#offensively one dimensional?!

[ibblescribbles]

Do you think you will ever check out Raincode? It's made by the same people who made DR but with a more focus on mystery. (It has the same vibes and stuff, I feel like you would like it a lot) another thing, the writing is so banger

Yes, I've already played Raincode!! Really enjoyed it, especially for the DR-like vibe and I actually made charms of the main cast:

I have sketches of Yomi and Yakou that I've been meaning to add to this set for ages but haven't been able to bring myself to refine them ;v; Makes me happy when people recognize the Raincode merch at cons tho! I'm really excited for Kodaka's new game too, I haven't played the demo yet!

[anarkhebringer]

MMMMMMMM I HAVE THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS EXACT THING AND HAVE SINCE HOT

[suvarnarekha]

sometimes you grown for realized that you are sanghi, you wasted your life as sanghi will damaged for rest life , godi media is harmful, i hope you will understand , you stuck by toxic minds by bjp who created conspiracy against minorities include christian and muslim, religion like hindu as weapon by far right and godi media and bjp wont help india

tut tut, it's your bed time anon go back to sleep <3

[mariatesstruther]

weeeaakkkk??? WEAKKKKK???

anyone saying hbo made tess look weak because she didn't violently kill anyone or she's pining for joel or whatever, well listen i think you are the one making her look weak

yes joel is the muscle, but there are more ways of being badass than showing physical strength. i mean we see her take a beating like it's nothing (boring even, she is literally waiting for them to get it over with), we see her be a boss in every situation, the one calling the shots, the leader, the big spoon, he listens to her

and then we see her be fragile and vulnerable in her last dying moments, and that makes you think that she's what, a pushover?

excuse me tess servopolous would never let anyone walk over her, and i don't know how they could have made that any clearer

[shifuaang]

Creating Maddie just to be hated by the audience and then die is extremely gross, especially in the context of her being queer. She existed for the sole reason of adding drama between Cait and Vi even though there were already chasms to be bridged in that relationship because of their origins and class difference and Cait's entire arc this season, none of which were really addressed in the end. Between this, the treatment of Isha's character, the misogynoir in both Mel and Sky's cases, the erasure of Sevika, and making Ambessa a one-dimensional villain, I'm so beyond disgusted with the writing this season.

What a disappointment, what a gut-punch, and how offensive. So much for continuing to write dynamic, fleshed-out female characters. So much for good representation.

[dastardly-imbecile]

DETRITIVORE

Something about the way you—as holy as anything could ever be—letting him, man of blood and ochre touch you, bask in your evanescence. Tear you down to Earth from your heavenly demesne, down to the frozen wastes of Hell and all below. The concept turns him on more than he’d care to admit, tightens the pressure in his pants. --- Simon finds an angel (or something better, something beyond) OR simon goes INSANE over a 6 month situationship with an otherworldly being

---

Wordcount: ~8.8k

Somewhat inspired by this drabble by @quarterlifekitty!

You are a pretty little thing, fragile despite your radiance, a filigree chain and a thin glass bauble, so easily shattered, so easily crushed. Ghost looks at you and thinks of skewering butterflies to corkboards and ripping their wings off, thinks of many angels dancing on the heads of many pins. 

Because that’s what you are, great grand wings spread out behind you, bright enough to blind him, colors he can’t name intertwining in the spaces between flat feathers as large as his head. 

He’s bleeding, he thinks. Dully, something presses down on his chest, trying to staunch the bullet wounds. It might be himself. He can’t tell. 

Slowly, you descend. No beam of sunlight from the heavens to spot you down, no tear in the sky, simply you, cloaked in white robes and ensconced in white wings, slowly dissipating at the edges in ephemeral wisps of light. Not entirely whole, not entirely three-dimensional. 

You reach for him with a long hand, made of something that’s certainly not skin but instead looks almost to be stone, run through with veins of gray, slightly rough. 

“Soon,” you tell him, hand curving to cup his chin, and for a moment, it is the most rapturous thing he has ever felt—even through his bloodstained mask, even though there is no rational way he’d be able to feel your touch. A warmth that radiates throughout his entire body, starts at his cheek and rushes through his torso, past the lethargy of his heart, into some hidden core that he had not known existed, not before this point. For a moment, he thinks of nectar in his bloodstream, golden ichor seeping out of the many ragged holes in his chest, and it is the saddest he has ever been. To imagine divinity wasted like that, soaking into the earth among the crimson bile that otherwise occupies his veins. 

-And then, your eyes flit to something beyond him, hand withdrawing in a moment. 

Hell is not hot, he knows, not pits of lava and blazing pitchforks. 

Hell is cold. As cold as he is right now. 

There is the strength of arms under him, wrapping around his back and his legs, breath on his ear, a muttered, “shit-fuck-goddamn-” and you flicker away in many snowy tatters of static and white and marble and a soulful gaze, disappointed, why are you disappointed?

He tries to summon the breath to ask, but it is rapidly leaking out of his chest, and you’re too far gone to hear, in any case. 

—

When Simon wakes, it’s in the medbay, a dingy old room of wide white walls and small, uncleaned windows. Nobody bothers to upkeep it, because more often than not, their breed of missions leaves them dead, not injured. 

With that stray thought comes all the others, all flooding in one-after-another, battlefield and bullets and you, thing from the sky, impossibly bright light at the end of a not-so-dark-tunnel. 

“Simon,” Price says from beside the bed, hunched over on a chair almost comically small, and says nothing else. Nothing else needed, really. Polite formalities like you’re awake or how are you are time wasters at best, downright offensive at worst. 

“I was shot?” He asks, moving a hand to run over his bare chest. Every muscle in his shoulder, from deltoid to trapezius, aches in a new, unique way. His chest itself is swathed in an expanse of bandages. White. His eyes catch on the color and half a memory manages to dredge itself up from the tar pits of his subconscious. 

Price grunts out an affirmation. “Near bled out. Miracle you didn’t, according to the nurse.”

“Miracle,” he repeats. The word is dry on his tongue. 

Miracle.

He almost says something to Price—the words fizz on his tongue, something about angels and something about death—but he swallows them before they can burst free. Part of it is the rational side of him, that of steely logic that recites stories of blood-loss-induced-hallucinations, of the inherent untrustworthiness of the human mind. 

The other side that staunches the words in their path is, of course, the irrational. If you’re real. If he can still remember the heat of your hand, of your fingernails digging into his chin. To speak of you is to share, is to give someone else a taste of your mythos, and for whatever reason, he does not think he can bear that. 

Worse, what if Price has seen you too, in those quiet moments clung to the thread of life? What if you’re not his, purely his?

Better not to know.

“Better get some rest,” Price says, puncturing those errant thoughts. He stands and reaches a hand up, as if to give Simon a pat upon the shoulder, brings it back down just as quickly when he remembers the wound. 

He does, eventually, when he can’t hold his eyelids up against the march of sleep anymore. Dreams, rather predictably, of white as pale as snow and a hand scraping its way down his jaw. 

—

A week passes before he’s cleared to walk, another before he can sleep in his own quarters. It passes in a blurry sort of delirium, punctured only by the occasional visit. Johnny brings him an obnoxiously large bouquet of flowers and what must’ve been the girliest get well soon card he could find, and Kyle smuggles in a bit of real chocolate—to offset the medbay mush, worse even than their common fare in the cafeteria—and Price sits heavily by the bedside while sharpening his knife. 

Still, the moment he’s able to kick his feet over the side of the bed, make his way back to his quarters, the fog clears. There is a single goal in mind that drives him to boot up the shitty laptop tucked into his drawer—his personal, untraceable one, not the one military-issued—and stare at his blinking cursor, trying to think of what to search. 

He starts, eventually, with Wikipedia, feeling more than a bit like a grade school boy trying to cheat on a school project. Scrawls first through Angel, jumps from there to Valkyrie, and then Apsara and Uthra and Elioud, a dozen mythologies and a dozen tales of beings from the heavens. Considers himself, for a moment afterwards, and then switches to a different tab and types out, is it normal to have hallucinations before dying. Deletes it after only a moment. 

You were no hallucination. He knows that as well as anything, as well as he’s able to touch his hand to his chest and push his fingers into the gnarls of scar, trace his tongue over every tooth in his mouth.

With the same tab, he searches, guardian angel, and buries himself in that research. Moves from webpages of folklore to the deeper, smaller parts of the internet—ends, finally, on a small, unmarked forum. No logo, only a small, off-center title that reads, angel watch. 

Below that, a small tick counts off, 121 members, 13 active, 1 guest. 

The rest is locked off behind a sign-in box. Members only. His hand hovers over it for a moment before he clicks the create account button. Sends the confirmation email to one of many burners—suitably generic, but not too generic, less John Doe and more Arthur Davies—and watches the site open up to him like a flower. By now, the ticking clock in the corner of the screen displays a time that’s more than a stone’s throw past midnight, but the bluelight burns any exhaustion away. 

That, and fascination. That, and obsession. That, and the desire not to dream—every night, these past two weeks, he’s been plagued by you—and you make his dreams so warm that it’s painful to wake up. 

Clicking through the threads reveals far more interesting information than those previous clinical, detached webpages. He navigates from post to post, and surprises himself by finding more than a little entertainment in reading the little blurbs. Most of them pluck at his sense for falsehood, simply fabricated stories, and others no doubt come from the minds of people who probably shouldn’t have their delusions fed into. He quashes the thought that he’s one of those immediately. 

It’s not like he only saw you on the bottom of a four-day bender—as one poster—or, quote, doctor told me I have schizophrenia but my angel told me not to take the meds. He’s different. You came for him, and no matter how much he scrubs at his chin with lye soap, he’s incapable of erasing the feeling of your touch. 

Here and there, though, he finds hope. The occasional post—one in a dozen, in two or three—that has him enraptured. Stories of having a NDE—site lingo for near death experience, a car crash or a mugging or a sickness—and seeing a figure of white and wings. Moreover, it’s in these threads that he begins to notice the common question.

How can I see them again? 

The consensus emerges by the time dawn claws its way up the horizon and even enrapturement can’t keep him from rubbing at his eyes. 

It’s the experience that draws them, draws you, down to the mortal plane. It’s the sliver between life and death, it’s those moments of balance on the tip of a knife, on the head of a pin. 

The only way to see you again—to ensure that you are real, to find some way to truly talk to you—is to tear his own heart from his chest, is to talk to you in the seconds before he must shove it back into place. 

—

It’s for that reason that, three months later, his hands twist at each other in his lap as they sit upon the plane. Fully decked out in gear, Soap to one side and Gaz to the other, on their way to some distant Northern country under the pretense of defending the peace. He’s not sure whose peace they’re defending, but he’s never really cared. Go in, go out, as smoothly as a needle through thread. Or, not always so smoothly—sometimes, it’s rough as a serrated knife sawing through bone—but the fact remains that it’s his job to stay unscathed. 

Except, not this time. This time, he will find some way—he doesn’t know which one, not yet, but it will come to him in the heat of battle—to throw himself before a spray of bullets, to let the slash of a knife brush too close to some vital artery. 

See you. Grab you. He wonders what your wings would feel like beneath his fingers, wonders if you’d burn as hot if he stuck his hand down your throat, if there is a molten core at the nape of your spine that powers you like some miniature sun. He’d like to place his palm over it and let it scald him to the bone, burn his blood black and sticky as tar. 

“Nervous?” Soap pipes up from beside him. When he stares at him blankly, he sheepishly gestures to the wringing of the hands. “Usually, yer right still. What’sit?”

“No,” he replies. The heaviness of his voice must be enough indication not to prod, though Soap doesn’t turn away without a knowing sort of tilt of his head. He must think it’s because of the near-death he suffered, must think that some monster of nerves has Ghost’s head clutched in its claws. 

Well, one monster does. If you could be called a monster, which you can’t. The metaphor sort of falls apart if you examine it for too long, but lucky for him, he’s too distracted to do that. 

—

As it turns out, things never really go by plan. The mission itself is belly-up from the first moments they touch the ground—supposed to be an easy insertion, an ambush, but the gunfire greeting them beyond the helicopter sparks of a mole. Probably some desk jockey two levels down, who’s going to be court-martialed and shot in a month or so when they find the crumbs leading back to his desktop, but that thought doesn’t comfort Ghost much when he’s dodging flarefire.

Still, the idea of self-sacrifice hangs heavy in his mind, but that plan was made under the assumption of an easy mission. This—with Soap cursing up a storm ahead of him, crouching around the side of a wall, and Price’s voice screaming through his headset, doesn’t really cultivate that sort of mindset. He’s slid easily into the slot made for him upon the team—that of one conjoined unit, of step and fire and you watch my back, I’ll watch yours.

It’s only through attrition that they manage to whittle the enemy corps down. “Split,” Soap murmurs to him, after the sound of gunfire has died down. They do—around the side of a brick building, down two winding roads, and he spots the enemy soldier before he even consciously shoots—a blur of black that darts out from behind an outcrop of crates, trigger, press, boom. The gun kicks back in his hand, but it doesn’t even shake him. He doesn’t even spare the body a glance—the art of killing has been hardwired into his skull, runic commands etched into every square inch of bone, routine as a computer executing the thousandth line of code. 

It’s only when the air shivers that he stops. Pauses. Would’ve been able to excuse it as a heat mirage in any other weather, but here, it’s cold enough that, even through the many layers of combat fatigues, chill licks its way down his skin. 

In any case, after a moment passes, it’s no longer excusable as any sort of mirage at all. 

Your wings are the ones that form first—the air crystallizes, brightens and darkens simultaneously, forms first a vague silhouette that carves itself into an expanse of feathers and light. Then, the curve of your robes, the impression of a body with stumps for arms, a flat plane for a face. From there, the smaller details make themselves known—hands folding out from the air, eyes and lips and the folds in your clothes. He imagines this is what watching Michelangelo carve David must have been like, how he would have felt watching God smooth Adam out of riverbank clay. Eve might be more accurate—pull out a rib and let the body fall in place around that, the curves of someone feminine and lush. 

Wonder hits him first, but it only lasts a moment—vindication swiftly swallows it, he’s seeing you and he’s not even half-dead, so thus, he cannot be insane. Before that even has a moment to settle; however, there is the bright burn of betrayal. 

Because there you are—in front of him, vividly delicate, real as the clouds curling above—but you are hunched over another, over this man with a bullet in his head. 

His angel, his guardian, except…

Except, when he traces over the words from that forum, over what he knows of your presumably-type, the label fits less and less. What first comes to mind is the look of disappointment on your face, that day three months ago, when Soap scooped him from the mud. If you wanted to save him, why would you be disappointed? Ecstatic is the correct answer, perhaps beatifically peaceful. 

And…

And, that’s not the first time he’s been so close to death, had his head trapped in its guillotine. He remembers the feeling of a wooden casket, remembers a dead man’s skin, softer than you’d think, after so many days in the ground. 

He knows now, more certainly than he’s ever known anything. If some higher deity’d thought it fit to assign him a celestial watcher, it would have manifested then, six feet underground. 

So that means…

What are you?

He takes a step closer. You do not even look at him—instead, you reach out both hands, cupped. The solidity of meat apparently means nothing to an extradimensional being like you - you dip them into the dead man’s chest, and they sink in as easily as if it were water. Spend a moment in stillness, wrists twitching as if you are rooting about within, and then pull. 

In your cupped palms is a pool of liquid silver. Long strands of it stretch between them and his torso, both solid and liquid at once, like melted spidersilk or cold honey. Where the sunlight hits it, it gleams with streaks of impossible color that match your wings. 

Doesn’t take any lessons in theology to know what it is—the notion comes as bright as instinct. Perhaps it’s hardwired into the human brain to recognize it, to know itself in third-person. The soul. He takes another step closer, enough that he could reach out and touch you, if he wished, and he does wish—but curiosity wins out. 

You bring your hands up to your lips, tilt them, and drink the liquid down. Your throat bobs with the rapid movement, and he fixates on it, on the idea of something just beneath the skin, on the strange imitation of humanity in that small movement. 

For a moment, you solidify—you were nowhere near translucent, before, but you were lacking some aspect of dimension. An item in a videogame without proper lighting, an untextured model still within the project viewport. Now, though, now, he feels like he could see you in any pub—minus the wings and robes and stone-gray skin. 

Just as his hand twitches, begging to give in to the temptation of reaching, of letting your warmth engulf him once again, you turn. 

Look at him, hand half-extended, and scramble back. Not scramble—your limbs do not move, there is no graceless flailing, simply the blink of a shutter, and you are standing two steps back, no longer kneeling. His teeth clash together in instinctual frustration. 

“You can see me,” you say softly. Not a question. A statement. 

“What are you?” He asks, instead of answering, all too aware of his limited time—the notion that his teammates will soon be searching for him, that his comms will crackle to life—and, so, he embellishes his question with, “an angel?”

You tilt your head. “No. I… I remember you. Man of the skull.”

He can feel the ugly grin creeping up his lips. Covered by his masks’s own vicious leer. The face of death, looking at its mirror. 

“What, then, huh?” He takes a step forwards, towards you, stepping over the dead man’s body, and you flicker back in an equal motion, still utterly still. 

“A…” you glance around, as if looking for an escape route, but there’s no real urgency in the movement. He gets the feeling that you could leave entirely, if you wished, vanish from existence as easily as you came into it. No, you’re entertaining him, for a reason he’d quite like to get his hands on. “A scavenger. Carrion-eater.”

“The dead. You eat that? What is it, th’ soul?”

“Something like that,” you reply. “Has to be fresh; dissipates in thirty seconds, vanishes entirely after a minute.”

Ghost, Price says through the com, Ghost, you copy? Area cleared. Return to the chopper. 

He paws up at his helmet, caught in the instinctual urge to turn it off. But no—he has to make it back. Time ticking, one, two, three. 

“I can get you food,” he says, hefting his gun, letting the weight bring his hands down a touch, “fresh as you need.”

You blink at him with wide eyes. Listening quietly. Maybe you sense the second part of the words, the stick behind the carrot. 

“Let me touch you,” he finishes. Instantly, you draw back, already tearing apart at the edges—preparing to flit out of existence—so he hurries, the words stumbling over themself, “the hand, just the hand.”

Your disintegration pauses. A moment of consideration—he’s acutely aware of every second that passes, waiting for the next crackle of Price’s voice—and then, you say, “you’ll kill them?”

Again, he smiles. His cheeks ache with the movement—it’s more action than they’ve seen in months. Useless gesture too, considering the mask, but he’s hoping you can intuit in some way. 

“Fresh as can be, luv.”

Slowly, you reach out a single stone-clad hand. He grasps it immediately, before you’re even fully done moving, and the warmth floods through him immediately—starts at his palm and rushes up through his veins like and concentrates in his chest, in the small of his back, in the area behind his eyes. It comes with not exactly a memory, but a feeling—the idea of safety, the idea of a childhood he never had, of an adulthood he’ll never experience. A warm fireplace and a comfortable chair, joints that do not crack and skin free of scars and someone waiting in the other room, soft and…

And your hand vanishes. He hadn’t realized he’d closed his eyes until he opens them, beholds the small street without you, and his hands close sharply around a bubble of air. 

Report- Price begins, caught in the middle of a half-cut sentence. 

“Heard,” he interrupts, rubbing at his shoulders. If he needed you before, then he cannot live without you, now. Wants, with each beat of heart, to touch you not through gloves or a mask, but skin-to-skin, tear you open in the kindest ways. Sink into your heat until he cannot remember himself, until he can make that other life a reality. 

—

“Jesus, Simon,” Johnny says, interrupting his next shot—the bullet goes a touch wide, doesn’t hit the dummy in the head but instead sinks into its ear. “The fuck’re you doing out ‘ere?” 

Last he checked the clock—which was a couple dozen shots ago—it was somewhere in the realm of 1:00. He doesn’t spare Johnny a glance. 

“Could ask the same of you.”

“Having a piss. Saw ye through the window.”

“Practicing,” he says calmly. Aim, shoot. Straight through the chest. Another, through the head. 

“Jesus,” he repeats, “I ken we have a mission tomorrow, but Christ, you cannae-”

His words are cut off by the next shot. He says something else, and Simon grunts out a response, but his focus has been taken by the task. Must practice—must hit every shot he aims tomorrow, so you will return, so you will let him take your hand, take something else. He’s been dreaming about you, still, this month away. Now, though, it’s less the vague impression of wings and robes, and more…

More real. More him upon you, more you upon him, more the softness of your skin and the pitch of your voice. 

He wants you more than he’s wanted anything in his life. And, to be fair, Simon has never coveted much. A bed to sleep in at night, a good glass of bourbon. He’s had much of his greed beat out of him, by his father and life and the trials of the military. 

Either way, maybe that makes this a bit more reasonable. A man can only build up so much debt before he can cash in, before he can make a grab at the golden goose and claw at the aurum viscera within. 

—

This time, it’s a multi-day mission, taking over a building, waiting for a package to be delivered. No ambush this time around—after last time, mission details have been kept locked behind walls of steel—and so it is straightforward when he splits down a long metal hallway, away from the others. When he locks a man in his sight, aims, shoots, just like all those hours of practice.

He goes down before he has time to scream. 

Now, Simon pauses, unsure for the briefest of a second—until the air begins to waver, until you pull into reality like a slip of cloth through a microscopic gap, unfurling and weaving and defining yourself in slow, subtle brushstrokes. You do not spare him a glance until you’re done pulling the ichor from this man’s chest—such single-minded focus on the meal in front of you.

Only when the final drops are gone, down the smooth column of your throat, do you turn your eyes to him. 

“Thank you,” you say, flickering into a standing position. He nods—must actively try to keep the motion casual, to not belay the excitement that shudders beneath his skin. 

“Still hungry?”

“Always,” you reply, grimacing. 

Slowly, he makes his way through the spiraling hallways of the complex, turning his way towards the nexus at the center—where they are supposed to meet—and each enemy that goes down, you appear in due time, drink them dry of whatever liquid rests in their deepest heart. With each successive body, you grow realer yet—each time, he thinks that must be the end of it, but then, it happens again—and even you seem shocked by it. You actually linger, after the fifth, to drift alongside him as he stalks down the hall. 

“I’ve never had this much before,” you confess, “I can… I feel like I could stay here forever.”

“Stay?” He asks immediately, focus sharpening immediately, honing in on that word. The small tatters of light that usually flake from the edges of your body are gone, he notices—now, the lines are sharp and distinct against the background. 

“Maybe,” you whisper, and give a longer, searching look, evaluating him for some silent virtue that he’s sure he does not have. Not if it’s honor, or patience, or guilt. 

Area secure, Price pipes through his headset. 

Acknowledged, he replies. Ahead, the meeting place looms, as does the fact that he will not have your company—for how long? A month, two? Until another opportunity to shoot and stab, until he’s able to watch you suck that silver liquid down your throat, ache for the opportunity of a single brush. 

His mind makes the decision before his mouth does. 

“Tonight,” he says, “the safehouse. If you can.” Doesn’t bother giving an address—clearly, you’ve been able to follow him well enough. 

Another line crossed, another glimmer of hesitation in your eyes. He tilts his head towards the drained body upon the floor, a sort of come on, a reminder of all he’s done for you. 

“I’ll try,” you say. 

You will. If he were you, he’d do more than try—he’d long, he’d yearn. 

Then again, he already does. 

—-

It’s more than a bit of a surprise when he walks into the room, skin still damp from the shower, and sees you perched upon his bed as delicately as a bird. Wings tucked behind your back, knees drawn up to your chest. Already, the edges of your being have grown a touch ragged, tearing in miniscule ways, but you are still mostly whole and mostly real. 

“You came,” he says, and you nod, make a little sound of confirmation. Maybe it’s the warm shower, maybe it’s the towel barely clinging to his waist, maybe it’s you perched upon his bed but you are cast in a new light here.

Well. Not new, not if he admits to himself. Another angle, perhaps, the dark side of the moon. The need for your warmth, for the soothing balm of your touch, is nothing new, and neither necessarily is the sudden rush of blood to his groin, but both have been amped up to a thousand. 

“What are you?” He asks, still standing across from you, towering above your sitting form. Your eyes dart up to look at him, and then down to his chest, and up again. The skin is a mess of scars—some old, some as new as those wounds from months ago, still faintly scrapped over with raw red skin. 

“I told you,” you start, but he cuts you off. 

“From where? How?”

“I…” you hesitate, shying back upon the bed, “I don’t know. If I was ever human. Or… I came to, one day, and I was like this.”

His lips twitch up into a smile. This time, the mask is off, and you can see it—it seems to scare and reassure you in equal measure, drawing some parts of you forward and throwing others back. 

“And how’d you find out ‘bout the soul thing?”

You shrug. This movement is lighter, and when you look up again, there is a twist of a smile upon your own face. The first time he has seen that expression crack out of anything besides careful placidity—and it is, as expected, beautiful and terrible all at once, tempting as a hot stove. 

“Instinct, I guess.”

Some sort of ice has been cracked. Enough that he’s able to move over, gingerly set himself down upon the bed. A good distance from you, yes, but you do not even flinch, do not flicker away to a safe distance—instead, only tilt your head the opposite way, regard him with calculated levity. 

“You, then?” You ask eventually, “what are you?”

He actually barks out a surprised laugh. “Y’ don’t wanna know that, luv.” 

You let out a low hum, rocking back, wings twitching in what might be amusement. A moment of silence passes—he runs his eyes over you, noting it all down in his memory. The slope of your shoulders, the gentle hang of your robes, the hunch of your wings, feathers all a trembling, blown about by some extradimensional wind. You are beauty personified, Aphrodite if there ever was one, a face to launch ships and start wars and dream of before you die, the life that flickers before the eyes as synapses fire and blood waters the concrete. 

Maybe you see the desire in his eyes, misinterpret it—or, not misinterpret, but interpret sideways, interpret halfway—and reach out your hand. 

“It feels good?” You ask, fingers curling in on themselves, “when I do this?”

He nods, eyes fixed intently upon them. You have no fingernails—such a strange thing to fixate on—but it’s a small indication of inhumanity. 

Instead of waiting for him to grab your hand like last time, you stretch forwards. Emboldened by the conversation, perhaps. He freezes when your fingers graze the curve of your jaw, spine tensing and liquifying in the span of five seconds. The warmth that seeps from the touch engulfs his cheek, his mind, drips down his shoulders in the same manner as an overflowing volcano. More intense, this way, skin to almost-skin—your palm comes around to cup his chin, inspiring another wave of ecstasy. It’s not quite pleasure, which is a strange thing to say when it feels so good—but it’s less active than that, less the burn of enjoyment and more the sooth of inattention. 

What the womb feels like, he thinks, and what death feels like, with none of the mess that comes in between. 

He has no way of knowing how long you sit there, basking in the pool of bliss, but eventually, you pull away in slow increments, and the warmth fades as quickly as it came. He has enough self-restraint not to cry out, but that doesn’t stop the shudder that whispers through his shoulder, claws at the lining of his stomach. 

“I think…” you say, “I think I have to go.” You give him a helpless sort of look, accentuated by your flaking edges, by the motes of light that fall from your arms and dissipate upon the bedsheet. 

“Already?” He asks, “after all that?”

You shrug, already drawing both hands back to your chest. 

“Hungry, aren’t you?”

You flash him a soft smile. “Very.”

And then, in a twist of reality, you’re gone, leaving him with only the memory of your presence. Greedy thing—five men, and still starving. 

He’s wants too, as ravenously as you must. Maybe you’re a good match for each other after all, he thinks, carrion-eater and predator, hyena trailing behind the lion and feeding on the artfully-arranged scraps. 

—

By the first month back at base, Simon’s unbearably restless, stalking through the halls. Spends late nights at the firing range until his hand molds into the shape of the gun. Johnny offers to spar with him, to release some of that pent-up energy, and then curses him out for slamming him onto the mat, hand locked around his throat. 

It takes a strangely long amount of time for him to reach the next milestone—for him to be laying upon his thin sheets, thinking of you as he’s apt to do, and for the connection to jump between up and down, to jump from his head to his hand to the sudden pressure in his pants. He hasn’t managed to meld the image of you with the image of something feminine—always sheathed in those white robes, always so distant, so clearly not trying to be any form of seductive—but maybe it’s the month away, maybe it’s the dark hour, maybe it’s the drink he’d had at the pub. Something about Madonna-whore, something about the debasement of something sacred. 

Something about the way you—as holy as anything could ever be—letting him, man of blood and ochre touch you, bask in your evanescence. Tear you down to Earth from your heavenly demesne, down to the frozen wastes of Hell and all below. The concept turns him on more than he’d care to admit, tightens the pressure in his pants. 

You are winged and stone, and as his hand wanders down to his zipper, tugs his dick free of its confines, he turns you about in his head—a conglomerate of a dozen angles, of the smoothness of your spine and the suggestion of breasts beneath the robe. Other things too, not what he usually looks at, when trying to enjoy a woman—the taper of your fingers and the flash of your teeth, the divinity hung about you like gauzy strips of taffeta. 

He gives himself one cautious tug to the thought, and then another, and pleasure immediately begins raking its talons down his stomach. Hasn’t had the need to do this for months—hasn’t had a woman, in general, in years. No urge for it, for one reason, and too busy, for another, and women don’t tend to like him, for a third. Man who kills people for a living, destabilizes foreign countries and doesn’t bother to clean the blood from out under his fingernails.

You, though. You like it. You need it. 

The thought is enough to make his back arch slightly off the bed, as his fist tightens, pace quickens. Another minute, and then he thinks of the brush of your hand against his chin, the bend of your smile, and his hips start jerking, thrusting into the air. Cum spills from his tip and pools warm on his hand, drips down into the lines of his abdomen. Simon lays there for a long, still moment, trying to come to terms with all that this wank session has revealed about himself. 

So it helps briefly, in the next month that passes, these small moments of relief. At some point, though, it starts getting worse—he lays upon his bed, liquid cooling on his stomach, and the only thing he can think about is how different it is from you. Falls flatter, too, when he realizes he does not even have a name to groan, does not have anything more than a rapidly-fading memory. Steps into the shower to clean up, scalds the water as hot as it can get, until his skin is shiny and blush-pink, but it’s not enough and it’s too much all at once. 

Hardest thing he’s ever done, when Price finally gathers them back into the meeting room, is to pretend he’s not ecstatic at the prospect of a new mission. Down to the dusty stretch of some scorched desert. Hostage rescue this time—save some big-name honcho from being tortured and interrogated so they can torture and interrogate him instead—but what really matters is that it involves taking out a cabal of soldiers, is that it involves spraying bullets and the cutthroat shine of a blade, is that it involves seeing you again. 

—

Ghost wonders, when the man falls, and your form shimmers to life, if this is what worship feels like. He’s never been particularly religious—after a life like his, you have to bend one way or the other, and he did not think to take the kind way out—but maybe, if he’d known you younger, with a softer mind, he could’ve been. 

Miracle personified, Eve wrapped around a serrated rib and God in a burning bush, sending smoke to cloud the sky. 

He does not fully relax until you manifest fully, until you dip your hands into the man’s chest and begin to unwind his soul from his body. Maybe it’s that that gets him: normally, he is always on the move, eyes peeled for the slightest bit of movement, scanning every square inch of corrugated surface. Today, though, he’s blissfully distracted by you, and so, he does not sense the man who clips him in the stomach with a bullet and sprays his blood across the brick. 

He turns immediately, fires off a shot, which by instinct or practice or sheer luck manages to land and kill the enemy before another can be fired. His other hand, he clutches to his stomach, as his knees buckle and he slams to the ground. It’s not good, he knows, immediately—the bullet managed to clip one of the soft, squishy parts of his body, sink into an area with much blood and much pain and much vital function—but he doesn’t know that it’s fatal until he sees white. Until you shimmer into existence, sitting eye-level with him, hands clasped. 

“Angel,” he croaks. Blood touches the back of his tongue with the word, and he barely holds back the urge to cough in an attempt to spare you from the spray. 

Your hands dart forward, and then draw back, winding around each other in a fretting, wringing motion. 

“Go on,” he adds, and the blood burbles up to coat the ridges of his mouth, “‘m dying. Might- might as well get your… your fill.”

“No,” you reply softly, “no, I think I can…” your face screws up in concentration, bottom lip drawn into your mouth, and you reach. 

Not for him, but for the same space you grasp at inside the corpses’ chests, but some realm not fit for human eyes. Your hands vanish, even though they’re still there—impossible to explain, four-dimensional mumbo-jumbo, same vein as Cthulhu in impossible colors and geometric shapes that turn inside-out while staying still—and when they reappear, they’re trailing long strands of silver almost-liquid. 

You shove it up at his face, and when he doesn’t move, dumbed out by the blood staining his hands and the vision of you, you put a single finger upon his bottom lip and shove the liquid in. It tastes of impossible things, of stardust and stories and some touch of his Ma’s old cooking, but that’s quickly superseded by the fact that your fingers are in your mouth, that you withdraw them and long sticky-sweet strands of silver soul stretch between them and his lips. 

Maybe it’s that that shocks him from his stupor; or maybe it’s the revitalization to his body, provided by the touch of soul—under his very hands, the skin warms to a feverish pitch, edges of the wound stretching together. Something is spit into his bloody palm, and it’s only when he raises it to his eyes does he realize it's’ the bullet—rejected from his body like a drunkard from a nightclub, thrown unceremoniously out. 

He gasps once, a great intake of breath like he’s just come up from underwater. You shift back an inch, backing away in a blink of an eye, and the silver melts from your hands. Evaporates might be a better word. Whatever. 

“Saved me,” he states, not a question, hand pressing into the former bullet wound with an almost dangerous pressure, searching for any evidence it was once there. He finds nothing—not even a scar. You nod slowly, carefully, hand brushing down your sides. From the edges of your being, large fractalloid chunks of light cleave away, collide against each other and shatter into small pieces that reform once again. It looks a bit like what he’d imagine a supernova would, fusion and fission and a thousand elements conjoining in the nuclear underbelly. 

Despite the beauty, he also knows, it’s a sign of hunger, an indication of what the healing process took out of you-

And that only makes it better in a small, sick way. The fact that you gave up so much of yourself for him, that you’re peeling parts of your own body away, flaying the skin from your arm and grafting it over his, insofar as that’s any sort of metaphor. Shearing away a bit of your soul and feeding it to him upon the boat of your fingers, prying open his mouth and melding your corpus with his. 

“You’re hungry,” he notes, pushing to his feet, “c’mon. Let’s get you back into good shape, ‘kay?”

He doesn’t miss the miniscule brightening in your features, the smile that tugs at the corners of your lips as you nod. It’s endearing in the strangest of ways, which is to say, it makes his heart beat, in tune with the new life you shoved down his throat, with the taste of the cosmos that still lingers upon his tongue. 

—-

Simon’s unsurprised to see you upon his bed again come night. Not perched carefully on the edge like a bird about to take flight, but squarely in the center. He did not tell you explicitly to meet him, earlier, after mowing down six men and letting you suck them dry, but he supposes it’s an implicit order at this point. 

For all he’s concerned, you’re his and he’s yours in every way that counts but one, and that one is easily remedied this very second. 

Doesn’t start with that though, the proposition. Must stay slow and soft—a ginger set upon the mattress, a rasped, “never thanked you properly, for today.”

“No need,” you say quickly. A moment of hesitation, before your face cracks into a half smile, “couldn’t let my meal ticket die.”

“Oi, that’s all I am to you?” He asks. The offense in his voice is a mere mock, but maybe it gets to you, because you duck your chin into your chest, grin replaced by a bashful twist of the mouth. 

“No, no. You’re…” you hesitate for a moment, settle eventually on a quiet, “kind.”

He has had many—many—named ascribed to him in all his years of life, but never kind. It sends a shiver up his spine, makes his stomach twist in a way that has nothing to do with either the nonpresent bullet wound or the heat writhing below. Neither pain nor lust—two sides of the same coin—but instead the same soft, squishy feeling that you’re all too good at provoking in him. The sort of thing that reduces him from Ghost—inhuman, immortal—to Simon, man of meat who’s all too easy to kill, Achilles and his heel and the softness beneath the skin. 

He says as much, “Kind? Tha’s a first,” and you shrug. 

“I think you’d taste good.” 

At his questioning raise of an eyebrow, your wings twitch in embarrassment, and you rush to continue. “I never used to be able to tell the difference, never ate enough, but with you, I’ve developed… how do you say, a palate?” You consider that for a moment, before nodding. “Some are bitter, and some are sweet, and the latter sate me, former don’t. When you were…”

“Dying,” he helpfully supplies, when you seem too distressed to say the word yourself. You give him a grateful smile. 

“I could’ve taken it,” you say, “I could reach down, to the parts inside your heart, and feel the rushing of your blood, the movement of your organs, and unhook your soul from your nerves, like unwinding the DNA helices in your cells. And I think it would taste like…” you hesitate again, smile falling from your face, with how caught up you are in your description, “it would be you.”

Simon can only stare, breathless. He wants you to split him open, vivisect him upon the bed, and crawl into his ribcage. Sew him shut with long strands of silver soul, and play your fingers down his vertebrae like a piano, twist your hands through his intestines. It’s the most turned on he’s ever been. 

“...Sorry,” you add, a moment later, “I wouldn’t do that, of course, I wouldn’t eat-”

And he’s grabbing your shoulders, pulling roughly to slam his lips into yours. You let out a surprised squeak, but do not pull back, hands coming around immediately to grip his arms with a fervent sort of strength. He falls back, taking you with him, until he’s half-spread across the mattress and you are tucked between his legs. Your wings flatten, cloaking him like a blanket, encompassing every inch of his body in a blissful, rapturous heat that reverberates across every cell and molecule. 

You let out a slow, soft moan into his mouth, and he must barely restrain the urge to bite. You and him, two sides of the same coin—predator and parasite, a snake eating its own tail, and he wants to consume you, wants you to consume him in turn. It’s not a new feeling, funnily enough—he has always had the hands to destroy and rebuild, to put a gun together and shoot it in turn. 

“How do I taste?” He asks, drawing back slightly. You look up at him with bright eyes, distant universes colliding in the pupils, and wordlessly begin to tug at your robe, shucking it off. Cues him to do the same—tug his shirt over his head, reach down to unbutton his pants and kick them into a disheveled mess upon the ground. When he returns his eyes to you, your robe is cinched around your hips, revealing your chest, the curve of your breasts and dip of your waist. Satisfied with the turn of his attention, you slowly—agonizingly so—bring the robe down your legs. 

He has no doubt that this is unnecessary—knows that you could magick it away in the blink of an eye, just like you flicker from place to place in lieu of walking, just like you know how to find him without words. It’s about the performance, it’s about his eyes on you, feeding you in a different, less corporeal way—which, albeit, doesn’t mean much when you’re hardly corporeal in the first place. 

His dick twitches in anticipation, already at full mast. Years of nothing but his own hand and half a thought, and here—here is an angel before him, heaven concentrated in the space between your thighs. Call yourself a scavenger, carrion-eater, vulture and hyena and earthworm plowing through the dead, and maybe no God sculpted you upon an adamantium dais, but to him, you are no different from any celestial being he’s ever imagined. He used to wish for you, if not consciously, on those nights alone in his bed, Dad screaming in the other room, stomach hollow. Dreamed of you, six feet under, dead man crumbling under his hands. 

He has been waiting all his life for this. 

Robe pooling around your feet, you dart to the bed in that peculiar way of yours—standing one moment, sitting the next, close enough that your noses almost touch. He reaches for you reverently, and when his hands land upon your waist, warmth shoots through him as sharply as a thousand euphoric needles. 

“Perfect,” he rasps, pulling you closer. You tilt your head back in invitation, and he takes it, planting a wet kiss on the bump of your clavicle, sucking gently. Moves down an inch, and then another, until his mouth clamps around your breast, teeth grazing your nipple. Your hand wraps around the back of his head, pushing him down and forwards, in tune with the breathy, soft groans that reverberate through your chest and into his. Something tickles his arms, and it takes a moment to realize that they’re feathers—your wings twist around, making what looks almost like a dome, enclosing you in this silent, private moment. 

When he draws his head back to move to your other breast, you shake your head, nothing but a, “please,” stuttering from your lips. When he raises an eyebrow in silent question, you add to it—“don’t have… much time. Just…”

He knows what you’re saying-not-saying. Draws back, observes the chunks of light that fall from your sides like shooting stars, and makes the decision that any further ecstasy will have to be saved for the next time. If nothing else, he wants at least one chance to bury himself fully into your heat—he has felt the nerveless placidity of your touch, but the connection of flesh will bring a thousand more volts of pleasure pulsing down the conduit. 

He shifts, and you flit into another position—half-laying, now, held up on your forearms, legs spread, facing him. Light gleams off your center, small motes that glisten against the stony gray—beats any classical statue he’s ever seen; his Galatea upon his sheets, his hands running up your legs. Past the curve of your ankles and knees, up towards the insides of your thighs and the nexus of your warmth. He so desperately wants to dip down, run his tongue down that long line of heat, but the way your glow scatters across his skin only reinforces that there is little time left, before you must dematerialize back into whatever cold world you hail from. 

You let out a moan of sheer anticipation as he rises, lining up his cock with your entrance. A moment of anticipation—your hand, stationed around his bicep, tightens enough that your fingers dig into the skin, and then, he snaps in. Warmth bursts through his entire body, intensified by the keen you let out. In, out, hand going down to search for your clit. When he finds it, he gives it a rough swipe, and you throw your head back, wings flaring out flat and displacing a thousand tiny flakes of light. 

“Love you,” you groan, breathless, and it should not move him like it does—you have met four times total, over the course of a scattering of months. But you saved him, and he’s saved you, in a more roundabout sort of way, and if he doesn’t deserve the bloom of true infatuation, then this deep, clasping thing is close enough as to be indistinguishable. 

All he can manage is a whispered echo back at you, as he loses control of his lower body, and flushes against you in a release of liquid heat. You clench around him, riding out the waves of pleasure by clawing your hands down his back, starting at the shoulders and ending at the core of his spine, where your hands collapse, liquid and boneless. He falls beside you, narrowly missing your wing—probably thanks to a quick de-re-materialization on your part—arm falling heavily across your bare stomach. Radiance dissipates across Simon’s skin, past the ridges and dips of his scars, a thousand miniature stars and tiny supernovas moving through an unfamiliar universe. 

“Thought you were an angel,” he murmurs, tilting his head to look you in the eyes, “when I found you.”

“Yeah?” You ask sleepily. He nods. 

“Guardian angel. You’re better, now tha’ I know the truth.”

You stroke a hand down his head, leaving trails that tingle and burn like lines of wildfire. “You think you have one? Somewhere?”

“Not doing a very good job,” he says, snorting. You nod, frowning. 

“She’ll have to compete with me.”

You look so adorable in this moment that he has to lean up, capture your lips in his for one soft, slow kiss. At some point, he must fall away, doze off into a languid slumber, but he cannot remember—it all dissipates into a bloom of radiance; a glimpse into the core of a distant sun. 

—

When he wakes, in the morning, he faces an empty bed, sheets ruffled and not a calling card to remember you by. Would be insulting, if he did not know that you’ll be back. The next mission, the next time he dons the mask of Ghost, you will be there, his forever follower, his angelic saprophyte, feasting on the death he cannot access. 

He smiles, rolling over and stretching luxuriously. Remembers the enclosure of your wings, the strength behind your touch. 

It is so cold now, but it will be warm again soon, and he cannot anticipate it enough.

[brokenbough]

Hear me out plsplsplspls new to 141 fem reader not interacting with the boys at all outside of missions like doesn't eat with them runs off somewhere else and when they confront her turns out she's just a social awkward loner who doesn't know how to talk to men (projecting)

Ofc! :)

--

Price picked his team. That was one of the few things he was in control of in this shitty, three-dimensional world. His team, his people.

Then... you came along. Shy, and socially awkward. Everything his team didn't need. Not to mention that you were a woman.

Now, Price wasn't one to discriminate, let alone on gender, he works with Laswell on almost every mission for God's sake, but your more than meek demeanor was just the icing on the toppling cake that you were.

He'd met you exactly once before letting you meet his boys (against his will of course), and it led him to one conclusion that he couldn't deny anymore:

You were soft. And soft got you killed in the field.

"This is the new Sergeant you're working with. Treat her uh... kindly." He says, short and clipped like he has somewhere better to be. He does. Many places in fact.

You nod to them, head held high, but mouth sewed shut with a tight jaw. You. Were. Sweating.

Someone clears their throat, the one with the mohawk. "W-welcome uh.. lass." He says, painfully Scottish. Cute though, you guess. "Soap." He says. Just his name. "Or- uh MacTavish if you.. want."

You nod to him specifically, hoping the pink isn't spreading up to your face. You don't say anything, turning to the one next to him.

Brown, cute too. Were they all this handsome? Jeez. You nodded to him as well and he raised his hand in silent greeting. "Gaz."

Then right behind him, leaned against the corner. You nodded to him as well, eyes focused on his chest. You saw the fabric move slightly; he nodded back.

You turn back to the captain, watching him nod again before dismissing the lot of you, except you of course.

You feel your blood rush before you sit down, watching the loose button on his shirt.

"Sir-- Captain." You correct, looking over and back.

He sighs like he doesn't want to talk, let alone talk to you. "I'm gonna be honest with ya. I don't want you here. I pick my team, not get stuck with... noobies who don't know a mag from a clip." He says.

"Uhm. Respectfully.. uh-- captain. We learn the difference in uh.. basic training. A-and I've been.. uh.. you know... deployed before. So... I'm sorry to be an inconvenience... but I'm not a stupid inconvenience." You explain politely, meeting his eyes for only a second, your leg bouncing under the table.

"Right." He exasperates. "Dismissed."

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

You find yourself alone as usual, maybe your nose in a book at the library, or eating when the rest of the 141 wasn't around.

You figured if the captain didn't like you, his subordinates definitely won't. And even if they did, they wouldn't want a woman on their team, strong or weak. But you wouldn't waste your time trying to convince them of either, you'd just stick to yourself and shoot when needed. Watch their back when called for, but drink by yourself when the op ended.

Gaz, maybe even Soap would drop by your room when they went out, but you always declined, stuttering, face down, and just trying to get your door shut again.

They didn't know what the matter was, what was wrong with you. Soap was even taking offense to his people skills because he could not get you out of your shell.

"I mean-- most women are open- especially with me, yknow what I mean-- but seriously, I can't tell what makes her tick." Soap complains, leaning back into the seat of the local bar in Southern Mexico. Oaxaca.

"Maybe she just likes her alone time; like Ghostie over here." Gaz comments, patting Ghost on the shoulder, getting an disapproving grunt.

"Or maybe she doesn't like us, huh? I mean, some people have been less welcoming." Soap continues, eyes his captain.

"I don't do transfers. I pick my team." Price defends nonchalantly.

The group goes back and forth on how to get you out, plotting and planning on how to get you to have one drink with them, the ploys getting more and more deranged as the drinks flow.

"Cmon big man. Give at least one suggestion." Gaz slurs, rocking into his more than sober lieutenant.

He clears his throat, pushing his sergeant into his other. "You could always ask her what she wants."

"Women don't say what they mean, you know that." Price huffs.

"Don't knock it till ya try it Cap'n."

"And what do ye kno bout communicatin' Lt.?"

"Works better than you think." He deflects before dragging them all out and driving(scary I know)them back to base so they didn't stumble somewhere else.

He shows up at your door the next day while they-- sober-- conjure up more ideas on how to get you out, his tipping point being one of them suggesting pulling the fire alarm.

He leaves the room without a word, not that any of them noticed or cared, too caught up in planning. The walk to your room is silent, most soldiers outside doing PT. Despite Price wanting you in the women's barracks, he ended up letting you stay with them, their own private barracks near the back of the base.

He knocked on your door firmly, stepping back some to give you space when you opened up.

Your startled face and demeanor was nothing short of awkward. It makes him cringe inwardly, but he knows how it is.

"Oh-- l-lieutenant. Uh. Hi? Can I uhm... help you?"

"I'm here to help you." He says blankly, looking at you.

"Oh. Uh.... with what?" You ask.

He stands there for a while, mulling over his words and trying to lock eyes with you but can't. His whole read on you is just: nervous.

"Do I make you nervous sergeant?" He asks suddenly.

"Uh- wha-what? N-nervous? A lot of things m-make me nervous. Yknow, haha, like any other p-person." You squeak out, resisting the urge to close the door you are still hiding behind on your superior.

So, yes. He thinks to himself.

"Johnny and Gaz are planning on literally dragging you our your room to hang with them. Be advised." He says blankly before turning and leaving as you shut your door and melt into a puddle in your room.

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

With these new warnings, you make it a point to avoid them at any cost, even after missions. Especially after missions.

You silently thank the lieutenant with each day you narrowly get caught before he's there and calling them off somewhere else. He never looks at you, or tells you that he's protecting you from them, but you can't help but think of him as your own personal guardian angel.

You find yourself in his vicinity more often now, whether in the library or gym at odd hours, and you can't help but appreciate his silence because the last time you guys talked off mission, you were a stuttering mess who didn't seem to know English.

An embarrassment to put it bluntly.

But now, with just him, you can relax in the library without having to worry about a conversation, or work out without someone asking what you're listening to. It's smooth sailing. Until it's not. Because, of course, the 141, one of the most elite squads in the world, pick up on this.

"You're stealing the lassie away." Soap accuses.

"No, I'm not." Ghost says amused.

"Ye are. Yer always together."

"No, we arent." He defends again with much amusement.

"You two were just in the library together." Gaz includes, taking Johnny's side.

"I was reading. She happen to be there too."

"Lies." Soap scorns.

"Maybe if you gave her space, she wouldn't hole up in 'er room. Ever think o' that?" Ghost questions.

"Well, no-- but that's not the point."

"That's the whole point MacTavish."

Soap only huffs, glaring at his lieutenant the rest of dinner.

---

Soap finally takes the hint to back off of you, instead waiting for you like a wounded animal. You make the grave mistake of trusting this... silent offering and find yourself in a loud bar with louder music surrounded by even louder and drunk men. Your worst nightmare.

Soap is speaking Scottish gibberish, Gaz is asking you a million drunken questions, Price is passed out in the seat, and your only safe place: Ghost, is gone. Maybe to the bathroom or to hopefully start up the car so you can leave.

"Cmoooon lass, telll mee your storryy." Gaz rumbles in your ear, brown skin glowing under the yellow light bulbs of the pub.

"I-I don't really have-- uhm. A story." You say, leaning back from the booze on his breath.

"Everyonnee haas a storyy.." He slurs, sure of himself.

"Sorry to uh.. disappoint. I guess you can't be right on everything, haha..." you say, wishing you drank so you could atleast forget this entire night.

Gaz only stares at you, finding your not so much of a joke not so funny.

"Sorry." You squeak, looking away.

------

The ride home is silent, save for Price's, Soap's, and Gaz's snores in the back seat. You were more than uncomfortable in the front seat with your lieutenant, tipsy enough to say to just call him Ghost.

You lied back in you seat, trying to curl up and away from the sleepy men.

"You should tell them you're an introvert." He suddenly says.

"The last time I talked to them, I got into this mess." You huff, not stuttering a word before realizing who you were talking to. "R-respectfully. Uh, sir-- lieutenant-- fuck, Ghost." You say quickly.

He let's out a soft chuckle and you feel your face heat up.

"Sorry." You mumble.

He only hums, tapping against the steering wheel.

Fortunately, you all get back to base in one piece, helping Ghost carry in the drunken men.

You two part once you finally have Gaz into his bed, tucking him in before quickly leaving, hoping he didn't wake up.

Goodnights are swapped between the two of you before you finally collapse onto your bed, vouching to never say yes to a night out again.

---------

They finally get the memo of you being an introvert when they don't see you for 3 whole days on base after the night in the bar. You've been avoiding them and they feel bad. They know now not to bombard you with... well.. them, before asking permission. They try to make the most of your boundaries but sometimes when you stutter whenever one gets too close is too cute to pass up on every now again.

Other than that, you've opened up a bit more, telling them-- indirectly-- that you don't have many friends and weren't sure on how you react with being thrown into a bunch you wanted to do as much. They also figure your shyness with them comes from not having many friends, and in turn, not talking to a lot of guys throughout your years.

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

Hope you enjoyed, sorry its so long, idk how to write them short 🥲 sorry it also took me to long to write, I haven't really felt like writing nor knew how to go about this prompt

🖤🩶🤍

[xnackery027]

TSBS’ Negative Trait Headcanons

This list is about negative traits the characters have, whether annoying or actually harmful. I’m not trying to say these are equivalent offenses, obviously. I’m also not trying to say that these are writing offenses. Negative traits are what give characters depth.

Sun has those wine mom magnets up on his fridge, and he thinks they are hilarious.

Moon unironically likes CinemaSins, and judges movies based on their review.

Sun used to subscribe to a bunch of trad wife channels, and has more than once tried to get everyone to drink unpasteurized milk.

Solar eats KitKats without breaking them first.

Nexus picks at the gaps between his casings. All the paint is scratched off around those spots on his arms.

Dazzle will guilt-trip Sun into buying her whatever she wants. (Looking at a pair of sketchers and being like “Dad, can I have these?” “No, Dazzle. We don’t have the money right now.” “Oh, okay. They probably wouldn’t fit me anyway, ‘cause I’m not a real girl…” “Oh, Dazzle, don’t say that! Here, try them on and let’s see if I can budget it.”) Sun has literally never put two and two together.

Jack asks Dazzle to ask Sun for things he wants, because he says yes to Dazzle more often.

Moon lowkey still misses the taste of humans. Sometimes he genuinely considers going off on a dimensional trip for some farmed human meat, but he never really has a moment to slip off and get some without somebody finding out.

Frank and Francis have no concept of privacy, and will spy and invade dreams no matter what is happening. There has been more than one occasion where Francis walks in on Terra and Monty and is like “Wow, you two have a lot of happiness coming off of you! What are you doing?” And they have to awkwardly shoo him out like a dog.

Eclipse refuses to eat anything other than buttered rice. He claims it’s for efficiency, but he’s just a texture person and can’t stand anything else yet. His body is sort of sensitive to taste, too, and buttered rice is flavorless. He’s literally refused his own birthday cake because he couldn’t get over the coconut shavings on it.

[kirbyofthestars]

a fairly detailed kirby oc ask meme

🪐 (Saturn) - What planet are they from? Is it in Gamble Galaxy, Another Dimension, the Mirror World, the New World, or somewhere else? Where do they live now?

🧃 (Juicebox) - What species are they? What’s their biology and physiology like? Do they differ in any way from a ‘typical’ member of their species?

⚔️ (Crossed Swords) - What weapon(s) do they wield or specialize in, if any in particular? Any special properties? Do their weapons have names or epithets? [e.g. MK’s Galaxia, Morpho’s Doomblade]

🪄 (Magic Wand) - Are they capable of wielding magic? Is it a learned skill, or is it innate? What sorts of spells can they cast? Do they possess any magical items or artifacts? [e.g. the Dimensional Mantle]

💫 (Shooting Star) - If they were to wish on a clockwork star, like Galactic Nova or Star Dream, what would they wish for?

🪽 (Wing) - Can they fly, hover, or levitate? Is it through natural means or artificial means? If they have wings, what do they look and feel like?

🥘 (Stew) - Do they have any favourite foods or comfort foods? What are their eating habits like? If absorbed by the Cook ability, what healing item would they summon?

🧋 (Boba Tea) - Come up with a Kirby Café item themed around your OC! It can be a savoury dish, a drink, a dessert, or something else entirely.

☀️ (Sun) - What’s their morning routine like? Do they take a lot of time getting ready in the morning? How do they groom themselves? What are they having for breakfast?

🌙 (Moon) - Is your OC a particularly light or heavy sleeper? Somewhere in-between? Do they take naps?

🍅 (Tomato) - If Kirby absorbed them or their attacks, what Copy Ability [or Abilities] would he get? Alternatively, if they themselves are capable of using the Copy Ability, do they have a favourite?

⚡️ (Lightning Bolt) - Which Power Effects [Blizzard, Bluster, Sizzle, Splash, Zap] would their attacks grant? Do they have any particular weaknesses or resistances, elemental or otherwise?

🎶 (Music Notes) - Do they play any instruments? What kind of leitmotif and/or battle theme would they have? Are there any songs you associate with them?

💌 (Love Letter) - How easy are they to befriend? Are they more of a social butterfly or a lone wolf?

💥 (Collision) - What’s your OC’s combat style like? Do they adhere to any particular code of honour or ethics in a fight, or are they totally unfettered by that sort of thing?

⚙️ (Gear) - Do they have any knowledge of, or connections to, the Ancients? What do they think of them?

⚖️ (Scales) - On the subject of a certain someone’s lengthy rant; is your OC moreso on the side of magic or science? Somewhere in-between? Do they incorporate the two together in some way?

🍨 (Ice Cream) - The Invader Armour undergoes a drastic transformation depending on its pilot. If they were to wield it, what appearance would their mech take on? What abilities would it have?

🪞 (Mirror) - What would their Mirror World counterpart be like? If they are a Mirror World counterpart, what traits of theirs are reflected? Do the two of them get along?

🐛 (Caterpillar) - What are your OC’s greatest fears, and why? How do they act or react when they’re afraid?

💼 (Bag) - Inventory check! What items does your OC typically carry around with them? What do they carry them in?

🔮 (Crystal Ball) - Out of all the treasures in the Great Cave Offensive, Kirby is letting your OC pick one from his stash to keep! Which one do they pick, and why?

♟️ (Pawn) - Does your OC get possessed easily, or do they have the willpower to fight back against any possible attempts? Have they been possessed before?

🕸️ (Spiderweb) - Create a bouquet inspired by your OC! It can be based on their colour palette, flower language and symbolism, whatever they like best, or any combination of the three.

💜 (Purple Heart) - If they were corrupted by the Jamba Heart, which negative traits of theirs would be amplified?

🩷 (Pink Heart) - If they were a Dream Friend, what would their moveset be like? How much HP do they have? Would they be a strong attacker, or would they take on more of a support role?

🦁 (Lion) - If they were an animal — that is, of the Earth / Shiver Star / New World variety — which animal would they be? If they already are an animal, what real-life species or subspecies are they most similar to?

🕰️ (Clock) - What would a Dreamy Gear version of them look like? What sort of accessories would they have? What kind of role do they play?

🛡️ (Shield) - Which Clash role would your OC pick - Sword Hero, Hammer Lord, Beam Mage, or Doctor Healmore?

🦋 (Butterfly) - Does your OC ‘fear the reaper’, so to speak? If they fused with Morpho Knight, what sort of form would they take on?

🍒 (Cherry) - Out of all of the Dream Friends [Kirby included], which ones would they get along with the most? The least?

🥀 (Wilted Rose) - Do they have a Soul form? What would it look and act like? How much control over themselves do they have? Is it still possible to save them, or are they too far gone?

[witchhazelevesque]

Scene from a time loop valdangelo wip I’m probably not going to finish: -

Frank is belligerent. Again. 

"Oh my god, man, I don't wanna date your girlfriend, so can you stop taking everything I say in the worst possible way?" Leo groans. 

Everyone at table turns their eyes on him, wide with shock and near horror or shock and mortification, but god, it's been a literal half a day of this bullshit, and no, at this point Leo can at least tell that he's not saying anything that’s actually inflammatory. 

"I-" Frank tries, his face bright red, like not quite rivaling the pasta sauce on his plate, but a near cousin. 

Leo waves around his cloth napkin then tips it toward Frank, "I think we could be good friends, actually, if you want to give that a whirl."

Frank looks more confused by this, which Leo is gonna try not to take offense to. 

"Or not, if you're not into the idea, it doesn't fucking matter, I think I may adopt nihihilism or-whatever it's called in that meme that's like, super hyper color 80's guy in sunglasses with a thumbs up and caption 'Nothing Matters', y'all know that one? Doesn't matter,  none of this matters, what does matter but doesn't actually- hey, Hazel, want me to sell my soul to Nemesis to rescue your brother? It may just put me out of my own misery."

Hazel's wide dark eyes stare as fixedly as Frank's wide dark eyes. It would be a funny photo, actually. Leo wishes he had an inter-dimensional camera that wouldn't have its memory wiped when this loop is inevitably reset.

"What are you talking about?" Annabeth asks, and Leo feels a rush of affection for her pragmatic course of thoughts. 

"I'm stuck in a time loop, I’ve been sitting with y'all having dinner for like a whole rotation of a clock, and I'mma be honest, I'm really sick of you guys."

Jason looks a little hurt by that, which wasn't Leo's intention. 

"A time loop?" Percy asks, exchanging a wary look with Annabeth. 

"Yeah, yeah, it may well be Kronos's vapor trail pulling some really short strings," Leo agrees with the sentiment behind that onimous look. "Don't know why he's doing it to me, since I never met the guy. Maybe he's trying to activate Annabeth's FOMO or something."

"I- what?" Annabeth demands. 

"You like being the hero," Leo reminds her, and yeah, he's kind of being an asshole at this particular point. "Time Daddy probably thought it’d drive you bonkers to not be his mortal nemesis- heh- or something."

"That's not funny," Percy snaps at him. 

"It ain’t supposed to be," Leo snaps right back. "In fact, I am so fucking over being funny that you can assume from here on out that everything I say is gonna be serious."

"Horseman of the apocalypse," Piper mutters. 

"Yeah, well, Pipes, when making people laugh kept them from beating you up, you kind of get into the habit," Leo says, because nothing matters. 

She sits up straight, eyes widening. 

Leo lightly smacks the table top before reaching into his belt and taking out the fortune cookie, laying it out. 

"What do you say, Hazel, wanna give it a go?"

"No!" she swipes the fortune and when Leo reaches for it, he's not expecting it to be a contest of strength, she's got him beat there, but a matter of trickery. She may also have him beat because she pulls some sleight of hand that vanishes the cookie, which is actually really cool, Leo will admit. 

"Nice," Leo tells her, leaning back with an appreciative nod. "I think it's a little like Percy's pen, though."

He reaches back into his pocket and pulls out the fortune.

[airas-story]

This is an ask from @theboywiththestaginthehead that never made it into my inbox. (Trying to find all of those asks, but my confidence is not high.)

Hello. I love your drabbles very much. If I may ask for something, I would love to see the continuation (not necessarily) of joke about sex that upset Tony. Somehow Avengers find out about Stephen's love adventures, and they are quite a story, since he has so much choice because he had Time Stone, different dimensions/realities/etc. Maybe he started his love adventures later than Tony but he is so much more kinkier (not exactly a slut, but open for some interesting experience, that is all!) and had plenty of partners. If it's not okay with you, it's fine.

Sequel to part one and two.

“Well, Tony might have a few ideas,” Clint teased. Tony sighed at another poke at his sex life. “How about we ask—”

“If we’re talking sexual expertise,” Stephen interrupted. “I’d be the better source of information.”

Everyone paused, several people blinking at Stephen in confusion.

“No offense, Doctor,” Natasha started. “But you’re—”

“A multi-dimensional traveler who spent several million timelines traveling through space.” Stephen leaned forward, smirking. “I assure you, I have done it all.”

Tony stared, shocked. Stephen met his gaze, smiling softly before turning to Clint.

“You’ll have to find new material for Tony. I’ve got sex covered.”

[ratlesshonret]

Lately, I've been making kits for existing Limbus IDs that are bad, trying to make them not just better, but also more interesting.

Here's what I have so far. Keep in mind that my main rules are "No changing Skill affinities", "No changing the main Status archetypes," and "No changing Coin amounts"

For This Episode: A Tale of a terrible Outis, an okay Meursault, and two awful Sinclairs

Blade Lineage Outis really just needed some better numbers. Higher skill rolls, more Poise gen, and a Crit damage buff on the S3 in line with modern BL/Poise IDs.

Main thing I did was, since the S3 is supposed to be a "finisher" skill, I moved the Stagger Threshold raise to the first coin and gave it both a Kill and Crit Kill effect.

I also made her S2 Slash, since she buffs her own Slash Power, and generally made her unique gimmick Slash Power Up. If Meursault can have his S2 Acupuncture be a Slash skill, so can Outis.

Los Mariachis Jefe Sinclair took more work. I made both his Poise viable to maintain and his Sinking more effective. He's generally a Count maintainer through his S2 and generally low Coin count, but his S3 has a whopping 7 Sinking in one infliction.

I also gave him more SP healing to be a fast ramper, and gave him buffs based on his SP relative to the enemy's.

The big fuckery I did was with his Evade and Passive, and how they work together. His Evade can now roll pretty high, and directly raises the target's Stagger Threshold based on the Gloom Res. when he successfully evades. So you can start by ramping him up and popping a bunch of Sinking on the enemy, before Evade-spamming to go for a bunch of Stagger raising.

His rolls are also good now, but dampened a bit by his negative Offense Level and, again, generally low Coin count. Main thing I probably should've done that I didn't is adding Aggro, but I think raising his Speed could also help (but those stats aren't shown here.)

Zwei South Sinclair is an interesting ID. The first thing I did was, of course, raise his rolls to be more modern.

Obviously, as you can see, I also gave him a few Unbreakable Coins, and changed around his Clash Loss conditionals. I also swapped his Protection for Defense Level Up, and made his S3 give it to the highest HP ally, prioritizing other Zwei IDs (for that sweet sweet Ishmael synergy)

Also, I gave him Assist Defense, and made him gain Defense Level Up when hit, doubled if he's hit via Assist Defense. Most of his debuffs remain next turn due to his low Speed, which is also why his ally buffs are Combat Start.

Not much else to say. Made his Tremor infliction better.

Finally for now, W Corp. Meursault.

First thing was, again, rolls and conditionals. Made his Rupture infliction close to, but not on par with, W Yi Sang's. He obviously has no Dimensional Rift. His Count infliction is generally positive after conditionals are active, but at the end of the Skills, so you need to be careful not to eat the Rupture stack before the infliction even goes off.

All of his Skills have Protection now, some of them conditional. His buffs from getting hit, through his Passive, are now a bit better too, but mainly the Clash Lose buff, since I feel it should actually be a worthy consolation prize.

His main goal is to use a high Envy Res. to change his S3 to Envy and get the max Slash Fragility, while also going first, to make W Corp. Don Quixote and W Corp. Ryoshu deal 30% more damage.

In general, I raised both his Charge generation and consumption, just to put him on par with other Charge IDs that like to hit 15/20 Charge Count before doing much. His S2's conditionals are a maze of what Charge amounts activate which conditionals, so I'll leave you to figure it out on your own.

In the end, I feel this ID might be a bit bloated, but it was always trying to do too much in my opinion. My mission statement was "Bulky Charge/Rupture ID with Envy synergy," and I feel I did that well.

[longing-for-rain]

Ember Island Players…Racist Caricatures or Meta Commentary?

This episode was supposed to be a fun filler episode to recap the events of the show in a silly way before the series finale, but it’s managed to become arguably one of the most controversial episodes in the fandom. Over the years, Aang’s possessive behavior towards Katara has been rightfully criticized, but there are always people who attempt to justify everything Aang does.

Apparently, the latest iteration of this is the claim that—wait for it—we should be sympathetic towards Aang and give him a pass in The Ember Island Players because he felt “emasculated” due to the supposed “feminization” of his culture.

I’ve been called racist for saying this is a reach, but it’s more than a reach. It’s an entire acrobatics routine; a level of media illiteracy that shows a lack of understanding of the point of that episode.

Yes, Aang’s character is portrayed in a silly, mocking way. So are all of the other characters. That’s the point; the episode was a filler, a gimmick, and the underlying comedy is the fact that all of the characters are reacting to exaggerated, one-dimensional versions of their own personalities.

For example:

Katara is portrayed as an “overemotional crybaby” in her own words, and is constantly giving motivational speeches and crying

Sokka’s “comedic relief” archetype is played up to the point his lines are just corny one-liners

Zuko is portrayed as an angsty, whiny pretty-boy who acts like a bratty asshole at all times

Toph is a huge buff guy (although in this case, it’s a play on how her character was originally going to be a “jock” type male character)

As for Aang? He’s portrayed as unserious, goofy, and childish. Which—just like all the others—is a jokey exaggeration of his childish demeanor and nature. He’s not even alone in taking offense to his portrayal. All of the characters aside from Toph hate their characters for largely the same reason. They’re being confronted with aspects of themselves that make them insecure. For Aang, it’s his immaturity—and specifically his fears that he’ll be rejected by Katara.

As for why Aang is played by a woman? Well, we don’t actually have to wonder about that, because the creators themselves answer this question in the episode commentary.

Bryan: “It's sort of a self-referential joke. Whenever you do a animated show, they usually want to cast, uh, women...who are, like, in their thirties to play boys, because you never know how long the show is gonna go on, and, you know, as Jack mentioned earlier, boys' voices start cracking.” (source)

Wow, imagine that! An inside joke about the cartoon industry in a show’s meta-episode dedicated to making fun of itself? Impossible!

I’m serious though. The episode transcript is right here. Point me to where exactly there is even the slightest hint of anyone bringing up Aang’s culture and tying his childish behavior to it.

That’s right; it isn’t there. Because that wasn’t the point. Aang’s anger did stem from feeling emasculated, but it had nothing to do with culture and everything to do with his own misogynistic attitudes. He was offended at his portrayal on an individual level. I’m not denying that the issue of oppressive nations using femininity as an insult against men of colonized nations is a very real issue, but that was never a theme present in this episode. We don’t see Aang expressing anger towards the Fire Nation, nor do we see him mention anything about culture. What we see is Aang, individually, feeling insulting that his actor is female and Aang being angry at Katara, individually, because the play suggested she felt more attracted to Zuko than him.

Trying to downplay Aang’s behavior and suggest we coddle him despite his atrocious treatment of Katara is a disingenuous reading of the episode.

Why are you reaching to make an excuse for Aang when if you’re really taking the “the point of the episode is that the play is racially demeaning the characters” angle…and why are you not bringing up Sokka? He’s portrayed as a dumb oaf who is always talking about eating meat. There is a much stronger argument to be made there about caricatures, but Sokka isn’t threatening anyone’s ship so apparently nobody cares.

And while we’re talking about caricatures, how about this crap?

Sorry, Aang stans, but this show and Aang’s character aren’t the enlightened portrayals of anti-colonialism and groundbreaking activism you think they are. It’s pretty clear from the context and the episode itself what the intention here was. It is poorly aged comedy from the early 2000s written by white Americans. And we will continue to critique that, thanks.

[flower-boi16]

Helluva Boss Handles Abuse Horribbly

In Helluva Boss abusers are either one-dimensional or aren't even treated as abusers to begin with. Take Stella for example; Stella was made abusive towards Stolas as a way for the series to justify and remove accountability from Stolas in favor of making him look more sympathetic. Stella and Stolas' dynamic had the potiential to be fairly interesting but it was watered down into a clear-cut abuse story and nothing else.

Then in Seeing Stars, Loona starts assulting Blitz and starts acting aggressive towards him over him telling her to be a bit nicer to clients. She then, regularly, beats Blitz even when he is running towards her in tears and apologizes for threatening to replace her...and all of that is treated as a joke. Blitz didn't even though anything to deserve this, Loona was just acting like a massive dick to her father over the smallest of shit and she doesn't get called out for it. Helluva Boss is very, very inconistant when it comes to how to treats abuse depending on the character.

Then we get the worst offender Exes and Oohs, where the series decides to slap daddy issues onto Moxxie despite it adding nothing to him as a character so it could create artificial drama. Crimson is also a very shallow and one-dimensional character who serves a role that is completely pointless anyway, and the series doesn't even explore Moxxie's truama, removing it changes nothing about him as a character and it's just something that's tacked onto him that you can easily remove.

But that's not even the most offensive part of this; Moxxie decides to finally stand up to his father, the moment the episode was building towards. He tells his father to fuck off, he gets a full 3D turn and...he immediantly gets tazed and put in the damsel in the distress role. Moxxie stood up to his abuser...and the narrative decides to completely undercut that moment by having him get tazed for a bad joke. The series punished a child-abuse victim for standing up to his abuser.

And this is the show that people claim to care about male abuse victims. This moment becomes even more insulting once you remember that Stolas gets a scene where he stands up to Stella and HE gets to keep his moment, but Moxxie? Nah, he gets tazed.

Actual. Writting. Sewage. Oh, but we haven't even reached the worst part, the obvious elephant in the room, Stolitz. I've made millions of posts ranting about Stolitz just go read those for more detail but my problems with Stolitz should be obvious at this point. It's a relationship where one partner is clearly more abusive than the other yet the show (and the fandom) tries to claim that both parties are "equally in the wrong" even when they aren't, unironically both-siding a relationship that is based on coercive r@pe which the writers refuse to acknoweledge IS r@pe.

Helluva Boss doesn't read like it's interested in telling actual stories about abuse, rather it uses abuse as a way to artificially create drama, remove accountability from characters, or just refuses to unpack it at all.

[nerogore]

netflix devil may cry rant, because i knew i’d make one eventually. my heart says now is the time, but my unfinished legal coursework says otherwise LOL.

yes i’m aware most of the shit i’m saying has been said a hundred times over and it’s probably tiring to read, but i still need to get this out somewhere.

i’m making this a character based critique because that’s what i feel most interested/invested in, i’ll leave the heavy narrative analyses to the people who can actually do a decent job at it.

to start off — as a hardcore nero fan, i was so disheartened at the attribution of many of nero’s traits to dante for no reason other than convenience. i always manage to make things about nero somehow (i know. oops. i have valid reasons for it, i swear) but it seems they were too lazy to establish dante as a complex, intelligent character so they opted to select whichever trait they found ‘coolest’ from each character instead. which in turn made him appear clunky and one-dimensional, and a mockery of what he truly stands for.

dante in the show appears more as a puppet being pulled by the strings rather than his own entity, as he’s always been in the games. he is yanked around by lady and darkcom and the white rabbit (who is his own set of issues), rather than forcing himself into their plans and uprooting them from the heart through sheer will and determination.

dante is missing everything that makes him, him. he’s missing his charm and emotional connection/appeal to the audience. his eccentric, avoidant nature and peculiar fashion choices are gone. there is no gothic influence or style, which played a massive role in conveying the darker themes during dmc1-4 and establishing dmc as something special. the excessive modernisation of the dmc universe in the show pissed me off quite a bit, actually.

something i was genuinely very, very heated over that irritated me throughout my entire viewing was the american/US theme that was consistently pushed — possibly my biggest issue with the themes/narrative of the entire show. it was shoved in our faces every two seconds and as someone from outside the US, it genuinely felt akin to being locked in a cage while everything around me was lit on fire so even if i wanted to escape, i couldn’t. dmc is not the right franchise to convert into making a political statement, it’s just insensitive; and worst of all, it was poorly done. truly offensive. conversely, dmc has always been about the interplay between characters and their ties to humanity, and how this forms each individual into the person (or demon) they are. in the show, the characters felt secondary to the shitty, half-baked christian/american storyline and oops!! i know i said this was going to be a character-based critique, but here we are. had it been well-executed and sensitive, not corny and not making up the entire plot, i may have been able to look past it and feel moved, but i just couldn’t. this may be more of a personal issue than anything, but… yeah. yikes.

and yes — you could point out the religious plot of dmc4 and argue this is no different. but i argue that this IS different, and very much so.

even when the topics of dmc4 (deadly fortune included) were religion-focused, it was all contained and specific to the devil may cry universe. it was about sparda, and sanctus, and nero (bless his soul). it was about dante’s relation and impact on the plot. it was about nero’s experiences with the cult worshipping his grandfather, and his love for kyrie, his conflicting feelings regarding credo. it was relevant and specific to dmc, not an external message poorly inserted into a narrative that caused it to feel corny, flimsy, and downright insensitive, like with the show.

continuing with dante — worst of all, he has no heartfelt motivation. no motivation at all, actually.

he’s just shoddily inserted into the narrative because he has to be there, dragged around like those poor children on leash backpacks you see at shopping centres, not because he IS the narrative. where is his love for humanity? where is his compassion? where is his conflict? it’s clear the story intending to be portrayed doesn’t favour dante in any way beyond being a convenient stepping stool, and that has me very concerned for season 2, and makes me doubt their ability to redeem it or explain whatever the hell was going on in the first season.

and i understand this adaptation is aligned more with a dmc3 dante in mind, who at the time understood less of his demonic nature and lacked the emotional maturity and compassion of his later self, but even then, he fails to show ANY character development. he is tricked by everyone, all the time. he turns his back on his enemy, and he is captured. he spends most of his screen time imprisoned. in dmc3, he learns what is important because of lady (muah) and vergil, and by witnessing the beneficence of his less than human nature, no longer seeing it as a burden or just a part of himself he has to ignore.

i feel like the main difference between dmc game dante and netflix dante is best captured by his line to lady in dmc3 —

“this is my family matter too. quite frankly, at first, i didn’t give a damn. but because of you, i know what’s important now.”

he was originally in denial, but not anymore. because dante KNOWS. he is AWARE. he’s always known, always remembered, but actively chose to shut away what he hated about himself, whereas in the show, he was never aware. instead, he explains things away by calling himself a ‘superhero’ or saying generally idiotic things because he is genuinely stupid, not pretending to be. he gets beaten up for plot device purposes almost as much as nero (!!), which is wild to me.

i’m not even going to bother delving into the absolute butchering of lady’s character, because that’s well and truly been done, and this post is already far, far longer than i intended it to be :’)

also just remembered… yeah, i was really mad they gave dante nero’s theme song when dante already has plenty of amazing music choices from five bloody games to choose from… i’m salty.

not really sure how to end this off other than by encouraging anyone who hasn’t yet played the games to do so, and anyone who has, to play them again. or something. love you guys and bye!!

[phoenixcatch7]

Theirs an episode in Justice League Action where Superman, Batman, and Stargirl get their minds swapped and go into each others bodies, Superman in Batmans body, Batman in Stargirls, and Stargirl in Supermans. They beat the villain Mxy (who’s full name I can’t remember) by calling in reinforcements including Firestorm who has two people in his mind and the Professor gets stuck with Mxy and tricks him into undoing everything by saying his own name backwards.

It’s complicated and I’ll send you a link to the episode if you want clarity, but in your (and @puppetmaster13u) Possessed Dolls au what would happen to Batman? Would he act the same role as Firestorm? Presumably not because he’s one person two bodies not two people one body. Would a random persons body be left… empty and both Bruces body and Batmans puppet get different people in their minds? Or would the episode go as normal? Would Batmans puppet/body feel strange to the person not used to it, would they discover any secrets (as small as him being tall or as big as him being a puppet)? Would Batman be eerily good at acclimating/adjusting to a new body- enough to make people ask questions or not?

Ooh, a body swap isn't something I've considered before!

Hm... Myxlptlk or whatever his name is (lol) is someone I have limited knowledge of, but that's not too important here XD.

I'm assuming mxy tried to swap firestorm as well, but the magic tripped up figuring out what to do? Lmao. Did mxy accidentally get stuck in their body or vice versa? Interesting.

I think whatever happened, if someone was successfully transplanted into a doll body, they would be spiritually set on fire. Their soul getting rejected by the very vessel it's in. The doll would take GREAT offense to some unworthy intruder. It'd be like acid on their soul. Just, screaming unending agony.

But the way the dolls bind to their users' souls would certainly affect the process of trying to body swap them. I think the Bruce body would be untouched, as it wasn't the target, but if a spell was not a straight swap but instead a two step empty and fill that might change... Luckily then that emptying a body of its soul is typically called death and is to be universally avoided! (Though I am imagining a scene where a villain is using that spell to murder people without a trace and being terrified/horrified when Bruce Wayne just keeps popping right back up again lol.)

It's tempting to imagine batman acting as the untouchable reinforcement, but given the dolls are all about fluid identities and body modifications it's just too interesting to not have them be affected somehow.

Maybe if it pulled a different puppeteer to take his place? Like, if nightwing was going about his routine patrol in bludhaven and all of a sudden he's in the batman body again while the jl sort of collectively fall over trying to figure out the new controls. Him being the only other permitted user? His voice would change where everyone else's wouldn't, considering he isn't using a physical mouth to speak. And he'd have to try and fix it the same way firestorm did...

Oh!! Of course!! Batman could try and trick mxy into body swapping with him! And then while mxy is incapacitated (4th dimensional or not having... Whatever the dolls are made of trying to eat your soul with needle poison teeth and rip it apart for food cannot feel good) he uses mxys body (flawlessly adapting, of course) to reverse the spell and banish him! Or... Just tells him he can escape the agony by undoing the spell lol, if it has to be him and not his body to say it.

Underhanded and a bit mean? Probably! But it was a decisive victory with little to no collateral damage and now the team only has a few questions for him!