#obviously i am still in support of the strikes its just like. so many people lost more than their livelihoods over it

[sodrippy]

so glad we all held out during the wga/sag strikes bc they got all their terms fully delivered and no other departments are seeing probably the biggest layoffs in the industry right now! yay!

[lobautumny]

So like, the Reddit strike going on right now, yeah? I've been seeing a lot of people comment on how they appreciate the protest and then go on to say that this has the notable downside of them constantly looking up questions and not being able to easily find the answers because all of the easily-findable answers are exclusively on Reddit. I am not sure if most of the people making this observation are within the line of thought of "man, maybe this protest isn't such a good idea after all" or "man, it really sucks that we've let the internet get so consolidated," and I'm really hoping its the latter.

Like, all of this? This right here? Reddit making a shitty, anti-consumer grab for money and control over how people are allowed to access the information on their servers, and the website going dark in protest causing tons of people to not be able to access important information? This is exactly what people mean when they say that it's bad that the internet has shrunk down so much and is mostly comprised of, like, 10 websites. It's a fucking problem that one company making one bad decision and causing their website to crash and burn can jeopardize so much of humanity's cumulative information.

This two-day glimpse into the internet without Reddit is the warning shot. Imagine what will happen if Reddit actually goes down for good for one reason or another one day. Imagine what will happen if/when Discord or Fandom bites the dust, or gets rendered practically-unusable without paying an ever-increasing premium because they're owned by blood-sucking corporate leeches.

Another big thing is Twitter clamping down really hard on your ability to DM people if you don't have Twitter Blue. If this goes through, it'll put a ton of artists and sex workers who rely on Twitter DMs for their business operation into a shitty situation. Now, obviously, it's not gonna be the end of the world for them, but once again, it feels like a warning shot to me. Twitter is a sinking ship, and unless something changes and it starts to course-correct, I worry that it'll go under and all of the creators who rely on it will suddenly be in an extremely precarious situation.

These are the sorts of things that we, as the users of the internet, need to seriously think about as time goes on, and if we don't find an adequate answer sooner, we're going to pay for it later. I still hold that the best solution is to start making and using more individual, niche websites. Things like Twitter, Reddit, Discord, etc. have their place, of course, but I seriously think a lot was lost through the death of things like individual forums and the existence of many different wiki-hosting sites.

We need a concerted effort, not just on the side of larger creators, but on the users themselves, to stop exclusively using these larger websites and support the creation and growth of smaller, more niche websites, and prevent a catastrophe before it actually happens. I simply hope that people with larger platforms than my own pick up on all this and start talking about it and swaying people to act sooner rather than later. I know it's possible to correct the problem of the mysteriously tiny internet before a modern Library of Alexandria moment happens, I just don't know if that correction will actually happen in time.

[old-stoneface]

okay. the thing that particularly strikes me, in guards guards, abt the comparison of ankh-morpork to lady sybil to The Dragon is that it is often cited as all being...positive? in a sense? ive seen it argued that sybil being so directly compared to those two items, alongside vimes being a direct parallel to errol in that book (and the entire watch being compared to draco vulgaris (total wittles, at first they were novel and now theyre just a burden, etc)), is a sign that it is all written to be a straightforward love story between sybil and vimes. i disagree. i will say that their relationship is foreshadowed Very Early On, like, from the moment that sybil is introduced, and its pretty clear through their interactions that theyre going to end up together, despite my frustrations lol. i just think that being the "damsel in distress" is an inherently bad thing for women in pratchett's stories, because it leads to dysfunction. anyway. my point here is that not only is it not a clear love story, and it is not written to be one, but the complications of their relationship and further marriage are also teased throughout the book, and it all starts with vimes being a complicated and dysfunctional character. the book opens with vimes rolling a medium success in shivers and giving us a little monologue about how the city welcomes you in, and the city is distinctly a woman, but once youre in her arms she'll kick you in the teeth and send you back into the gutter. there is never any indication of whether vimes has been in a relationship before being with sybil, but it is implied slightly - hoooweveeer i am not referring to when colon says that vimes was "brung low by a woman". i believe colon, having seen vimes very drunk many times, has heard him do his monologue about the city being a woman who treats you unfairly. in fact, we have confirmation of vimes talking about that, shortly after the bar fight scene with carrot in the mended drum. this monologue - where vimes outlines the relationship he has with the city, how he feels very proprietory of it and yet still despises it, is a clear indication of how vimes views heterosexual relationships. Any relationship he has with a woman will be defined by the negative aspects first and probably never the positive, because of Who Vimes Is As A Person and what his view of gender is. we have these scenes where sybil is obviously trying to tell vimes she has feelings for him, and vimes outright rejects her every time but the last, which is when he is feeling overwhelmed by the weight of her affection and he realizes that this may be his only chance to not die alone. vimes turns to this relationship as a last resort. even though sybil is extremely generous and supportive, vimes feels THREATENED by her advances, and not in the same exhilirating way that he gets when he is being attacked. btw there is a lot to be said about how vimes has an addiction to danger and how vetinari often leaves people believing they have just escaped with their lives, but thats another post. i have more thoughts on this, i think i have more ideas to develop here, this is just the beginning of my gay vimes thesis but this post is getting so long........

[absurdlyriveting]

Who wants to read a super long rant I wrote in the middle of the night without my glasses about how TV writing for this one show should be better from a non-writer who has no business commenting on any of this? You do? Ok, here you go.

So I just watched the St Denis Medical pilot. I recognize some of the cast, including one of the main characters — the nurse in charge. Really like that actress (Good Girls anyone?). But overall I found that the show was just… not very funny. (I didn’t like The Office either, I’m sorry. But I do like Parks & Rec)

And look, most pilots aren’t great and it does actually take time for shows to find their footing. We shouldn’t all be so hasty to write off a show because of its pilot. Still though, I couldn’t stop thinking about this one thing.

I really could not root for the head nurse. 

Just. No.

She was an obvious workaholic control freak, they basically say as much in the episode. and she’s aware of this and had multiple opportunities to prioritize her family and she just. Didn’t. And it made her kind of suck as a person. Obviously this is more “realistic” right? This is a problem many people have. There can be comedy in between the lines, I get it. It’s probably what they’re going for. But I just found her to be incredibly disappointing. 

Am I supposed to hope she grows and becomes less neurotic and actually spends time with her loved ones? Because honey she should already be doing that. Am I rooting for divorce because her unnamed/unseen spouse must obviously be upset with her for constantly missing shit because a person can only be so supportive and understanding for so long? I mean… sorta yeah. Should I hope she finds her ideal work/life balance? I really don’t give a fuck. She’s a disappointment right here and now. Even though she’s nice and friendly, I just don’t like her that much. You can be the nicest, most caring person in the world, but it sucks when your family doesn’t get the same importance as random strangers or your job do. I’m making this far more extreme than it is (she isn’t that horrible, truly) and I know she will probably grow and evolve and we will get more context and background and blah blah blah, but it did make my brain start churning. 

So then I thought, how would I have made this funny? How do I root for a person who is missing their kid’s school play (hopefully with an actual valid reason)? 

What if, instead of the character being a shitty person who fails as a parent and partner because they make bad choices, they instead were forcibly put into rock & hard place situations? This current main character only had one true moment like that, which is when the woman collapsed at the end. she had no choice but to stay and help. It was the right thing to do. BUT all the other times she did have a choice and should have fucking left the hospital.  

So my new made-up character is instead constantly in these situations against their very obvious will. Perhaps they have a nickname, like “Magnet” because they are always attracting the worst situations. Magnet is probably aware that everybody calls them Magnet, but definitely doesn’t want to acknowledge it or hear it said out loud (they ignore it if they hear it) because saying it might make it even more true. 

Magnet is always trying to do something else. They’re always trying to leave. But they are constantly “right place, wrong time.” Yes they can totally help you, but did it have to be right now? 

They are a compassionate person, yes, but an easily frustrated one. All new staff members are warned, if you have plans then you better not be in the same room as Magnet right beforehand. Lighting doesn’t strike once, it strikes all the damn time, 3ft away, and sometimes catches on fire. 

“No, no, no! You can’t just collapse right here in the exit! I have to leave to go to my kid’s soccer game! Absolutely not! Where are my nurses god dammit! Somebody save this man so I can go see my kid save a goal!”

(person coding or some shit) “Sir, either you DIE or you RESPOND TO TREATMENT. RIGHT. FUCKING. NOW. I have places to be so pick a lane IMMEDIATELY SIR… ah yes, excellent. You made the right decision. Thank you for not dying.”

“Look I know you’re like bleeding and stuff on my shoes, but this other nurse is so much better at stitches than me and she’s just doing paperwork while I have an important thing to get to, so…” 

“JANET you BETTER NOT be having an ALLERGIC REACTION for the FIFTH TIME today. We did this already! and I can’t keep telling you to not eat peanuts no matter how delicious a Snickers is! Don’t you dare touch that candy wrapper Janet so help me god.”

“I’m sure you’re lovely and a wonderful date, but I’m happily married and am looking forward to having a dinner and a movie with my spouse tonight and would really appreciate if you would put your clothes on right now and stop throwing my very important medical supplies on the ground because they aren’t slutty enough.”

“Why isn’t anybody helping this woman already? She is obviously in distress! I am in a rush, but even I noticed she needed immediate attention. I cannot believe you people work here sometimes. Oh she was fine right up until I walked in front of her? Sure, yeah, of course she was fine. It was definitely me and not her obvious injury/illness!”

“Ok look, you’re making me 20 minutes late to my kids pool party, but they will flip out when they find out that I saved a bunch of people cosplaying as Power Rangers. once you’re all bandaged up, can I get a pic for them?”

“Hey Doc! Over here! Yes she fainted right on top of me. No, I don’t know why. That’s your job, you’re the doctor. She’s breathing and everything otherwise appears normal. I have literally no other insight to add because this just happened. So I’ll just shift her weight over onto this other very capable nurse who also went to school for as long as I did, and be on my way. See ya later! Hope you feel better ma’am!”

“Why is 5pm always seizure-o-clock? Can’t anyone have a seizure at 3:45 anymore? I mean, lets be reasonable here.”

Magnet is always having people collapse, bleed, become critical, etc right in front of them anywhere and anytime they have places to be. They will always do their best to help whoever is in medical trouble if it’s actually urgent, but this is just a JOB and they know how to delegate. “Oh the computers went down? Nurse do you know how to write up a patients information on an intake form? And do you still know how to write a prescription Doctor? And IT is working on it? Ok great, if you have questions then text me, but I trust that my right-hand nurse has got this. Jimmy if you tell me you forgot how to write with a pencil and paper because you only use speech-to-text then you really need to re-evaluate your career as a medical professional. See you tomorrow!” 

Sometimes though, they must respond and that’s just how it is. Frankly, we wouldn’t root for someone who is heartless, and they aren’t THAT big of an asshole. It’s played for comedy, not for mean-spiritedness. 

“Of course I will hold your hand ma’am. Nothing is more important than you being ok. I know you’re scared, but I’ve got you. There’s definitely nowhere else I need to be right now. It will all be ok.”

Also maybe the other nurses really love Magnet’s spouse because they get brought baked goods by them once a month and are the only adult person who makes Magnet go from grumpy to immediately happy. So whenever Magnet is just fully unable to leave and they know it might be a while, they text (sometimes with a photo as long as it doesn’t break Hipaa) Magnet’s spouse to keep them updated. There is a constant line of communication.

“M. Spouse you’re gonna want to move your reservations, Magnet is trying to subdue a patient who is very high on many different drugs right now. Also those muffins were amazing btw.”

(5 min later) Magnet def gets very injured by said patient. 

“Actually M. Spouse, cancel those reservations, Magnet got LIGHTLY stabbed but don’t worry it was VERY gentle and will only require a few stitches and also maybe make it hard for them to use utensils, so I recommend ordering in.”

Cut to Magnet in the background “God dammit that was my fork-holding hand! How am I supposed to eat fancy overpriced anniversary steak now!!!! (grumble grumble) Does my hair still look ok at least?”

Maybe Magnet also loves kids and is truly a different, very patient person in front of them. Kids are never as inconvenient as the adults because they’re kids. So sometimes the staff sort of use the kids to break tension in a funny way. 

“I can’t BELIEVE how stupid that dipshit motorcyclist was— Oh hi sweetie! Are you looking for your mommy? Oh the nurse told you I had candy did she? Uh huh, I wonder why she sent you all the way over here, definitely not where you’re supposed to be at all, for a really cool reason like getting a piece of free candy even though there’s a bowl behind the nurses’ counter. Yes let’s go over there now and get you a piece and maybe not beat up that reckless motorcyclist. You should just stick with your bicycle…”

There’s so many ways you can play with this. And I would constantly be on Team Magnet. We know, without a doubt, that whenever they try to go somewhere or do something important that there will be an obstacle. So the challenge is then, how will it be funny and also how will it work out in the end in a way that makes me still root for the character and their interpersonal relationships? We don’t want them to be a straight up asshole all the time. They should get very concerned when things are super serious and bad. And they get upset if other people aren’t taking something seriously enough. But if Janet needs yet another epi-pen then by god will they be annoyed as shit in a hilarious way because that was a totally avoidable situation and only happens when Magnet is around anyway.

The staff would also be very aware. New staff member at a meeting: “Where is Magnet?” Everybody else: laughs. 15 minutes later Magnet walks in. “Sorry, was delivering a baby in my neighbors driveway. They named him Steve. Weird name for a baby. It’s not even short for Stephen. Just baby Steve. So what did I miss? Thanks for taking notes for me again Carol, you’re the best.”

Perhaps as seasons progress Magnet can also start to attract cool things. “How do you always get the celebrities and super rare diseases and I get someone with uncomfortable gas?” “My winning personality.”

You could also have an entire episode where the comedy is that everything goes completely smooth and normal with no big interruptions or emergencies, but Magnet and the other staffers are increasingly paranoid all day because chaos is normal, and this feels like calm before a storm. They’re peering around corners like James Bond looking for a villain. Cut to the day is over and Magnet gets in their car feeling relaxed and satisfied with a job well done, smile on their face… but then a car accident happens right behind them. “Aw man. So close!” (Begrudgingly gets out of car, credits roll.)

So back to home life. Magnet’s family always knows that they will try to put them first. And maybe this type of character would be a good foil for current iteration of Nurse-in-charge at St Denis. Magnet is someone who knows their priorities and pushes really hard to keep their promises and make things happen even in the face of medical emergencies. It isn’t perfect and it doesn’t always work out, but they have supportive (and very entertained) colleagues and a loving partner and kids. The partner does understand (“I know what I signed up for, and that’s a person who cares a lot about helping people, and even more about their family.”)  because even if Magnet is always 20 minutes late, they ALWAYS show up unless it’s truly life or death for someone. And they get frequent updates from Magnet and/or the other staff so they aren’t blind sighted or waiting around for hours with no news. The muffins are multi-faceted bribes/gifts after all. 

Yes, this is me being so sick of every couple in every show having drama solely based off of bad communication. 

Maybe the kids are upset sometimes but are usually ok with it because Magnet has cool work stories and maybe brings home souvenirs (“look, this nail was in somebody’s arm today! no, don’t touch it, that’s gross”) and also constantly communicates with them. (“I’m so sorry I was late buddy, but you know how much I love you and that I wanted to be here right? I loved seeing you win that final tournament. Would you show me at home the cool karate moves you used on your first opponent? I know spouse took a video of that match, but I’d love for YOU to show me.”) And again, Magnet does show up the majority of the time, even if its a little later than planned. So the family knows to tell them 4:00pm when they really mean 5:30pm. Because they’re “Magnet.” They will attract a problem. The family knows the nickname and are very aware. 

“It’s Halloween! I was supposed to be home by 2pm for trick-or-treating! And yet somehow every time I go to the door, another puking vampire shows up to ruin my third pair of shoes! …Oh, Spouse texted and said trick-or-treating is at 6pm? Yeah, I guess 2pm was early. No it didn’t occur to me that they lied about the time. So wait, if I leave now I can be an hour early? Amazing! (starts walking toward the exit, gets puked on again) God dammit that’s my fourth and final pair!!!!! Fuck it, I’m driving home with puke shoes. (over their shoulder while walking to the exit) Whoever pulls my name for Secret Santa this year, I want waterproof shoes and a 10 pack of socks please and thank you. Happy Halloween everyone!”

I would root for Magnet all day, every day. 

Give me Magnet. Not micromanager who undervalues her family. Please and thank you.

[taraljc]

I think they did an incredibly brilliant casting job when they cast Polly Walker who is undoubtedly one of the best actors of her generation and sexy as hell to boot because it allowed them to take very thinly drawn characters and give them real depth and pathos.

A lot of people have mentioned that the Marina storyline in season 1 felt shallow and a poor choice. However I think it was important for a variety of reasons not the least of which to show the generational trauma of women's worth solely defined through their relationships to husbands and fathers and children, not as individuals.

Marina turning around to Penelope and giving her the you're just a silly little girl living a fantasy speech that Portia Featherington gave her when she forced her to give up her dreams was a really important setup for series 3. and it is vitally important for setting up the idea of Lady Whistledown as a tool to manipulate people in the same way that Portia manipulates, rather than protect people which is what Penelope believes she has been doing this entire time. and giving Colin the backstory of being Marina's mark and hating Whistledown for outing Marina is a lot more interesting conflict than just 'I am jealous because she is a published author', tbh. because it forces Penelope to face a lot of potentially ugly realities about her choices, but also forces Colin to recognise his privilege in the face of the MASSIVE gender inquality, and that he was so easily led in the first place because he is always been looking for a princess in a tower to rescue.

Even bringing Marina back at the beginning of series 2 was strategic in terms of showing the realities of making the best choices one can under difficult circumstances and being content with them instead of having the luxury that Violet and her children have of even entertaining the idea of a love match.

Happily Ever After is one of the defining characteristics of Regency romances as a genre, and so you will rarely see any popular adaptation stray from that. but when you look at the novels of the time that spawned the Regency romance genre, you see many relationships founded on practical concerns. Particularly obviously the grandmother of them all, Pride And Prejudice.

People bemoan Charlotte Collins and Lydia Wickham's fates. But when you think about it, Charlotte actually has a chance of a long and happy marriage precisely because she knows exactly who she is and has a very strong sense of self and that will temper Collins pompous posturing. She has purpose and a community to serve, and her position will afford her respect as well as respectability.

And you can say Lydia made her bed and will have to lie in it but just because she was young and stupid doesn't mean that she will not age and learn wisdom. But even if she remains just as silly and useless as Philippa Finch well into adulthood, she is still surrounded by a support network of family (and almost the certainty that Wickham will die and leave her a widow with much better prospects).

Portia and Marina, Marina and Penelope, and Portia and Penelope are telling a very important story about a woman's power and I think it actually mirrors a lot of Queen Charlotte for a reason, telling a much larger (and frankly more layered and interesting) story than each individual love story taken on their own.

Bridgerton is hardly truly subverting the tropes of the genre. If it does at all, then it does in the most mildest of ways such as expanding on Benedict and Eloise significantly in the first three seasons and giving them lives and desires that are more three-dimensional. but it still does not strike me as particularly likely that shondaland would turn any of its female leads into content blue stockings no matter how much we might want Eloise and Cressida to set up house in Mayfair.

One thing I do very much admire about the series is that you are rarely shown women of a certain age (i.e. over 40) as objects of desire, and yet Violet and Lady Danbury and Queen Charlotte and Portia Featherington are not outside the story or mere plot engine's driving the story. They are also showing what romance novels genuine generally did not which is a woman's second act. and the biggest and best example I believe is not just the inclusion of but the focus on Queen Charlotte.

If Violet is Mrs Bennett without the shrillness and Portia is Mrs Bennett with a lot more Lady Macbeth, then Queen Charlotte is a surprisingly touching example of an ever after that while not happy, is still a beautiful and tragic love story of watching a loved one slip away by inches that is rarely depicted in the genre. Merry widows are allowed. Widows in waiting are a different story.

I don't think we'll ever see something equivalent to Jo Baker's Longbourn for Bridgerton. That's left to the realm of fan fiction most likely. But the stories the series chooses to tell from outside the material it's adapting inform the material they're adapting.

I don't think Penelope would work as a character as well as she does without Madame Delacroix and Alice Mondrich as foils. Penelope knows that society would never accept her actually working for a living (though again the rules for men were certainly different as noblemen wrote all kinds of books about all kinds of things with no censure) as appropriate for her station, and will almost certainly struggle to keep Lady Whistledown the same way Will is struggling to keep his club.

But at the same time I can't imagine future seasons of Bridgerton without Julie Andrews' narration pointing out the absurd, the truth, the lies, the sorrows, and the sublime. It's baked into the premise and the narrative structure. So I doubt Pen will be putting down her quill anytime soon.

While ruminating on how stressful part 2 is going to be watching Penelope struggle to reveal herself as LW to Colin, I keep thinking about the whiplash she must be feeling.

She had spent so many years longing for Colin and had just come to terms with giving him up and starting a new life without the man she loves.

She was going to marry Debling and continue being Whistledown. That was the biggest draw for her, outside of getting away from her family- it was Whistledown. She wouldn’t have love but she would have solace in her work, her writing.

And now, in the span of one night, she has to come to terms with the rest of her life being completely different than what she thought it would be.

I know we’re all stressing for her to tell Colin, but I really do empathize with her probably feeling incredibly overwhelmed on top of being afraid of losing every last good thing in her life.

[crybabykiko]

could you do the nsfw alphabet for atsumu please? thank you :)

Aw shit, here we go again...

NSFW Alphabet: Miya Atsumu

gn!reader focused

A/N: She hasn’t written in awhile but you know what I’m proud of it- lol be nice to me or I’ll leave forever jk I won’t but still be nice to me ily 💕 Atsumu is a menace I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Obviously nasty below the cut so if you’re a kid fuck off

𝕬 - 𝕬𝖋𝖙𝖊𝖗𝖈𝖆𝖗𝖊

He’s not the best, but certainly not the worst. He will take care of you, but… only after he takes care of himself first. Usually that just means he needs to take a shower. Once he does, he’s free to supply cuddles until you both fall asleep.

𝕭 - 𝕭𝖔𝖉𝖞 𝕻𝖆𝖗𝖙

He has abs so solid you could make a sharkcoochie board on them. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

𝕮 - 𝕮𝖚𝖒

When Atsumu cums… he cums hard. It’s like having an out of body experience- every nerve cell in his body is firing off as he tenses up, digging his nails into whatever flesh he can grab, and grinding his heels into the surface supporting him. He bites down so hard his teeth grind involuntarily as his face contorts in a strained statuesque vision. One low growl from deep in his chest comes out through gritted teeth as he sputters out mixtures of “that’s it,” and “don’t you dare fucking stop.”

The orgasm face of Atsumu Miya is one of the 7 wonders of the world.

𝕯 - 𝕯𝖎𝖗𝖙𝖞 𝕾𝖊𝖈𝖗𝖊𝖙

It’s not a secret per se, but he’s been exposed and clowned for eating ass… so he doesn’t wanna talk about it.

𝕰 - 𝕰𝖝𝖕𝖊𝖗𝖎𝖊𝖓𝖈𝖊

So contrary to popular belief, I don’t think he’s that experienced... he’s just lucky! (Lmaoooo all of his experience is based on like 2 actual people that he maybe got to second base with (he says third but come on we know he’s lying) and then a litany of porn. Poor thing just wants some coochie I AM HERE KING and he has no trouble finding it, he just never seals the deal. He’s someone who just kind of, knows what to do naturally. He’s able to read someone’s body by touch alone, and so he knows what you like right off the bat based on how you react. He might try a couple of things at the start to see what really makes you squirm, but once he’s got it... holy hell has he ever got it.

𝕱 - 𝕱𝖆𝖛𝖔𝖗𝖎𝖙𝖊 𝕻𝖔𝖘𝖎𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓

I hate to say how easy this was- but I KNOW Atsumu is a guy who prefers doggy. I see him as a hair puller, so this is perfect for him. I also could see him being into mirrors, and this is the perfect position to make you look at what he’s doing to you, especially while he’s pulling your head back by your hair. He especially likes gripping his thumbs into the smalls of your back (he crosses his arms bc saw it in a porn once and he thinks it makes him look cool), and when he’s INTO it, he likes to smack your ass to encourage you.

𝕲 - 𝕲𝖔𝖔𝖋𝖞

Is goofy by accident. Like will sometimes try throwing in something new with his normal dirty talk that completely throws you off. He hates when you laugh at him for it, but you find it endearing.

𝕳 - 𝕳𝖆𝖎𝖗

I’m gonna… say something so controversial yet so bold:

What hair?

And yes I mean that. Smooth. He waxes. Monthly. No hair. (Besides like… legs and armpits… yah he doesn’t touch those) Naked mole rat dick but fuck it he’s Atsumu motherfucking Miya he can do what he wants.

𝕴 - 𝕴𝖓𝖙𝖎𝖒𝖆𝖈𝖞

While he’s not the most... romantic in general per se, he does want to make you feel appreciated. He’s very eager to get his, but he won’t allow himself to unless you have already. It takes restraint, but he cools himself down by having you get on top, or by leaving lingering kisses anywhere he can, saying you’re the most beautiful thing he’s ever laid eyes on.

𝕵 - 𝕵𝖆𝖈𝖐 𝕺𝖋𝖋

When he’s away from you he loves to send you videos of himself or FaceTime you. He gets you worked up enough to join him no matter where you are. He just needs to see you, he needs you to see him stroking his cock to the thought of you- he can’t cum without you telling him to.

𝕶 - 𝕶𝖎𝖓𝖐

I have to get this out but I KNOW he’s nasty. I imagine Atsumu as a huge dirty talker and also someone who’s into spitting. Both of those are just clear in my brain... like he would be pundinng you from behind, spit on your back, and then call you a slut all in 3 seconds flat but the way that you would cream? Ugh insanity he needs to be arrested he needs to be stopped

𝕷 - 𝕷𝖔𝖈𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓

Since he’s got money now- he’s a big fan of ordering Uber XLs or even just hiring a driver for a night on the town as a flex. But he especially loves telling his driver to put up the window partition while he annihilates you in the backseat. I just think he’s a fan of car sex in general- it just does it for him.

𝕸 - 𝕸𝖔𝖙𝖎𝖛𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓

Loves to hear his name. Whether you’re moaning it or screaming it like it’s the only word you know, he’s always going to ask you who you belong to, and the answer is always Atsumu.

𝕹 - 𝕹𝖔!

He totally eats ass. He’s just not gonna tell anyone bc he told Osamu ONCE and now his contact name is ASStumu and he lives in fear of that getting out.

𝕺 - 𝕺𝖗𝖆𝖑

Sloppppppyyyyyy. Loves giving ~slightly~ more than receiving, simply bc he loves the sight of seeing his spit dripping down your thighs while he goes down on you. Loves eye contact when you’re going down on him.

𝕻 - 𝕻𝖆𝖈𝖊

Though I wouldn’t say he’s super experienced, I know he’s relentless. He fucks. Literally just fucks. Not in the sense that he only treats you like a hole bc yikes, but in the sense that he just goes the speeds of fast or faster. There’s no slow with him.

𝕼 - 𝕼𝖚𝖎𝖈𝖐𝖎𝖊

Yeah. Lots of them. Anywhere, anytime. Particularly for him, a lot of them end up being in his car, simply because you’ll be out somewhere and the mood strikes. He’ll quickly take you out to the car for a few minutes, slut you out, and then return to the function like nothing happened. You’ve had many a quickie in a bathroom or closet in a party as well. When he wants you, he wants you, so he’s not afraid to take you.

𝕽 - 𝕽𝖎𝖘𝖐

Not as much of a risk-taker as people think. Mostly because he wants to protect you. He would hate for someone to see you in such a compromising position… but also, you’ve had your fair share of quickies in the bathrooms of various wedding receptions, so he’s lying.

𝕾 - 𝕾𝖙𝖆𝖒𝖎𝖓𝖆

Can last a decent amount of time, if he spreads it out over multiple rounds. I’m general, he can probably go about 2 or 3 rounds without needing a break. More if you draw out foreplay with him. He’s a pleaser, so really how long he lasts is up to you. He’s got the power and control to hold off on is own release until he’s certain you absolutely can’t take anymore.

𝕿 - 𝕿𝖔𝖞

One of those mfs who gets you the mold of his dick as a toy for your birthday for when he’s away because according to him “you’ll be so needy while I’m gone”

I hate him so much but I would use that shit every day he knows what he’s doing I’m so upset

𝖀 - 𝖀𝖓𝖋𝖆𝖎𝖗

Speaking of being needy- he loves to egg you on when you are. He knows all the buttons to push, but he’ll never actually make the move until you’re begging. And of course he loves to turn that around in you, hitting you with that “god, ya just can’t get enough of me, can ya?”

𝖁 - 𝖁𝖔𝖑𝖚𝖒𝖊

He’s more of a talker than a moaner. Not necessarily loud in bed- but very, very vocal. Commanding of you in a good way, and will definitely show his appreciation through praise.

𝖂 - 𝖂𝖎𝖑𝖉𝖈𝖆𝖗𝖉

Actually has a Cosmo subscription bc he likes trying all the strange and obscure sex positions in the articles. Also likes taking the quizzes, and will casually have you do them with him at breakfast.

𝖃 - 𝖃-𝕽𝖆𝖞

he’s a little on the thicker side. Its probably a good 7 inches, so it’s enough to fill you, add in the stretch of his girth and it’s a good, mild burn when he first goes in, but he fills you just enough without it being way too much. He’s a shower, so he doesn’t get much longer, but you have a lot to work with. He also has a cute freckle on his left inner thigh.

𝖄 - 𝖄𝖊𝖆𝖗𝖓𝖎𝖓𝖌

His sex drive is on the higher end, but really only when he’s in his off season. When he’s actively playing in games, he tries to curb his appetite a bit because he believes in the superstition that sex messes with players’ stamina on the court.

𝖅 - 𝖅𝖟𝖟

He’s gonna knock out, but not until he showers. He ALWAYS showers after. The water soothes his muscles and by the time he’s done it’s lights out.

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[ladyyatexel]

I Went On A Manga Binge

So you don't have to

For those of you who have wisely avoided the shreds of it I've left around the blog thus-far, I had some weird notion to go re-experience Yu-Gi-Oh uuuuuh a week ago? We'll go with that. Time is meaningless.

I'd been able to read a good portion of the early manga at the end of highschool, and somewhere in my stacks and stacks of paper is fanart from this dark time, so you know I cared. I also still own a Dark Magician action figure somehow, so. I'd also watched a large portion of the anime with my brother because it had been laced with some kind of crack and we couldn't look away? I remember when we both were just like shit, wait, don't change the channel, I can't stop looking at it. And the next thing we knew we were waiting for new episodes and I was doing research on the Japanese original because I was that kid.

Anyway, unnecessary backstory out of the way, here are some... let's call them Observations and Consequences of having read somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 chapters (and growing) of a manga primarily hinged on card games from a spectrum of sources ranging from boringly lawful to sketchy as fuck.

Surprise actual character that develops in typical shounen fashion being Jounouchi. My limited experiences with the 4Kids dub and only early manga had not painted him in a particularly good light. I don't know if episodes were being aired out of order or if I had just missed the ones that established that he was making shit up as he was going along, but Wow I liked him a lot more going through the manga than I ever did watching the (dubbed, heavily edited and censored and thrown into a slurry machine) anime. I'd managed to come out with the impression that he was just as reasonably experienced with the game as Yugi back in the day. Wild.

I'm now reading every single comic-style post on Tumblr backwards.

Striking inverse to first point, wow, I don't like Seto Kaiba. Though he gets points for his general philosophy of the future, and the line I read in my sketchy online combo of scans and scanlations in which he said, "If God is in your way, you run him down," was Metal As Fuck. I somewhat shame-facedly admit to enjoying him a lot more as an Abridged Series character. (I watched Abridged as it came out back in the day! The experience of watching the anime with my brother had been so fresh that I got all the in jokes about the way things were edited and dubbed, it was great. Series remains influential part of my life to this day, which is hella weird.)

I almost understand how Duel Monsters works now. I don't want this.

That said, wow a lot of the decisions made in the anime made everything a lot more ridiculous than the admittedly already ridiculous original. I got the distinct feeling in the manga that the Duelist Kingdom stuff we were seeing was designed to be used and exploited in ways that don't make sense in an actual cardgame just played on a table like a normal person and this was part of testing everyone to think higher, differently. Maybe this is obvious to everyone already, I don't know. I had always liked that it was very, 'Not so fast, I'm going to blow up the moon to change the tides,' but I'm not really sure the anime gave enough explanation that this was an extra layer added to things for that event? You can see people actively getting used to it in the books, and people who aren't considering the real or 3D nature of it getting owned, but my memory of anime version is everyone just like, 'oh, shucks, fuck me, I forgot to consider the phase of the moon before i played this card, can't believe I forgot.' No one calls Yugi on any of this stuff because it's valid play in that situation. Plus Yami Yugi had mad trickster energy in the beginning and it suited him to think of ways to do things inside these little simulation boxes the way it suited him to set perverts on fire. I imagine the real card game trying to emulate this element as something that would be to its detriment, but I neither know nor particular care haha

Ryou Bakura.

Really, though. I think he became kind of casualty of 'wow, we have a lot of characters who really aren't able to do anything in this story anymore,' despite the fact that his whole inner life could have been as interesting as Yugi's. I always like thinking about the possibilities of stories in which main character falls into magical world and is given magical item and told they're the hero and then they find out they've been the bad guy the whole time. The first several volumes of manga were about the quiet weirdo kid that no one talked to who was always blacking out and turning into a fucked up version of himsef because he was so attached to his ancient Egyptian jewelry, so like, Bakura could have much the same shit going on. I want to know what's happening with him so much. He clearly doesn't love being possessed, but he's also so drawn to the ring. Despite it having stabbed him at least twice and him knowing it's a danger to him and his friends, he keeps being pulled back into it. You see so much more of him being like, 'Oooh, a creepy thing, I love that! :D' in the manga than ever in the anime, which I'm all about. Also more blood. I'm very about that as well. Though my memory of the anime also made it look very much like normal regular daily Bakura was just a weird facade in places before he ever would have been. I think that was it trying to compensate for what people didn't see from the Toei anime, but okay whatever, that I love everything about this guy is not news, I don't need to talk about Bakura excessively here, I'm pretty sure that's gonna show up on my blog by itself

On a related note though, damn, more of these people need to talk to each other. Can we have some existential crisis support clubs or something. Can we get like some apologies or something? "I respect you as a duelist." "Cool, but you literally built a tower designed to specifically assassinate me and my friends? You were supposed to get Better after I retaliated by putting you in a coma, but you kinda didn't." "Why would the coma have made it better" "I just told you it didn't" ---- "Sorry I went along with the plan of your evil parasite stabbing you, misled you, and then also jumped in and took up some real estate in your head too." "I understand, I also have an evil thing inside me that does things while I'm blacked out." "...no, I was conscious for all of that." "Oh." "..." "..." "..." "Do you like Ouija Boards?" "sure okay" ETC. Like damn we are reading shounen manga because no one is talking extensively about their feelings here and I'm tapping my foot angrily.

Holy shit there are so many mythologies happening at once. The ancient family guarding the Egyptian Pharaoh has a surname that's a Mesopotamian goddess. None of the god cards make any Egyptian sense except Ra, and just like. Baaarrrrely. Somewhere either Evil Ring Bakura or Mar/lik makes a reference to cremation and spirits being taken to heaven with smoke which several things, but definitely not Ancient Egyptian. Marik/Malik meanwhile is clearly trying to head Arabic, along with Rishid, but then, hey, our sister is just Isis. Goddess McGoddess. Sometimes they're the same goddess! Her name could be Isis Isis or Ishtar Ishtar. Meanwhile, all the obviously 'occult because Christians think it is freaky' stuff. ~ancient egyptian pentagrams~~~This isn't a complaint, I guess so much as a 'Wow, I can kind of see the cultural spot the author was coming from and where he was aiming' kind of thing.

Wonder where things would have gone if the card games had not been latched onto the way they were.

Managed to forget how gross the pre-cardgames stuff was on the sexual harassment front. I'm glad there was a sort of explanation of everyone drifting away from being dick heads and that that decision was made. It got way more comfortable to read after no one was bringing Yugi p*rn on VHS.

Yugi looks better with a nose, glad we got that upgrade.

Interesting to watch the series style shift as it goes away from being horror to being over the top cardgames and friendship (with blood!). The first picture of Mokuba is fucking Jarring. Also noticed that the nicer a character is, the less their teeth are defined.

Glad manga did not go as completely off the fucking the rails about Marik's face. I never got as far as seeing him back in the day because college occurred, but I remember seeing pictures and stuff and being like, "what in the Fuck happened to that dude, I think the house style has collapsed in on itself"

Things the author Really Likes: motorcycles, belts, SHOES, holy shit the shoes. These are some of the most lovingly rendered sneakers I've ever seen. All the detail on his characters goes straight to their feet and then it's stretched upward until it forms stiff peaks. Gently fold in 3000 years of trauma and bake face down in a crumb coat of scattered mythology. Remove when you roll two zeros.

Where the fuck am I going to put the extremely large omnibus volumes of this comic I purchased in order to balance out how much I would be reading for free on the internet. I should have grasped that a three in one edition would be Thick and yet somehow I was still :O when it arrived. Have I strategically purchased volumes that contain my favorite parts, maybe, what's it to you will i eventually get the whole thing because incomplete book series gnaw on my soul? yes

Wish the transition from "I've murdered several people in delightfully karmic ways" to "all you need is friendship in your heart and cards in your hand" Yami Yugi/Pharaoh had been discussed more/transitioned better. Buddy, where did you get this approved for television high horse? Please go back to strangling people with yo-yos or at least tell me why you stopped.

I still can't tell anything that looks like a big robotic monster apart from any other big robotic monster. My dude, I can't tell cars apart, all these monsters look the same.

Yami Yugi fascinated me way more in highschool? Maybe because it was still super early and the anime was like 'we need to torture you about his origins WeEkLy. Now I'm just like 'wait hold on, can we go back to Bakura and Marik for a minute, there's some extreme unpacking to do here?' Those two are paying so much more in baggage fees here my guy wow

Violently uninterested in any of the spinoff media

[o-craven-canto]

Finished reading Perhaps the Stars, which means I can finally stop caring about spoilers.

Whew. That was Something.

Some interesting reflections I found around here (under the cut for, usually, massive spoilers):

terra ignota is- i mean, it’s not realistic, which excuses a lot- it’s a world where the cool holo-cloak astronauts with real life pokémon that you can just voluntarily join are a tiny minority and the fascist illuminati cult are the most popular hive. it’s a world where one of the most influential figures in world politics is Some Guy With A Blog who models themself on Voltaire but thinks free speech is obviously evil. it’s a world where landlords are forward-thinking stewards of resources and care a lot about the environment. it’s a world where one autistic woman with a computer can flawlessly operate a global network of antimatter-powered flying cars with zero accidents (when in reality it would probably take at least three autistic women). there’s a level on which you kind of just have to buy into some things, because it’s about the ideals more than the plausibility.

but also, i really cannot get past that one faction just, has solved psychology, and can read people’s minds through microexpressions Sherlock Holmes-style, and can be perfect master manipulators when they want- except, they aren’t particularly influential and can be outsmarted when the plot requires that they be outsmarted. like, how am i supposed to believe these dorks in sweaters have that kind of power, but never when it would matter? the whole plot is made of extremely-important individual people who, when nudged slightly one way or the other in their ideals and beliefs, have enormous impacts on everything! you can excuse the silliness of organized religion still existing when you’re only allowed to talk about it with your therapist, but- this is a thing that should be enormously important on the story’s own terms, but inexplicably isn’t.

i have to assume that somehow Ada Palmer just, does not intuitively consider solving psychology to be something that would have a massive transformative impact on the way absolutely everything works. i am… unclear on what kind of contortions one goes through to write the existence of Brillism but not what should be its many obvious implications.

-- itsbenedict (source)

you are supposed to have an overwhelming emotional response to the melodramas of the characters, feel their successes (so long as they are remaker-utopian) as your own, take the story as inspiration for a progressive future you are striving for every day, desire to live in the world and then in the world to come after the book ends, but I did not, at all.

the books urge you to read them as historical documents and so, obedient to the request, I cannot help reading it cynically as a ruling-class narrative justifying the autocratic world order at the end, written by people whose motivations for supporting it are exactly as described above – based on sentiment, groupthink, fanaticism and delusion.

I have no great feelings about J.E.D.D. except a sort of pity that he was MKULTRA’d since before he was even born into being the perfect idiot-savant Emperor of the World by, apparently, the common action of multiple Lodges, Black and White, all of whom appear to sincerely believe their own bullshit and act in full confidence that everyone else will too. he appears to have no escape.

It is not that there is nobody who dissents, but  Hiveguard really is not treated as anything but an unfeeling and unthinking reactionary menace, who are generally just Problematic. Sniper doesn’t get with the platform because it has Brain Problems and is generally kind of uninterested – again, it just out of reaction opposes J.E.D.D. and acquiesces by the end without any great objection. And given the all-pervading, highly valourised,   sentimentality and psychological anatomisation of motive, it is very striking that very little sentimentality is given to them.

-- fruityyamenrunner (source)

... in the world established in Too Like the Lightning, certain things are meant to subtly shock us... The society depicted there has an understanding of gender and sexuality a million miles from our modern conceptions of such things, rooted in biology but fundamentally strange in disparate directions — both silent on the subject and, as the other side of the same coin, lasciviously obsessed with it. Modern notions of transgender identity or sexual orientation don’t even apply.

But in Perhaps the Stars especially, Palmer backs down from many of these alien details. As others have noted, the reforms instituted at the very close of the series essentially seek to make their world more similar to ours, eroding their strange taboos on gender and religion, robbing the papier-mache Masons of their talismanic authority, and so on.

Perhaps the best illustration of this is some of the clunky, adolescent dialogue that gets attributed to Sniper towards the end of Perhaps the Stars — they enter unprompted (in a totally inappropriate context) onto a long monologue about their gender identity and pronoun preferences which could have been lifted from someone’s tumblr circa 2021. At one point they put into writing, in seeming earnest in a letter to their ba’sib Cato, “thank you for supporting my asexuality” — which, at least to this reader, sounds as bizarre on their tongue as it would to hear Elon Musk denouncing the scourge of Arianism. Those words belong in another time; I know your world too well for them to ring true coming from Sniper.

It all feels as if Palmer is apologizing, or anxiously backing away from the sheer alienness of Too Like the Lightning, trying to find ways to bring the world of Terra Ignota back into alignment with the mores of the 21st century United States. It’s a wasted opportunity, especially for an author who was so daring in setting up the parameters of their world.

-- Modern Times (source)

Not just Cato [was wasting his potential] - everyone. The whole human race. Palmer’s commitment to this lesson is clear just from how many different iterations there are, every one of which has the same end. The end of the Iliad in this war is when things become “less locked in” and the part that was most locked in human behavior was solving problems with death. Yes, the Melodrama had one last gasp, but those deaths were of the allegorical abstracts those characters embodied (ruin, vengeance, the toxicity of tradition, the general power of those forces in the world, etc).

It’s brilliantly done to have Spain be both the ender AND the chief mourner of these concepts, since our oldest cultural habits or national prides run deep, and deciding to lay them down is the kind of parricide that Achilles so consistently refused. (The man found a sacrificial bull/(deer!) in an age where only monsters kill living animals. Bc that’s just what you do.  

This is why the peace fall that brings Spain and Danae together isn’t just about recognizing the confluences between the two most nation-centric Hives and leaders, it’s a marriage of the only healthy way forward that honors the past without rehearsing atrocity on its behalf.

But (that tangent aside) Cato is just what SCIENCE can do when freed from concentrating on death. (Or the supremacy of only one direction, Gordian). The reason Bridger is the protagonist is that Bridger is the avatar of mankind’s potential. He could have saved everyone, but that was too hard, so he gave up that potential in a vain attempt to keep violence and kindness at the same time. No wonder Achilles dies at the end of every Iliad. Those concepts are naturally incompatible, and trying to force them together (Mycroft killing the Mardis to save the world, Madame sowing ruin to create world peace/stability, Bridger removing himself to make Achilles, OS killing one with their trolleys rather than many, Utopia trying to save the human race with a little war, Tully doing the same thing, Gordian fomenting conflict to accelerate immortality, and EVEN JEDD’s original demand of complete surrender to the kindness of his custody) all fail. All of them.

-- skyebluemango (source)

[hickeys-dickey]

Pls share your thoughts about the gays in THAT scene… I would love to read them!

Ahh you are too kind, I am but a little swiss cheese brain but I'll try my best to sum up my thoughts, I have too many! I wanted a chance to grab some screenshots too! I'm going to put a read more because this is a long one buckle up lads.

So obviously the whole punishment for Hickey is designed to humiliate him (I would imagine this is one of the reasons his punishment isn't explained to him, because if Hickey truly was a naval petty officer he would know, and I think it's another way for Crozier to essentially say "I see you" and not in a good way). The fact we're not shown the other whippings shows the importance lies in the scene with Hickey.

I've seen a bit of discussion about his charge of "dirtiness", which isn't listed initially when we see him being questioned by the Captains, and whether or not it alludes to homosexuality but on a quick cursory search it does seem to have been used as a euphemism where an outright accusation of sodomy would mean a death sentence. The way Crozier throws it out there, no doubt to heap the humiliation onto Hickey and add crimes to the list to cover the fact he added lashes on to the punishment essentially for a bruised ego (but that's another matter), suggests a whole lot of venom to the accusation. Hickey's pointed look at Irving and Irving's quick shift of his gaze down suggests they both know exactly why Crozier has listed this among Hickey's list of crimes, and Hickey looks furious for it.

But I think this is also ultimately where the panic begins to set in. Again, there are far greater minds than me who have made excellent posts about queer coded characters in the terror, and I think it's no surprise that most of them are the faces that are focused on in this scence. It is clear long before this moment that Crozier's leadership is lacking, and people have already begun to voice concerns fairly loudly. Tozer for one is livid in the wake of Heather being injured, and the marines have clearly started distancing themselves from both the officers and the men. I feel like this scene, for a lot of characters is a point of major shift in either allegiences or character.

Tozer and the Captains are the first faces that are panned to in this scene and I think the expressions speak for themselves.

Tozer is visibly upset/concerned after the first lash. I do think guilt probably has a part to play, in that is was him whole told Hickey where Silna was, and presumably approved enough of the plan to not rat him out to anyone. Again, very probably part of Tozer's anger at Heather being injured due to what he sees is Crozier's poor management. Fitzjames is stoney faced, but is also the only one looking. As a man who many have noted pushes himself to pick emotional scabs, I think it would make sense for someone who is also notably queer coded and stuggles with trauma to make himself look directly at someone being whipped for a crime he himself might commit. Crozier isn't even looking, whether out of suddenly doubting his harshness or simply triggering something in his own memory it's not clear. I think the end of this shot also speaks for itself.

(Fig 1. Three Concerned (very likely not straight) men contemplate)

The lads at the back behind Mr. Johnson are all looking Directly At the whipping as it is taking place. Interestingly none of the men at the front near the table are looking. This is the stewards, officers, and marines. Whether out of respect or also Concern at their own skins (I think every one of these characters has been addressed as being queer coded at some point, minus the marines who are all, except Tozer, fairly nameless characters).

I'm not a gifmaker which is unfortunate for this section, though this is what is gifed in the beautiful gifset by sashneeka I reblogged (x). Tommy is also visibly upset, whether because he knows Tozer was involved in the plot to kidnap Silna and is concerned for him and any of the rest of the crew who had assisted in someway or voiced support. Billy interestingly does look briefly, and sets his jaw after in a way that suggests he's trying to fight the guilt of being the one to tell Irving about the whole affair with Hickey to paint himself in a better light. It could just as easily be Billy there on that table being lashed, but he somehow rationalises it in his head (probably because Hickey is a little bastard) that he was right in what he did. He does look down fairly guiltily after this, so maybe he hasn't quite settled on an opinion. Jopson also looks incredibly concerned/unsettled, and interestingly looks at Hickey right up until the whip hits where he flinches, and not for the only time in this scene. From what we know about Jopson's past, though not at this point, it may well be he is remembering similar punishment/mistreatment and like Fitzjames looks enough to pick the scab open and flinch from his own trauma.

The closeup of Hickey shows the full extent of his rage and humiliation building, and as I think Adam himself said, they whipped something out of Hickey that day and let him reach this potential that lay inside him (to become an even bigger bastard). He's fully severed all ties and feelings of loyalty after this and it becomes full on train to manipulation station from this point. I have a lot of Thoughts about Hickey also (which I am sure you are all aware of) but I think there was some semblance of Hickey attempting to start afresh on this journey, or at the very least keep his head down and go unnoticed. The trouble is, he notices Crozier as a flawed man, and one not from the upper classes like himself, and his ego can't help but think we're not so different, that could be me with the right connections. Well surprise lads, its murder time now and he's gonna make this old man pay for not recognising initiative but punishing it. I do wonder if Crozier wasn't booze sick and rattled from losing even more men under his command, would he not have come down so harshly for someone clearly defying the Articles to do what he thinks is right and save the men (a la Crozier and his fuck you I'm directly contradicting an order and leading this rescue party myself).

Tozer gets another wee closeup here and again looks like he has resolved something in his head too. Most likely that he thinks Crozier an unfit leader, and admiring Hickey for having the balls to do what he did (Hickey also never reveals anyone else who came with him, and when he talks about Hartnell and Mason's part in taking Silna it highlights their skill and bravery and (he thinks) commends them to the Captain. It's probably the only time we see him building up and applauding others). He looks dead ahead here and seems to have a very steely gaze, like yep fuck it looks like I'm going it alone now. It is interesting that Tozer goes from this to notably disliking Hickey (both at the start and when they are packing up - "you've just given me an excuse to give a big shove". This might be anger at Hickey having caused all the issues with Silna after the fact when Heather gets killed at Carnivale), but still follows him in the end. Hickey has the ability to kill, manipulate, steal, basically do whatever needed for their group to get ahead, which means Tozer can be part of the group and not have to dirty his own hands. I think Tozer probably has a complicated relationship with Hickey, but he does fall for the charm hook, line, and sinker, and the fact he seems concerned for him here suggests how easily he is sympathetic to those he sees as being wronged.

Gibby getting Hickey's blood on his hand (ayy) seems to visibly make him blanch, and I do find it interesting that the shot then pans to Tommy as though they are looking at each other when they are stood side by side. The similarities between them maybe? (I've seen and reblogged a lot of discourse about Tommy loving Tozer, maybe another nod to no one being so different to the man on the table?) Irving doesn't get much of a close up in the rest of this scene but bless him he looks equal parts terrified and guilty (another man who has been noted as having a list of many things to distract from the Gay Thoughts like why do you need to distract from Gay Thoughts Irving?). He also has the Far Off Look of trauma about him, probably because he too could just as easily be on that table.

I have many many thoughts about the way Hickey turns to look (and fucking smile???) at Crozier next, which is when Crozier is looking directly at him and Fitzjames looks at him. Like if I were Crozier I think my fucking blood would chill, look at this man. Being humiliated and lashed still hasn't broken him, if anything he has just become fully unhinged and looks at Crozier as though to say "did you really think this would work?". I would also say, this man has fairly quite for someone who is at this stage something like 22 lashes in? Like what the actual fuck Hickey?? I fully belive Hickey to be a psycopath, and most of what he does in the beginning of the series is an attempt to stay hidden until they get to Hawaii and he can ditch the crew, but I think it is fairly safe to say he isn't hiding it any more.

And he knows this is going to make the men doubt Crozier - I can't do a proper search because I am using my work laptop atm, but I seem to remember reading that a punishment greater than 12 lashes required a court martial (probably why Little steps in to say so when Crozier orders his punishment as well as them technically being lost at sea), which would be another strike against him as a Captain. Not only that, but Crozier does seem to grant him some mercy in letting him only be lashed I think 23 or so times? Probably because the tension is fucking palpable in this whole scene and Crozier can either choose to claw back some sense of control on the matter, or deal with the consequences of many people admiring Hickey for what he has done for the crew and start a mutiny. I think this is the first time Fitzjames sees the damage Crozier is doing to himself with his choices as Captain, and is probably just as concerned at the look Hickey is giving him. He knows this has unleashed something in this tiny rat bastard too, and that he will become the physical manifestation of Crozier's self-destructive tendancies. Crozier perpetually comes to everything just a fraction too late to change anything - he never saves any of the men, only comforts them as they die, and a lot of this has to do with his own ego and bad decision making, and I think this is the first example here of the fact his actions are having an effect on others to the point it will be his downfall.

Anyway, to round it off, I think this scene really epitomises the notion that Hickey is a mirror to the rest of the men, and they see their flaws in him. Those who have questioned Crozier's captaincy look concernced knowing they too could be being lashed. They too would have tried to get Silna to stop the Tuunbaq hunting them. Those who are queer or queer coded know they too could be being lashed for it. Crozier himself sees his unwillingness to follow the Articles in him, sees his own insubordination, and feels what Sir John meant when he said his position afforded him deference. Hickey may as well be a metaphor for all the men being lashed, theres not one among them who haven't voiced wanting to do what he has done. Let them without sin and all that. This is make or break for who holds loyalty to the Captain, and the turning point for who is going where. I think everyone except Jopson, Irving and Fitzjames ends up in the mutineers camp, and Irving ends up killed and mutilated by Hickey and Fitzjames is scavanged by them. Theres not one of them that isn't haunted by what happened in this scene, and Hickey would end up being the death of every single one of them. The only one who remains loyal after this is Jopson, who thinks his care and duty to the Captain can outweigh his other sins. Fitzjames and Crozier have a stronger relationship once he recovers from his withdrawal, yes, but Fitzjames also keeps him in check now (I'm thinking of Edward Little being threatened with flogging again because of course I am), and it is another step too late for Crozier's self-destruction. I've seen a Hickey/Fitzjames Christ analogy on here before too, so I hope you'll forgive me in comparing them, but Hickey in this scene really does get punished for everyone else's crimes in this scene, and becomes a sort of Christ-like figure, reborn as a complete version of the worst of himself from the pain of being lashed. They whipped something out of him!! Anyway, that about sums it up!

[keldabika]

Hey yo! :D For the requests: how about a vld post-canon fanfic in which the reader helps Lance to move on, while still remembering Allura with respect and fond memories, which ends up in a sweet love confession? :3 If you need more details, please don’t hesitate to ask. Thanks, and have a good day!

[Lance McClain] “Under The Sun”

———————————————————————

“It’s been quite awhile now, I wonder when Lance is coming home?”

You pondered without so much as a doubt that he’d be back eventually, but you were a bit worried about your long-time best friend. It was late into the summer evening now, and the gradient dark blue was only just beginning to peek over the horizon. He was out late far more often now, though you supposed it was because Allura’s death had hit him hard, but you were in disbelief in seeing the usually peppy and flirtatious boy so…. depressed. It was heartbreaking to witness.

Staring out the farmhouse window, you watched the tall grass sway in the fields beyond and the slight breeze ruffle through the distant image of an apple orchard. The sun was nearly set by now, and soon the stars would be clear in the sky—a constant reminder of the paladins journey across the galaxy.

Knowing that there was so much life out there beyond the Earth you knew, you could barely comprehend just how significantly small your life was in comparison. You hadn’t travelled with the paladins or engaged in conversation with Allura beyond briefings during the Galran invasion, but you understood that the universe they witnessed was oh-so-incredibly vast and endless.

And now you felt oh-so-incredibly lonely in it. You weren’t close with many of the other paladins, besides Hunk and Pidge of course. Shiro had his new husband, Coran was too iffy for your tastes, and Keith…. well he was always off and away. With Altea restored to its rightful glory, commerce and politics between itself and Earth were bustling and swell, never better, and many of the paladins, including Lance from time-to-time, were busy making deals and new friends.

And you felt left out and abandoned because of that. It wasn’t fair that you hadn’t been accepted into the space academy, only because there was a limit to the number of accepted students, and it wasn’t fair Lance left without a single word to you, on some grand adventure for years on end without so much as a word, and it wasn’t fair that you were helpless in all things besides cooking or cleaning or feeding the animals out in the barn, or giving Lance a hug when he needed one, or looking after his siblings while his parents were gone or just—being there. It just wasn’t fair that they’d all experienced so much of life, and you hadn’t done anything in the meantime. Your meagre living was nothing in comparison to their heroism and praise. You felt selfish for thinking this way, so you never voiced your concerns to anybody, especially Lance.

“I wonder what he’d think of me, thinking this way,” you looked out unto the glimmer of stars appearing beyond the clouds, “he’d look at me and think ‘Life is never fair, you should deal with it.’ What a joke.”

You suppose you were satisfied for now with just being able to be near Lance, as a friend and support for when he needed you most, even if he didn’t know it.

“Oh Allura,” stepping outside, your eyes had an even clearer view of the skyline, and the sunset appearing within your vision, and you could almost feel the expanse of the universe looking down upon you, Allura among the vast amount of stars blazing within it, “tell me what I should do to help him. Tell me how I should be there for him, in the same way you were and in ways otherwise. How can I make him happy now you’re gone?”

Of course, you would never receive an answer beyond a pregnant silence, and the echo of your own voice over the hills and through the house where the children were asleep. You kept your eyes on the stars, hoping they’d give you some form of sign, an astrological message that could guide you, a vision of some kind, but there was only emptiness, the soft yet visible twinkle of each individual sun, burning lightyears away.

Sigh. You really should’ve expected this you suppose.

“Speaking to the sky, I’m selfish and an idiot!”

You gripped your [H/c] hair and yanked it downwards, chanting ‘idiot’ over and over again, like a mantra or a prayer, hoping it would relieve some of your many frustrations, until you heard a small sound from a hay bale around the side of the house, near an old trough used to store feed.

“Hello? Anybody there?”

Silence was all that answered at first, but then a small series of whimpers came from the area. You grabbed a pitchfork and slowly made your way over to the bale, creeping closer and bringing the pitchfork up to your chest, ready to strike.

“AAAAAAAAAAH!”

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

A terrified Lance dunked himself into the trough, getting his backside stuck before tipping it over and having it land on top of him while attempting to crawl away.

“Dios mío [Y/n], you scared me!” Lance stood up and dusted off his jacket and pants, rubbing at his eyes and making an awful attempt at hiding his face away from your sight.

“Well I’m sorry, oh merciful Lord Lance, but you being secretive and not answering me when I asked has a lot to do with that.”

He looked away from you for a further moment before responding.

“Well, I uh…. just wanted to be alone for a minute y’know? All my siblings and family n’ stuff, kind of makes my back stiff and mind numb from time-to-time.”

You watched solemnly as he tried to laugh it off, sitting back down on the edge of the trough, head leaning in his hands and staring off into the distance, obviously bothered by something. You were curious, but you didn’t have any right to pry if he didn’t want to tell you first. You’d respect his wishes if he really did just want to be alone.

“Well, alright then,” you smiled softly at him, forcing yourself off your knees and turning around to head back inside, “if you want to talk, I’ll be back inside. I’ll be in my room if you need me.”

You began to walk away, adamant on getting back upstairs to the comfort of your bed and laying awake all night, when you felt a small weight on the back of your shirt. Lance’s hand had managed to grasp the fabric while you were walking away, and though you turned around to ask him why, he had barely moved from his position on the trough, only gazing at you with unshed tears in his eyes.

“Can you stay for a moment,” he pleaded, “please? It’ll only take a minute [Y/n], I swear.”

‘Allura give me strength’ you thought, letting out an exasperated sigh and seating yourself beside him on the ledge, barely glancing at him again, preferring to turn your sights to the horizon once more. You knew it’d be another nightly session of listening to his fears and sorrows, meanwhile drowning in your own self-doubt and anxieties. This also meant that tomorrow you’d wake up questioning your worth again, comparing yourself to the woman you’d come to respect and admire, and a woman who was now gone off to the afterlife, long before you.

“Tell me what’s up Lance. What’s eating away at you this time tonight, huh? Lemme guess, is it your girlfriend again?”

You watched as Lance fiddled with a piece of straw, rolling it back and forth between his palms, keeping his gaze on the sunset ahead.

“No,” he muttered, “more of an apology really.”

You nearly did a spit take, staring at him like he was a chicken with two heads. You never thought you’d be hearing an apology from the Casanova himself, let alone one aimed at you. Usually he was too cocky to have second thoughts.

“Sheesh Lance, what’s gotten into you? Did your mom finally drill some manners into that peabrain of yours?”

You jokingly put him in a headlock and started ruffling his hair, Lance desperately trying to remove your arm so he could fix his ruined part.

“[Y/n] c’mon! I styled my hair hours ago, I nearly kept it perfect for the whole day!”

He began running his fingers through his hair to put it back in place. Concentrating on perfecting it once more.

“Oh Lance, what kind of farmer like you needs styling gel? It gets greasy in a couple minutes anyways so why even bother.”

“It’s the thought that counts [Y/n]!”

You snorted as he huffed at you, the two of you quipping at each other reminded you of the days before he left off to the academy. Then you remembered,

“Oh right, the apology. Glad to see you learned some common courtesy, but what’s this all about Lance?”

You really needed answers. He suddenly went quiet and seemed to contemplate something for a moment. He worried you, and he knew it too, that you were expecting an explanation for an apology he probably wasn’t ready to give.

“Well you see [Y/n],” he stared directly at you, “I know that I’ve been down recently, and that you’ve always been…. there, I guess, for me when I needed you to be. And I know that I’ve never even thanked you or given you something in return, and that by using you as a way to escape my own problems, I’ve given you some of your own,”

He stopped for a moment to see if you were still paying attention, and seeing you looking at him with encouragement, he continued,

“I’m so sorry, [Y/n]. Really, I am. I was being dumb like always and pouring out my feelings onto someone who had difficulties of their own to deal with, and I never really thought about how I was hurting you…. I’m sorry. When Allura was here, and I was back out in space, battling alien hordes and saving the galaxy…. I felt like everything was right in the world, and that I was living my best life, being beside all the people I cared about, with friends I could trust. I didn’t realize until later that I completely forgot about you in the process, the best friend I left behind, who mattered maybe even more to me than I thought. I never meant to forget you, and I never meant to hurt you.”

He began to get nervous, losing the cocky persona he developed over the years completely, turning downtrodden and forcing out a final “I hope you can forgive me.”

Then he went quiet.

“….I never hated you, y’know,” you began, finally responding, “I never once despised you for leaving without me. I knew you’d come back someday, when I heard a lion took off from the desert that day, I just didn’t know when.”

You kept going, “If anything, I hated myself sometimes, for being selfish and wanting you to come back sooner, or blaming you in my mind for not taking me with you. It always felt unfair to me, that I was stuck here in a constant cycle of boring life, while you were out patrolling the universe, fighting Galra and going on cool missions-”

“-and nearly dying, like, 50 times!” Lance interrupted.

“….and nearly dying 50 times, yes.”

The sun was nearly gone now, disappearing quickly before you, clocking the time you’d been outside conversing in the summer heat—the pale moon climbing the sky behind you.

The stars shone ever-brighter, and the breeze had settled down, the grass at your feet stamped in and no longer swaying, and the crickets in the field were chirping, with the cows grazing in the meadow below, almost ready to head in for the night.

“I’m jealous Lance. And frustrated. But I never spoke a word of anything to you, because I loved you too much to bother you with any more problems than you already had. Nothings your fault, I was only emotional, and I have no disrespect for any of your friends or partners, including Allura. I only wish that you could’ve been happier.”

Ending your rant, you faced Lance again and shrugged, acting nonchalant, like nothing you said mattered at the moment. But he knew that whatever he said next would make a large impact on you.

“You loved me?”

You relaxed a little, “Still do Lance, never stopped even after you left. But, you came back with a space alien girlfriend, I knew I had to let you go.”

Allura was the light of his life, and he was the happiest you’d ever seen him in the weeks before her death. If she hadn’t needed to make a sacrifice, they would’ve probably grown old and had a life together, a family too, and he would have become the Altean King, with you far out of the picture. The little markings on the ridge of his cheekbones still detailed just how loving of a relationship the two were in. Even after her passing, you wouldn’t make a move when Lance only thought of you as a friend.

Both yourself and Lance were gazing at the sky now, completely silent, and yet there was an underlying comfort in the stillness, one which permeated through the air around you and invited a conversation to be had. Lance seemed to wish to speak in order to break it, scratching at the markings whilst trying to find the words to talk to you.

“Oh quiznak, words are too hard!”

Lance reaches across the trough to grasp the hand you’re using to stable yourself on the ledge, bringing it up to the space between the two of you and wearing the most serious expression you’ve ever seen on his face.

“When I was in third grade, I ran into a small child in the hallway and accidentally spilled their thermos of soup all over the floor. That tiny [H/c] kid became my desk-mate for all of third and fourth grade, and I remember having to give them my baloney sandwich because they wouldn’t stop crying till I did. In fifth grade, that same kid switched our lunchboxes because I had the better pizza pops, and in sixth grade, while taking a math test, they threw up all over the floor and I laughed like crazy; ended up going with them to the office because the teacher ‘didn’t like my attitude’. In seventh grade, I went to their birthday party and popped all the balloons, I stole half the cake and made off with three goodie bags before anyone could catch me. In eighth grade we became friends, and played pranks together on the other students during April fools, tipped an outhouse, and did each others homework because we both sucked at school. When I was in ninth grade, I gave them a Burger King crown and told them they ruled my world…. I know you know who I’m talking about.”

You began laughing the hardest you had in years, looking back on all the memories you and Lance had built up over the years, times when neither of you knew what would happen, and had big dreams and hopes for the future. The future had turned out to be far different from what both of you had expected.

“To be fair Lance, you were the one who threw up during that math test, not me. You cried for your mom all the way through the school and passed out on a couch in the lobby.”

“Shut up [Y/n], I’m attempting to be sentimental!”

When the laughter died down, and the world was quiet again, you gazed down at the entwined hands that rested between you two, and lazily swung them back and forth to see if he’d let go. When he didn’t, you smiled a bit,

“So what, this means your willing to try? To move on from Allura just like that? Forget everything you had with her and stick with me for awhile?”

He smiled brightly at you, as bright as the sun that could barely be seen, the final slivers fading away over the prairie.

“Allura’s not entirely gone,” he taps his markings, “these babies are a constant reminder of that. I’ll never forget the happiness she gave me, but I don’t want to keep dwelling on the fact that she’s gone. You’re here with me, more than anything, and I hope that we could stay this way for as long as we can.”

“I’d like that.”

It’s far too late to keep outside you realize, and the night brings with it a chilling cold that practically freezes your clothes to your skin, and tinges the air with frost. The fall season is coming, and summer is nearly over, and with it comes the colourful leaves, and the frosted grass, and the wilting flowers. You stand up, dragging Lance with you, and dust off the seat of your pants, preparing to head inside to bed.

Now the darkness has settled, the sun is gone. You take your hands and guide Lance around the house to the doorway. The door creaks open and shuts behind the two of you, and as you say your goodnights, you head off to your room. And as the glow of the moon enters through your window, enshrouding the walls in a pale light, you lay there and ponder.

Truly, you hope that you can spend many more days with Lance down in the fields, and with the cows and the tall grass, and out in the apple orchard, where the two of you will lie, down in the top soil, under the sun.

———————————————————————

BONUS:

“[Y/n], know that you’ll always be my Burger Queen.”

“Lance please. Shut the fu*k up.”

———————————————————————

✨ Hope you enjoyed ✨

[itstittycitybaby]

V Halloween Special

a/n: happy halloween you guys! i will be posting this along with another special on halloween. i went with something very different instead of what i had planned. i really didn’t like how it was coming out and i wasn’t proud of it. so here we are.

The chilly air welcomed you as you lurked into the night. The moon brightened London’s desolate streets. The curfew had rid people from roaming in the night and instead left the ghosts to roam free.

Lit pumpkins sat on doorsteps, grinning at you as you walked by. The halloween lights on balconies shimmered beautifully. Halloween night was eerie and desolate except for your footsteps on the pavement. There were no henchmen in sight. However, you’d find them soon enough.

London had been tainted by Chancellor Sutler’s reign. Its people have suffered greatly because of their weakness. Humans were such fragile things. Something you’ve come to learn from your five hundred years of life. 

The people of London were weak but it wasn’t their fault. It was all the Chancellor’s; the power he held over them was great, but your strength was greater.

Your ears perked up. The sound of footsteps that scuffled in the alley made your senses heighten. You could feel them. Four henchmen were following you. A delighted grin pulled at your lips making your fangs flash in the night. A feast was walking straight towards you; the prey falling gently into the spider’s web.

You could feel their hearts getting closer and closer. You turned around, skirt swooshing around your knee.

“What do we have here? A pretty lady out past curfew?” The man’s words slurred. There were four of them. They whistled as they circled in front of you like wolves. You couldn’t help but scoff; men were never polite or kind, no matter what people said. They would always be pigs.

You didn’t say anything, but kept your eyes focused on what seemed to be the leader. He was bigger and more burly than the others. He walked with arrogance and pride. It was cute, really.

“Cat got your tongue? Shame really, would’ve enjoyed someone more vocal.” They closed in on you. They laughed as you got into a fighting stance. You smirked, ready to pounce. “Well, no one will hear you, that’s for sure.”

Foot shifting slightly to the right, you pounced on the man to your left. He cried out as his back smacked to the floor. You straddled him and clenched your legs tightly around him so he couldn’t escape. The others stood in horror as you sunk your teeth into his neck and drank. The man underneath you screamed until he became limp. You chuckled darkly as you rose up from him. “I’m just helpless aren’t I?”

The glimmer in your eyes was feral. You grinned wickedly and licked your lips. His blood was bitter but it would do. The three men pulled out their weapons. “We’ll k-kill you vampire,” the leader stuttered, holding his knife with trembling hands. You giggled. It was high pitched and deranged. You could feel their heart beats rapidly pump in their chests and their blood running cold. “Aww,” you cooed, lips pulling into a pout. “Don’t be scared. You’ll spoil the blood.” 

The leader lunged at you. You dodged gracefully, sliding to the left. One of the other men tried to slice you with his dagger but missed. 

You dodged their attacks swiftly with ease. Humans were no match for a vampire. Playing with your food always made you excited. Hunting for so many years became boring, but seeing horrible people like these henchmen beg for mercy never failed to get you off.

The sound of metal screeching together made you halt. You and the henchman in front of you snapped your heads at another opponent. 

They wore all black with a little hat on their head. If you weren’t in the middle of feeding, you would have thought it was cute. Their dark hair barely touched their shoulders and they had a short curtain of bangs. 

What caught your eye was the mask. Guy Fawkes. A strange sight to see from the resemblance of the man. The grinning smile the mask had was eerie. You couldn’t help but admire the person as they gracefully sparred the leader. 

Your arm errupted in pain. Its sting traveled throughout your body. One of the henchmen had taken your surprise and turned it against you. You snarled, bearing your fangs. He clutched his dagger tightly and lunged. He was too slow. You tackled him onto the ground and leapt on him.

You clamped your hand around his mouth tightly, muffling his screams as you tore into him. The henchmen writhed underneath you, but you were stronger. His blood had spoiled from the fear that had coursed through his veins. You grumbled as your got off of him, “So much for a feast,” you grunted as you dusted your skirt off.

You heard a hiss. You lifted your head to examine the scene in front of you. The four henchmen laid dead on the concrete floor. Your nostrils flared as a sweet smell hit you. Blood. You felt a tinge of arousal as you basked in the glorious scent. The person in the Guy Fawkes mask grunted, clutching their side tightly. Your mouth watered at the wonderful smell. 

Their head snapped up once they heard your boots clicking onto the brick cement. The dagger in their grip tightened as they studied your movements. “I’m not going to hurt you,” you said gently, hands raising in front of you. “I just want to take a look at your wound.”

The person laughed. It was followed by a grunt of pain.“And why should I trust you? A vampire looking at my wounds? A bit funny isn’t it.” There was no malice in the man’s tone. It was genuine curiosity.

“I only kill people who hurt others. Like Chancellor Sutler, for example. I don’t believe you’re on of those people. Feel free to correct me of course, and I’ll have no problem pouncing on you.” V grinned under his mask. The idea of meeting a vampire on halloween night made him want to laugh.

“I’m not a vile man who takes away people’s freedom if that’s what you’re insinuating.” “Then what are you?”

The man’s eyes watched you closely on you once you were finally arms length away from him. His blood smelled so sweet and you knew it would be delicious. He would be delicious to devour. But you were no monster (aside from the fangs and the literal blood thirst that pumped through your veins). This man had swooped in to save you from the disgusting pigs. Even if you didn’t need it, the thought still counts. You owed him a favor now and you were intending to full fill it.

“Ah, you ask a man in a mask who or what he is. Obviously you can see I wear a mask and what I am is a man who wears a mask.” The man coughed, his words becoming more strained and weak. 

You snorted. “Listen, as much as I endure your charming dialouge and smooth voice, the more you talk the weaker you get. So, while I take you back to my place, you can tell me then. Sound good?”

He was silent for a few moments. Out of shock for being interrupted or what, you didn’t care. This man was loosing blood and he was loosing it fast.

“How can I trust you?” You sighed. “Well, if you don’t want to die then take the chance. Something tells me your time to die isn’t now. So what will it be? Dying and in the end I drink from your delicious neck, or you come with me and survive?”

V felt his cheeks flush. Well, you were rather forward. He mulled it over before nodding weakly. “Alright, I’ll take the chance. I might need some help getting there.” You grinned. V’s heart beat faster at the glinting fangs in the moonlight. “Perfect,” you replied. You wrapped your arm around his shoulders, the other on his waist. The man leaned on you for support and the two of you limped back to your humble abode.

**** 

V looked around the flower shop. The bright florescent light flickered on, revealing the wide range of colors to flowers. He was in awe as he gazed around the shop. V had passed by this shop during his missions without a second thought. He didn’t pay attention the shops anymore because he could no longer visit them.

“Your shop is beautiful,” V praised, gazing at a batch of garden roses that were arranged neatly in a bin. “Thank you,” you said, smiling. “I’ve always loved flowers, even as a human. They’re the only things that make me happy.” 

“I’m assuming you can’t run it in the day.” You smiled sadly, grabbing the first aid kit from under the register. “You’ve assumed correctly. I have two assistant’s who come in during the day. I’m the one that orders the flowers and take care of the greenhouse.”

 You sighed softly, “Ready? I’ll patch you up in the back.” “No witnesses,” V asked jokingly. You laughed. “Smart man.”

****

“Mind taking off your tunic?” V froze; he forgot taking off his tunic was an important part in this matter. You were so charming and sweet that he forget.

“Uh,” he stammered, “on second thought I can do it.” You shook your head. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. I promise I won’t ‘suck your blood’ or something like that.” V’s heart striked with guilt. That was not the reason why; in fact, if you actually asked to feed V found himself willing. The thought scared him when he had just met you. What was scarier was you seeing him underneath the persona of the mask.

“You’re bleeding out. I really need to make you’re okay,” you said gently. “Alright,” he whispered. “Close your eyes.” You arched a brow but shut them anyways. It was dark and all you could hear was the rustling of fabric. It was silent for a few moments but the man in front of you murmured that he was ready.

What you were expecting wasn’t the sight in front of you. His skin was pink and very scared. Whoever this man was had been in some kind of accident. He still had his mask on which was odd but you didn’t comment about it. The air was tense between the two of you. The man seemed to be waiting for something. A reaction, or maybe for disgust? 

You didn’t say anything at all. The man seemed surprised that you opened the first aid kit instead, and pulled the supplies out that you needed instead. You focused on threading the needle and made a small noise of victory once it went through. “This may hurt a bit,” you warned. 

V hissed softly at the sting of the needle going in. Eventually he got used to the pattern of the needle being pulled from his skin. The pain became dull the longer it went on. “Why are you doing this for me?”

“A favor.” V’s brows furrowed underneath his mask. “A favor?” “Mhm. You really didn’t have to step in and help me out there.” “It’s my duty to help a beautiful woman in danger. Although, you could’ve handled them yourself.” You snorted, “Quite the flatterer.” “Sorry,” V grunted as a particular sensitive spot you were stitching. “I genuinely mean it. It wasn’t my intention to make you...uncomfortable.”

“It’s not that,” you said, tying a knot and reaching over for the scissors. “Just surprised. Not many would call my kind beautiful after witnessing someone’s neck being ripped out.” The man didn’t say anything as you snipped the loose thread. He watched you peel the gauze before kneeling back down again. “It must be hard. Having to control your instincts.” “Yes, it is.” You stuck the gauze on him with tape and lifted yourself off the floor. “Thank you.”

You smiled. It was a genuine smile. “Of course.” The two of you stared at each other. You couldn’t see his eyes but his gaze felt warm. It made your heart flutter and if you could blush, you would be like a silly school girl. The man looked like he wanted something more to say but thought better of it. He reached for his tunic and slipped it on, while you went back to front of the store to put the supplies away.

****

The man stayed there for a few hours before heading back out. He stubbornly refused to leave his empty mug in the sink, and persisted to wash it. Looking at the drying mug made your heart tug with sadness. The man was so charming and polite that it made you want him to stay. It had been so long since you’ve had a connection. Now that it was gone, it made your heart sink.

 The sun was about to come up and grace the people of London with hope. After the mysterious man left you went back down into the basement. You couldn’t help but think of him as your coffin closed shut. There was something about him that drew you in. Maybe it was the sweet blood running through his veins, or his kindness. Whatever it was, it left you craving for more.

You slept as the sun rose lazily. The customers in the shop didn’t know what truly laid beneath the adored flowers. They were clueless and very naive to what true dangers lurked in the undergrounds. 

Before your last assistant left for the night they handed you flower. Your eyes widened in surprise. It was a rare rose that had been thought to be extinct. Hell, you haven’t seen one in a very long time. It was a Scarlet Carson and on the stem was a neatly tied black ribbon. “Who left this?”

Your assistant shrugged. “Dunnno. It was in the mail slot on the door. Came with this too.” She handed you a slip of paper. The handwriting was written in calligraphy, its swirls intricate and drawn with care. As she closed up shop behind you, you read the words over and over again.

“Thank you, my dearest rose. I look forward to seeing you again, mademoiselle.”

                      -V

[slashingdisneypasta]

Slashers / Horror Villains as: Animated (Children’s) Movie Villain Songs

+ A Nightmare Before Christmas 

First of all, its mostly Disney. Second of all, I hope you know that this was a struggle for me. 

Also, note, Bubba will be the only Leatherface in this post and Billy and Stu will be the only Ghostfaces. There is Norma Bates though, so sort of a consolation. 

There are links to videos on YouTube ^^

~~~

Billy Loomis and Stu Macher / Ghostface: Playing With the Big Boy’s Now (Hotep and Huy, Prince of Egypt) 

Well... they’re part of the ‘big boys’, now! They are part of the Slashers group that, uh, ‘inspired them’. Imagine instead of Egyptian Gods, they’re chanting Slasher names. 

[HUY] Pick up your silly twig, boy [HOTEP & HUY] You're playing with the big boys now! Ha ha ha ha!

[EGYPTIAN PRIESTS] By the power of Ra Mut, Nut, Khnum, Ptah Sobek, Sekhmet, Sokar, Selket Anubis, Anukis Hemsut, Tefnut, Meshkent, Mafdet... 

Chop Top and Nubbins + Bubba Sawyer / Leatherface: Kidnap Mr Sandy Claws (Lock, Shock and Barrel, Nightmare Before Christmas) 

I mean... they aren't Drayton’s minions, but they are like this XD 

I say that we take a cannon, aim it at his door And then knock three times And when he answers Sandy Claws will be no more

Yes you're so stupid, think now If we blow him up to smithereens We may lose some pieces And then Jack will beat us black and green

Kidnap the Sandy Claws Tie him in a bag

Chucky / Charles Lee Ray: In The Dark Of The Night (Rasputin, Anastasia)

Mystical man? Check! ‘Betrayal’ (As far as he sees it)? Check. Made them pay? Check; I think Nica, Sarah and all the other families he destroys throughout the franchise can attest to that. And ‘One little girl got away’? Well Andy isn’t a girl, but yeah. Check. 

I was once the most mystical man in all Russia When the royals betrayed me they mad a mistake My curse made each of them pay But one little girl got away Little Anya, beware Rasputin's awake

Drayton Sawyer: Don’t Fall In Love (Forte, Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas) 

Its such a crochety, unessessarily rude way of describing relationships to someone! I mean, I understand completely and resonate deeply with the desire to be alone and not be responsible for anyone else, but- come on! Beast doesn't share your view! Let it go! 

Its just like Drayton’s reaction to Bubba having a crush. Super cool video too! 

As soon as your heart rules your head Your life is not your own It's hell when someone's always there It's bliss to be alone

And love of any kind is bad A dog, a child, a cat They take up so much precious time Now, where's the sense in that?

Freddy Krueger: No More Mr Nice Guy (Rothbart, Swan Princess) 

A man with an uncomfortable relationship with the main female character pretending to be normal and not homicidal for a while before unlocking more power and letting there inner bad guy loose and taking great pleasure in it? Sounds familiar. They also have a similar vocabulary- except of course Rothbart is rated G. 

I'll become that nasty, naughty, dirty, spiteful Wicked, wayward, way-delightful Bad guy I was born to be

Lyin' loathesome, never-tender Indiscreet repeat offender No more Mr Nice Guy That's not me 

Inkubus: The World’s Greatest Criminal Mind (Professor Rattigan, The Greatest Mouse Detective)

‘Inkubus’ is literally a movie about him listing all his crimes over the centuries and messing with the police force because he has a bone to pick with a detective. Sounds pretty similar to me! Listen to the song! ^^

Now comes the real tour de force Tricky and wicked, of course! My earlier crimes were fine for their times But now that I'm at it again An even grimmer plot has been simmering In my great criminal brain! 

Jason Voorhees: Despicable Me (About Gru, Despicable Me) 

I... this is all I could think of!! But the more I listen to it and read the lyrics... it f i t s Jason so well! XD Please just let this slide; I know Gru isn't really a villain but he is at the start!! Let me have this. 

Why ask why? Better yet "Why not?" Why are you marking x on that spot? Why use a blow torch isn't that hot? Why use a chainsaw? Is that all you got? Why do you like seeing people in shock? But my question to you is "Why not?" Why go to the bank and stand in line Just use a freeze gun it saves me time. I'm havin' a bad, bad day It's about time that I get my way Steam rollin' whatever I see, Huh, despicable me I'm havin' a bad, bad day If you take it personal that's okay Watch, this is so fun to see Huh, despicable me

Jennifer Check: Trust In Me (Kaa, The Jungle Book) 

She’s a succubus demon. Tempting boys into a safe-feeling, docile state so she she can strike is her thing. 

Will cease to resist Just relax Be at rest Like a bird In a nest

Trust in me Just in me Shut your eyes And trust in me

Mayor Buckman and Granny Boone: Savages (Governor Ratcliffe and the Colonizer’s parts, Pocahontas) 

Obviously, because of the (Inaccurate) historical relevance of both movies (Different time’s, same terrible prejudice,) and also because there is definitely a very cult-ish feel about both Governor Ratcliffe’s song and Buckman’s leadership. How easily they’re able to gather support from their people for the most horrible reasons. How horrifying it is to audiences and historians. 

They're only good when dead They're vermin, as I said And worse

They're savages! Savages!

Barely even human

Savages! Savages!

Drive them from our shore! They're not like you and me Which means they must be evil We must sound the drums of war!

Michael Myers: The Gospel Truth II (Muses about Hades, Hercules)

In a Disney movie, Michael would have others sing his song about him as he goes about his silent, determined walking XD 

If there's one God you don't want to get steamed up It's Hades 'Cause he had an evil plan He ran the underworld But thought the dead were dull and uncouth He was as mean as he was ruthless And that's the gospel truth He had a plan to shake things up And that's the gospel truth

Midnight Man: Oogie Boogie’s Song (Oogie Boogie, Nightmare Before Christmas)

A song about a “Gamblin’ Boogie Man” is perfect for the Midnight Man! He and Oogie could be pals. 

Woah! The sound of rollin' dice To me is music in the air 'Cause I'm a gamblin' Boogie Man Although I don't play fair It's much more fun, I must confess When lives are on the line Not mine, of course, but yours, old boy Now that'd be just fine

Norma Bates: Mother Knows Best Reprise (Mother Gothel, Tangled)

Norma is soooooo so so so unbelievably manipulative towards Norman (And Dylan. It just works better on Norman) and this song absolutely presents that. She can go from sweet, loving mother to spiteful, heinous bitch in two seconds if Norman or Dylan don't do what or react the way she wants them to. 

Likes you? Please, Rapunzel, that's demented

This is why you never should have left! Dear, this whole romance that you've invented, Just proves you're too naive to be here Why would he like you? Come on now, really! Look at you, you think that he's impressed? Don't be a dummy Come with mummy

Pamela Voorhees: My Lullaby (Zira, The Lion King 2)

In a opposite approach to a villainous mother to Norma, we have Pam, who was heartbroken by the camp councillors letting her son die and vowed to get revenge. She didn't know she was teaching Jason to be the Crystal Lake killer like Zira did, but she did, and the whole song does have her kind of feel to it also. 

Sleep, my little Kovu Let your dreams take wing One day when you're big and strong You will be a kingI've been exiled, persecuted Left alone with no defense When I think of what that brute did I get a little tense But I dream a dream so pretty That I don't feel so depressed 'Cause it soothes my inner kitty And it helps me get some rest

Patrick Bateman: Cruella De Vil (Arthur, 101 Dalmations) 

Never before was there a song that described audiences reaction to watching Patrick living in his daily life and hearing his thoughts better then this one. 

Cruella De Vil Cruella De Vil If she doesn't scare you No evil thing will To see her is to Take a sudden chill Cruella, Cruella De Vil

The curl of her lips The ice in her stare All innocent children Had better beware She's like a spider waiting For the kill Look out for Cruella De Vil

Pennywise (Both): You’re Only Second Rate (Jafar, Return of Jafar)

Mostly for the video and Jafar’s energy in this scene actually XD So many transformations, so many tasteless puns! I was going to give this to Freddy but its the closest thing to Penny I could think of. 

Go ahead and zap me with the big surprise Snap me in a trap, cut me down to size I'll make a great escape It's just a piece of cake You're only second rate You know your hocus-pocus isn't tough enough And your mumbo-jumbo doesn't measure up Let me pontificate upon your sorry state You're only second rate

Sheriff Hoyt / Charlie Hewitt: Hellfire (Judge Claude Frollo, Hunchback of Notre Dame) 

A nasty filthy man who think’s he’s in the right despite being the biggest creep and monster ever? Mhm. 

*Note: I honestly didn't notice the deformed baby, Quasimodo/Thomas link until the day after I wrote this. Don't know how I feel about it. I mean, Hoyt is actually nice, in his way, to Thomas so the connection isn't totally there but onwards:

Beata Maria You know I am a righteous man Of my virtue I am justly proud

Beata Maria You know I'm so much purer than The common, vulgar, weak, licentious crowd 

End of Post! 🌼

(Bonus’ under the cut) 

I did think of other connections which I obviously didnt landed on but still have merit! Here! 

Billy Loomis and Stu Macher: ‘Gaston’ was considered, but that would have just been a joke XD I don’t think Stu is quite as obsessed with Billy as LeFou is with Gaston. 

Chucky: Friends on the Other Side. Obviously! That link was actually what inspired me to make this post. In The Dark of Night fits to a T though. 

Freddy Krueger: You’re Only Second Rate! Ah, its perfectttt. But No More Mr Nice Guy fits better. If I ever do a Slashers as Disney Villains post, he’ll be Jafar for sure. Or Hades. Or Scar. Or Oogie. Probably Hades. You know what? Without the gore and blood and explicit sexual references, Freddy could be a Disney Villain himself. Its not like Disney hasn't towed the line before with perverted villains. >_> (Jafar and Frollo) 

Jason and Pamela Voorhees: Mother Knows Best! Of course. 

Jennifer Check: Love is For Peasants (Barbie Island Princess) Because Jennifer thinks like this: 

Men? <<< Literally anything else. 

Patrick Bateman: How Can I Refuse? (From Barbie Princess and the Pauper) XD If Patrick were a kids movie villain, he would totally join the ranks of corrupted usurpers pretending to be trustworthy royal advisory staff. Also ‘Let It Die’, that little interruption part of another song that O’Hare sings in the Lorax and ‘How Bad Can I be?’. 

[bigfrozenfan-fanfics]

Chapter 13 - Kolgrimr’s Fury

Links: Chapter overview, Character list, Map, Glossar Rating: M over all Publishing cycle: each Friday at 6:00 pm CEST dst/UTC +2:00 on (link)

Remarks: all my chapters contain carefully selected music tracks. It’s your own decision if you want to use them or not while reading. The purpose is to musically support the respective mood of the plot. If you can please use a browser for reading (not the Tumblr app) due to the text formatting and music.

At some point his mother had stopped beating the drum and after a few minutes he returned from his trance state to reality. His gaze cleared up and he saw Gyda sitting right in front of him. She looked at him relaxed and with a satisfied expression on her face. He listened into himself and felt a previously unknown power within him, it was almost tangible. He smiled at her and nodded impressed. “It worked. I can feel it. Thank you, Mother.”

She briefly stretched out both arms, palms up and said, “What did you expect? It always helped your father up until that day and now it will help you.”

“Yes, indeed. It will help me to get my ...,” he broke off in the middle of the sentence and his face took on a look that was at first astonished, then annoyed. Quite automatically he had let his mind wander and realized that the Arendellians had disappeared from the camp. They had been warned!

“What have you done ...,” he gasped and pulled himself up. He stared at his mother.

“What is it, Kolgrimr? What did you see?”

“They are all gone! Fled because someone warned them! The ritual prevented me from noticing in time. I ...” He clenched his fists and looked at her fiercely, his lips trembled.

She gasped and clapped her hands in front of her mouth. Then she stood up and looked at him sadly, almost pleading. “Kolgrimr, please ... I didn't mean it. Who could have guessed it!”

For seconds they just stood facing them and stared at each other. Then he seemed to have made a decision. One could clearly see it working in his head. “Well, let's do it the other way. It will take longer and have consequences for someone, but I have no choice now. You can prepare yourself for big changes, Mother.”

He angrily grabbed his things and stormed out of the hut. His mother stood there helpless and with her mouth open, staring at the spot where he had just slammed the kota's lid behind him.

~~~

He was furious and roared as he walked through the camp, holding his deadly modified battlestick in front of him. He simply pushed the nearest Northuldra out of the way and moved towards the camp centre.

Many more men and women were already gathering there, startled by Kolgrimr's cries of rage and warning shouts echoing through the camp. Everyone stood there waiting and nervous with their birch wood sticks in their hands and those who didn't have one hurried as fast as they could to their kotas and took it.

Yelana ran up gesticulating and tried to calm her people down. “Stand back! Stay calm, folks.”

Then Kolgrimr stepped onto the small clearing, his burning gaze directed at the leader. The people groaned when they saw him for the first time. So this was Gyda's son and some of the elders here had a deja vu moment as they remembered his father's appearance. Wrapped in his almost black fur coat, he wore a hood with reindeer antlers on his head, and his huge-looking figure loomed threateningly before them.

He pointed angrily at Yelana. “You! You drew everyone's attention and warned them about me. Not only that; you have allowed this brood from Arendelle to enter into our land again and you have also have taken care of them, and treated them as if they were our own people. And then you just let them go!”

“Kolgrimr, calm down, you're making a big mess of things here. They have proved to us that they are our friends and they amended the mistakes of the past. They ...”

“Shut up!” he yelled at her and cut off her word. “They lulled you in, wrapped you around their finger and repeating to you what they did to our old leader. What they did must be avenged!”

“Kolgrimr ...,” she began, but was interrupted by him again.

“You are unworthy to rule us, an illegitimate leader of the People of the Sun and have simply usurped that position. You have betrayed our people and now you will be replaced! My mother will take her rightful position in your place and you will be banished for your deeds.”

Yelana gasped for breath and the mood of the Northuldra tipped behind her. One of the men rumbled, finally becoming enraged, ran angrily towards Kolgrimr with his battlestaff raised against him. But the latter only grinned, and then something began that hadn't happened for ages, a deadly serious battle of the Northuldra against one of their own.

~~~

Honeymaren was already halfway back to the camp when she heard excited voices from there. “What's wrong now?” she muttered and started to run.

Even before she passed the first kotas she heard the roar of an unknown person. She soon realized that this could be only one person. “Kolgrimr!” she exclaimed in horror and stopped so abruptly that she almost tripped over. Her heart began to accelerate and a deep fear seized her suddenly.

What am I going to do; she thought and crept forward carefully, far enough so that she now saw almost all of her people standing together in the clearing, with Yelana at the head. And then she saw Kolgrimr himself and her heart almost stopped at the sight of him.

She had to stand by her people now. Wasn't she the best Skalastet fighter among them? But that also meant that she might very soon find herself in a serious situation between life and death for the first time in her life. She was very afraid and just stood there like paralyzed for seconds. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes briefly to calm down again. Then her decision was made and she crept unnoticed around the crowd and Kolgrimr, towards her kota. Once there she took out her battlestick and moved silently to the hut that was right behind Kolgrimr.

Arriving there, she ducked on the ground and peeked around the corner. A soft noise made her look to the side, startled and she recognized her brother, who moved one hut away towards her, with his battlestick in the crook of his arm. She put a finger in front of her lips. Ryder nodded and now also looked forward to the clearing. Then he looked at her questioningly and she waved him over. When he was with her he whispered, “You're not planning on attacking him from behind all by yourself, are you?”

“What else can I do, little brother, I must stand by them all. But you can be sure that I'm very scared too. This looks like a real fight and it may end badly.”

“Please be careful, sister, and don't do any of those jumping-up-the-tree-and-hit-up experiments like you did with me. We don't know how good he is with the stick.”

Honeymaren nodded and looked forward again carefully, every tendon in her tensed to breaking.

And then suddenly everything went haywire without any warning.

~~~

Yelana just yelled out loud, “Don't attack him ... stop!” and spread her arms wide to hold her people back, but it was already too late.

Kolgrimr levered up his attacker's battlestick and kicked him so hard against his chest with his foot that he sailed backwards in a high arc and then lay motionless.

Now there was no holding back anymore and many Northuldra stormed him all at once. The first three did not know what happened to them when their battlestaves were knocked from their hands with such force that they themselves were torn around and hurled to the ground. At the next man Kolgrimr cut the staff in half with the blade of his hunting tip in one mighty blow, and in the same movement he struck the other end of the staff with force against his neck. The Northuldra crashed to the ground like a felled tree.

The wave of the attack came to a halt and the Northuldra became more careful now. With eyes widened in fear they looked back and forth between the men lying on the ground and Kolgrimr. Only a few seconds had passed and already five of them were out of action, two of them unconscious and three rubbed their aching arms.

They slowly moved further apart and tried to encircle him now with sticks held out in front of them. Kolgrimr smiled and let his battlestick whirl before him, so that the blades of the hunting tips flashed in the light of the low-lying sun and created a trail of light in front of him. The men hesitated.

Honeymaren still waited. He was yet a bit too far away from her and her steps would surely reveal her in the attack. She hoped that the next attack would bring him closer to her. She slightly corrected her foot position and the grip on her staff. She was ready for the jump.

And indeed, Kolgrimr retreated slightly at the next attack. Two of the more experienced fighters exchanged fierce blows with Kolgrimr at the same time. But he had no problems at all to parry the strokes. With playful ease he casually hit them against arms, legs and scored body hits. He obviously played with them and was unnaturally fast. It was almost as if he knew exactly in advance where the two men were going to strike.

“Yet a little bit closer ...,” Honeymaren whispered to herself without a sound and gripped her staff tighter.

Now the third attacker joined in, a wirily built younger Northuldra woman. She let her battlestaff slowly spin in front of her, waiting for the ideal moment to attack as she moved in a semicircle closer to the fighters. Then the moment was there, she jumped into the gap and thrust with all her might. Kolgrimr made a leap backwards.

That was the moment Honeymaren had been waiting for and left her guard. One leap, another, and her toes barely touched the ground as she jumped up behind him with her battlestaff raised and delivered a precise, powerful blow to the only exposed spot. His carotid artery. She knew it wouldn't kill him, but it would certainly incapacitate him.

She also knew at this crucial moment that her stroke was perfectly executed and would find its target. Then the unthinkable happened. Only a fraction of a second before that, Kolgrimr crouched down in a flash, spun around and looked her straight in the eyes with a terrifying, mad grin, as her strike went nowhere and she went down uncontrolled. Immediately he was above her, put his foot on her chest and pressed his hunting tip against her neck. Honeymaren was stunned and let her staff roll out of her hand.

“You!” he rumbled over her and slightly increased the pressure with his battlestick. Honeymaren groaned and a thin blood thread ran from the light cut.

“Let go of my sister at once, you monster!”

Kolgrimr slowly turned around and saw Ryder standing behind him in attack position two steps away. He raised an eyebrow in surprise and said, “Interesting. I didn't see you coming.”

“How could you, I was standing right behind you, in your blind spot. Let her go now ... please. She was just trying to defend us. We haven't done anything to you!”

Kolgrimr pondered, looked down at Ryder's sister again and then raised his eyes to look into the faces of the surrounding ones who were frozen in their movement.

One of the men whispered in the ear of the equally shocked Yelana. “How can a man be so fast. It's supernatural.”

Yelana shook her head slightly and muttered just two words, “Berserker juice.” He looked after her uncomprehendingly as she took two steps towards Kolgrimr, threw her staff from her and spread her arms wide.

“Kolgrimr. Enough! Hear me ... I beg you. I will grant your request and go into exile willingly if you release Honeymaren. You don't want to kill one of our people, do you? You are one of us, and it is not us you hate.”

Kolgrimr's attitude relaxed a little and Honeymaren dared to breathe a sigh of relief. At least she hoped fervently that he would accept Yelana's offer.

“Why not right away so? That's I wanted to hear since the beginning. Drop all your staffs and step back,” he ordered in a loud voice, turned back to Ryder and said, “You too!” He made a nodding head movement towards the ground and fixed Ryder with a piercing look.

Ryder hesitated and gave Yelana a questioning look. She nodded and breathed a sigh of relief when he finally dropped his staff.

Kolgrimr took the spearhead from Honeymaren's neck and said to Yelana in a commanding tone, “Get your belongings and get out of here! Hurry up, go on!” Yelana gave him an angry look, picked up her staff again, took a quick step to her kota and disappeared into it.

Shortly after, she came out again, with a bag over her shoulder. She took one last look around and walked with measured steps towards lichen meadows. When she was out of sight Kolgrimr also took the foot from Honeymaren's chest and pulled her up by her collar. He stood behind her in a flash and suddenly she had his long knife at her throat.

The Northuldra groaned loudly and Ryder sank to his knees in desperation. “I have no intention of killing her,” Kolgrimr shouted to the Northuldra gathered around him. “But for now, I'll keep her as hostage, you hear? Don't get any stupid ideas or you will bitterly regret it!”

Then he lowered his head to her left ear grinning and whispered in low voice, “You won't die, dearie, not yet. You will help me to bring the Arendellian royalty back to me, specially your beloved snow queen.”

All her hope seemed lost now; she thought. She realized, that she was helplessly at his mercy now. She felt his hard grip pressing her against his chest and the deadly sharp knife at her throat. Tears began to flow down her cheeks and she trembled in fear.

When Kolgrimr finally started to move and to direct her into the woods she throwed to her brother a last glance. He still kneeled on the floor, staring at her desparately. Maybe this was the last goodbye.

Her lips silently formed her last words to him, “I love you, little brother.”

~~~

---

I hope you have enjoyed this chapter! Please leave a comment if you liked the story, I would be pleased to read your opinions, even criticisms. If you want to be tagged as soon I publish the next chapter please let me know, except you are already tagged :-)

Announcement : Tomorrow a little surprise is waiting for you, so don't forget to check my blog. By the way, I plan this also for the change to the future parts, always one day later than usual. Just now part two has started... At this point I would also like to thank all those readers who have liked my story so far without comments, but are still there and also my new blog followers. THANK YOU guys!

Tagging: @karma26 @whether-near-to-me-or-far @annaofthenorthernlights @igotelsapregnanthelp

[canmom]

it's a bit of a pipe dream to think i would be well known one day, but i would hate to become known as a 'british animator' or 'british writer' whose work reflected on the vibrant culture of this shithole of a dead empire. if my work doesn't say on some level "this country is an unmitigated evil in the world and all its institutions and traditions must be violently overthrown" I'm doing something wrong! this seems to be true of e.g. most of the interesting british comics writers. being british should be seen as an unfortunate fact about my background, like, 'oh this explains a lot about how depressing her work is' lmao

anyway this makes me kind of think... obviously i am into a lot of japanese animation and games, and i certainly don't want to make some silly claim that every anime creator i like is some badass radical because that's obviously not true, but also like, promoting an image of 'cool japan' is a literal policy of their seemingly eternal far right government and i don't really want to enable that! i would hate to sort of shackle someone to a nationalist project they don't uphold in appreciative critical writing.

a couple weeks ago i saw an fairly big name webgen animator on an animator discord expressing resentment about being held up as an up and coming filipino animator when, in his eyes, he had seen no support from his country and taught himself everything through the internet. he saw his community as international web animators. and while i don't want to be idealistic, his attitude appealed to me. i feel much more comfortable thinking of myself as a creature of the internet, with all the flaws that entails... i can't really remember a time where i didn't spend much more time reading and talking to people in other countries (mostly Americans, but also a lot of people from other European countries on the old Blender forums) and i guess that played a huge part in my particular path of 'socialisation'.

one thing I've found quite striking since getting more involved in the like, 'indie animator subculture' is that there the balance of countries ppl are from is much more south american and southeast asian, much less USian, than most online communities I've been in, which is honestly a p welcome change. it's a bit of a cliché but i do feel like the internet really is demonstrating its potential to create certain kinds of international connections not mediated through mass media localisation in the way of the last hundred years of capitalism, and as much as corporate near-monopoly media production - The Industry - still dominates the landscape in so many ways, it's still really exciting to see what sort of art movements are going to grow in this ecosystem...

but of course, i realise this feeling of being part of a cosmopolitan international culture or w/e is such a class thing. the UK, by virtue of its place in the world economy and the last few centuries of colonial plunder gets both the most modern comms infrastructure and the benefits of its language being widely considered the path to wealth and privilege, a structure which perpetuates itself long after the period of direct rule... especially since its immediate successor as "top dog empire" also uses English. the people i talk to are either from other rich countries, or often the comparatively well-off people of colonised countries who are coming to speak to me in my language rather than the other way round. there's not much i can immediately do about the distribution of power in this situation, but i don't want to have illusions about it. and if i can figure out the right, sustainable means of motivation, it would be really good to learn to visit the non-English-speaking parts of the web.

what is to be done about all this? idk. just mulling this one over. i very much admire someone like @anarcha-catgirlism who seems to pick up languages as easy as breathing out of an intrinsic love of it (i'm sure she finds it harder than it looks from the outside lol), but I've never had that facility and comfort with language learning the way i did with, say, maths.

it's very hard to figure out how to get a proper habit of practice going the way i have with drawing and animation lately. what happens is, i think one day, oh no, not done this in a while, let's make an effort to get back into practicing kanji, knock a couple hundred off my wanikani queue, and then it won't occur to me to do it again for like, weeks. other languages I've tried i have fared even worse; at best i get a period of hyperfocus and then it collapses, or the excuses for language classes you get in british schools. i don't know how to summon the determination that keeps me coming back to draw even when I'm unsatisfied with my skills. I'm certain it's possible to learn languages even with unmedicated 'adhd', but i haven't figured out the trick of it and continue to be an embarrassing monoglot...

anyway, enough moping. time to draw.

[ectonurites]

Conner Kent in Suicide Squad/the Infinite Frontier era: wtf is going on

Alright lads hello I just need to type out some theories/thoughts about what’s going on with my boy Kon right now. This is more for myself than anything else (just trying to organize my thoughts) but since some of y’all like to hear me talk about comics (and some of this discussion has already been happenin in my inbox) I figured i’d format it and put it on here too! its like 4k words and written over the last few days mostly at 3am. sorry <3 

this is basically just me going like

Also fair warning that like, I can be wrong and misinterpret things just as much as anyone else can, like I use panels to support why I think what I do but a lot of this stuff is subjective/complicated to understand so like... in general somethings should be taken with a grain of salt, especially because exactly what changes to the universe were made by Death Metal/Infinite Frontier haven’t been super super clearly defined yet. Also sometimes comic writers make the most random nonsensical shit happen, so I as a fan am also allowed to theorize about random nonsensical shit.

But to start: let’s backtrack!

Many months ago when Infinite Frontier was first announced they dropped some promotional art, and I remember being a little confused because. Well:

(Variant Cover spread for Justice League (2018) #59)

(Variant Cover spread for Superman (2018) #29)

Notice how Conner is back to his Teen Titans 2003 look up top, but in his YJ 2019 look at the bottom? This seemed weird to me! But then they announced that Conner would be part of the Suicide Squad ongoing title, in the T-shirt look, so I wrote this discrepancy off in my brain as ‘oh I guess that cover was just the last hurrah for punk Kon’ and moved on with life.

In Suicide Squad right away we learn he’s very much so there against his will:

(Suicide Squad (2021) #1)

Which corroborates more or less what we were also shown in Future State: Suicide Squad, although admittedly it tells... a slightly different version of the events. When I first saw both of these together I just chalked it up to being a bit inaccurate as it’s shown as a memory in Future State:

(Future State: Suicide Squad #2)

Issue 2 we saw him in action with the Squad, trying to do his best to still be a hero despite the team, but things get a little more interesting in the following issue. It starts off with an account of his history

(Suicide Squad (2021) #3)

This page gave me a few immediate red flags, mostly minor things that had to do with coloring, so more irl problems than things to take seriously in-universe (Kon’s pants are the wrong color in the first Superboy shot, and Bart’s Impulse costume is in Kid Flash colors instead of the correct Impulse ones) but then also it just bugged me the phrasing “he joined Young Justice” when he was a founder of the team, he didn’t join it he made it with Tim and Bart.

But again, chalked that stuff up to just.... writers/artists being inconsistent/unaware of things that they should be aware of, or even Nocturna just not being specific with details. But it did still strike me as a little odd considering the very accurate use of villains in those same shots, Scavenger who was a reoccurring bad guy from Kon’s solo days and showed up basically nowhere else (even holding the Spear of Lono and everything!) and Billy/Harm (Greta’s brother) from Young Justice.

But then a few pages later we got this:

(Suicide Squad (2021) #3)

Which is interesting. My first instinct was to think he’s being drugged w kryptonite or something thats leaving him hazy/out of it, but my thoughts on that have kinda changed, we’ll get there in a bit. But in general the context of ‘something’s wrong’ made the slight discrepancies on some details of his own history make more sense.

I also want to then bring up the next part to this story, the crossover issue in Teen Titans Academy.

(Teen Titans Academy #3)

So a few things. Does it feel weird to anyone else that Conner Kent, a known previous Titan who literally has a framed picture of himself in a case there, would set off alarm sensors like that? Wouldn’t he be... recognized as a Titan not an intruder by their sensors? Interesting! Anyways.

He looks really pained looking at that picture, and sad, and almost frustrated, which ya know makes sense and hurts my heart because he misses them! He misses his friends and being happy. 

But, importantly for a criticism I wanna make thats less theory related and more just me bein annoyed at Tim Sheridan, that’s a picture of Conner. Right there. That’s Superboy, on display at Teen Titans Academy, so the people who frequent this building would know who he is and what he looks like and be able to recognize him, he’s even in the same outfit and everything. Alinta recognized him at the end of Suicide Squad #3. 

So why does only one person during this big fight then comment on his presence?? Why doesn’t it get a bigger reaction???

(Teen Titans Academy #3)

And after the fight we don’t see any on panel moment of Wallace going up to the staff Titans (who weren’t present for the fight) and saying like “HEY NIGHTWING UHHH SUPERBOY WAS WITH THE SUICIDE SQUAD?” we just see him talking with his friends upset about Crush leaving. We see Alinta talking to them but we don’t see the exact dialogue. So I do just wanna take the writer by the shoulders and shake him a little bit and ask WHY because that just feels like... something you’d wanna address on panel! This is like the first time since joining the squad that Kon’s at all in contact with people from his life before Waller got involved, I feel like not addressing those people’s reactions to it/not discussing it at least a little bit on panel (especially when Conner CAME UP in the previous TTA issue, Dick brought him up and everything!!!) is a really odd choice. Maybe it’ll happen next issue and i’m just impatient, but who knows. Anyways, gripes with Sheridan aside, lets move on.

I wanna bring up how Conner... doesn’t really respond to Wallace’s question? At all? Except to just fight him off, not even an attempt at a ‘Sorry’ or anything? (the ‘Ha! That all you got?!’ seems to be coming from Culebra not Conner, although the placement of the bubble is vague enough it could be that it was supposed to be Conner? but it seems more like what she’d say, especially as she’s grabbing Emiko like that) That just feels weird. It feels off. In general he speaks so little in Suicide Squad #3 and this issue. Tbh it almost feels like he doesn’t really recognize Wallace which I mean I suppose they never exactly met (they would have theoretically during Death Metal, basically all past/present Titans were together for a while during that), but Kon’s been back in existing long enough he’d have a sense of who current heroes are anyways.

But right, so, lots of little things that feel weird... that gets us caught up to the most recently released comics... but in this household we look at solicits as they drop. Which gives us some info on what’s coming up a few months ahead of time, albeit without full context obviously. Issues #4 and #5 don’t mention Conner in their descriptions or show him on the covers at all, because there’s just other plot things going on, so ya know seems things will be quiet for him for a bit.

But then we got the August solicitations and oh BOY it’s a doozey for him! And some things start to kinda connect perhaps!

I want to just take a moment to look at that specific wording. “The teen calling himself Conner Kent” I’m probably reading too much into it but that feels deliberate, like why wouldn’t you just say ‘Conner Kent’? Usually these kinds of descriptions are trying to keep a low word count, not add in extra words that don’t need to be there. It makes it feel like that’s a name he’s using that... doesn’t actually belong to him.

So the theory I want to propose (that has been floating around already) is that based on these covers and the description, and how the Conner we’ve been seeing in Suicide Squad apparently talks about his own personal history like he’s ‘reading a wikipedia entry’ and had little response to people he should be aware of like Wallace and apparently isn’t recognized as a Titan through a bio-scan and also bearing in mind those initial promo arts with two separate looks at the same time for him... I think we're looking at a situation where the Conner in Suicide Squad so far has actually been a clone of original Conner (like... like he’s Match 2.0 or somethin) the whole time, that’s just not aware he’s not the original. 

Now that’s the base theory I wanna work with and build off of, but there’s MANY different directions that could go in/ways that could work.

For example, one idea is that the Conner we saw in #1 who was chained up is the original Conner, and he’s been being cloned and held captive, so everything else with Conner in Suicide Squad so far has been this Match 2.0 

Another idea could be the original Conner in #1 is also the Conner in #2 who Waller had then commented wasn’t ready during the mission in Arkham and had zapped with a lil Kryptonite, and after that moment she took him off the field because his spirit hadn’t been broken enough to be obedient (as he was a lot quieter in Issue #3 & the TTA crossover compared to #2, and #3 is when the Nocturna thing with the history happened)

Or it could even be original Conner in #1, then in #2 was one clone that wasn’t ‘ready’ that after that point she stopped using him, and switched to a diff clone for #3, because like that first cover did show a LOT of clones. That could be more just ‘artistic interpretation’ or something, covers sometimes do exaggerate/mislead, but it also could indicate we’re looking at a lot of clones.

(Suicide Squad (2021) #2)

With all of those in mind I also wanna bring up this little bit from Future State Suicide Squad:

(Future State: Suicide Squad #2)

Again Future State is a ‘possible future’ so stuff from it isn’t set in stone, but the idea of ‘she still has his YJ 2019 outfit somewhere’ makes me think it could be something along the lines of like, Clone!Conner finds original Conner and frees him and he gets back his YJ outfit, which could lead to like the imagery on that variant cover/the idea from my very first part of this post where I was talking about Kon being shown in both outfits in different places.

Alternatively entirely from all that, another option is that she maybe got ahold of what was needed to clone Kon, but doesn’t even have the original Kon in her possession. (again with the Future State thing, she could be lying since elsewhere in Future State we did also see a copy of YJ 2019 Kon’s costume in one of the Jon-focused Future State comics in a display case 🤷‍♂️) Which could also lead to that confrontation on the variant cover & the promo art thing... and could also explain why we have seen nothing about anyone looking for him, because in that sort of scenario he wouldn’t have even been missing in the first place.

There’s a lot of possibilities! It’s still too early to solidly know anything, but I feel pretty confident we’re entering another cloning related plot with our Clone Boy so it’s... ya know. Clone time. On the one hand it’s annoying because god we have done clone/multiple Kons plots before. We’ve done them so much.

BUT on the other hand, I think it could be interesting to use this situation to tie into some older stuff from pre-reboot that I can see some connections to, because due to Infinite Frontier altering the world and people’s memories it’s all technically fair game storytelling-wise again (and like, the use of Scavenger specifically in that flashback way above, who’s not a super well known villain in general, makes me think maaaaybe the writer did do some of their Kon homework)

Something also just dawned on me that i’m not quite sure what it means but still is worth mentioning: The Conner here in Suicide Squad is back in his Teen Titans Vol. 3 outfit, and his history as he tells it stops during Teen Titans Vol. 3. And doesn’t... mention when he died? It feels like it... stopped before that, because like I feel if he was telling his life history (even the wiki version LMAO) the part where he died and came back would be pretty important to bring up?? And Nocturna specifically says that he didn’t explain how that stuff from TT Vol. 3 then led to him in his current situation. That’s a pretty big gap (like uhhh everything from resurrection until he got lost on Gemworld + all the rest of the Young Justice 2019 stuff?) So like.. there could be something funky going on here that has to do with that. 

Similarly when he flashes back in Future State: Suicide Squad to his past it also goes right from Teen Titans Vol. 3 to the current Suicide Squad run? Like I get it’s one page so they can’t show that much, but the fact that there’s now two places that flash back to that same specific time period and nothing past it until the Suicide Squad feels just... noticeable! Not concretely indicative of something, but noteworthy.

(Future State: Suicide Squad #2)

Like...this almost has me thinking maybe it could be something where like, they tampered with his dead body and cloned from that? BECAUSE, for those of you who may not be familiar with how Kon’s resurrection (during Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds) worked, when he came back there was time travel involved! He was brought back to life in the future (like. Legion of Superheroes era) because it was a process that took that thousand or so years to work/heal him (essentially because of his hybrid dna the process that healed Clark when he had died back in Death of Superman/Reign of the Supermen in the 90s just took a lot longer, but its the same Kryptonian healing chamber thing) meaning when he came back to the present alive again, his dead body was still also in the present just in it’s process of healing. Meaning especially if we’re bringing back stuff from before the reboot, Kon likely has his dead body just vibing out there while he’s goin around living life 🤷‍♂️

SO them doing something related to that could explain the choice to put him back in the T-shirt (since thats what he wore in the era his brain would be caught up to if we’re relating this to when he died) and why he’d recognize himself in a group photo with Bart, Cassie and Tim but maybe not someone like Wallace who didn’t exist back then. I don’t know, this branch of thought is still half baked. Will maybe come back and elaborate on this later. But I’m now really thinking there might be a connection to the early Teen Titans Vol. 3 era specifically because of it being referenced twice in stuff with this Suicide Squad.

ANYWAYS moving on, this is probably a shot in the dark and I only thought of it because I just was reading 90′s Superboy, but right away when thinking about ‘Amanda Waller’ and ‘Cloning Kon’ I was reminded of some stuff about the circumstances around the first clone that was made of Conner: Match.

(Superboy (1994) #35)

Match was created by an organization called ‘The Agenda’, that was after a while primarily under the control of The Contessa, Lex Luthor’s ex-wife, aided by Amanda Spence who had a personal grudge against Kon bc her dad was Paul Westfield the guy Kon was originally cloned from (before the Lex/Clark retcon). They were the big bad guys of an arc called The Evil Factory in Superboy (where Cadmus personnel got replaced with clones) which also then tied into the Sins of Youth event over in Young Justice (Remember how Match was posing as Superboy for a while there? yeah). After those plot lines finished the Agenda was pretty defeated (Amanda Spence was still out there and came back later but still) and... who got their hands on the remaining Agenda tech?

(Superboy (1994) #87)

Why none other than Amanda Waller herself!

If they re-canonized pieces of this (which also tied into Young Justice which ya know, YJ 2019 was all about re-establishing stuff from YJ even before Death Metal happened soooo) it would totally make sense for Waller to have complete access to the exact technology used to clone Conner before. 

Now, a thing to consider here though is what happened to Kon after he’d been cloned that first time, where his DNA got all destabilized by the process (and he needed to go through a procedure with Roxy as a genetic template to keep him together, which was how he got stuck at age 16 for a while). This was something where he was fine for a period of time before the side effects began to kick in. Now, I think it’s worth mentioning that was also back in the days where he was not yet Lex & Clark’s clone, but still Paul Westfield’s. So there could easily be a ‘now that certain Kryptonian genes have kicked in as he got his newer powers it doesn’t destabilize him the same way’ reasoning or something along those lines to avoid this problem. Alternatively, it could be an interesting thing to embrace rather than retcon away, especially if we’ve been seeing Clone Conner in action and Original Conner hasn’t been in our focus, things could be wrong with him that we just don’t know about.

Another branch of thinking that I think is even MORE a shot in the dark but could be interesting (or again even related to what I just said, could be a combo of things) is if this somehow ended up related to those clones that were reverse engineered from the remains of Match from the very end of Teen Titans Vol. 3

(Teen Titans (2003) #99)

All of them were then taken down with Kryptonite and killed in battle (by Rose & Damian) 

(Teen Titans (2003) #100)

But like... idk man if Waller got her hands on those corpses or even just the data from Dr. Caligan that he extracted from Match to make them... that could also be a potential way to make some new Conner clones, and that could be why the bio-scan thing at Titans Tower wouldn’t work properly because of the thing he says above about it not being a “complete match’

One thing I don’t think is the case, but has been brought up to me, is stuff with New 52 Kon. I’ve talked extensively about New 52 Kon in recent weeks because I read through all his stuff, but the thing that makes me shy away from him being part of this situation is the fact that... he’s not interchangeable with Kon the way I think some people think he is. He wouldn’t visually be recognized as Original Kon because he is literally on a genetic level a separate person. They’d prob look related, sure, like they’d pass for brothers because they both have Clark’s DNA, but New 52 Kon has Lois’ DNA and Original Kon has Lex’s. New 52 Kon would likely look more like Jon, rather than Kon. Lois specifically commented in an Action Comics issue that Kon had some resemblance to Lex, even. So like, things like Wallace recognizing him or him looking at his own matching reflection alongside the group picture at the Tower... those wouldn’t happen the same way if this was New 52 Kon.

Now I think it coooould theoretically be possible for Waller to have gotten her hands on that future N.O.W.H.E.R.E. cloning tech that had been used to make New 52 Kon, like I wouldn’t rule that out. Because she knows where the remains of their bases are as shown in Red Hood and the Outlaws (2016) #16-17, and like, Harvest is dead so she could easily just send teams out there to gather shit if she wanted. 

Onto some other things I don’t think are actually related but that I was reminded of/wanted to address:

I feel i’d be a bad timkon fan if during all of this discussion of past stories with cloning Kon I didn’t even bring up Tim’s cloning attempt stuff, but I think it would ultimately be unrelated. His tech was stolen from Luthor, and his attempts didn’t succeed because he was trying to build from scratch without Cadmus’ the data about how they altered the DNA from the original process. 

(Teen Titans Vol. 3 #34)

Then that initial cover for the annual really reminded me of part of the Hollow Men story from Superboy Vol. 5 just with like... Kon in a room full of copies of himself. I don’t think this story would be related either because it was more magic Tannarak stuff rather than regular cloning, but ya know. It’s the imagery.

(Superboy Vol. 5 #9)

It also really reminded me of the stuff from Hyper-Tension which was hypertime stuff not cloning but again just... visually.

(Superboy Vol. 4 #62)

In general I don’t think we’re EVER gonna see Black Zero or any of these multiverse Superboys again LMAO.

To try to sum up all of this in a way that might make sense here’s kinda a... flowchart of some of my main ideas for what the cloning situation could be/how the logic could work. Again this is borrowing stuff from across continuities because Infinite Frontier means theoretically anything’s fair game. (Also I don’t think I mentioned this earlier but I do mention it in the chart, but I think it’s also reasonable that Waller could get her hands on Cadmus tech if Cadmus is like properly made canon again. She just has funky government connections!)

Also I just now thought of this now several hours after I already made the chart and I don’t wanna remake it so sorry not incorporating it there but I remembered there was also that bit during House of Kent where Clark took Kon to the Hall of Justice and they were running some tests on him, so I’m thinking it’s also possible Waller got ahold of that data/that might be how she found out about Kon in the first place for this timeline. And they indicated that there was something wrong with him there, where he might eventually lose his powers or something, so maybe she tried to do cloning stuff to be able to have a copy of Superboy in his prime or something??? before that started kicking in. I don’t know, just more things to consider:

(Action Comics (2016) #1028)

ANYWAYS in conclusion: there is clone fuckery of some sort happening, I’m curious where it’s gonna go, and I just want Kon to be okay.

If you actually read this uhm. props to you bc this probably makes no sense to anyone but me its just word vomit <3 

[kuroopaisen]

fireflies. (kuroo tetsurou)

➵  there are people who fall between the cracks, finding themselves stuck in a world halfway between this one and beyond. kuroo doesn’t want you to face it alone. 

wc: 4.7k

warnings: gn!reader, yokai!au, soft angst? 

a/n: somewhat inspired by neverwhere by neil gaiman, and after dark by haruki murukami. somewhat. also, big thank you to ren once again for her support and her beta’ing. and moo, i can’t write a kuroo fic for a celebration week without dedicating it to you :’) thank you for your constant and motivating support!

The city is ageless. It’s a visual cacophony of neon and ramshackle, a collection of buildings tightly packed along skinny alleyways. A wide asphalt road runs through it all like a great river, often glittering under streetlights on rainy evenings. Human beings don’t walk this in-between world that exists between the cracks. But the otherworldly do.

Kuroo used to be afraid of the dark. These days, the night brings him comfort. The night means he gets to exist, slipping through alleyways and hopping across rooftops. The moonlight touches his skin in a way the sun no longer can, whispering him into life on the asphalt. 

It’s not the life he wants, but he makes do. He’s not sure how long he’s been here. He knows next to nothing of his life before this endless night. Just whispers.  

But he’s certain he couldn’t produce these little fires back then. They gather around him like the loose clouds that blot out the stars. 

He enjoys his little cloud, specks of light so small and inconsistent they look like fireflies, hovering around him like he’s the centre of their world. 

These little fireflies dance around him as he watches you across the street.

It’s not the first time Kuroo sees you. He has no grasp on time — not truly — but he remembers your face. He remembers how sad you looked, pacing around the street of an evening, hood pulled over your head. He remembers the apathy hiding underneath. 

It’s an apathy onset by exhaustion, more than anything else. An apathy that’s the result of caring too much for too long, from losing yourself to the dread.

It is only his second time seeing you, but your expression struck him so deeply that he couldn’t help but remember your face. It has been a long time since he’s seen such raw, human emotion. A long time since he’s seen anything sincere. That evident misery of yours carries more significance than you could possibly know. 

Kuroo sees himself in you. The numbness lying beneath your melancholy is as familiar to him as the streets and alleys of this city. What is the purpose of being so numb? He wonders that often. The answer is always something about survival; to be numb is the only way you can live with yourself in the face of unending insignificance. If this truly is purgatory, then it would be wise not to feel anything at all.

Maybe you’re like him. Or, maybe you’re more human. 

Perhaps he’s reading too much into it. It could be the boredom getting to him. There’s not much to entertain himself with out here, as much as he makes his own fun. Maybe it’s best to leave you alone.

But ah, the curiosity is too much.

He waves a hand through his cloud, catching some fireflies in his palm. He blows them your way as a little greeting. Only a handful, a little embassy of light reflecting on the barren asphalt. He can’t control them very well — they always seem to go the opposite direction of where he wants them to go, always sink a little too close to the ground — but with the sheer force of his will they float towards your chest. 

It’s hard to see from the other side of the street, but he swears your eyes follow them. 

But he wonders. He hopes. He follows. 

Not too obviously; he knows he’s a tall guy, and that makes him scarier than most. And truth be told, he’s not sure how human he looks these days. There were no mirrors in the city; only reflections found in windows, half-whispers of the truth. 

“Stop following me.” Your voice is low, as if you’re not sure your words would reach him. 

Kuroo raises his eyebrows, perfect, delighted surprise on his face. 

You can see him. 

“Are you okay?”

“Go away,” you say, your voice slightly louder this time. 

You can hear him. 

“Please,” he murmurs, reaching a hand for your shoulder. “Tell me—”

You turn, slapping his hand away. The feeling echoes through his arm. 

You can touch him. 

“I said, go away.” 

Kuroo stares at you for a moment, trying to take in as much of you as he could. You look young. Maybe just younger than he had once been. Your skin is dull, your eyes distant, your hair lifeless. You look like someone who hasn’t slept in a very long time. You’re clad in a hoodie about three times your size, paired with jeans and ragged trainers. You look like the sort of person one would expect to find wandering the city at night, inoffensive to the point of being forgettable. Kuroo almost believes he’s made a mistake and that you’re not like him at all. 

It’s your scent that gives you away. You smell like burnt toast. It’s not the most pleasant smell, but he won’t knock you for it. He smells much the same, after all. 

“When was the last time you went home?” He asks, looking you straight in the eye. It’s not the best conversation starter, but he hopes it’ll strike some chord. 

You frown. “Fuck off.” You turn around and begin to skulk off. 

“Please,” he swallows, catching up to you with a few long strides, “it’s important.” 

Scowling, you pull your hood over your eyes, hands digging into your pockets as you pick up your pace. 

Kuroo curses, speeding up as well. “I can help you.”

Your step falters. 

He gulps, slowing to a stop. “I know that you can’t find your way home.”

You take another step down the street. 

He doesn’t know what to say. But he wants to get through to you. To offer a hand. 

“You’re probably scared, and, and… overwhelmed, and…” 

A deep breath. And then, words he wishes someone had said to him. 

“You don’t have to do this alone.”  

✧ ✧ ✧

“I can’t sleep at night,” you say softly, “but as soon as the sun rises, it’s like I fall into some sort of coma.” You shiver as you speak, wrapping your arms around yourself. “Nothing can wake me up.” 

Kuroo resists the urge to put an arm around you. 

“That happened to me, too,” he nods, biting his lip. “Eventually I got evicted, but it didn’t really matter at that point. I couldn’t remember sleeping, let alone paying my rent.”

Kuroo realises how silly that statement sounds, but the look you give him tells him you understand. 

The only memories of his life before are braided with the city, with the feeling of losing himself. There are no names, no details, no dreams. There are some faces, but they’re transparent as ghosts. 

“I just…” You take a deep breath, squeezing your eyes shut. It’s hard. He can tell. “I just don’t know what to do.” 

He looks at you, tired and sick as you are. You’re afraid. Lonely. Directionless. 

He knows. He’s been there. In many ways, he’s still there. If there is comfort to be found in this strange underworld, he has not yet found it. But, perhaps he can offer it. 

“Just stick with me,” he smiles at you as best he could, hoping the warmth reached his eyes. 

You gaze at him for a long moment, your eyebrows slightly pinched. He understands if you don’t trust him; it’s smart not to, given the circumstances. You were alone, somewhere you didn’t understand. He wouldn’t begrudge you for that. 

“Where am I?” You ask. The words are frail, the question one you’re afraid of. 

Kuroo swallows, unable to meet your gaze. “I don’t know, actually. I just know it’s… strange. And that the people here aren’t human.” 

“Are you human?” You’re quick to ask that question. 

He grins at you. “As far as I know.” 

You bite your lip, looking up at the sky. It’s paler than it was when the two of you first sat down in this little alleyway. He knows there isn’t much time left this evening. 

“That’s enough for me, I guess,” you sigh, closing your eyes. 

He hopes that, at least, brings you some comfort. 

✧ ✧ ✧

“Those cats are walking on their hind legs.” 

“Uh huh,” Kuroo nods, a smile playing at his lips. “Because they’re not cats.”

You turn to him, frowning. 

“I know,” he chuckles, shaking his head. “I don’t know what they are, to be honest. I just know they’re not cats.” 

You sit on the roof of a convenience store, elevated just high enough to see a little clearer. A few nights ago, you wouldn’t have been so bold. 

The not-cats move across the powerline like it's a tightrope, one paw in front of the other as they skitter along with perfect balance. They are too far away and the night is too dark for you to see them clearly, those vaguely feline shadows against the purple sky. The flashes of red that you guess to be their eyes don’t frighten you. Not while Kuroo sits next to you. 

You still don’t know if you trust him. That’s half a lie; you do trust him. You just don’t know if it’s wise to. But it didn’t take you long to realise that this is the world you live in now. 

You had once believed that nobody else existed here in this strange half-awake place. You’d thought it was just you and him. But others flit by now, both frightened and frightening. Even if it’s against your better judgement, you feel safe with him. 

One of the not-cats pauses on a pole, its tail straight as an arrow. It holds an upturned paw in front of its little snout and blows air across it. 

A ghostly little fireball swirls in the air, illuminating the not-cat’s face for the first time. 

You straighten up, tilting your head at this new peculiarity. 

“Look!” You gasp, patting Kuroo’s arm. “They’re like you.” 

He grins. He’s glad for the curiosity in your eyes. “Not quite.” 

He waves his hand and a scatter of fireflies burst into life. They envelop the two of you, a gentle swathe of light falling across your bodies. They’re only little, like white candle flames floating through the air. 

“Yours look like the stars,” you murmur, reaching out to touch them. Your fingertip brushes against one, its warmth spreading through your finger as it disperses. 

“Mhm,” Kuroo nods. Sometimes, if he is lucky, he gets a glimpse of the real thing in the blackest of nights. Most of the time, the sky plays host to nothing but the moon; a pallid, hollow-cheeked watcher, who never waxes nor wanes. 

No, those little ghostly fireballs look something like the moon. Or perhaps the sun. 

You can’t quite recall what the sun feels like. 

✧ ✧ ✧

“Shouldn’t we help him?” 

A small, scrawny child stands in the middle of the road, a straw hat drawn low over their eyes. You and Kuroo stand in an alleyway across the street, huddled together for warmth. 

Kuroo grins. He should’ve expected you’d react like this, your eyes all wide and full of compassion as you watch the child. “Just watch.”

You look up at him, eyes betraying both concern and confusion. He nods at the child, reaching to ruffle your hair. 

You blush, looking away from him quickly. 

The child approaches the bottle shop, each step taken with great deliberation. It glances over its shoulder, and you catch a flash of its eyes. Bright, clever, sharp. A bit like Kuroo’s. 

The child slips through the glass doors, tottering up to the attendant at the front desk. 

You watch through the glass, poking your head out of the alley. 

The child holds its hand out, standing on its tiptoes to be more level with the attendant. The man in question looks deeply unamused; an exhausted replica of a scowl lines his face, and he crosses his arms over his broad chest. 

The man peers at the child, eyes narrowing. He says something. 

Poof!

Where there once stood a child in a straw hat now stands an otter in a straw hat that is far too big for its head. 

It turns on its tail and flees, the man shouting after it. But, he does not pursue it, letting it skitter off into the night. 

The otter scampers down the asphalt road, the sound of its claws scratching against the rough surface.

Kuroo whistles. The otter skids to an abrupt stop, whipping its head around as its whiskers twitch. 

Kuroo grins, holding out a flask you didn’t even realise he had. The otter scuttles forward on all fours. You realise, perhaps with more surprise than is warranted, that it’s rather cute. 

“Where were you keeping that?” You frown, tilting your head at him. 

Kuroo grins, ruffling your hair. You blush. You’re still growing used to this close proximity between the two of you. 

“Why give it to an otter?” You scoff. 

“Not an otter,” Kuroo smiles. “But, think of it as payment. For the entertainment.” 

You smile, shaking your head. 

He’s relieved. It’s the first time he’s seen your face soften like that. 

✧ ✧ ✧

The streets are full of ghosts. 

And yet, it’s the first time the city has felt truly alive. 

You watch them pass with wonder. 

There is a woman, donning only a blood-stained skirt and an expression of anguish. Another boasts the same look of despair, only this one has no feet, drifting above the ground with arms held out and wrists limp, long blcack hair trailing behind her. Men stalk the streets in golden Heian robes with nothing but pure vengeance in their eyes.  

There are others too. Red trolls roam the street, clad only in tiger skin loincloths and weidling iron clubs. A group of the otters from before totters down the street, straw hats balancing precariously on their heads. Those bipedal cats bolt across rooftops and hop along power lines. 

All these spirits mill about, some mingling, others avoiding everyone else with a certain perseverance. A few slip through doorways and windows, and you wonder if they’re visiting their descendants. You hope that’s all they’re doing. 

“What’s going on?” You ask, dodging a demon as it barrels down the street. 

Kuroo shrugs. “Not entirely sure. But I think it’s some kind of festival.”

“A festival?” You look up at him, your hands dug deep in your pockets. You can’t imagine just how scared you’d be if he wasn’t with you. Honestly, you’re not sure what would’ve happened to you. If you’d even be standing here. 

Kuroo nods. “I think so.” 

He looks up and down the street, a bemused smirk on his face. “Although, they could’ve organised some stalls.”

“I don’t think ghosts have much use for street food,” you hum.

He chuckles, ruffling your hair. “I guess we have to make our own fun, huh?”

You huff as you raise an eyebrow at him. “I’m not giving any more whisky to those otters.”

“Oh, come on.” He nods back at the street with a grin. “What else are we gonna do? Tie that guy’s robe up?”

You look at the man in question. It was one of those men, the ones who look as if they’re devoured by vengeance.

“I don’t think that’s the greatest idea,” you shake your head, shuddering at the thought. Could ghosts hurt you now, in this in-between world?

“What about that guy?” He says, pointing at one of the red trolls. “We could steal his club.”

“I do not want to get on that guy’s bad side,” you say, looking up at Kuroo with a hint of fear in your eyes.

“Live a little!” He grins, poking your cheek.

You pout at him. That only makes his grin grow wider. 

He turns his attention to the procession in front of you, his grin turning devilish. “Do you think ghosts have money?”

“That’s a terrible idea.”

“I’m just saying,” he groans, stepping into the procession without warning. You dash to keep up with him.

“What would you even buy with it?” You ask, falling into step with him – which is easier said than done, considering the length of his legs.

He shrugs. “I dunno. Might be nice to give the guy at the bottle shop real money for once.”

“But it’d be ghost money,” you consider. “Wouldn’t that be cursed?”

“You don’t know that for sure.”

“Like you don’t know for sure that it’s safe.”

He laughs at that, shaking his head. “How have I managed to stay on my own two feet without you, huh?”

You blush, your face suddenly feeling very hot. “It’s a miracle you haven’t gotten yourself killed.”

“I’ve still got time.”

“Don’t joke about that!” You hiss, elbowing in the side. “That’s a bit insensitive given our companions, isn’t it?”

He laughs again. It might not be the prettiest sound, but it’s one you’re rather fond of. “Glad to know you’re that concerned about me.”

There are things you want to say, sitting at the back of your throat. Things like, ‘I’d be so lonely if it weren’t for you,’ and ‘I don’t know if I would’ve been able to find my way if it weren’t you,’ or ‘I don’t know if I would’ve ever smiled again if it weren’t for you.’

But you say none of that. You keep those close to your chest. Maybe you’ll tell him, but not tonight. 

You merely gaze at him. 

He looks different. Sharper, maybe. Or perhaps, you just haven't paid enough attention to him before. 

“What?” He grins, catching your eye. 

You look away quickly, heat rising in your cheeks. 

“Nothing.” 

He grins, leaning down so his face is level with yours. “You sure?” 

You glare at him, hoping your cheeks won’t betray how flustered you really are. 

“Just teasing,” he chuckles, ruffling your hair. 

Your instinct is to roll your eyes, even if that’s not what you really want to do. But you won’t think about that. Not right now. 

Kuroo’s already heading down the street, looking over his shoulder at you with a wild grin. “You coming?”

You tilt your head at him. He nods at the sky, a familiar glint in his eye. You scamper after him with your hands dug in your pockets. The two of you thread through the alleyways, finding your way towards your typical route to the rooftops. It’s almost second-nature now, but you could swear that Kuroo has a more natural talent for it. Perhaps it is just because his legs are so damn long. 

As always, he hops onto the rooftop of the convenience store before you, grinning down at the street below. You pout at him, trying your best to tug on his heartstrings; just like you always do. 

He offers you a hand. You take it, and he pulls you up. The two of you clamper across the rooftop, sitting yourselves down on the edge. Your legs dangle off the side as you look down at the informal procession thin out below you. 

You sit in comfortable silence, letting the world pass the two of you by. You can feel it, in this rare moment; peace. That sense of relief in knowing you’re not alone. In knowing there are still things to smile about. 

You know it’s because of the boy sitting next to you. Of the warmth he brings you in this city of ghosts. 

There is so much you want to say to him. So much you can’t put into words. But as you look up at the pale sky, you know that now is not the time. 

The moon is setting. You think you’ll always dread this moment. 

“Kuroo?” You murmur, laying your head on his shoulder. 

“Hm?” 

“Can you make some fireflies, please?” Your voice is so gentle, carried away by the light that bleeds across the horizon. 

He nods, holding a hand out. These days, he can’t say no to you. 

✧ ✧ ✧

You hadn’t expected to build half a life. 

And yet here you are, sitting in an abandoned apartment, next to something of an apartment. 

It’s a life half-lived, harbouring in abandoned places, rifling through the trash for scraps of this and that. People throw out perfectly good furniture, you discovered. Perfectly good food, too. 

At the end of the day, you’re just grateful for the shelter. Grateful for the comfort he brings you in this strange underworld. 

Kuroo is grateful for the fantasy. He’s grateful for the fact that sometimes, he can let his mind wander, take him on a journey through the life you could have shared together, should things have been different. A life spent in the sun, full of people and laughter and purpose. 

He wonders, most of all, about what you would look like, under the sun’s gentle warmth. How breathtaking you would be. 

He tells you none of this. He harbours those feelings for himself, for the most part. But he suspects that you feel the same. 

You hold hands, now. He can’t remember when it started, but he’s glad it did. 

The two of you sit at the window, rain pelting against fractured glass as the sky bellows. 

Light splits the sky, and for a second Kuroo almost believes it's daytime. 

A creature springs to life on a rooftop. It’s wolf-like, its pale blue fur crackling with white light. There’s something majestic about it, gleaming amongst rundown rooftops and dodgy power lines. 

Another crack of light, and a second creature joins the first. They glance at each other for a moment, bowing their heads low. And then, they sprint off. 

He chances a look at you. You’re enamoured, eyes bright and full of curiosity as you watch the wolves bound across the rooftops. 

He smiles as he watches you, unable to hold back his fondness. You’ve brought him such joy, such comfort, without even knowing it. No matter how frightened he is, how matter how much he feels like things are slipping away from him, you bring him solace. 

You look at him, tilting your head to the side. There’s such tenderness in your face, such sincere affection. Maybe, just maybe, you feel the same way he does. 

He leans in, pressing his lips to yours. You freeze, but you’re not afraid. It’s soft, and its warmth spreads through you much like his fireflies do. 

He pulls away, eyes unbearably fond as he looks at you. 

You laugh, a new, welcome feeling beating in your chest. “Why did you do that?”

“It felt right,” he says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. 

You laugh again, shifting to face him properly. 

He thinks it’s a beautiful sound. One he wishes he could hear more often. One he wishes he could hear for a long time coming. Longer than he would, at least. 

You kiss him, hands coming up to cup his face. He relaxes into it, much like any human would. 

He wants to lose himself in this. In you. In this little moment of human intimacy. 

But he’s changing. He can feel it. He’s been dreaming. How, he’s not sure. But in each and every one, he’s a fox. 

He doesn’t know what the dreams mean. But he feels, deep in the part of him that will always be human, that these dreams are a warning. An echo of what’s to come. 

He’s only just found you, only just begun to love you. 

He doesn’t notice the little fireflies popping into existence around you, punctuating the dark with each beat of his heart. They’re bigger than before. 

✧ ✧ ✧

The stars are out. 

It’s a rare sight in this city, which is so bright and vibrant that it tends to blot out the night sky. But tonight, you can see it in all its glory. 

The two of you sit at the window of your apartment, faces turned to the sky. 

“Do you know any of the constellations?” You ask, turning to him with bright eyes. 

Kuroo smiles and shakes his head. “None of the official ones. But it’s fun making them up.”

“Yeah?” You tilt your head at him. 

He looks tired. He’s been acting it, too. Quiet. Reticent. Distant. There’s something unreachable about him that’s never been there before. 

“Point some out to me,” you ask, desperate for anything to fill the silence. 

Kuroo leans closer to the window, running a hand through his hair. 

“Well, that’s a cat,” he says, pointing to one cluster of stars.

If you squint, you can almost see it. 

“And that’s a dick,” he chuckles, pointing to something on the other side of the sky. 

“Very mature of you.”

He ignores you, dragging his finger across the sky to point at the brightest star of all.

“And that’s you,” he grins, turning to look at you. 

“Shut up,” you huff, knocking him with your elbow. 

“Aw, are you all embarrassed?” He snickers, reaching over and ruffling your hair. 

“You’re so cheesy.” 

“I thought you liked it when I was cheesy.”

“When have I ever given you any indication of that?” 

He answers your question with a kiss. His lips smile against yours, and you believe, for a moment, that everything will be okay. 

He pulls away from you too soon, an unreadable look in his eyes. 

“Hey, Tetsu?” You murmur as you bring a hand to his cheek. 

“Hm?”

“Are you okay?” You ask, smoothing your thumb over his cheekbone. 

“I’m fine,” he smiles at you as best he can. But even he knows it’s not enough. 

“I’m worried about you.” 

A horrible silence thickens between the two of you, and the fear rooting itself in your chest is starting to blossom. 

“Is there anything I can do for you?” You know there isn’t much you can do in this place between the cracks. But whatever you can do, you will. He’s done so much for you after all. 

His gaze is distant, as if he’s looking at something just beyond you. 

You want to say something — anything. But you don’t know what. You don’t know how to reach him. 

He spreads his legs, patting the floor between them. 

You frown, but you sit on it nonetheless. You turn your back to him for comfort’s sake, wondering what on earth he is getting at. 

He wraps his arms around you, propping his chin on the top of your head as you fall back into his chest. 

“Can we just… stay here a while?” He asks, something very strange, very unfamiliar in his voice. It sounds a bit like regret. 

“Okay.” You comply. 

He’s warm, his arms firm as he holds you close to him. He holds you like he never wants to let go; like if he did, that would be the end. 

That, more than anything else, frightens you.

This wonderful boy, this man who has done all he can to bring you light and joy, is scared of something. Something he doesn’t want to admit to you. You try to glance up at him, but you can’t see his face. 

You bite your lip, casting your eyes to the window once more. 

The moon is setting, and daylight is bleeding through the sky. 

There is no way to know what the next evening will bring. 

✧ ✧ ✧

You’re alone. 

All that’s left are the fireflies, stronger and brighter than before. 

You can’t find the tears. 

But you cry anyway. 

✧ ✧ ✧

The city is ageless. It has changed much, and yet it hasn’t changed at all. It writhes with something deeper, something darker than what meets the eye.   

Someone new is here. A girl, afraid, alone, frightened. 

But she is not alone. 

On the other side of the street, a figure is bent over, hand held flat with an inarizushi sitting in it. A fox eats it eagerly, its fur glistening with something otherworldly. 

The girl wonders if she should approach, if she should ask something, anything. 

You don’t notice the girl on the other side of the street. You are far too focused on the kitsune in front of you, your mind cycling through the same few thoughts. 

You wonder how long it will be until you see the fireflies again. 

You wonder if you’ll still remember him.