#not starting drama either so don’t waste my time with any anti bullshit

[twistedappletree]

sorry but i’m actually just gonna start blocking people who put zhuiling hate in tags bc yall will ship every incest ship in the book then trash on the one ship where they’re genuinely NOT related and it’s getting so fucking old

[likeabulletyoucanhurtme]

1. What's one thing you would like to change about yourself? The way my brain literally freezes when asked a question I wasn't expecting and I have nothing to say and look stupid but then I've realised I'm doing it again and the words won't come and I've avoided your eyes and look even more stupid and now I just have to say "I don't know" cause my brain is literally white noise now. Either that or my feet. youaintfuckingchangingme

2. Are you religious? If yes, what is your religion? Nope. I am an atheist and now also anti-theist. I've went from not believing in religion to thinking it's one of the worst parts of our planet. theresafirebetweenussowhereisyourgod

3. What was the best phase in your life? What was the worst phase in your life? Best would probably be 0-10 maybe? Idk I can't remember it, might have been good. Worst is definately now.

4. Are you the person you thought you'd be when you were little? I didn't think questions like this when I was little so idk. wheniwaslittleiknewiwouldblowupandsellamillorgrowuptobeatillagonutsandbeakiller

5. Who is one person you would talk to about anything? No one.

6. Have you ever lost someone close to you? Kinda

7. Have you every had your heart broken? Have you ever broken someone else's heart? Mine, yes. Doubt I ever have anyone elses though howcouldihaveburnedparadisehowcouldiyouwerenevermine

8. Do you believe in second chances? Depends on what they've done secondchancestheydontevermatterpeopleneverchange

9. What is one thing that people always misunderstand about you? idk ask them?

10. What is your biggest regret in life? Not standing up for myself to junkie fucks heremenowwordsivownofuckingregrets

11. What things are standing between you and complete happiness? Financial instability, lack of affordable housing, lack of relationship trust and a lack of chocolate too

12. If you lost everything important to you tomorrow, whose arms would you run to in order to make everything okay again? The sweet embrace of oblivion

13. Does the most important person in your life know how much they mean to you? I doubt it

14. If you could send a message to the entire world, what would you say to everybody? Religion is bullshit, let's just give it up guys and focus on saving the planet buttheresnoonetosavemeyeahcauseiknowgodisalie

15. If you were going to die tomorrow, what would you spend today doing? Getting drunk probably iswearthehappiestdayofmylifeisthedaythatidie

16. How would you describe yourself in 5 words? I wouldn't describe myself in 5 words

17. What opportunities have you not taken that you regretted not taking? Everytime I could've bought chocolate and didn't. I regret that.

18. What would you do differently if you knew that no one would judge you? Nothing. Fear of being judged has never stopped me from doing anything because I don't give a fuck what you think idontcarewhatyouthinkaslongasitsaboutme

19. If you could ask one person a single question and they had to answer 100% truthfully, who would you ask and what would you ask them? idk I don't really have any burning questions right now

20. If you could start your life over, what would you do differently? You've already asked my biggest regrets and missed opportunities so read back

21. Are you currently holding on to something that you need to let go of? If yes, what's stopping you from letting go? Fear of change, or of being alone icantbethatwaywhenmylifelooksthisgreysoiletgoiletgo

22. Are you living or just existing? How do you know? I am existing. I am only truly alive when I'm at gigs but they've all been stopped due to the rona getbuyslivingorgetbusydying

23. What was the last thing you did that was really worth remembering? I watched a movie today, though it was kinda crap.

24. What do you want most out of life? To overcome the things standing between me and complete happiness alliwantinlifeistobehappy

25. If you had one year left to live, what would you want to do in the next 12 months? Punch some people very hard in the face and get very drunk

26. If you could get one wish to come true, what would that wish be? For religion to disappear

27. When you think of home, what comes to mind? The house in which I live theysayhomeiswheretheheartisbutwhatashamecauseeveryonesheartdoesntbeatthesame

28. What scares you the most? Global annihilation and the death of the planet

29. What is your greatest strength? What is your greatest weakness? I don't know, I'm not a marvel charachter

30. What did life teach you yesterday? Not to trust memories of a book

31. What have you done in the past week to make someone's life better? Bought a christmas present

32. What makes you special? Nothing. I'm distinctly average.

33. What was a time that you did not speak but you should have? A college presentation

34. Describe what you want the next five years of you life to be like in a single sentence. Full of gigs and alcohol and chocolate

35. If you knew when and where and how you were going to die, would you life be better or worse? I don't know if I could live with that kind of knowledge. I'd probably cry all day

36. What would life look like for you if you never wasted another minute of it? idk I'm not sure what I'd be able to do with all this extra time. dontwasteanotherdaydontwasteanotherminuteicantwaittoseeyourfacejusttoshowyouhowmuchimeanit

37. Do you consider yourself to be the hero or the villain of you story? This is not an action movie. This is more like a boring drama. imjustamanimnotaheroidontcare

38. How much do you love yourself? Not a lot icanhatemyselfmorethananyone

39. What or who have you given up on? Owning a house and certain people ivegivenupontheentirehumanrace

40. Who are you really? Deep down, who are you really? I am me maybeiamjustnotcleverenoughtopersuadeeveryoneofthereasonswerefailingeachother

[atimefordragons]

[ T S E S A R E V N A  ... ]

My incomplete audition for Gem Quest, didn’t have the time to participate properly, let alone finish my audition from all the other groups (yeah, I don’t know what time management is and have no idea how to pace myself). 

“В небе далеком горит звезда, | In distant heaven star shines Не одинока и не одна | It's not alone and not the one Каждый себе выбирает путь | Everyone choose their own way И она не даст свернуть | And star won't allow them to turn Не закрывай глаза | Don't close your eyes Смотри она ведет тебя.. | Look, it leads you...”

-  Звезда (Dima Bilan ft Anna Belan)

Real Name: Yekatrina “Katya/Rina” Anatolyevna Raevskaya

Age: 26

FC: Alia Bhatt

Species & Class: Dragonborn & Mage-Knight

Guild: Moonstone

Description of In-Game Powers: (what their fantasy species lets them do, basically, and all the associated drawbacks)

A dragonborn is a cross-bred species, born from the bloodline of either a human or an elf, and a Great Dragon (highly evolved, ancient dragons that can cast spells, and shit, and even speak the human tongue). Because great dragons are rare, most dragonborn are second generation or later. In the case of Tsesarevna, an ice dragon and a human (not a first gen).

Dragonborns have a natural affinity for magic, particularly elemental, even more specifically for the element of the dragon type whose blood they inherited, in the case of Tsesarevna, frozen water related magic, ice, frost, snow.

Place of Birth: Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation

Appearance: (optional textual description/notes of wardrobe, features not represented by fc, etc)

Places Most Likely to be Found In-Game: Level 20 - A Midwinter Night’s Dream (I see what you did there Ayz) and Level 38 - Murias Pass (the snow reminds her of home, ya know. The cold never bothered me anyway), also sometimes Level 39 - The Dragon, but she’s technically stuck on that level because she refuses to kill the Dragon, issa zaldrīzo ānogar.

Current Inventory:

History Book: The Dragon King Festival

Strongest character trait: eurovision knowledge Confidence (in herself and some others)

Strengths: Katya is almost surprisingly determined, it contradicts with the rest of her “I’ve never had to work hard to get what I want in my life” type personality, but she is persevering and stubborn, when she wants something, she won’t stop until she gets it. Which in her real life was never very difficult getting.  

Weaknesses: Where to even start? Spoiled Princess Brat (she has never not gotten what she wants in her life, and it shows), impatient, impulsive, not exactly a team player (I mean, she is now, but that shady shit she pulled back when she first started playing kinda got her a rep), arrogant, prideful, kind of a bitch (doesn’t really think of it as a weakness, but ya know, it’s hard to make friends), dragon obsession (refuses to kill dragons, even in order to advance the game, got herself and party members killed early on in the game ‘cause of it), kind of an adrenaline junkie, and reckless af. She doesn’t really consider the consequences of the game, wholeheartedly believes her dad, fam and connections in the real world will get her out soon enough, so has no problem running head first into fire (”I’m too hot to die in a video game”).

Player Stats: (on a scale of 1-10, 1 being the weakest, 10 being the strongest. try to balance it out!)

STRENGTH: 9

DEFENSE: 7

CHARISMA: 3

PSYCHE: 5

WILLPOWER: 9

CAUTIOUSNESS: 2

AGILITY: 5

ENDURANCE: 7

INTELLIGENCE: 8

LUCK: 4

Personality:  “Haven’t you ever seen a princess be a bad bitch before?”

Haha, yeah, but mostly, she’s just a massive nerd. She’s such a fucking nerd. Bitch learned Quenya and Sindarin just for kicks, and her own amusement. Literally no one else in her irl circle even fucking knows what those two things are (Elvish tongues in Tolkien).

As the baby of a two large families, and the only daughter of a Russian oligarch, Katya is incredibly spoiled, and very much self-centered. Something of a downplayed celebutante, she is not quite as present at every single high society, high fashion event in Russia, or elsewhere in Europe, she only goes to a handful. And really only for the free stuff, she loves stuff. Katya maintains a somewhat disinterested high social status, as she is the daughter of a major industrialist, and friends with other, higher profile wealthy Russian heirs and heiresses, and there are benefits (so many), but she isn't quite interested in attaining spotlight or attention. However, she also perceives it as something that is just naturally part of her life. She uses a lot of hand gestures when speaking, and tends to give off a naive-princessy vibe who seems to think the world revolves around her. Which, to be fair, it does in her house -she does know that it doesn’t actually, but ya know, can’t quite turn off that bitch, I’m a princess mindset.

“I don’t skate through life... I walk through life. In really nice shoes.” - Alexis Rose (Schitts’ Creek 3.04)

Notably, she speaks with a vocal fry when speaking English. She says “like” a lot, has a bit of a condescending tone, but, she like, does care. About a lot of stuff, but also humanity in general. Spoiled baby she may be, she does have a moral compass, and was amongst the public figures who signed an open letter against the Saint Petersburg Anti-”Gay Propaganda” bill (it’s some bullshit about “protecting” minors from “non-traditional sexual relationships”). She believes in doing the right thing, that the goal of any organization or even person should just be to decrease the net suffering of humanity, but also, she is a super proud Russian. Very anti-american, thinks they’re all stupid, always says shady shit in Russian whenever she runs into americans online. However, it’s not like she’s a fan of United Russia (Putin’s party), they’re right-wing nutjobs, she does not like them. Her main political party is A Just Russia, who are much less then left than her (officially, they be centre-left), but they’re the only ones (of her favoured parties) who have seats in the State Duma (the lower house of the Federal Assembly, Russia’s legislative body - the Duma is like parliament, or congress, I think, I don’t really know what congress is tbh, house of representatives maybe? Idk, the place where Nancy Pelosi is charge, equivalent to that). Katya also supports Patriots of Russia, a socialist, left-wing party, but they only have seats in regional parliaments, and only one seat in the Federation Council (similar to the senate, the upper house of Russia’s legislative body). There’s also Russia of the Future, but it’s not been formally registered yet. In the 2018 election she voted for the communist party’s candidate just for kicks (it’s different in Russia, there’s was zero possibility of Putin losing, come on, grow up).

As a side note, if this helps with the explainary-stuff, I basically envision her as a slavic-desi cross of Alexis Rose from Schitts’ Creek, and Gina Linetti from Brooklyn-99, also this hindi song; Sheila ki Jawani. The song is basically about owning the fact that you’re super sexy.

Biography: Katya is half-Russian, half-Indian, born to a Russian father, industrialist (and oligarch) Anatoli Ivanovich Raevsky, and an Indian mother, activist and journalist Mishti Syeda Khan. Her parents eventually separated, though technically are still married, when she was about 14, and her mother moved to Manchester in the UK, while Katya remained in Russia with her father. Katya is from a large family, on both sides, and at the time of her birth, was the first baby to be born in quite a few years (the elder cousins were like tween-teen, too old be constantly coddled and cuddled, and too young to make babies), so she was hella spoiled by everyone. The problems her maternal family had with her mother marrying a non-Muslim white boy? Well, we still hate him, but look how cute Rina is.

Despite the... complications between her family members - the whole religion/marrying a shada (white) boy thing, not to mention that Mishti herself is like agnostic at “best”, in general, as the baby, Katya (or Rina as her mother and maternal family call her), get along - well, okay, there’s always the shady auntieji’s, and bullshit drama, but like, that’s just brown families yo. We like that. We’re all 100% those bitches (see ya at Eid Nanu [grandma], ya messy bitch). While there is some distance between Katya and her mother, metaphorically and literally, she really does look up to her mother and her work, and followed in her footsteps, studying journalism at Moscow State University, and moving on to work at Известия (Izvestia), the “national” paper of Russia, formerly the state newspaper of the Soviet Union. Currently, she’s a glorified fact checker, and maintains the website with a handful of other colleagues. She’s also authored small “puff pieces” for Nedelya (a weekly Friday section about leisure actives, culture, that kinda stuff).

Katya is not exactly an avid gamer. She likes games, but it’s not like a 24/7 thing, whereas she is 24/7 thinking about like ASOIAF or Stars Wars (fuck you JJ, you were supposed to destroy the Sith R*ylo, not join them), not to mention Eurovision. Anyone who thinks Eurovision only lasts for a week is a fake fan, and anyone who thinks it’s a one day thing is an american. Ziben ziben ilulu motherfucker. Anyway.... she prefers immersive, high fantasy worlds, she likes the story and plot, so her types of games are The Witcher and Dragon Age Series, Elder Scrolls, that sort of thing. She doesn’t put in daily hours, ‘cause she got other stuff to do, but will dedicate weekends to leveling up her characters in order to accomplish quests and missions quickly and not waste time to get to the story cut scenes. She hates, hates, hatessss microtransactions and those stupid fucking mmorpg phone games which are literally just farmville repackaged with a dragon or an orc; FUCK YOU. What a fucking waste of time, quit advertising as having a plot and story, or cool character customization, ‘cause you don’t have any of that you basic ass bitch!

Gem Quest was regifted to Katya by a coworker, who had gotten it as a present, but didn’t have a VR set (of course she had one, she’s rich, and also she needed it to play Batman: Arkham VR - she’s still waiting on a game that’ll let her make out with Nightwing while playing as a custom character). She got a bit of a bad rep (understatement) in the beginning of the game. Katya hates being stuck because she doesn’t have enough exp or whatever, so she always levels up in the beginning of a game before taking the time to fuck around and do whatever, which, in the case of Gem Quest, means teaming up is the easiest way to do that. So, whenever a party member was holding them back from leveling up, she would straight up kill them in order to move on. She killed her own irl friends, to be fair, she doesn’t do that anymore, that was just in the beginning, but ya know, the rep of being that bitch kinda hard to get of.

G.’s announcement didn’t particularly freak out Katya. Whatever kind of evil Kaiba Corp execs bullshit he was pulling didn’t matter, he still had a body out there in the real world, and there’s no fucking way her dad would let die in a fucking game. There’s perks to being Oligarchs in Russia, and even if she did die in-game and was unable to return to reality, wherever G. and his real body were, motherfucker will die in excruciating pain. Polonium-210 ain’t pleasant, and the Novichok series is so much worse.

Relationships: (OPTIONAL, fill out whenever you want to)

Silverwing - rn. Anastasia “Anya” Gagarina (fc: Anna Belan), a fellow moonstone, and real life friend - well, the younger sister of an ex-boyfriend whom she still gets along with (the sister, not necessarily the ex).

Inferna - I don’t really have any plotting ideas, but Inferna’s whole; “It’s very important that I am both cute and powerful” is so relatable (to me and Katya xp)

Enthroned -

Morningstar -

Extras/Trivia (aka unnecessary information):  

Her mother, and thus maternal family, are from Kolkata, in the state of West Bengal in India, thus making Katya fluent (relatively) in Bengali as well (well, a dialect of it - West Central, you’d think as an actual Bengali person, I’d know the proper name of it, but nope. Idk, shudobasha maybe, but I think that’s for people from Dakha, which is in Bangladesh, not India. Whatever. Not like my dad will check this and be disappointed in me.)

Apart from her native Russian, Hindi, and Bengali, she speaks English, and Japanese (100% learned it because she’s a weeb), as well as the fictional languages; Quenya, Sindarin (and can use the Tengwar script to write them), High Valyrian, Mando’a, Dovazhul, and Klingon. As a teenager she also created a dictionary for ancient “Black Speech”, an in-universe constructed language in Tolkien’s legendarium, but her version is not canon, so it doesn’t count - she’s also forgotten a lot of it. She was a baby, she still has the hard copy she made somewhere in the Raevsky Manor in Saint Petersburg.  

After graduating from MSU, her father bought her, her own apartment in the Kudrinskaya Square Building in Moscow, adjacent to the ones he owned already, which she had lived in when she moved to Moscow for school. 

Katya’s family is religiously mixed (well, she’s the one who’s mixed), her maternal family are largely Muslim, some Hindu (very few though, like, you can count them on one hand), and her paternal family are either Orthodox Christian or atheist (usually depending on how long they were alive and how into the Soviet Regime they were). Katya’s parents are agnostic (Mishti), and atheist (Anatoli), Katya herself is also atheist, but sometimes she’ll say she prays to the Seven or R’hllar, or Lord Jashin, or some other made up nerd ass religion (’cause she that bitch).

But for real, she can be a real bitch about religion. The Soviets got a lot wrong, but banning religion was not one of them <- so she says. She gets super pissed when someone brings up religion during a politics chat, that fake shit should have nothing to do with running a country. 

hates starbucks with every fibre of her being, it’s such an american staple and the first time she saw one in Russia, she nearly had a heart attack.

Will die mad about:

The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker; the fuck was that bullshit? We trusted you JJ! 

the garbage show’s gaslighting and murder of Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, First of Her Name, Rightful Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men. Queen of Meereen, The Prince who was Promised, The Unburnt, Slayer of Lies, Breaker of Shackles, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, and Mother of Dragons.

Hrithik Roshan still being so fucking hot (he’s 45, please like chill a little, holy fuck)

Catarina de Lurton dying 

Former american politician John McCain constantly saying “Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country” - bitch, we’re a thousand years old, how’s your 250 year old failed experiment of a garbage nation going? 

Freud.

Links:

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Pinterest

Urstyle Collection (aesthetics, and other shit)

Social Media

[susandsnell]

it's been bugging me for a while now, but five worst parts of the dark Knight and one good part. bc I know you hate the movie 😂😂

boh. oh my gosh. b please don’t hate me.  😂😂

Five worst parts of the Dark Knight: 

5. The Filmmaking. More specfically: LONG AND WASHED OUT PALETTE. IT’S SO FUCKING LONG. IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE OVER TWO AND A HALF HOURS WITH TEN PLOTS TO WRAP UP AND HAVE NO FUCKING COLOURS IN IT. WE GET IT, NOLAN, A MAN DRESSED UP AS A BAT BRINGS YOU NO JOY AND SO NOW WE HAVE TO NOT HAVE ANY JOY IN OUR HEARTS EITHER, THANKS A LOT. HERE I THOUGHT I WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE FUN AT A MOVIE ABOUT BATMAN, BUT YOU SURE PROVED ME WRONG. 

4.  The Writing. Holy pretentious dialogue Batman! Where do I begin?Harvey Dent’s “I will state the theme of my arc in the most lazy and blatant foreshadowing speech until Emma Stone literally says she’s gonna die in the opening of The Amazing Spiderman 2″ gets quoted all the time and yes, superhero movies aren’t known for their subtlety, and not all great movies need to be subtle, but the “die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain” is egregious not only for the reasons I stated, but is a nauseating indicator of the film’s cynicism (despite what the boat climax purports to be proving!). Alfred’s “some men just want to watch the world burn” speech is similar albeit less facepalmy and Theme Stating. It’s blunt and heavy-handed, overly expositional, and very hit-you-over-the-head with regard to commentary. 

And here’s the thing! It could work in the context of the type of movie it is - The Shape of Water pretty much opens with a statement of the “who the real monster is” idea, but it works because the film is a fairy tale and presents itself as such, whereas this movie wants to have its cake and eat it too as a “super adult DEEP subtle COMPLEX movie” with incredibly clear and simple shit like this. Beyond that,  Nolan really has a dialogue issue in a lot of his works where nobody just has a fucking conversation. Everything has to be the most serious issue in the world or a ten thousand word treatise on the fundamental dichotomies of human nature or some shit you’d hear in a freshman philosophy 101 course from that guy nobody can tolerate who thinks he’s G-d’s gift because he wears glasses or some shit, I don’t know. Even the Joker, an agent of chaos, gets wrapped up into it! Like he is a showman, but the yammering and rambles of shit that isn’t even that deep but pretends to be gets on my damn nerves. And the worst part is that it comes at the expense of the characters. 

They don’t really…develop emotional bonds (even with Rachel, the token woman And Therefore the Object At Which Emotions are Thrown). I’m not invested because none of these characters are real or relatable or have human interactions. The script shouldn’t be an anchor that drowns the actors and suffocates the characters to the point that there’s no chemistry, no connection, no believable core. Alfred is practically Bruce’s father and I get no love out of them! Harvey and Bruce don’t connect at all! Lucius Fox, the only POC in the entire movie, is literally reduced to a plot device despite having moral concerns! 

3. That damn third act. This one takes special mention because it just pisses me off. It’s just too much! The chase with the Joker would be fine, but that’s not the end. His plot already extends way beyond where it would logically end (hence the bullshit runtime), but on top of that, on top of the drama with the escape ferries hammering you over the head with the point they’re trying to make about humanity and the obnoxious moralizing, and then you have Harvey’s fall to the dark side which I’m sorry, needed a lot more time than just getting crammed in to the back end of the movie. His descent into evil happened way too quickly. Two-Face is a great villain! But take Batman the Animated series (to me, the best adaptation of Batman there is, while not perfect) as an example: he’s established as a character and his descent into Two-Face receives the full focus of entire episodes and impacts the characters later on! Having him play sideshow to the Joker is a huge mistake, especially with something as huge at play as threatening Gordon’s family; it completely disrupts the focus of the plot and unnecessarily prolongs the film as a whole, but he goes down pretty easily in one of the movie’s shitty-ass fight sequences that I’d make their own point if there weren’t worse things because I can’t tell who’s punching who. And if you’re gonna rush Dent into villainy only to kill him, that makes his whole plot kinda a waste.

And The Dark Knight Rises was a lot more criticized than the Dark Knight, so how’s this for a fix for the entire trilogy? Don’t kill Two-Face. Keep Joker getting carted away gloating about having corrupted him, but then have Two-Face get away too.  Don’t make whitewashed lamely written Bane the villain of the next movie - instead, let the tail end of this movie build Two-Face up as the main villain for the final part! That way, you have more time for development, cohesiveness, consequences, exploration of themes, and you don’t waste characters. 

2.  Batman / Bruce Wayne’s entire character. Okay, so whenever I fawn over the Lego Batman movie and how it confronts the issue with modern portrayals of Bats and rightfully points out it’s not deep, he’s just a humongous dick, this feels like the source material of that popular portrayal. Of course, it pre-dates it in the comics - Miller and company are to blame for Grimdark Asshat who Batmansplains, but I feel like Dark Knight especially, for its success and greater accessibility as a film, is what widely propagated this portrayal. 

Secret identity or cape and cowl, there is a serious issue in your Batman movie if your Batman is terrible. He’s the protagonist, the titular character, and he’s fucking terrible! At best, Bruce Wayne is like…completely deadpan and not even there (I don’t give Bale shit because I think a lot of the fault lies with the writing/direction, Ledger was pretty much the only lively performance in the movie), placeholder of a protagonist. At worst, he comes off as deeply self-centered, self-aggrandizing, entitled, and violently unstable. I don’t care how bad the Joker is, when in custody, he still had legal rights, and Batman fucking tortured him. Even brutal criminals should not ever be tortured for information! And the film never engages with Bats reaching the point of beating people to a pulp as means of interrogation; he just feels conflicted about who’s worse and broods over it after the fact instead of, I don’t know, maybe thinking twice about torturing someone. The darker Marvel Netflix shows have their characters doing a lot of grim things, but the narrative or other characters almost always holds them accountable for it in ways beyond “aww, I feel kinda sad that I beat mentally ill people to a bloody pulp” – it challenges them often, or has other characters call them out. Batman just does this shit and people are like “oh you shouldn’t do that” and he’s like “AHHH I’M A MONSTER” and it borders into uncomfortable real-life implications with regard to authority and violence. There’s something to be said for introducing grey morality into superhero media, and I get the anti-hero thing, but Dark Knight codified the “white guy grimdark antihero being actually just a terrible fucking person who is the good guy in name only” deal we see in a lot of our media today.

It’s one thing to have a complex and flawed protagonist, but you have to balance that out with redeeming qualities, otherwise, he’s not even a fucking superhero! Again, I refer back to the 90s animated series: Batman has his moments of ruthlessness, but it’s balanced out with the philanthropy work we see in Bruce Wayne, and moments of genuine compassion that he shows many of his enemies – he apologizes genuinely to Two-Face, often tries to give them an out, and is frequently super kind to Harley Quinn, bringing her the dress she was accused of stealing when she was sent back to Arkham in the episode where she tried to redeem herself, and frequently trying to get her to acknowledge that the Joker is abusive towards her, as well as convince her she can still start over and be a good person. On top of which, Batdad is super popular in both the show and the comics. He’s frequently shown as having an especial soft spot for children; addition to all his adopted kids, you also have a lot of his interactions with children, whether as Bruce or as Batman, marked by gentleness, care, and compassion, largely based on what he went through as a child. 

You get no such moment in the Dark Knight. I cannot for the life of me think of kids who would go to see this as a Batman movie and leave looking up to Batman and wanting to be like him except on the surface level of wearing a cool costume and punching bad guys. There is nothing heroic or admirable about this Bruce. He fights crime as a vigilante - brutally, I might add -and this time, it comes off more as a desire for vengeance than a desire for justice, a point which the film raises, but ultimately doesn’t resolve or engage with in a satisfying character arc. 

The closest thing we get to humanizing this character is his relationship with Rachel, and even then, his interactions with her have heavy shades of Friendzoned Nice Guy which is especially bullshit because he won’t pursue a relationship with her yet is bitter about any decisions she might make about her own love life. He doesn’t even care about her that much as anything more than a conquest! He really doesn’t, and Alfred tearing up the letter proves that – with regards to how he behaves towards her, it really feels like it’s not so much that the letter would break his heart as it is that he’d resent her beyond the grave! 

Worse yet, he gives no shits about anyone else. This has a lot to do with Nolan’s scripts having a toxic masculinity problem where it’s not cool for guys to sympathize with or have emotional bonds amongst themselves, but like… he’s allies in a shared venture with the other characters, and nothing more. Alfred is practically his dad but you wouldn’t know that. Gordon, as revealed in TDKR, was kind to him after his parents’ deaths, but they’re just partners. Harvey is a rival for claiming a woman!  In other adaptations, Bruce and Harvey’s friendship is fleshed out a lot so the guilt and shock of his transformation into Two-Face is really impactful! Here, Bruce doesn’t really give a shit beyond it just being another thing to do. 

And that’s what heroism and motivations are to Batman in this - just a thing to do. I don’t want to watch a hero who’d rather bitch about doing good than actually just fucking do good, this is the safety of your city, not a school essay! He doesn’t really seem to want to help people, he wants to complain about people, but then thinks he’s so fucking special and such a snowflake martyr for still helping them regardless! It’s such a deeply childish and yes, toxically male mentality. I know it’s become a meme, but the ”I’m not the hero Gotham needs, but the hero that it deserves” line pisses me off so much for this reason, as well as the fact that he thinks that Gotham’s flaws justify the fact that he beats the fuck out of people and roars in their face to get answers; I think the perfect refutation to both that line and how a superhero protagonist that explores what heroism means can actually be found in Wonder Woman – “It’s not about deserve, it’s about what you believe.” In fact, that’s what made Wonder Woman so good (and feminist!) – it’s rejection of toxic masculine ideals and emphasis on love, compassion and vulnerability being one’s strength, and that people are inherently deserving of being saved if you believe in the good of the world - a much better treatise on good and evil than “see, people sometimes don’t explode boats but they still suck so it’s okay for a billionaire in furry cosplay to beat the shit out of mentally ill people because that’s what this city deserves, a guy who’s more into violence than saving people.” He just doesn’t care, so why the hell should we?

And there’s just no arc. He just reacts to shit and that’s it, which makes him boring when he’s not being a fucking maniac. Despite the script not allowing him to have feelings for other human beings, having him break his no-kill rule with Harvey at the end would have been impactful….had he not already broken it in Batman Begins by leaving White Ra’s al Ghul (Liam Neeson I love you but there is no reason to have whitewashed him or Talia the way Nolan did in the series - same as he did with Bane and arguably Catwoman since she’s been portrayed as a WOC many times before, actually come to think of it, there is a LOT of whitewashing in this trilogy) to his death. 

The film comes up with no real way to challenge it’s hero, have him grow, or change, or even show consequences for his failure to change, making him come off as stunted, unlikeable, and yeah, not much of a hero.

1. The sexism. (You knew this was coming, and yes, it is the worst part). I already mentioned how the men in this movie all fall prey to toxic masculinity as is common with Nolan characters, then even more characteristic of a Nolan movie is The Dead Girlfriend, Wife, or Daughter (you know, the only three things women could ever be!) of Sad White Guy(s). Rachel is the only female character (strike one) and she is handled nothing short of atrociously. Her entire job as a lawyer, intelligence, and hard work established in Batman Begins (which is also too grimdark but actually doesn’t piss me off half as much!) is hardly even mentioned and takes a backseat to her being a prize for the men (including her boss!) to throw feelings at and squabble over. While the male characters have no personality except for one characteristic and a goal because this script was written by an edgy thirteen year old boy, Rachel has no personality except to be a living emotional crutch/plot device. She does not exist as an autonomous individual outside her relationships to the men in the movie. Shit, she’s barely autonomous within these relationships! Bruce is a bitter little shit about her not wanting him back and we’re supposed to feel for him despite him literally offering her nothing relationship-wise for two movies and actively pushing her away at times! He feels he can’t be with her, but the framing is such that she shouldn’t have the right to be with anyone else, either! What the hell? I would even go so far as to say that her choosing Harvey just as she gets blown up, as well as how both of them got to that point, almost feel like the narrative punishing her for not wanting Bruce. More male entitlement bullshit. 

 And her fate…well, I mean. There’s a damn reason The Dark Knight is my go-to example when I want to explain what Fridging/Stuffed in the Fridge means. After having every possible stereotypical pigeonholed white girl trope tossed at her, Rachel is killed off callously for the character development and man angst of not one, but two self-obsessed stubbled white guys who make it about themselves and their right to act like phenomenal turds. She’s Helen of Troy – a woman blamed for people’s reactions to her (Harvey becoming Two-Face, Batsy or Bruce being saaaaaad, etc). She’s the Lost Lenore; a person reduced to how their death impacts their romantic interests.  We have reached peak Nolan here, and frankly, peak Batman too, because the franchise (comics, movies, etc) has always had this same problem with its treatment of women. Her fucking death isn’t even about her! It’s Harvey’s fucking villain origin and Bruce’s sad ending and Alfred’s resentment and note-burning and would she have waited, oh boo hoo, how about, did she have a fucking family, what would have happened if she hadn’t been murdered young, et fucking cetera. 

The thing that really gets me is that Rachel is by no means the worst treated woman in speculative fiction (especially not those that make a claim to some degree of intellectualism); she’s white, so her death is beautifully tragic and she’s put on a pedestal rather than being subjected to racialized misogynistic tropes (being treated more roughly by the narrative, having her suffering ignored or erased altogether, her death being callously ignored except for a throwaway line of dialogue, etc), she’s not unnecessarily and gratuitously sexually brutalized for shock value (that looks uncomfortably like fetishism at times) like the women on Game of Thrones or in nu!Bond movies, or, if we’re still in the Batman universe, Barbara Gordon in any iteration of the Killing Joke (which is another tentpole of misogyny in the Batman universe and I fucking hate it and it clearly influenced the Dark Knight, so, chicken, egg). She isn’t forcibly sterilized and her inability to get pregnant treated as making her a freak like AOU Black Widow. She has no pointless and insulting fanservice scenes like Carol Marcus in her underwear in Star Trek: Into Darkness. Her suffering is not treated as empowerment like any number of women written by Joss Whedon, she isn’t used to be chewed up and spat out and destroyed in a romance with either a guy who terrifies her and in whom she’s shown no prior romantic interest or an outright villain who has caused her nothing but pain in some stupid half-assed not-redemption arc where she has to sublimate herself and be stupidly forgiving beyond the willing suspension of disbelief so some horrible man can evolve.

But why this sexism sticks out to me is that it’s so insidious; if it were more on the nose like the examples I listed above, it’d almost be less jarringly offensive, but it masquerades as her being an empowered yet tragic character and weaves into an overall narrative that validates all the tropes I mentioned, and legitimizes itself in a way that feels fundamentally dishonest about how sexist it’s being. Worse yet, there’s the fact that The Dark Knight is more than just self-contained; its influence on not just comic book movies, but all kinds of media as we know it, is undeniable. And as far as setting the example goes? This hugely well-regarded, influential film is almost entirely white, and tells us that women exist as distractions, tragedies, and extensions of men’s storylines, and this bullshit has been echoing in similar media works since. 

AND NOW, THE ONE (or multiple!) NICE THING(S): 

All this being said, I admit there actually are a lot of things I like about this movie if I can separate them enough from the main issues! 😂For one thing, Hans Zimmer’s work on the score is top-notch; I listen to Like a Dog Chasing Cars and Harvey Two-Face all the time and the music alone provokes stronger emotions for the characters than anything in the movie actually did. The opening heist is just fantastically entertaining, and up until the messy third act, the pacing and plot is pretty tight and engaging! Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker is of course fantastic; although he’s not my favourite Joker, he really gave it his all, and is by and large the highlight of the film. Nolan is really good with visual appeal (with the exception of that damn colour palette) and the shots are fantastic. I really love the chase scene with the Joker and wish the rest of the movie held my excitement like that.  

Finally, it’s odd to say this, but I really like the world of the movie once I ignore the characters and plot. The Gotham that was built in Nolan’s trilogy, the contrast between the classes with the lavish receptions and dinners versus the underbelly, the corruption versus the goodness, how these disparate elements work in a terrible symbiosis, the architecture and technology reflecting this character – it’s incredibly vivid, both grounded in reality and yet sufficiently speculative fiction-y enough to be intriguing. I just wish that the people in it matched the quality of the setting. 😂😂😂

[iluvrambling]

Do Not Play BnS

Blade and Soul is an action MMO (no, really, it is - the combat is great) from NCSoft, best known for stabbing City of Heroes/Villains in the back and hiding the body under a bridge.  I'm still bitter.

But I'm even more bitter about how my experiment with Blade and Soul ended.  (It ended badly, obviously.)  I really enjoy playing this game.  The story is fun, the music is fantastic, the combat is glorious.  So why am I going to delete this game and why am I recommending that you pass on it?

The players.

The playerbase of BnS is, for the most part, a deeply entrenched group that is actively seeking to deter new players from participating.  The game encourages this, with events that punish new players (for example: PvP for Valentine's Day, against people of all level ranges, in an area required for story progression).  The only way to get acceptance is to either a) be in Korea or b) pay to cover up your inexperience.  All things are forgiven to whales!  Not a whale?

Then you probably shouldn't play.  You think I'm joking, don't you?

Looking to learn the game?  That's great!  Just be willing to put up with crushing failure - unless you have fantastic ping and never make any errors.  Even then, you still have to put up with a clan full of exclusionary ***** who will forever let you know that you will never be as good as the people who have been here since Day 1.  Unless you buy stuff, then you're okay.  Some games are pay to win, and of course BnS is one of them, but more than that, it is pay to not suck.  Of course, you could pour hundreds of hours into farming gold so you can buy Ncoin at a crippling exchange rate so you can buy things from the cash shop.

Or you could play any other game.  And that's what I suggest you do.

You will not be able to progress past the story without a clan.  Clans hate newcomers and treat them like dirt for not knowing all the mechanics beforehand.  Looking up the mechanics requires knowing that a) the NA version names are different from every other region (what the hell is Skybreak Spire?) b) most guides use abbreviations of the KR names translated to English (Skybreak Spire is Black Tower, commonly called BT).  And that's just a sample of the asshattery a new player who wants to do endgame content has to navigate.  We haven't even gotten to the special, special brand of interpersonal clan drama you can expect from BnS!

And on top of all that, the NA client is an extremely poorly optimized piece of ... software (and oh do I use that term loosely).  It comes with 'anti cheat' software but as far as I can tell, all it does is cause even more lag.  XIGNCODE.  It's bad.  No one likes it, except the people who get paid to bundle it with their game.

The sad part is, while I had a clan to play with, I could kind of look past all the flaws (though I noted them) and I was willing to suffer through the things that annoyed me (I even spent some money on it!) but the second the drama hit me and people started sneering about how awful I was for being poor and therefore bad at the game (I was doing fine, I thought, but apparently I was just too poor and stupid to notice how terrible I really was) all the fun left BnS like air from a balloon.  It went from a cool martial arts MMO with neat graphics to a miserable soul sucking experience where I seriously questioned why I was wasting time logging in.  What good was it to work on upgrading my gear when no one was ever going to have me in a raid ever again?  When I never wanted to be in a raid again?  (Disclaimer: I run raids in many other MMOs.  Except GW2, I don’t bother there, I’m just lazy.  I’ve dealt with obscure mechanics, that’s not the problem.  Poorly explained mechanics with shitty game optimization that prioritizes boob jiggle over attacks connecting and in fact processes enemy response BEFORE player input is registered is the complete bullshit problem.  There are classes that are utterly dependent on animation canceling to work.  Macros are expected.  It’s bullshit.  Complete bullshit.)

Yes, yes, I could have swallowed my pride (or the clan leader's dick) and just ignored the bullshit and continued playing so I could experience more... of the same endgame raids?  But why?  I liked my clan name more than I liked the people in it, at that point.  I knew the raids well enough to do them with strangers, but why?  So I could get new gear to qualify for the next raid that I've never done before and would have to do with total strangers who wouldn't explain anything?  I'd be right back at square one, teaching myself and saving money to buy more gear so I could... run with people who hate me because I am a clueless noob.

There are many definitions of fun, and that one comes right after the one where I take a drill to my nuts.  Honestly, once you get done with the main story of BnS, there is no reason to play the game.

Buying a level 50 to skip the main story just gets you to that point faster.

[the-e4b]

Where do I fucking begin with this.

First off, great to fucking see you can’t just let shit be and have to continue coming into our lives.

Second, great way to all all smug and coy and think your post is somehow gonna make us rethink our lives because somehow you think we’re fucked in the head.

Let me dissect your post DisneyMaster, dear boy:

- “I think at some point in your lives, you faced a horrible of such magnitude like me that you could only see the flaws in everything including humanity. You became such cynical nihilists that you end up convincing yourself that you were either better than everyone else or that everyone else can be as ugly as you are.”

It’s called “disillusionment”, ever heard of it?

You can’t share an opinion without someone daring to harass you for it, you can’t even express something you’re into without someone accusing you of being supportive of the negative, and do I even need to share what this stupid site tends to do if you’re things they hate.

It’s not fucking permanent however because I’m not Mr. Enter. Nor are the other five. We may hate the current state of things, but that doesn’t mean we’re all fucking miserable.

I’ll admit I was very cynical around 2016, but that’s because shit was hell for me in 2016 and in a dark place. But that’s past since 2016 was hell for everyone anyway.

- “ In any case, I went through what you guys did and while there are moments of great hatred that I have for some people, that I came close to throwing everything away that I've built up, there is one thing that I've done to get through every day, I concentrate on the good of everything. I look at the bright lights in weary worlds and I keep on walking and dreaming. “

That’s great you’re all looking better into the future, that’s fine. Everyone at one point tries to move on and get better from everyone one endures. Kudos for moving on from Twilacorn drama and being a better person.

Now, what else?

- “ Ask me this, you are happy digging through the refuse of humanity and bringing it out for everyone to see? Are you happy being in the same bed with people who commit deplorable acts against their fellow man and others as well?”

...Oh boy here we go.

You make it seem like we do this on a daily basis. If you haven’t noticed, we haven’t fucking even touched DA crap in a long while. And second, the stuff we find are submitted to us since our followers want to see us discuss what was submitted. You are really gonna start with this?

- “Are you even confident that I'm worse than Hitler or that it's okay to misgender somebody you disagree with because you are that much of an expert in gender identity?”

YOU ARE ACTUALLY GONNA FUCKING START THAT DEPLORABLE SELF ENTITLED BULLSHIT AGAIN!?

Okay, fine. The fucking logical gloves are off here:

1. we haven’t fucking talked to you in a long time. IF AT ALL. After you happily admitted you were being a cock for a long time over Twilacorn YEARS after it passed and even gave a blunt rant towards the fandom’s pickiness, you basically moved on from us and vice versa (heck you blocked us to move on, which is understandable). The only reason we responded back is because you came back again complaining about the usual stupid tumblr bullshit we don’t bother with. If you had FUCKING ACTUALLY JUST BEEN LIKE “So how come you guys are doing this and this”, it wouldn’t have been a problem, BUT then you pull the fucking tumblr dialogue (”anti SJW”/”neuro-bigatory”) and accusing us of “picking targets”. Fuck m8.

And then my “favorite:

2. FUCK OFF WITH THE STUPID MISGENDERING BULLSHIT. NOT EVERYTHING IS A FUCKING MISGENDERING/TRANSPHOBIC CRAP. I’ve made it fucking clear and get it through your fucking egotistical skull: I refuse to call Peet by their preferred name because all they’ve done is show NO RESPECT to ANYBODY, constantly forcing down their political beliefs on their videos/twitter/tumblr, attacking their ex friends over trivial things, disrespecting ACTUAL transgenders, and of course the infamous “I could credit this person’s artwork I’m using but I’m a cunt who will refuse to do so” incident. Since I’m close to multiple artists, Peety Tooty’s disrespect against artists have made me refuse to give them that respect of wanting to be called “Lily”, Don’t agree with me on it? Fine, but Shut the flying Celestia up over the fucking “Misgendering” shit.

- “ Maybe you are and this paragraph was just a complete waste of time.”

It really wasn’t until you started spewing accusations and elitism at us.

- “But perhaps if there is a speck of compassion in you and your cohorts to change your ways than maybe we can help each other out.”

The beginning was ACTUALLY was fine, as mentioned.

- “ I think I would like to have friends who would rather politely tell me what I'm doing wrong than a troll who just wants to keep pressing my buttons until I lash out at them making it look like I'm the bad guy. I'll let you think about it and feel free to dissect this for anything that makes you feel justified in your actions. Whatever makes you feel happy.”

The latter ruined it. Great job.

Really DisneyMaster. Just let it be. You were doing well beforehand now just fucking let it go.

One last thing.

LEAVE SATURN ALONE.

Just fucking because she called you out on some shit doesn’t mean you have a right to begin trying to find her so you can possibly deliver the same fucking rant you gave us.

Now if you excuse me, I’ll leave this blackgaze song and go get coffee...

- deafpony.

[ezmisery]

The White Dog of McClean Maternity Ward

It was impossible to work on the ward without hearing about The White Dog. The rumor traveled as if it were an animal itself, walking from person to person with a sullen limp. Rumblings would start from the patients, then move to the orderlies, and finally the medical staff. And once the patients were off the maternity ward they brought news of the dog to the general population. It was unruly. Embarrassing, really. But we had no control of it.

I had been working at McClean for over five years. It was a job I thoroughly enjoyed. As a psychiatrist, I knew I wanted to work with the patients most in need. And I couldn’t think of anywhere more in need than McClean Mental Hospital.

We housed a diverse group of the mentally ill. From the light-end of the spectrum, where patients only visited once a month, to the deranged and violent inmates we housed 24/7. I began my career in the eating disorder ward. At first I was slightly unnerved by the ribs protruding like tree branches. The patients were walking skeletons. One slipped on a wet floor and broke nearly all her bones as if she were an elderly woman. I spent two years there, working non-stop on food plans and boosting self-esteem.

It lost its appeal pretty quickly. I got bored of doing and saying the same things over and over. I stopped feeling like I was making a difference. Sure, my patients needed me. But their problems were so benign.

Eventually I moved to Ward 6. This was the ward for the ‘worst’ of society. These were the patients who were admitted without their consent, most likely due to a violent outburst or self-harm incident. I balanced a caseload of forty three people. During my time in this ward I was bit, punched, tackled, and vomited on. But I loved it. Being able to reach out to those who could barely function…it was thrilling. My heart beat faster every time we had an incident.

But even with these dangerous patients I lost interest. It became monotonous to try and help them only to see no progress. These people were beyond help. I felt like I was wasting my time with them.

I’m not sure exactly why I transferred to the maternity ward in particular. Well, if I’m being honest, it was because I thought it might be more exciting. The patients I worked with were messed up, sure, but adding a baby to all that crazy would make things even more stimulating. I’ve always had a bad habit of wanting as much drama in my life as possible. Plus the extra pay didn’t deter me either.

But this isn’t the point. I am trying to write about the White Dog. My first run-in with the legend came from a woman in Ward 6. Marlene. I met with her weekly for treatment just like the other patients. She was completely unresponsive to any form of questioning. The hour would be spent asking questions that received silent answers. I figured she was too medicated so I lowered her dose of anti-psychotics. The next session she remained quiet, but more afraid than before.

“How is the new dose feeling?” I asked her.

She didn’t respond. I resisted sighing in frustration.

“I thought today we could go over some things in your file. You’ve been with us almost three years. And I see before Ward 6 you were on the maternity ward-”

“Don’t put me back there,” Marlene cried out suddenly. “He’ll come for me. He’ll come back. He follows. He takes.”

My curiosity spiked, I lay down my notebook. “It is good to hear your voice.”

“Please, no. He is so cold. Cold.” She drew her knees up to her chest and began to rock back and forth.

“Who are you speaking of, Marlene?” I leaned a little closer.

Tears sprouted from her squinted eyes. The color left her skin. “The White Dog,” she whispered. Suddenly she slapped herself in the face and then pulled her earlobe so hard it split. I was used to violent outbursts so I called an orderly and we dealt with the situation quickly.

I wrote the incident off as a symptom of her psychosis. Making up stories can help patients cope with stress or trauma. Marlene had lost the child she was carrying when she was in the maternity ward, so it made sense for her to imagine some sort of monster to explain the loss. I mentioned it briefly to another psychiatrist, Doug, during a meeting and he laughed. The reaction was so strange I pressed him on it.

“You’ve never heard of the ‘White Dog of McClean’?” He grinned. “It’s our own personal urban legend.” Doug split his time between maternity and Ward 6, so I listened closely.

“I figured it was just something she made up.”

“No, the patients have created an entire monster story for this thing.” He chuckled. Doug was an easy going guy; perhaps too much so. He didn’t take his job very seriously. “Supposedly there is a white dog that haunts the maternity ward. It prowls from room to room, ripping babies out of the patients and then swallowing them. And if he isn’t satisfied with the infants, he’ll go after the women too. They say he’s almost as tall as a man with fur so white it looks cold to touch.” He locked eyes with me for a moment before breaking away in laughter. “It’s all bullshit. Just a story the patients tell themselves. Don’t worry about it.”

But I did worry about it. I didn’t think it was real, obviously. But the effects of a common psychosis were fascinating. If what Doug said was true, multiple women had the same delusion. It was passed back and forth like a virus. Now that I’m writing this down and thinking on it, maybe the Dog was the reason I transferred wards after all.

Whatever brought me there, even on my first day I could see the effects of the legend. Patients begged to be moved to a different ward. They never wanted to be alone. At night the women would scream with fear at any noise. Most had to be restrained to avoid serious injury to themselves. My first few days on the job were shrouded in chaos. Orderlies ran after women with giant stomachs. The nurses were jaded, handing out medicine with barely a look. Doug was the only other psychiatrist on the ward so we did most of the heavy lifting.

I had seventeen women on my caseload. It nothing compared to my previous work. I saw the patients for some light therapy and med changes. A lot of them had to be taken off the heavy stuff due to the baby. Weirdly enough, all of the women came from Ward 6, where I had worked previously. One patients stood out to me – Lou.

Lou was barely eighteen. She was thin as a rail but could do a lot of damage to herself. She had lived at McClean for almost her entire life. In recent years, she had made immense progress. Her habit of cutting was almost completely cured. She spoke positivity about getting a job and living on her own. We were all quite proud of her.

I sat down with her and saw a completely different person. Not only had she resorted back to self-harm (as evidenced by her fresh scars) but she was also making no sense.

“Lou,” I said softly, “You need to slow down and tell me what’s going on.”

“He wants the baby so bad he’s going to take it before it’s ready chew the head like a lollipop pop pop pop chew spit pop.” She stared deep into my eyes as she spouted this nonsense.

“Who? Who wants the baby?”

“The Dog. Pop pop split bleed bite the tiny skull until it breaks breaks breaks breaks breaks.” I could tell she was trying to tell me something important.

“Lou, I don’t understand you. Can you go slower?”

“Slow is death slow gets you caught against a wall hurt up up rip sh sh sh you’ll wake the baby.” Her hands were twitching.

I moved closer to her. “No one will hurt you, Lou. You are safe here.”

She leaned in, her voice a bit quieter. “The Dog hunts when the swans are asleep and the people pretend he is one of them.” She spit violently onto my cheek. “She’ll die she’ll die she’ll die she’ll die!”

“Who?” I wiped her saliva off my face.

For the first time she stopped and said something coherent. “My baby. He’s going to kill her tonight.”

I was scared Lou would try and abort her child, so I put in the order to have her restrained until the morning. I went about the rest of my duties and left for the night. The next morning Lou was dead. Her child’s heart had stopped beating. Her stomach was severely bruised and one of her hands was sliced open. There was no explanation as to how any of this happened.

I was thrilled. Not because she died, obviously. But because it was such a mystery. The psychosis was so strong she broke out of her restraints and literally ended her life. I vowed that I would spend the next night in the ward to see if anything like this could be replicated. And prevented, of course.

I made space in the day to see every one of my patients. None of them seemed surprised about Lou. “It was her turn,” Jade told me in her deep, depressive voice. “The Dog was hungry.”

“Whose turn is it tonight?” I could barely contain my excitement.

“Oh doctor. It’s mine.” She rubbed her hands over her belly. “Can’t you see how ripe I am? How delicious I’ll taste? I’ve been asking to get out of this ward since the damn thing was put in me. But I’ve accepted it. I am his now. At least I won’t be afraid anymore.”

I made sure Jade would be restrained and decided I would monitor her room that night. She was the only patient who said the Dog would hurt her. I left her door open and sat in the doorway, her file in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.

The night began as usual. Some of the women screamed to be let go. Jade fell asleep without incident. As the darkness stretched on I revisited her file. She had murdered her husband because she believed he was inhabited by the devil. Sent to Ward 6 when she was 28. She was there for two years before transferring to the maternity ward.

I had to reread that twice. Two years in Ward 6 before being transferred…so she had to have gotten pregnant in the hospital. But the patients were segregated by gender. She never should have come in contact with a male patient at all.

That’s when things began to crumble. All of the women here were from Ward 6. All of them had to have gotten pregnant inside the facility. But how? I ran back to my office and scoured the records. Lou had lived her entire life in gender segregation. How could she have gotten pregnant? How could any of these women?

Slowly I walked back to Jade’s room in complete confusion. The hall was cold. Everyone had gone completely quiet. Jade’s open door swung in the non-existent wind. “Hello,” I called out, the hairs on my neck standing up.

A howl sounded from inside her room. Believing it was Jade, I ran through the entryway only to stop suddenly in my tracks. Standing in her room was a huge white dog. It was almost six foot tall. Its fur was ice white. It had two wounds on either side of its body. Hanging from the wounds were unborn dog fetuses. Streaks of red bloodied its teeth. It looked at me with dead, yellow eyes.

I slowly backed up but the thing growled at me. It wanted me to watch. Carefully it stood on its back two legs and hovered over Jade’s body. It bit down on her stomach. The bones made a sickening pop. Jade awoke and began to scream. The Dog ripped at her throat, leaving her voiceless and gurgling. It then turned to me. I was breathing heavily. The room seemed to be spinning. It slowly approached me. I swear I heard it laughing. It lunged at me and I fell backward, hitting my head and passing out.

…

I don’t work at McClean anymore. After that night I couldn’t bring myself to go visit that cursed building. My logical brain tells me that what I saw wasn’t real. Doug said maybe I had too much coffee. But whatever I saw still lives in my brain. I don’t know how many women died on that ward. I try not to think about it. I was an over-eager idiot who thought I could cure something real. It was real. Logic be damned it was real.

All I know is that if I stayed in that job, I would have ended up just as crazy as my patients.

[dawnover-dusk]

Starling { Seungcheol } (1)

genre: crime!au, mystery

word count: 1,488

summary: when monsters from 5 years past come back to play

warning: death, blood, if you can’t watch crime dramas do not read

note: no one reads my fics anyways but please let me know if you want me to add tags that you can blacklist!! also, i have no idea where this series is going

next > 

You started your work day with a hot coffee in your hand and an angry chief on your heels. The older woman fell into stride besides your nonchalant form, irritatingly waving off the front desk receptionist who made the mistake of bidding the two of you a good morning. You flashed an apologetic smile at the officer while holding up your ID card to the scanner guarding the door to the secure facility which laid beyond it. It blinked green to give you access to a harshly lit corridor.

The pair of you stopped in front of large red door, much too colorful in a hallway drenched with whites and grays. You unlocked the door and propped it open, watching your boss sit huffily on the uncomfortable chair placed on the opposite side of your desk. You had hoped that your superior would reprimand you in public, but the woman was much too experienced to let anyone witness any sort of challenge to her authority.

As soon as you closed the door to your small office, Chief Medical Examiner Jessica Ho attacked. 

“The new fellows are starting today,” she began, a soft Brooklyn accent twinging her husky voice. “Or, should I say ‘fellow’, because you scared them all away.”

You shrugged, feigning stupidity as you hung up your wool coat on a hook at the back of your door. “I can’t sugarcoat the realities of this job with government benefits and vacations, Chief. You know it’s a bunch of bullshit.”

She sighed in response to your statement, not wanting to admit that you said the truth. “If you weren’t the best at what you do, I would’ve fired you.”

“Chief, you enjoy my company,” you teased, grabbing your green scrubs and putting them on over your clothes. “Just keep me away from recruitment events.” After tying your hair up in a high ponytail, you donned your white coat.

“His name is Mingyu Kim. Apparently was appointed chief resident and had stellar recommendations from all of his rotations. Don’t mess this up.” With her vague threat lingering in the air, she sashayed out of your office, her heels clacking on the linoleum floor. 

You smirked as you stared down at the headshot attached to Mingyu’s CV, which Dr. Ho had left on top of your files. “What a waste,” you trilled, grabbing your charts for today’s autopsies. “A pretty face can’t be admired by the dead.” 

Mingyu stood outside of the examination room, narrowly colliding with the large tables of tools and covered corpses being wheeled in and out by stone-faced technicians. He whispered a few apologies as he shuffled into a corner, hoping that he would be as out of the way as possible. You walked up to him and introduced yourself. “So, you’re my new junior. You look like you would be a great pediatrician or something, how’d you end up here?” You joked.

Although he gave you a considerate chuckle, you noticed that his smile failed to reach his eyes. You bit the inside your cheek and debated apologizing for the remark, but instead, you led him into the examination room. “Grab a mask, and we’ll get to work.”

You and Mingyu stood side by side, heads tilted as you stared at the metal table in front of you. “You know, Dr. Kim, I was going to start out with the whole ‘Ever seen a dead body?’ spiel, but this is just anti-climactic.”

You assumed that the young fellow was smiling behind his face mask. “Forgive my ignorance, but I’m not sure how we’re supposed to determine anything from just a severed left hand. Unless…” he trailed off, looking at you hopefully.

Scoffing, you replied, “I’m a medical examiner, not a magician.” You thumbed through the folder which came with the body part and rolled your eyes at the lack of information provided. “Apparently it was discovered at Starling Bay—” You paused and dropped your papers onto a clean surface, eyes widening.

“There’s no ‘Starling Bay’ in New York,” Mingyu muttered.

“Dr. Kim, can you show me the wrist?”

Mingyu obediently reached out to manipulate the hand on the table, turning it over gently. A fuzzy black tattoo adorned the left side of the inner wrist. The boyish doctor peered at the spot with confusion and leaned closer to inspect the tattoo. “It looks like a bird? How did you know—”

You were already on your way out of the room, latex gloves trashed and mask crumpled. “Dr. Kim, collect forensic swabs underneath the fingernails and note anything unusual – scratches, bruises, yada yada. Keep your phone on you too. I’ll call you in a few minutes.”

“Where are you going?” Mingyu exclaimed, trying to keep the panic in his voice from surfacing into his speech.

“Downtown. It seems my dear boyfriend has been keeping secrets from me.”

Your thick coat billowed out around your calves as you pushed open the heavy glass doors, striding into police headquarters with an aura of confidence. You flashed your ID at the guards who recognized your face anyway and waved you through. “Here to bring your hubby some lunch?” one of the guards jeered at you, and you flipped him off with a smile. You could hear their laughter behind you as you made your way towards the elevators.

Once the elevators opened onto the 17th floor, you bee lined towards the large corner office, ignoring the panicked protests of the receptionist in the front. The door was closed and the glass on either side of the doorway was covered by the drawn, vertical hanging blinds. You almost knocked before you remembered that you were supposed to be angry, and, as if to reinforce your childish anger, you pettily misaligned the nameplate on the front of the door.

“Thanks for the present, Lieutenant,” you drawled sarcastically, standing in the doorway with one hand resting on the door handle and your hip cocked to the side.

The black-haired man looked up from his computer, a smile playing on his full lips. “My baby’s always so smart,” he cooed, cuing exaggerated gagging noises from the taller man standing next to him. You had to remind yourself to be angry again when you saw his cheeks dimple from laughing.

“Sorry, Junnie, but I’m kicking you out.” You tilted your head towards the door.

“Gladly,” he vehemently agreed, “Dr. Wen out.” He gave a mock two-fingered salute as he exited, but popped his head back in immediately afterwards. “Oh, and if you ever need couples’ counseling—”

“Out,” you and Seungcheol yelled in unison. After Jun was safely out of the doorway, you closed the door and locked it.

“You told me that the city wasn’t going to keep investigating,” you began, slowly walking over to his side. He stood up from his chair and placed a hand on your hip, his other brushing away loose hairs from your eyes.

“You never tell me about your nightmares,” he murmured back. Your eyes fell onto the plush carpeting of his office, afraid to meet Seungcheol’s gaze. You knew that he would just see past your façade, and you couldn’t break down. Not at this time, and certainly not here, in his office.

He pulled your body closer and kissed the crown of your head. “Please talk to Jun,” he whispered, “I know he’s the only psychologist that you’ll open up with.” 

You nodded into his chest and closed your eyes, afraid to ruin his button-down shirt. “But you have to tell me about it.” You pulled back and stared at him, confidence returning. “The hand.”

He sighed and sat back down in his plush office chair, pulling you to settle in his lap. With an arm around your waist and fingers absentmindedly drawing circles on the side of your hip, you noticed the gauntness in Seungcheol’s face and the bags under his eyes. You reached your hand out to cup his cheek, and he returned his gaze to yours, smiling slightly. 

“I trust you,” you whispered, and you saw his eyes flicker in recognition at your words.

“I trust you, too,” he returned, and pulled up an encrypted folder onto his computer screen. A black command terminal popped open and he typed in a series of passwords before dozens of photos littered the monitor.

Your jaw clenched as your eyes wandered over the crime scene photos, heart pounding wildly in your chest. You leaned closer to the monitor as your hand enveloped Seungcheol’s on the computer mouse, clicking to enlarge the last photograph.

A beautiful mural of a black starling with iridescent feathers contrasted against an off-white wall, stained gray with grime. The starling was perched on a branch with legs bent, as if about to take flight. The flash had rendered the rest of the room pitch black. Underneath the bird, however, were two words, crudely spray painted in red.

“Miss Me?”