stuff and windows.

(Eliot and Parker share a look and push Hardison off the ledge)

poor hardison

Hardison: Wh-o-o-oa! (comes to a stop inches from the floor) Really? It’s not funny. It’s not funny. I see you laughing. I see you laughing. I’m a person... Human being! I got feelings, and I don’t feel none of this. I’m tired of being pushed off of stuff. We all having a serious conversation when this is over with. (takes a step forward) This is... s-squishy. Oh, peed my pants. All right

my sweet summer child hardison

- - - - -

Jimmy (referring to radio): Do you believe this guy? Blames all our problems on immigrants. (turns off radio)

bruh that’s america for you

- - - - -

are you fucking KIDDING ME eliot beat people up with a role of duct tape ???

- - - - -

Eliot: Hang on. I want to tell you something. If you wouldn’t have been so selfish, you could have had another pro here just like yourself, and I’d be fighting two guys instead of just you. This may have turned out differently for you. I’m just saying.

Thug 3: Aaah!

(Thug 3 swings again and misses, Eliot blocks and hits him several times, knocking him back to the ground)

Eliot: You got to learn to share. Where do they get these guys?

I LIVE for the conversations eliot has with the goons he fights

- - - - -

parker working with nate and his father being a mastermind in training

- - - - -

[Patent Office Warehouse]

Hardison (going through items on a shelf): “Run a radio play.” A radio play takes a week to set up.

Parker (riding something down the aisle behind him): Incoming!

Hardison: Hey! Trying to make a radio play using... whatever.

Parker (backs the item behind him): Whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!

Hardison: Woman!

Parker: What? (rides the item back down the aisle) I’m trying to help you?

Hardison: You know what? Then you want to help? Get me something that I can actually use...

Parker (holds up a Mr. Butler): Oh, hello. I’m Mr. Butler. You like a sandwich?

Hardison: Yes. Thank you

parker is a child and I love her for it

- - - - -

sophie with the fake pregnant belly (and how it freaked her out earlier in the episode)

+

Paramedic (listening to the Belly): Okay, well, heartbeat sounds... normal. Absolutely, perfectly, almost mechanically normal.

Sophie: 👀😬

- - - - -

Eliot (walking away from window): Welcome to the party, pal.

Eliot (tosses radio to the floor): Yippee-ki-yay, mother--

eliot is a nerd who quotes action movies

- - - - -

eliot, hardison, and parker army crawling behind nate like little ducklings

- - - - -

Sophie: Where do you think he’s going?

Nate: I don’t know, I-I—

Parker: Where? Don’t you mean when?

[Flash]

(Jimmy walks out of the building holding some sort of device. He dials 1962 on the display and disappears)

[Exterior Street]

Hardison: Now, why would he go back to 1962?

Nate: Don’t encourage her

never, ever change parker

- - - - -

Parker: What is that?

Hardison: It’s a bow tie. Bow ties are cool

hardison is ALSO a nerd and we love to see it

- - - - -

Jimmy: Tell them -- tell them…how much Jimmy Ford loves his son

HAHAHA IM NOT CRYING YOU ARE

- - - - -

how eliot screams nate’s name and the panic on his face

how the team rushes to get nate after the explosion

- - - - -

this episode in summary:

wHaT tHe FuCK

[wretchedbitch]

For no one’s amusement but my own, I reread POTO and jotted down my thoughts. And, per no one’s request, here they are. 

the hot TL;DR take is that maybe most some of the changes made for the ALW adaptation are good actually??? (contrary to some loyal Leroux bitterness I see out there but I digress). Also, this book remains one of THE weirdest things I have ever read, ever. It’s like the “so bad it’s good” movie of books. 

Anyway 

PROLOGUE:

“The events do not date more than thirty years back; and it would not be difficult to find at the present day, in the foyer of the ballet, old men of the highest respectability, men upon whose word one could absolutely rely, who would remember as though they happened yesterday the mysterious and dramatic conditions that attended the kidnapping of Christine Daae, the disappearance of the Vicomte de Chagny and the death of his elder brother, Count Philippe, whose body was found on the bank of the lake that exists in the lower cellars of the Opera on the Rue-Scribe side. But none of those witnesses had until that day thought that there was any reason for connecting the more or less legendary figure of the Opera ghost with that terrible story.” 

This. is one sentence. Gaston Leroux says comma splice rights 

I feel seen

“the very moment when he became the first victim of the curious financial operation that went on inside the "magic envelope.” 

enter: the first mention of 20k francs/mo 

it’s page 10

“I was at first inclined to be suspicious; but when the Persian had told me, with child-like candor, all that he knew about the ghost and had handed me the proofs of the ghost's existence—”

Erik/The Daroga shippers are so valid

Like The Daroga is me talking about poto

“This chief scene-shifter was a serious, sober, steady man, very slow at imagining things. ”

This description of Bouquet tho …

CHAPTER 2

“he did not even think of stealing a ribbon that would have given him the perfume of the woman he loved.”

Listen…book Raoul is a SIMP…..no further comment

CHAPTER 3

“The ballet-girls are right," he said. "The death of that poor Buquet is perhaps not so natural as people think.”

Bruh shows up at a dinner party just to spook everyone and fear monger using his own rumor fuel I’m 

“5. Or if the manager, in any month, delay for more than a fortnight the payment of the allowance which he shall make to the Opera ghost, an allowance of twenty thousand francs a month, say two hundred and forty thousand francs a year.”

Second mention of 20k francs/mo

CHAPTER 4

“I did not protest, first, because I dislike scandal, and, second, because I thought that your predecessors, MM. Debienne and Poligny, who were always charming to me, had neglected, before leaving, to mention my little fads to you.”

Erik: I dislike scandal also Erik: 

“IF YOU WISH TO LIVE IN PEACE, YOU MUST NOT BEGIN BY TAKING AWAY MY PRIVATE BOX.”

“At the end of the performance, he always gives me two francs, sometimes five, sometimes even ten, when he has been many days without coming. Only, since people have begun to annoy him again, he gives me nothing at all.”

The patronage 

CHAPTER 16

“The reader must know that the ghost had calmly been paid his first twenty thousand francs. Oh, there had been wailing and gnashing of teeth, indeed! And yet the thing had happened as simply as could be.”

Good to know Erik is still making his extortion money 

“At first sight, Richard and Moncharmin thought that the notes were still there; but soon they perceived that they were not the same. The twenty real notes were gone and had been replaced by twenty notes, of the "Bank of St. Farce"![1]”

Erik’s sense of humor remains 👌🏼

CHAPTER 18 

“Yes, she was carried off in the Prison Act, at the moment when she was invoking the aid of the angels; but I doubt if she was carried off by an angel.”

Erik: perfectly plans to abduct Christine during a performance, just as she’s singing about angels for the melodrama of it all

“Unfortunately for their hopes of learning some detail that could put them on the track of their hoaxer, they were soon compelled to accept the fact that M. Raoul de Chagny had completely lost his head.”

Really works out in Erik’s favor that his behaviors are just so batshit that they can’t possibly be accomplished by a fathomable, mortal man so even when Raoul spills all this shit, no one believes him lmao

“What is certain is that, though your carriage and Sorelli's and Carlotta's are still there, by the Rotunda pavement, M. le Comte de Chagny's carriage is gone."

"This has nothing to say to ..."

"I beg your pardon. Was not M. le Comte opposed to your marriage with Mlle. Daae?"

"That is a matter that only concerns the family.”

Unless something comes up later, I really doubt Erik could have accounted for Raoul being accused of abduction/murder but I bet he thought that shit was lit 

[edit: this is not the turn those details took but man am I bummed to find out Phillipe was just being a really good older brother only to die for it : )] 

“This, gentlemen, is the art of the police, which is believed to be so complicated and which, nevertheless appears so simple as soon its you see that it consists in getting your work done by people who have nothing to do with the police.”

Leroux says fuck blue lives; they’re useless and make heartbroken viscounts do their work for them 

“You know who I am! ... I am the Persian!"

Best character alert 

CHAPTER 19

“No, sir," said the Persian sadly, "I do not hate him. If I hated him, he would long ago have ceased doing harm.”

Pharoga shippers; valid: the sequel 

CHAPTERS 20-EPILOGUE (the end of the book just happened really quick, so here are some general thoughts) 

Phantom feels big brain OG (no pun intended) for the whole “Christine! Just take advantage of the monster’s affections for you and act SUPER in love with him so you can gain the upper hand and help us” thing. Though…also high key glad that vibe has been dropped over the years

Erik really trapped Raoul and The Daroga in the Rainforest Cafe, huh 

I’d have to insert like an entire chapter to reference this but damn Raoul really just gives up on life right away once Erik turns the hot box on and whines while The Daroga does all the heavy lifting to try and save their lives it’s kind of hilarious in the worst way but also same, Raoul 

REALLY bummed about Phillipe actually : ( 

Erik remained a melodramatic bitch until he took his very last dying breath and I RESPECT him for that 

Like, he died as he lived: extra

The end of the book always hits me in the weirdest way because it’s somehow TOO climactic but also not climactic enough??? But I gotta hand it to Leroux for fabricating this nasty little monster man of a “theater kid” who spun a 180 thanks to true love’s first kiss. 

[vasiliassuns]

thistle gimme the tea on ruby

♥ oh gods, you really just love getting me on the analysis trains, hm ?

♥ ( note ; do not read this post if you absolutely love ruby with all of your heart and believe she is 100% innocent , to each their own , these are just my own personal opinions and im not trying to offend anybody ) 

♥ warning ! this post is very long, and essentially turned into a character analysis of specific moments and nearly an entire volume largely based off of how i see the show. it is multiple paragraphs long, standing at exactly 3444 words exactly. there will be a tl;dr at the end for anybody who doesnt want to read the full post, or has trouble focusing ! thank you for understanding. 

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

♥ where do i start ? personally, ruby’s character really got it’s worst in volume 7. i really enjoyed her character pre - fall of beacon, and a decent amount in volumes 4 - 6 as well. there is a moment in volume 4 that make me let out a long sigh, as well as a singular moment in volume 5 that greatly confuses me on her character, so i will touch up on that as well.

♥ volume 7 is what kills my love for her character, in all honest, as well as some moments in volume 6 that i feel could have been written better. i’ll go in chronological order for this, starting with my “:///” towards a part in volume 4, then confusion of a scene in volume 5, then the slight issues that developed with her in volume 6, then moving on to volume 7 and how im no longer really enjoying her character

♥ so, in volume 4, its very common knowledge that tyrian was sent to attack and retrieve ruby to bring back to salem, due to her having silver eyes and the damage she cause salems fall maiden. when qrow shows up to save ruby at the perfect last second, he adamantly tells her and the rest of team rnjr to stay out of the fight. at first, ren and nora dont listen, but then do, which is fair. but ruby continued to push her helping qrow. as we all know now, qrow was telling her to stay back due to his semblance. while, yes, ruby did help qrow against tyrian with a couple of the blows, the fight would have gone much different should she have not interfered (personally, i feel like qrow would have had a shot at beating tyrian, especially because their auras were both flickering and they seemed very evenly matched). but due to her constant interference, she nearly got knocked out by a large wooden beam, had qrow not sliced it in half. she wound up (even if it was accidentally) distracting qrow, giving tyrian the opportunity to nearly poison him. i dont hate her for wanting to help in this scene, because its her uncle who she cares about, but i feel like she also should have trusted qrow and stayed out of the fight. the line “this is my fight too” also gets me. maam, this isnt your fight, the fight is about you, but doesnt need to physically involve you.

♥ with volume 5. its a very well known scene, at least in my opinion. when weiss got impaled by none other than cinder fucking fall. within the few episode long battle for haven, we did see ruby’s eyes activate once when jaune and cinder were running / flying at each other to fight. i do understand why her eyes activated there, because jaune is her first friend from beacon that wasn’t her sister, arguably one of her closest. what i dont understand is why ruby’s eyes didnt activate when she saw that cinder had impaled weiss with the spear, weiss sitting in the same position ruby last saw pyrrha in, weiss an inch from death. it just doesnt add up to me how her teammate and partner, somebody who’s saved her multiple times and shes saved multiple times. it may be that she was too stressed in the moment for them to properly activate, which we’ve seen ( in volume 7 ), but i still feel like something should have happened with her eyes. 

♥ continuing on with volume 6, i really didnt have many issues with her character here either, but a few of her lines / moments kinda made me go “:/ bruh why tho” closer to the end of this volume. it’s really only two quotes of her’s that get me, which is “Just because you don't have an idea, doesn't mean we're out of options! Oz hasn't been here to tell us what to do, but we still managed to get this far anyway. We've been in bad situations before, and we don't need an adult to come save us or tell us what to do. We just did it our way! And I say we do it our way. And if you think you can keep up with us "kids"... we'd be happy to have you.” from the episode ‘lost’. i partially understand what she’s saying here, but at the same time, she says this to qrow, who saved her life on multiple occasions, and who wanted to get to atlas without breaking any laws. the way she said it (nothing against lindsay, she is an amazing and very talented voice actress, and she delivers nearly all of rubys lines perfectly, but imagine as if this was a real person we knew), kind of seemed decently rude to me. i understand that she knows they need to get to atlas, because james can help them (ill bring this back up later, trust me), and shes clearly not afraid to break the law that involves james’ military to get to him. 

♥ the second thing in volume 6 about ruby that semi-upsets me / makes me go “:/” is in the episode seeing red, when she was talking to cordovin, she said “ We're going to Atlas. Bigger people than you have tried to stop us and failed, but we're supposed to be on the same side! We're supposed to use our power to protect people, but you just use yours to look down on everyone! We didn't want to steal from you. We did it because you gave us no other choice! Now I'm giving you one last chance to stand down and hear us out.” this semi-upsets me mostly because of the line “bigger people than you have tried to stop us and failed”, as well as “we did it because you gave us no other choice.”. the “bigger people than you” gets me because while, yes, in the grand scheme of things within the war against salem, cordovin is a small footnote within it, the only other people who physically tried to stop team rwby was roman (who sadly was eaten by grimm due to his negative emotions with flocks of grimm around, not because of ruby), cinder’s miniature faction (who only partially failed. as much as i hate cinders character, she didnt fully fail in stopping rwby, she just was forced to step back for a while...multiple times.), and tyrian with rnjr. roman didnt inherently fail, he just chose to walk away from the fights hed been having with team rwby in order to devise a new plan to beat them the next time. cinder’s faction only partially failed because ruby managed to get on top of beacon tower in volume 3 with weiss’ help, watching pyrrha pass away thus activating her silver eyes for the first time. the only reason tyrian failed to stop rnjr was because qrow was there to help, and ruby managed to get an opening to slice his tail in half (which. ew that shot looked disgusting). yes, bigger people have tried to stop her and her friends, but they didnt inherently fail, at least not yet. with the line “we did it because you gave no other choice!” mostly just confuses me. while yes, technically cordovin didnt really give any options for the group, it didnt automatically mean that they had to instantly resort to stealing from the military. 

♥ now ! onto volume 7, where my salt really starts. because i have a growing icky feeling about her character in volume 7, im going to split this next bit up into three parts. the first part being the first 4 episodes, the second being episodes 5-9 and the third and final being episodes 10-13. buckle up!

♥ episode 1, i really have nothing against ruby. she has the same attitude she did in volume 6 and before, which is a mixture of pure but also wanting to stop salem.

♥ its episode 2 that starts to get me. as i mentioned earlier, ruby knows they have to get to atlas because they know james can help them, and that the lamp is safer if its locked away in the vault, but then she suddenly doesnt trust james. i dont know if this is because the ace-operatives arresting them, but in that situation, james also couldnt have known who the unlicensed huntsmen were. as seen by his and winter’s reactions to the soliders bringing rwby+jnr+oscar & qrow in, they instantly tell them to let the 9 go, because james and winter personally know them and know they would never attack people. so, i dont really know why ruby would stop trusting the idea that james could help them because of that. it may also be the fact that ruby doesnt like the idea that james was planning on telling the people of atlas and mantle about salem (which, honestly? to me? this decision seems fully rash and makes a lot of sense.), but even then, if the students at the vytal festival knew about salem, or the world did, it may have proven to be more beneficial to them, because the more people that knew she existed, the more people who can fight her or the more people that can support those who are fighting her on the front lines, so ruby no longer trusting him over that doesnt make sense to me either. ruby’s sudden distrust of james upsets me quite a bit, because she and the team shed been traveling with had learned ozpin was hiding things from them (my feelings on this is a whole different post, but not necessarily a negative one), and was very upset about that. really, her openly lying to james about not knowing why ozpin had disappeared / locked himself away in oscars mind, as well as the amount of questions jinn has left, really ticks me off. they spent the entirety of volume 6 trying to get to atlas and to james because they needed his help, and once they finally got there, in front of the man himself, she lied. she became the exact same thing that she and her group had openly not liked what so ever, which was a blatant liar. id understand if ruby said that jinn had one more question left, to see how james would react, and tell him of salem’s immortality at a slightly later date, when they got into the rhythm of being around each other and working as a team against salem, but just blatantly lying, without consulting her team prior, to the man who could in all honesty make or break how they fought this war, was plain wrong.

♥ in episode 3, ruby was mostly back to who she had been prior to this entire mess. she explains why theyre hiding stuff from james, albeit in the vaguest way possible (weiss and blake explain the thinking behind it more than she does, honestly). we also see the beginning of a conversation between ruby and oscar about them lying to james. though, with the lying situation and who she was turning into, this is really all for this episode.

♥ in episode 4, the largest scene we see with ruby openly talking about her distrust for james is her conversation with qrow. she says “I'm trying to do what I think is best, but I really can't tell if what's best is what's right. Or if I'm no different from Oz.“, which at this point, shes nothing like ozpin. shes worse. ozpin was hiding the truth about salem due to the trauma connected to her and the fact of her immortality that the ozma line of reincarnations had, which isnt entirely a bad thing. should he have tried to find a way to tell them she was immortal without disclosing his own personal traumas? absolutely, i dont disagree that he hadnt made brash decisions, that should have been made differently, but the sad truth is, is that ozpin chose to hide what he hid, but that one mistake (albeit, a large one) doesnt entirely make him a terrible person. ruby, however? her choice on telling james wasnt brash, it was blatantly impetuous. she barely thought and decided to lie on the spot, unless shed purposefully been internally planning for a long while to lie to him, and had a lie stored up to use should he have asked. that isnt okay, what so ever. the conversation ruby had with qrow eventually delvs into talking about summer, which isnt really important.

♥ when thinking about episodes 5 through 8, nothing particularly stands out to me as ruby blatantly lying. those episodes are mostly team rwby and jnr doing huntsman work, yang making a terrible decision and making blake talk for her, and r/enora turning into something i honestly really hate. episode 9 however, gets me thinking.

♥ in episode 9, the finally tell james that salem cant be killed, but ruby doesnt tell james, oscar does. a quick side note, i really like the fact that crwby had oscar tell james and not ruby, because oscar is the current (and hopefully final) reincarnation of ozma, and its a secret his past lives kept for a millennia. but! back to ruby. within this episode, before she decides they can finally tell james about salem (which, as you can tell, i believe they should have done instantly), ruby is preaching to james about how they can figure it out and that how they should all work together. this pisses me off because shes standing there, hiding one of the largest, if not the largest secret in the show, to a man who has done everything for her and her team. james trusted rwby, especially ruby, with everything he knew, gave them new weapons, clothes, a place to stay, food, etc. all for free because he trusted they wouldnt hide anything from them. another thing that gets me about ruby saying it was finally time to tell james, was that it seemed solely up to her to tell him or to chose when to tell him. it was up to the technically youngest in the group to chose when to tell james about salems immortality (i say technically, because oscar is the current reincarnation of a millennia old line, and i personally have seen him be wiser than ruby in this, weather hes more mature than her or not. physically, yes, oscar is the youngest. mentally? i really dont think hes the youngest in that regard). it doesnt make sense to me as to why everybody was trusting ruby with when to tell james. why wouldnt qrow tell him? qrows known james for years, weather they were close friends (that hug and sincerity tells me that they arent the bickering work partners v3 shaped them up to be) or not. qrow knows he can trust james because simply of how long theyve known each other. weiss knows she can trust james, hes been seen multiple times in the show defending her against jacques, even offering her a place at atlas academy (that bit to me seemed like james offering weiss a way to get away from jacques, because she would need to live at atlas to properly be a student, not the manor), he even said “shes the only one making any sense around here” after weiss got rightfully upset at the woman talking beacon down in volume 4. oscar knows he can trust james, simply because of his connection to ozpin. seeing as ozpin can access oscars memories, and its cannon that their memories merge, its safe to say that oscar was able to see who james used to be pre-fall of beacon, and to see the kind of man he was, as well as making his own judgement based on their first introduction together. so, why would these three, and the rest of the team traveling with ruby not tell james the truth? hell, qrow is a mother fucking spy. im pretty sure he would be able to tear james apart and figure out his intentions pretty easily. why couldnt qrow have just had a one on one conversation with james to make his own final call, as the fully fledged adult of the group? it doesnt make sense to me why they would trust ruby with this extremely important decision what so ever. 

♥ episode 10, there really isnt anything i have against ruby. shes fighting to protect mantle and is doing her current job, which is one of the few details i can appreciate, but thats about it. 

♥ episode 11 and 12 specifically piss me off, and not just about ruby, about nearly everybody involved. i understand rubys standing in this, saying that they need to stand their ground and fight salem head on, unlike they had in the past, i honestly probably would have said the same thing if i were her too. james had emotionally shut down at this point, i think that this is very clearly evident, especially seeing as the white sparkles in his eyes have dissipated, something we commonly see in the eyes of rwby characters to represent their humanity or emotional status. james is emotionally shut down, the ace-operatives have their own opinions on this situation which is entirely okay and valid, and they happen to be siding with james. blake is trying to take the calmer approach, most likely having noticed that if they lashed out like yang began to, it would go very bad very quick. weiss was in a state of semi-shock, her mind most likely naturally connecting their current situation with trauma and abuse she endured as a child (most prominently ; isolation). but how ruby handled going against james and the fight against the ace-operatives / specifically harriet, was down right wrong. she should not have jumped past james with her semblance to reveal james’ plan, which automatically escalated the situation from bad to even fucking worse. she yet again made a decision for herself and a group of people that can cost them their lives if things dont go their way (which, knowing how this show can be written sometimes? it will always go their way in the end), without thinking. i really dont feel i have to explain how spontaneous her choice on this is, especially because i know multiple people have covered it in better written posts. it essentially boils down to rubys blatantly reckless actions and absolutely moronic choices to do what they did. do not get me started on her line of “then you trained us” or the fact that all the ace-operatives walked into that fight with less aura than team rwby, which already gave them an unfair advantage. i really do not have the patience to fully type out and explain why i hate these two episodes with my entire being, but it mostly boils down to: nobody in this situation is right. not ream rwby, not james, not the ace-ops, very clearly not salem and her lackeys, not qrow choosing to fight 1v1v1, or cinder for a multitude of reasons. the only characters in these episodes i dont have a burning hatred for, be it temporarily or a fire i have a feeling will be burning for a while, is team jnr and oscar. they were trying their best in regards of what was best for everybody, oscar wanting to help james to the best of his ability. 

♥  tl;dr : basically? ruby rose in volumes 1 - 6 was actually a really enjoyable character and only had a few moments of “okay but why?” but everybody also has those moments. ruby rose in volume 7 turned into a hypocritical, blatantly rude and whiny little girl who i honestly cant really see as a good character at the moment at all, because of how she acted the entire volume. 

[notimeliketoday]

Before I say my reply from this post: https://notimeliketoday.tumblr.com/post/617733549503741952/birkastan2018-kindly-be-informed-of-all courtesy of @birkastan2018, I will say my deep apologies to someone. 

Note: This is how you actually apologize (for the entitled folks out here).

Tl;dr: It’s okay to ask for reader’s feedback but it’s never okay to shame them if they don’t. It’s just basic manners and courtesy.

I’m sorry about the misunderstanding about the deletion of a reblog @ombreecha. I tried clicking the link birk gave to me but all I got was Not Found caption in place of the actual post so it made me think maybe you deleted it after all, which just opened another way you’ve been stressed about this issue.

Birk only said this after I said you deleted your reblog:

 Well that’s new. The author’s directly affirmative reblog was just there a few minutes ago, so it appears that she literally just deleted it moments ago… At any rate, as I have told the author directly on multiple occasions - if she does not want that add'l info with respect to her feedback preferences at the bottom, I am (and have always been) happy to remove it. All she has to do is say so.

I’m really, really sorry about that. It was an accidental mistake on my part.

With that out of the way, it’s really wacky how you profess to be a writer when you can’t grasp what a simple word means. Whatever happened to proper application of dictionaries?

As for your claim that it “is just screaming disrespectful to us readers and to her whose work you “promoted”” unfortunately I don’t even know what that means. And frankly I don’t know how including an author’s feedback preferences at the bottom of a reblog would “repulse” readers. If anything, I’d think a reader who was choosing between what title to read next would probably gravitate towards the one where the author might not have any expectations of feedback over one that would.

Nothing I don’t expect from someone who can’t understand how to properly use the word “sociopath” and is willfully obtuse to opinions she doesn’t like.

I believe Bree already said what the issue over this already so I won’t repeat it.

For all that claim of living in United States, you sure learned little in how to properly articulate your words and their proper usage.

I am honestly laughing over how you like to think that you are not forcing readers to comment on your works because you’d rather think you’re trying to change mindsets. 

Nope, not guilt tripping, shaming and judging silent readers at all. 

Who are you kidding?

And for that matter, who do you think you are? How important do you think your contents are for the fandom for you to just demean others and demand reviews that you believe you are entitled to get from the readers?

Wake up from your delusions of grandeur girl. 

You and the rest of your entitled folks are just a dime a dozen among content creators. You believe you’re all hotshots just because there are a lot of readers who reviewed your works, with your other folks reaching hundreds and even thousands of them they think they’re on top of the fandom world, and so believe you’re all entitled to feedbacks just because you’re all popular? Funny how y’all ultimately failed to grasp that you can be replaced at the readers’ whims.

READERS’ TIME IS ALREADY A PRIVILEGE AND A GIFT FOR AUTHORS. IF THEY DO NOT LIKE WORKS, THEY CAN EASILY IGNORE THEM NO MATTER HOW GOOD IT MAY BE. A COMMENT IS EXTRA REWARD, IN A MANNER OF SPEAKING.

Readers/consumers hold the real power in the fandoms, fam. No amount of denial can change that power dynamic. Silent readers/lurkers can make a favorite work famous even if they never interact or give feedback at all just by simply promoting the works which caught their interest.

They’re literally the reason fandom exist at all bruh. Like Kishimoto/any other authors wouldn’t have any fandom if their works didn’t generate readers who are into their creations.

I mean, hardly any of us interact and give Kishimoto feedbacks personally yet his work strives until now.

In fact, our relationship with commercialized and copyrighted works is just the much grander scale of how the fandom operates.

Kishimoto is our content creator and we are the silent readers whose feedback almost never reaches him so we compensate in showing our support through promoting it to others, discuss about it, and create our own fanworks using the lore and characters he already built to continue generating interest in it.

I’ve come to the realization that some people seem fond of twisting themselves into pretzels over this but it’s really very simple. I reblog stories that I read and enjoy in the hopes that others might see it, give it a read, enjoy it too and leave whatever form of feedback that author seeks. In this case, the author made clear that none is expected, which is very nice. 

This is rich coming from the very person who twisted everything and brought chaos in the otherwise stable relationship between content creators and readers through her greed for attention and fame.

For all that you desire more readers’ feedbacks for interaction purpose, you sure did a great job alienating many of them. 

Fact is, you and your folks would never have reached the level of popularity you currently enjoyed in the fandom if silent readers didn’t promote or even bother to read your works. But instead, you want to make it transactional and therefore deprive many readers, who won’t have time nor unable to review due their own reasons or simply because they’re not comfortable at all, the pleasure of enjoying the fandom the way they want to.

All in the name of entitled btches who forgot who made them and helped them reach the fame they currently enjoyed.

Talk about an ungrateful - as you named yourself - capitalist whore. Your own title, not mine

Ah, and for all those talks about reviewing works, why haven’t you reviewed other small content creators? Why choose only those you’re friends with?

So you do lack manners yourself.

You can’t even exercise what you preached.

Pathetic.

[16ruedelaverrerie]

SOUND THE HORNS, RAISE THE ALARMS, it’s time for THE WAR ON STARK PROPAGANDA haha that’s a severe way of putting it, “Stark propaganda.” But it really is a case of emotional allegiances affecting the interpretation of narrative events; the first trouble is that the audience loves the Starks too much, and that Theon loves the Starks too much (for a given value of “love”).

It’s not like the show never points out that Theon’s position in Winterfell is one of hostage! But the centrality of the Starks to the show makes it really difficult to look at things through anything other than Stark-tinted glasses-- and because the show primes the audience to think of the Starks as generally good and noble and kind, it’s not easy to see that even those who are good and noble and kind are perfectly capable of inflicting harm on others. Just because Ned Stark seems like a really nice dude doesn’t mean he won’t take a child hostage. In fact, it is absolutely because Ned Stark is a... nice dude... that he takes a child hostage; this is a kind of niceness that has very strict limits on what kinds of mercy are allowed and when. Taking Theon hostage means that the Greyjoys can be kept in check instead of being eradicated off the face of the planet, but just because that minimizes overall bloodshed doesn’t mean that Theon can’t be rendered precarious and miserable by it.

Also, it’s extra hard to remember that Theon doesn’t need redemption when Theon himself is constantly looking for redemption. Even though the only real human connection he has with the Starks is through Robb, Theon does DESPERATELY want to belong to the family that he’s grown up in. So, you know, I get it! I understand why a lot of people would watch the show and think that Theon’s betrayal of Robb’s trust is tantamount to turning on one’s own family! That his taking of Winterfell is some sort of INTERNECINE CATASTROPHE!

But that’s a conclusion that comes from adopting the show’s viewpoint as your own. Again, I get it. When a text wants something, it tries to make you want it too. My concern is that reading against the text is a skill that we're not really given the chance to learn very well or practice very often, but that it’s such an important skill to have in order to be thoughtful, critical interlocutors of both fictional and nonfictional materials. Saying that Theon needs redemption is to take for granted a lot of assumptions that undergird GoT’s diegetic worldviews (some of which are also ASoIaF’s); that the Starks are “good,” that family must come first, that one has to pay for one’s wrongs with suffering and death. But none of these are inviolable truths! The Starks are just people, a family is nothing but a socially constructed unit, and punishment is not the only possible response to a misdeed.

The last point, especially. In a Renaissance revenge tragedy, things don’t end when vengeance has been served and everyone is satisfied with the state of affairs. They end because vengeance has snowballed freakishly out of control and there is no longer anyone left alive to pursue vengeance or be avenged upon. Suffering can never adequately pay for suffering. How the heck does Theon lying dead in the Godswood do anything to unstage the Red Wedding? What does Theon being flayed in the Dreadfort do to unkill the miller’s boys? To think of Theon’s story as a redemption arc is also to place his torture and abuse within that framework, and the rhetoric of “he got what he deserved” presupposes a moral economy that operates on the principle that punitive measures are necessary to right a wrong. But suffering can never adequately pay for suffering. I read the Reek section of Theon’s story as being in large part about the inherent failure of this sort of punitive moral economy; you may want to see someone punished, but the problem is that once you start punishing them, there’s no clear point at which to stop.

What’s so vile is that setting up Theon’s story as a redemption arc also made a lot of people react to trauma with a fantastic lack of compassion! This is why Peter Sagal can call late-season Theon a loser, and why a major-outlet thinkpiece can state with confidence that no one stans Theon. In a redemption arc, you serve your time and you stand back up and you finally do good; Theon’s inability to rise to the occasion in the aftermath of Ramsay was therefore a source of frustration for people who were expecting a glorious moment of redemption for Theon. Under this framework, his failure to fight Euron was a failure to seize that redemption when it was offered to him.

But why is violence the only way to answer violence? Why can’t Theon respond to his own wartime deeds in some other way that doesn’t involve more war? When I said that I wanted Theon to have a fleece blanket and a bowl of soup, it wasn’t that I wanted him to withdraw from the story or to cede control to Euron. It was that GoT has never been interested in imagining a truly viable alternative space to the theater of war, and I wanted to see what it would look like to turn some swords to goddamn plowshares without waiting for the current war to run its course. When I say this, people keep telling me that the world of GoT is a harsh one and the only way to survive is to fight. But literally there is nothing to stop anyone from imagining otherwise! That’s what fiction is-- the act of imagining otherwise. But all GoT wants to do is imagine the same thing over and over again; Sam wants to fight, little girls want to fight, everyone wants to fight because D&D have created a world in which there is nothing outside of fighting. Sansa tells the Hound her suffering did her good because she now knows how to fight better (not physically, but more shrewdly; more mistrustfully). Theon is worthless until he fights again-- and eventually dies fighting, because having regained that violent worth, his arc is ended and he is no longer needed for any further violent purpose.

I’m not a very good watcher of the show. I don’t think I ever cared who sat on the Iron Throne, I don’t instinctively understand the desire not to be spoiled for plot developments, and I’m mostly skeptical of spectacle. It’s probably the case that I’m not the person all this was meant for! So my opinion counts for very little... but here is the opinion that counts for so little, @hurlumerlu. These are my tangled feelings. There is also a side branch argument about how I find the redemption arc to be uninteresting as a narrative shape because it is too neat, but that’s a different aesthetic argument for another time.

 Oh my god I’m sorry @we-return-in-waves, just to get here you had to scroll past ten thousand lines of me wishing that someone would establish a women’s shelter in Westeros or something kl;dkhglk actually I’m sorry to @hurlumerlu as well, in fact I’m sorry to everyone for making the previous answer part of an askbox post and not its own separate entry. But I DON’T KNOW, I JUST STARTED DOING IT AND THEN I REALIZED THAT MY ANSWER WAS TOO LONG BUT BY THEN IT WAS TOO LATE AND ALSO WHAT ELSE IS NEW?? ME TYPING TOO MUCH = A PROBLEM THAT RECURS IN EVERY AREA OF MY LIFE EXCEPT FOR IN MY SCHOOLWORK, UNFORTUNATELY ENOUGH

Which is a segue back to your message. You are truly an infinitely better human being than I, firstly because you are generous enough to derive enjoyment from my shitty DBH posts; but secondly because you are disciplined enough to use fandom as a motivation! If I were you, I would just end up staring at a blank Word document for two hours, thinking but what if Gavin wins a Grand Prix and instead of celebrating like a normal person he just breathlessly yells NINES, MEET ME IN THE BACK into the interviewer’s microphone before flipping off the entire crowd and walking backwards offstage

Fandom hinders me from getting schoolwork done and schoolwork hinders me from getting fandom stuff done. It is a vicious cycle of no great consequence but I am despondent over it anyway. Thank you very much for dropping me this note, @we-return-in-waves! I do it all for you.

 No bruh you. What?

[cancerianprincess]

Birkin Bag (2)

|Part One|

Summary: Erik finds out he might’ve rubbed off on his best friend a tad too much and that she’s really with the shits

Warning: Language, Angst, Kidnap Mention(s), Mild Violence

Quick A/N: Didn’t plan on doing an OC, but still wanted ‘Reader’ to have a name, so you are Aniya, Aniya is you, & that’s “Y/N” for the series. That cool? Everybody got it? Aight bet 🙂👍🏾

~~~~

“I bought my bitch a Birkin Bag so she could hold my fucking strap..”

____

“It’s been two days now, can’t we just kill him already?”

“No, stupid! Do you want to start an international incident?”

Erik could only roll his eyes at the bickering taking place in front of him. They couldn’t have possibly been professionals, because professionals never discussed business around their captive, or argue, to put it more accurately. Still, they weren’t totally inexperienced either, and that’s probably what pissed him off the most about this situation.

“Man whatever, I’m tired of this ‘being patient’ shit.”

“Well that’s what yo’ ass get for giving him the wrong injection! Ain’t nobody fault but yours he was out for a day and a half, we coulda been got somewhere with the operation.”

Him of all people, Erik ‘Killmonger’ Stevens, Prince N’Jadaka of Wakanda, had been taken down in his own home. And even if it was late when he got home from the range with Aniya, he still should’ve sensed them from a mile away. Though he couldn’t be too hard on himself, because thanks to the big, burly, Harambe looking nigga in the corner, he had given him a run for his money in that fight. That dude was damn near bigger than M’Baku!

“Fuck the plan, I’m bout to just shoot this nigga right now.”

“Tee, put the gun away. What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand?”

Nevertheless, now wasn’t the time to think about that. Before the vaguely familiar woman could put a cap is his ass, Erik needed to concentrate on how to escape without breaking the promise to his aunt and cousins that he’d never go on another psychotic murderous rampage ever again.

“Please? Just one to the shoulder, that’s all I’m asking.” But Harambe wouldn’t give in to the whining.

“You heard what the man said, we gotta wait til she notices he’s really missing.”

His brain had been multitasking the entire time, dually focused on both the conversation and breaking free of his restraints, but when the word ‘she’ hit Erik’s ears, he only had to ponder for half a minute until it registered. There was only one female he was tight with that would think to immediately come to his aid in circumstances such as these.

‘It’s a trap.’

Alarm rapidly grew in the pit of Erik’s stomach, but he refused to let it show. He wasn’t sure how to make it happen, but if there was any chance to prevent Aniya from getting hurt, he would have to play it cool in trying to get the two captors to accidentally disclose pieces of their strategy to him.

“Aye...Aye!”

They turned around at his second shout, realizing that Erik was actually speaking to them now.

“Look, Jay, he’s finally talking to us,” the girl cooed, pretending to be honored. Her partner whipped to peer at her with a hint of panic. “How the hell you gon’ just throw my name out there like that, Tracee?”

She simply scoffed. “Bruh, you literally did the same thing to me, like just then.”

“And?” Jay shot back. “He been awake for a good minute now. Ain’t no telling what he already done heard.”

“Exactly. So stop bitching, aight? He gone be dead soon anywa-”

Erik cut into their dispute with an intentionally exaggerated laugh, which gave him precisely what he wanted.

“Yo, y’all funny,” he joked, drinking in their irritation expressions. Time to follow his asshole side with the playboy act. “Listen, y’all two real cute and allat, but say shawty, why don’t leave ol’ Magilla Gorilla over there alone and come talk to a real man?”

Tracee’s face fell blank for a second or two before brandishing a wicked grin that was semi-genuine. She retrieved something from the table they were working at and began stalking her way over to the chair Erik was strapped to.

“Yeah, gone head and cut me out these ropes, ma.”

He didn’t really except her to comply that easily, but if she got close enough, one good head butt would do the trick. All he’d have to then was get loose, grab the gun from her hip, and tag Big Boy one good time so he could dip.

But unfortunately for Erik, the woman advancing on him wasn’t about to let that happen in the slightest. Tracee knew if anything could weaken her prey, it was the file she held in her hand. Which is precisely why she threw it open in Erik’s lap after drawing her weapon, placing it to his temple. She nudged him with the barrel, silently prompting him to take a look at it.

“You know if I were you, I’d shut my mouth and open my eyes instead,” she purred. “Save as much energy as possible.”

Erik bore his daggers at her for another moment, but reluctantly did as he was told and inspected the image lying on the very top of the pile of paper.

“Because that smooth talking ain’t gonna get you far with me,” Tracee continued, her voice growing darker with each word she spoke. “Unlike it did with my sister, sadly.”

That’s when any sort of guard Erik had up began crumbling away.

He thought he recognized the crazy bitch towering over him, and when his gaze fell on the name at the top of the folder, he knew exactly how he knew her. Through clenched teeth Erik asked her, “‘The fuck is this?” His voice was low but the bass in it caused his barely audible question to be heard. Tracee responded with malicious snickering rather than an actual answer as she backed away from him slowly. Erik repeated himself again, only this time he roared it, finally tearing away from the black and white photo that was now burned into his memory.

Still the woman said nothing, merely flickered her eyes to a spot behind Erik to glance at the source that would rebuttal in her place.

“Don’t ask questions you don’t wanna know the answers to, homie.”

It was a third voice that Erik had yet to hear since waking up in the foreign location, but before he was even able to identify it the third stranger struck him with something blunt, delivering a hard blow that knocked Erik out cold.

********

You felt something was up by the third day. Erik never missed a chance to taste your mom’s cooking, except for the rare cases when he was otherwise occupied. Even in those instances, he would always ask you to snag him a to-go plate to retrieve later on. So when he never showed up for dinner that Sunday afternoon without a heads up, it had been icing on the cake.

Granted, it wasn’t like the two of you constantly stayed up each other’s asses and talked every single day, but 72 hours of complete radio silence? No texts, no call, no stupid Snapchat, absolutely nothing. There hadn’t even been one single funny tweet sent to your DM’s and it just didn’t seem right. Plus, Erik’s fatass never turned down some good soul food, so after lumping two and two together, your better judgement was done taking the back seat. Something was definitely wrong.

“Your boyfriend not coming for dinner today, Aniya?”

“He’s not my boyfriend, Ma,” you said, rolling your eyes at her obvious teasing. She merely smirked, thinking otherwise by how frequently you were checking your phone. You fed her the first sensible excuse that came to mind as an attempt to downplay it.

“The center has some kind of conference or something coming up, so they probably had Erik on call for the prep work. But because you’re so worried about him, I’ll go fix him a plate since he’s your ‘favorite child.’”

That had been several hours ago, the recent memory playing back of you ambling into the kitchen to mask your jittering leg. Now you were hurrying towards Erik’s front door, having practically sped over to his apartment the minute you reached your car. But after making the walk from the elevator, your hand stopped short of knocking, eyes alert once spotting that the door was already hanging open slightly. You inched it open a little further, tapping twice with your knuckles just in case anyone was still inside.

“Erik,” you called out. “Yo, you in here?”

No answer came so you proceeded to investigate with caution, but instantly felt a wave of queasiness bud in your stomach due to what you saw next.

Nearly everything in the main room of the two-bedroom had been trashed. The couch was slanted at an odd angle, no longer in its designated place, while both armchairs had been overturned on their sides. Shards of what used to be the glass coffee table laid scattered across the living room floor along with all the items it once held. There was even a rather large hole in the wall closest to the hallway. All clear signs that there’d been a struggle or fight of some kind.

As soon as shock loosened its grip on your body, panic took over and sent you searching through each section of the apartment, yelling for Erik the whole way. Your feet raced from room to room, your mind going twice as fast trying to piece together what could’ve possibly happened. None of them appeared to have been damaged; the kitchen, bathroom, home office, and Erik’s room all remained untouched, but unfortunately empty as well.

Returning to the starting point of your search, anxiety continued to flow through you as you placed your hands on your head, thoughts bouncing around like rapid fire.

“Who would attack Erik? And in his own house, at that? I mean, sure he’s done his fair share of wrong, but he’s been making up for it all since coming back from his first trip to Wakanda,” you thought.

No matter who was behind this or why, you knew you had to track them down quick before Erik relapsed back into his old ways, or worse. The list of enemies was potentially endless, with the outreach center opening and newest addition to the United Nations and all, but you figured you had to start somewhere. Right as you reached for your phone, racking your brain on where to even begin, it went off in your pocket. In fact, it buzzed continuously, signaling more than one new notification:

Unknown (3)

At first you raised a puzzled eyebrow at the screen, but given the circumstances decided to click on the messages rather swiping them away. When it opened the first thing you saw was a shared location, leaving you even more confused than just a few seconds ago. But when your gaze drifted up to the bubbles above it, confusion quickly evolved back into panic.

‘If you want your boyfriend back be at the old Stokely Warehouse by midnight. Come alone.’

The next one was even more grim than the first.

‘No cops or we put a bullet in his skull.’

You blinked at your phone several times, gradually letting your mind wrap around the seemingly unreal situation that was now at hand. You had to have been staring at it for a good bit, because you only zoned back into reality long after the device’s screen had went black.

And that’s when it all hit you like a ton of bricks.

Erik had really been taken by some mysterious ass goons.

Who had evidently been tracking his whereabouts.

Or the movements of the apartment at the very least. That had to be it, for it was the only way they could’ve known to send you the demand right then and there. And now they wanted you of all people to be the one to go and retrieve him.

But that was the question, though: why you? If it was money these people were after, you certainly didn’t have it. They should’ve hit up the Wakandan council for that; it wasn’t necessarily a secret anymore regarding their wealth, or Erik’s true identity, so demanding ransom from them would have made more sense.

None of that mattered now, though, because the bottom line was that your best friend was in danger. You registered the fact that Erik’s specific skill set would probably kick in and he’d off every last one of those dumbass bums, but instantly remembered that he was on a different path now. You were so proud of him for attempting to overcome all the traumas of his past and trying to shy away from the ‘Killmonger’ persona, and now who knew if this would trigger a setback for him? Just thinking about either dilemma and its following outcome was enough to launch your anger into overdrive.

You bolted from the loft, dialing a number while backtracking to your car. Starting the engine and reversing from the parking space in record time, you began leaving a voicemail for your boss when she didn’t answer. Not going into specifics, you simply spun a tale about some ‘family emergency’, knowing it would get you at least the next week off. That way, you’d have plenty of time to save your partner in crime and put the bitches in the dirt who’d started all this. Maybe ask questions first, if you felt like it.

But before any of that could happen, you zoomed through the night, shredding back to your place for a swift pit stop inside. Because if you were gonna do this, you would need the bag Erik had brought back for you from Wakanda.

~~~~

*Y’all I’m so sorry 😭😭 I know this one might have been a teeny bit long but it’s just how it ended up flowing but still, thanks as always for reading and sticking with it!! 💋”

|Part Three|

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