#or like. he was an adult of several centuries when bad things happened to him but i Know that even though he corrects others

[skunkes]

talon's issue is he never wants to be treated like a child ever again but is always looking for community/family and every kind gesture or attempt to to help him is for some reason interpreted by him as being patronizing, belittling, but in the familial, Parent to Child, Authority to Child way. dis is why its difficult to get anywhere with him. He himself still sees himself as Person With No Agency, Meant to Be Harmed and Talked Down To

[mikimakiboo]

I was wondering if you were doing anything for/with the apple incident. Since it would be like, a clarifying moment for the guys in the tt gang. Like that’s why he’s jumpy and scared all the time. That’s why he was so rude and scared. That’s why he stopped talking to them, he thought they would be aggressive and violent. The servants could think he was cursed by the devil, or a witch or smth. Till it reached a high note, then him and Dream slowly reconciled and reconnect. Then night just starts pouring his soul out with him bc he’s so lonely and scared.

My time to shine and ramblllleeeeeee

Btw since you asked something about my AU just assume I'm in love with you, okay ? I'm your wife now /jk

As you can imagine the answer will contain spoilers regarding Nightmare's backstory SO I'm putting it under the cut :D

So regarding the apple incident, whenever I make AUs including Nightmare he is always corrupted, however the tree of feelings doesn't always fit the narrative, like in Time Travelers AU where Nightmare was born and lives as a noble in the 17th century and not 500 years ago as a guardian

So since there isn't any tree of feelings there isn't any apples either so there technically can't be an apple incident

So that's when the second scenario comes in handy: magic overdose :D

Basically at the age of six Nightmare's magic starts to grow a little too much, he would often choke on a black goop that would form in his soul and go in his throat for him to throw up, and it's a long and painful transformation, I'm talking about years here, from his six years old to his ten years old his magic would slowly overwhelm his soul more and more, come out of the joints, mouth, nose, eyesockets, he would choke and develop quite severe chronic pains until he's eventually covered in goop just like his original corrupted self

One good thing with that scenario is that it allows me to give him a softer personality as he wasn't exactly corrupted, his magic just got messed up, but he's still the same person as his passive self

Now, as Nightmare is living in a very religious time, everyone thought that his messed up magic and black goop was due to some demon possession or that he was cursed by either God, Satan, or any other divine force, and so Nightmare had to go through a lot of exorcisms, lots of different covens but of course none of it worked

He was always insulted and looked down upon as he was seen like a curse by himself: his father died young (when Dream and him were babies), his mother died young too (when they were young adult) and everyone blamed him and his mere existence for it and every other bad thing that happened to other people he ever talked to or looked their way

His own mother, Nim, was part of the people insulting him, by telling him that he was her biggest failure and she should have left him in a coven if only Dream didn't insist so much to keep him

So yeah Nightmare doesn't really think very high of himself and is fully focused on being as good as he can so hopefully people won't see him as a curse anymore

Dream was actually the only one to never turn his back on him, even when they were in different covens/schools (nobles were placed in special schools from 10yo to 18yo, very strict, they had to speak Latin too so that's why Nightmare is fluent) he would always send him letters, so their relationship never got too bad, Nightmare did have a period when he didn't respond to the letters but he never felt resentment or anything toward his twin because he was actually his only friend, so when they were back home together when they got out at 18 they actually became even closer because Dream was really the only one who would listen to him and genuinely love him

So yeah the two brothers are inseparable and rely very much on each other, Nightmare tells everything to Dream and Dream also talks about anything and everything with Nightmare

Now regarding the tt gang, when they learnt about the backstory they did assemble some pieces regarding Nightmare's behavior

Because his obsession with being perfect and not mixing with them, hardly talking to them and keeping his perfect noble image is actually trauma response after years of being talked down and seen as God's mistake, so now he has to appear perfect at all time so he won't have troubles anymore without realizing that this image hurts him too as he bottles up everything he feels and do not act like himself AT ALL

So yeah the backtory do make them understand his behavior better and they do feel very bad for him because obviously it wasn't his fault, he was only a child who should have gone to the doctor to have some magic drained out instead of being exorcized every two days and treated like shit

They'll eventually work through the trauma together

Hope that answers your question :D

[666writingcafe]

Emergency Meeting

Which Takes Place A Few Weeks After the Flood

Mephistopheles

What a day. Several false calls about supposed important news items that turned out to be completely blown out of proportion, followed by one about a bunch of brats taking my brother's backpack and throwing it in the messiest trashcan they could find, and yet another meeting with the House of Lords where everyone was too busy arguing amongst themselves to get anything done.

And then when I thought I could just go home and relax for the evening, I overheard a few members of the upper House quietly conspiring against Lord Diavolo again, so I had no choice but to report straight to the castle and deliver the news myself.

Barbatos greeted me like he normally does: courteous with a smile that doesn't quite travel up to his eyes. I know he isn't the biggest fan of me, but since I haven't done anything to put Lord Diavolo in danger, he resigns to merely tolerating me. Which is fine. Butlers aren't really supposed to develop intimate relationships with people, anyway. Interferes with their job performance.

What I wasn't expecting was to walk in as Lord Diavolo was beginning to cozy up towards the Avatars' attendant. Obviously, they scooted away from each other once Barbatos made our presence known, but the light blush dusting both their cheeks indicates that we clearly interrupted something.

Stupid feelings.

I was merely meant to be a friend of Diavolo's. Our families have been close for many centuries, so consequently the kids are expected to maintain that relationship. But things changed when we were teenagers. Diavolo was never bad-looking by any means, but as he was morphing into his adult form, I found myself more and more attracted to him. Didn't want to admit it to myself initially, but it's kind of hard to deny it when you repeatedly wake up stiff from a certain type of dream starring a certain individual doing certain activities to you.

So, yes. I'm jealous. I've worked very hard to hide that from people, because it does nothing to change the fact that Diavolo will never see me in that way. The only way my jealousy is apparent is my hair. After one too many incidents where I looked in the mirror and saw him looking back at me, I broke out the hair dye and vowed to never be mistaken for that prideful bastard. His mere existence here mocks me. He has Diavolo wrapped around his finger.

And apparently so does his fucking attendant.

"May I help you?" Diavolo's question forces me to calm down and remember the reason why I showed up here in the first place. I suppose it's a good thing they're here too, for the news concerns them as well.

"My Lord, trouble's afoot. Members of the Upper House are making plans behind your back." Diavolo sighs.

"What else is new?"

"They're working with the Celestial Realm this time." The attendant's eyes widen. "My Lord, are you familiar with the Rembandy Accord?" A stern look develops on his face as he nods his head. Upon the confused expression on the attendant's face, Diavolo explains,

"If two members of Celestial and Devildom leadership sign a formal agreement, they can sentence an angel or demon they deem to be a risk to both realms to be sealed in Cocytus indefinitely."

"I see," the attendant replies, sighing. "I suppose after what happened the last time, they would feel the need to escalate things. If this Accord were to go into effect, I'd imagine you'd be powerless to stop it."

"That is correct. It is one of the few laws that I cannot override."

"From the sounds of it, both realms have picked their representatives," I add. "It's only a matter of days before they meet and sign the document, effectively extinguishing the lives of the Avatars." I swallow the scathing words bubbling in my throat about them. Nothing I say will change Diavolo's perception of them, after all, so why start an argument over it?

"I'm surprised they haven't signed it already," Diavolo comments. "Not that I want them to, of course, but given their opinions on the brothers, I would have thought they'd do it the moment they found their representatives."

"They're contemplating adding one more name to the list." I glance over at the attendant. "Yours."

They don't react the way I expected them to. Instead of turning on the waterworks and flailing across the room, they merely remain seated, albeit while looking more morose than they did moments ago. The room grows eerily silent. Eventually, the attendant stands up.

"If that is what they deem to be the acceptable punishment for my crimes, then so be it."

"MC--" Diavolo immediately stops himself, but the error has already been made. I heard about what happened to Solomon when he made the same mistake, and I'm prepared to stop them before they do the same to Lord Diavolo.

But they simply sigh, their focus still remaining on me.

"It's only right that you know the truth. You're one of Diavolo's closest friends, after all." They take a deep breath before continuing,

"Zephyr the demon was only an alias for me to use during my stay here. My place is in a future timeline, where I'm a human exchange student turned magical apprentice. My power is amplified by my ancestry and pacts with the seven Avatars of Sin, and in my world it was difficult to control, resulting in damage across the three realms.

"I received an object that helped tame it, but wearing it here would bring about too many questions, so I've kept it off. You've witnessed some of the effects of that decision recently. Objectively, I do pose a danger, and so it is only right for people to want to protect others from me." They briefly pause to wipe their eyes, and reflexively I pull out a handkerchief from my pocket and hand it to them.

"Thanks," they mutter as they accept it from me. Once they've finished, they offer it back to me, but I wave my hand to indicate that they can keep it. It's not like I can't get another one.

"Believe it or not, this has been the tamest part of my day," I tell them. "At least it makes some degree of sense. Only a human would have so much power tied to their emotions." Diavolo shoots me a warning look.

"Okay, tell me the last time you saw that severe of a flood! It paled in comparison to the ones caused by Leviathan's hissy fits, and he usually summons a whole ass serpent to help him out!" His look doesn't waver. "I swear on my life, I'm not trying to put humans down! They've proven to be quite useful over the years! I was simply making an observation based on things that I've seen frequently whenever I've been around humans. Nothing more." He finally relaxes, allowing me to do the same.

And notice the amused look on MC's face.

"What's so funny?" I ask them.

"You're a very expressive person," they reply. "That's not a bad thing, by the way. It helped me briefly take my mind off things." Right. Their potential sentencing. I really do need to quit getting distracted so easily.

"Look, I do not care so much about the brothers. What happens to them is of little consequence to me. But having you trapped with them would cause so many holes in space and time that the universe would look like the human world's Swiss cheese, and I am not about to be at the end of that particular lecture from Barbatos. So, I will do everything in my power to ensure that you get back home." I extend my hand out to MC, and they shake it. As I turn to leave the room, I call out to Diavolo,

"Don't think you've gotten off scot-free, Lord Diavolo. You, me, and Barbatos will be having words about your conduct towards our time-traveling human."

Taglist: @lost-in-time-wanderer, @fuzztacular, @dianedancer18, @sweetbrier2908, @flare-love, @completelyshatteredbrokenmschf, @thunderlightning351, @l3v1chan, @anxious-chick, @5mary5, @expressionless-fr, @tenkobitch, @budbuddnbuddy

[dadmareau]

Every kid has days where theyre just on thin ice all day. Tantrums, misbehavior, brattiness, testiness, etc until they do something thats just the straw that breaks the camels back and theyre n trouble. Whats little Dream like on these days? How does Dadmare deal with him?

Dream, despite his reputation for being a perfect beautiful child, can absolutely be a (lol) nightmare to care for on these rare, supremely awful days. He gets sassy, testy, and bursts into tears or arguing about the smallest things. Some days, he may even just scream to talk over Nightmare.

The best thing Nightmare can do is be patient and kind to him. He succeeds, most of the time.

Unfortunately, raising a kid full-time on your own (and for the first time in several centuries since you were, you know, a child yourself) doesn't do much for patience. Not to mention Nightmare has to deal with his own bad days, bodily aches / pains, and other issues. With a lot of care and explanation, Nightmare manages Dream's awful days well enough-which goes to say that he tries not to scream back and talks Dream through his big emotions and tears. It usually works.

The best way to identify Dream's Bad Days is the precursor of sullen, clipped sentences. In the morning, Nightmare will make breakfast and ask about what Dream wants to do together later in the day. Dream loves to bubble on and on about what they could do together, but on Bad Days, he will say one thing. Just one. And Nightmare immediately knows-if he doesn't already sense it coming.

Dream, when he's having a Day, will just say absolutely anything that comes to mind-even if it's rude. Now, this will happen anyway later, but this time Dream will add a certain derisive tilt to it. A motive of his sassiness or testiness perhaps comes from some Big Anxiety about Mister Mare secretly hating him or wanting to leave him behind, so Dream tries to make it happen. An adult being super nice and existing outside of the rules of his reality just couldn't be true.

Another motive would be some part of Dream feeling very guilty about his brother's disappearance. Of course it wouldn't make sense for Dream to be guilty, but as a child, he has no idea how to manage the grief of losing someone very important to him. Additionally, as a child who is given the burden of responsibility for everything he knows, he is going to feel guilty.

Therefore, he tries to trigger a big response of punishment from Mister Mare, so he feels better or validated in his guilt. He doesn't do it with the pure idea of 'oh, I'm responsible for my brother's disappearance,' but more so the idea of 'I'm bad. I should be yelled at.' He doesn't connect the two ideas, but they're rooted together.

Nightmare doesn't really know or piece together these motives until later on. Even if he did, he isn't quite as experienced or confident enough to take them apart and most effectively help Dream with them. All he can do is teach Dream how to deal with his emotions in a healthy way, and to talk to him about them.

Then, there are times when the two are both having an Awful Day. So, what will happen is that Nightmare sits in his rage corner, Dream sits in his rage corner, and the two face away from each other until they can talk about their feelings. This gets implemented after a particularly awful fight between the two that ends in tears.

[albentelisa]

Hi!

Here's an interesting idea. What if Jim had actually been born a member of the Arcane Order, but eventually switched sides like Nari due to Bellroc and Skreal resurrecting Arthur who he couldn't stand?

Well, I'm rather fond of a juvenile deity archetype, so...

In this AU, Jim was born (well, more like 'created' by the Arcane Order) during the times when the Arcane Order started giving up on humanity. He was meant to be a 'judge' kind of deity (his element is lightning), so he is capable of destroying humanity - back then, the Order was reluctant to unleash the titans and overwrite the world, so creating someone who would correct mistakes of the world they created, seemed like a better solution.

Jim was still a child (despite being several centuries old) during the Camelot times, and his views about the world were pretty much black and white. He was deadset that humanity was bad and should be eliminated (like it was his role to do that eventually) and Arthur was pretty much the embodiment of all the worst traits humans possessed. Jim not only couldn't stand him, he absolutely loathed Arthur (well, Merlin as well, but we'll reach that point later).

Nari's betrayal hit Jim a lot, but unlike Bellroc and Skrael, he was absolutely convinced that humans had deceived and corrupted her. He wanted to 'save' her from them. Moreover, when Bellroc and Skrael resurrected Arthur, claiming it was for the better outcome, Jim got his own idea about what exactly had happened. From his point of view, Bellroc and Skrael had also fallen and were manipulated by Arthur. So Jim planned to escape and save his family.

And, at first, he didn't manage to escape, unlike Nari. Jim may know a lot about the Arcane Arts (way above even skilled wizards), but it's still below the level of any adult Arcane Order member, not to mention that he has no outside allies (unlike Nari who went to Merlin). So he was brought back and scolded - several times actually as he kept making attempts, adjusting his plans each time.

Jim comes to the conclusion that Bellroc and Skrael can track his magic signature, and attempts to mask it. It backfires and Jim somehow ends up in the body of a mortal human kid around five years old. It's when Barbara and James find him.

At that point, Jim thinks that his outright humiliating position won't last for long and that he can revert it (spoiler - he can't). He doesn't care that much about any cover story, and he just picks James's name (as any name would do, honestly, and he isn't that versed in human names). Initially, Jim ends up in the police and after a lot of misfortunes (and nobody being able to locate his family) Barbara talks James into adopting Jim.

James, however, doesn't like Jim at all (well, simply because Jim is uncannily creepy). The dislike is mutual, to be honest. On the other hand, Jim takes a liking to Barbara (to the point that he is willing to admit that there is ONE good human in the world). James and Barbara start to drift away, and James leaves(though, to be honest it would happen in any case).

Meanwhile, Jim tries to get his deity form and powers back without any success. The only good thing is that Bellroc and Skrael can't find him now (so he technically got what he wanted). Jim befriends Toby (and good human status goes to the second person), then he gets attached to Nana... The list keeps expanding (including his eventual crush on Claire) and Jim starts to genuinely appreciate his mortal life.

Growing up as a mortal human gives Jim another perspective, and he realizes that Nari actually tried to save the world when she ran away. Now Jim feels he should try to find a way to create a world where humans and magical creatures can coexist. However, he still thinks that Bellroc and Skrael are manipulated by Arthur.

No one knows Jim's secret though. He doesn't believe that sharing his secret will change a thing.

And then the amulet happens - which is, surprisingly, a lot. Jim has nothing against trolls (he's supposed to be magical creatures' protector), but being Merlin's champion is the bitter pill to swallow. Jim tries to tinker with the amulet a bit to break any connection it may have with Merlin (especially 'for the glory of Merlin' command - that one is like a major insult to Jim). Unfortunately for him, the amulet is more connected to stones' magic which is more of Nari and Bellroc's domain. Jim simply doesn't have enough knowledge, which leads to the amulet malfunctioning for him a lot - he might know enough not to break it for good, but it still lacking to make it function like intended).

When the lightning hits Jim during the incident with stalking, he recovers some of his control over electricity. Blinky mistakes it for Jim having some wizard ancestry. And Jim wonders if he can fully reverse his curse (as he feels he could do more in his original body).

Angor's curse doesn't work on Jim, which makes him curious. Angor deduces that Jim has to be a more powerful being, but he keeps the knowledge to himself. Later he makes a deal with Jim - and Jim agrees to liberate him as he feels sorry for Angor. From that point, Angor Rot is Jim's secret ally - and he fakes putting a binding spell on Barbara.

Angor also 'accidentally' drops the shadow staff as a handicap. Claire picks it up. Angor warns Jim that shadow magic is dangerous and corruptive, but Jim dismisses the warning (he has seen Morgana, but somehow missed her unstable state).

Angor gets his soul back in this AU and Jim captures Strickler (he talks him into changing sides eventually. However, Jim still goes to the Darklands alone - simply because he believes he shouldn't needlessly endanger any of his allies (and everyone will give piece of their mind about it later).

Much like in the canon, Jim gets Enrique out but gets captured and the bridge is destroyed. As Aaarrrgghh never temporarily dies here, Angor is the one who offers his body as a vessel for Kanjigar (as having no soul for some time made him a fitting candidate for a medium.)

Gunmar is still out, and eventually, the time comes to contact Merlin. It's something that Jim is heavily against. Merlin is on his shit list, much like Arthur. Jim begrudgingly agrees in the end, but only after Claire gets possessed by Morgana.

Speaking about the possession, Jim unwittingly creates a telepathic link with Claire after traveling to the Shadow Realm and now they both can sense each other's emotions. Claire figures out that Jim is hiding something from her and others and talks Jim into confessing his true identity. And somehow, without the burden of that secret, Jim feels much better.

The team finally goes searching for Merlin as Jim steels himself for the meeting. He doesn't plan to reveal himself to Merlin, hoping that somehow everything will be fine, but Merlin learns his identity at once, sensing the Arcane Order energy in him.

Merlin doesn't trust Jim in this AU, thinking that Jim fakes the love for humanity. Merlin has known only past Jim who was full of destructive urges and he believes that nothing has changed.

Jim is willing to swallow his pride and actually ask Merlin for help. He feels that he needs his full power to fight Gunmar, but Merlin tells him it's impossible to break the spell that turned Jim into a human. Jim suspects it's a lie and Merlin simply doesn't want to cooperate (which is true as Merlin believes that full-power Jim is a way bigger danger for humanity). Merlin gives a different suggestion - he will help Jim temporarily unleash more of his magic, but as a side-effect, his abilities will be sealed for good afterward. It's not an easy decision for Jim, but he agrees.

The thing that neither Jim nor Merlin has anticipated is that when the Green Knight attacks and Jim is hit with the obsidian shard, both Merlin's seal and Jim's spell start to deteriorate, bringing Jim's original form and powers back (ironically, it happens when Jim comes in terms with his new mortal status). Moreover, when Jim cast the spell he was a child deity, but now he is close to an adult one and is even more powerful. The Green Knight has no control over him, but Bellroc and Skrael actually can manipulate his mind, seizing control and bringing Jim back to the Order.

Nari prompts Claire to use the telepathic link to reach Jim and she manages to help him break free.

Now it's two Order members vs two. Nari goes against Skrael and Jim fights Bellroc, while the team deals with the Green Knight.

Jim doesn't get Excalibur here - he leaves it for someone who will be humanity's champion. He and Nari decide to work together and actually build a world where humans and magical beings live together.

[bafflement]

Deaged Oz AU - You're Grounded, Tip!

Tip woke in a cold sweat, staring around at his surroundings, briefly unsure as to where he was. He’d been trapped somewhere cold and dark, alone, with no hope of rescue. But the room he found himself in didn’t match, it felt safe, familiar. It wasn’t that terrifyingly small place he’d been. The walls weren’t closing in. What was going on? As the nightmare faded slightly, he felt himself relaxing. He was safe, while that tiny cramped space had existed once, he hadn’t been trapped there in centuries. It wasn’t him who’d been trapped, not really. He wasn’t going to risk going back to sleep, though… he really didn’t like small dark spaces and he had a sudden feeling that that dream might have been a large part of why, but he was safe here. He was in the room he shared with Oscar, his brother still fast asleep in the bed opposite. Oh, but in so many ways, that was a blessing. Oscar could sleep through just about anything, so when James had stated that he would feel safer if Oz was in a room with someone else, just in case, Oscar had volunteered pretty quickly. He would have felt so horrible, had it been one of the others. They needed their sleep too, after all! He was aware that was slightly hypocritical, but everybody kept telling him just how safe Atlas was as opposed to the other kingdoms, surely him sleeping alone wouldn’t have been that bad? The others all did, after all, it had even been one of the perks that had convinced them to stay in Academy dorms.

Huh. Maybe he could convince someone to let him sit in on a few classes one day? Just so he knew how Atlas Academy worked, the place he might have even attended had things gone differently all those years ago. But then, if the stories he’d been told of his frail, sickly self before he was snatched were true, would he have done? Would anyone ever have allowed it? He knew, of course, that the main reason he was no longer that sickly child was because of his Aura, but for most people Aura... helped, but did not cure. He was different, there, too. Maybe because of that second presence, maybe not. He’d been far too young when all this started to ever really know the difference and the pre-merge memories of his predecessors were… hazy, at best. Sometimes, that was probably a blessing though.

He sent a fond look over at the still sleeping Oscar, but made no move to wake him. Let him sleep, at least one of them should be able to. Ah well, he was awake now, he might as well take advantage of that fact and get some work done. There were several things he needed to look up and the library wasn’t that far away. He loved that it was open all night, though that made sense with the amount of students Atlas Academy had. You never knew when someone would forget their homework until the last minute and need to pull an all night study session, or worse, have to cram for a test. He thought back to similar situations at Beacon and couldn’t help but smile, albeit slightly sadly. For so long, that place had been his home, but there was no going back now. He just hoped the students were alright, though he’d only heard of one death at the time, there was no guarantee the others were still safe now.

Oh, Pyrrha. She’d never been meant to die as his school fell, she should have lived a nice long life, been happy even if she wouldn’t have been safe. He tried to think about just why his adult self had decided that she was the best suited to be the Fall Maiden, but no matter how hard he tried, the memories wouldn’t come. It was probably the trauma from the fall, from almost dying and waking up as a ten year old, but that didn’t excuse it. She was just one more mistake, one more decision that should never have been made.

He needed to stop thinking like that. What was done was done, all he could do was try to ensure that it couldn’t happen again, that everybody else was kept safe. He wasn’t sure quite what he’d do if he lost his friends, his brother… Qrow. He wasn’t going to think about it, it hadn’t happened and it wasn’t going to.

Research would distract him. He scrawled a quick note and left it on the desk, better for the others not to think he was missing, but he really didn’t want to wake anyone this early. They’d see the note when they woke up, everything would be just fine.

The corridors were deserted as he made the familiar trek to the library, though he wasn’t expecting anyone to be around at this time of night. The lights flickered on and off again as he passed, one of the things he quite admired about Atlas. There was such a thing as too much technology of course, but in this case they’d got the balance just right. He just hoped the books he needed tonight wouldn’t be on too high a shelf. Oh, there were always a few librarians there on the night shift but he really hated having to ask for help reaching things. He couldn’t wait to be tall again, to be able to do all these things himself.

He knew that would take some time, but the part of him that was eleven was impatient and he had to admit to himself that everything was easier in a larger form. He thought he might be faster and more flexible like this, though, which helped in fights if nothing else. But sometimes people didn’t want to fight him, didn’t want to hurt the child he appeared to be and he hated that. He wasn’t actually a child, not really. He was more experienced at fighting than any of them, yet they couldn’t bring themselves to try.

There were a few people scattered throughout the library as he entered. Nodding to the receptionist, he moved towards the shelves purposefully. He tried to ignore the soft smile they always gave when they saw him, since he knew that was mostly down to his age. At least, he’d never seen them react that way to anyone else and he was pretty sure he wasn’t really that abnormal a person to find amongst books by now.

Oh good, the geography texts he was after were located on lower shelves, he wouldn’t need to make a nuisance of himself by asking for help. Carrying them to a desk one by one, he settled in to read, pulling out a notebook to make notes. He liked it like this, when he could relax and just read, take notes and forget to worry for a few hours.

Oscar was panicking. When he’d woken, it was to find Tip’s bed empty, though it did look slept in, there was no sign of his brother. He hadn’t been in the common room either, nor anywhere else he could think of to look. Oh no, what if he’d been snatched in the night? It might not even be Salem, there were quite a few other people who didn’t seem to like Tip very much, though thankfully his friends had mostly gotten over that. By the time General Ironwood entered, Oscar was far from the only one worried. Nora was pacing up and down the carpet, looking terrified for him and even Ren telling her that he was probably okay wasn’t seeming to help. Ruby was muttering to herself and Weiss was busy taking the common room apart, looking for her uncle. The note had slipped off the desk in the confusion, nobody had noticed its presence.

They’d tried scrolling him, of course, but there hadn’t been an answer, Sometimes Tip would forget to reply if he was busy enough, but it was a rare occurrence and usually, if he was that busy then the others would know. Tip was small, yes, but why would he disappear?

Technically he could and had pulled that trick in the past with his semblance, but that was mostly just to get out of playing games or, once, to win a fight. Vanishing like this, causing everybody as much worry as he had was something they all knew he’d never deliberately put them through. But there wasn’t anything to suggest that he’d been snatched, either. The tracker the General had woven into his hair was pinging as within Academy grounds, though he couldn’t really narrow it down beyond that. Ironwood’s eyes narrowed, he might need to correct that particular oversight. Tip knew he was being tracked, surely he couldn’t complain if the tracking got more efficient? The better they could get it, the more they could help others who became targets later on, or at least was the excuse he was planning to use.

They started to fan out, checking places they thought Tip might be. Wherever he was, though, he’d be in so much trouble when they caught up to him. He needed to realise that doing this worried them. They all knew he had a hard time believing that people cared, but that didn’t mean that they didn’t.

Tip, in the library, was too deeply engrossed in a book to realise he was being scrolled. He’d moved on to sciences, looking for ways to disrupt Watts while they still could. He was pretty certain that most of them would have been looked into, but it was always possible that they’d overlooked something simple by dint of assuming it needed to be complicated. That had happened far more times than he liked to think, over the millennia. It wasn’t even like this was a problem that hadn’t happened before, though he couldn’t fully recall how it had ended last time. They’d find a way, they had to.

He flinched, feeling a sudden hand on his shoulder and blinked up at James’ angry face. He swallowed, what on Remnant could he have done, to make his friend that furious with him? He couldn’t think of anything, but obviously something had to have happened.

“… James?” He ventured softly, looking up at him, eyes wide and confused.

James snarled. “Wintertip Pine, where were you. You went missing, do you know how worried we’ve been?”

“I left a note.” Even to his own mind, it didn’t sound like the best excuse. But he had!

“What note and where?” James didn’t sound amused, but there was a note of doubt to his tone. Oz wasn’t likely to lie to him, but if he’d been informed then he would have remembered.

“On the desk? I didn’t want to have to wake anyone, and it’s just the library.”

“You know damn well you’re a priority target, Oz. You don’t get to just disappear like that. Wake us next time if you need to be somewhere else!” The frustration in James’ voice was almost touching, though Tip really hadn’t meant to cause it.

“I’m sorry, I’ll try harder next time.” He admitted, trying to ignore just how scary James was like this. He might have been intimidated as an adult, but as a child?

“You’d better. Now get back to the common room. Oh, and you’re grounded by the way.”

Tip’s mouth opened to argue, but he thought better of it. Oh no, if his friends were that worried about him, what must they be feeling right now? What had he done?

On returning, the others made something of a fuss of him. Tip wanted to complain, but under the circumstances, discretion was likely the better part of valour. He resolved to wake James, specifically, next time. After all, if he was going to be grounded for leaving a note, then James could bear the consequences. He never had liked being woken up too early, but then this time he’d even asked for it.

The note lay undiscovered for almost two days. Tip felt rather vindicated when they found it, not that that got him out of being grounded. He had to admit, rather sourly, that James might have a point. Like this, he was rather vulnerable. He could look after himself just fine, under normal circumstances, but the possibility had existed that Salem might have had him snatched.

That would have been a very bad thing indeed.

[flightfoot]

I'm going to play devil's advocate and say two controversial statements: people are unfair to the Miraculous Order and they weren't entirely wrong.

The order in general and Fu and Su Han as its only representatives are treated in a generally unfair manner, I am convinced that this has to do with the mentality that any institution is by nature corrupt, wrong, and must be destroyed.

Kwamis are dangerous, they are essentially little chaotic gods that can cause chaos and destruction if they get out of control. Plagg literally wiped out the dinosaurs. Plagg can cause an extinction for shits and giggles. And the rest are no less dangerous. Tikki being one of the most sensible we saw her lose control over a piece of candy. All the Kwamis become unruly during the chapter that they can see Master Fu again but that is especially noticeable with Wayzz because he normally appeared calm and serene. Fu destroyed the order due to misuse of the Miraculous.

Miraculous being restricted and having safety features is, in the first instance, a good thing in general. That doesn't mean that they, as sentient creatures, don't deserve better. Marinette's treatment of them is better and correct, but the security features and restrictions were not something bad or illogical nor do they indicate that the order was hungry for power. Both Fu and Su Han point out that they are supposed to be used for the benefit of humanity at large and we see the opposite with the alternate world.

And seeing the consequences of the others Marinette and Adrien and that Gabriel literally lost his sanity in a visible way, I think we can also say that his rules and others features like age restriction are GOOD.

Did they need to change? Yes, of course they did. But somehow the benefit that is given to other characters never seems to be given to the Order.

Fu was a child, he should never have been hungry, especially not as part of his practices and trainings . It was also very common at that time. The two facts are not mutually exclusive, nor was it done with malice.It also seems to be omitted that they SAVED Fu. I remember he saying that they pushed him with the grimoire and the Miraculous box and instead of looking for some explanation that was at least charitable It is ignored and only talked about how evil they were and how that incident shows that they were rotten.

The way Su Han is treated also omits that as an adult he is doomed to be useless. Fans looking for psychological explanations to talk about how horrible the order is don't like to talk about how they appeared several centuries later in an unknown world that had moved on without them and how disorienting and terrifying that must have been.

The part about not wanting to move forward and being morally superior has also been proven to be a lie. The guardian who appears at the end of the NY special smiles when he is offered the chance to work together, Su Han always ends up giving in to what Marinette wants and agreeing with her that her method is better (even when I think he was the one who was right about knowing CN's identity) and has currently trained Luka and spent time with him. If anyone is a moral center and someone who adapts well it is him.

We don't really have that much information on them, but most of the headcanos analysis, and theory doesn't even use what we actually have because they start from the idea that they're some kind of secret bad guys.

I'm not gonna argue that the age restrictions are a problem, I do agree that given what we've seen happen when those are lifted prematurely, it's best to have them in place.

I don't know about the Order being "secret bad guys" exactly, but they ARE sketchy.

While getting Fu to take the miracle box and grimoire and seemingly buying time for him to escape is good, it doesn't mean that the Order is all that great. They're not EVIL, and they at least believe themselves to be good, but have a very flawed way of going about it.

The negative perception of Su Han isn't just because of how he's treated Marinette (and I'm actually kind of annoyed at how easily he folds to he whenever pressed), it's also the way he treated Fu. It's messed up that he, as an adult, seemingly regularly mocked Fu, a then-12-year-old, with the insult "chicken-legs".

They're not villains, and they're not wrong about the Miraculous being dangerous, but they haven't handled the responsibility they've declared for themselves very well.

[bitemarksafterdark]

Heart of Glass - Chapter 13

Six days had passed since Kai witnessed for himself how Ruby treated Noah outside of the tattoo studio, and it still didn’t sit right with him.

It hadn’t helped that Noah had shown up to class the following day with a makeshift dressing on his left forearm, made of a gauze pad held on with medical tape. However, Kai recognized it as the type of thing most skaters knew how to throw together to keep a fresh graze clean when they’d take a spill off their board, so he tried not to jump to conclusions.

He’d tried his best to put it to the back of his mind and forget about it, no matter how much it worried him that Ruby had physically hurt Noah again.

Still, it wasn’t until Noah came over to Kai’s dorm room to study for an assignment they had due for film studies the following week that Kai saw what Noah had been covering up. Several linear scabs ran parallel to each other about halfway up the inside of Noah’s wrist, toward the outer side, so they hadn’t caused anything other than superficial damage, but they momentarily stole the air from Kai’s lungs when he saw them.

Pretending he hadn’t noticed was difficult, but Kai threw all his focus into the study session.

For their assignment, they each had to choose and analyze a commonly used trope in film, then write an essay deconstructing it and provide examples of how the trope could be subverted to change the story’s narrative.

“So, what were you thinking of writing about?” Kai asked, tapping his pen on the inside page of his open notebook as he lay stretched out on his stomach on his bed, Noah sitting on the floor beside him with his back resting against it.

“Not sure yet,” he replied, still weighing up a few options. “Maybe something horror.”

“What, like the ‘unkillable killer’ or the ‘Final Girl never dies’ kind of thing?”

“Maybe? Or do you think those are probably too obvious and overdone?”

“They might be a little bit, but I doubt that will matter when we have to deconstruct it anyway.”

“Yeah, I guess…?” Noah sighed, resting his head back on the edge of the mattress as he thought for a moment before a smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth as he glanced up at Kai. “Or I could absolutely eviscerate the whole “Young Adult female protagonist is so special the male love interest just has to have her” trope?”

“You just want an excuse to talk shit about Twilight, don’t you?” Kai answered with a laugh.

“Mm, not just Twilight,” Noah corrected smugly. “Also, The Vampire Diaries, which, while we’re on the subject, don’t get me started on the whole ‘centuries-old vampire goes back to high school to bang teenage girls’ thing because that’s a whole-ass TED Talk for another time.”

“Something tells me you’ve put way too much thought into that already,” Kai teased. “But go on, why also The Vampire Diaries? Also, why in the hell do you even know anything about either of those?”

“Because Ruby made me watch them. More than once. Anyway, TVD because of the stupid love triangle involving the main female character and not one, but two vampires, who also happen to be brothers.”

“So, like Twilight, if you swap the werewolf for Edward Cullen’s brother?”

“Yeah, except both the vampires are played by actors in their thirties, and we, the audience, are expected to believe one of them can pass as a high school senior.”

“Okay?”

“Anyway, Stefan, the one who goes back to high school, he’s supposed to be like the classic hot, popular, captain of the football team type guy, yeah? And he and Elena, they start dating, but then Damon-“

“The brother?”

“Yeah, the brother. Damon, he’s supposed to be like the even sexier, unattainable aloof bad boy of the story. Then Elena and Damon are attracted to each other, even though she’s with Stefan, and then there was stuff about doppelgangers and lovers from previous lives or some shit, I don’t remember, honestly. I lost interest after a point, but, come to think of it; there was also a character named Kai in it.”

“There is?”

“Yeah. He’s like a witch, if I remember correctly, but also a serial killer who murdered his family to steal their magic. He got imprisoned in a pocket dimension or something where he was forced to listen to Two Princes by Spin Doctors on repeat.”

Kai just blinked, trying to process the infodump Noah had just offloaded on him in trying to explain the plot of The Vampire Diaries to him before he burst out laughing.

“Okay, that sounds way too convoluted for my taste,” he giggled, shaking his head.

“Yeah, but, anyway… what was I saying? Oh yeah, so basically, the whole idea of the main female lead being so special that all dudes within whatever place or situation she finds herself in gravitate toward her because they all want to be the one guy worthy of her is overused to hell, and kinda dumb when you think about it,” Noah explained, having evidently put more thought into the premise than he’d initially let on. “And how come you hardly ever see those stories from the perspective of the male love interest? Like, what’s going through his mind other than wanting to hook up with her? Think about it. If it was a guy and suddenly all the female characters were throwing themselves at him even though he was a dick to them at times, people would call that shit out straight away, but when the protagonist is a girl, she can be a bitch, and everyone still loves her for it. How is that fair? Why isn’t she ever called out for any toxic behavior?”

“Sort of like how some of those movies and tv shows go the ‘I can fix him’ route? Like, you have the movies where the geek gets a makeover so the popular girl or guy will be attracted to them?” Kai asked, looking a little puzzled but thoughtful before something else occurred to him about what Noah had said about how the girl doesn’t get called out for her toxic behavior.

“Or the boy who, when the girl comes along, ties himself up in knots trying to prove he’s worthy and be what she wants him to be because he feels like the real him isn’t good enough for her?”

Noah immediately went silent as the question evoked a strong swell of emotion, unsure if Kai was still talking about movie tropes or if he was actually referring to how he saw things between Noah and Ruby.

Either way, being struck by the realization hurt, and it showed as his expression fell right before his gaze left Kai in search of anything else to hide his reaction to it.

There was no hiding it, however, and the moment Kai saw Noah’s whole demeanor shift, he knew he’d put his foot in it, as unintentional as it had been.

“Noah, I’m sorry… I didn’t mean-.”

“No, it’s okay. I know you didn’t mean it like that,” Noah replied quietly, still avoiding looking at Kai as he tried to stuff his feelings back down again.

Kai slid off the bed, settling beside Noah on the floor, kicking himself for upsetting him like that when he should have been more careful.

“I wasn’t saying that’s what you do,” he explained gently. “I just…”

“But you’re right, though. I do,” Noah murmured, slightly sniffling as he swiped at his nose with the back of his hand.

Heaving a sigh, Kai hung his head, letting a moment of silence hang between them before he spoke.

“Let’s take a break or talk about something else, okay?” he offered, trying to find a way to pull Noah out of the sudden tailspin that he’d thrown him into accidentally. However, Noah didn’t respond immediately, filling Kai with a sense of panic that he’d made a mess of things between them.

“Hey, um, you recall that first day you spoke to me? Remember you said you’d seen me in film studies before music, and you brought up me talking about Eternal Sunshine?”

Noah nodded, wondering where Kai was going with this new line of questioning.

“Have you seen it?” Kai asked, a tentative but panicked smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. “You didn’t say if you had already.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen it,” Noah affirmed. “It’s one of my favorite movies.”

“Mine too.”

Kai fidgeted for a second, chewing his lip as he stalled, trying to figure out where else to direct the conversation.

“Do you want to watch it now? I can put it on if you’d like and we could watch it. Together?”

“Okay,” Noah nodded, feeling the anxious energy radiating off Kai at feeling like he’d screwed up and recognized it like his own.

Kai smiled awkwardly and got up, grabbing his laptop from his desk and bringing it back to Noah, setting it up so that they could both see the screen clearly to watch the movie.

Having the film to focus on seemed to help ease the tension as they both sat quietly and watched, at first just sitting side by side. Still, by about halfway through, Kai and Noah had gotten comfortable enough that they were now leaning on each other, with Kai pulling his knees up, so he was curled up against Noah’s shoulder.

“If you could erase your memories, would you?” Kai inquired casually, wanting to break the silence between them despite the movie still playing.

“Some of them.”

“Me too.”

“What would you erase?”

“When I came out to my parents,” Kai admitted, a flicker of a sad smile flashing across his face before disappearing, just leaving the sadness in Kai’s eyes behind at the thought. “And all the memories of my dad being a homophobic asshole after that.”

“Is that why you came out here to go to school?” Noah asked, his heart aching suddenly at the revelation that Kai’s family treated him poorly over who he was attracted to, as that was one of Noah’s own biggest fears. However, he had yet to face coming out to anyone other than Aspen.

“I figure if I’m lucky, I can get my life figured out enough by graduation that I won’t have to go back there,” Kai admitted, nodding and still trying to find a smile. “What about you? What would you erase?”

Noah’s head dropped a little, an answer on the tip of his tongue, but he was reluctant to speak it aloud.

“The worst memory of my life,” he confessed, fidgeting and scratching at his wrist, close to where the cuts Kai had noticed earlier were.

Noah drew a deep breath, needing a second to steady himself as he worked up the nerve to elaborate on what that memory was.

“When I was fourteen, my dad knew this guy. Sort of someone he knew through work, you know?” he began, carefully choosing his words. “Anyway, my dad found out he abused some kids and made an anonymous tip to the cops about it. The guy got fired from his job, lost everything, life ruined, all that shit.”

“Okay?” Kai murmured, watching Noah carefully as he listened.

“The guy figured out my dad was the one who called the cops on him, and he decided he wanted revenge, so he… abducted me to get back at him.”

Kai’s eyes widened, his lip starting to quiver as his heart broke when he realized where Noah’s tale was heading, but he didn’t say anything for the moment.

“He, um… He��” Noah faltered, struggling to continue as he recalled the ordeal he’d been put through, the words sticking in his throat as his eyes brimmed with tears and his breathing pattern changed pace, growing more shallow and rapid.

Kai didn’t need Noah to force himself to say what had happened. It was written all over his face and how he balled his hands into fists to disguise their shaking, to which Kai instinctively moved to cover them with his own, squeezing gently to help ground him again.

Noah took a few more deep breaths, swallowing thickly, staring down at their hands interlocked with each other for a moment before he gathered himself again to continue.

“I got hurt. Bad,” Noah murmured, his voice cracking and barely more than a whisper.

“Is that how you got your scars?” Kai asked softly, tracing circles in the back of Noah’s hands with his thumbs.

The question caught Noah off guard, and he looked confused about how Kai could have known until he remembered that Kai had seen him shirtless at Aspen’s and when they’d gotten tattooed, so he must have noticed then.

“Yeah, that’s how I got them,” he nodded finally, letting out a shuddered breath, strangely feeling some relief talking to Kai about it.

“When he realized the cops knew where he’d taken me, I don’t know if he panicked or that was just part of his plan the whole time, but he decided he wasn’t going to let them take either of us alive,” Noah explained, a few stray tears spilling over. “He’d already cut me a few times by that point, but when the cops got there, he stabbed me multiple times and then slit his own throat.”

Noah paused briefly, then took his t-shirt off to show Kai the full extent of the damage done to him.

Despite disguising it with tattooed linework and shading, Noah’s largest and most prominent scar was still very visible up this close, and it immediately drew Kai’s attention.

The scarring started at the base of his sternum, tracing the contour of his ribcage before arcing across his stomach in a downward trajectory, then over his left hip before disappearing beneath the elasticated waistband of his boxers.

Without thinking, Kai reached out and traced its path, stunned into silence as he imagined how horrific the injury must have been to have left that much damage in its wake.

Surprisingly, Noah didn’t flinch or pull away as Kai’s fingertips grazed gently over the raised lines that ran through his skin, feeling drawn to the touch, not repelled by it.

“That’s why I started getting tattoos,” he confessed quietly, wanting to reach out and touch Kai in return, like he had back at Aspen’s place the other night. “It was a way to cover them up, so I didn’t have to keep being reminded of what happened to me.”

“You wanted to reclaim your body….” Kai acknowledged, understanding Noah’s reasoning completely.

“Yeah,” Noah replied, managing to find a smile, albeit a sad one. “And then it sort of became a coping mechanism. After what happened, I would hurt myself sometimes, but then after I got my first few tattoos, any time I felt like I wanted to hurt myself again, I’d go get another one instead.”

Kai trailed his fingers down Noah’s arm and gently caught his hand again, circling it with his fingers and turning it over palm upwards to reveal the cuts on his wrist. He lightly traced those, too, before gazing up at Noah.

“Seems like it hasn’t quite been so effective lately,” he sighed softly with no accusation in his tone, just sympathy, and worry.

Noah closed his eyes and hung his head, acknowledging that Kai was correct.

“Things have been getting harder lately….” He admitted quietly, though he knew Kai was already aware of what was going on as it would take a blind man not to see it.

“Ruby?” Kai asked anyway.

Noah nodded.

“Does she know? About…?”

“Yeah, she does. At least most of it. I didn’t want to tell her about….” Noah replied, faltering again. “I didn’t want to upset her.”

“I know,” Kai smiled sadly. “You do a lot of not wanting to upset her. You can tell me I’m wrong or to shut the fuck up, but it seems like she doesn’t seem all that concerned about how much she upsets you.”

Noah wanted to argue, but the words died in his throat, and all he could do was try to swallow the stab of emotion that caught him and fight back the fresh sting of tears in his eyes, not wanting to lie anymore and tired of pretending that nothing was wrong.

“I hate it…” he whispered, choking up a little. “I don’t know how everything got so fucked up, and I don’t know how to fix it. Everything I do just makes it worse.”

Noah looked and sounded so exhausted right then, and Kai couldn’t blame him in the slightest for it. It physically hurt Kai to see how much pain Noah had endured not only in his past but was still enduring to this day.

Kai couldn’t help but wish there was something more he could do to ease it, even just a little, so when another tear spilled over and cut a track down Noah’s cheek, Kai instinctively reached up to brush it away, his thumb gliding gently over Noah’s cheekbone.

Noah leaned into the touch with another shivering sigh, his eyes fluttering closed for a moment, crying out for comfort.

The atmosphere was noticeably heavy as they searched each other’s gaze in silence, aching from the weight of the moment as Noah’s hand came up to rest over Kai’s, still pressed against his cheek, as he nuzzled into Kai’s palm just a moment longer, then pulled away as Noah acknowledged that he was still in a relationship with someone else, and the last thing he wanted was to put Kai in any position that would make him a target for Ruby or anyone else because of him.

© 2025 BitemarksAfterDark

[mangoxangel]

Doing this because I saw a friend of mine do it and thought "hey why not"

✨️A 2024 Recap✨️:

Jan: Still in Florida for since Christmas and New Years vaycay. I turned 25. Was terrified. Turning a quarter century and the anxiety of becoming an adult hit me fill force and i felt like such a failure. Something I regret feeling looking back now. I made some headway with my degree. I passed my midterm review and had the go ahead to start my fi al thesis project.

Feb: Not much happened. I was still employed to my first animation job at a small studio.

Mar: F1 season is starting back up and I learn that my favorite driver is switching teams. It was a blur here. It was get up, do chores, do school work, eat, shower, sleep and repeat

Apr: I Finished up the project with the studio I was working at and we submitted it to our school's art festival. We didn't win, but it was a formative moment for me. I felt so accomplished getting to finish and submit something.

May: This was awful actually. I didn't talk about this, but Tuxedo got into a bad accident. I can't say much because we are still looking for lawyers, but the place that we boarded him at did not follow instructions and it ended up with him getting into a fight with another dog. He was on deaths door, but he pulled through. I find myself babying him more now.After Tux's near death experience all the good little things I was doing just dropped.

Jun: On a little summer break until my summer classes started. Ended up hosting two girls from Jamaica since my Uncle was then dating their mom. I did not want to host anyone let alone be responsible for two strangers. Still bitter from what happened to Tux

Jul: How about the hosting situation ended on a bad note. But what wasn't bad was that I completed summer school AND Sir Lewis won the British gp. I remember feeling very pissed off despite that. Realizing I was isolating myself but not caring. It was scary the flip flop of my emotions.

Aug: Wisdom teeth removed. I was on break and I would have no better time. Getting ready for my final. My Auntie visits from Jamaica and she encourages me to love and go out more. I was merely a shell at this point

Sept: I try making each day a little more easier for myself. Went to Dragon Con for the first time! I was trying to be more social and that was my first experiment and it went so well. I also became Vice president of a club I joined during grad school! September went really quickly.

Oct: I couldn't tell you what happened in October even if you had a gun to my head man. I did Inktober, but that's about it!

Nov: Family drama happened, but I don't care enough about it that it ruined anything. Got to see my favorite uncle and that's all I care about.

Dec: Several cool things happened! F1 finished, and I cried during the last race. I spent Christmas with family only and we had a fantastic time. It really felt like Christmas this year, and we have made plans to hold each other accountable for the new year. I finished grad school! I passed my finals, and the judges really liked my short film. It was such a glorious feeling to have all three years of work come to a close. I'm finally done with this chapter, and I can't wait to spread my wings.

What I really took away from this is to never isolate myself ever again. It's an old habit from when I was younger to self soothe myself. Thinking that I'd be too much of a burden on others if I let them know how much I'm really hurting on the inside.

I refuse to bottle myself up anymore. I will be intentional about my well-being and my actions.

[holychopshopgalaxy]

#i definitely think that throughout those 10 years Thomas also did some Bad Things and went through some terrible shit that would make him#understand flint's actions way more than the version of him that we saw#like that is not the same man!!

ok GREAT point i forgot to mention thank you. idk what ppl in general think bedlam was like but it is notoriously famous for a reason - it was essentially a torture dungeon for a good part of the 18th century. so flint has a wild darkness in between his mental cracks (or whatever the fuck silver and hennessey said) but i doubt you spend several years getting medically tortured for being gay in bedlam without receiving a hefty slice of darkness and desperation yourself (remember when billy said the worst part about torture is the knowledge that it changes you against your will? interesting). and you have to hand it to the director and rpj here because even in less than a minute of camera time, thomas' look on that plantation before he recognizes james is definitely the look of someone who's... Been Through It™

another thing - thomas mentions he was educated at Eaton. Eaton was a boys boarding school with a reputation of rambunctious ruckus (sidebar: it was also known for its high incidence rate of homosexual activity.... @ writers room nice wink there). so given this neat little factoid about his boyhood plus Mature and Sophisticated Adult 1705 thomas having a strong-willed temper (when james looks at him during the alfred scene like pls don't do this i told you to forget you ever thought of it and thomas defiantly blinks "no, u #yolo" then proceeds to yell at his dad at the dinner table.... underrated comedy moment). it's perhaps unlikely thomas was totally unfamiliar with the method of settling disagreements via using one's fists and might have a tiny understanding from the get-go about flint's rage-fueled brawls... maybe. js.

basically the audience tends to receive a biased read on thomas because he's heavily filtered through the heartbroken nostalgic lens of flint's feelings, particularly his guilt over not being able to protect him from well, everything that ended up happening, as if he's a doomed princess who perished because his knight (james) failed to rescue him, because that's part of what the Shame Demon that's tormenting flint is whispering to him. and the tender, soft and loving side of thomas' nature is what's emphasized because that's how he was romantically with flint, it's a significant part of what flint admired in his outlook on the world and it's what flint holds onto preciously in his heart. but like... given Everything we're shown as an audience, the evidence is there that this character was a fighter in his own way, at the very least I don't think you could survive years in bedlam without some type of iron will.

tldr i would 100% find it plausible for thomas' reaction to plantation flint confessing "babe jsyk i have a Darkness in me that compelled me to enact Evil deeds as a goth pirate" to be like damn that's crazy, wanna trade emo stories, also can we kiss now or

the speculation about post-savannah reunion "how could a relationship work and how would thomas be ok with everything flint did" is like. i did Not get that interpretation at all based off the london flashback scenes

I think after talking a lot they'd come to a mutual understanding (which they were always very good at doing in their partnership) and it'd be fine imho.

like even as a privileged aristocrat, thomas was a troublemaker. a political radical who's whispered to be mad by half of whitehall as well has his political powerhouse dad ("what a piece of work you are") because he believes in rethinking systemic things and isn't afraid to say it loudly. he considers his wife his intellectual equal and lets her sleep around with as many men as she wants, in general could not give less of a fuck what others think of his marriage or his beliefs. his sexuality warrants death by hanging yet he remains confident in it and entirely unashamed. this guy wasn't exactly a goody two shoes

he was also stubbornly determined to see humanity in the downtrodden and exercising forgiveness for those who are extremely disadvantaged. he gives coins to random lower-class families at criminal executions by the docks even after witnessing the angry mob behavior (makes a friendly comment to the child about it being "lucky"), and is still persistent in seeking the universal pardons after learning how israel hands brutally murdered the governor's family. he was an actual authentic christian when it came to mercy and compassion for the poor and oppressed

then he spends 10 years unjustly incarcerated as a political prisoner ("unjustly" because aside from having a homosexual relationship, he never actually did anything illegal), and spent at least a significant amount of that time in horridly inhumane conditions. going from a wealthy politically-active nobleman to an early 18th century asylum inmate who then supposedly kills himself and is perma-exiled to a penal colony is... quite a harsh downfall to say the least. there's no way it doesn't dawn on someone that intelligent and intellectual that trying to work within the system cost him absolutely everything. flint says that england took everything away from him and miranda, but that's not entirely true - he and miranda still had each other. thomas truly had nothing.

so i don't think it's a stretch to infer 1716 thomas would be way more ideologically aligned with flint than one may initially think. would he agree with everything flint did in his war against england? most likely not. miranda didn't, so highly doubtful that thomas would either. that was always their dynamic though - they saw eye to eye on principles and beliefs (james admits this during his bar convo with hennessey), but argued a lot over methods and practicality. that was always the foundation of their intellectual connection. furthermore, flint didn't even agree with everything he did himself. gates' sacrifice tortured him. he wanted to return flint to the sea for a long time. he kept fighting brutally because he believed he had nothing left to lose. sounds like an incredibly wronged and damaged human being who may qualify for... authentically christian forgiveness perhaps

and besides. james was his truest love and miranda was his dear wife. miranda and james recognized each other despite everything and thomas and james recognized each other despite everything. bottom line they all suffered and they were all committed to each other because it was love. love is synonymous with a commitment to seeing the best in someone despite their flaws and fuckups. that's just what it is and its demonstrated plainly over and over again in the show.

if he could forgive ashe for his cowardly betrayal which cruelly ruined all 3 of their lives, would he really not forgive miranda and james for charlestown? or the maria aleyne. thomas wasn't eleanor. he wasn't thirsting after his father's approval so logically i can't see why he'd react the way she did

i mean yeah they'd have a LOT to talk about but still. all this taken together, you really mean to tell me thomas wouldn't understand flint's war against the empire, and wouldn't forgive his more evil actions (born out of desperation)? ya i doubt it

[yuueee]

𝐦𝐞𝐝𝐝𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 fire lord! zuko x fire lady! reader

authors note: Firstly I just want to apologize for the hiatus, I want to be more active from now on! I’m starting finals next week so I’ll thankfully be done with this semester soon and will also have more time to write. Anyways I hope you enjoy!! I also want to apologize if Zuko is ooc here.

requests:

First of all, your tumblr looks sooooo cool! I’m looking forward to reading all of your future work! Imagine this: Zuko is annoyed by people constantly asking him about a future heir, but when one day his friends also start to ask, and even his uncle and his own mother join the baby fever train, it’s too much for him so he complains about it to his wife who only reassures him with her lovely self and her understanding smiles, not telling him yet that she is in fact pregnant. What do you think ?

Can you write an imagine with zuko who is clearly, utterly and soooo obviously in love with the reader (outgoing, courageous, loving) and maybe with the prompt “So you...well...I mean...I could give you a massage?” Thank you a lot! ^^

As the current Fire Lord and Lady, it wasn’t uncommon for the citizens of the Fire Nation to be deeply invested in your relationship - it was to be expected especially due to the uncommon nature of your union. What you weren’t expecting were Zuko’s close friends and relatives being wrapped up in your business as well. Being outside of team avatar, you were naturally more welcoming to his friend's constant questioning, but Zuko on the other hand was not. He couldn’t understand why they cared so much all of the sudden. They hadn’t been as interested when he was in a relationship with Mai - so why did they care so much now?

It wasn’t as if you weren’t getting along with his friends or family - you got along with them quite well and were very loved by them in fact. Outside of them though, you weren’t always as welcomed, unfortunately, the Fire Nation was still coming to terms with having the daughter of an Earth Kingdom General as their Fire Lady. The arranged marriage was put in place to solve several different ‘problems’. After Zuko broke up with Mai several years ago, he hadn’t begun dating anyone else due to being so busy but he’d eventually be expected to have an heir in the next coming years.

Although they had gotten better, tensions among the Earth Kingdom Colonies were still high and both sides were having difficulty keeping them under control. Eventually, an agreement was made for the daughter of a high-ranking Earth Kingdom General to marry Zuko - that daughter being yourself. Arranged marriages certainly weren’t unheard of in either nation - but a union of this sort was definitely unique.

Though he certainly wasn’t thrilled about it, Zuko understood that it was for the good of the people - and it wasn’t like there was anything he could do about it anyway. Even with his position as the recently crowned Fire Lord there still wasn’t much he could do.

On the other hand, you understandably had some issues coming to terms with your new situation at first. Despite being known by those around you as friendly and just a joy, in general, to be around - the woman Zuko had first met was quite the opposite. He could recall it like it was yesterday. Though it was awkward and stressful at the time, he now considered it to be the best day of his life.

“She’s in there.” A female servant whispered to the young man quietly, as if she didn’t want to speak loud enough for you to hear from your place at the balcony.

“Thanks,” he replied with a soft smile, bidding the elderly woman goodbye as she shuffled down the hallway. Turning towards you he was faced with a warm tropical breeze. His advisors had arranged for the two of you to meet a couple of weeks before that dreaded day, and for some reason, they thought Ember Island was the appropriate place. A combination of anxiety and general distaste for being on the island was causing him to be quite stressed - which led him to be more awkward than usual.

“Um, hello?” he spoke up faintly, as if not to startle you. He was sure you heard him come in, but you hadn’t turned around since he entered the small room. You stood several feet away with your hands placed on the railing, your [hair-texture] locks sifting gently with each gust of wind along with your predominantly red clothing. It was against what you had wanted to wear that day but it didn’t seem as if you had much a say in anything going on in your life recently.

You understood that doing this would be for the greater good of the Earth Kingdom and that your situation could technically be worse. You could have been married off to some old creep - but if you were being honest with yourself being married to the Fire Lord sounded just as bad. As you turned around though, you were surprised at the face you were met with.

He had a much younger face than you had expected, but the slight hollowness of his cheeks and the worry lines on his forehead told you that he had experienced things beyond his years. He also happened to be quite handsome - not that you wanted to admit it though. You had been bent on hating him ever since your father told you who you’d be wedding.

He was the leader of the Fire Nation, of course, you would hate him! The country that has had a century-long reign of terror on the world - and now you found yourself engaged to their leader. What had you done so wrong in your life to deserve this?

As much as you wanted to plan on running away the first chance you got, you knew deep inside that it would only cause tensions to increase and more issues to arise. You wanted the best for the residents of the Earth Kingdom, so you agreed to go through with it, but did so resentfully - which you had every right to feel that way.

But as you glared up at the young male next to you and tried to keep your attention off of the scar over his left eye - you couldn’t help but wonder what if this was the man who joined the avatar in defeating the Fire Lord? He wasn’t what you expected at all. Standing in full armor with his hair holding the fire nation insignia in a top knot - he looked awkward and out of place. You almost felt bad for him - keyword is almost.

“What do you need Fire Lord?��� you questioned him, turning your gaze back to the rushing waters of the ocean.

“Um,” he faltered slightly, probably not anticipating your response. “I just wanted to introduce myself-“

“I know who you are.” you brushed him off, turning around and walking towards him - grabbing his collar and pulling him to your height. “We might be getting married but if you think for a second I will ever be nice to you, you are sadly mistaken.” you hissed at him before letting him go and walking out of the door.

Zuko couldn’t recall how long he stood there watching your form leave, all he remembered was standing there like an idiot with a red face. He hadn’t expected you to like him of course but he surely wasn’t expecting that.

As he reminisced on memories long ago while sipping his Uncle’s tea, he couldn’t help the smile that appeared on his features. As stated earlier, It may have been an unpleasant memory back then but now he considered the day he met you to be the best day of his life. Though your relationship had surely faired through many complications for a while in the beginning - surprisingly, you became fond of Zuko over the years.

It was certainly a long time coming but that strange friendship you two shared eventually evolved into love against all odds. That didn’t mean you weren’t constantly giving him an ear full (as you should tbh) your first months together. But as time progressed and you learned that he may not have been the evil prince that you had heard so much about, at least not anymore.

He wasn’t that same angsty teenager he had been years ago looking for the avatar, he was now a young adult growing quite well into the position of the Fire Lord - which was no easy feat. Taking another sip of tea, he watched his Uncle and Mother come to take a seat with him.

“How is it, Nephew?” His Uncle asked with a mischievous grin and a raise of two bushy eyebrows - albeit already knowing the answer.

“It’s great as always Uncle,” Zuko responded with a small smile, his Uncle's expression making him just a bit concerned, causing his Mother to chuckle. Though she had gained a few wrinkles over the past couple of years, she was still as radiant as she had been in her youth. She was also much happier being able to live with the family she had been apart from for many years without fearing Ozai’s intervention. It came with a price though - it seemed as if her relationship with her estranged daughter who was now on the run would never be resolved. She never lost hope though.

“Zuko,” his mother began speaking, catching the young Fire Lord’s attention with a raise of his eyebrows. “When are you going to give me a grandchild?” She asked teasingly, eager to see his reaction. In turn, her son had barely kept himself from spitting out the mouthful of tea.

“Why do you ask that?” He choked out in between a series of coughs with Iroh patting his back gently.

“You haven’t?” She asked in between chuckles, noticing how her son got bewildered at the mention of having children of his own. “You know you’ll eventually have to have an heir at some point right?”

“It’s not that I haven’t thought about it... but Y/N and I are just really busy.” He thought aloud, wishing he could run a hand through his hair - but was unable to since it was pinned in a top knot.

“Zuko, you never know when you’ll get this time of peace again. What better time to raise a child?” Iroh reassured, wiggling his eyebrows. Letting out a groan, the young Fire Lord attempted to mentally prepare himself to go through this same conversation every time he visited his family.

Over the next couple of weeks, the constant badgering he received from his friends and close relatives started to frustrate him further, so who could he turn to? You of course.

Being married for several years now, you were more than used to Zuko’s rants, so you simply just reclined on the bed with an eyebrow raised as he paced back and forth.

“I don’t get it! Why is everyone so concerned about when we’re going to have a child or not?” He questioned seemingly no one as you attempted to keep your face from contorting into a smile. It wasn’t as if you didn’t understand his frustrations, it was just funny to watch, especially since you were already pregnant.

You were surprised that he hadn’t noticed honestly, with you staying in for the past few days due to feeling sick. Who could blame him though? It wasn’t as if he wasn’t attentive and loving as a husband, he was extremely busy as of recent-and also just dense at times. After noticing his silence for a few moments as he looked over the balcony, you decided that maybe this could be the perfect time to tell him.

Getting up and sneaking behind him, you snaked your arms around his waist and turned so you could see his face. He let out an audible sigh of what sounded like relief before returning your smile and your hug.

“You want a head massage?” You questioned pulling away, wiggling your fingers playfully.

“Please.”

For the past couple of years, Zuko had been letting his hair grow out so now it rested around his shoulders.

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.” You started tentatively, but as usual, he was too caught up in the sensation of your fingers raking across his scalp to entirely understand what you were saying, so he just nodded in response. “I’m pregnant.” You stated plainly, ceasing your scratching. Not getting a response for a few moments, you turned to face him with a worried expression.

Much to your surprise he was grinning up at you and placed a warm hand on your cheek. “Really?”

“Yes. I’m sorry it took me so long to tell y-“ you were abruptly cut off by him pulling you into another hug and placing a kiss on the crown of your head. “So you’re happy about it?”

“Couldn’t be happier.” He responded sincerely, leaning into your shoulder so you couldn’t see the redness on his cheeks.

Maybe your family and friends would finally leave the two of you alone now?

taglist: @practicallylivesonline @chewymoustachio

[kudzucataclysm]

Hello! I am here to ask about S!E :]

I don't know more than I do know, so here's a recap of the things I do know:

There was an apocalypse thingie and martians are now a thing

Francis is part martian, full of rage and used as a weapon consistently

There's a tiny little guy that's full of love, anger and trauma. Somebody help him please

Francis has Martian relatives/cousins that are assholes

Little guy (you may have caught on to the fact that I keep forgetting his name) is also very abused

Martian age is weird. They age more quickly if needed but sometimes not (?)

The US is even more fucked than it usually is, given the apocalypse and all

I would be absolutely delighted to know more about any of these points! Sorry for forgetting the little guy's name, my memory is just like that. I have adopted him though he's my little guy

HIIII i absolutely love this question!! and dw we are all forgetful here but im afraid you'll have to fight @impaledlotus for custody of the little guy v-v my bad

HERE WE GO

There was an apocalypse thingie and martians are now a thing

There were TWO APOCALYPSES ACTUALLY!! Yes indeed, you heard right; the 1962 nuclear exchange AND the 1962 yellowstone supervolcano eruption that Lupe Altena managed to kiiiind of stop from happening. Then Martians invaded in the 80s and basically went “damn bitch you live like this???” to humanity and colonized earth with the goal of 'wildlife management'. You cant just let your new food source kill itself off through dumb decisions!! Thatd be very…counterproductive lol

but i suppose Gabriel's Arrow was also considered an apocalyptic event of sorts? when theres a global outbreak of superpowers that affected 40% of the population (800,000,000 people YEESH), there was significant societal upheaval for a solid decade or so, with the cold war on top of everything..i think it'd depend on the historian! and trust me the history textbook no the 20th century in SE is 30 pounds and historians are required to undergo annual psychological evaluations :D a LOT happened in a century or so

Francis is part martian, full of rage and used as a weapon consistently

that is correct! she is a chimera, and one that is half human half martian (with really weird abilities that other chimeras don’t have have hm 🤔). and yes she is EXTREMELY angry becuz her entire life has been absolute shit- she isn’t seen as a person but a weapon and a monster instead, so she doesnt really know how to act like a kid! she also has severe PTSD, possible BPD, anger issues, a bit of sociopathy, SELF INFLICTED AMNESIA, and a plethora of other things going on. every adult in her life has failed her, none more so than her aunt/adoptive ‘parent’ FRIDAY…but that shall be explored more in the story unless u want more info on that

There's a tiny little guy that's full of love, anger and trauma. Somebody help him please

thats Desmond!!! the goodest boy :3 and uh yeah 😔 what kind of monster would hurt a child like this 😶‍🌫️

Francis has Martian relatives/cousins that are assholes

millions of em actually!! or at least several tens of thousands…her dad gets around a lol 😅 and maybe in particular you’re talking about Oz, her twin? yeah he’s an asshole. a bastard even >:D

Little guy (you may have caught on to the fact that I keep forgetting his name) is also very abused

He is 😔 emotionally, verbally and mentally by his dad and older brother ever since his oldest sibling Happy left and his mom had a huge accident that has left her in the hospital almost all the time. he is also neglected. tis all very sad but there IS a lowkey fucked up reason as to why his dad treats him as he does. but thats SECREEEET

Martian age is weird. They age more quickly if needed but sometimes not (?)

it depends on their environment and who’s in it! the average modern Martian is completely matured within 3 years- they used to reach maturity by 4-6 months (back in the Martian STONE AGES). however, both Martians and chimera can age slower if raised by a human or in extremely safe, nurturing conditions (Martians can’t age as slow as chimeras can tho).

francis was raised (for most of her life) by a human, so she’s 15 years old physiologically and mentally. her twin oz, raised by martians, is 30 years old physiologically despite them both coming from the same egg :D

The US is even more fucked than it usually is, given the apocalypse and all

yeeeeaaaah the US is disincorporated. disenfranchised. split up. GONE

well mostly. the west coast was annexed by the political-military alliance of south east asia, and alaska was given to russia/the ussr as ‘compensation’ for uh the weather terrorism that the US did. yay!

las vegas, nevada is now LAS NEVADAS and is it’s own independent city state just like Necropolis. it’s a capitalists wet dream and it’s controls almost the water in the west

the midwest, where most of the nukes fell iiiiis wasteland. the (contains) yellowstone eruption literally blew open the continental shelf under the mainland US and now it’s an irradiated wasteland where WEIRDOS live. that’s where Desmond comes from :D

the south east has been lost to a virulent strain of parasitic KUDZU as well as feral Martians and feral DINOSAURS. yes, we brought em back. yes, you can have them as pets (for a cooool 5$ million). so nobody goes there unless like, you’re going on a safari hunt or something. people live there but they’re extremely isolated and kinda dangerous

the northeast-mid atlantic is all that’s left of “The United States of America” and it’s a corporate police state that’s under constant martial law thats under the rule of a president grown in a lab in the middle of nowhere…who is ALSO under supervision of two major foreign powers. except for NECROPOLIS WOOOO

Necropolis (the N.E.C or ‘The Nec(k)”) is the main setting for Arc 1, and is a GIGANTIC CITY made out of alien “living metal” and other Martian bullshit technology that combines all of the entire New York tri-state metropolitan area. Theres MARTIANS, MUTANTS, ADP MONSTERS!! And ofc, chimera :D so how does everyone manage to not kill each other?? the giant UFO thats constantly hovering over the city, and govt funded/backed 'superheroes'

But yuuup thats the state of the US in SE vv’ its a mess. No one wants to live here tbh (unless youre a criminal mastermind or hypercapitalist or something. weird!)

aaaa i had fun answering these! i hope i answered all your questions just fine, but if theres anything else you wanna know plz dont be afraid to ask :D

[fific7]

Ticket to Ride - Part 6

Billy Russo x Reader

A/N: Inspired by The Beatles song of the same name. This takes place in my S1 Punisher AU with Arrogant!Billy in attendance, in which he gets a taste of his own medicine. Here we are at the final part!

Warnings: 18+ NSFW due to sexual content, including oral and unprotected, between consenting adults* in some chapters. Drinking and swearing.

*Irl, please don’t go wild in the country without protection.

(My photo edit and my photos of Murano & Burano)

𝕄𝕪 𝕓𝕒𝕓𝕪 ����𝕠𝕟'𝕥 𝕔𝕒𝕣𝕖

𝕄𝕪 𝕓𝕒𝕓𝕪 𝕕𝕠𝕟'𝕥 𝕔𝕒𝕣𝕖

𝕄𝕪 𝕓𝕒𝕓𝕪 𝕕𝕠𝕟'𝕥 𝕔𝕒𝕣𝕖

{…𝕠𝕣 𝕕𝕠𝕖𝕤 𝕤𝕙𝕖?}

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

Billy awoke early the next morning, reaching over to his phone on the bedside table and tapping the screen to see what time it was. Seven. Plenty of time to have a shower and make his way down to the breakfast room.

Standing under the stream of hot water, he couldn’t help feeling apprehensive. What if she had done another runner? He wouldn’t be able to cope with that. He didn’t think she would have, but…. he just wasn’t 100% sure what she was thinking or feeling right now.

After his full disclosure of what he’d got up to with Madani followed swiftly by his confession of love last night, he felt more optimistic but he could tell she was still conflicted.

He’d just have to do whatever he could today to persuade her to give him another chance.

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

Making your way into the light and airy breakfast room at just after eight, you couldn’t deny you were pleased to see Billy, sitting up super straight like a well-behaved schoolboy, already at a table.

His face broke into a huge smile when he spotted you, and you could see a large measure of relief wrapped up in it. You knew he would’ve been wondering if you had run out on him again. But no, you’d decided overnight to at least see how things went today on your trip to the Lagoon Islands.

He’d thrown you a curveball by telling you he loved you last night, and while you were relieved to hear that he hadn’t slept with that woman (his anger when you’d pushed him on it had finally convinced you that he hadn’t), you still weren’t exactly happy with what he had admitted to doing. It was still cheating in your book.

Could you ever really trust him again?

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

Billy fussed over her like a mother hen when she sat down across from him at the table, jumping up and rushing over to the buffet table, picking out a selection of toast, focaccia, butter, jams and Nutella for her along with a couple of mini pain au chocolat croissants. They were her favourites so he felt quite proud of himself as he laid the plate before her like the spoils of war, before making his way to the coffee machine and creating a cappuccino for her.

“Thank you, Billy - you’re spoiling me,” she said with a small grin. “Your every wish is my command, Princess,” he smiled back, hand covering hers and stroking gently. Now she started properly laughing at him, and he huffed, slightly offended. Once she’d calmed down a bit she said, “Honestly Billy, you don’t have to wait on me hand and foot. All I need from you is complete honesty.” Billy tried to look as convincing as he possibly could, “I will be, sweetheart, I promise.”

She took a sip of her cappuccino, and fixed him with an intense stare. “Bearing that in mind, Billy, just what exactly was going through your mind when you were making out with Madani?”

Billy blew out a big breath; he hadn’t seen that coming. “Well… uhh… nothin’ really. I was just doing somethin’ I had to do, and needed to get it over with as quick as possible.” Another sip of coffee, another intense look from her. “Uh-huh. So you didn’t enjoy it then? Is that what you’re saying?”

Billy suddenly felt like he was back on very thin ice. He could feel himself squirming in his seat, and fought to keep still. Madani was, in all truth, a pretty woman.

Fuck.

What should he say in reply to that?

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

Your eyes were drilling into Billy’s, and he looked about as comfortable as someone who’d just found out he’d got a scorpion down his trousers.

His face flushed pink, so you could guess what that meant. He cleared his throat, and then said in a low voice, “Look, she’s not bad lookin’ so it wasn’t as uncomfortable as it could’ve been.”

You smirked, not ready to let him off the hook yet, “So you were attracted to her, then. Not sure I’m happy to hear that, Billy.”

“NO! No, I wasn’t. Well.. like I said, she’s not unattractive but I’m not interested in her.”

You picked up your knife and aggressively sliced right through one of croissants. The look on Billy’s face was priceless. No doubt he’d guessed that the croissant was a surrogate for a certain part of his anatomy.

“Sweetheart, they weren’t long or involved kisses… not real ones, not like between you an’ me,” he said in a worried tone, very unlike his usual assertive manner. “Sweetheart, you’re the one I’m in love with. The only one I want to be with.” He was gazing earnestly at you, hand covering yours.

You cut off another piece of croissant and popped it into your mouth.

Billy would have to work a hell of a lot harder than that today if he was going to get you back, you thought.

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

Once the vaporetto had moored alongside the jetty you walked on board the boat up the ramp in front of Billy, while the disembarking passengers walked down the other side of it as it swayed from side to side, the boat moving in its own wake. The crew member who’d expertly tied up the boat a few moments ago was still calling out “Palanca, Palanca” as you headed through the covered section to the open area right at the back, sitting down on the bench seat in the stern and turning your face up to the sun.

Billy sat next to you, scooting as close to you as he could, suddenly lunging in for a hungry kiss. Two mothers with children in tow emerged through the doors leading from the salon, and you pushed him away while hastily smiling at the newcomers, saying, “Giorno” to them. Both of them smiled at you, returning your greeting, but then their eyes slid over to Billy and you saw both sets widening as they looked him over. You sighed. Having a hot boyfriend sucked sometimes. And Billy was looking particularly hot today in leather jacket, white t-shirt, black jeans and combat boots.

However, you noticed that Billy’s eyes were glued to you, still gazing at you ever since you’d fended him off. You didn’t think he’d even glanced at the other two women.

OK, Russo - one point on the plus side to you, you conceded.

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

Billy was paying full attention to his girl. He felt slightly triumphant that he’d managed to steal a kiss, and she’d only shoved him away when he’d vaguely heard the salon doors opening behind him.

He was so worried that she still hadn’t made her mind up whether to take him back or not, and he knew that today was his final chance to convince her to do so. Whatever was in his power to do, he’d do, to make that happen. And he wasn’t dumb, that meant not paying any attention whatsoever to any other females in the vicinity. He’d guessed that a couple of women had arrived along with the kids he could hear squealing and laughing just out of his sight line, so he made sure he kept his eyes trained solely on her.

Her lips curved upwards in a small smile as she looked back at him.

Pleased, he thought - ha, think I just scored a point there.

He wondered how many more of those he needed to rack up to finally win his woman back.

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

There were no direct vaporetti lines to the Lagoon Islands so you had to firstly go to Fondamente Nove, which was a busy hub for several of the numerous lines. You wanted to visit two of the main islands; Murano - where Venetians had made their famed glass items for centuries - and Burano, an island of fishermen and lacemakers. You were really excited to go there, as the houses were painted in a rainbow of colours. Legend had it that this was so the returning fishermen could spot their own individual houses as they returned home across the lagoon.

You needed to find the ferry stop for Line 12, which luckily Billy spotted just as the two of you were about to walk right past it. There was a vaporetto arriving just as you did and swiping your travel passes, you went aboard and took seats in the salon. This ferry was a slightly different type to the others you’d been on, longer and lower and was soon packed with locals and tourists alike.

It took a little while to arrive at Murano, alighting at the Faro stop. They still produced glassware on Murano but nothing like as much as they had in the past. You and Billy wandered alongside one of the main canals, looking into the windows of all the little glass shops until you came to the entrance of one of the big glass foundries.

They offered tours of the workshop and of course also had a shop, so the two of you paid for the tour and watched in amazement as an old man took a fiery red and yellow blob onto the end of a pole, and blew and turned it until it started to take on the shape of a little vase.

In the store, you browsed along the shelves looking at all the glassware on display, until you suddenly noticed you were alone. Glancing around, you spotted a dark head over in the corner at the cash desk and were heading over there when Billy turned round. His trademark smirk appeared and he hurriedly picked up the little paper carrier bag which was on the counter by its handles and strode towards you.

“See anything you like, sweetheart?”

Smirk getting wider. You eye-rolled and grabbed his arm, noting at the same time that the female sales assistant was still gawping at Billy, even though he now had his back to her. You tugged him towards the door, asking, “What’ve you just bought?” as you went. He shook his head, “Can’t say. It’s a surprise.” You glared at him, “Billy….” but he just kept grinning as you left the store and wouldn’t say anything, even though you nipped at his wrist just below his leather jacket sleeve with your nails.

“Wanna get a coffee?” he suggested, as you resumed your canalside stroll. “Yeah, okay,” you replied, stopping next to the outdoor tables of a small caffé and sitting down, Billy joining you. He slid his hand over yours, “M’glad we’ve got this time together today, sweetheart. Wanna make you understand just how much you mean to me.”

You nodded in acknowledgment before waving at the waiter and ordering two double macchiatos. You carried on, “The main problem I have, Billy, is how I’m ever going to trust you again? You might not think you cheated, but that’s what it is in my book.”

Billy looked over at you, eyes wide, sad …and scared.

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

Billy had then looked up and thanked the waiter as the coffees were placed in front of you both. He really didn’t know what to say, to be honest. He knew Frank - and no doubt Karen - also thought that it had counted as cheating. But he truly hadn’t. Well…. Cheating Lite, as he’d already designated it in his head. But not proper, down-and-dirty, long-term cheating. It had been a means to an end. Nothing more, nothing less. He just hadn’t considered the bigger picture. At all. And that had been a big mistake.

He took a sip of his coffee, and cleared his throat before spilling out what had just gone through his head. “Y’know I’m not exactly an expert at relationships, angel. In fact, I’m sure you’ll agree I’m totally shit at them. I need you to keep me on the straight and narrow. Tell me how things need to be. Please don’t give up on us, don’t leave me… please.” Billy was completely and utterly pouring out his heart to her, and he prayed she could see that.

His girl looked at him, some anger and hurt still in her eyes but she managed a shaky breath and looked down into the depths of her coffee cup for a few moments.

Billy held his breath.

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

Your eyes met his again, “But how am I going to trust you again, Billy, tell me that? Every time you say you’re working late, how d’you expect me not to think you’re meeting up with her or someone else?”

Now it was Billy’s turn to look down. The silence stretched out to a few minutes, and you did nothing to break it. Eventually he looked up at you again, “M’tryin’ to think of how I can prove to you that I’ll never, ever, do something like that again - whether it’s work-related or not.”

He reached across and slid his long fingers between yours, holding onto your hand so tightly it felt like he’d never let go.

“Firstly, I give you my word as an ex-Marine that I won’t ever pull a stunt like this again. Secondly, I’ll be the most attentive boyfriend you’ve ever had. In and out of the sack.” You tried to hide a smile, but you knew he’d seen it. “Thirdly, I’ll put a tracker on my phone, and I’ll hack you into my messagin’ and email apps so you’ll have absolute access to my location and comms.” He was smirking back at you by now, he felt this was going pretty well.

“But you’ve got access to burner phones, Billy.”

His smile dimmed, while his brain scrambled to come up with a solution to this inconvenient fact. You saw his eyes light up and the smirk returned, “Easy. I’ll put Frank in sole charge of issuing them and I’ll tell him not to give me any unless it’s absolutely necessary for an op.”

“Could just buy them in Walmart’s,” you dropped into the slight pause after he’d finished speaking. His face fell again, and now you burst out laughing. “Okay, okay, Billy - I get the message. I see that you’re doing your best to be honest and transparent. There’s no need for you to put all that tracking and hacking in place.”

Billy beamed at you.

“I’ll just get Micro to track your ass.”

His mouth dropped open as you spoke.

“And monitor all your calls and texts.”

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

Woah! thought Billy, didn’t think she’d be getting King Nerd involved. That was probably Karen’s idea. Gee, thanks Karen. But he would agree, what else could he do? And he’d offered to track himself, so it didn’t really matter in any case, did it?

“Uhhh…” he stuttered, “….uhh yeah, whatever you like, sweetheart.”

She smiled over at him, a genuine smile. “It’s OK, Billy. I wouldn’t do that to you.” She side-eyed him, “Unless you give me good cause. Like… coming home stinking of another woman’s perfume ever again.”

His hand went over his heart, and he put on his best puppydog eyes. “Angel, I swear on my life - never. Never. Ever. Again.”

She nodded. “Okay, Billy, I’ll take that as you being on oath now, just like when you joined the Marines.” His eyes widened and he nodded fast. “Yeah. I am. I’m on oath.”

He watched as she drained the very last few drops of her coffee. “Okay, Russo! Let’s go,” she said standing up and picking up her bag.

“Yes, ma’am!” He jumped up and saluted, taking his place at her side as they retraced their steps to the Faro stop and their next vaporetto.

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

You’d hopped onto the next Line 12 ferry which arrived, and recommenced your onwards journey to Burano. Sitting inside the salon again, the loud chatter around you from the mostly local passengers almost drowned out any conversation you and Billy tried to have. He finally leaned right up against you, snaking his arm round your waist, his lips against your ear.

“Got you a little somethin’, sweetheart.” He handed you the gift bag.

Opening it, you saw a mass of tissue paper inside the bag and took it out. “Careful!” he warned, so you slowly opened up the paper and saw a delicate rose pink heart trinket box sitting at its centre. You lifted its little lid up and then replaced it, delighted with it. Smiling at Billy, you said, “I love it!” into his ear and kissed his cheek. His lips returned to your ear, “See? You have my heart.”

Now you rolled your eyes heavenwards, “I’d stop there if I were you, Russo. Cheesy really doesn’t suit you!” He burst out laughing. “Hey! Give a guy a break. He’s over here layin’ his heart and soul right out in front of you.”

You leant in and kissed him on the lips, before pulling back and saying, “And don’t read too much into that!” But Billy was already grinning happily back at you.

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

Billy was happy. His steps were light as he walked beside her from the vaporetto stop along a small street, lined with stalls and shops selling souvenirs and lacework, which eventually led to a square.

She loved the trinket box! he thought, very pleased with himself. The minute he’d seen it he knew that she would, and had decided to buy it on the spot. While he didn’t want her to think he was trying to buy her back, he’d just wanted to make some gesture to show her that he treasured her, the same way she’d treasure the little things she put in it.

He blurted all of this out to her as they strolled along. She stopped walking and looked at him, amazed, “Billy Russo! I think that’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.” He felt shy suddenly, and he could feel his face heating up. What was happening to him? Is this what love did to you? He didn’t hate it. “It’s how I feel,” he mumbled, looking away from her. He felt her hand on his cheek, “Well, keep that up and maybe, just maybe…”

She turned and started walking again, and Billy hurried to catch up with her. I won’t push it, he thought, I’ll just leave it be while I’m on a winning streak.

There was another street leading off the square which was full of trattorias and caffés, and they chose one of the restaurants to sit outside, the tables rapidly filling as more people from the vaporetto stop arrived.

She’s definitely looking at me more kindly, he thought. Things might just be okay after all.

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

After a delicious lunch of pasta and several glasses of wine, you and Billy started exploring the little canals and streets with their cute colourful houses. They looked so bright and beautiful in the sunlight, and you imagined the fishermen back in the day sailing home and being able to see their own little house from afar.

You reached the waterside, beside a quiet little square with houses all around it and some grass in the middle, clothes on washing lines strung across it, blowing in the breeze. There was no-one else around and suddenly you found yourself pressed up against the wall of one of the houses, Billy’s long fingers on the nape of your neck, his hand on your waist. His dark chocolate eyes were gazing into yours, a soft look in them. But you could also feel something a lot harder pressing into your hip, and you saw desire spark in his eyes.

His mouth was on yours and he kissed you, the sudden passion of which took you by surprise. He pulled back, his forehead touching yours. “I’ve missed your touch so much,” he whispered, “…every minute of every day since you.. since you left me.” You laid your hand on his chest, “I missed you too, Billy - even if I did hate you at the time.” He chuckled, “Do you still hate me?” You looked into those beautiful eyes, “No, I guess I don’t. Although you’re still walking a line, Billy.”

He nodded, “I know. I do know. But promise me you’ll give me another chance?” You smiled at him, pushing yourself away from the wall and him, “Let’s see, shall we?”

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

Billy tapped on her hotel room door, and gave her a devilish grin as she opened it. He’d made sure to wear a white tank and a pair of grey tracksuit bottoms. He knew she liked him in those.

She was already in her sleepwear - an oversized Anvil T which she’d stolen from him ages ago - and leant against her door, looking back at him, amused. “Why Billy, whatever brings you here?”

He just kept grinning at her and also leant against her doorframe. As if she didn’t know, he thought. She’d had to spend the entire journey back from Burano fending off his hands and mouth.

“Just checkin’ you’re OK, sweetheart. See if there’s anything you need.”

She laughed. “And what could I possibly need, Billy?”

He angled his body so that she couldn’t fail to get a great view of his toned torso and more importantly, the very obvious outline of his erection showing in his joggers. If there was one thing Billy had complete confidence in, it was the effect his body had on women.

“I can think of one or two things, sweetheart.”

He was ecstatic when her hand reached out and grabbed him round the back of his neck, pulling him into her room. “Uhuh… maybe you should show me what those are.”

Billy’s grin got twice as wide.

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

You gave a huge sigh as Billy pushed inside you, hearing an answering one from him and you ran your hands up into his lush hair. You couldn’t deny it, you had missed him. And his enthusiastic lovemaking.

However you were a little taken aback when he began moving slowly and sensually on you, instead of his usual frenetic pace. He was stroking your hair, placing little kisses all over your face and neck, running his hands over your body, whispering “I love you, love you so much” between his languid thrusts. He slid a hand down and massaged your clit, so well that you climaxed within a few short moments. Not long afterwards, you heard him gasp and he released into you, with a long groan.

The two of you lay in silence, side by side but still entwined. Then Billy leant across and kissed you, softly, slowly, with passion. “I can’t be without you, angel.” The puppydog eyes were out in force again as he gazed at you, “Please. Gimme another chance. I’ll be a better boyfriend, a million times better.”

You continued to look back at him, then gave a quick nod, “Okay. Yes, okay Billy. But one… just one transgression…” His hands went up in supplication, “Understood! Not one transgression will be made.”

“And you make sure to tell that thirsty bitch back in New York that her little dates with you won’t be happening anymore.”

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

“Already done.”

He saw her eyebrows rise.

Oh. Oh, she thinks that means I’ve been in touch with her.

“No, sweetheart…. Frankie took care of that for me while I’ve been away.”

She smirked, “Pleased to hear it.”

Billy let out a sigh of relief, he was going to have to be so careful over the next few months. He’d only just got her back! He couldn’t let a stupid, chance remark or two ruin it. He ran his hand over her hair again. “I’m so happy, y’know? M’never going to take you for granted again.” He saw her smile widen in the darkness of the room.

“But, sweetheart, you gotta promise me something too.” She looked at him, puzzled, amused, “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. No more runnin’ out on me and flyin’ halfway round the world.”

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

@blackbirddaredevil23 @omgrachwrites @behindmyeyes-insidemyhead @ourloveisforthelovely @swthxrry @odetostep @supernaturalcat7 @obscurilicious @strawb3rrydr3ss @bruxa0007 @aleksanderwh0r3 @theshadowkingsqueen @bat-luna-cat @carlywhomever

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

[testudoaubrei-blog]

Content note for discussions of eternal damnation, and all sorts of other shit that will trigger a lot of folks with religious trauma.

Before I get started I might as well explain where I’m coming from - unlike a lot of She-Ra fans, and a lot of queer people, I don’t have much religious trauma, or any, maybe (okay there were a number of years I was convinced I was going to hell, but that happens to everyone, right?). I was raised a liberal Christian by liberal Christian parents in the Episcopal Church, where most of my memories are overwhelmingly positive. Fuck, growing up in the 90’s, Chuch was probably the only place outside my home I didn’t have homophobia spewed at me. Because it was the 90’s and it was a fucking hellscape of bigotry where 5 year olds knew enough to taunt each other with homophobic slurs and the adults didn’t know enough to realize how fucked up that was. Anyway. This is my experience, but it is an atypical one, and I know it. Quite frankly I know that my experience of Christianity has very little at all to do with what most people experienced, or what people generally mean when they talk about Christianity as a cultural force in America today. So if you were raised Christian and you don’t recognize your theology here, congrats, neither do I, but these ideas and cultural forces are huge and powerful and dominant. And it’s this dominant Christian narrative that I’m referring to in this post. As well as, you know, a children’s cartoon about lesbian rainbow princesses. So here it goes. This is going to get batshit.

"All events whatsoever are governed by the secret counsel of God." - John Calvin

“We’re all just a bunch of wooly guys” - Noelle Stevenson

This is a post triggered by a single scene, and a single line. It’s one of the most fucked-up scenes in She-Ra, toward the end of Save the Cat. Catra, turned into a puppet by Prime, struggles with her chip, desperately trying to gain control of herself, so lost and scared and vulnerable that she flings aside her own death wish and her pride and tearfully begs Adora to rescue her. Adora reaches out , about to grab her, and then Prime takes control back, pronounces ‘disappointing’ and activates the kill switch that pitches Catra off the platform and to her death (and seriously, she dies here, guys - also Adora breaks both her legs in the fall). But before he does, he dismisses Catra with one of his most chilling lines. “Some creatures are meant only for destruction.”

And that’s when everyone watching probably had their heart broken a little bit, but some of the viewers raised in or around Christianity watching the same scene probably whispered ‘holy shit’ to themselves. Because Prime’s line - which works as a chilling and callous dismissal of Catra - is also an allusion to a passage from the Bible. In fact, it’s from one of the most fucked up passages in a book with more than its share of fucked up passages. It’s from Romans 9:22, and I’m going to quote several previous verses to give the context of the passage (if not the entire Epistle, which is more about who needs to abide by Jewish dietary restrictions but was used to construct a systematic theology in the centuries afterwards because people decided it was Eternal Truth).

19 Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?

20 Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?

21 Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?

22 What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction:

The context of the allusion supports the context in the show. Prime is dismissing Catra - serial betrayer, liar, failed conqueror, former bloody-handed warlord - as worthless, as having always been worthless and fit only to be destroyed. He is speaking from a divine and authoritative perspective (because he really does think he’s God, more of this in my TL/DR Horde Prime thing). Prime is echoing not only his own haughty dismissal of Catra, and Shadow Weaver’s view of her, but also perhaps the viewer’s harshest assessment of her, and her own worst fears about herself. Catra was bad from the start, doomed to destroy and to be destroyed. A malformed pot, cracked in firing, destined to be shattered against a wall and have her shards classified by some future archaeologist 2,000 years later. And all that’s bad enough.

But the full historical and theological context of this passage shows the real depth of Noelle Stevenson’s passion and thought and care when writing this show. Noelle was raised in Evangelical or Fundamentalist Christianity. To my knowledge, he has never specified what sect or denomination, but in interviews and her memoir Noelle has shown a particular concern for questions that this passage raises, and a particular loathing for the strains of Protestant theology that take this passage and run with it - that is to say, Calvinism. So while I’m not sure if Noelle was raised as a conservative, Calvinist Presbyterian, his preoccupation with these questions mean that it’s time to talk about Calvinism.

It would be unfair, perhaps, to say that Calvinism is a systematic theology built entirely upon the Epistles of Romans and Galatians, but only -just- (and here my Catholic readers in particular will chuckle to themselves and lovingly stroke their favorite passage of the Epistle of James). The core of Calvinist Doctrine is often expressed by the very Dutch acronym TULIP:

Total Depravity - people are wholly evil, and incapable of good action or even willing good thoughts or deeds

Unconditional Election - God chooses some people to save because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, not because they did anything to deserve, trigger or accept it

Limited Atonement - Jesus died only to save the people God chose to save, not the rest of us bastards

Irresistible Grace - God chooses some people to be saved - if you didn’t want to be saved, too bad, God said so.

Perseverance of the Saints - People often forget this one and assume it’s ‘predestination’ but it’s actually this - basically, once saved by God, always saved, and if it looks like someone falls out of grace, they were never saved to begin with. Well that’s all sealed up tight I guess.

Reading through these, predestination isn’t a single doctrine in Calvinism but the entire theological underpinnings of it together with humanity’s utter powerlessness before sin. Basically God has all agency, humanity has none. Calvinism (and a lot of early modern Protestantism) is obsessed with questions of how God saves people (grace alone, AKA Sola Fides) and who God saves (the people god elects and only the people God elects, and fuck everyone else).

It’s apparent that Noelle was really taken by these questions, and repelled by the answers he heard. He’s alluded to having a tattoo refuting the Gospel passage about Sheep and Goats being sorted at the end times, affirming instead that ‘we’re all just a bunch of wooly guys’ (you can see this goat tattoo in some of his self-portraits in comics, etc). He’s also mentioned that rejecting and subverting destiny is a huge part of everything he writes as a particular rejection of the idea that some individual people are 'chosen' by God or that God has a plan for any of us. You can see that -so clearly- in Adora’s arc, where Adora embraces and then rejects destiny time and again and finally learns to live life for herself.

But for Catra, we’re much more concerned about the most negative aspect of this - the idea that some people are vessels meant for destruction. And that’s something else that Noelle is preoccupied with. In her memoir in the section about leaving the church and becoming a humanistic atheist, there is a drawing of a pot and the question ‘Am I a vessel prepared for destruction?’ Obviously this was on Noelle’s mind (And this is before he came out to himself as queer!).

To look at how this question plays out in Catra’s entire arc, let’s first talk about how ideas of damnation and salvation actually play out in society. And for that I’m going to plug one of my favorite books, Gin Lun’s Damned Nation: Hell in America from the Revolution to Reconstruction (if you can tell by now, I am a fucking blast at parties). Lun tells the long and very interesting story about, how ideas of hell and who went there changed during the Early American Republic. One of the interesting developments that she talks about is how while at first people who were repelled by Calvinism started moving toward a doctrine of universal salvation (no on goes to hell, at least not forever*), eventually they decided that hell was fine as long as only the right kind of people went there. Mostly The Other - non-Christian foreigners, Catholics, Atheists, people who were sinners in ways that were not just bad but weird and violated Victorian ideas of respectability. Really, Hell became a way of othering people, and arguably that’s how it survives today, especially as a way to other queer people (but expanding this is slated for my Montero rant). Now while a lot of people were consciously rejecting Calvinist predestination, they were still drawing the distinction between the Elect (good, saved, worthwhile) and the everyone else (bad, damned, worthless). I would argue that secularized ideas of this survive to this day even among non-Christian spaces in our society - we like to draw lines between those who Elect, and those who aren’t.

And that’s what brings us back to Catra. Because Catra’s entire arc is a refutation of the idea that some people are worthless and irredeemable, either by nature, nurture or their own actions. Catra’s actions strain the conventions of who is sympathetic in a Kid’s cartoon - I’ve half joked that she’s Walter White as a cat girl, and it’s only half a joke. She’s cruel, self-deluded, she spends 4 seasons refusing to take responsibility for anything she does and until Season 5 she just about always chooses the thing that does the most damage to herself and others. As I mentioned in my Catra rant, the show goes out of its way to demonstrate that Catra is morally culpable in every step of her descent into evil (except maybe her break with reality just before she pulls the lever). The way that Catra personally betrays everyone around her, the way she strips herself of all of her better qualities and most of what makes her human, hell even her costume changes would signal in any other show that she’s irredeemable.

It’s tempting to see this as Noelle’s version of being edgy - pushing the boundaries of what a sympathetic character is, throwing out antiheroics in favor of just making the villain a protagonist. Noelle isn’t quite Alex ‘I am in the business of traumatizing children’ Hirsch, who seems to have viewed his job as pushing the bounds of what you could show on the Disney Channel (I saw Gravity Falls as an adult and a bunch of that shit lives rent free in my nightmares forever), but Noelle has his own dark side, mostly thematically. The show’s willingness to deal with abuse, and messed up religious themes, and volatile, passionate, not particularly healthy relationships feels pretty daring. I’m not joking when I gleefully recommend this show to friends as ‘a couple from a Mountain Goats Song fights for four seasons in a cartoon intended for 9 year olds’. Noelle is in his own way pushing the boundaries of what a kids show can do. If you read Noelle’s other works like Nimona, you see an argument for Noelle being at least a bit edgy. Nimona is also angry, gleefully destructive, violent and spiteful - not unlike Catra. Given that it was a 2010s webcomic and not a kids show, Nimona is a good deal worse than Catra in some ways - Catra doesn’t kill people on screen, while Nimona laughs about it (that was just like, a webcomic thing - one of the fan favorite characters in my personal favorite, Narbonic, was a fucking sociopath, and the heroes were all amoral mad scientists, except for the superintelligent gerbil**). But unlike Nimona, whose fate is left open ended, Catra is redeemed.

And that is weird. We’ve had redemption arcs, but generally not of characters with -so- much vile stuff in their history. Going back to the comparison between her and Azula, many other shows, like Avatar, would have made Catra a semi-sympathetic villain who has a sob-story in their origin but who is beyond redemption, and in so doing would articulate a kind of psychologized Calvinism where some people are too traumatized to ever be fully and truly human. I’d argue this is the problem with Azula as a character - she’s a fun villain, but she doesn’t have moral agency, and the ultimate message of her arc - that she’s a broken person destined only to hurt people - is actually pretty fucked up. And that’s the origin story of so many serial killers and psycopaths that populate so many TV shows and movies. Beyond ‘hurt people hurt people’ they have nothing to teach us except perhaps that trauma makes you a monster and that the only possible response to people doing bad things is to cut them out of your life and out of our society (and that’s why we have prisons, right?)

And so Catra’s redemption and the depths from which she claws herself back goes back to Noelle’s desire to prove that no person is a vessel ‘fitted for destruction.’ Catra goes about as far down the path of evil as we’ve ever seen a protagonist in a kids show go, and she still has the capacity for good. Importantly, she is not subject to total depravity - she is capable of a good act, if only one at first. Catra is the one who begins her own redemption (unlike in Calvinism, where grace is unearned and even unwelcomed) - because she wants something better than what she has, even if its too late, because she realizes that she never wanted any of this anyway, because she wants to do one good thing once in her life even if it kills her.

The very extremity of Catra’s descent into villainy serves to underline the point that Noelle is trying to make - that no one can be written off completely, that everyone is capable of change, and that no human being is garbage, no matter how twisted they’ve become. Meanwhile her ability to set her own redemption in motion is a powerful statement of human agency, and healing, and a refutation of Calvinism’s idea that we are powerless before sin or pop cultural tropes about us being powerful before the traumas of our upbringing. Catra’s arc, then, is a kind of anti-Calvinist theological statement - about the nature of people and the nature of goodness.

Now, there is a darker side to this that Noelle has only hinted at, but which is suggested by other characters on the show. Because while Catra’s redemption shows that people are capable of change, even when they’ve done horrible things, been fucked up and fucked themselves up, it also illustrates the things people do to themselves that make change hard. As I mentioned in my Catra rant, two of the most sinister parts of her descent into villainy are her self-dehumanization (crushing her own compassion and desire to do good) and her rewriting of her own history in her speech and memory to make her own actions seem justified (which we see with her insistence that Adora left her, eliding Adora’s offers to have Catra join her, or her even more clearly false insistence that Entrapta had betrayed them). In Catra, these processes keep her going down the path of evil, and allow her to nearly destroy herself and everyone else. But we can see the same processes at work in two much darker figures - Shadow Weaver and Horde Prime. These are both rants for another day, but the completeness of Shadow Weaver’s narcissistic self-justification and cultivated callousness and the even more complete narcissism of Prime’s god complex cut both characters off from everyone around them. Perhaps, in a theoretical sense, they are still redeemable, but for narrative purposes they might as well be damned.

This willingness to show a case where someone -isn’t- redeemed actually serves to make Catra’s redemption more believable, especially since Noelle and the writers draw the distinction between how Catra and SW/Prime can relate to reality and other people, not how broken they are by their trauma (unlike Zuko and Azula, who are differentiated by How Fucked Uolp They Are). Redemption is there, it’s an option, we can always do what is right, but someone people will choose not to, in part because doing the right thing involves opening ourselves to the world and others, and thus being vulnerable. Noelle mentions this offhandedly in an interview after Season 1 with the She-Ra Progressive of Power podcast - “I sometimes think that shades of grey, sympathetic villains are part of the escapist fantasy of shows like this.” Because in the real world, some people are just bastards, a point that was particularly clear in 2017. Prime and Shadow Weaver admit this reality, while Catra makes a philosophical point that even the bastards can change their ways (at least in theory).

*An idea first proposed in the second century by Origen, who’s a trip and a fucking half by himself, and an idea that becomes the Catholic doctrine of purgatory, which protestants vehemently denied!

**Speaking of favorite Noelle tropes

[luverofralts]

Arkhelios University

The heavy iron door that led into the building scraped loudly against the stone floors as Theo pushed against it. It had looked rusted in place, but it eventually gave way with a little force. Theo hadn’t been sure of what to expect to find inside the ominous building, but it certainly wasn’t this.

The hallway was lined with decrepit looking cells, each containing a heavily rusted bed frame and little else. Whoever had owned this place wasn’t exactly running a hotel. Being anywhere near the cells made Theo anxious. He could feel the remnants of blood shed centuries ago, caked into the cracks of the walls. Bad things had happened here.

He ran quickly past the iron bars and up a stone staircase. He didn’t care where it led, as long as it was nowhere near where he’d been. 

Before him now was a large, open chamber that looked like it had once been divided into several rooms. There were faint piles of rubble on the floor that may have once been walls and a large, ornate fountain in the center that miraculously still flowed with running water despite it’s obvious age.

The air hummed even louder around him in this place. It had to be some kind of spell, or some kind of magic that kept the fountain going as the years passed while the building collapsed around it. Theo could feel something around him calling out, and then quickly pulling away again.

“Hello?”

His call went unanswered, though Theo wasn’t sure if that was a bad thing exactly. There was more blood on the stone floor by the fountain, and he could see much more marking the floor by a number of windows. If his parents were here, they would probably tell him to leave. Well, they weren’t with him and they never would be again. It was time for Theo to do what he thought was important, even if the situation was getting a little scary.

Theo, little Theophilus

Theo searched frantically for the source of the words he’d heard, but found nothing. He was alone, but the words had sounded so close. The voice didn’t sound familiar. It was barely a voice at all. A voice without sound.

A blast of energy suddenly exploded from the fountain, enveloping Theo in a blinding blue light. It filled the room in an instant, forcefully pushing Theo into his dark form, and then even further.

Theo had never known power like this. He’d never dreamed such power was even possible. At his age he could mostly read, knew some basic math, and thought that he could live on the two sandwiches and bag of cookies that he’d been given by his friends. At the same time, he could feel the hum of the world around him, see the energy crackle through the air towards him. He could hold life in the palm of his hand and then snuff it out without a second thought.

Blood trickled down from his nose as more energy poured into his tiny body. Every cell within him was changing somehow. A switch had been flipped inside of him that he’d never known existed, and there was no going back. He’d been strong before, especially while focusing his energy through his enchanted crystal, but this...this was something else.

Romana, Romanus, Theophilus. Remember Theophilus.

The soundless voice repeated itself once more and then fell silent. The rush of energy stopped building within him, and Theo finally was released from the blinding glow.

He searched once more for the elusive voice, but no guiding figure stepped out of the shadows to explain what was going on. No welcoming signs or concerned parent appeared either. He was still alone in this strange chamber, but at the same time, he was far from alone. Something had called to him with words. Confusing words, but definitely something more tangible than the vague feeling he often felt when experimenting with what he could do.

“It’s not Theophilus,” he called out cautiously. “Most people think it’s Theodore, but that’s-”

A sudden chill paused Theo mid sentence. He was about to say his name, just like he did for every substitute teacher or friendly adult who had no idea what Theo stood for, but some strong instinct held him back.

“No, sorry, that's right, but I just go by Theo,” he lied. The name had a weight to it that he liked, and for a reason that he didn’t understand, it made him feel safe. Something had awakened in him and this new power demanded him to name it to possess it. 

Awaken Theophilus. Awaken to your destiny.

Pain gripped Theo in a way he'd never experienced in his short life. He could feel energy pouring into him without end, setting every cell in his body aflame. The strange voice called out again, urging him forward. Urging him towards someone or somewhere important. To revel in his power. To seek out vengeance.

The air burned around Theo as he watched his hand begin to fade in horror. It felt like he was teleporting, but he wasn't in control of what was happening. His eyes squeezed shut in fear before he saw the rest of his body fade. Every part of him cried out for his parents, for them to help protect him even if they hadn't wanted him. As it turned out, he wasn't as great as he'd thought he'd be at protecting himself on his own. But he'd never told them where he was going, and they had no way of finding him with his necklace on. There was no way of taking it off with hands that were fading away. Wherever he was being sent, getting that necklace off as soon as he could may be the only way he'd ever see his family again.

[wtl-archive]

Intermission 06: Now The Sun Begins To Set

Content warning for child death.

Steven learns early on to keep most of his gem powers a secret outside of Beach City, especially his ability to heal. He had done so much for the Earth already, saving it from total destruction on more than one occasion; for now, he could take a break and let people solve their own problems. Connie was quick to remind him of that whenever he started to slip back into bad old habits, feeling the need to carry the world on his shoulders, to make every problem his responsibility. He was under no obligation to heal anyone. His powers were his to do with as he pleased. Eventually, he opens up Rose’s Fountain to the public, so that anyone can use it’s magic to heal themselves free of charge. But there’s one thing that the fountain’s water can’t do; bring back the dead. As he gets older, it’s something that constantly lingers at the back of his mind. He revived Lars, his mother revived Lion. If someone else close to him dies in the future, would he revive them too? Should he even do something like that again? The best way to know for certain was to ask. So, when he turns 21, he goes around Beach City and asks his friends and family a simple question: When your time comes, do you want to be brought back? To his surprise, most say ‘No.’ And to his dismay, most instead request for their children to be saved, should they die.

He lets the answers whirl around in head for several days. He knows that eventually, people and animals revived will still pass away, but if Lars is any indicator, it’ll be a long time before that happens. Despite being a few years older than him, Lars hasn’t physically aged a day. Lion was just as healthy as ever, and he was almost certainly a few centuries old. What would happen if he revived a child, then? Would they be stuck in the body of a ten year-old for several decades, for centuries even? He couldn’t imagine how terrible that would be, to have the mind of an adult but be stuck as a kid. It’s with a heavy heart that he makes a rule for himself; he would never bring back someone under the age of 16. He tells the people he talked with about this new rule, and even though they’re not thrilled with the news, they understand. Over the next 5 years, he only has to use his revival power once. The second time he’s forced to use it, it nearly breaks him apart.

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

This couldn’t be happening, he refused to believe it.

Steven always wanted kids, and while Connie was hesitant towards the idea at first, she warmed up to it quickly once one of the pregnancy tests came back positive. The doctors warned them both of what dangers they might have to face in the future with this pregnancy, but Connie was nothing if not determined and stubborn. Once she set her mind to something, it was almost impossible to stop her.

Steven had his concerns, but Connie’s enthusiasm was contagious, and even when the scans and test came back with worrying news, the couple kept going. It didn’t matter if their child, which they decided to name Von Von, might be physically disabled at birth. They would still love them whole-heartedly, no matter what. Von Von’s birth was meant to be a happy occasion. They were going to be a beautiful, sweet child. They were going to be the best thing that ever happened to him, after meeting Connie. He would hold them, and love them, and cherish them with every fiber of his being.

Instead, he was sitting at Connie’s bedside while she cradled Von Von’s motionless body in her arms.

He wasn’t sure how long it had been since the doctors gave her the news. He knew the moment Von Von entered the world that something was wrong. They weren’t crying, and their body was limp. Connie was so exhausted from the birth that she didn’t realize something was off until the doctor wouldn’t let her see them. Her panicked begging was burned into his memory - he had never seen her that hysterical before.

He didn’t have the heart to tell her what happened, to look her in the eyes and explain that the past nine months were just a waste, so instead he let the hospital staff break the news while he waited a few feet away, trying his best not to break into tears, trying to not feel like a complete coward for not being by her side.

The nurse brought Von Von in soon afterward, and even though they were devoid of any life, Connie held them with all the care and love in the world. It was then that he finally got the courage to get closer, wrapping himself around her as she whispered to them how much she loved them.

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” was all he could muster up the willpower to say without his voice breaking. Their first child was gone before they even got the chance to talk to them. He would never see them smile, or tell them a bedtime story, or teach them to ride a bike.

It just wasn’t fair. Connie seemed to be thinking the same thing. Tears and sweat streamed down her face, the only sound coming from her now being soft, but pained, whimpering. She held Von Von closer to her chest and forced her gaze to meet his, her eyes red from exhaustion and grief. Though she didn’t say anything, her expression spoke volumes, and he could already tell what she wanted to ask. 'Could you bring them back?’

His body answered the question for him, the tears he had been holding back over the past hour flowing down his cheeks like a river. Wordlessly, Connie handed Von Von to him. He pulled the cloth wrapped around them back just enough to reveal their face, closing his eyes and letting the tears fall onto them. He refused to look at them until he was certain they were alive again, until he could hear their faint cries and feel them wriggling around in his arms.

When the healing light faded and Von Von took their first breath, it was like everything else melted away.

“Welcome to the world, Von Von,” he sniffled, gently running his fingers through their now pink hair.

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Read all the pages in order here.

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Hey past me, what the actual flying fuck were you on when you wrote this shit?? Like damn, I know I was depressed but holy shit, can you pull in the fucking reigns a bit??? Can you take your foot off the gas??? Fuck, dude.

It's well written at least? I guess? Christ. Anyway. Yeah Druid's life is sad as fuck, Example Number 618.

Writer Credit: NugatorySheep