#not exactly meant to imply shipping

[scoonsalicious]

Like A Fairy Tale

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Fem!Reader

Summary: Dating Bucky Barnes had been like living a fairy tale, but as he distances himself from you and your relationship, you come to the realization that maybe fairy tales aren't meant to come true.

Warnings: Language to make Steve blush, mentions of alcohol use, implied sex, angst with a happy ending.

Word Count: 3.4k This is my very first posted fic, and I am very nervous but I hope you like it! If I've missed any warnings, please tell me so I can add them. Much love and thanks to my bestie @jmeelee for indulging my obsession and dropping everything to read this when I sent it to her <3 Please pardon any spelling/grammar errors.

If you ever feel so inclined to support my work, hop on over to buy me a coffee; it's much appreciated! <3 I write for 18+, so minors DNI. _____________________________________________________________

Once upon a time, being Bucky Barnes’ girl had felt like living in a fairy tale. He was everything your younger self had ever dared to dream of in a Prince Charming– attentive, affectionate, kind, and oh, how he made you laugh! You were the envy of all of your friends, the very definition of #couplegoals, and you thanked your lucky stars every night that the two of you had found one another, despite all the odds.

But fairy tales aren’t real. 

You weren’t sure exactly when it started, but somewhere in the third year of your relationship, after you’d moved into a handsome brownstone in Brooklyn together, after you’d adopted a fluffy white kitten, Bucky started pulling away from you. The steps that took him from you were small at first– he was taking on more and more missions, opting to stay gone for longer periods of time. Days would go by, and they’d turn into weeks, then a month or two at a time would go by where you wouldn’t see him. 

At first, it hadn’t been terrible– Bucky had always made sure to contact you each and every day. A video call whenever he could, a phone call or text when he couldn’t, but slowly, so slowly you barely noticed, the calls stopped coming all together. Sure, he’d answer when you called him… when he could, which wasn’t always possible on a mission, and you hated acting needy and taking him away from his work, so eventually, you stopped reaching out, too. 

When he was home, you were like ships passing in the night. You always offered to take time off of work so you could spend some time with him before he was set to head out again, but he never wanted you to jeopardize your career on his account. Your reunions would always be passionate, but short-lived, a few hot and heavy nights before he took off once more to save the world. 

You tried not to let it bother you. You really, really did. His job was so important. People’s lives relied on him. Where did you get off getting upset over that? So, you kept it to yourself. Until you couldn’t. Not any more.

“Y/N,” your best friend, Lainy, cornered you at her annual New Year’s Eve party, “where’s Barnes? He’s been leaving you to go solo for months now. I don’t think I’ve seen you with him since Mark’s St. Patrick’s Day Party.”

Ouch. “He’s working, Lainy,” you told her, not wanting to admit that March had been the last time the two of you had gone out together, let alone spent more than three days in a row in each other’s company. 

“Yeah, he was ‘working’ over the Memorial Day trip, and the 4th of July BBQ, and Jack and Alice’s wedding, and your aunt’s funeral.” You cringed internally as she applied air quotes to ‘working.’ “And he was ‘working’ on your birthday, and Christmas. Babe, he’s been leaving you alone for almost an entire year. What’s going on? Are you sure there isn’t someone else?”

The worst part was, you knew there wasn’t, or at least, no one individual. When he’d first started distancing himself, of course another woman was the first thing that came to your mind, and you weren’t proud of yourself, but you’d gone through his phone to search for evidence of an affair… multiple times, and repeatedly came up with nothing. And bless Bucky’s heart, but he didn’t have the technological know-how to hide an infidelity from you. Granted, that didn’t negate the possibility that he was randomly hooking up with people while he was away. You’d have to be stupid to not consider the possibility.

You could have asked Steve. You didn’t think Captain America had it in him to lie to you about something like that, but you didn’t want him reporting on your suspicions back to Bucky, nor did you think you could stand to see the look of pity in his eye if he had to tell you that yes, Bucky was cheating on you while you anxiously awaited his return every night. So, you kept the suspicions to yourself. 

Your conversation with Lainy had left you deflated. Here it was New Year’s Eve, and you were alone, the man you loved god knew where– just not with you. How many more holidays and milestones and everyday nights were you going to spend by yourself, waiting for a man who never seemed to want to be home with you anymore? This wasn’t the kind of life you wanted, the kind of life you deserved. 

You made your way to the kitchen to refill your glass of wine. You’d probably already had too many, but you needed to drown the despair that was slowly filling you up. As you poured an exceptionally generous glass, a man entered the kitchen. You recognized him– Harris, a cousin of Lainy’s who had flirted with you relentlessly for years before you had started seeing Bucky. 

“Y/N!” he exclaimed, his eyes lighting up upon seeing you, “it’s been awhile.” He enveloped you in a friendly hug. “How’ve you been?”

You smiled and exchanged pleasantries, catching up on the overall brushstrokes of your life. 

“I’m sorry about your breakup,” he offered gently, after you’d exhausted the usual small talk.

“My breakup?” you asked, brow piqued.

“Last few events I’ve seen you at, you’ve been alone. I assumed you and Barnes…” he left the thought floating, the implication hanging in the air: Barnes has left you alone, I assumed you broke up.

You huffed out a laugh. God. Was your relationship actually over and you were the only one dumb enough to not see it? 

“If you aren’t seeing anyone,” Harris continued, “I would really love to take you out. You’ve gotta know I’ve been into you for ages, and I figure if I don’t shoot my shot now, who knows when I’ll have another chance.”

You cocked your head and looked at him, taking in his earnest demeanor. Here was a man who genuinely wanted to spend time with you. Why were you waiting on someone who no longer wanted to be around?

“Um, I might have to get back to you on that, Harris,” you told him before excusing yourself. You needed air. 

You found yourself on Lainy’s balcony, the air deceptively mild for the end of December in Manhattan. Alone with your thoughts, you pulled out your phone and dialed Bucky’s number. It went straight to voicemail.

“Someone asked me out on a date tonight,” you said into the recording, your voice choked with tears you didn’t want to shed. “And I think I might say yes, because, honestly Buck, what are we even doing anymore? You’re never here, and I’m always alone. I tried. I tried so fucking hard to not let it get to me, because your work’s important. I know that. I do, and I’m not begrudging you for your job. But… but I can’t keep on like this. I can’t even remember the last time we spent more than three days together. Isn’t that crazy? Three days. Everyone thinks you’re cheating on me. Did you know that? You’re away so much that everyone I know is convinced you’re fucking someone else. Maybe you are, or maybe you already left me, but I’ve been too stupid to notice; if that’s the case, you could have just told me.” 

You kept your composure as you left the message. You weren’t angry at him; you never could be. You were just tired. So tired, and so lonely. 

“All I know is that it’s another night where I’m all by myself, wishing you were here, wanting to talk to you, to feel you, and you’re just… not. You’re off doing something, or someone, more important than me, and I used to be okay with that, but I can’t be anymore. I deserve more than waiting on you, Buck. I deserve to be someone’s priority. I really wish I could have been yours, the way you were mine. 

“So, let’s just call it, okay? Your heart’s obviously not in it anymore, and mine is too tired of being hurt and alone. We’ll have to figure out what to do about the house. I’m keeping Alpine, though. You haven’t been here for her, either, and it wouldn’t be fair of you to take her if you’re never going to be around.”

Inside, you could hear the rest of the party as they counted down to midnight. When they reached zero, the night erupted in fireworks, and you could hear cheers and cars honking their horns throughout the city below you.

“Huh,” you said into your phone, “it’s midnight. Happy New Year, Buck. I hope it ends up being a good one for you, and I’m sorry for whatever I did that made you decide you didn’t want to spend this last one with me.”

You hung up the phone and the tears finally fell as you slid down the balcony railing until you were crouched on the floor. You weren’t sure how long you sat there crying, but eventually Lainy found you, wrapping a blanket around your shoulders and ushering you into her spare room. She helped you change out of your cocktail dress and into a spare pair of pajamas, and helped you wash your face before tucking you into bed. She left you with a glass of water and a kiss on the forehead, promising that tomorrow would be better, that the next best chapter of your life was about to begin, but as you drifted into a fitful sleep, you couldn’t find the will to believe her.

You woke the next morning with a throbbing headache, the alcohol and the tears doing nothing but dehydrating you into agony. You grabbed your phone to check the time, but the battery had died in the night. From the slant of the sun coming in from the guest room window, it looked to be late morning or early afternoon. 

You changed back into your dress, thanking Lainy for her help and making a small joke about doing the walk of shame in your clothes from the night before. You avoided her questions about what had happened, promising to go over it at length at the weekend after you’d had some time to process. You weren’t in the best headspace to get into at the moment.

Fortunately, your best friend knew you well enough not to pry, and you said your goodbyes, plans for brunch on Sunday having been made. You weren’t eager to get back home, to be surrounded by reminders of Bucky, when all you wanted was the man, himself. But he was your ex-boyfriend now, you supposed. You were going to have to come to terms with that sooner than later. Besides, Alpine needed to be fed, and you weren’t going to abandon her.

Your keys clicked in the lock as you opened your front door. “Al, baby,” you called, kicking off your heels and closing the door behind you, “Mommy’s home. You hungry, sweetie?”

You began making your way back toward the kitchen when a loud crash from upstairs got your attention. You rolled your eyes; what had the cat knocked over now? 

But then there was the roar of a body barreling down the upstairs hall and toward the stairs, leaving you frozen where you stood. You cast a glance to where you’d left your phone in your purse by the door. Too far away to reach in time to call for help as the intruder came pounding down the stairs. 

A massive figure rounded the corner, nearly knocking you over.

“Bucky?” You blinked, sure your eyes were playing tricks on you, but no– there he stood, and he looked like shit. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days, and his eyes were swollen and red-rimmed. He’d obviously been wearing the same clothing for at least a day, if not more.

“Y/N,” he breathed, throwing his arms around you and wrapping you in an almost bone-crushing embrace. “Sweetheart, I was so worried.”

“What are you doing here, Buck?” you asked him, pulling away from him. God, you wanted to let him hold you, but you just couldn’t. Not anymore.

Bucky cupped your face in his hands, blue eyes desperately searching yours. “I got your message. Doll, it fucking broke my heart. I came straight home, but you weren’t here, and I was terrified that you were gone; that you’d left me for good.”

You scoffed. “I’m not the one who leaves, Bucky.”

He flinched at your words. “I know, Baby. I know, and ’m so sorry. I had no idea. I shoulda known what leavin’ you so much was doin’ to you, ‘cause it was doin’ it to me, too. When I heard you say that people– that you– thought I was cheating on you, that I had neglected you so much you thought I found someone else, that I could ever love anyone else, ever want anyone else– I’ve never hated myself more, doll. I can’t stand that you even had those thoughts in your head for one second, because it’s always been you. There’s never been anyone else. You’re it.”

“Then why have you been gone?” you asked him in a whisper. “If there’s no one else, and I’m it, why don’t you ever want to be with me? Why do you keep leaving?” 

Bucky ran both his hands along his face. “God, it feels so stupid now,” he said with a sigh. “But I was trying to save–”

“Trying to save the world, yeah, I know,” you interrupted him, annoyed. “Trust me, I’m well aware that I can’t compete with that. But I needed to know you thought we were worth saving, too, and you never did.”

Bucky started laughing then, and you scoffed. “Wow, you don’t have to rub it in, Bucky.”

“No, no– Sweetheart, no!” he shook his head. “That’s not it, at all. Hold on.” He went to the foyer and grabbed his go-bag; you had missed it when you walked in. Coming back to the kitchen, he put it on the table, opening it up and extracting a folded piece of paper and handing it to you.

It was a real estate listing for a farmhouse Upstate, with acreage on the Hudson. You and Bucky had talked about what kind of house you would buy if the situation had ever presented itself, and it was almost as if you’d dreamed it up.

You looked from the paper back to Bucky. “I don’t understand,” you told him.

“It needs pretty extensive renovations,” he told you. “I wanted to take on enough overtime to have the money for them and make a good dent on the mortgage, but it needed more work than I originally thought. And, I have to come clean– I haven’t been one hundred percent honest with you about where I’ve been spending all my time.” He looked up at you through his lashes, head bent down in shame.

“But… but, you said there wasn’t anyone else,” you stammered, heart ready to beat out of your chest. 

“Oh god! No, and I mean that! There isn’t, I swear! God, I’ve fucked this up so bad!” Bucky tugged at his hair in frustration. “I’ve been going on extra missions, but sometimes, Sam, Steve, and I go Upstate to do some work on the house, to cut down the costs so I could still make my timeline.”

“You already bought it?” you asked, your voice flat. You were in shock. “You want to move out? Away from me?”

Bucky moaned in distress and drew you to him again. “No! God, I’m doing this all wrong. I want us to move there, together. To make it the perfect house. The perfect home for me, my wife and our stupid fur baby.”

You stilled at his words. “I’m sorry, your what?”

Bucky smiled at you sheepishly as he reached back into his go-bag. “I’ll have you know that I had an entire plan. Was gonna have the house ready by Valentine’s Day. Take you up there as a surprise, ask you properly, but I fucked that up, so…” He brought his hand back out, holding a small burgundy velvet box. He opened it to reveal a vintage engagement ring, a sapphire instead of a diamond. Your favorite stone.

Bucky got down on one knee. “Y/N,” he began as his voice choked up a bit with emotion, “I know I fucked up for the last eight months. I would completely understand if you can’t forgive me, but I need you to know that I love you. I have only ever loved you, and if you let me, I will spend the rest of my life making up for the fact that, even for a moment, I let you think that you weren’t the most important thing in my life, my number one priority. Will you marry me?”

“Buck…” you began, not sure how to phrase what you were about to say. “What about your job? I can’t keep coming in second to the rest of the world, and I get that it’s selfish of me, but–”

“I quit,” he said simply.

“What?” Your eyes were wide with shock at his statement. 

“The second I heard your voicemail, where you said you wanted to call it because I was never there, I told Steve I was done, that I needed to start putting you first. It wasn’t even a question. I’m officially retired.”

Your mouth hung open. You had hoped he would cut down on his missions, but for him to have quit completely… You gently tugged him to his feet, taking the ring box and running a finger across it.

“It’s lovely,” you told him softly. “Absolutely perfect; exactly what I would have picked for myself.” Bucky beamed at you, pleased. “But I can’t accept it.” His face fell as you gently placed the ring back in his hands. 

“Oh,” he whispered, eyes growing glassy. “I… um, I understand. I fucked up, hurt you. I understand if you don’t want to be with me anymore.”

“I still want to be with you, you idiot,” you admonished him. “But you did hurt me, and we’ve been apart for a long time. We need time to find our way back to each other again, okay? Ask me again on Valentine’s Day, just like you originally planned. Don’t do it now just because you fucked up.” You leaned up on your tip toes and kissed him. “And if it helps make you feel better, I’m probably going to say ‘yes,’ anyway.”

Bucky grinned at you. “Really?” he asked. When you nodded, he picked you up and spun you in  a circle before pressing his lips to yours as if he hadn’t touched you in months. “I promise you, Sweetheart, I’ll do anything I can to make this up to you, I swear it.”

“Anything?” you asked with a smile. “I think I know where you can start.”

“Oh yeah?” he asked you. “And where’s that?”

“Take me to bed, Bucky Barnes,” you said, kissing him again.

Without a word, Bucky swung you over his shoulder and ran with you up the stairs, your squeals and giggles echoing behind him.

Much, much later, when you lay sated together tangled in limbs and sheets with Alpine snuggled next to your heads, Bucky played with your fingers as you rested your head on his bare chest.

“So, Doll,” he said, kissing the pads of each of your fingers, “you gonna tell me who had the nerve to ask my girl out on a date?” 

You laughed. “Lainy’s cousin, Harris. I suppose I’ll have to text him now and tell him I’m not interested.”

“Hell no, you’re not interested,” Bucky chuffed. “Gonna have to remind that punk you’ve already got a boyfriend. The position has been filled.”

“That’s the thing, though,” you said, planting a kiss on his nose. “I don’t have a boyfriend anymore, do I?”

Bucky’s face fell. “But I thought you said–”

“I’ve got myself a fiance.”

Bucky tightened his grip around you, drawing you even closer to his warmth. “Yeah, okay. I gotta admit I like the sound of that a lot better.”

Your entire relationship with Bucky Barnes might not have played out like a fairy tale, but in that moment, you were more sure than ever that you two would get your happily ever after.

[ckret2]

A leaked list of some of the exciting upcoming content from The Book of Bill:

The pyramids of Giza ranked from most to least sexy.

Winning lottery numbers. He does not say which game they're for.

Three pages of Bill practicing blackletter calligraphy so that he can write the fancy-looking "The Book of Bill" on the cover. (Meant to tear those pages out before submitting book to publisher.)

A section where he implies that all your headcanons about him are stupid. Yes, your headcanons specifically. If you compare your copy of the book to a friend's, these sections will have different text. He insults all headcanons equally, even the ones that contradict each other.

A long, rambling story about a funny thing that he saw at a party in the Nightmare Realm, but he keeps getting distracted gossiping about the embarrassing love affairs and crimes against reality the partygoers have committed. Not a single one of these characters has ever been mentioned before or ever will be again. He gets so distracted he never finishes the original funny story. He was clearly drunk when he wrote this section.

A pet care sheet on how to keep a pet axolotl. All of the information is extremely wrong.

Some of the other dimensions he's tried and failed to conquer. He keeps insisting that all the failures were somebody else's fault. It's extremely obvious that they're his fault.

A photograph of a vivisected elephant, for some reason.

A phone number written on a cocktail napkin that Bill insists would be really funny for all the readers to prank call. It leads to the desk phone of the director of the CIA. 

Bill claims he definitely totally knew that Stan was disguised as Ford the whole time, he only played along to trick the Pines back, and then he quickly changes the topic.

A page of Bill's original poetry. It's all unintelligible symbols. It will take 27 years for somebody to crack the code. They're all gory but juvenile limericks.

A cocktail recipe. It will kill you.

Bill's original version of the portal blueprints that he copied to give Ford, with Bill's handwritten annotations. One part of the blueprints is labeled "component that will accidentally destroy the universe. REMEMBER NOT TO INCLUDE THIS COMPONENT IN SIXER'S COPY!!" He underlined this twice. If this page is compared to the portal blueprints in Journal 3, it's clear that Bill included that component in Ford's copy.

A personality quiz to help you meet your ideal sleep paralysis demon.

Bill's baby pictures. He looks exactly the same, except his bow tie and top hat are too big.

Bill reveals that he thought the llama symbol on the zodiac wheel referred to that farmer guy on the edge of town, and he was super confused to see Pacifica there.

Multiple pages scattered through the book about Bill's amazing powers, his brilliant and fun plans for our dimension, and all the cool favors he's willing and able to do for his friends and followers. All these pages end with a passive-aggressive aside about how somebody would have to be REALLY stupid to turn down an invitation to join Bill's crew, Stanford Pines—

A page labeled "My loyal servants and slaves!" filled with several hideous, oozing, nightmare-inducing Lovecraftian monsters, and one Mickey Mouse.

A self-portrait depicting Bill riding a rocket ship playing an electric guitar while rainbow lightning flashes all around him and money rains down from the sky.

A cynical, sneering tirade about how love is evolution's idiotic way of tricking primitive species into reproducing and how only simple-minded mortals who can't separate their true thoughts from their hormones fall for it. In the margins he's drawn a heart around the words "Bill Cipher +" a scribbled-out blot. The blot is completely unreadable. Despite this, the fandom will spend years debating the name underneath based on the size of the blot.

Extremely stupid "explanations" about various unsolved mysteries and crimes. In six years the world will discover one of them is accidentally correct and Alex Hirsch will get investigated by the FBI.

The book will be divided into four sections. Each section will begin with a big illuminated letter. In order, the four illuminated letters spell "F" "U" "C" "K".

[stonegoldsxcrxt]

Ah, Star Wars fans. Once again perpetuating the Draco in Leather Pants trope to the point where we're all sick of it. Do I have to beat someone with the 'He's-Supposed-To-Be-Evil' Stick or something?

yeah. the acolyte itself as a show is straddling a line right now that, I'm sorry, I kind of don't think the Star Wars fandom at large is media literate enough to understand.

I've already seen a number of tiktoks and tumblr posts saying, "omg now I understand reylos," which besides being exhausting and annoying, immediately proves my point. There's obviously some differences between reylo and whatever osha/qimir is called within both production and the narrative, but overall what I'm baffled by every. single. time. is how weirdly everyone in the star wars fandom reacts to an attractive male villain blatantly manipulating a young woman.

I think the acolyte is clearly aiming for us to see and understand that Qimir is manipulating Osha. We know Qimir is clever. We saw him successfully worm his way out of being caught by the Jedi by playing up the "quirky sidekick" shtick. What I don't think a lot of the audience picks up on is just how smart he is. During one of his and Osha's conversations, he lets her suggest things and make assumptions, ie:

Osha: Where’d you get that scar?

Qimir: How do you think I got it?

Osha: Looks like someone stabbed you in the back.

Qimir: Someone who threw me away.

Osha: Your Jedi Master?

And then he doesn't correct her or elaborate. He lets her assume the worst. He lets her imagination wander. He's not interested in explaining because he knows the real story, whatever it may be, doesn't make him look as favorable as her idea. It's exchanges like that that are subtle examples of his manipulation, less obvious than the outright goading he uses against her when he gets her to admit she thinks of herself as a failure and that's why she left the Jedi.

There's also the earlier exchange:

Osha: He’s found me before, and his strength in the Force is very powerful.

Qimir: You think that’s his strength? That’s your strength in the Force, Osha. Someone ought to teach you that.

To a lot of people, that sounds like a compliment. But it isn't. Qimir makes a statement vague enough that successfully implies the Jedi have been lying to Osha about her own strength in the Force while also keeping just enough information to himself that he knows Osha will stick around to find out what he meant, instead of swimming to the ship he points out to her right after. And she does exactly that, continues to follow and engage in argument and conversation with him.

In fact, Qimir knows the more Osha talks to him, the more Osha even entertains the idea of talking to him instead of leaving, the more he can get inside her head. His naked swimming jaunt isn't him flaunting or showing off for Osha in some genuinely romantic way– it's yet another manipulation tactic. Though, if she is seduced, that helps him too.

Qimir purposefully makes himself into a vulnerable state in front of her to lull her into a false sense of security. He leaves his weapon with his clothes so she has the opportunity to take it; he is signalling to her that he is "completely" disarmed, though that is not true, since we know he is far stronger in the Force and in combat, and, perhaps, more cunning than Osha. His nudity forces Osha to acknowledge he is human, and Qimir benefits from Osha thinking of him as just a quirky, charming loner who's the victim of the Jedi, who offers her soup and disrobes in front of her.

The reason I know that none of this is genuine is simple. He goes back and forth between flat out acting as if he pities Osha ("Why do you love people who can only go so far?") but that doesn't get him the reaction he's looking for, so he bounces back to antagonizing her ("Why aren’t you a Jedi, Osha?) to finally, convincing her that she is similar to him ("I understand.") None of these things are actually Qimir trying to get to know Osha. Sure, he needs to understand her to manipulate her, but he'd do or say anything to get her to stick around and allow him to corrupt her further.

to me, Qimir is kind of the Star Wars equivalent to like a mimic species in the animal world. He's smart enough to know that in order to get what he wants, he has to act a certain way that isn't necessarily his real personality, and he can exploit Osha's (and anyone else's, for that matter) feelings by molding his personality and actions to achieve his goals so his victims are less likely to notice that he's using them.

The problem is that a big portion of the audience doesn't appear to recognize it, either. We know the rules of the Star Wars universe very well by now. Force Users this deep in the Dark Side cannot actually love someone. Sure, they can be obsessed with someone, but they cannot actually reciprocate feelings as the Dark Side corrupts them.

I've come to the conclusion that the majority of people watching Star Wars are not watching with the intention of picking up on any of this, despite the fact that the acolyte is actually doing it quite masterfully. They are paying attention to Manny Jacinto's muscles, and little else. You cannot argue or convince people who do not want to listen. They did not want to listen in 2017, when the reddest of red flags "You're nothing, but not to me," line was delivered, which had all the subtlety of being hit over the head with an anvil, and they are not listening now. If people are able to be gaslit by Kylo Ren into believing his victim card was validated, they will certainly and inevitably be gaslit by Qimir, who, so far, is much more cunning.

the acolyte even *plans* for this though, deliberately and suddenly cutting to the scene of Jecki's lifeless body, reminding the audience that Qimir is not the quirky, charming, harmless loner who he presents himself to be, but actually a man who we know to be capable of unspeakable acts of violence towards even children. at this point, I can't actually see any reason why the fandom continues to act like he is in love with Osha in any kind of genuine manner when it's so mind-blowingly obvious that he is male manipulator #1.

I think does a huge disservice to the story the acolyte seems to be trying to present at this point to be so blind with lust or whatever it is the fandom feels towards this guy that his own tactics have begun to work on them. it's actually so incredible that it makes me a bit ill. they may find him hot all they want, but for the love of Leia Organa's Star Wars at least recognize his tactics for what they are instead of also allowing yourself to be fooled!!

[saintsenara]

Why Harry being short and frail (or even petite and delicate) past puberty is such a popular take these days? Sure, he is not bulky, but don't we know from Voldemort himself that James was tall and don't we know that Harry was exactly the same height as James during the final battle? Don't we know that Harry works out 3 times a week and is generally athletic? Is it the same thing that is happening with fanon Sirius or is it something different? Is it because he was short as a child and grew up in a cupboard, thus unlikely to end up like he did at the end of the series? What do you think about it? How likely is it? I keep seeing it in many slash ships and I am genuinely baffled. Is it me who has it backwards? Please solve this mystery, dear Asenora!

thank you very much for the ask, anon!

i think several things are at play, tbh - some of which are more understandable than others.

the first is that daniel radcliffe genuinely is short [for a british man, at least] - his height is given online as 165cm [or 5'5], but looking at pictures of him leads me to suspect that's an exaggeration - and was, unsurprisingly, even shorter when he was a teenager. many of the other actors in the films are much, much taller than him - especially people like alan rickman and david thewlis, both of whom were over six foot - and since the films inevitably influence how people picture the characters physically, the height differences we see on screen end up becoming part of that.

the second is that, while harry is described as "tall" in canon, that term appears to be doing a fair amount of heavy-lifting. numerous male characters are described as taller than him in both half-blood prince and deathly hallows - with the example which always stands out to me being the fact that fred and george weasley are said to "shrink" when they polyjuice into harry before the seven potters chase. fred and george - like charlie - are described in canon as being noticeably shorter and stockier in build than bill, percy, and ron. unless ron et al. are so tall that it would be thought of as really unusual - let's say above 6'6/198cm - harry probably isn't over 6'0/182cm tall.

thirdly, it's worth saying that what is meant by "tall" is culturally contingent. i've said that daniel radcliffe is shorter than average for a british man - and that's true - but his height isn't going to be thought of in that way in different parts of the world. similarly, there are parts of the world where describing a man who was, say, 5'10/178cm as "tall" would be considered quite strange - but i don't think the uk [where the average male height in 1998 was just over 5'8/174cm] is one of them. certainly, i picture harry as around that height [allowing characters like ron, sirius, dumbledore, and voldemort - who are all described as such - to be noticeably taller than him, but not so tall that their height would be considered abnormal], and i don't think it precludes him still being thought of as "tall" within the context in which he lives. but an author from, for example, the netherlands - where the average male height is 6'0.5/183cm - would probably think differently.

[there's a point about cultural contingency in the quip he makes about being short because of the cupboard too: i would read that as a dark joke which he doesn't actually think has any truth behind it specifically when it comes to his height, but which nonetheless expresses that the dursleys abuse him generally and this abuse has had a long-term impact upon him; readers from other parts of the world take it more literally.]

and finally, harry is definitely physically fit and - of course - works out a lot as part of playing quidditch, but both he and james are emphasised in canon as having slender builds - and it's also implied in the text that seekers are generally slim. harry doesn't need to be seen as any less sporty if we presume that he has the physique of a distance runner or triathlete rather than that of a sprinter.

however, there are definitely some aspects to the tendency for harry to be written as short and slender which do bother me a fair amount - and i do think that these have something in common with what we see with fanon sirius.

that is, that harry and sirius aren't written as short and slender because the author wants them to just happen to be short and slender. they're written as short and slender because the author wants them to be passive. their height/build is emphasised in the story in order to hammer this home - and it's often accompanied by them being assigned other aspects of physical appearance, personality, dress, or manner [especially ones which might be considered as "effeminate"] which, once again, aren't intended to communicate anything other than this passivity.

and - of course - in the writing of vast amounts of slash, any indication of passivity, submissiveness, or femininity - and the physical traits which end up equated with them - is taken as an indication that the character in question would be an exclusive - and submissive - bottom, who defers to the whims of their partner, an exclusive - and dominant - top.

and - unsurprisingly - topping ends up being associated with masculinity - and the personality traits and physical characteristics - above all a tall, muscular build - which are equated with that.

frail!harry seems to be most prominent - in my experience - in ships like tomarrymort, not so much because people really care about the implications of harry's characterisation, but because they're hugely opposed to the suggestion that characters like tom riddle would ever bottom [since - of course - they associate the act of being penetrated with femininity and femininity with weakness...]. great lengths have to be gone to, then, to emphasise that voldemort - or whoever else - is powerful and proud and authoritative and masculine and tall. and, for some reason, this is apparently incompatible with the idea that he might also like to get railed... which means that harry has to make sure nobody is in any doubt about who's the woman bottom by becoming as teeny tiny as he possibly can...

[bicheetopuff]

Tbh I am a multishipper but I think the only reason Hori didn't make Izu//Ocha canon was bc he likes 'open endings' kinda, and it worked in his favor by just letting things implied. He gave Izu//Ocha specific romantic-coded materials to go with anyway. He made Izuku call her his hero, acknowledge her as his savior and acknowledge her help throughout the story. That's pretty much romantic subtext in the story. And this happened in the penultimate moment. There is no scene like that between BKDK at the climax. If Hori really wanted to shut the ship down, why did he include such a scene anyway? Now people are criticizing it and are angry because it seems like Hori chickened out.

Out of context, I’d agree with you that the MC calling the main girl his hero would be considered a romantic sentiment in a shonen manga. However, I honestly don’t think that’s the case here.

I don’t think they were implied and I don’t think their relationship had an open ending either, because that would imply that they had something mutually romantic going on when they really didn’t. The only romantic implications, are the fact that other characters poke fun at Ochako and just assume she likes Deku because they’re close friends. She has a crush projected onto her that she never really admits to outside of referring to it in past tense. Everything else about their relationship, feels like it could’ve been interchangeable with him and Iida, and it still would’ve had the same effect.

I actually believe that narrowing down Izuku’s admission of Ochako being his hero to romantic subtext makes the scene less impactful, almost like he’s only saying that to her because he wants her to like him, instead of saying it because he genuinely believes it and feels like she deserves to know.

Ochako was in an emotional state where she was mourning the loss of Himiko and questioned her heroism because she couldn’t save her, when the girl who was supposed to be the villain, was the one to save her life. Izuku reassuring her that she’s still a hero—still his hero—is something he would’ve done for anyone and I’m genuinely happy he was the one to do it for Ochako.

It’s implied that he considers a lot of people to be his hero. All Might, Katsuki, Iida, Todoroki, are all people who have continuously helped him through out the story too. And he has his internal thoughts praising all of them and thanks all of them as well. He doesn’t have to voice it because those characters weren’t in a situation where they needed to hear those words from him. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t think it, and I think it’s silly to assume that he doesn’t. It’s in character for Izuku to not say such things unless he feels like it’s necessary.

Horikoshi didn’t have to shut the ship down, because the ship was never implied to be mutual. He included such a scene, because Ochako needed someone to understand her, and Izuku was the only one who would’ve. They both sought out to save their villains and neither of them succeeded, so yes they’re the only ones who understand each other in that light even if their motives and the way they felt about their villains were different.

It’d be different if they had made this decision together and were trying to save their villains for the sake of each other, but they had both made their decisions individually before even speaking to each other about it. So they’re not relating because they actively tried to, they’re able to relate cuz they both had the same goal by coincidence. The way I see it, I think it’s meant to show that once Ochako stopped actively trying to be like Deku, is when she realized she was already like him in a way, even though she knew being exactly like him wouldn’t be good for her.

Also bkdk didn’t have a scene like that in the climax? In the climax of what? The story as a whole? The war? The epilogue?

Chapter 1? Deku vs Kacchan? Their final exam? Deku vs Kacchan part 2? The beginning of the Paranormal Liberation War Front arc? Katsuki’s apology? Katsuki’s confession in the hospital room after the war?

Ochako and Deku’s conversation was probably the first time they talked about each other to each other and explained what the other meant to them (even if it was mostly Izuku doing the talking). That kind of conversation had happened with not only bkdk countless times (yes it still counts even if it’s in the form of them screaming their feelings at each other), but also with Iida and Todoroki to a certain extent too. Not mention, literally every villain minus AFO.

To me, while their conversation is important and I appreciated it a lot and thought it was really sweet, it didn’t really feel different or more special than other conversations Izuku had with his other friends before that.

I think the reason Horikoshi didn’t make izcha canon, is because he genuinely never planned to…

[skywalkr-nberrie]

One of the biggest arguments I’ve seen used by the Ob*d*l*s against Anidala, is that scene in the ROTS novel where Padmé says she could trust OW with the secret of the rebellion and was hesitant to tell Anakin and I just wanna say:

Padmé wasn't an idiot. She was an extremely intelligent and competent woman, perfectly able to understand that loving Anakin and thinking that he could be trusted with a certain politic-related matter were two very different things and reducing her choice regarding who to trust with an important political matter only on the basis of her feelings of romantic love diminishes her professionalism, and this is why I say y'all could never understand her.

Padmé didn’t have to "love" OW or even like him at all to know he was the perfect Jedi to ask for help in a secret political matter.

That's the point being made in the novel, she’s hit with the realization that Anakin in this particular moment could not be told this piece of info because of his relationship with Palpatine, and Padmé specifically mentions in the Junior ROTS novel that she didn't want to make Anakin “keep a secret” if he didn’t agree with their stance because it’d be “unfair.” So this also played a part in why Padmé didn’t think it best to inform Anakin about the Rebellion. It honestly had little to do with her actually lacking trust in him, and more to do with the circumstances she was in not allowing her to be open with her husband and her not wanting to make him choose between his wife and his “father figure.”

However, Padmé knows OW’s political ideas aren't tied to ONE particular person but to a philosophy, one which is closer to her own, at that point. None of this was ever meant to be hinted as “romantic” or even remotely insinuated as romantic. It’s strictly professional and even the tone of the scene makes that so abundantly clear.

All I’m saying is that, some of these proshippers are doing the most out here to try and prove their ship, like my loves? You forgot a very important thing called ✨ context ✨ and regardless of her rational thinking, Padmé still went out of her way to try and talk out all of this Rebellion secrecy stuff with Anakin when she confronted him in the scene where she asks if he ever thought they were “fighting on the wrong side.” Padmé didn’t trust OW in the same way she trusted Anakin (with her entire self and being) she had the level of trust and love for Anakin that was only meant for him.

Mixing up her unwavering faith in Anakin as her husband with her trust in OW’s devotion to duty as her comrade/ally is purposely deluding yourself, because the two aren’t the same and therefore can’t be compared. An example of this is: Padmé constantly putting more value to Anakin’s words over OW’s in the end of ROTS when he came to tell her of Anakin’s “crimes”. She completely disregarded what OW had claimed about her husband and instead made her way to where Anakin was herself, to ask him directly. Despite what the truth was, this is proof of her trusting Anakin unconditionally, and I didn’t even think I had to spell that out because it’s as clear as day.

In conclusion, Padmé didn’t trust OW more than Anakin, she just knew the circumstances she was in didn’t exactly make it easy for her to openly talk with her husband about these matters and that’s part of what played into the issues they had in ROTS, it’s exactly what Sidious wanted. This scene in the novel doesn’t exist to imply some hidden romantic undertone that George was intending all along. No, far from that. George was always an “open, , clear and easy to understand” type of storyteller, so if the former was the case, this scene wouldn’t be any different if there was some hidden message or subtext the reader should be made aware of, George would make it obvious. Fact of the matter is, the one and only reason for this scene in the novel to exist is only to show to us as the “reader” that the narrative is tearing apart the Star-Crossed-lovers (Anakin and Padmé.) and visibly putting the two of them on different sides in the story because the consequences of this narrative choice is what will foreshadow and play into the inevitable and great fall of the couple and character in the future. Even the novel makes a very purposeful and clear distinction between “love and trust” in this chapter where all this occurs. Padmé loves Anakin, but knew she had to trust OW with the situation at hand. And if you want to talk “narratively” Padmé needed a reason to keep the Rebellion a secret from Anakin, thus leading to Palpatine to sense “betrayal” in Padmé later on, and using that to his advantage to manipulate Anakin even more into getting him to “suspect” her. It’s all spelt out for us and it’s not hard to miss. All it takes is a little media literacy and understanding context.

(Mind you, hypothetically, if this scene existed for literally any other reason, it would’ve been brought up again, but it wasn’t. It’s only mentioned once and exists for only one moment which was meant to serve a certain narrative and then it was done. There’s not much to make of it since the context of the scene is so clear.)

[therainscene]

It’s funny that Bylers are so often accused of being delusional, because I was at my most delusional when I was anti-Byler.

I spent most of S4 refusing to acknowledge that Will had romantic feelings for Mike, despite knowing damn well what all that love triangle imagery and sad gay pining was implying. I convinced myself it was just bros before hoes drama; that perhaps Will wanted to come out to his best friend but felt nervous after six months of radio silence following “it’s not my fault you don’t like girls!”

The van scene forced me to accept that he really was in love, and it pissed me off because what was even the point of making him fall for a straight boy?

Mike’s bizarre “no homo” behaviour was clearly a symptom of growing up in a conservative 80s household, and witnessing Will’s sacrificial act of love in the van was the shitty lesson he needed to get over his homophobia.

I saw a typical straight male protagonist in an 80s coming-of-age film getting to coast his way to self-actualization on the back of queer suffering; a cruel and homophobic trope I thought we’d moved past by the year 2022.

But then the NINA reunion scene rolled around--

--and I immediately picked up on the heavy parallels between Mike and Will in how they greeted El. The realization hit me like a tonne of bricks: Mike feels the same way about her as Will does.

I thought, “wait, does this mean I was wrong about...? Oh my god. No way.

No fucking way.

Will was in love with El this whole time?? What the fuck, he’s been gay since S1 and she’s his sister this is BULLSHIT I will personally strangle the Duffers--”

Heteronormativity is a hell of a drug, kids.

Let this be a lesson to those of you who think media illiteracy is to blame for Byler denial -- how well someone understands the mechanics of storytelling is irrelevant if they insist on treating Mike’s supposed heterosexuality as an axiom instead of an evidence-based conclusion. The issue lies with bias, not literacy.

I was stubbornly anti-Byler because I knew I’d immediately fall in love with this ship if I allowed myself to have hope it could be canon, and the general state of queer rep in mainstream media meant I was all but guaranteed to get hurt if I was so stupid as to have hope. But in my desperation to cling to the “safe” heteronormative outcome, I only ended up hurting myself with my own silly assumptions.

We’ve seen both canonically gay characters in the show make exactly this mistake, needlessly hurting themselves with their silly but self-defensive assumptions about their love interests.

Stranger Things absolutely nails its depiction of the subtler ways internalized homophobia can manifest -- Will may feel like a mistake and be prone to beating himself up, but he isn’t some pitiful self-loathing queer who wishes he was straight, either. He’s just so crushed by heteronormativity that he accepts it as an inescapable fact of life and lets it guide his beliefs and actions.

Don’t get me wrong: Will, like Robin, is very sensible for being cautious in such a horrifically bigoted environment -- trying to openly defy that level of homophobia by yourself, especially when you’re young, is a bad idea.

But unlike Robin, he clearly struggles to accept that he has the right to chase his same-sex love interest. He's no longer simply exercising caution, but conforming to homophobic standards -- much in the same way I thought I was sensibly refusing to be queerbaited, when really I was just agreeing with the heteronormative status quo.

I realize now that this is the real reason Will was written into a homophobic 80s trope: not to teach Mike an outdated lesson in acceptance, but to maneuver Will into position for the lesson he’s going to learn in S5 about resisting conformity.

Will needs to learn that castrating himself to make straight people comfortable is a bad idea too. Not only is that a miserable way to live his life, but what sort of world is he leaving for the next generation of queer kids if he never questions these homophobic standards?

It’s just the cycle of abuse scaled up to the societal level.

This is what gives me confidence in Byler endgame. Queerness isn’t just an incidental element of Will’s personal arc, but suffuses the show to its very core -- it’s in its themes, its allegory, its characters.

So Will getting the boy isn’t just nice fan-service for Byler shippers, but a necessary ending if the show’s most important lesson is to land:

That it’s rewarding to make the difficult choice of standing up to bigotry in the face of forced conformity. Of choosing love.

Could it be the case that I was right the first time, and Stranger Things is going to turn out to be yet another heteronormative mainstream show that doesn’t commit to its own themes? Sure, maybe. But that wouldn’t invalidate the valuable lessons this show has already -- and apparently accidentally lol -- taught me.

Anyone who calls us deluded for hoping a mainstream show is going to have a gay pairing as its main couple just doesn’t realize -- or doesn’t care -- that they’re contributing to the very problem they’re describing.

[ms-cartoon]

Warning: This post will contain mentions of assault or anything along the lines of it. You get the idea.

My review for HH ep 2 was supposed to be out by now, but there are some things I have to say first. My reasoning for sticking around for Hazbin Hotel is all gone except for Vox right now. I love Husk too, but they really just kinda ruined him for me in ep 4. I'm probably being dramatic but that's just how I feel. If he's supposed to be this wise bartender who's meant to make people feel better and help reach an understanding of some sort, he really just failed at that.

EP 4 of Hazbin Hotel is probably the worst one out of all the eps released so far. There are PLENTY of flaws to point out, but they can be said for some other posts I'll upload soon. What I'm mainly concerned with as of now is that "Loser Baby" song sung by HuskerDust.

So it's revealed that Husk was once an overlord and was always gambling. He betted his status and powers when playing against Alastor and lost. Now I guess he's forced to do whatever Alastor wants such as being a bartender. . . .

Sorry to get off topic here but. . . . Husk was an overlord??? I don't like how they just suddenly reveal that. It caught me off guard. I know they sorta foreshadowed it in the pilot, but they should've given most newcomers to the show a hint or something. It honestly feels like the writers just pulled that revelation out their asses just to add some positivity and similarity between Angel and Husk's relationship (because Viv and the fans just love idea of this ship oh so much)

Also, since he was previously an overlord, how come nobody's heard of him??? Everybody will get shocked when they hear or see Alastor or recognize him by his radio shows. Everybody knows the Three Vs, Camilla, etc. but not a Husk??? The Overlord with a gambling addiction?? Charlie and Vaggie will get shocked when Alastor comes in the picture but look at Husk like he's some random dude that just popped outta nowhere?

Plus, Alastor didn't force Husk to work as a bartender. In the pilot, he was easily convinced with cheap booze.

Speaking of his gambling addiction; well we all know he likes to gamble judging by his appearance. But gambling being his addiction?? Since when was that implied?

Anyway . . . . At this point, I don't get what the idea of that song is or what Husk meant by it. Maybe I am overlooking it, but its pretty hard not to believe knowing how Viv screws up her writing skills and how she went about it. According to all the Viv defenders, the song was meant to say Angel isn't alone in being stuck in a situation he feels he can't get out of and that Husk can understand where he's coming from and what he's going through. Well sorry to burst y'all's bubble, but even if that was, they just did wrong ENTIRELY. (Sidenote: If you Hazbin lovers wanna see it how u see it, then fine. But Imma stick with what I believe and there's nothing that could be said to change my mind, so don't bother trying to correct me.)

Husk makes it seem like he knows exactly what it's like being in Angel's shoes; signing a contract and being forced to do something against his will. That part seems to be the only thing they have similar. Except what happened with Husk in the past should NOT count as a similarity!

Husk: Loses a bet against Alastor, costing his soul and status as an overlord. Agrees to commit to Alastor's biddings apparently, including being a bartender for a hotel (which he wasn't really forced to do. He doesn't seem to be afraid in refusing Alastor's requests. I partially don't even believe it was apart of the deal to do what Alastor wanted)

Angel: Is a pornstar. Forced to be a pornstar and do whatever Val wants him to do. Including submitting to him and his sexual needs, getting beaten, r8ped, assaulted (sexually even), exploited, drugged, etc.

What part of Angel's problem should Husk be understanding? Alastor doesn't beat or r8pe Husk! It's never even revealed what Husk goes through with Alastor. I doubt it's anything bad on his part, since he clearly isn't afraid to talk smack to the powerful radio demon who could kill him in an instant. They just . . . had that past and now Husk is doing him a permanant favor. What Husk is doing now isn't even anything bad. He's working as a bartender for a hotel and is being paid to do it. He may not like, but it's nothing bad. What ANGEL is going through on the other hand?? The word "bad" doesn't even begin to cover it.

Husk may not know what Angel goes through (though he should connect the dots since Angel hinted at him when he revealed he gets drugged all the time) but Angel just full on agreeing with him and accepting that he's a loser for what he goes through and having to embrace his situation????

Ummm . . . . NO!

Bro! You just saw Angel about to get drugged!! He should NOT have to accept that!!

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Through Night Shade Peering

Bones in the Ocean Masterlist

CW: Nonhuman whumpee, captivity, magical whump, vague noncon (not exactly implied but not super explicit either), blood, biting, sadistic whumper

-

Fifty-three years after Guilford Wentworth found a siren

-

They spent a month by the sea.

Neandra Wentworth’s lungs were failing her - the siren could hear the crackling when she breathed, as if each inhale pulled in water from the air around her but could not force it back out. Each time she was taken with a fit of coughing, it seemed to last longer and longer, leaving her wheezing and with blue-tinged fingertips pressing her slip of a handkerchief to her mouth to hide the drops of red that the siren could smell, even so. 

She hadn’t left the upstairs bedroom in the past week. 

Guilford Wentworth had expressed certainty that the sea air would revive her, packed up their worried children and the servants and moved them to this grand white home on a hill overlooking the ocean, with a view of the merchant ships that came and went from a nearby bay. 

The siren doubted Neandra would ever leave this house alive.

He also knew that his captor did not care.

The siren avoided the humans in the home. Every day before sunrise, long before any of the Wentworths were awake, he found his way down to the shore, picking along the rocks and stiff, strong beach grasses that waved in the sea salt stinging breeze. Today, he ignored the set of steps made from stone that someone had placed long ago, and turned his eyes away from the unnatural scar they seemed to slice through the hill. 

The humans ruined the world everywhere they touched it. 

They built stone buildings over beautiful meadows and chipped faces into rocks, they sailed on big ships that tore through waters they had never been meant to see. They stole the creatures who lived wild and made them playthings and puppets and put them in zoos, locked behind bars for their sticky-fingered children to point out and exclaim over. 

They kept the wild things. They broke their wildness and then pretended to sorrow over the loss. They called them pets. 

His captor called a pet, sometimes. His captor called him so many things.

Areyto shuddered. He kept ihs eyes on the waves, pausing in his slow approach to watch them break against the shore. The air here held a chill that he loathed, nothing like the island he has been born on, it was still the ocean. He could still see the tide that came in and went out, the white-capped waves in the distance, dark clouds with the promise of rain.

Areyto’s feet had gone soft, trapped inside his captor’s homes, walking on wood and rugs. They ached now when the sharper points of the rocks pressed along the underside. The siren only ground his teeth against the pain and kept moving, pulling the silk of his robe more tightly around himself to guard against the whipping wind.

He could just see the white sails of a ship, far in the distance.

His hate boiled up inside of him at the sight of it. A ship like that had stolen him from the waters and kept him tied up and locked away in darkness, seeing no sun until his captor had had him marked for obedience and been the thief of his entire life. 

Areyto’s eyes scanned the horizon, watching the dark smear move, knowing what was likely on it. More human men, maybe women, too. Maybe captive animals or sea serpents, wild creatures being sent to fates worse than death for the pleasure of humans. Maybe the storm would break over their heads, and captives and captors alike could become meals to be torn asunder and dragged down to the depths, gifts for the ocean to feed her children. 

“Kill them,” he whispered, a prayer to the moon that hid behind the daylight and the clouds, a prayer to the ocean itself. “Kill the humans, all of them, and set me free.”

There was no answer.

There was never any answer.

His curse made sure the moon never saw him any longer, could not hear his voice even when he cried for her. Only his captor heard him, and his captor called the screams a song. 

Marked as he was, spelled to give his immortality and his obedience to his captor, he was just another tamed wild animal. He felt it more than ever today, with the painted symbols all down his left side newly relaid and throbbing with the echo of two days of endless agonies. 

His captor had found a new magician to come by each decade to repaint them. The new one always had a smile twisting her face too wide, one that dug under Areyto’s skin. Areyto had found himself missing Atabei, who had at least looked guilty, who had offered him small pieces of mercy. No, he did not miss her. 

It was all her fault, in the end.

She’d been the one to begin it all. 

He did not pity her her fate, her last days alone and locked up surrounded by stone, with men called doctors declaring her mad.

He did not think of the conversations they had had, some nights, when Atabei could not sleep and came searching for him. He did not allow himself to recall the graying silver that was more visible in her hair with every passing year, the wrinkles that began to show at her eyes when she smiled. He did not remember the warmth of a kind touch, a hand through his dark hair just before she began the ritual that would leave him screaming, the soft whispered praise when he survived it, as he always did, because Guilford Wentworth would never allow him to die. He would not think of the way she came more and more often in the dark of the night to sit beside him, as time stretched on.

He did not think of the way she had called herself his friend, and how at some point he had stopped denying it. Whatever she called herself, though, she still wrote his curse in ink anew every time it began to fade. However many regrets she had, she still hurt him, again and again. Her low-pitched, husky alto song harmonizing with his was simply painting over the truth of the pain. 

He did not remember her hand in his, asking him to forgive her after the first wife died but before his captor had sent Atabei herself to die in an asylum. He could not even now feel the warmth of her touch. 

She had been the reason for his captivity, even if she was a captive, too.

He did not miss her.

He did not miss her.

The water ran just up to his toes, and Areyto closed his eyes, lifting his chin. He let the breeze lick around his neck like a lover might, if he’d ever had one. He felt the sand give way beneath his feet, felt himself sink deeper and deeper, bit by bit. His toes wriggled, spreading as wide as they could. 

Finally, he sank to his knees. Sand ground against them, stuck to the palms of his hands as he reached out and ran his fingertips over the curve of a white shell just peeking up above the grains. The water came in, washing his hands clean, and he dug the shell out. He watched the saltwater fill the hole left behind, sand swirling in until it vanished.

Just like the shell, he thought, his place in the world disappeared as soon as he was taken from it. If he laid here, unmoving, would he eventually become buried, too? Would the saltwater toss and turn his bones, break them down to sand to be washed up on a beach across the far waters? 

His lips twitched, the shadow of a smile.

It might be nice, to be nothing.

“Look at you,” His captor’s voice rang out, and Areyto’s breath caught. Despair threatened to push him under, and he thought - for just one moment - that he wished he were able to drown. He would have thrown himself to the ocean’s mercy if he could. Instead, he made himself perfectly still, and waited. .

Behind him, Guilford Wentworth made his slow way down the hideous, ugly step-scars. Areyto could hear his heavy breathing, the crunch of his boots against rock and then the scrape when he found sand. He came up behind Areyto and stood too close, leaning over to slide a hand along his spine and watch him shiver. 

“All dark skin and hair and white silk,” His captor said, voice low, pitched not to carry any further than his prisoner’s ears. “You look like a ghost, a spirit of some dead maiden.”

“I am a ghost,,” Areyto replied, voice flat, barely moving his own mouth. He refused to flinch from Wentworth’s touch, even when those fingertips burned against the nape of his neck, tracing the painted marks that peeked out from the neckline of his robe. Heavy hands wearing many rings twisted into his dark hair, pulling at it just a little, never letting him forget who held his leash. “What I was is dead.”

“You were a monster,” Guilford countered. “You still are. Monsters need to be tamed. To be kept.” He chuckled, voice low, and pulled harder, steadily forcing Areyto to lift his chin. Areyto’s hands closed slowly into fists around sand and shell, until the edge of the shell cut deeply in, the pain keeping his mind clear. There was no point in the disgust he felt at Wentworth’s touch, so why couldn’t he stop?

Wentworth cleared his throat, straightening back up and forcing Areyto backwards using the hand in his hair, until he was standing on his knees, spine straight. His markings ached, his skin boiled with the need to tear his captor apart. “My wife is dying.”

“That is what your wives seem crafted to do.” He couldn’t quite keep the edge from his voice. When Wentworth’s heavy hand began to pet through his hair like a man might pet a dog, he let his eyes close against the burn he refused to admit had nothing to do with the salty ocean air. 

His stomach dipped, and all his markings burned like new. He couldn’t do anything but obey. The magic bound him like a fisherman’s net. 

Wentworth sighed, reading the distress Areyto tried not to show. His fingers kept catching in tangled curls, jerking Areyto’s head this way and that. “Wives do die, in their time. In any case, I thought the air here would help her-”

“No, you didn’t.”

“What?” Wentworth jerked him backwards, throwing Areyto until he landed on his back in the soft sand, staring up at his captor. Wentworth’s face was shadowed by the weak sun fighting through the threatening clouds. The tide surged up to Areyto’s thighs, soaking the hem of his silk robe and leaving him half-bared to that horrible heavy gaze. “What did you say?”

Areyto set his jaw, and stared past Wentworth at the waters that had once been home. “You knew the air here would be cold and damp.You knew it would make her worse. You are done with this wife and ready for a new one. Why bother to lie to me? It’s me who you will have sing the new one into your bed soon enough-”

“Be quiet.” Wentworth’s hiss sent a sparking of pain along the painted marks of his curse, and Areyto bit down on his lower lip. Wentworth’s eyes moved from left to right, taking in the empty sands on either side of them, the house far enough away that you couldn’t see it from here. Or be seen by anyone inside it, even if any of them were awake.

His captor’s smile stretched as wide as a slick of oil still spilling from deep earth as he unbuttoned his own shirt without taking it off, shifting down onto his knees to straddle his captive siren, weighing him down.

It felt like a stone tied to his ankle, dragging Areyto into the dark.

One of Wentworth’s hands went around his throat, thumb pressing against the thrum of Areyto’s pulse just under his jaw. The other went into his hair, pulling hard. 

“Open your mouth,” Wentworth commanded.

Areyto’s body, as always, obeyed.

The water surged again, as if the ocean tried to pull him back home. It lapped along his legs, caressed his calves as it pulled back away, just brushed the bottoms of his feet. The sand beneath him was soaked and he sank into it as his head was forced back, as his throat was filled and he had to breathe in quick gasps whenever Wentworth pulled back, and relaxed his hand enough to allow it.

Areyto added his own saltwater tears to what soaked the sand beneath his body, a dizzy lack of air making the world seem to spin, as if his misery were the center of the earth.

“Why aren’t you making any noises?” Wentworth asked, his voice a series of harsh grunts as his hips moved, snapping too far forward, pulling too far back. Areyto’s jaw ached, his neck hurt from being bent strangely to accommodate Wentworth’s will. Sand dried and itched and stuck to him. The waves kept breaking just a little higher each time, until they teased at Areyto’s hips, his waist. 

He kept the shell closed tightly in one hand.

“Oh. Right.” Each word was a thrust, and Areyto wasn’t breathing. Couldn’t breathe. His eyes opened now, black and white spots dancing around the edges and finally into the middle. Wentworth stared back down at him. Their eyes met, and for all that Areyto knew his burned with hate, Wentworth’s sparkled with a perfect joy. “I gave you an order, didn’t I? Well, I take it back. Make all the noise your body wants, Areyto. Make as much noise as you can.”

This order was worse than the silence.

Now, he couldn’t stop himself - the siren whined, whimpered at the pain as his throat was bruised, gasped and cried out only for the winds to whip the sound away faster than he could even hear himself making it. He begged, maybe - he couldn’t have said.

Things had gotten so far away, in his mind. 

Too far away to be sure any longer.

Wentworth pulled back, all at once, but it was only a second before he grabbed the siren by one shoulder and threw him onto his stomach, hand pressing hard into his back while his knees kicked the siren’s legs apart. He shoved the sodden silk robe up to bare Areyto to his heavy, wanting gaze. Water rushed in, and Areyto's forehead pressed into the sand as he hitched in a sob.

Why did he still bother to weep?

“Beg,” Wentworth commanded, leaning down to press a kiss against Areyto’s hair. The siren’s stomach threatened to heave itself empty at the mockery of intimacy. “Beg me not to do this now, beg me not to bed you right here next to the water. Beg me not to.”

“Please,” Areyto gasped, voice hoarse and broken. He wanted to stay silent out of spite, but the markings were perfect and fresh and instead obedience was pulled from him faster than he could even think to defy him. “Please, not like this-... don’t do this-... not here-”

Wentworth bit down, flat human teeth burying themselves into Areyto’s shoulder as he forced himself inside, inch by inch. The siren threw his head back and screamed, a broken sound that only seemed to make Wentworth’s own desire rise higher.

Blood ran to soak the sand beneath the siren’s shoulder and between his legs. 

One of Wentworth’s hands found his hair again, holding tight to keep Areyto’s head pressed to his shoulder. The other reached out over the top of Areyto’s hand, closing fingers around his and pressing him more deeply into the sand. The siren’s back was forced to arch as his captor ground skin between teeth until it tore. He licked at Areyto’s blood and groaned with satisfaction as his hips rocked, the way made slick by blood and his lust fed by the pain of his imprisoned monster. 

Areyto’s eyes were wide and sightless - he could not see or feel or think past the way he was torn apart, in too many places. His free hand held tight to the shell he had found, as if it could save him. 

At some point his grip was so strong it broke the skin, and he bled there, too.

The tide surged, and added salt to the fresh wounds. He screamed again, and Wentworth’s voice was in his ear telling him to move, and so he did, and it made the pain rise ever higher. The sounds the siren made bounced off the hills ahead of them, they were stolen by the breeze to be blown out to the sea. 

The tide soaked the blood into the sand, pulled it back to the waters. It dissolved in spirals and tendrils that came together and broke apart, until it faded away into the enormity of the waters. Until all there was was the sand, and the pain, and Guilford Wentworth buried inside him giving commands in a whisper that he had to obey.

“Mine,” His captor groaned as he finished inside him, went still, a heavy weight that pressed the air from the siren’s lungs. “Forever. Say it.”

Areyto stared at a bit of sea grass fighting its way through the suffocation of sand, surviving where no other plants did. 

“Yours,” He whispered. Wentworth pulled away. “Forever.”

“Forever…?” Wentworth was doing up his buttons again, even though his own clothes were soaked through. The siren didn’t look up. He kept his eyes on the grass. “You know what to say, don’t you?”

The siren swallowed back the screaming hatred that threatened to burn him up from inside, and only whispered, “Yours forever… master.”

Wentworth chuckled again. He turned and walked away, making his painstaking, clumsy way up those stupid rock stairs.

The tide rushed in, all the way up to the siren’s mid-back now, moving further and further up towards his shoulders. He didn’t move - it felt like a bath, like the gentle lapping of a mother cat to a kitten. It felt like the ocean was trying to clean him of the filth that Wentworth had left on him, inside of him. 

“Kill him,” The siren prayed. “Kill him and set me free. Please, please… kill him. Just... kill us both.”

As always...

No one answered.

-

Taglist: @grizzlie70 @burtlederp @finder-of-rings @theelvishcowgirl @whump-for-all-and-all-for-whump @bloodinkandashes @squishablesunbeam @mj-or-say10 @apokolyps @wildfaewhump @shrimpwritings @there-will-always-be-blood @latenightcupsofcoffee @angelsproject @starsick1979

[thebiggestfuckgiven]

Ectoberweek 25: Graveyard Shift

Rating: T

Warnings: Descriptions of gore, mentions of experimentation (implied narratively and in the gore as well), mentions of loss (it still counts if its yourself/a version of you), horror, and dissociation-ish

A/N: okay I accidentally used the prompt of the same day I used last year, but maybe i’ll do it on purpose next time and invent a new tradition for myself. Danny, as usual, suffers ✨ I’m very happy I got to do a little something for Ectober this year. I was afraid I wouldn’t get the chance to. Please enjoy <3

-💜-

The night sky was startlingly clear. There were no stars, only that faint indistinguishable hue of air pollution, but it was still an amazing view. Then again, when you’ve been kept captive indoors for months on end, any view of the outside world is beautiful. Even if that view is a polluted star-less sky in a grimy, smelly city.

The cemetery he was in was no less of a spectacle, grim as it was. It had no wrought iron fence or any kind of enclosure, instead having been left open on all sides for all to come and go.

Truth be told, Danny had no idea where he was. They never told him where they were taking him when it was time to ship him to a new facility. He thought that was pointless. Who was he going to tell, really? They probably liked keeping him in the dark. Better to control that way. Whatever. The joke, now, was on both of them.

About ten or fifteen blocks away, sirens blared faintly from a scarce street. Firefighters, ambulances, police— the whole bunch of them gathered around an unmarked containment truck flipped on its side. The drivers could still be alive, if the group who had attacked them wasn’t cruel enough to change that.

Danny assumed they thought they’d find expensive tech and cutting edge resources, and they did. Sort of. What they hadn’t expected was to find Danny. The crash had made his container malfunction, and those doors opened… well, he wasn’t about to let that opportunity pass him by.

All he took with him was himself, and he left the daring group alive. They wouldn’t have known what to do with him, anyways.

He flew as fast as he could until he found this cemetery. They would start looking for him in a few hours, and if he wanted to get away, he’d have to find a hiding spot first. One of these, he figured, must be empty. Graves weren’t just for bodies, after all. Sometimes, they were for the idea of one. A body never recovered, or completely destroyed. Graves were for people, too.

He hovered over one in particular. It gave the impression that it was empty. How he knew was a mystery to him, but he was grateful for it.

The headstone read,

Stephanie Brown

Beloved Daughter, Sister, and Friend.

Your smile will always live in our hearts.

xxx xx, xxxx - xxx xx, xxx

The stone wasn’t worn or aged. She’d been “buried” recently. Hand resting gently on the headstone, he wondered what could have happened to her that she had to be buried without herself.

Far away, the sirens died down.

Maybe the answer will reveal itself to him eventually. He knelt on the soft grass and sunk a hand through the ground.

“Uh, can I help you?”

Danny froze up. That was one thing he forgot about cemeteries. Like graves, they weren’t just for the dead, either. He yanked his hand out of the ground and slowly glanced over his shoulder.

Behind him stood a young woman. The first thing he noticed were the clothes. She wore a purple beanie and a thick black jacket with a purple shirt underneath. The second thing was her hair, blonde and wavy, because it was curled around her neck like a makeshift scarf.

Glancing upwards, he saw no clouds. No snow… it was autumn already, then. But that… that meant he was gone for more than a few months. It meant he missed the whole school year. He was supposed to graduate high school in the summer.

“Are you okay? You don’t exactly look… all there.”

He faced the young woman again. The way she said it made it sound like it had a hidden meaning, which he quickly caught on to.

“I— sorry, I’ll get out of your way,” he muttered, pushing himself up to his feet, though unnecessarily so when he could’ve floated away.

“It’s all good,” she replied, watching him carefully. “Did you know her?”

“Hm? Oh, you mean Stephanie? Um, not really. I was just… paying my respects.” The lie felt misshapen in his mouth. She looked at him confused. He kept talking to steer her away from any questions. “Did you? Know her, I mean.”

“I used to,” was all she said to that. He didn’t like the way she was looking at him. He wanted to leave. “Do you live here?”

“No? What kind of person lives in a graveyard?”

Her hand still in her jacket pocket, she gestured towards all of Danny with a tilt of her head.

“Your kind of person, I’m pretty sure. Shit, unless you aren’t self-aware and I just ruined that.” Her eyes widened with genuine concern, making the reminder click in Danny’s head that he looked decidedly not-human under the night sky. That, and surrounded by well-meaning headstones, anyone would’ve walked the other way at the sight of him.

Almost anyone.

“Ah,” he said simply, looking down at his glowing, translucent self. “That. And you’re not, I dunno, shocked? Horrified?”

She shrugged. “It’s October in Gotham. I’ve seen worse.”

The statement sent a shiver like lightning right through him. A whole year… and Gotham was far but not it was still the Eastern area of the States. He could easily fly back home.

Maybe not.

How can he go back like this?

“Listen,” the blonde woman said, interrupting his thoughts. “You look a little out of it for a ghost. What brings you to this cemetery and m- Stephanie’s grave?”

“Um…” Danny glanced behind the wide headstone, where he saw himself. Danny Fenton lay lifeless and disfigured, his left leg missing and the skin of his right arm cut and held open by two tiny metal clamps attached to a single, wrap-around wire. There was muscle tissue and veins missing. The other arm was charred into an indistinguishable stump, melted skin folded over itself horrifically in too many layers, melded by heat-raised bubbles that were long solidified.

Where his left eye once was, there was now a vacant void. A window into his true self: a perfectly preserved brain thrumming with unnatural green light. Dead, and impossibly present. His other eye was still there, but just as vacant. Black hair glistened with remnants of the ectoplasmic waste they used to keep Danny Fenton fresh.

It was a quick glance. He fought not to throw up, ghostly body functioning now on memory alone.

“I thought…” that no one would see me “I’d check the place out. I paid my respects to some of the other graves.” He hesitated. He shouldn’t ask. He doesn’t want to know about Stephanie Brown, about the resting place he’ll be desecrating with the thing he became. “Hers is… empty. Can I ask what happened to her?”

The blonde woman’s reaction was small. A brief raise of the eyebrows, eyes widening for a second before going back to their watchful gaze.

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you know it’s empty,” she said with a hint of a smile. “I can’t really go into any details, but let’s just say that the girl they buried there doesn’t exist anymore.”

He had no idea what that meant.

“Why do you… still visit her?”

She seemed to think this over, looking out onto the street far away from where they were.

“That girl, she was so,” the blonde woman sighed, “naive and hotheaded. She would try so hard to be something without caring to think of what it would take and in the end, it’s what did her in. But I still cared about her, and I guess I still miss her sometimes.”

The sincerity caught Danny off guard. He couldn’t help the way he stared at her, wondering if anyone talked about him like that. Did they make him a grave, or did they just… discard his memory? Would he ever get to stand over his own headstone and think of all the things he used to be, loving and missing that person?

He frowned a little, and watched the blonde woman.

She smiled fondly, a sort of bittersweetness in her expression, at the headstone. Then she took a breath, blinked a few times, and redirected her smile to Danny.

“Your turn. What are you really doing here? Looking for real estate opportunities,” she joked, eyes twinkling. Danny refrained from stepping away and turning tail. He looked at her closely.

She didn’t seem familiar, but the GIW were growing larger and there were plenty of operatives that Danny has never met. Her jacket was big enough to hide a blaster… but they couldn’t have found him so quickly. No, besides, no self-respecting operative would wear such expressive colors.

“Something like that,” he blurted out before he could even think. “I mean, not like that. I don’t… I don’t know anymore.” His voice was a soft whisper and he stared at himself where he lay crumpled. “I don’t think I can go back home anymore. I don’t… I don’t know who I am. What I am. People aren’t supposed to… live through things like these, aren’t they? Die through, or whatever.”

“What things?” The question was tentative. “Are you— what are you looking at?”

“Nothing,” he said with bitter conviction. “Absolutely nothing. I was going to hide it in your coffin.”

“How did you—? wait, hide what?” Her voice changed from its friendly, wistful tone to a razor-sharp serious one. She stepped closer to him, trying to meet his gaze.

“Got a feeling. Like I might do the same one day, if I had one.”

Danny didn’t stop her when she got too close to her own headstone. When she followed the direction of his gaze to the twisted, hollow thing that ate up the surrounding shadows like this blacker than black void that was trying to grow into a walking, lifeless monster made up of clinical pain and suffering.

Stephanie did not scream or gasp. She held the headstone in a brutal grip, short nails painfully scraping against it. Her mouth gaped wordlessly, jaw trembling with shaky and uneven breaths. The lines of her face contorted into themselves in their attempt to make sense of the thing they were seeing. Eyes glistened even in the shadows, their pupils a disappearing pinprick.

Stephanie’s horror was a silent one.

“What— wh-who is that? Is that—?”

“Me,” he said flatly. “I thought I’d be able to escape. That I would last longer than their curiosity and hate.” He clenched his fists. “I saw a glimpse of snow the day it happened. I” —his voice cracked— “I didn’t even make it three months.”

Stephanie stared at him, transfixed. At the Danny Fenton that would never again be.

“Wh-what happened to you?” Her voice trembled, barely a breeze-like whisper.

“Don’t ask me that,” he said, strained and holding back suffocating memories. “P-please don’t— just, don’t.” He took a gasping breath, eyes snapping wildly towards the sound of screeching tires in the distance. A big car headed their way. “Hey, listen. Hey— Stephanie.”

A creaking slingshot, her wide stare shot back towards him. Her mouth had been snapped shut, and loud, shallow breaths tried to push themselves in and out of her nose.

“Take care of him, please,” he begged, bright, opalescent tears falling freely down his face. “They can’t find him again. The pain will never end again. Just— I, I don’t know, get him a coffin or anything, but don’t bury him yet. I’ll find him again, but I can’t stay. I can’t, they can’t find us again. Promise me, please?”

This was a complete stranger in front of him. But she had her own grave, and she stood over it alive and well. He had to trust her with the only thing he had left. She would understand that. She had to.

“Stephanie, please,” he pleaded once more when she said nothing. The loud engine of that big car became louder. The downward rush of a thick, heavy axe.

She nodded, shakily.

“I-I promise, yeah.” She cleared her throat, pulling herself from the edge and regaining clarity. “Yes. I will. Go, I’ll- I’ll take care of it. Whatever it is.”

Danny cried. An urgency was overtaking him, thrusting him into that day they hunted him down.

“Thank you,” he managed to whisper before shooting off into the clear night sky, leaving behind a faint comet-green streak. He disappeared in seconds, leaving Stephanie Brown alone with the horrifyingly disfigured corpse of a teenager and her clattering thoughts.

She pulled out her phone in a shaky flash, going straight to the Favorites in her Contacts.

The call connected after the third ring.

“I need your help hiding a body.”

[mecachrome]

if you ever wanted to talk about your view of them and their dynamic and what makes them interesting to you? i'd be down to read that 👀

hlksdfhh jasmine i completely forgot about this after hungary... why does Everything Happen So Much 😭

anyway i would love to discuss the joys of 2381!!! admittedly 50% of this is just my 2-pick shipping (which i am wont to do 😔) but i really do find their dynamic/potential dynamic sooo interesting... the gist of it is basically that alex and oscar are very similar people but in a way where it doesn't actually allow them to mesh that well if that makes sense? which is what makes them fun to me LOL 🧡💙

like the way i see oscar's character at a glance is that he has a very strong sense of self but in most cases lacks a desire to rock the boat or overexert himself without good reason to (all actions must be done toward a Tangible Benefit !), so he's good at carefully balancing being an assertive speaker in a very casual, imperturbed manner + being just charming enough despite not being naturally drawn to or really even enjoying social spaces. i've talked at length about the empathy/sympathy split and how in a lot of ways his character is kind a mirror of lando's, or how basically oscar = extroverted thinking / introverted feeling and lando = extroverted feeling / introverted thinking. imo oscar isn't afraid of communication, he's just very careful and diplomatic in public situations and knows exactly how much of himself he's willing to "give" up to an audience, even when he comes off as a little reserved or awkward... i think people often boil oscar down to just being the Mature Intelligent Introverted Listener and lando to being the Reckless Clueless Extroverted Yapper even though they actually possess very similar baseline mentalities; where they primarily differ is just in conversational processing styles and how they choose to communicate meaning/intent.

but anyway. alex meanwhile is clearly SUCH a fascinating and deeply charismatic person who is also very introspective and has gone through a lot of hardship to attain the shrewdness he exhibits today, and although his story is quite different to oscar's and i do think he has more of an extroverted persona than him you can see that they interact with people from a very similar perspective + act in that same deliberate & controlled manner. instead of doing what looks/feels right, oscar and alex are the type of person who operates on the True Belief that their actions are correct, that they've thought through their decisions carefully and are taking the most informed risk possible in every situation; imo they have a very strong need for control in their lives but camouflage it with their desire to come off as ~subtle and effortless~ in presentation lol. like it's not that oscar doesn't swear in the car, he just thinks it's cringe to turn on the radio and broadcast it, etc. etc. so he and oscar are relatively "simple" people but also very deep thinkers who are quite sharp and witty and er... at the end of the day occasionally Judgmental Assholes. hlskdhflh that's why i call them insincere4insincere 🧡🧡🧡

Like when you look at the way oscar talks about guys like dr3, it's clear he's fascinated by their personalities and enjoys them as people but at the same time also feels a sort of... i call it "sociological fascination" LMFAO but in short there's a sense of detachment where he's content to simply observe these Conventional Social Patterns but the thought of actually living that way or thinking and acting that way gives him a headache. he'll be like "this is something dannyric would do/say... but Not Me 😅" and ofc it's meant as a compliment and not at all judgmental but at the same time it's very much implied that >These people live in another world and I live in mine. and he's comfortable and clear about delineating what that world is LOL

anyway i'd argue alex is quite similar, because if you watch his high performance interview there's this bit where he talks about how his self-awareness is simultaneously his biggest strength and weakness— which is such an alex thing to discuss... he's soooo frank and vulnerable in a way very few athletes are willing to be but it always comes from a place of very careful admittance, lessons that can only be imparted with enough distance established to the hardship that created them in the first place @__@ wah — and then is like wow it's So interesting how some guys are literally just no thots head empty ! like verbatim he says he's "intrigued" by their "blissful unawareness" which krills me because mentality is such a tricky thing to discuss in motorsport and sports in general, but alex being like ~i know i'm not like most athletes~ (#notliketheothergirls) but also I'm Capable Of Thinking And Using My Brain... for better or for worse... is so freaking funny to me.

tl;dr: alex and oscar basically just think other people are A Little Bit Stupid. which is very budding pundit/future color commentator à la jb22, just guys who are able to break things down and think things through and talk about them eloquently and therefore believe that Everyone Else Except Them Is A Bit Of An Idiot. and most importantly they enjoy being that person in a one-on-one dynamic; they thrive off being the one who gets to be the smart guy and know things and correct people pedantically and kickstart teasing banter and get the last word in. and because they're so often surrounded by specific athlete types who complement their know-it-allness, it works most of the time — like a lot of why landoscar are comaptible is that the gaps in lando's communication are filled by oscar and vice versa, i.e. they're both willing to do the work the other isn't — so when you look at 234's dynamic it's kind of like... "Why are we the same person and What are we supposed to do about it." and since they're both naturally "polite" characters it's not necessarily awkward or anything but it is kind of like. idk the vibe is just so interesting HLSDFHKH. it makes too much sense to the point that it kind of just circles back to not working 😭

like they're both good speakers but hate doing contentTM and don't like being taken too seriously (or actually don't like coming off as taking themselves too seriously), even though they're also very frank and straightforward and able to speak about themselves and their mentalities with overwhelming clarity. and ofc they're not exactly the same person but when you look at how alex talks about himself, how he's grown in confidence over time and had to rely on purely himself for sooo much of his career, it's super interesting contrasted with oscar being such an entj who clearly values his autonomy, likes to know how everything functions around him and understand the fundamentals of everything he does or tries, and likes believing he's achieving something through objective and empirical methodology — i.e. an "overthinker" but more so one caught up in the facts and technicalities rather than in emotions.

anyway so all their interax are just like >Ribbing each other about padel and random little moments here and there and they do make sense and have things in common but it's also kind of weird and unnerving on another level. they're both too assured in not getting "consumed by the narratives" around them and too unwilling to concede to the #cringe to ever really fundamentally Work... but that's what makes it fun ! insincere4insincere 😌

like when oscar says he's still "grounded" and you hear people talk about him being humble, what's most important to note is that his being humble or introverted doesn't come from shyness or a lack of self-belief, it comes from being secure enough in himself to not need his worth validated by other people... likekhklsdahflh so random but i find it kind of funny when people act like oscar worships mark because obviously he's very important to his life and career but 80% of the time when oscar talks about mark it's with a tone of like Yeah that's just my fuck ass old manager who couldn't even beat sebastian vettel (said lovingly but also a bit pityingly) also he doesn't even run the company by himself put some respect on the other people's names. anw that kind of groundedness, knowing where credit and criticism should be given and never going overboard in his assessment of a situation are all things alex had to learn to develop in himself after his red bull days.

ok what was i saying.

this literally means nothing idk if it even makes sense. but don't you think 23481 is so fascinating like the triangle of oscar somewhat following lando's career growing up > alex being lando's "hero" when he was younger and then alex and oscar are just there and alex doesn't really believe in that cringe shit (except for of course the spirit of valentino rossi at the foundation of all of this). LMFAO

also that's why it's so funny that during this get to know alex albon video he gave THREE answers that were the exact same as oscar's from his own interview in this series and every time it was brought up he was like Oh... Hm... and was kind of weirded out by it 😭 like he gave the same answer about choosing his own team + lewis singing, and then when he said he wanted to be an astronaut for a day and heard that it matched oscar he went: "Does it? Now I feel… I don’t want to be in a space shuttle with Oscar, so I’ll change mine. I’ll be a zookeeper, like in a sanctuary." like when ur no longer not like the other girls... 😔 freakmatched a little too hard

[blueikeproductions]

Onyx Prime is one I have a semi complicated feeling towards.

The Prime of Beasts, and borrowing his name from an obscure Beast Wars character, he’s meant to explain why some Transformers have Beast Modes. It’s not … super clear if this includes the various Mechanimals like Laserbeak and Ravage, or Cyberverse’s various menagerie.

But presumably it does, as that would mean the deer bots seen in ONE are related to Onyx too, as they’re the only non Prime Beast Moded robot. ONE Airachnid’s toy gives her a space spider Beast Mode, but she only turns into a space helicopter Vehicle Mode in the film, so it’s unknown if she’s a Triple Changer or if her Beast Mode was an early script idea.

ONE Onyx, like Alchemist, Quintus, Micronus, Vector, Nexus, Prima, & Solus, doesn’t really get to do anything except die by the hands of Sentinel & the Quints. His Cog is donated to the main heroes, but who got it isn’t clear. I think Megatron did because of his beastly nature at that point, but I also think it fits Elita pretty well.

His design is a hybrid of his IDW and Aligned designs, taking more from the IDW design with the colors and beast kibble.

An interesting quirk is the ONE design borrows heavily from the semi confusion of his IDW design. Oynx is supposed to be a centaur, but IDW artists opted to have him stand on his hind legs, with his fore legs dangling awkwardly.

This would be turned into foreshadowing, to imply Oynx wasn’t what he seemed, revealing that he was actually Shockwave due to comic book time paradox reasons.

The awkward posture was due to Shockwave wearing Onyx’s corpse like a Pretender Shell, being unable to copy the original centaur look. Hilariously the ONE design foregoes the centaur look altogether, but nothing has clarified on if the centaur is his actual Beast Mode, or if he turns into a different creature in a BM Savage Noble fashion… His TFONE model implies he might Transform into a space dragon, or if we want to meet half way on the centaur idea, a space griffin.

As such, Onyx’s only major role has been IDW, and it technically wasn’t even him. The actual IDW Onyx was a kind shepherd who Shockwave killed after landing on prehistoric Cybertron following his failed Dark Cybertron scheme.

Pretending to be Onyx, Shockwave guaranteed events on Cybertron played out as he knew them to, as well as raising a Beast army (from all the Beast Wars characters in their most unflattering role) and securing the mysterious magical Talisman as part of a new scheme involving Unicron.

It’s always bothered me though that the one place Onyx would’ve fit well as a central antagonist would’ve been RiD15 because of it’s heavy use of animal type Decepticons. It would’ve made more sense if Oynx was the one orchestrating the crash of the prison ship, but Steeljaw makes Oynx’s mission his own: to turn Earth into a home world for Decepticons, rather than beast bots. Oynx isn’t exactly nice here either, causing problems for the Autobots, because he has a chip on his shoulder over vehicle type Transformers due to problems from his past. Something like that might’ve been better than hyping up The Fallen, causing the same problem TFP had by using Unicron too soon.

With the upcoming CyberWorld possibly returning to a RiD15 Beast theme with its Decepticons (while the Autobots remember they have more Dinobots besides Grimlock), maybe Onyx Prime has a role there?

[om0000]

star guest yap

the thing that i think makes star guest so interesting is that i feel like in canon westley faked his death exactly BECAUSE he didnt have anyone on the skullship who actually cared — like its still a drastic asf measure to take but i feel like he could take it only cuz he knew that nobody would be actually affected in much of a meaningful way (its even joked abt in the end credits of the episode where hater, who seemed to be the most upset abt westley's "death", says that he doesn't even remember who westley is) n its sad, its sad to think that westley craved so bad to build community with other watchdogs — the only people that he COULD build community w n the people who he was supposed to be working w for who knows how long — but couldn't, even over the course of 3 years of trying. n its clear that he was trying, he starts the episode waking them all up, he tries engaging in conversation w them, he acts friendly, he compliments moose after the guy literally HITS HIM IN THE FACE like be fr u cant get more desperate than that — and despite that none of his efforts ever pay off n none of his sentiments r ever reciprocated. n its implied heavily that westley didn't just feel left out, he WAS left out, actively, very possibly subject to bullying. n interestingly enough even after he does get their recognition (or at least they cheer him on) after capturing wander n sylvia it doesn't make him stay, cuz i feel like he didnt want to associate w the hater empire at all by that point, cuz he already got a taste of freedom n it made him doubt everything. well, in the end, after he "died" there was nobody on the skullship to actually mourn him

now what makes star guest even sadder than that is that it raises the question of what if westley DID have someone — and it puts a spin on things cuz now westley either lies to his own bf abt his death n basically. breaks up w him in like the worst way possible n makes him cry n lose sleep over someone who isnt even actually dead n is somewhere in some other galaxy living his best life — or he lets andy in on his plan. which would be the right thing to do but it would also require admitting that what they have to him doesn't feel worth staying on the skullship for — that it didnt make him feel happy or understood or, well... loved. n while i think westley would actually try to explain hjs side of things rlly carefully — n if andy ever felt anything towards that guy hed have no choice but to comply n like promise to keep his secret safe or smth — it makes the entire situation FARRR more drastic. it makes westley's decision to fully cross out his previous life maybe lije 5 times harder to make n 10 times more determined, it makes andy either watch his partner leave for a better life that does not involve him, or literally watch his partner die — it makes star guest not just doomed by the narrative yaoi but literally never even meant for each other yaoi. that is insane. like thats full on crazy for a silly little rare pair ship

[goo-berz]

Talking about Vivziepops' weird art of minors

I've never been the biggest fan of Vivziepop, I've always knew about their weird behavior (since like 2018 ~ 2019) before they were as popular as they are now.

She has done a lot of weird stuff but the thing I mainly wanna focus on in this post is their character Addison. Addison is a 17 year old gay effeminate fox humanoid from Zoophobia, he's in a relationship with a 19 year old Teacher's assistant named Gustav. Many people get confused by this but Addison has been CONFIRMED to be 17 years old by Vivziepop. Someone had changed Addison's Fandom Wiki page back in 2019 to say they're 18, when this is not true, Vivzie has confirmed they're 17. I did go back and change the age to 17 on the Wiki with the correct age in hopes that people stop believing incorrect information.

Vivzie confirming their age: https://twitter.com/vivziepop/status/1128064633166712832

The tags in this post brings up the fact that Addison is nearly 18 - not 18 yet - They're still 17.

Edit: Oh yeah, I want to add on context to this tag: "I should mention the characters canon ages are higher then when I first made them because as I wrote the story any big age gaps were uncomfy"

I've heard multiple older fans of Vivziepop say that Addison was originally meant to be 14-15 years old, and I've heard that Gustav was originally meant to be in his 30s.

Addison was created 2010, She began shipping Gustav with Addison in 2011, and Zoophobia began in 2012. So the fact she shipped a 14-15 year old character with a 30 year old one to begin with, and encouraged her friend to draw intense NSFW art of them together is so.. weird.

Anyways, Vivzie also hints at Addison being a minor, using wording indicating how young they are in age in their Blogpost introducing the character

"I finally created a few concepts, but the one I have been toying with the most is a young character much like Gale. An albino boy, with an identical albino sister"

If you need more proof, Addison is also preyed on by Mirage, a character that SPECIFICALLY goes after minors... that's basically her main personality trait, that she's a p3d0. She goes after Addison because he's a young submissive boy and easy to manipulate.

Anyways, back on topic. I personally I don't see anything wrong with the age gap of 17 & 19, however I do think it's weird to have this relationship between Addison and Gustav.. he's not exactly a teacher, but he still holds power over Addison due to the fact he's the voluntary teacher's assistant. Back when Zoophobia was popular there were people who found this dynamic weird & creepy considering the fact that Addison is basically a student under Gustav. Also, I just wanna bring this up because I find this weird, Gustav was originally under the impression that Addison was a year one student and much younger than he actually is, yet he still tried to flirt with him.. erm..? Yeah..

Anyways, that isn't the main point. The point is that Vivzie DREW NSFW OF HER 17 YEAR OLD CHARACTER AND HIS 19 YEAR OLD TEACHER... erm.. holy cracker balls? Literally how can anyone excuse these?

Vivzie also drew Gore of Addison too, but I won't post it here cus it's very graphic and weird and idk why she drew it!!

And .. possibly the worst drawing of them all.. Holy titties what is this... If you're wondering, the stuff under the censors is ACTUAL NSFW. It's not suggestive, or implied s3x, It's their ACTUAL WEE WEEs.

These accounts are poorly archived, so it's hard to find the original post and what it originally said. However after some digging I was able to find out the original text said

“ dollcreep: “ i can only see ‘dark-Günter’ exposing him and addi to a public area like so…so. yeah. Günter says; merry Christmas. god this question is super old. vivz reminded me about it"

So, I'm assuming that Dollcreep drew this, not Vivzie. However I was also able to find out from the limited resources there is that Vivzie reposted this to her accounts Vivzie-zp (unarchived) and ZPanswers, which are also now deleted, but if you view the accounts tumblr archives over the Wayback machine you can see that she did indeed repost this. http://web.archive.org/web/20120801182958/http://zpanswers.tumblr.com/archive

If you don't know, Dollcreep and Vivzie used to be best friends, however aren't anymore. Dollcreep originally designed Gustav, originally named Gunter, and Vivzie bought the design from them. Vivzie designed Addison back around 2010, and taking into account the old caption, this means that Vivzie.. allowed Dollcreep to draw NSFW art of their underaged character ;-; oh my gawd!!! Whatthe heck guys... like I said at this time Addison was still 14 - 15 and Gustav (Gunter) was in his 30s.

Also I want to mention that this drawing was from 2011, so that means Vivzie had this pedophilic ship with Dollcreeps OC for years, & after she bought the rights to the character she decided to.. keep the pedophilic ship and write it into Zoophobia by making him Addisons teacher. That's crazy..?

Anyways, because I brought up Mirage. Mirage is written pretty bad. She was a character meant to be in.. or scrapped from Zoophobia, she was meant to be a villain who preyed on the kids, mainly Addison. Her main trait is that she likes kids

Vivzie's made a bunch of drawings of Mirage preying on kids which I think is pretty weird, especially considering how poorly some of them represent it and make it seem like a joke instead.

and yeah, we all know about this infamous drawing she made of Mirage preying on Kestrel, a 14 year old. Pretty weird

Also when I looked at the web archive of Vivzie's ZPanswers blog (a Zoophobia ask blog) she accepted many weird asks about Kestrel, 14, and Addison, 17, like an ask asking if Kestrel had ever been fucked by a horse & how Kestrel, Addison & others would act when they were drunk. Which is also pretty weird to me I won't lie

Anyways that's all for now. Sorry if this is all over the place its 4am and I just wanted to get my thoughts out that vivziepop is kinda a weirdo

[oneslimybastard]

mouthwashing spoilers ig bewaaare it's so fascinating just How Much people hate Jimmy Mouthwashing, despite that when it comes to Evil Deeds he actually lags behind a lot of other horror characters.

He's not a serial killer. He's not even really a killer (the only person he hands-on murders is Swansea in implied self defense). He's bitter, entitled, emotionally immature, impulsive, misogynistic, a rapist and enabled by Terminal Nice Guy Curly. Aka, a guy you've worked with, or a pissy uncle that keeps getting invited to christmas out of enforced politeness, your boyfriend's friend who keeps making you uncomfortable and you keep being told that he's a "good guy" deep down. A scumbag of which there are a dime a dozen of.

Any readings that he was a machivallian evil mastermind to me feels like huffing cope. Because the entire game is just Jimmy fuckign, floudering, as his actions suddenly have a lot of consequences that he wasn't emotionally equipped for. He thinks he can fix things, and that it's not really his fault, sure he assaulted Anya but she wasn't supposed to get pregnant from it, sure he crashed the ship in a temper tantrum but he didn't think Curly would get meatified from it. He sends Daisuke into the hutch because he's too much of a coward to do it himself, but he wasn't supposed to get injured from it. Yeah he's treated Anya like shit but she wasn't supposed to kill herself. Swansea comes after him with an axe — that wasn't supposed to happen either. And at the very end, Jimmy martyrs himself to "save" Curly (how saved he gets from being turned into a cryofrozen treat is debatable but I like to think it does ensure his survival, for the themes), so he can have some fucking solace that he managed to set things right before he kills himself — when in actuality all he did was ensure that he will run from taking responsibility for the rest of time.

After all, no one can hold you accountable if you're dead.

Jimmy isn't evil, you the player would be much more comfortable with his character if he WAS evil. He's just pathetic, making excuses, and emotionally lashing out, lashing out over the trauma he inflicted on someone else having consequences for him he sees no obvious escape from for once. Curly can't nepo him outa this one, lads. And all it takes is a few button presses to doom the entire ship.

Then he doesn't even have the guts to own it. He doesn't have the guts to own what a shitty person he is, called out directly in-text by Swansea who like we stan Swansea but I would not be surprised if his list of crimes (minus ship-crashing) looked exactly like Jimmy's, sexual assault included.

And that's the whole point of Mouthwashing innit. The worst guys you know will be some dick who refuses to own up to his own scumbaggery because he can't stand to look himself in the mirror if he does, and the people who cover for him. Evil doesn't exist (the contexts for where I think it does is a different and politically loaded conversation), usually it's just Some Fucking Guy who thought he was too good for therapy and magikarp splashed his path of carnage through other people's lives because of it.

Jimmy could have set things right, but that meant grappling with what a shitbag he is and the damage he caused Anya, and for certain people embittered by their own mediocrity, Armageddon is just the much more glamorous option.

And when he's forced to pick up the pieces and take responsibility, he breaks. Despite how much we hate it, it's very easy in this world to become a Jimmy, to fuck up and hurt people and then just go nuh-uh-nuh-uh until we've convinced ourselves we really did nothing wrong; to brainwash ourselves into thinking running away from accountability is the noble action. Even easier to become a Curly, with a pet Jimmy scrambling around that you can't be fucked to hold accountable because that's like, so messy, and a bother, it's fine, he's just a little grouchy you guys. Yes yes Anya I hear your concerns but like... I dunno, this puts me in a really complicated situation, you understand?

People know this instinctively, and that's why they feel like they have to parade Jimmy around like the Worst Guy Ever, to wash their hands of him, since that's more soothing than thinking about how much of a Boring Regular Guy he actually is. A Boring Regular Guy you've got in your life right now who kind of puts you off but nobody is actively dealing with. You included.

That's probably a large part of why this game haunts people, and why Jimmy just gets under their skin so bad to call him like the most irredeemable guy ever. In a genre he shares with like the Mad Father himself and Sachiko the torture ghost from Corpse Party, or the lady from the Amnesia DLC, etc. etc. (Astarion BG3 is also Objectively a shittier guy than Jimmy Mouthwashing, which isn't a fair comparison because different genres with different stakes, but it is a funny one.)

also he's in yaoi with curly soooooorry it's in the text as he cradles that meated up bod and stares straight into curly's bulging eyeball and forcefeeds him pills. and then his own leg. his love language is just complicated ok dont judge.

[rallamajoop]

The Baker Incident Report and the Resident Evil 7 Guidebook

While I’m talking obscure sources of RE7 lore, there's a couple more I’ve been poking through lately: the Baker Incident Report file (only available with the RE8 Trauma Pack DLC), and the BIOHAZARD 7 resident evil kaitaishinsho or RE7 guidebook (only available in Japanese, though some translations have made their way online).

I’m not the biggest fan of these kinds of ‘canon’ – fans shouldn’t have to go pouring through pages of DLC-exclusive-text-dumps or untranslated supplements to find out WTF was supposed to be going on – and both of these have other problems I’ll get into below. All that said, here's some of the more interesting new info they give us.

From the BIR, the Winters were moved to ‘Eastern Europe’, as witness protection from the Connections. That's still frustratingly unspecific, but more than we’re ever explicitly told in the game.

The lab that created Eveline is in Munich, Germany, per the BIR. This one does add up: close enough to Eastern Europe for Miranda to be involved, but not so close that it would necessarily ring alarm bells for Mia when the BSAA wanted to move them right to Miranda’s doorstep. Mia’s obviously been to the Munich lab, but presumably didn’t know exactly where the mould comes from (something redacted out even in their own reports). The guidebook also places the lab in Europe, but doesn't give a city. The BIR adds that the Connections are active in Eastern Europe, and we know they have facilities in Central America. Presumably there are offices in Texas too ‒ Mia can't be commuting cross continents to get to work every day.

Eveline was shipped to Central America due to an attempted raid by the BSAA, which is far more we learn from the "Orders" file from the game. The BIR goes so far as to imply that this botched operation was indirectly responsible for the whole Baker Incident, with Chris and his team leaving due to their frustration with the BSAA's attempts to cover the incident up. The guidebook, however, tells us Chris Redfield was actually the guy leading the team behind the failed raid. I assume we’re meant to take it that the mission failed because of an info leak, but I’m still amused by just how ineffectual this franchise keeps making Chris out to be.

Post RE7, Zoe is working as a reporter for a small paper in New Orleans. We don't know if she too went through witness protection but her name was listed among the dead at the Baker mansion.

Ethan is called a systems engineer in both the guide book and the BIR (this one does seem to have been spread around fandom more widely).

Eveline was created in the early 2000s, according to the guidebook. This one really doesn't add up for me: if the project started in 2000 and had already advanced through the A-E series by the early 2000s, why did it stagnate there for the next 10 years without further progress? Did Miranda leaving the project set it back so far? They can't have been waiting for Eveline to grow up, she can age 25x faster than usual, and is being deliberately maintained at the age of a 10yo girl. IDEK, I'd be inclined to ignore this one.

The guidebook states that Mia told people she worked for a "trading company," and was often away from home for work, something which had already strained the Winters’ marriage. I'd guess she told people she spent a lot of time accompanying shipments of goods when she was really smuggling materials or taking part in covert operations for the Connections.

The guidebook gives 2010 as the year she started working for the Connections (a year before her marriage to Ethan in 2011, though it doesn’t mention when they met, which may well have been 2010 or earlier). Mind you, this is also the one bit that randomly calls her "a researcher", so take it as you will (more on this below).

Of Mia's involvement with the project that created Eveline, it says only that the Connections' Special Agents Alan and Mia were assigned to transport Eveline to America. No real indication Mia was ever involved before then.

Of Mia's relationship to Eveline, it says that Mia "found Eveline creepy, but felt sympathy for her lonely situation." You and the rest of us, Mia.

Eveline forced Mia to lure Ethan to the Bakers' property in hope that adding Ethan to their family would make Mia more compliant, according to the guidebook. Eveline was especially fixated on Mia, having known her longer than the Bakers, and was frustrated with Mia's continued resistance to her control. Mia seems to have tried to keep Ethan's existence secret from Eveline to protect him, but somehow let it slip. All this is already implied in-game, of course, but it's nice to have it spelt out.

The Bakers feed people infected food because “oral and mucosal infections” are supposedly better for mould-powered mind-control. Ethan is obviously already infected AF well before their attempts to feed him 'dinner' (there's no way his severed hand would be usable otherwise), but IDK, maybe ingesting some extra mould would have made it easier for Eveline to control him? I'm sure a 10yo girl and a family of hillbillies do not have this down to an exact science, and I wouldn't even be surprised if feeding people mould was counter-productive somehow, given their success rate.

So why did none of those infected prisoners join Eveline's "family" alongside the Bakers? The guide book tells us simply that all were "deemed unfit" as family members, and were thus killed, and converted into molded instead.

We get official names for all the molded types we meet in the game (Moulded, Blade Moulded, Quick Moulded and Fat Moulded – pretty self-explanatory).

As a side-note, Ethan himself gets referred to as a ‘molded’ around this fandom a lot, which really isn’t correct. Ethan’s infected by the mold in the same manner as the Baker family, whereas ‘molded’ is a term coined to describe what amounts to mutamycete zombies (see above): the unintelligent, inhuman monsters that made up the generic enemy types of RE7, whose whole bodies are simply “superorganisms formed of countless mycelia.”

The guide book also implies that Jack’s final, mutated form reflects that he’s starting to become a moulded himself, which is a very interesting little detail.

Notes attached to concept art suggest that most moulded are created from dead bodies, covered by mould in bathtubs to convert them. Eveline is also seen spontaneously converting people to shapeless mould though, and clearly converted much of the ship’s crew into moulded-creatures in a very short time after her escape. It’s not super-consistent, but it is all horror-logic at its best (read: the rules are whatever will make this scene scarier).

There’s a bunch of additional stuff in the BIR naming the Connections’ founder as Brandon Bailey, someone who naturally has ties to Umbrella, blah, blah, blah ‒ I’m sure it all means more to fans of some of the older games. I can't pretend to have much interest in this part myself.

So with all that interesting info, what's my big problem with these sources? Well, for one thing, you don’t have to look far into the guidebook to find info that contradicts what we already know – and sometimes even itself. One page clearly describes Mia as a special agent working for the Connections ‒ a description that matches the wording used in the Orders document, and everything we see Mia doing in the game. But then another page randomly tells us Mia was hired as "a researcher" ‒ a description that matches nothing else we know about her (though it's an irritatingly common misconception, and this book may be the reason why). No-one's checking any of this stuff for consistency.

The guidebook also features such other gems as telling us Ethan currently lives and works in Los Angeles, when both Mia’s driver’s license and all geographical logic tell us they’re from Texas. Then there's that weird bit about Eveline being created in the early 2000s... and realistically, I can only assume a lot of what made it into the book may have come from earlier concept notes that were never updated as the story developed ‒ and if you read anything else on the production of this game, you'd know that concepts changed massively as development went on.

But more frustrating is everything the book doesn’t tell us. There isn’t a word said about the oh-so-mysterious "imprinting protocol" that Mia references in the game. How does it work? Is it, as the ending text spiel seems to imply, merely something that can be implemented in a hurry when Eveline needs to be transported across the globe? Can she be imprinted on more than one person at once? Has she ever been imprinted on anyone else? That seems likely, given that the lab’s in Munich while Mia lives in Texas (and if she's really been around since the early 2000s and Mia joined the company only in 2010, she logically must have been), but we don’t find out. Does Eveline get similarly obsessed with everyone she’s imprinted on, or is Mia special? Not a clue.

Since the guidebook was released in March 2017, long before the Not a Hero and End of Zoe DLCs, neither expansion is mentioned in the text. And since we don’t even learn the name ‘The Connections’ until the Not A Hero DLC, the group that created Eveline is referred to simply as the “mysterious organisation” (with quotes) whenever it comes up.

Nothing is said in the guidebook about the new incarnation of Umbrella which was so prominently involved at the end of RE7 either. Possibly, this too was to avoid spoilers for Not A Hero, which does at least give us some info on them – but then, the Baker Incident Report doesn’t mention the new Umbrella at all either, and it doesn’t have that excuse. That omission is all the stranger, considering that Zoe’s whole purpose in writing it is supposedly to expose the cover-up after the Baker Incident – doesn’t Umbrella factor into that at all? It’s like their whole role in RE7 has just wiped clean.

It's also obvious there was so much more lore written for this game that the guide book doesn’t share. Early versions of collectable documents that can still be found in the game files give the D-series head and arm some fascinating backstory, but there’s nothing about them in the guide book, which is a real shame.

Mia especially stands out as a character who must have so much backstory we never hear anything about. How did she get involved with a company as evil as the Connections? How did she justify it to herself for so long – what excuses did she make to herself? Did she genuinely believe they were finding ways to win wars without losing soldiers? Was she gathering evidence against them, was she scared they’d kill her if she left? Not one single word in either the guidebook or the BIR to explain.

Even more annoying to me, though, is just what a wasted opportunity the Baker Incident Report is to add more to Zoe’s story, when she’s one of my favourite RE characters. Included in the text is a letter she received from Mia, giving what should have been the perfect opportunity to flesh out the relationship Zoe and Mia must have built in the three years they spent trapped in the Baker property, the only two (semi-)sane people present – and what does the letter do? Imply they hardly knew each other at all. It’s the most boring possible answer, it contradicts hints from the actual game (Marguerite outright tells us they've been working together, even!), and GDI, you do not get to tell me that my girls didn’t know each other! ;_;

Ethan and Mia similarly get the short shrift. Throughout RE7 their every interaction is building to a big scene that never actually happens where Ethan finds out the truth – Ethan knows Mia’s been keeping secrets, he never stops asking questions about it, and Mia says outright that she wants to come clean. So what does the BIR tell us? Well, post RE7, Mia mentions in an interview that she doesn’t want anyone telling Ethan. Not a word about what changed her mind. Not a word about why Ethan would just stop asking. Total cop-out.

And there’s so much more it could have covered too. There's nothing about Ethan’s ‘military training’. Nothing about the Winters' relationship with Chris. Mia’s conversation with him in RE8 suggests he was personally involved in relocating them to Eastern Europe, but the BIR doesn’t mention that either. The BIR at large is basically just an extended lore dump, and it doesn’t even sound like Zoe’s voice.

So this is about where I finish up with both of these sources: frustrating, inaccessible, inconsistent, and more missed opportunities than real material. There’s a lot in both I’ll happily go on ignoring. But I’ll still pour through them for every last interesting detail, because I am that obsessed with this canon right now, and they’re what we’ve got.