#or maybe in order to stop her from dying after she [redacted]

[kohaive]

she's so vindicated rn

[grumpyhedgehogs]

and the world tilts upon its axis

Summary: “You never told us.” Anakin’s words pierce directly into Ahsoka’s heart; she can’t imagine what they do to his master. That stricken feeling flits through the Force again before Obi-Wan can wrangle it again. At least it gets Anakin to look up. He looks torn, agonized, pained, but repeats, unsteady, “You never told us.”

“The past is not an easy thing for me to speak of.”

Notes: (Obligatory ‘everyone finds out about Obi-Wan’s shitty childhood’ fic.) Past Abuse/Violence, Slavery. 

“It really isn’t a problem anymore,” Obi-Wan tells them all very reasonably. “I haven’t had a vision in years--not a clear one, anyway. Feelings, things like that, but nothing so concrete as they used to be. Master Qui-Gon taught me how to see past the feelings years ago.”

“You used to get Force visions,” Ahsoka says, tone rather shrill, “and you never told us?”

Anakin makes a loud choking noise deep in his throat. Cody, sitting on a crate of supplies near where Ahsoka and her master collapsed half an hour after their latest battle, shakes his head. Ahsoka pulls herself up to sit beside him, feeling rather as if something very important has been ripped away from her before she even knew it existed. He looks up at Obi-Wan, the only one standing out of all of them, and says, “I don’t understand what the big deal is.”

“There isn’t one,” Rex supplies. Skyguy tries to swat at him without taking his arm from over his eyes, but Rex moves out of the way and leans back against a wall of the Resolute. He shrugs. “Jedi are just dramatic like that.”

“Much as I dislike the generalization,” Obi-Wan interjects, “I have to agree in this case. Force visions can be upsetting and helpful in equal measure, and they faded from my mind a long time ago. I’m surprised my medical files even contain a record of those after all these years."

“What if they come back!” Anakin sits up, glaring. “You never even said anything. I’ve heard Master Windu talking about how forceful they can be--you cold pass out if a vision comes at the wrong time! I’ve heard some younglings are prone to seizures!”

The thought makes Ahsoka shudder. She wraps her arms around herself surreptitiously. Cody sends her a sympathetic look.

The next words out of Master Kenobi’s mouth make her blood go cold. “Well, yes, I know that, Anakin. I was the youngling Mace was speaking of.”

“What.”

Obi-Wan waves his commander off, though, and shakes his head. “Honestly, it’s fine now. We wouldn’t even need to have this useless conversation if you hadn’t sliced into my medical files, Anakin--”

Rex is already across the room and peering over Anakin’s shoulder as her master rifles through his datapad, so Ahsoka chalks Obi-Wan’s efforts up as a lost cause. She pulls her own datapad out and shuffles closer to Cody instead; Skyguy sent her a copy of her grandmaster's file as soon as he could manage. Something about not being able to trust Obi-Wan when he said he didn’t need to go to medical.

Ahsoka thinks that is the pot calling the kettle black, but--

“You have nerve damage?”

At Rex’s incredulous exclamation, Obi-Wan closes his eyes for a long, long moment. Then he opens them, runs a hand over his beard, and looks around for a place to sit. “This is going to be a long conversation, I see. Is everyone sure they wouldn’t like to move to, I don’t know, anywhere but the cargo hold, before we begin?”

“Shinies are everywhere else,” Rex points out briskly, “but the cargo hold is too cold for most of us. We run too warm to be comfortable here.”

“That isn’t good. You should’ve told us sooner--I’ll have to talk to Master Shaak Ti about what we can do for you.”

“Deflecting.” Anakin intones. In any other setting, his stern tone would make her laugh. Obi-Wan sighs again, and settles down into a meditation pose across from his former padawan, fixing them all with a half-exasperated, half-doting look.

“Yes,” Obi-Wan says. “I have nerve damage. I’m sure you’ve all seen how many layers I wear? It’s to help my blood circulation. I can’t keep myself warm enough otherwise, because I can’t feel how cold my surface skin is until it’s too late. So, extra clothing all the time, just in case. I can deal with a little sweat if the outcome is less chance of frostbite.”

“ Why do you have nerve damage?”

“Have you seen how many times I’ve been electrocuted?” Obi-Wan answers. He’s too serene for Ahsoka’s liking.

“I’ve been electrocuted twice as much as you have,” Anakin points out. At his shoulder, Rex nods, but stops when Anakin snaps his gaze to his captain. He turns back to his former master. “And I don’t have nerve damage.”

“You’ve been electrocuted twice as much as I have been recently.” Her grandmaster normally looks a little tired, but this conversation seems to be getting to him more than most; he rubs at his face again, and, with his hand still over his eyes, says, “Electro-whips and prods were the weapon of choice in the mines.”

The words are quiet, like Obi-Wan really meant for them to be under his breath, but it makes every spine in the room go rigid.

Very slowly, Anakin sits forward on his knees. His datapad slips from his lap. Rex only just catches it before it clatters to the floor. Ahsoka has never seen her master’s eyes look as sharp as they are now. “Which mines, Master? And what were you doing there?”

Obi-Wan’s lips thin. “You do realize I’ve had an entire life without you? Twenty years or so, in fact. Things did happen to me before you came along.”

It’s always been a fact that Obi-Wan is older than herself and her master. It’s never bothered Ahsoka before--until now. To know he’s been alone--without them, at least--for so long? The clones are all artificially aged to be around Obi-Wan’s age, maybe a little younger. It’s easy for Ahsoka to forget they haven’t been around forever, that Cody hasn’t been one step behind his general every day of both their lives. It turns her stomach.

“Answer the question!” Anakin all but demands.

Obi-Wan’s hand falls from his face and for a second Ahsoka can detect something stricken in the Force before his expression smooths over into an artificial calm. “It’s really not--”

“No.” Cody says. It’s all he can seem to get out. Ahsoka tries not to flinch at the darkening mood in the Force and reaches out to loosely grip Cody’s wrist. After a moment, he turns his hand over and offers her his palm as Obi-Wan begins, reluctantly, to speak. Ahsoka takes it.

Obi-Wan bites his lip when he tells them about being sent away from the temple.

It rocks Ahsoka to her core when he speaks about the situation on Bandomeer, even more so with the revelation that he nearly wasn’t a Jedi. A Jedi Order without Obi-Wan Kenobi? A Council without his guidance? A GAR without the Negotiator?

Her lineage without his support?

“You had to fight a Hutt without anyone to help you.” Anakin sounds more choked than he did before. Ahsoka wishes she could reach out and soothe him in the Force, but she’s doing her best to keep her shields up. The Force knows how Master Obi-Wan is feeling right now.

“Master Qui-Gon helped me when he could,” Obi-Wan assures. His voice isn't as steady as she’s used to, but he carries on admirably. It makes Ahsoka wonder how long it took him to perfect his sabacc face. Her heart twists in her chest. “He’s also the reason I only spent a few weeks in the mines--I was fitted with a Force-inhibiting collar, you see, so I had to have help navigating my way out with the rest of the--” He cuts himself off. It takes a minute for the gears to turn in her head, for Ahsoka to realize he doesn’t intend to continue.

“The?” Rex prompts, face and tone bleak. “The miners?”

Obi-Wan actually does wince now. “The slaves.”

“It was a bomb collar,” Anakin says. "You were fitted with a bomb collar." His face is blank until Obi-Wan nods, at which point his expression seems to crumple in on itself. Anakin puts his head between his knees and breathes loudly through his mouth. Obi-Wan pauses and refuses to go on until Anakin raises his head and glares her grandmaster into submission. In the back of her mind, in the only small corner not screaming in horror, Ahsoka hopes one day she’ll be able to cow her own master like that.

She regrets the thought as soon as Obi-Wan speaks, quiet and too soft into the dead silence of the air around them, about Melida/Daan. “They were just children,” Obi-Wan whispers. His hands clench and unclench on his thighs and it is all Ahsoka can do not to let go of Cody’s fingers and throw her arms around him. “I couldn’t leave them behind, even if it cost me my place among the Jedi. They had no one else to turn to. You must understand?”

It explains so much of his file--parts of it are redacted, too early in his apprenticeship to signal anything but disaster, and he’s reported too many times to the Halls of Healing--too many times he’s had to be carried in. If Ahsoka had the same medical record her grandmaster does, she’d have to get herself grievously injured on every other mission, and she’s grown up in a Force forsaken warzone.

She’s positive she doesn’t want to hear the rest.

Ahsoka isn’t sure how long it has been when Obi-Wan’s voice peters out soon after his explanation of Cerasi’s sacrifice on his behalf (and Force, did everyone Obi-Wan ever loved have to keep dying in his arms, it’s so disgusting, it’s awful, how could this happen so much to just one person, to someone she loves--). After a long moment of quiet, Ahsoka finds the strength, herculean as it is, to lift her gaze from where it has been fixed on her knees. Her grandmaster stares into middle space just the same as her, and his face is as she has never seen it before--stone cold, closed off and unwelcoming. It’s sort of like when Skyguy gets into one of his moods.

Speaking of Skyguy, he doesn’t seem to be faring much better; his head is between his knees again but his hands, like Rex’s beside him, are clenched into fists. He’s shaking so hard she can see it from across the room. Ahsoka realizes that at some point Cody let go of her own hand, and glances around to see him clenching his bucket on his knees fit to crush it between his very human palms.

Then her grandmaster draws himself up into a proper sitting position and sighs, a light puff of air that Ahsoka has come to learn is his way of reorienting himself. “It worked out in the end. Qui-Gon came back for me when I called and was able to help bring balance to the planet--something I couldn’t have done alone. I was admitted back into the Order as his apprentice and then--” Obi-Wan’s lips twitch into a sardonic smile. “Well, nothing much happened until we went to Mandalore, but you know just about as much as I am willing to tell you about that experience.”

The attempt at humor falls a little too flat.

“You never told us.” Anakin’s words pierce directly into Ahsoka’s heart; she can’t imagine what they do to his master. That stricken feeling flits through the Force again before Obi-Wan can wrangle it again. At least it gets Anakin to look up. He looks torn, agonized, pained, but repeats, unsteady, “You never told us.”

“The past is not an easy thing for me to speak of.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

Anakin’s eyes spark with heat. She can’t see much of Obi-Wan’s face from here when he turns his head, just enough to know they’re having one of their silent conversations. Those have become few and far between, of late. It’s almost a comfort to see.

“You were my padawan.” Obi-Wan says slowly, like he’s formulating his words as he thinks of them. Ahsoka herself feels drained, empty, a husk--she can’t imagine how he must feel right now. “Ahsoka is my grandpadawan. Rex and Cody are my subordinates. It’s incredibly inappropriate, not to mention irresponsible and near abusive, to unload such traumatic, personal stories upon those who cannot legally or knowingly consent--”

“Sir, permission to speak freely?” Cody doesn’t wait for more than a surprised, dry laugh, before he says, “That is absolutely the biggest crock of bantha fodder I’ve ever heard.”

“Perhaps. That does not mean it is not true. I should not have even told you now--I just don’t want you to find out from some clinical diagnosis instead. You all deserve better.”

“Oh, I have no doubt you believe everything you just said, even that kark you just spewed. It’s just horrifying to know you think it.” Cody’s grip relaxes on his helmet with no little effort. He breathes in through his nose, out through his mouth once, and then opens his eyes and nods decisively first to Rex, who nods back, and then to Obi-Wan, who looks puzzled. “But we’re here to help, Sir. No matter what.”

Obi-Wan’s smile pulls a little wider. “Even if I don’t want it, hm?”

“Especially then,” Rex agrees. “Right, General? Commander?”

“Of course.” Ahsoka says, the words struggling so much to stampede out of her mouth that they trip over themselves.

“Always.” Anakin croaks. He’s the first to scramble to his feet as his master rises. He’s the first to throw himself at Obi-Wan. He’s the first to wrap him in an embrace that lasts maybe a bit longer than Master Kenobi’s sense of decorum would prefer. (Not that she sees her grandmaster complaining, of course.)

Anakin is not the last.

Rex settles for a nod and a clap on the shoulder. It’s only his position closer to Skyguy and Obi-Wan that gets her captain there before his commander; Ahsoka shoves him bodily out of the way and wraps her arms as tight as she can around Obi-Wan’s middle. Her skin itches and her muscles flex with the need to squeeze the sadness, the pain, the terrible past right out of him, even if she knows that’s silly. She tries anyway. Subtly, of course. Obi-Wan holds her back, just as he held Anakin before her, warm and all-encompassing and so safe. (Now she knows why. Now she knows he needs to feel that she and her master before her and every youngling after them is safe, that they are protected against a world that threatened to swallow him up and spit out his bones.)

Cody is last, stepping up to his general as Ahsoka pulls away reluctantly. He holds out a hand and Obi-Wan, without missing a beat (although his eyes are a little misty, but so are Ahsoka’s, and Anakin's, and Rex’s), grips his commander’s forearm. He goes very still when Cody pulls him into a keldabe. Ahsoka turns her eyes away when he lets out a trembling breath. Cody speaks, but his rumbling tone is too low for Ahsoka to pick out words. It’s alright, though; they aren’t for her.

“Mishuk gotal'u meshuroke, pako kyore.” Cody murmurs, slightly louder. Obi-Wan scoffs quietly and Ahsoka turns her head just in time to see Cody smirk back, pull away, and shake Obi-Wan’s arm, just a little, friendly, familiar. It makes the clawing, cloying thing in her chest that has grown throughout the evening finally ease. Skyguy wraps an arm around her, guiding them both out of the cargo hold and back to their quarters. He’s got the right idea--she’s very tired now.

Before the door closes behind Rex as they step outside, she hears Cody’s last words to Obi-Wan and wonders what they mean.

“ Aliit ori'shya tal'din.”

The Force is noticeably lighter when Ahsoka wakes in the morning.

[ponds-of-ink]

My P e r s o n a l Rough William Afton Timeline - Part 1 (Human Years)

Disclaimer: This is all speculative backstory built up from the SB therapy tapes as well as random points in the main FNAF lore. I am not solving any of it, but just saying “Hey, maybe this is how we got here”. Also, this is very long and packed with what-if info in a “No, Tumblr, we die like men” style. Get ready, it’s gonna be a bumpy plot-holed ride.

-

Late 1940s: Two people (Bill Afton + [REDACTED]) wed in some small town in Midwest America. They settle into their new home, get their newlywed lives in order, then prepare for their little bundle of joy down the line.

Early 1950s: William “Bill” Afton Jr. is born on [REDACTED]. He grows up relatively normally, even though his Londoner accent has been giving him a hard time at school. But, as long as the family was happy and his books were in reach, then he was fine.

Circa Late 1959 and/or 1960: Unfortunately, it wasn’t meant to last. Rising tension grew within the Afton household, culminating in a rather physical fight between Bill and [REDACTED]. Ready to defend his family, a BB-Gun-wielding Will encountered his mother hobbling out her bedroom with her hand on her chest. He could hear her fuming about Bill “dying of shame” for what he did before she passed out nearby. Thankfully, she managed to live another day. Unfortunately…

1960-ish: This resulted in a custody case spanning several days. Being a witness to the outcome, William was told to lie about his mother’s emotional stability at the time (though he knew she was okay, according to his standards) by his father. Will, not knowing the far-reaching consequences at the time, followed through reluctantly. Bill won soon the case.

1960, a little bit after: Thanks to this, [REDACTED] disappeared. Will almost called the police about it, but a quick peek in the obituary stopped him short. She died, though it wasn’t stated exactly how. In tears, he told Bill as soon as possible. This led to the promise that sealed this boy’s fate: To not breathe a word of what really happened at the scene or the custody case. If he did… Well, bad things could happen.

Mid-1960s to Early 1970s: Will keeps this promise all while going through his preteen and teen years. He still grew up well-adjusted, but he became more secluded than before (definitely not trusting his dad as much. Oof). More days spent studying and less time exercising his creative abilities. Well… All right, apart from that one time he auditioned for clown college in his late teens. But, since he got rejected, it probably shouldn’t really count for anything… Right?

Mid-1970s: Now around college age, he enrolls for a Business Degree in one of Utah’s universities. He finally says goodbye to his father and moves to Utah to be close to his new school. Soon, he encountered Henry Emily, a talented mechanic with a penchant for making animatronics. Fascinated by the idea, William decides to help Henry with his newest innovation: Springlock suits. Fredbear as a concept is made around this time.

Also Mid-1970s: One late night, Henry discovers that William is actually rather good at acting despite not enrolling in theater. Wanting to put this to good use, he comes up with a character to go along with the newly-created Fredbear: Springy, named after the suits he helped make. William, sensing an opportunity with the name, suggests that Springy could be a rabbit instead of another bear. Why was Springy lengthened to Spring-Bonnie? That… I don’t know. Maybe as a tribute to his mother, whose name was Bonnie? Idk.

Late 1970s: It was around this time that he met his future wife, who I’ll call “Justine” until we figure out her real name. They met while she was doing some ballet at that same college. It took a bit of time, but Justine and William grew to have a deep bond. So much so that, as soon as they both graduated, they married. And, a couple years apart, they have two baby boys: Michael and “Evan” (who’ll be referred to as such until we learn something different).

Early 1980: Fredbear’s Family Diner begins as a concept, along with some new tests being made. It was also around this time that William finally felt that he could trust someone enough to break his promise. So, he told both Justine and Henry about what happened. However, due to how tense his last encounter with his father was, William decides it would be best to not bring it up with Mike and his baby brother until they’re old enough.

1982 - Very Early 1983: Much to William and Justine’s surprise, they end up having another baby. This time, a girl named Elizabeth. However, due to complications, she had to spend some time in the hospital for a bit. This meant that the room that they had to leave her newly-furnished room unused for a bit. Also, on top of this, Fredbear’s Diner is under construction along with a television show. Needless to say, Will’s swamped… Much to his own chagrin. How can he get Evan to stop being afraid of the new bots without having to use his dad’s old tactics…? 

Early to Mid? 1983: Fredbear’s Diner finally opens. William starts using one of the prototype Fredbear plushies as a way to how poor Evan’s doing while he’s at work. Unfortunately, due to Michael’s growing frustration about his dad’s (unintentional) neglect, an incident happens that rocks William’s mind. One that is steeped in unfortunate infamy: The Fredbear Bite.

Post-Bite of 1983: The death of Evan takes a heavy toll on William. Not wanting to go down the old “not a word about this” route, he sends Michael to a boarding school outside of Hurricane. His wife either dies (or leaves, given what little we know) shortly after, rendering him alone once again. It is at this point that he resigns from Fredbear’s on leave, which turns out to be a great idea in the long run. He gets jealous of Henry and Fredbear’s growing success without him, but tries to not bring it up when Henry’s around. Conflict is a pain for Will to inflict, y’see.

May 13th, 1983 - In a fit of nostalgic grief, Will decides to visit Fredbear’s and see how it’s doing. This one idea somehow leads to the death of Charlie Emily, his business partner’s young daughter. Now realizing what he’s done, William panics and leaves her outside in the rain. He tells Henry that someone hurt Charlie, which prompts a hurried investigation. When they go back outside, the body’s gone.

Late 1983 to 1985 - Henry resigns, giving the restaurant to new management. William, meanwhile, decides it’s time to change some life choices. He slims down, trains himself to have a more American accident when needed, then tries to raise Elizabeth on his own. It is at this time that he discovers remnant and hatches a plan. His self-assurance of “putting Evan back together” may not be as metaphorical as he once thought… Maybe, if he pulled a Frankenstein without stitching up a body…

1985 to 1987:  Disguising himself as both “Utah-native” Dave Miller and good ol’ Spring-Bonnie, William conducts the infamous Missing Children Incidents at a new Freddy’s Location. One by one, all five known kids go down. Whether or not he’s done more is known to Afton and Afton alone. Whatever the body count, all he thinks is that—if there are ghosts of those kids— that they’ll be haunting in the traditional sense. Just wandering around and controlling random objects. 

1987: Another infamous bite takes place, shutting this Freddy’s down for good. It’s also here that “Dave Miller” is caught and finally reported, but is let go due to lack of evidence. Fearing for his life (and his reputation by his father), William returns to his roots and goes back into business under Afton Robotics. This time, however, he has an ulterior motive.

Early 1990: After some hard developments, Afton Robotics presents its new rival restaurant for Freddy’s: Circus Baby’s Pizza World. With Freddy’s going under, William’s sure to rake in both cash as well as remnant. However… Something doesn’t sit right with him. Maybe it’s guilt that the remains of Fredbear’s might’ve been caused by him. Maybe it’s the growing anxiety of Elizabeth getting too close to the scooper-ready Circus Baby. Maybe he’s just missing his wife, even though he’s made a fitting tribute through Ballora. It could even be his conscience screaming about the dead kids, for all he knows. Whatever it is, it only gets worse when another accident happens. This time, he can only blame his negligence for this.

1993: Circus Baby’s has now been shut down twice, only to be converted into a rental service. Its once-owner has now vanished from the public eye. William spirals in the private confines of his own home, absolutely crushed by the idea that Elizabeth’s soul must be roaming around in some dimension— unable to move around. Guilt seizes him, refusing to let go until he makes up his mind: He must stop all of this. Get rid of the evidence, then possibly himself.

December 1993: A break-in is reported among the lingering staff of the original Fazbear Entertainment company. A lanky figure, covered in shadows, broke in and practically dismantled the main four animatronics. Then, after a quick rest, he was somehow cornered by unseen enemies before putting on a retired Springlock suit. Multiple, simultaneous costume failures happened thanks to… well, a number of reasons. Water damage, improper placements, too much movement, etc. Unfortunately, a mere scream or shadowy image isn’t enough to prove the identity. So, they chalk it up to a disgruntled employee and leave it be. Little do they realize that they were both right and wrong at the same time…

[infinitefandomimagines]

I Can’t Lose You - Poe Dameron x Reader

-

WARNINGS: RISE OF SKYWALKER SPOILERS, MENTIONS OF DEATH, MENTIONS OF TORTURE, ANGST, BLOOD, YELLING

REQUEST: @lookinsidemyhead could I maybe ask for a Star Wars imagine? Like a poexfem!reader Maybe like instead of chewie being captured it was the reader and when they rescue her she’s a little out it from the torture in the interrogation room. angst with happy ending bc they escape

+

A poe dameron tros x reader where reader gets captured with chewy and poe rescues her, lots of angsty poe after losing reader because he thinks she's dead, then fluff when they reunite

-

The only thing that could pull the team's stunned gazes from the fiery explosion of the First Order ship was Poe's horrifying scream. The way your name ripped through his throat made Finn's heart stop and his blood run cold.

Poe took no caution in his efforts to make his way down from the rocky structure their getaway ship stood perched on, slipping and nearly falling more than once.

His heels kicked up sand as he sprinted towards the wrecked ship and Rey, who still stood frozen as the realization of what she'd just done dawned on her. Finn had to stop Poe from running straight to her, he'd never hurt Rey, but after what just happened he definitely wasn't thinking straight.

Finn wrapped his arms around his friend, holding him back and restricting his movement as he struggled to get free.

"What did you do?" Poe yelled at Rey, the high pitched crack in his voice was enough to send daggers through anyone listening's heart. Poe never stopped struggling to break free from Finn's grasp, and it was getting to the point where he just might succeed.

"Chewie I need some help down here!" Finn called up to the Wookie. There was no way he could get Poe to the ship himself, not when he was like this.

"Poe we need to go!" Finn yelled as he tried to pull Poe towards the ship, knowing if they stayed any longer your life wouldn't be the only fatality.

"No! No, I can't leave her!"

"She's gone, Poe. There's nothing we can-"

Finn stopped short as Poe finally broke free from his grasp. However, he didn't get very far, Chewie had made it down just in time to grab him.

"Chewie!" Finn yelled out, "Get him to the ship we need to get out of here! Rey come on!" Poe tried to fight his way out again, but the Wookie was too strong, forcibly pulling him back to the ship. He didn't stop fighting until Chewie released him once the ship had taken off with everyone safely inside.

There was a heavy tension in the air, nobody knew what to say. It's like they were just waiting for Poe to lash out like he usually did when he was upset, but he didn't. The burst of yelling and cursing the team was anxiously waiting for never came. Instead, he simply collapsed onto a storage box and with his head in his hands, he sobbed.

Finn watched his best friend, one who usually stood so strong and fiery, completely fall apart. Rey's heart ached in a way she didn't know it could, the thought that she'd caused this haunting her mind.

BB-8 slowly rolled over to Poe, letting out a series of confused beeps. "She's gone, buddy," Poe said in a broken voice. The small droid let out a high pitched whine mixed with sad beeps.

"This can't be for nothing," Finn finally spoke up, his voice soft as he struggled to speak through his own tears. "We can't let her die for nothing."

"She had the dagger with her, and without that. . ." Rey's voice was grim.

"So true, the inscription lives only in my memory now," C-3PO spoke up. All heads turned towards the droid. "Hang on, the inscription from the dagger is in your memory?" Finn asked.

"Yes master Finn, but the translation from a forbidden language cannot be retrieved, that is short of a complete redactive memory bypass. It is an extremely dangerous procedure usually performed by criminals."

"Alright, how do we do that?" Finn asked as if there was no question as to what the next step was.

"I know a black market droidsmith," Poe finally spoke up, his eyes glazed over and red. "He's on Kijimi." Poe didn't like the idea of going to Kijimi, but he didn't like the idea of you dying for nothing more.

"For Y/N," Finn said, giving Poe's shoulder a squeeze. "Yeah, for Y/N," Poe repeated, the sound of your name leaving a sad and bitter taste in his mouth.

-

Kijimi went just about how Poe thought it would. They had a rocky start, but in the end, they were able to retrieve the inscription from C-3PO's memory.

The droid's eyes glowed an ominous red as it recited the location to the Wayfinder.

"The Endor system? Where the last war ended?" Finn asked. No one had the opportunity to answer him as the entire building started shaking. Everyone shared concerned looks, but it was Rey who was the first to run outside to see what was causing the commotion.

"Ren's destroyer," she announced, looking up at the large, menacing ship. "He's here?" Finn asked, looking up at her. But Rey didn't answer, it seemed as though her entire body had gone stiff. "Y/N. . ." She spoke softly, but loud enough for Finn and Poe to hear.

"What about her?" Poe asked bitterly, your name sending a dagger through his heart.

"She's alive, she's on that ship," Rey turned around to face her friends.

"What?" Poe whispered, his voice cracking slightly. Tears stung the back of his eyes, but this time the tears weren't ones of sorrow. He felt a small glimmer of hope bubble up inside of him. He no longer slouched, his back straightening up and shoulders rolling back, Rey's words bringing a new light to his eyes.

"How is that possible?" Finn questioned.

"She must have been on a different transport," Rey spoke, her words still laced with disbelief.

"We have to go get her," Poe said eagerly, grabbing his things and looking around at the group. Everyone nodded in agreement, all except C-3PO, who sat confused, his only thought being to introduce himself.

"Yeah, that's gonna be a problem," Poe muttered, a little annoyed at their situation, but not even C-3PO's lost memory could damage his spirits. His head already fantasizing about seeing you again, creating multiple scenarios in his head.

Once everyone was ready, they rushed from Zorii's hideout, the girl following them just to be sure they made it to their ship.

"Thank you," Poe rushed out to Zorii once they'd reached their ship. He didn't plan on waiting for a response, but a grip on his forearm stopped him dead in his tracks. "Poe-" Zorii spoke up, only to be cut short.

"I'm sorry, I have to go, but you can come with us," He offered. Though his feelings for his past relationship were gone, he still cared about Zorii as a friend and leaving her behind just felt wrong. But Zorii shook her head, "I can't," she answered sadly, "But take this, it'll grant you passage to Ren's ship."

Poe stared at the shiny medallion, "I can't, it's yours-"

"Anyone two eyes and half a brain can see how much you care about this girl, it's worth more to you than it is to me."

Poe paused before lifting his hands and gently taking the medallion from Zorii, "Thank you," he breathed out, wrapping Zorii in a tight embrace. "You have no idea how much this means to me."

Zorii chuckled a bit as she returned the hug before lightly pushing Poe towards his ship, "Now go, save your girl and win the war."

Poe nodded, mumbling one more 'thank you' before boarding the ship with the others.

-

Getting inside Ren's destroyer had been easier than anticipated, especially with the held of the medallion. However, searching the maze of a ship deemed a difficult task. It seemed as though with each hall they turned down there were more and more stormtroopers.

The next corner they turned no one had their blasters at the ready. Rey quickly jumped in front of Finn and Poe, waving her hand in front of the stormtroopers, "It is okay that we are here," she rushed out.

"It is okay that you're here," one of the troopers repeated.

"You're relieved that we're here."

"Oh thank God you're here," The trooper's shoulders relaxed and he lowered his blaster to his side, as did the other.

"Does she do that to us?" Poe asked, a little confused as to what exactly just happened. Rey just ignored him, instead, she asked the troopers for where you were being held, which they gladly provided.

It was a mad dash to the room you were in, the name of the room being "Interrogation room #6" worrying him.

At some point, Rey ran off on her own, but when Finn tried to follow her Poe gripped his arm, "We need to find Y/N, Rey can handle herself." Chewie howled in agreement with Poe, and Finn knew better than to argue with his friends.

It didn't take long to reach the room you were being held in and even less to shoot the lock on the door and bust in. Poe winced as he entered the familiar room, the dark lighting and metal chair-like structure sending painful memories of his time spent being tortured by Kylo Ren. He didn't even want to imagine what you must have been through, though sadly he could.

Poe quickly shook all thoughts that plagued his mind, you were the only thing that mattered right now. Nothing else. He approached the chair slowly, scared that what he finds might not be what he hoped for.

His heart sank when he saw your unconscious form strapped down to the chair by restraints. A bruise had already formed on the left side of your face, just over your cheekbone. There was a bloody cut that stretched across your right temple which was beginning to form its own bruise, and a trail of blood trickled down and dripped onto your shirt from your nose. Your chest moved up and down slowly as you took in shallow breaths. Poe didn't even want to imagine what the parts of you he couldn't see looked like.

Poe gently placed his shaking hands on either side of your cheeks, cupping your face. The pad of his thumb lightly brushed over you bruise, examining it. "Y/N," he spoke softly, "Y/N, baby please wake up."

Your entire body suddenly tensed up as your struggled against your restraints, prompting Poe to quickly pull his hands away from you, terrified he hurt you.

"No, please. . ." You mumbled, not fully awake, your eyes screwed shut. "Please. . . Don't."

"We need to get her out of these restraints," Poe instructed, trying his best to hide the panic in his voice. Chewie let out a wail, pressing a red button on the wall adjacent to the chair. There was a hissing sound followed by a click as your restraints popped open.

You blinked your eyes a bit at the noise and sudden release of pressure on your wrists and ankles. A familiar face came into view as you blinked away the hazy glaze from your eyes.

"Poe?" You whispered, not quite sure if Kylo Ren was playing tricks on your mind again or not.

"It's me, baby, you're okay." He said, helping you out of the metal chair and pulling you into his arms. One arm wrapped around your waist as the other held the back of your head, your cheeks resting against his chest. You winced as he accidentally pressed against your bruised ribcage, but in all honesty, you didn't care. You were just relieved to be back in his arms, and Poe was more than happy to have you there.

"I'm so sorry," he mumbled into your hair, "I shouldn't have let you go out there alone."

"It's not your fault, you couldn't have known."

"Guys I really hate to break up the moment, but we gotta go!" Finn rushed out, earning a bellow of agreement from Chewie.

"Yeah. Yeah, okay," Poe said, pulling away from the embrace. "Can you walk?"

You nodded, however as soon as you took the first step forward your head started spinning and your vision blurred. You quickly reached out and gripped Poe's arm to stop yourself from losing balance. Poe instinctively caught you, holding up the majority of your weight.

"Chewie!" Poe called out, gesturing to you. The Wookie swiftly placed your arm around his waist, and wrapped a furry arm around your back and under your arm, holding you up.

Poe and Finn walked ahead of you, blasters at the ready, inspecting each hallway for hostiles. You limped behind them, Chewie helping you walk by holding you upright.

And after Poe being shot, all four of you nearly being executed, only to be saved by an unlikely ally, you made it to the Millennium Falcon.

Chewie gently set you down on the small cot in Poe's quarters while Finn rushed to the cockpit, trying his best to remember everything Poe had taught him about flying. Chewie soon joined him, helping him get the Falcon in the air so they could go find Rey.

Poe stayed with you in his quarters, sorting through a med pack to find supplies to bandage and clean your wounds. A soft groan escaped your throat as the ship took a sharp turn, harshly shaking the cot you were laying on, sending a wave of pain through your body.

Poe wet a cloth and started dabbing at the dried blood on your temple. You let out a hiss as the sudden contact stung. Poe slipped his free hand into yours, attempting to provide any form of comfort he could.

"What did they do to you?" Poe asked as he moved to clean the blood from under your nose. The question wasn't directed towards you, more of Poe just thinking out loud. However, his question still sent a chill up your spine as you began to replay the horrible things Kylo Ren and his minions did to get information out of you. You were able to refrain from giving them anything up until Kylo Ren used the force to crawl around in your mind. The pain was indescribable.

"Hey, it's okay," Poe comforted, stopping what he was doing. He'd noticed the grimace on your face and how you tensed up when he brought up his question. "You're safe, he can't hurt you."

You nodded weakly, waiting for the horrible thoughts to pass as Poe got back to work.

Poe worked quickly to clean and bandage your wounds, finishing up a matter of minutes. While he packed up the medical kit, you attempted to sit up, but the action proved to be a bit more painful than you anticipated. You inhaled sharply as a sharp pain exploded from your side, your hand instinctively flew to your bruised ribcage, holding it as if that would help the pain subside.

"Here, let me help," Poe said softly when he noticed your struggle. He placed a hand on your back and the other lightly grabbed your arm as he pulled you to a sitting position on the edge of the bed. Your hand still clutched your side as you squeezed your eyes shut, waiting for the pain to dissipate.

The bed sank beside you as Poe took a seat beside you, his hand rubbing comforting circle in your back. You leaned into him, resting your forehead on his shoulder.

"Do you want something for the pain," he asked, there was a bit of tension in his voice as he tried to hold back tears, he hated seeing you in so much pain. "No, it'll pass. I'm fine." And eventually, it did, leaving you relieved and a bit more cautious about how you moved.

You lifted your head from Poe's shoulder, your eyes meeting his. A soft smile graced his lips and his hand moved from your back to your neck, his thumb resting on your jaw. "I thought I'd lost you," he said in a shaky voice, tears threatening to spill. "And it made me realize you're the one thing I can't live without."

You wrapped your fingers around Poe's arm, just below his wrist, rubbing small circles in the back of his hand with the pad of your thumb.

"I can't lose you," his voice cracked as his eyes glazed over with tears.

"You won't, I promise," you confirmed.

Poe pulled you into him, gently pressing his lips to yours. His hand slid down from your neck to your waist, his other hand finding it's way to your hip. He pulled you into his lap, breaking the kiss to fully envelop you in a hug, careful not to touch your bruised side. One arm kept hold of your waist while the other crossed your back, his hand placed on your shoulder. Poe rested his head in the crook of your neck, holding you close.

You rested a hand on his back while the other held the back of his head. You lightly ran your fingers through his messy curls.

You let out a sigh of content, finally feeling at ease being in Poe's arms. "I'm right here, I'm not going anywhere."

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@gracielou0518 @booklove103

[real-jaune-isms]

RWBY Volume 7 Chapter 7 Rundown

This episode was not as stressful and tense as the last... it was just kinda depressing. But I felt better at the end of the chapter than I did at the beginning, which is a good thing.

Much like how last episode started with the aftermath of the rioting over SDC layoffs, this begins with the Grimm attack following Jacques’ election and Tyrian’s killing spree being pretty much over. I had expected it to be a much bigger deal, honestly. But shows what I know. The worst Mantle has ever seen is yet to come.

It starts with somber music on a somber scene: Penny sitting sadly and in deep self doubt back in her father’s Altas lab as she gets a small sign of reassurance and comfort, that being a mechanized arm probably used mostly for maintenance patting her on the head. Other than that, she’s all alone and she definitely feels it.

Ironwood is now in full paranoia mode and has enforced a curfew for everyone in Mantle. No one is allowed to be out at night without good reason, and no one may gather in assembly for any reason. It’s incredibly restricting, but it’s all he can think to do to keep people from grouping up in any place they might get attacked again. At least, that’s the only logic I could think to gather from it. As airships patrol overhead, we see that the thirsty mom who gave Jaune the casserole two episodes ago is still alive with her child, though still very much afraid. Unfortunately... they were some of the lucky ones. We see two of the little kids Jaune helped cross the street hiding from Atlas soldiers behind a dumpster. I can only assume it was their mothers who were slain by Tyrian, and now they may go hungry on the streets or maybe don’t know how to get home. It’s incredibly depressing and upsetting... 

Two people walking the streets are chased by soldiers just for being out late, and a newscast says that despite a public statement about the killer footage of Penny being faked people still think she’s a danger to society and should be shut down. With the rush of a truck in front of our view, we cut to a thrilling scene that lifts our spirits a little. As a supply van, the same sort we saw Ruby, Marrow, Qrow and Penny riding in a few episodes back, drives through the city we see some figures giving chase from the roofs. Familiar figures. Then another welcome face stands in from of the truck and makes it stop. It’s the new FNDM favorite, May Marigold!!! When the robot drivers tell her to step aside, that gets the attention of patrolling soldiers down the block. When they round the corner... there’s nothing there. Not even the truck! Turns out it was May whose Semblance was keeping her and Joanna invisible when they approached the other truck in their first appearance. And even more good news, dear Fiona has made a full recovery! And it turns out her Semblance is really amazing. She just places a hand on the van and the entire thing dissolves into dust as if being sucked into her palm. How exactly it works we don’t know, but it reminds me of Blackbeard from One Piece and his ability to create black holes to absorb anything he touches and save it for later. In this instance it’s a very useful way to take all the contents of the truck without taking up much room. 

Unfortunately it’s also really bad news for Ironwood because now Robyn is officially breaking the law and adding even more trouble to the situation of Penny being framed for a massacre and Jacques getting a position of governmental power. And Winter prompts even worse news out of him. Because of Robyn’s new habit of hitting up supply trucks to redistribute the materials to where the city most needs them, the Mantle suppliers have gotten bold are refusing to supply until conditions improve. So there will be no more deliveries to the Amity Project, no more progress. It’s been stalled completely, so close to the finish line. Nobody likes that. The only solution Winter offers is an even worse prospect though: declaring martial law to make every business obey military demands. And much to Nora’s quite vocal dismay, Ironwood is willing to take that path. He sees the big picture first and foremost and it’s blinded him to how important it is to address how awful the problems are here and now. Global communication? Or keeping their equivalent of a ghetto in good enough shape that the people can sleep safely at night and stop complaining to him? He said before he doesn’t care about his public image being ruined, but if this is what it means to ignore the defamation and bad press then maybe he should?

Nora is having NONE of his bullshit. He’s trivializing the lives and safety of hundreds of people. Saying they have to wait a little longer for things to start getting better is easy to say from the tallest and safest building, in the richest Kingdom ON THE ENTIRE PLANET!!! He doesn’t have to hide in the dark wet streets unsure of where the next safe place to sleep or thing to eat will come from, not knowing if he will be found and eaten by Grimm or arrested by the military just because he wasn’t where they want him to be. He doesn’t know what it’s like to be the little guy. Nora, we can mostly certainly have guessed by the condition she was in when she met Ren, has. Ironwood claims everyone has had to struggle in these recent times, but he refuses to admit he’s making Mantle bear all of the burden because that’s the easiest path for him with the least direct resistance. Ignoring their pain and keeping on with this game of patience is only making it worse on them, and sending more men to bully and order around more people will only create despair and strife, and they all know damn well that will just be trading the current problems for more Grimm than even they can handle. It’s a staredown, and ultimately Ironwood backs down and takes a seat to contemplate. Ruby is on Nora’s side, this treatment of Mantle isn’t right and is only going to make ripping the peace apart easier for Salem. This is exactly what Tyrian is here to cause.

Which brings up an interesting moment. Clover says the only reason Ren, Nora and Ruby are here is to confirm without a doubt that they saw who they say they did. He pulls up a visual of what’s essentially Tyrian’s rap sheet, and Winter explains that he was one of the worst killers Anima had ever seen who disappeared after he was caught and then let free by a Grimm attack on his prison transport. The info page itself tells a pretty eerie story of his past. The arrest was aided by a huntsman with the last name Pickerel, who insisted there should be more guards for the transport to the point he had to be removed from the mission for obstructing the process. A pickerel is a type of poisonous frog, and Tyrian’s inspiration is said to be the fable of the scorpion who asks a frog to carry him across a river on his back. The frog doesn’t want to for fear he will be stung, but the scorpion assures him he would not because it would only lead to him drowning as well. Yet the scorpion stings the frog anyway, for it is just in his nature to do so, he can’t help it. Poetic, especially since after Tyrian’s escape Pickerel is found dead in his home. Despite Grimm activity in the area of the transport route being minimal shortly before, a distress call came from the pilot that a swarm of Grimm came for the ship as Tyrian was in transit. Despite the ship being split in two within 6 minutes and some people whose names seem to be redacted from the record presumably dying, that same pilot named Cornetto continued to talk over the transmission. And a lot of that was just “What are you?!?!” before he too was killed. The last thing anyone heard from the scene was Tyrian himself seeing his unholy savior Salem for the first time and weeping at her beauty. Quite telling of why he worships her so much.

Ruby and Qrow agree that this is proof he’s here as Salem’s agent to start chaos before a major attack; Atlas is definitely her next target. Unfortunately, Ruby’s hopes that the public can be warned about this dangerous suspect and know who to watch out for instead of Penny are dashed by Clover. No one is gonna like the news that a long lost serial killer is in their streets, it’ll only make things worse so this has to be secret too. Nora? Well she hates that too, she hates ALL the secrets Ironwood is making them keep. Cooperation and appeasing tensions would be so much easier if they could tell people who the enemy is, what Atlas is actually doing to help. But that makes the General the Big Angry. Any info getting out is a disaster in the making. Telling people about the Amity satellite means more opportunity for the enemy to sabotage it, and telling people about Salem means people are going to freak the fuck out sooner than the good guys will be ready for. So secret it must stay and complete the tower must be, though hindsight is kicking us all in the ass because a few words said way sooner would have gone a long way to making the situation better. For now, the General implements a strategy the likes of which haven’t been seen since Kyle Rayner in Infinite Crisis! Arrest Robyn Hill and make her cut a deal so the supplies can start running and the tower can be finished. As you would expect, Nora and Ruby don’t like that plan. But Daddy Ironwood don’t care, he’s on a roll here. Priority #1 is Robyn and anyone not on that case needs to find Tyrian and his accomplice to figure out what their plan is and how they’ve gotten this far. And in full totalitarian leader mode he calls Mantle/Atlas HIS Kingdom. Winter and Clover are of course obediently agreeing, but surprisingly so is Ren.  But it’s not hard to understand why. His village was destroyed by a Grimm that there was a possibility might have been defeated if there was a Huntsman or two there, so of course he has respect for the established power he wishes could have been there in his time of need. Inversely, Nora has very likely been a street urchin in the big cities and seen how poorly they treat the common man so she holds a grudge and wants them to make changes for the better. It’s fascinating character juxtaposition that may very well drive another wedge between them...

But that’s a problem for another time. Now we have the Bees in the back of a truck for one of my favorite scenes this episode, nay this Volume. They’re part of the effort to bring in Robyn, being in a decoy truck while most of the Ace Ops are implied to be in other trucks so they can cast a wide net and no matter which one Robyn decides to ambush she will be met only with opposition. Once a truck gets stopped the others will be alerted and come running as backup, but until then it’s radio silence. And in that quiet comes some time to talk. After all this escalation of force Yang wants to know if Blake thinks they should have told Ironwood the whole truth about Salem and Oz earlier on. Blake can tell that’s what Yang thinks should have happened, and the blonde clarifies that even if she does have faith in her sister she still believes the General deserves to know just like they deserved to. Blake has reason to disagree, since Ironwood’s behavior even without that knowledge shows a paranoia and habit of overreaction that could have been exacerbated by such catastrophic news. He didn’t have many good options to work with, to be fair, but those are in short supply for all of them these days anyway. And these two have had to make more of those choices than most recently, not just the secrets but also killing. Yes, after 7 episodes it’s time for these two to actually talk about killing Adam. Because you don’t just do that without repercussions, without feeling some guilt and remorse. But Yang says it plainly: that was the only option they had in that moment. It was what they had to do. They can feel remorse and guilt about killing, but it was in self defense against an evil person who intended to murder them. Still makes the both of them wonder how far down this path they’ll have to go to keep doing “the right thing”. And one thing is for certain, even if it was what they had to do in that moment Blake wants to make sure they never find themselves in a place where they have to again. 

My mind wanders back to the Adam character short between Volumes 5 and 6. When Blake voiced her concerns and apprehension about what they were doing to Adam and said she wanted to stop hurting people, he chastised and belittled her for not having the strength to do what he insisted they had to. He gaslit her into thinking she was weak and cowardly, that she was an insult to the White Fang like her parents and her way of thinking was invalid. He wanted her to be unwaveringly obedient to him and not think for herself. In stark contrast, when Blake says she doesn’t feel right ambushing a Huntress trying to do good for Mantle... Yang agrees. She admits that’s a valid way to feel and that they don’t have to go through with what they were told if it’s going to make Blake uncomfortable. It’s differences like this, not explicitly stated but evident if you’ve been paying attention all this time, that show how much better a partner Yang is for Blake, romantic or otherwise.

The scene shifts once again to Pietro’s lab where Penny seems to be in a charging stand of some kind while they analyze her personal footage to prove she didn’t kill anyone at the party. Ruby and Weiss are there with them, as is Maria!! Our chaos grandma makes her return after 6 episodes of absence!! Ruby wants to make sure Penny is gonna be okay after how traumatizing being framed must have been, and Pietro assures that she likely will, she’s just scared about how wrong things have gone and how she’s hated and feared now. They can prove her innocence, surely, but they can’t just take away the fear and doubt that are in people’s hearts now. In that sense, Watts has won so far. And that upsets Pietro a lot, since Robyn would be dead if Penny hadn’t been there to try and help. But Ruby sees the truth here, Robyn was never in any real danger. Salem just wanted people to think she was and that Penny was to blame so further division and distrust could be sewn in Atlas and Mistral. Penny stepping in was exactly what they wanted, just as many others had been in Vale two years ago (their time, as best as I can guess). Pietro points out that the similarities don’t run there, since Atlas tech is once again working to the enemy’s advantage since the footage everyone is in a tizzy over uses imagery from all the hero work she did in Mantle so it would take a tech genius with a watchful eye to gather what they would need for this deep fake.

Maria gives a point of levity we were all subconsciously thinking and says she misses the days when people just fought to the death face to face. Thank you for that. Pietro admits the Mantle security system is chump change for the kind of hacker they saw the work of at the Fall of Beacon, but Atlas got the better network protection. And a million IRL I.T. people screamed in frustration that they left the ghetto city with outdated security that could undeniably and inevitably lead to their downfall. Weiss asks the important question, how WOULD someone get access to the Atlas Network? Fortunately, only few people have that clearance: Ironwood and other Council members, the leads of surveilance and cybersecurity, and the overseers of critical city systems like sewage and the heating grid. And there’s where the ball drops: Weiss reveals the heating grid is run in partnership with the Schnee Dust Company. Suddenly everything Watts has been doing becomes much more clear. He wouldn’t have helped Jacques win the election for free, so clearly he asked the SchneeEO for access to the heating grid in exchange, and now that’s his in to mess with the security of Atlas as a whole. And we see what he does with that next episode...

But for now, the heroes don’t know as much as us so for now they’re just a little suspicious. Ruby already knows about Penny so now she asks how Pietro himself is doing, and he admits the stress of both building the tower and worrying about people wanting to hurt Penny would have broken him down if Maria hadn’t been helping him. But we see there are still cracks in his composure as he starts tearing up just looking at her. My heartstrings are tugged every time I see the emotion on this poor man’s face. Ruby tries to reassure him that even if the worst does happen to Penny he can always rebuild her like he did after Beacon... but she doesn’t know the whole story. Penny is one of a kind for a very good reason. And so we get her backstory.

Ironwood initially challenged a team of Atlas’s best and brightest to come up with the next breakthrough in defensive technology, and Pietro was the most creative and introspective with his idea. A protector with all the might of Atlesian innovation, but the indomitable soul of a human. Apparently very few thought the same way he did, but the General believed in the project and so it was chosen. It’s likely that many of the other scientists who had pitched their concepts were transferred to help make Penny whether they believed it could work or not. From the photograph Pietro is holding as he recounts this tale, that includes a certain disgraced Atlesian with a fabulous mustache. We now have a plausible motive for his betrayal and defecting to Salem’s side. Considering his skills being computer hacking and enough cybernetic knowhow to build Tyrian’s tail, he may have had a plan for something akin to Skynet or Dr. Gero’s Androids but his idea got tossed aside for something he felt was ridiculous and beneath him. It does still give him enough experience with the development to know how to hack Penny however, and that does concern me a good deal. What worries me even more is what we learn about how exactly Pietro got the Penny Project to succeed. Everyone thinks he managed to create an artificial Aura for her, but that’s not really accurate... He actually gave her a portion of his own, leaving himself that much weaker. He’s had to do this both times he built her, and he doesn’t have enough life left in him to survive a third time. People complained there were no stakes or risk with Penny if she could be so easily rebuilt without consequence, but that all goes right out the window here. If she gets destroyed again, it will either be permanent or mean Pietro will die for her. Because look at that man. You know he would do it. And we really don’t want him to... As Ruby promises they will find the one responsible for all this trouble we get the “dramatic reveal” that Pietro’s thumb had been covering Watts’ face in the photo... but we had guessed it already.

Scene shift again right back to the streets of Mantle as the Happy Huntresses are striking again at another truck, which as luck would have it is the one with Blake and Yang. Robyn opens the back doors to see the Bees raising their hands in surrender, but she panics and runs anyway, telling the rest of her squad to scatter and regroup back at base. The girls chase Robyn into an alley where there is a very cool shot I can best describe as panning up from the pavement to dolly zoom in on Robyn as she checks over her shoulder. Blake tries to trip her up and then has to dodge bolts from the crossbow on the older woman’s wrist, all the while trying to explain that they just want to talk. But Robyn doesn’t stop to listen, she just slashes with her weapon’s razor sharp sawblade of feathers. Very versatile and transforming weapon there, Miss Hill. Blake uses a fire powered shadow clone to dodge, and Yang strikes from above and tries shooting at Robyn as well. But the feathers make a good shield too, as she further demonstrates when both huntresses start attacking up close and she fends them off pretty well. It takes the Bumblebee technique (yes, I’m sticking to the name, it works well and it’s canon) to send Robyn flying back a bit into a more open area with a kick from the airborne Blake. Robyn tries to intimidate the pair by saying they won’t be enough to take her in to Ironwood, and they openly admit they aren’t the only ones looking for her and their backup will be on their way since the truck got stopped. So they need to talk NOW, because she needs to hear this. She thinks it’s just a stalling tactic, but Blake presses on and reveals the plans for the satellite and the Tower... and Robyn is in disbelief. Yang tries to explain what that would mean, but that’s not what Robyn is so hung up on. So we get another reveal that’s been hinted at for an episode or two, her Semblance. Blake is told to take her hand and answer the question again. And with a green glow of the Aura flowing between them, we see Robyn is a human lie detector. The confirmation of the Tower being Ironwood’s secret project only confuses Robyn more, because surely he could just tell people that’s the plan and there would be no argument it should be done. Blake tells her the people framing Atlas for all the wrongdoing could cause a lot more harm if they knew the Tower was being worked on, but they won’t tell Robyn who those people are yet. She almost calls bullshit on that, but we can’t have swears in this show so Harriet radios Yang to check on her and Blake and Yang cuts the conversation short and says Robyn needs to trust them that the Amity project must stay secret since they trusted her enough to tell her this info. Blake runs off to distract the nearby soldiers long enough for Robyn to get away while Yang lingers to make sure she agrees to their terms. Reluctantly the politician turned vigilante does, but she says she’s still determined to learn the full truth. That strikes a deep chord with Yang since she had that same drive to seek answers from Raven for so long... and now she’s keeping the secret that Raven is the Spring Maiden.

For our final scene we shift to a First Civilization vault from Assassin’s Creed... I mean the Atlas Vault for the Relic of Creation!! Sorry, they look very similar. Ironwood is down there with Oscar explaining that he had hoped seeing this place would jog some of Ozpin’s memories within the lad. Plot twist, the Staff is what’s keeping Atlas floating in the sky, an idea originally pitched by Ozpin. The public story is that it’s Gravity Dust doing that job, but the Staff is a constant seemingly limitless energy source that could in theory lift Atlas higher than they could imagine. And that’s where Ironwood got the idea for doing that to Amity. But they have to use Gravity Dust for that, since the Staff can only do one job at a time. And the sky grows much darker from that sudden foreshadowing... Someone is definitely going to move the Staff or use it for some other purpose, and Atlas is going to fall... Oscar gets a surreal feeling from seeing something so complex that his past incarnation built, but Ironwood assures him that he will soon acclimate to the assimilation... real smooth there Jimmy. Ironwood admits he wishes he could get Ozpin’s advice in a time like this, and since he can’t give that Oscar offers his own opinion. The way Ironwood is handling this, trusting only himself, is only going to hurt him. The General asserts that nothing matters more right now than beating Salem, but Oscar has a counterpoint. Keeping their humanity matters, because it keeps them from becoming like Salem. Ironwood worries that’s Salem’s advantage though, lacking humanity means she’s willing to sacrifice more to achieve her goals and that may end up winning her the war. She may not feel fear or hesitation anymore, while her attack on Beacon brought both those debilitating emotions out of Ironwood as he helplessly watched his robots hurt people and was taunted by her calling card of the Black Queen virus being on all the computer screens. As the elevator comes to bring them up out of the vault, Oscar encourages the General that fear is normal but they shouldn’t let it control them. Ironwood doesn’t want to become like Lionheart, and wants to know if Oscar believes in him. Oscar has the only good answer to a question like that, that he believes in multiple people INCLUDING the General. The best thing Ironwood can do is talk it out with the people he’s afraid of, so he can learn to relax and let others in. But be careful what you wish for, because Winter is waiting up top for them with a letter. Jacques has invited them to a dinner party at Schnee Manor where Ironwood will have to go before the Council and defend his position. Sounds like an excuse to see our heroes back in fancy dress and meet Mama Schnee...

[commentaryvorg]

Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Part 6.8

Be aware that this is not a blind playthrough! This will contain spoilers for the entire game, regardless of the part of the game I’m commenting on. A major focus of this commentary is to talk about all of the hints and foreshadowing of events that are going to happen and facts that are going to be revealed in the future of the story. It is emphatically not intended for someone experiencing the game for their first time.

Last time, as trial 6 began to get crazy, the audience reared their ugly heads but with only vague hints of their terribleness so far, Danganronpa might possibly be on its last legs already, Tsumugi and the audience spent way too long babbling about their fandom while ignoring the actual characters and story they’re supposed to be here for, Flashback Lights had to be able to create the personalities and talents of everyone here because that’s just necessary for this story’s premise, and Tsumugi started insisting this means that nobody here is real in any sense at all, which is utter bullshit that would have been immediately and comprehensively shut down by Kaito’s wonderful convictions and belief if only he were still here.

…But since Kaito’s not here, this is starting to work on Shuichi.

“Akane”:  “Isn’t this what you all wanted!?”

Keebo:  “…We wanted this?”

“Leon”:  “Yeah, you wouldn’t remember, but you guys were all from the outside world.”

Yes, they don’t remember, which means that they never wanted this! Just like how the Gonta who was executed for murder never meaningfully wanted to kill anyone, because he didn’t remember wanting it!

Also, all technicalities aside, Keebo definitely never wanted this, since there was never a previous owner of his body at all.

Pregame Shuichi:  “Number 154… My name is ****”

Pregame Shuichi’s name is redacted here, which suggests that he maybe wasn’t even called Shuichi Saihara. Since they’re creating entirely new characters, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to give them new names as well, after all.

…Except that we the players saw in the prologue that at least Kaede and Shuichi had the same names, so apparently not. But even though it’s kind of awkward that they did keep their names, that’s something else we can just put down to the fact that it had to be this way, otherwise the prologue would have been massive spoilers. As it is, the prologue is designed to reasonably make sense once we learn about how they supposedly wiped their memories of their talents when fleeing the Ultimate Hunt, even though that’s not actually what was going on there after all. If Kaede and Shuichi had had completely different names before the reset, it would have given way too many pointers towards the real truth.

Redacting the auditionees’ names in these recordings, then, rather than being a hint that their names were different, was likely just down to the producers having to protect their identities in case they didn’t get chosen.

These recordings could have been faked by Tsumugi in her lab during this chapter’s investigation, sure, because she’s a freaking shapeshifter and the stupid cospox thing should not be taken as evidence against anything. But if she did that, it would have made more sense for her to not redact the name, to further drive home the idea that this is you, Shuichi, and the person you think you are is just a lie. So the fact that the name is redacted supports the video being real.

Pregame Shuichi:  “I promise, if I get selected… I will work as hard as I can!”

No, if you get selected, you will very quickly stop existing. Did nobody tell you that? It… it seems nobody told them that.

Consider that this season is the first time the fourth wall has ever been broken and the process behind creating characters revealed for everyone to see. Without knowing about that, it’s somewhat reasonable that the audience might not realise that characters are created entirely from scratch each time. They might assume instead that the existing auditionees’ personalities are kept mostly intact and just modified to give them talents. So pregame Shuichi here is expecting to still be himself, just with added super detective powers.

It’s also a little odd that the audience doesn’t wonder why the characters they’ve watched in every Danganronpa series never once mentioned that they’re in Danganronpa. Perhaps the general assumption of the audience is that everyone is always somewhat acting because they want to put on a good show, and that the personalities of the characters they see really are lies to some extent?

Of course, random auditionees can’t necessarily be trusted not to break character (especially not when people are dying), and it certainly wouldn’t make a very good killing game if it were full of people super excited to be in a killing game, since that rather defeats the whole point of them fighting to survive and not kill each other. So obviously all the characters very much do need to be written entirely from scratch.

It is admittedly a little odd that these auditionees explicitly haven’t managed to figure this out. However, the people who’d want to audition would be a very specific subset of people who, A, kind of hate their lives and don’t mind throwing them away to be on Danganronpa, and/or B, probably quite like the idea of killing someone creatively in order to get famous. Anyone who’s already a kind, decent and caring sort of person like the characters who’ve actually been in this killing game (well, most of them) would never want to audition in the first place. So maybe that’s why the auditionees don’t question it, because the kind of person who’d audition is inherently the kind of person who misses the point of what really makes an entertaining killing game?

…I am definitely overthinking this, because as we’re going to see in due time, apparently the entire fucking audience misses the point, meaning that these auditionees are actually no more unrealistic than the rest of those morons out there. Think of this as more of a hypothetical: if the audience had been written better, this is how the auditionees could then be somewhat plausible. Though to be fair it would also be easier to just rewrite these bits to have the auditionees be fully aware that they’ll stop existing if they’re chosen, and/or to still hate their own lives but want to become the kind of heroes triumphing in the face of despair or at least dying for the sake of hope that Danganronpa is supposed to be about.

Pregame Shuichi:  “I will come up with the best, most gruesome murders, I promise! Everyone will love it!”

This should not be what everyone is watching for! Creative murders that make for an interesting puzzle in a class trial, sure, but gruesome murders are emphatically not the point of Danganronpa. If all the audience wanted was to see people dying horribly, there would be no reason to even make it a game and have the class trials! Nor would there be any point in the whole hope-versus-despair thing, which we’re sure going to be fervently told is totally the whole point later on.

Pregame Shuichi:  “And an Ultimate Detective hasn’t been the blackened yet, so I’m sure I can do that!”

It’s honestly kind of surprising none of the writers ever thought of that throughout all fifty-three seasons. And that this didn’t make them think “huh, that would be a novel plot twist, why don’t we do that with this guy?”.

Shuichi:  “… Wh-What… was that…?”

It wasn’t you, Shuichi. It was your body and your voice, but that’s all.

Shuichi:  “N-No… it can’t be! I’d never say something like—”

Monokuma:  “You wouldn’t say that now, but this is you before you became who you are now.”

In other words, it wasn’t him! Monokuma is straight-up agreeing with Shuichi that he wouldn’t say that, because the person in the video was a different person than him! So it doesn’t matter one bit what that creep in the video said. It’s not relevant to the person standing here.

I gather that there’s a proportion of the fandom that believes these videos were faked. Since there’s only the vague possibility of that but no explicit proof of it, I imagine that the biggest reason people believe this is simply out of not wanting to believe the videos are real, because they feel it compromises the characters they love if they were “really” these varying flavours of murdery asshole. I totally understand that feeling – god, the entire story would fall apart if Shuichi, Kaede and Kaito weren’t actually who they seemed to be – but… the videos don’t actually create that issue to begin with. Monokuma outright says here that the people they were before the Flashback Lights are not the same people that they are now. The videos don’t have to be faked for Shuichi and his friends’ characters to not be compromised by them – they never were in the first place.

It’s also relevant that Monokuma is the one to clarify this. While he and Tsumugi have kind of been interchangeable exposition machines for a while, Tsumugi is currently very pointedly trying to make Shuichi and his friends fall into despair by hammering home how fake their existences supposedly are. Since she would never say this, because it’s the complete opposite of what she’s trying to achieve, Monokuma has to be the one to point it out.

Tsumugi:  “When we saw your audition tape, we had a flash of inspiration. The weakest Ultimate Detective ever… Wouldn’t it be great to see him grow?”

I’m really not sure why that audition tape gave them this idea in particular. Sure he seemed a bit awkward, but mostly just creepily murder-happy, which isn’t exactly what you want in a hero. Still, however they got the idea… it was a good call. Shuichi’s character arc has been great.

Of course, they also decided it’d be totally necessary to sacrifice a perfectly good pianist and astronaut for the sake of this storyline. Which was also a great story, but much less intentionally on their part.

Pregame Shuichi:  “You mean… we were selected!?”

Pregame Kaito:  “We got picked!? Really!? Alright!”

Pregame Kaede:  “Wh-Whoa, really!? I’m selected for it, too!?”

We get shown this flashback to what apparently happened in the prologue as soon as they heard the words “killing game”. And yes, sure, we the out-universe audience never saw this part back then – but of course we didn’t. It would have been a gigantic spoiler. The game has not been averse to omitting certain things to prevent spoilers, like it also did with Kaede’s crime. We have precedent for the game lying to us, but only by omission. This is a somewhat bigger lie of omission than for Kaede, but it’s still much more reasonable to accept that the game hid a minute or two of conversation that did happen, rather than that it showed us an entire half-hour or so of events that didn’t happen.

Shuichi:  “We really… said that?”

Shuichi’s response here also suggests he may well have just actually watched footage of this – the game used its usual flashback format to show us this, but that’s just because it’d be the easiest way to do that. If they did see footage of that, it cannot be faked. Tsumugi may be a shapeshifter, but she’s only one person.

“Fuyuhiko”:  “The people you used to be are gone. You’re fictional characters now.”

Yes, they’re gone, so it doesn’t matter what kind of people they were! That video you just showed Shuichi means nothing about who he is now!

“Hiro”:  “So you got nowhere to return! All that stuff’s fiction, too!”

Himiko:  “Th-Then… my friends and family… My whole life before coming here…”

This is a legitimate thing for them to be upset about, though. It’s going to be so weird and difficult for them to come to terms with that as they start living normal lives once they’ve escaped: the idea that everything and everyone they expect to exist out there just doesn’t. They’re essentially going to have to treat it like all those people just died, and grieve for them, because they felt real to them until now.

(Himiko’s still not mentioning her master though and I am sad about that.)

“Mahiru”:  “The only place we fictional characters can live is in this fictional world. Only in this world. Only in Danganronpa.”

Maki:  “Only… in this world?”

Not for you, Maki! The outside world is better for you than the fictional world you thought you came from; there’s nobody forcing you to kill anyone out there! At least learning that her backstory is a lie shouldn’t be so bad for Maki, especially because her best friend who might have been the one person she’d be looking forward to seeing again was already dead. The orphanage doesn’t exist either, but her relationship with the rest of the kids there was probably less personal; at least this means there’s no orphanage of kids who will starve if she doesn’t keep killing people.

Tsumugi:  “You’re all fictional characters created to kill each other. It’s what the world wants. That’s why… there’s nowhere to run.”

This is also a legitimate concern. However real they may actually be, all the assholes out there apparently don’t acknowledge that, so they’ll be escaping into a world that isn’t even going to see them as people.

Himiko:  “E-Enough… I don’t want to know anything else! I’ve had enough!”

Tsumugi:  “Ah! That reaction…!”

“Junko”:  “Could it be… you fell into despair?”

Even if she did, Himiko’s still expressing her pain very openly rather than the empty, listless despair it could have been. Tenko would still be proud of her! …Though how you fall into despair is maybe not the best thing to be proud over.

“Makoto”:  “It’s times like these you need to look to your friends for support.”

“Hifumi”:  “However, all your friends are fictional, too.”

Clearly this isn’t enough despair for Tsumugi yet, though, because she’s about to go for where it really hurts. This is, of course, all bullshit, as their friends are exactly as fictional as they are – that is, not meaningfully fictional at all – but since they’re all dead it’s going to be harder to prove her wrong about that.

“Mikan”:  “For example… even Kaito’s illness was given to him as part of his character.”

In other words: you murdered Kaito, you fucking murderer. You gave him the most slow and painful death that any Danganronpa character has ever had to go through. The fact that him having the illness was scripted does not for a second mean that his pain wasn’t very, very real. Is Tsumugi ever going to properly acknowledge this and take responsibility for his suffering and death? Of course not.

I’m kind of sad that neither Maki nor Shuichi ever properly pick up on this and get appropriately angry at her for doing that to him, now that they know that Kaito’s death wasn’t really the unfortunate but natural death it seemed to be. I suppose it’s because they’re being too shaken by the “not real” bullshit right now to be able to properly hold onto the fact that Kaito’s death still really mattered and is still very worth getting worked up about.

Tsumugi:  “I was the one who came up with that plotline and gave him that virus.”

I mean, sure, you came up with the “Kaito dies from a virus” plotline. The entire delightful character arc that Kaito went through as a result of that? I highly, highly fucking doubt you had even the slightest inkling that any of that would happen.

(Also look at her still not properly admitting that she killed him.)

Tsumugi:  “I was also the one who came up with the plotline where you fell for Kaito.”

Nope. I’m calling complete bullshit on this one.

See, I don’t think Kaito was even necessarily meant to make Maki into his sidekick in the first place. Making Shuichi into his sidekick – sure, that was definitely planned as part of Shuichi’s arc that Tsumugi just mentioned. But Maki seems more to me like her intended purpose in the story, in-universely, was to kill someone because of her tragic backstory as an assassin. She could very easily have been the murderer in chapter 2 if she’d seen her own motive video like they were all supposed to. And while Shuichi is very noticeably weak in the normal sense of the word and therefore someone whom it’s easy to imagine Kaito would want to take under his wing, describing Maki’s problems as “weakness” is a lot less natural. It probably didn’t even occur to the in-universe writers that Maki was weak in the way they’d expect Kaito to do something about. Yet Kaito saw her weakness and chose to help her anyway, because he was more real than they were thinking of him as when they scripted out expected interactions between their planned characters.

So the idea that they’d give Maki an artificial crush on Kaito when they never even should have expected them to interact all that much in the first place seems very unlikely.

Then there’s the part where Maki’s crush on Kaito doesn’t feel artificial and arbitrary at all. Tenko’s crush on Himiko? Now that I can buy was something planned from the start, especially since she had it from the start. She mentions in her FTEs with Kaede that she really admires performers and that’s why she likes Himiko so much, but that alone should have made her even more into Kaede, who behaved much more like a performer than Himiko did at first. So apparently Tenko also just had a particular thing for cute little magical girls, which could therefore very believably have been written into her. But there’s never any sense that Maki was written with an inexplicable thing for larger-than-life space doofuses. And as I talked about with much satisfaction when Maki confessed her feelings, the focus was on the friendship she had with Kaito – the friendship that Tsumugi likely didn’t even expect to happen in the first place. Her feelings grew from that friendship over her time with him and did not exist to begin with – she said she “fell for” him, not that she was always in love with him. So no, Maki’s feelings for Kaito were entirely something that happened on their own and were not planned.

Himiko:  “Then, what about Tenko? Was she always defending me because—”

But even for feelings that were almost certainly scripted, that doesn’t really matter on the whole either. Tenko still genuinely cared about Himiko as a result of her crush, regardless of whether that’s what the writers wanted of her. She didn’t know she was following someone’s script. And Kaito supporting Shuichi may have also been scripted, but that doesn’t invalidate how much he cared either, nor make his support of Shuichi any different to his support of Maki just because one was scripted and one probably wasn’t.

“Kazuichi”:  “Because that was her character. It’s the same for me, too.”

(Excuse me, there was plenty more to Kazuichi’s character than just his pathetic crush on Sonia, please and thank you.)

Maki:  “Y-You’re telling us… this is all a lie? Even… my feelings…? Are you saying even *those* were lies!?”

However, this is really getting to Maki, exactly like Tsumugi wants it to. And this isn’t about Maki having put her romantic feelings on a pedestal and being upset because romantic love is totally superior to platonic love. It’s because, like I talked about back when she confessed, these feelings were supposed to finally be something that was her own. Something she’d come to feel entirely by herself, without anyone else, not even Kaito, telling her to or wanting her to, without anyone moulding her to be this way. But because she’s so used to the idea that all she ever is is a puppet for someone else’s whims, she’s much more liable to believe Tsumugi’s claim without questioning it. She doesn’t have enough confidence in her own feelings yet to be able to try and stand up for them like other people (like especially Kaito himself) would. Turns out nothing was her own after all, her feelings and desires really didn’t ever matter, and she’s only ever going to be controlled by people with far more power than her who don’t care about her at all. This is not specifically about romantic love and is really Maki being hit right in the issues that she’d finally been getting somewhere with.

(Though I kind of doubt Tsumugi realises that she’s targeting Maki’s issues so directly with this. She’s probably just saying this because to her this is all about romantic love which is obviously the most importantest bestest kind of love ever and so Maki must be sooo sad to think it’s all fake, right?)

And if Maki’s feelings towards Kaito had never turned romantic? Tsumugi wouldn’t be able to claim this at all. “Oh, hey, the fact that you see this person as your friend and care about them because of everything they’ve done for you? Yeah, those feelings are fake, they don’t mean anything, I made you feel that way, you don’t really care about them and all the things they did for you at all.” Doesn’t work, does it? Because feelings of friendship cannot come out of nowhere like romantic ones sometimes can. Which is why, in an out-universe sense, Maki’s feelings did need to be partly romantic for this to work. And it’s also why Tsumugi can’t take quite the same approach with Shuichi, even though his friendship with Kaito actually was scripted, because Shuichi’s actual platonic feelings there would have naturally arisen thanks to Kaito’s actions and were therefore very obviously not artificially induced.

Tsumugi:  “Well, if you’re going to call fiction a lie… then yes.”

Fiction is technically a lie in the sense that it’s something untrue, but it’s otherwise quite different from lies in that it’s not meant to deceive anyone. Everyone consuming fiction knows that it’s untrue and just enjoys being able to suspend their disbelief and pretend that it’s true for little bit anyway.

That said, Maki’s feelings for Kaito, and her existence as Maki the Ultimate Child Caregiver/Assassin, and everyone else’s existences, are neither a lie nor fiction in the first place.

Tsumugi:  “Everything in this world has a writing credit. All our words and actions…”

No, they don’t! You are not scripting every single word that has been coming out of everyone’s mouths! There were some events that the writers managed to influence, sure, and those can be considered to have a writing credit. But not even remotely all of it. And not most of the best parts, for that matter.

Tsumugi:  “…are just a bunch of lies.”

They’re not lies if the person saying so doesn’t know it’s not true! Gonta was not lying when he said he didn’t kill Miu, nor was he lying when he said he was raised by a race from a decades-old videogame. Nor was anyone lying when they did or said anything that they believed was the truth from those memories they were given.

Tsumugi:  “Even that thing Kaede said that moved Shuichi’s heart…”

Shuichi:  “…What?”

…

Kaede:  “I believe in you, so you should definitely believe in yourself!”

…

Tsumugi:  “That was a lie! Cuz the real Kaede said…”

Pregame Kaede:  “I’m perfect for a killing game. I don’t have any faith in humanity.”

The Kaede who said she believed in Shuichi was not lying and was no less real than the other one. Tsumugi is conveniently avoiding talking about the part where they’re completely different people (something Monokuma has already established) so that she can try and give the impression that our pianist Kaede was obviously completely insincere and knowingly lying and following a script.

Also, remember the very first post of this commentary where I made note of pregame Kaede talking about how rotten the world is? Yeah, that matches this quite well. And the thing is, Tsumugi probably doesn’t even know that pregame Kaede made that comment, and even if she does it’s not like she’d care to make an effort to match it, because Shuichi isn’t going to remember that. That match is something that’s only there for the out-universe audience to pick up on. So if Tsumugi did fake this video, it sure is an oddly specific coincidence that pregame Kaede’s words match so well. As such, it makes a lot more sense to me to assume that this video is real.

Why did pregame Kaede even think that having no faith in humanity made her perfect for this, though??? Does she not realise that obviously the kind of person who makes the killing game interesting is someone who does believe in people and has that belief battered and tested as they watch their friends kill each other? But as frustrating as this is, again, someone who did realise that wouldn’t be the kind of person who’d ever want to audition in the first place.

…And, again, the entire audience are going to turn out to be assholes who completely miss the point, so all complaints about the auditionees’ attitudes should just be lumped in with complaints about that, of which I will be having plenty soon enough. Practically everything wrong with this chapter boils down to how badly-written the audience is.

Tsumugi:  “And who could forget Kaito’s inspiring line?”

…

Kaito:  “Don’t forget! The impossible is possible! All you gotta do is make it so!”

…I can accept that this line of Kaito’s might have been scripted. He said it a few times, like it’s a phrase he just liked to say a lot, even in his backstory (maybe to his former sidekicks), so this was probably written into him. But that does not matter. He had no idea he was following anyone’s script and said it for his own reasons while meaning every word of it.

Uggghhhh look at this absolute asshole here. There is nothing in this world that can ever convince me that this was, in any meaningful way, the same person as our heroic Luminary of the Stars who supported his friends with everything he had and selflessly put himself through untold extra pain because he was convinced that doing otherwise would let everyone down. But I do appreciate the painful jarringness of how completely opposite pregame Kaito was to the Kaito we’ve come to know and love, at least.

And it also matches quite well with the face we saw pregame Kaito making when they arrived in the gym, again back in the very first post of this commentary. That was not a situation in which Tsumugi could have been faking it, and you can’t convince me that that was ever the same person as our Kaito, either.

Pregame Kaito:  “I’m not just gonna be in Danganronpa, I’m gonna kill everybody and win!”

That’s not even how it works! Pretty soon it’s going to be made apparent that everything always ended with hope winning, so a blackened has never managed to kill everybody and win, and if they did, that wouldn’t make a very entertaining story! (Grumble grumble unrealistic asshole audience, please file these complaints with the rest that will be coming later. Such complaints about the auditionees certainly shouldn’t be taken as evidence of the videos being faked, because the rest of the asshole audience that we see very definitely exists.)

It does seem that the in-universe writers might have got the idea for Kaito’s reckless stubbornness and inability to accept the possibility of failure from this person here, who is brazenly refusing to acknowledge the extremely high chance that he’ll just end up dead.

Pregame Kaito:  “Once I’ve got fame and fortune, I don’t gotta worry about what’s impossible.”

But evidently this dude was also just a selfish asshole who didn’t give a fuck about anybody else and was quite happy to slaughter a bunch of people just to get what he wanted. The absolute least Kaito he could possibly be in all the most important ways. It’s an insult to Kaito that this guy shared his name and appearance.

(If Kaito were alive and seeing this video? It’d barely shake him at all. He’d just go, “Well, that’s not me,” in the most straightforward, isn’t-it-obvious tone of voice ever, and that’d be that. His conviction in who he is would be far too strong for this to get to him like it’s getting to the others.)

Tsumugi:  “Every single thing that has happened in this killing game… is a lie!”

Shuichi:  (It’s all… a lie?)

Unfortunately, while Tsumugi is quite obviously lying if you think about it for even a few seconds, Shuichi can’t see that.

Shuichi:  (The reason we’re all here right now is because of them… Because of them… I was able to change. That’s why I was trying to live for them, too… I was trying so hard to stay positive… But… if even that’s a lie…)

It’s no coincidence that Tsumugi chose specifically Kaede and Kaito to do this for, because they were the people Shuichi depended on the most for his strength and confidence. Even though they’re not here any more, he’s still so dependent on the memories of who they were, to the point that upon hearing that they never existed, seeing supposed “proof” of that, he loses the strength to even question it. It just breaks him.

Since Tsumugi actually wrote the gist of Shuichi’s character arc, including the part where he came to rely on both Kaede and Kaito, she might at least have a reasonably good idea of what she’s doing this time. The thought that’d hurt Shuichi the most isn’t the supposed loss of his own feelings, like with Maki, but rather the supposed loss of his friends’ feelings and support towards him.

If Kaito and Kaede were only still here, they’d both be doing everything they could to reassure Shuichi that what Tsumugi’s saying doesn’t matter. Even if their support of him was scripted and planned, it doesn’t change the fact that that feeling of wanting to help him was real to them and not a lie they’d never have done anything else even if they’d known the mastermind wanted them to do this. But… they’re not here any more. So it’s heartbreakingly easy for Shuichi to forget how real and genuine their support felt when it was happening, now that they’ve faded into memories. Especially now that he’s learned that most of his memories were entirely fake to begin with, giving him the sense that he can’t trust anything that he thought he knew and believed was real.

I really love the way the game shows a collage of illustrations of Shuichi being inspired by both Kaede and Kaito, and then just makes them twist and swirl into nothingness, reflecting exactly what’s happening with Shuichi’s perception of them. And all his strength came from them, so if he didn’t ever really have them… he had nothing, right?

(Also Heartless Journey is playing and I am rather giving myself some sads here.)

Shuichi:  “… Why… am I here? Why did I even survive this long?”

Shuichi’s had his exhausted-looking sprite for a while here. It’s especially fitting in this moment, considering where his mind was at when we saw him looking like this last chapter, and the fact that he’s been driven to wondering what was even the point of him surviving. Noooo, Shuichi.

“Hajime”:  “This is fiction. There is no greater meaning.”

Shuichi wasn’t chosen to be the hero and survive until the end like this just by meaningless random chance, though. It was because the story of someone weak like him overcoming his weakness and growing stronger despite all his struggles is a meaningful story that can inspire people.

However, the fact that Tsumugi seems to genuinely believe that there’s nothing meaningful to fiction is going to be her downfall. Really, it was a bad move for her to even reveal to everyone that they are fictional, because that’s going to allow Shuichi to protest against this sick practice and end not just this game but all of them. But Tsumugi probably didn’t even realise what a risk that was, because it apparently doesn’t occur to her that there could be more to them being fictional and that they could even do anything but despair over its meaninglessness.

“Junko”:  “How ‘bout that? You in despair yet? It will be troublesome for us if you don’t despair under our rule.”

Yep, that’s exactly why Tsumugi has been doing all this. If she can get everyone to despair, then Keebo will come swooping in with his hope robot powers and the audience will still get a story they want, despite how very off-script things have gotten. That’s why she’s been telling such blatant lies about how fictional everyone supposedly is.

(Also, her “Junko” has been switching personalities a lot more lately. I guess that’s just to match with the switching personalities in general, or perhaps to be more of a direct callback to the first game than she was earlier now that literally everything else she’s doing is callbacks.)

“Junko”:  “Viewers flock to see your despair. That’s why all those people out there look sooo happy! See!?”

“Shuichi’s reaction LOL”

“LOL the face of despair.”

“Mmm, Shuichi’s despair <3”

“despair taaaimu!”

“You’re all in despair LOL”

“S-tier despair!”

Aaaaaand right about here is where the outside world just completely stops being recognisable human beings in any shape or form. This here is a general grab bag of some of the things that are being said, none of which is remotely like how any actual person should react to seeing a fictional character’s despair.

Yes, I have also been enjoying Shuichi’s despair this whole time. But I’ve been enjoying it in the sense that it’s been making me empathise with him and feel his pain. It makes me desperately want to reach into the screen to encourage him and help him in any way I can even though I know that’s not possible because this is how the story goes. If I was reacting in this completely detached, alien, “hurr durr lol despair” way that doesn’t seem to even remotely care about the characters themselves, that’d be the story failing to do its job properly!

Where was that person from near the beginning who was cheering “You can do it, Shuichi!”? They should still be cheering him on, trying to tell him that his friends weren’t all lies and neither is he and he can still do this if he doesn’t give up! The whole point of despair in these Danganronpa narratives is supposed to be so that people can root for hope to overcome it!

…It’s worthwhile to mention that there’s a good chance these comments are deliberately cherry-picked to be the ones most gleeful over the despair, since the hope fans are soon going to start showing up in droves, but even so, geez, these people. Have some fucking empathy.

(Though next time we will also see that the rest of the audience who are rooting for hope aren’t really doing so in a way that involves empathising with and caring about Shuichi’s pain either, so, eh.)

Shuichi:  “Is this what the outside world wants? Is this what they want from us?”

It makes sense that this would be what they want from a character they’re insisting on seeing as fictional, but it does not make sense that they would want it for this purpose! Almost nobody should ever want it like this!

Monokuma:  “Well, yelling for help is useless for fictional characters anyway. It makes the viewers even more depraved and obsessed when they feel sorry for you.”

Yes! Feeling sorry for them, that’s the point! This is the closest anything in this narrative ever gets to talking about the actual reason why watching fictional characters suffer is enjoyable – because it makes you care about them more, it makes you want to engage with the story more in your in-universe desire to see them overcome it and feel better, it makes the story have more of an effect on you! “Depraved” is a really uncharitable word for this – although maybe that’s more specifically for this context where they’re actually watching this happen to real people, in which case, yes it very much is.

Monokuma:  “They watch, knowing that they shouldn’t, just to revel in the depravity of it all.”

The “knowing that they shouldn’t” part is after all something that only applies to watching real people die. Nobody in the actual real world should feel guilty for enjoying Danganronpa games because characters die in them – that’s the point. Nor should anyone feel guilty for enjoying any fiction where bad things happen, because that’s one of the main ways to create conflict, which is one of the driving forces of a story. If the narrative presents the bad things in a way that implies they’re okay to do in the real world, that’s another matter – but bad things happening in and of themselves do not make a fiction wrong to enjoy.

Shuichi:  “It’s all a lie… isn’t it? Me… Everyone here… Everyone who died…”

Their deaths were not lies, Shuichi!

Shuichi:  “I can’t fight… for a lie, can I?”

You thought it was worth fighting for before you knew it was a “lie”! Why should the fact that she’s calling it that change anything? You know the killing game still happened!

Around this point, Clair de Lune – Kaede’s piano song – kicks in as BGM. It’s pretty lovely and appropriate and heartbreaking.

Tsumugi:  “No matter how much you grow, Shuichi, you’re still weak after all… Now that you know it’s all lies, you’ve gone back to the weak Ultimate Detective…”

She’s not wrong here. Now that the friends he depended on so much for his strength aren’t here any more, now that she’s convinced him that they never really existed at all… he still has the potential to be as weak as he always was without them, just like he always had the potential to be strong if he did have their support.

This concept might be why this is working so much on Shuichi, Maki and Himiko in particular. All three of them started off weak, and only grew stronger thanks to the events of this killing game and the support their friends gave them. Upon hearing that all of that was supposedly fake, it wouldn’t be hard to see how that’d bring them right back to where they started.

That’s also why none of this would work nearly so well on Kaito if he were still here – because he started off strong, and still had a good amount of that strength by the end even if the killing game had weakened him in a lot of ways, such that it wouldn’t go away just because he’s being told it’s a lie.

(And all of my yelling at Shuichi isn’t trying to imply that he’s being stupid to not realise all this – I know that he’s still weak enough in some regards that he’d let this break him apart. I just wish I could help him, like an actual person would.)

Himiko:  “…”

Himiko’s no longer expressing her despair in a loud, emotional way and is just being depressed and listless like she used to be. Hearing that Tenko’s concern for her was all planned and scripted probably pushed her back into that.

Tsumugi:  “Well, that was surprisingly disappointing… But I guess it’s okay! We’re still on script!”

Not even being subtle. This was entirely a ploy to keep things vaguely on the generic Danganronpa hope-versus-despair script so that Keebo could do his thing.

Shuichi:  “Everything’s a lie… Everything’s meaningless… Everything we’ve done, everything we’ve faced together…”

You still faced that together! Kaede and Kaito still died for you! That’s not meaningless, no matter what else around it might have been a lie!

The shutting-down sound effects used when a protagonist stops being the protagonist are really quite appropriate here. It very much feels like Shuichi.exe has encountered a problem and needs to reboot, and it’s going to take him a while to do that.

---

[Next post]

[plush-anon]

tejoxys

I finally saw the Endgame spoilers clip

*rubbing my grubby little hands together bc I love a good roast*

Welp, if it’s a roast you want, a roast you shall receive!

(Note: I think I spoke vaguely enough about everything big in the Clips below NOT to warrant an outright Spoilers tag, so I’m leaving it with just an Endgame Leaks tag and a ‘Read More’ line. Message me if you’ve a.) seen the Clips/gone scrolling for more info in the Spoilers tag and b.) think it’s more spoilery than I try to vague it to be, and I’ll tag it post haste)

Christ Almighty, the Clips just make everything look like an enormous MESS.

Thor looks just... awful. In every scene. LITERALLY EVERY SCENE HE’S IN IN THESE SPOILERIFIC CLIPS, HE LOOKS TERRIBLE. There isn’t a single one where he doesn’t look like a mess. Everyone else gets a glow-up (new hair, tattoos, freshly shaved) and looks put together in general (which is admittedly baffling - really, EVERYONE looks good in the face of mass genocide and failure to stop it from occurring?) but Thor decided to whip out his Big Lebowski cosplay at their big ‘save the world’ get-together... why??? (seriously Thor, was a shower too much to ask for?)

Now, if we’d had ANY inclination that anyone else looked rough aside from Tony and Nebula a la the stuck-in-space teaser trailers we saw originally, that would be one thing. Everyone there lost a loved one, everyone there has probably had to come to terms with the fact that they FAILED TO STOP THANOS when they were all right freakin’ there! NO ONE SHOULD LOOK 100% OKAY HERE. Show me dishevelment, poor coping mechanisms, show them having to struggle for weeks (maybe even MONTHS) after the events.

But nope! They are ALL in perfect health according to the trailers we’ve seen before. Even Tony, after nearly dying in space multiple times, just takes a bath and appears to be in fine health after getting back (with some bags under the eyes). Everyone’s perfectly fine, except for Thor (and maaaaaybe Hawkeye, who looks to have gone full-on Frank Miller Batman in his quest for vengeance, but still had time to get a mullet and some sweet sleeve tats in between!).

Nice.

This is a MASSIVE problem with the MCU as a whole, and has been for a while: their repeated attempts to gloss over and sweep consequences of mental trauma and illness away under the rug until it suits them for plot convenience or for comedy. You see this in the Thor sequels a LOT (Selvig being institutionalized for comedy after being possessed, Loki being kept in literal solitary confinement for roughly 2 years, Valkyrie’s PTSD and alcoholism played for laughs, mocking Loki’s suicide attempt from Thor 1 and the actual death he survived in Thor 2, ALL of Odin’s outright dickishness as a parent a la narcissistic parenting, Hela being imprisoned in isolation for literal CENTURIES), as well as anything to do with Tony Stark and his thought process (everything he does is pretty much as a result of the trauma he endures, and everyone in the Avengers just??? doesn’t recognize it??? and attacks him for it without going ‘hey, maybe he’s got PTSD’ or something???? what the hell, man). GOTG does a MUCH better job of it with Rocket and Nebula, but Mantis is left woefully unrealized (thought they do touch upon it briefly, and handle it with relative seriousness). 

Either way, Thor concerns me a LOT, because he is the king of a very small group of Asgardian refugees (and given the scene that shows in the Clips, as well as the appearance of another Thor character later on, we KNOW there were multiple survivors), trying to find a new life on Midgard in the face of not one, not two, but THREE fcuking tragedies - the destruction of Asgard, Thanos’ attack on their ship, and the Snap. Why is he the way he is, in the location he’s in (which actually appears to be the apartment from Team Thor’s mockumentary)? He is the only semblance of leadership left for these people who have lost everything and he’s Like That. Where is a Thor stressed and fretting over being fully responsible for once in his life over the lives of his people, over what little remains of his kingdom? Where is a Thor struggling with guilt as he tries to build a new life for his people, struggling with rule and politics and trade? WHERE IS HE??? Bc right now, all I see is Chris Hemsworth auditioning for the remake of The Big Lebowski, having wandered onto the Avengers set instead of his audition location by mistake -_-

The scenes with Steve leave me absolutely baffled (and some of them just ooze cheese, and not in a great way), because how in the fcuk do we get to those?? His scenes feel the most disjointed here, bc they all have a similar vibe to his personality in Whedon’s Avenger movies. Kind of the ‘Boy Scout’ presentation, which is particularly odd in the aftermath of the Russo Fools’ two Cap movies and Infinity Fcuk Up, which made him more serious, less - bright? I can’t think of a good word for it rn. This is particularly highlighted in his big ‘save the world’ speech we hear - it feels kind of like an ‘okay team, time to save the world!’ speech, instead of something more serious. Is it to try to bring everyone’s hopes up? What else is missing here that we’re not seeing? Why does he feel like he’s back to this persona in light of all that’s happened? Is it to highlight how good and awesome he is in order to {SPOILER REDACTED} like we see in that final sequence? (Also, the imagery for SPOILER REDACTED, while meant to be badass and awesome, feels... kind of awkward, IMHO. Which is weird, bc I thought it would be more amazing and awesome. IDK, maybe I’m just super jaded with the MCU by now).

Carol Danvers’ scenes are actually pretty on point. She gets to be a badass in her fighting scenes and gets an awesome new look that pretty much only functions to further cement her Lesbian Status. The only way she would be more obviously a Lesbian is if her suit were in the colors of (one of) the Lesbian Pride flags and a Cyndi Lauper song was playing in the background (or maybe Joan Jett).

Hulk/Bruce Banner... I don’t even know how they’re going to swing this. Like, at all. I’m particularly baffled bc given how some of the scenes appear to be set early in the film, it resolves extremely quickly to get to that point, and after all the drama of Hulk not coming out in Infinity Fcuk Up, I just - who the fcuk knows at this point. Also, that one scene with the {SPOILER REDACTED} could be effective depending on how they set it up, but then... why exactly is he the one in the scene with the {SPOILER REDACTED} and not Carol or Thor, due to Obvious Plot Reasons?

Finally, Peter Parker. He’s adorable in his scenes, ‘nuff said.

Now, after seeing these scenes, I am left EXTREMELY CONCERNED for this movie’s tone. Granted, it was only 5 minutes of footage for a 3 hour movie. Quite clearly, there is a LOT we aren’t seeing. All the same though, it feels extremely disjointed. I know they’re trying to pull away from the dark and grim ending of Infinity War, but these clips make it all feel a little too casual, a little too ‘let’s go beat the bad guy!’ as opposed to ‘we have suffered a great failure and a great tragedy - as heroes, we MUST work to undo this for the sake of those we have lost, and everyone left alive who has lost the people they loved’. Idk, that may just be me on this one.

But you know the worst part of all of THIS? The worst part is that this is probably what we’re going to get on the release date. This isn’t a trailer Marvel released with deleted live-action scenes featuring minimal to no CGI, or sections clumsily edited over with explosion effects - this was a slew of scenes with a TON of special effects fully rendered in painstaking detail, recorded with a phone on its side in what looks like a movie theater, with foreign subtitles on the screen (I honestly don’t recognize the alphabet, but it might be Middle Eastern). That CGI is expensive and time-consuming as all hell to do, and considering how many of these scenes had it? Either they wasted a shit-ton of money on scenes they didn’t use (seriously, a number of them have Rocket in them, or Hulk - those aren’t the easiest characters to render, I would imagine), or these are in the movie, end of story.

Not to mention, TPTB clamped down on these Clips HARD - like, IMMEDIATELY - as opposed to the process behind deleting Reddit comments. The fast and heavy response from Marvel and the Russo Fools, COMPLETE WITH OFFICIAL TWEET LETTER, along with a Chris Evans tweet not to Spoil the Shit, was to chastise the ones who did (which is somewhat warranted here, given how extreme the security on leaks for Endgame have been).

This response, combined with the quality of the clips, and some of the plot threads that actually seem to be mentioned/referenced in the Lego sets, leads me to believe it’s real.

And I’m not really impressed.

On the flipside, I’m actually kind of relieved, knowing what I’m going into when I walk into the theater opening weekend. I’m not going to be completely shocked and horrified by what I see. This works well in breaking the ice, and also eases some of my anxiety on what to expect (bc I have had a LOT of it for this movie).

The downside to this is that at the end of the day, this is what 22 films ultimately amounted to. Something that feels a little too glib, a little too rushed. Something that doesn’t feel like it’s doing right by the characters who were left, and the characters we love (at least, not in full).

I understand that this is an insurmountable task - to bring to film, with limited time, a satisfying conclusion to so many characters. To arrange hundreds of people within thousands of hours on a set budget to bring this massive story, building for over ten years now, to a close that will resonate and sate with as many fans as possible. But I read fanfiction that does just that with less time, fewer moments, no budget - hell, there are 10k oneshots that rewrote Infinity Fcuk to make sense and treat the characters with the respect that they’ve earned over 20+ films.

This? Doesn’t feel like those.

I will happily admit, I am guesstimating a LOT here, based off of what essentially amounts to 3% of the movie (slightly more, depending on how long the credits are sans post-credit scenes, but still roughly 3%). There is a LOT that is missing, which could fill in these gaps successfully and make this whole post look completely pointless. If it does that, I will gleefully concede that it fooled us on this one. Maybe all of these scenes really ARE hoaxes (even if they were painstakingly subtitled in a foreign language and shown on a movie theater-size screen, but I digress).

But the framing of the scenes looks like it was meant to showcase what the movie would be as a whole, in terms of tone and what to expect. And from that, I’m not excited, or overjoyed. I’m just tired.

And I cannot WAIT for this all to be over, bc I’m fcuking exhausted just watching 5 minutes. Lord knows what 182 of them will leave me like in the end.

*peers up at massive unending ranty analysis post* ...ah. Well then. that happened again. Ah well. Hope you had fun reading my nonsense brain goop, kiddos.

[badchoosey]

Hero, Vol.1 - Chapter One: The First Day of the Rest of Your Life

You soar over the ruins of Northbridge and touch down amidst the wreckage of shattered skyscrapers.

Alert: Where are you?! Come and face me!

A figure rises out of the smoke and fire, wreathed in chaotic energy.

Voice: I’m not hiding. You’re the one who’s hiding. You’ve been hiding all your life.

Alert: Time to shut you up!

Voice: How can you possibly hope to defeat me when you don’t even understand what you truly are? You haven’t even begun to comprehend the power within you.

Alert: Maybe so… but I know enough to finish this.

Voice: No, this is not the end… soon you’ll realize that this is only the beginning!

Six months earlier…

Your sleepy eyes focus on the time, after shutting your buzzing alarm off.

Alert: I’m late! I am very, very late!

You leap out of bed and throw open your closet doors.

Alert: This could be the biggest day of my career… I need to look great…

You rummage around in your closet and settle on a basic blue number.

Alert: That’ll do, I guess…

Dressed for work, you leave your apartment and sprint to the train station.

Alert: C’mon… don’t leave without me!

Just as you reach the platform, the train doors close shut--

Alert: No! No! Wait!

You watch helplessly as the train barrels away from the station, leaving you behind.

Alert: Of all the days to be late to work, why did it have to be today?

After waiting around for the next train, you finally arrive at Prescott Industries. The tall, glass skyscraper gleams brightly in the morning sun. As you walk toward the building, you hear someone call your name. You turn around to see Poppy Patel hurrying toward you with two iced lattes.

Poppy: Alert! Wait up!

Alert: Poppy? What are you doing here?

Poppy: Bringing you an iced latte to kickstart your big day, of course! You’re gonna need it now that you’re in charge of planning the biggest social event of the season! Speaking of which… you didn’t happen to snag your favorite person in the whole world an invite, did you? You said last week that you would try to get me in to the big gala at Prescott Industries tonight.

Alert: So, this latte comes with a few strings attached, huh?

Poppy: No! Well, maybe a little bit… but you will try to get me in, won’t you? All the best and brightest and most fashionable people in Northbridge will be there. When Prescott Industries unveils a new technology, that’s major.

Alert: Not just major. Silas Prescott said his new invention would ‘change the world as we know it’...

Poppy: And… what is it?

Alert: No clue. I work for Grayson Prescott, not his father, remember? I’m dying to know what the invention is just like everybody else.

Poppy: Speaking of Grayson, the handsome, charming heir apparent… You could ask him to invite me, couldn’t you? I’m sure he wouldn’t say no to his favorite executive assistant! If I can get the inside scoop on the gala, I’ll be a shoo-in for the promotion to Motif’s Senior Fashion Editor. I neeeeed this, Alert.

Alert: I know, I know, Poppy. This is a big opportunity for me, too.

Poppy: Then get in there, do the best job you possibly can with the gala preparations, and Grayson will be so impressed he won’t say no to you! I promise I’ll find some way to pay you back.

Alert: You’re so gonna owe me. Like we’re not just talking one favor here. I’m thinking three at least, maybe as many as five.

Poppy: Ugh, why do I feel like I’m making a deal with the devil?

Alert: Hey, those are the terms. Take it or leave it!

Poppy: All right, all right… I hereby sign my soul over. Just… don’t forget to ask him, okay?

Alert: I promise I won’t. Now, I really should get to work. I’m late enough as it is… and so are you!

Poppy: Oh, don’t be silly. Being fashionably late is all part of the job!

You push through the glass doors and into the lobby of Prescott Industries, where Grayson Prescott confidently directs the gala preparations.

Grayson: Bring those tables through here. We’ll want to give our guests the best possible view at tonight’s unveiling…

Grayson turns and notices you enter.

Grayson: Alert, there you are! Just in the nick of time…

Alert: Sorry I’m late… somehow I managed to miss my train again.

Grayson: It’s all right. You’re here now.

Alert: I am. So, how are the gala preparations going, Mr. Prescott?

Grayson: Please, Alert, Mr. Prescott is my father. Call me Grayson. We did go to school together, after all.

Alert: All right, Grayson. Actually, I was hoping I could ask you something--

Just then, Marjorie Miles, Director of Operations, marches over, her eyes narrowed behind her thick-framed glasses.

Marjorie Miles: Hmph. About time you showed up, Alert.

Alert: It’s only a quarter past--

Marjorie Miles: Exactly. A quarter past the time you were supposed to be here. In other words, late. As for you, Grayson, your father wants a word. It sounded urgent.

Grayson: Thanks for letting me know. Alert, can you handle this on your own?

Alert: Uh… I think so?

Marjorie Miles: Don’t worry, I’ll make sure she doesn’t screw anything up too badly.

Grayson: I’m sure she won’t. See you later, Alert.

Alert: Good luck!

At Grayson heads for the elevators, Marjorie turns to look at you, her expression impatient.

Marjorie Miles: Tonight could be the most important night in this company’s history. Do you understand what that means, Alert? It means that it’s also the most important night of your otherwise unremarkable life. So, are you finally ready to do your job and help me?

Alert: Why don’t you try asking nicely?

Marjorie Miles: Okay, Alert… your choice. Do you want to tell Grayson that things here are going splendidly…. Or do you want to tell him your bullheaded unwillingness to assist me killed the mayor?

Alert: I feel like this escalated quickly…

Marjorie Miles: Two words: shell fish--

Alert: Technically, that’s one word, not--

Marjorie Miles: Shellfish allergy. The Mayor’s office waited until this morning to let me know that the Mayor is allergic to shellfish. In other words, we can’t serve the thirty pounds of ceviche de camaron we already paid for!

Alert: Okay, that’s a real problem. What can I do to help?

Marjorie Miles: I need you to call around and find something… not embarrassing to serve for an appetizer at the gala tonight. Do you think you can stop swiping or Pictalking or whatever you millenials do long enough to accomplish one task?

Alert: … Yes, I can do that.

You pull your laptop from your bag and start searching for caterers…

Fifteen minutes later…

Marjorie Miles: Well?

Alert: Let’s order tacos.

Marjorie Miles: Tacos?

Alert: It’ll be fun! We can hire a taco truck and let everyone build their own!

Marjorie Miles: Hmm… I suppose it would be memorable. Since you managed to produce a halfway-decent idea for the appetizer, what do you think we should do with all this ceviche?

Alert: I think we should dump it. Northbridge Bay probably has worse things in it. Besides it’s sort of like we’re putting it back where it came from?

Marjorie Miles: I’m not sure I follow your logic there, but… sure. If we can’t serve it, we may as well get rid of it. I’ll get some of our drivers on that ASAP. Congratulations on not screwing this up, Alert. Keep it up, and you might even be considered semi-competent someday.

Alert: I can’t wait.

Marjorie Miles: I’ll continue handling things here. In the meantime, I need you to check in with Dax in Engineering and Santiago in Security. Report back to Grayson once you’ve confirmed they’re ready.

Alert: Okay, got it.

Marjorie Miles: Then why are you still standing here? Chop chop!

A few minutes later, you step into the Engineering Lab to find it seemingly empty.

Alert: … Hello? Dax? Anybody here?

At the far end of the room, a curtain hides an enormous something from view…

Alert: (That must be the new technology Prescott Industries is unveiling at the gala tonight!)

As you step deeper into the lab, the floor beneath your feet begins to tremble gently.

Alert: (It’s supposed to be a secret, but Dax probably wouldn’t mind if I took a peek. I think…)

As you step toward the curtain, the trembling in the floor ramps up in intensity.

Alert: (What the…?)

Just them Dax Darcisse slides out from beneath a nearby computer console, pushing his goggles up onto his forehead.

Dax: Whoa, whoa, whoa! What are you doing, Alert?! You can’t just go touching things in here… for all you know, that could be highly radioactive!

Alert: Is it?!

You quickly retreat away from the curtain.

Dax: No, it’s not radioactive. But it could be, because… science! And besides, I’m still working the kinks out… I thought everything was fine, but somehow the XD917 crystalline array just activated all on its own.

Alert: Crystalline what-now…?

Dax: Um, did I say that? I meant ‘classified’. ‘Redacted’. ‘Under NDA’. ‘Bleep’!

Alert: Right. A secret. Anyway… Marjorie asked me to check on preparations for the unveiling tonight. Will you be ready?

Dax inspects the data visualizations streaming on a nearby console.

Dax: Huh, weird… things seem fine now… I’ve literally never seen that happen before. You’re not carrying any raw promethium around, are you?

Alert: Uh… not that I know of?

Dax: Yeah, didn’t think so. That is very, very strange. I’m going to run through the system diagnostics once more to be sure… but yeah. All systems green. As much as I understand it, anyway… only Silas knows what it’s supposed to do when the power’s turned on!

Alert: Wait, seriously?

Dax: Yep, I’m as stoked for the big reveal tonight as you are!

Alert: Okay…

You start toward the door and then turn back…

Alert: Actually, Dax, there’s one more thing…

Dax: Sure, what’s up?

Alert: I thought you might want to know there’s a chance that Poppy is coming to the gala tonight.

Dax: Oh, uh, really? Why would I want to know that?

Alert: You tell me. I was definitely getting a vibe when the three of us went out for drinks last week…

Dax: A vibe? What kind of vibe? From her or from me? I’m confused.

Alert: Yeah, I can see that.

Dax: I mean… she could never be interested in me like that… Could she?

Alert: Only one way to find out. Although I technically haven’t asked Grayson if I can invite her yet…

Dax: Well, just let me know, I guess… or don’t. Either way. Unrelated topic - should I wear anything special? What do you think about cologne? I mean, I don’t own any cologne. But I’ve got access to lots of chemicals. I could probably whip something up…

Alert: … What about the diagnostic?

Dax: Yes! Diagnostic! Top priority!

Alert: Exactly. See you later, Dax.

You head to the chief of security’s office, where Santiago Lupo eyes a row of security monitors. One has been tuned to the local news.

News: --string of brazen daylight robberies that have plagued the Northbridge jewelry district--

Santiago smiles as you walk over.

Santiago: Morning, Alert. You hear about all these armed robberies?

Alert: Sorry, I don’t really watch the news…

Santiago: Why not?

Alert: Too depressing. I don’t need that kind of stress in my life.

Santiago: Well, sure, but just because you’re not seeing it doesn’t mean it’s not happening…

Alert: Okay, then… why don’t you get me up to speed?

Santiago: Basically, this gang has been stealing diamonds all over the city, and the police are stumped.

Alert: That actually sounds pretty bad…

Santiago: Unfortunately, they’re hardly the worst this city has to offer. But don’t worry. I went over the security plans for tonight’s gala with Silas Prescott personally. The party’s gonna be great, but the security’ll be even better. You’d need an attack helicopter to punch you way through our defensive grid!

Alert: Isn’t that kind of… overkill?

Santiago: Hello no! No such thing in my book. Mayor Brady, District Attorney Katsaros… all the most important people in the city are going to be at Prescott Industries tonight. Nothing is going to happen on my watch!

Alert: I feel safer already.

After saying goodbye to Santiago, you take the elevator up to the second highest floor and step into Grayson Prescott’s office.

Grayson: Hey, Alert. Everything ready for tonight?

Alert: Yup. Everything’s taken care of.

Grayson: That’s good news… but I believe there was one more thing to discuss?

Alert: … There was?

Grayson: This morning, you wanted to ask me a question? What was it?

Alert: I… I have a friend who wants to come to the Gala tonight. She’s one of my best friends, and she’s a junior fashion editor at Motif. If we could put her on the guest list she’ll write something nice about the gala!

Grayson: I suspect my father’s announcement tonight will make for plenty of good publicity.

Alert: Oh, right…

Grayson: But there’s no need to sell me on her attending. She’s more than welcome to come.

Alert: Really?

Grayson: Really. Any friend of yours is a friend of mine. Now, am I mistaken, or is the junior editor you’re referring to Poppy Patel?

Alert: Yeah, that’s her!

Grayson: I remember you two were close in school. She’s more than welcome, but I have to say… I was devastated to see her article declaring that joggers were officially off-trend.

Alert: Oh. I’m sure they’d still work if you--

Grayson: I’m kidding, Alert.

Alert: Ahh. Gotcha.

Grayson: See you tonight?

Alert: Definitely.

That night, back at your apartment…

Poppy: EEEEEEEEE! I’m so excited! This is the swankiest social event of the entire year, and I actually get to go!

Alert: … Ahem.

Poppy: All thanks to my best friend, Alert, who I will definitely find some way to repay.

Alert: Better!

Poppy: I’ve been thinking about the gala for weeks, and I know exactly what I’m going to wear.

Poppy slips into the other room and emerges a few minutes later wearing a slinky dress.

Poppy: Ta-da! You don’t have to tell me I look fabulous, because I already know I do… Now, the important question. What are you going to wear?

Alert: Uh, I don’t know… I was thinking I’d just wear what I have on.

Poppy: … Alert, seriously? Listen, tonight’s going to be huge for you! If you want to move up in the world, you’ve got to look the part! Not to mention… you’ve been single for far too long, my friend. I’d say it’s high time we changed that!

Alert: Do you think there’d be anyone who’s my type there?

Poppy: Well, you never know, right? But you should at least dress up for my sake. You know… your best friend? Who helped you through so many hard times in college?

Alert: I seem to remember that the other way round… but okay, what do you suggest?

Poppy: I’m glad you asked.

Poppy digs through the clothes she brought over and pulls out a garment bag.

Poppy: I’ve been hanging onto this for a fashion shoot, but no one will notice if it goes missing for a night or two. Go ahead and try it on.

You step out of the room, change, and return a few minutes later.

Alert: Well, what do you think?

Poppy: Stunning. Simply stunning! Promise me you’ll wear that! … Or I guess you could just wear what you wore to work…

Alert: This gala is my work, Poppy. It might be all fun and games for you, but I’m on the clock.

Poppy: Well… still, I’m sure we can squeeze in a little fun. Are you ready to head out?

Alert: Ready.

You and Poppy arrive at the gala to find the Prescott Industries lobby awash in a sea of high-profile guests in gowns and tuxes. Uniformed waiters circulate with trays of appetizers and fluted glasses of sparkling champagne.

Poppy: I never thought I’d say this, but I’m feeling a little underdressed. This party is bougie as hell!

Alert: Tell me about it…

Dax: Hey, guys!

Poppy: Speaking of getting dressed up… nice to finally see you out of a labcoat, Dax.

Dax: It’s weird, right? I feel weird. I think I’m gonna go put it back--

Poppy: No, don’t! Seriously. You look good. And we already have one Prescott employee wearing their work clothes tonight…

Dax: Yeah, Alert, isn’t that the same outfit you were wearing earlier?

Alert: What is this, gang up on Alert day?

Dax: Sorry. I mean, you do look professional, so that’s something.

Poppy: And what about me?

Dax: You’re okay, I guess.

Poppy punches Dax in the arm.

Dax: Okay, okay, sorry! You look great.

Poppy: That’s better. C’mon, let’s go get some drinks. Next round’s on me!

Alert: But it’s an open bar…

Poppy: Details, details…

You and Dax trail behind Poppy on your way to the bar, hanging back just out of her earshot.

Alert: So… are you nervous?

Dax: Not at all. We’ve rigorously tested the, uh, device since this morning’s anomaly, and everything looks--

Alert: I meant Poppy, genius.

Dax: Oh, right. Do you really think she might be interested in me?

Alert: It’s too soon to tell.

Dax: Oh, yeah… that makes sense.

Alert: Don’t worry. These things take time, that’s all.

Dax: Right, totally.

The three of you cross the lobby, passing by District Attorney Meiko Katsaros and her son.

Meiko Katsaros: Kenji, I can’t believe this! You wait until now to tell me you’re dropping out of law school?

Kenji: Relax, Mom, I’ve got it all figured out. Can’t we just focus on enjoying the party?

Waitress: Excuse me, ma’am, sir. Here are you drinks.

Kenji: Finally! Bottoms up!

Meiko Katsaros: This conversation isn’t over, Kenji. Let me tip the waitress for these drinks, and we’ll-- That’s strange. I must’ve left my wallet at home.

Waitress: It’s quite all right, ma’am. No tip necessary.

As you reach the bar, Poppy taps your arm and points.

Poppy: Hey, Alert, look who it is…

At the far end of the bar, Grayson stands in a close circle with several businessmen and his father, Silas Prescott.

Silas Prescott: I gotta say, I’m glad you boys came to us with this opportunity. The Bayside neighborhood has been an unsightly blemish on our fair city for too long. It could use a little… redevelopment.

Grayson: Dad, I’m not so sure about this deal. Redeveloping Bayside would mean pricing long-term residents out of their homes. Where are those families supposed to go? The rent in this city is already at an all-time high.

Silas flashes an annoyed look at his son but quickly covers it with a laugh.

Silas Prescott: Gentlemen, you’ll have to forgive my son. He doesn’t quite have the killer instinct necessary to succeed in this business yet.

Grayson: Maybe I just don’t think life has to be a zero-sum game.

This time, Silas fails to cover his annoyance.

Silas Prescott: That’s what losers tell themselves. You think I got to where I am today by being soft?

Grayson: I… I think I need some air. Excuse me, gentleman.

Grayson takes his drink and heads upstairs toward the balcony, his father’s disapproving stare following his across the gala.

Dax: Wow. That was…

Poppy: Hard to watch. Yeah. Alert, it looks like Grayson’s in need of rescuing. Now’s your chance to be a hero!

Alert: It’s not my place.

Poppy: Well, then whose place is it? You’re his executive assistant!

Alert: I’m sure he’ll be okay. He deals with this sort of thing all the time.

You, Poppy, and Dax mill about the lobby for the next half hour, mingling with your Prescott Industries coworkers. Suddenly, a hush falls over the assembled guests as the music fades out…

Poppy: Ooh, is this the big announcement?

Alert: Shhh!

Everyone turns to watch as Silas Prescott descends the central staircase, holding the room’s attention without so much as a word.

Silas Prescott: Ladies and gentleman, it’s such an honor to see you all here tonight. Mayor Brady, District Attorney Katsaros… I hope you’re all enjoying my champagne.

A ripple of laughter passes through the crowd, and SIlas smiles indulgently.

Silas Prescott: But as many of you have probably guessed, I didn’t organize this little shindig just for the pleasure of your esteemed company. In fact… I have something incredible to show you. Something that will change the world as we know it.

The crowd chuckles pleasantly. Silas steps over to a large curtain on the far end of the room.

Silas Prescott: Please forgive my flair for the dramatic. I know the suspense must be unbearable, but I assure you… a discovery of this magnitude deserves and equally grand reveal.

The crowd goes quiet as Silas holds up an enormous pink crystal.

Silas Prescott: Twenty-five years ago, my… my late wife and I discovered this crystal on an archaeological expedition.

Poppy: … It’s beautiful!

Silas Prescott: Analysis revealed that this was no ordinary crystal. Its subatomic particles show a composition that defies quantum mechanics as we know it. So the brilliant scientists at Prescott Industries have spent the last twenty-five years writing new rules.

Alert: Dax, this is the secret project you were working on?

Dax: Just all the parts that required a handsome, young science genius.

Silas Prescott: This incredible discovery now powers a device we call… The Prism Gate.

Silas gestures and the curtain behind him raises… revealing a strange device with two curved pylons attached to a control panel.

Silas Prescott: The Prism Gate operates under its own power and provides access to a clean and inexhaustible energy source.

The crowd gasps.

Silas Prescott: You heard that right. Infinite, clean energy. An end to famine, to pollution, to inequality. Now… watch…

Silas places the crystal in a slot on the Prism Gate’s control panel, and the Prism Gare begins to resonate. A pink, otherworldly glow fills the entire lobby!

Silas Prescott: Ladies and gentleman… welcome to the future!

Just as the crowd erupts in applause, an explosion thunders from overhead! The overhead skylight bursts inward, showering the room with shards of glass!

Silas Prescott: What the hell? Security!

Santiago: Everyone, stay calm!

Four masked men carrying fully-automatic rifles rappel down into the lobby from the roof.

Criminal: Everyone on your knees. This is a robbery!

Lead Gunman: Nobody does anything stupid, nobody has to die! So pretty, pretty please… do something stupid!

Alert: Oh… Oh crap!

[eternalsterekrecs]

hi! i love fics where stiles can use magic but i've literally worked through your entire magic stiles tag. do yall have any new recommendations! thanks!!!

Oh boy, you’re in for a ride!

MAGIC STILES FIC LIST OF DOOM

Melt Together by SmallBirds

A supernatural heatwave has descended upon Beacon Hills, much to Stiles’ chagrin.

First Impressions by Kedreeva

Derek is a teacher at an all-werewolf school after the revolution. After seeing one of his students, Erica, get into a car with an unknown runecaster, Derek begins to suspect something terrible is going on.

No One Could Love You More by MellytheHun

Stiles begrudgingly comes to Derek’s rescue during a coven-hunt, thinking Derek needs a regular, common healing only to find he may lose Derek and anything they could have been.

i’m the alpha by triggeringthehealing

“I don’t care about power. Not anymore.”Looking back at what he said once, and what the truth was before he did, only the first part of his words was ever completely true.

To Ashes by triggeringthehealing

It’s nothing but tiny black particles of dust, staining his hands — he remembers how it took weeks to get the colour out of his skin after the time at Jungle.

All Is Lost Again (But I’m Not Giving In) by coppersin

The nightmares aren’t real. They can’t possibly be real. But people keep dying and Stiles is genuinely losing his mind. And he can’t seem to open his mouth and just tell someone.

Your Mark on My Skin by pterawaters

Despite everyone telling him not to, Stiles takes his wizard’s vision seriously and tattoos the image from his dream onto his wrist. When he runs across a man with the same symbol emblazoned on his back, Stiles knows he can’t let the mysterious stranger get away. Maybe it’s wrong to use the werewolf’s fugitive status against him, but Stiles knows he only has one option. If he gives Derek a disguise, but doesn’t bind the spell to himself, there’s nothing else to keep Derek from running away at the first opportunity. Of course Stiles had to pick the one obscure face that Lord Jackson knew from his childhood. In a land run by a king bent on killing all the werewolves he can find, the only way to keep Lord Jackson from asking questions is for Derek to play Stiles’ lover. Once that happens, well maybe the situation starts to get out of control.

Your Smile Gets Me Higher Than an Airplane Ever Could by crossroadswrite

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Scott tries diplomatically, “the Hales are still waiting for Derek and Laura. Apparently they’re on the same plane home as Stiles.”

“Hot Hale Twins are coming back?” Stiles says a little surprised.

–OR–

The one where it’s very late, Stiles is stucked in an airport and bored out of his mind until he bumps into Laura Hale. And then into her Hot Twin Brother Derek Hale.

There’s handholding and a little bit of magic involved, it’s all pretty gross.

The Boy Who Drew Wolves by dr_girlfriend

“Once upon a time,” Stiles began, and Thomas sighed happily, resting his cheek in the hollow of Stiles’ shoulder. “There was a gangly, clumsy, freckle-faced young boy, and a beautiful, majestic wolf —”

“You mean, there was a beautiful, brilliant, amber-eyed boy, and a half-starved, mangy-looking wolf,” a voice interrupted. “It looks like I made it just in time, huh?” Derek said with a conspiratorial smirk at Thomas. “Gotta make sure you tell it right.”

“Yeah, Daddy!” Thomas parroted. “Tell it right!”

“Okay, okay,” Stiles sighed, settling his arm across Thomas with his hand resting on his husband’s waist, thumb drawing an absent-minded little circle. “Once upon a time, there was a probably-going-to-grow-into-his-looks-just-fine young boy, and a very lonely wolf…”

Red by Littleredridinghunter

When Stiles was eight his mother died. When Stiles was ten his father was shot and he was taken into child services. Stiles never made it to eleven.

The Hale pack survives Kate but she has plans to come back and take revenge.

When another pack contacts the Hales for help, they go, despite the fact the Alpha is crazy and his mate is a monster.

safe and sound by thepsychicclam

When the Pack is attacked by an enemy Pack, Stiles and Derek end up on the run, in a stolen car, and spend the night in a crappy motel.

sparks by thepsychicclam

Derek is a librarian at one of the few supernatural universities in the country, and his student worker turns out to be none other than grad student Stiles. And it doesn’t take long before they start dating. Stiles is a gifted spark, but he keeps hanging out with people who are into dark magic, and Derek’s worried.

Sometimes It Just Works by MellytheHun

“Fic where, in a fit of post-break-up, drunken depression, stiles throws together a truly pathetic love spell (really, Lydia would be so unimpressed she’d probably disband their weekly magic lessons) in an attempt to find the perfect partner.

But, like everything else in Stiles’ life (and as proof to how much joy the universe gets pulling one over on him) everything goes horribly wrong and instead of the feathery light, rose petal path he’d been expecting to appear and lead him to his true love, a half naked man with harlequin biceps and a beard that could rival most lumber jacks appears in his minimalist studio apartment looking grumpy and endearingly confused.

Cue Stiles’ imminent freak out that includes shoving the man in his hall closet because “Oh my god, I manifested a burly mountain man out of thin air!!”

When really, the spell had just transported Derek from whatever secluded cabin he’d been holed up in for the last few years right into Stiles’ life.”

Stiles Stilinski, Magical PI by suzvoy

Stiles is a Private Investigator, only not really. He’s also magical, but only close up. One thing he’s really good at is lusting over people from afar, which is why it’s a problem when Laura Hale hires him to help her brother.

Where Lightning Strikes by andavs

Scott finally held out his phone, showing whichever picture he decided was the best. Stiles squint-glared at that and waited for his foggy brain to catch up. When it did, his heart skipped a beat.

Burned into the wheat field, in a way Stiles was pretty sure was notnormal for crop circles, were two concentric circles.

McCall Pack.

“I think it’s Kira,” Scott said, clear and concise. “I think she needs help.“

*

Scott and Stiles head back down to Mexico to find Kira and end up finding a little more.

As the Lights Go Down by standinginanicedress

Stiles is standing there looking bizarre – which maybe isn’t a very nice thing or even a convincing thing to say about a person that Derek’s basically invited over to hook up with (whatever that even fucking means to kids these days) – but he…does. He’s wearing dark jeans, a black hoodie with the hood pulled up so Derek can’t even really see his face aside from his mouth and jawline, and he’s got that metal baseball bat in his fingers again.

He looks like he’s come here to literally beat Derek to death.

Then, he grins, lifts one shoulder up in a half shrug, and says, “I can’t come in until you invite me.”

Derek is mystified enough that all he can say is, “really?” He thought that was a vampire thing.

clenching my jagged jaws (over the capture) by Marishna

Derek Hale was never supposed to be alpha, but he’s a good one. He doesn’t need any help and he definitely doesn’t need an emissary.

Stiles Stilinski is Derek Hale’s emissary and come hell or high water he’s going to see the Hale pack through the impending arrival of the alpha pack, even if it means he can never return to Beacon Hills after.

Hale Monster Sweets by bleep0bleep

The guy is back again. Derek watches curiously from his counter, idly keeping an eye on the teenaged vampires trying to decide on a type from the blood popsicle selection. The guy outside the store is a little pale and lanky, with a cute upturned nose and a sprinkle of moles on his pale face, not that Derek didn’t notice the first time he stopped in the middle of the bustling street to stare at Derek’s store sign, which he wasn’t supposed to be able to do.

[Hilary Duff Lyric Redacted] by calrissian18

Stiles hadn’t been in Beacon Hills in five years, hadn’t seen Derek in nearly as long, when he got the text:

New number: (+530) 365-2421

or

An abundance of overeating and geekery, dangerous caffeine/sugar cereal addictions, surprise werewolves, bird insults, purple-eyed shrimp, reincarnated serial killers (it’s cool, he has a leash), poorly played professional baseball, and a love story. In that order.

the spark within by triggeringthehealing

Stiles is more than just a spark, but when he starts learning magic, it feels like there’s something stopping him. He has magic in him, but despite the guidance from two experienced Druids, it still feels like it’s failing to wake up. He’s magic, but the spark that he needs is out of reach.

Blackbird by skoosiepants

Stiles groans and drops his face into his hands. “I’m seventeen, I can kind of use mountain ash and I can explode houses when I’m mad enough. How am I gonna win any kind of magic fight?”

“We’ll work on it,” Deaton says, as infuriatingly calm as ever. “The important thing to remember, Stiles, is that when everything else is chaos, you’re the port in the storm.”

Or-

Laura Hale never died, and Stiles is magic.

Everything Under the Moon by standinginanicedress

“Just go in and buy him something and attach a note that says, like, I don’t know,” she flips a curl over her shoulder, “let’s bone.”

Derek looks up at the sky and purses his lips. Doesn’t dignify that with a response. There’s no way in hell Derek is going to attach some dinky little note to Stiles’ gift that is either as crass as Erica’s suggestion or as humiliating as something he could come up with himself – no fucking way in hell.

But she does have a point. Stiles’ birthday is coming and Derek is shit out of luck and shit out of ideas for ways to make Stiles see him as anything more than just Derek. The way Stiles looks at him sometimes, it’s like he has no fucking idea.

Striking Matches by castielblues & eeyore9990

Stiles has only ever wanted to protect his family and his pack. That’s not easy to do when you’re human and sarcasm is your only defense. Now Deaton is telling Stiles he’s a spark, and if that’s a weapon in his arsenal, he’s sure as hell going to learn to use it.

All Stiles needs now, to complete his transformation into a true badass, is a training montage and a decent soundtrack…

Medicine Man by MellytheHun

Prompt: Person B knowing they’re undoubtedly about to die within the next few seconds, likely from the gaping wound they’re bleeding out from. Instead of calling for help, they phone Person A and carry on a casual conversation as if nothing is wrong, making sure to mention how much they love them before their time runs out.

Night Owl (series) by Lissadiane

Confession: Stiles is afraid of having magic.

The Spark had been cool. It had been small, manageable. He could do some funky stuff with Mountain Ash, all with the power of belief.

And now here he is, his Spark blown wide open, apparently coming down with a fatal case of magical overload, and all that stands between him and bleeding out is a grumpy owl that looks suspiciously like a feathered version of Derek Hale.

(In which Stiles learns he’s a witch, but instead of a wand and a trip to Diagon Alley, he gets blood magic, a grumpy and reluctant owl as his companion, and an accidental blood bond with Derek Hale.)

bend bridges, mend bones by Thealmostrhetoricalquestion

They burst through the portal in a gust of stale air and violet light, landing hard on the outskirts of a swamp. Stiles feels his knees buckle, both from the magic required to keep the portal open and from the force of their landing, but he grits his teeth, determined to stay standing in the presence of Derek Hale and his pack. Christ, it would be just his luck to rocket through his own portal at neck-breaking speeds and collide face-first with a puddle of sticky, disgusting mud.

Thankfully that doesn’t happen, which is good because Stiles can’t really afford to add useless to the list of things that Mage’s are; untrustworthy cowards, meddlers, monsters.

(In which there’s an awful lot of fighting, people learn to trust people, and Stiles saves the day. Repeatedly. Over and over again. And he would like some credit, goddamnit, Derek.)

Birdhouse In Your Soul by asocialfauxpas

Stiles’ magic is growing out of control and he must bond with a supernatural creature to keep from exploding. Yes, seriously.

And We’ll Be Complicated by ingberry

Stiles already had his hands full with the case he was working on for the enigmatic Mrs. B. He really didn’t need this too, but there was no changing the fact that he no longer remembered Derek Hale or anything connected to him. And no one could figure out why.

All My Kingdoms Turn to Sand by elisera

The real question is what Stiles wants. If he’s looking forward to seeing Derek again because they’ll complete what they started a long time ago or if Stiles is nervous because he’s feeling apprehensive. There’s a real possibility that he told the pack to finally send Derek up in order to tell him thanks, but no thanks. A lot can happen in six years; people change and grow apart and it isn’t like they were allowed to talk.

Talking Shit About a Pretty Sunset by whiskey_in_tea

Stiles leaves Beacon Hills on a Sunday morning. Lydia’s run the numbers and it’s not a sure thing by any stretch of the imagination, but supernatural evil seems mostly inclined to take the Lord’s day to rest just like humans do. He won’t make it back before Monday night but that’s okay, unless whatever comes after them is the actual apocalypse they should be all right— and if it’s the apocalypse his meager skills won’t be of much use anyway. Just go, Scott said while Stiles and Lydia dithered over lunar calendars and statistics, charts and graphs of every awful thing that’s rolled through Beacon Hills since they activated the Nemeton ten months ago. Who the fuck knows what’s coming, Stiles, you just have to go.

Among the Famous Living Dead by standinginanicedress

“Okay,” Stiles leans over the book, finger on his chin, while Derek stands there beside him with a frown on his face, “we have the pig’s blood.”

“They loved that at the butcher shop,” Derek mutters, rubbing his hand along his jaw. “I’ll take three quarts of pig’s blood. Not like this town doesn’t already think I’m some sort of fucking pervert anyway.”

“We have the hair you picked off his clothes,” Stiles points to the tiny Ziploc bag with a handful of Scott hairs tucked safely inside, and Derek grimaces. “We have the candles. We have the snake. Now we just need an object of the deceased.” He furrows his brow as he leans over the book some more, cocking his head. “It says the object can be anything that was deeply personal to the deceased. Like a piece of sentimental jewelry or a cherished trinket or even a favorite song.”

Derek snorts. “Yeah. Let’s just listen to fucking Blink-182 and summon the devil.”

“Right?” Stiles laughs, high and hysterical, manic almost.

Derek laughs, and Stiles laughs, and it’s not funny. It’s really not funny.

Aching for You by LittleRedEmissary

When Stiles tries to cast a protection spell on Derek and accidentally casts a spell much stronger than either of them expected, the duo has to relearn everything that they’ve learned about protecting the pack, because the old methods won’t do anymore. With the infamous Winchesters coming to town Derek hopes that the hunters will just drive through town, but the pack has never been good that laying low.

Emissary by dragon_temeraire

To keep the peace, Stiles agrees to be emissary to the Hale pack.

In Which a King and a Mage Dance by mikkimouse

Mage Stilinski sidled up next to him. “I thought I told you to call me Stiles, Your Majesty.”

Derek’s face warmed at the memory. He turned his attention back to the crowd. “I’m afraid now is not the place for such familiarity.”

“Such a shame,” Stiles said. “I do so love familiarity.”

The warmth on Derek’s face turned to heat. “I’m sure you do.”

By Fang and Fury (series) by grimm

He doesn’t come to The Beacon to pick up people. It’s precisely the reason why he doesn’t go anywhere else. People in this neighborhood know him, know he’s not interested in being hit on, which allows him to have a drink in peace. Derek knows he’s good-looking, but the type of people it attracts disgust him. At least other werewolves can smell the unfriendliness on him and stay away, but that doesn’t stop everyone. He went to a gay bar with his coworker Isaac once and it was horrifying.

Like James Dean, Only Sadder by 42hrb

The star of the Beacon Hills High School baseball team and Beacon Hills resident bad boy probably have nothing in common, right?

Deputy Derek Hale, Alpha by eldee

Deputy Derek Hale has recently become an alpha, and that changes things for him. Now that he’s back after a leave of absence, he’s hoping to get what he and Stiles had almost-started back on track. The thing is, it seems Stiles is going through some changes of his own and Derek’s not sure how he fits.

Fall Right Back to You (series) by yodasyoyo

My version of season 4 (which I still haven’t watched) and how Derek and Stiles finally fell for each other.

Clarity is told from Stiles POV: After his possession by the Nogitsune he is consumed by guilt and plagued by nightmares. Then he touches a magical artifact and ends up absorbing Derek into his subconscious.

Remedy is told from Dereks POV: In the aftermath of Clarity they are struggling to deal with the demon that has been unleashed on Beacon Hills and Derek is coming to terms with his past and his feelings for Stiles.

Filter Out the Starlight by skoosiepants

“Why are you not more curious about me?” Stiles says when Derek’s got the door half open, sun spilling over the dark wood, dust motes spinning about his legs. Stiles is wearing fabric that hasn’t been invented yet, he’s clutching a smart phone to his chest, and he appeared out of nowhere, like an angel.

Softly, Derek says, “We all have our secrets,” and closes the door.

Or-

A heartbroken Stiles accidentally travels back in time to find his one true love. A harlequin-ish Christmas romance.

all stories deserve an end by bleep0bleep

No one hardly ever comes up to this area of the forest, especially with the rumors of the “mad wizard.” Stiles encourages the rumor, because it means people leave him alone. It’s a good, solitary existence as long as Stiles pretends the aching loneliness in his heart isn’t there.

Children’s Tales by artemis69

Be careful, little girl.

Don’t go causing troubles in Beacon Hills, because the Hales live there, little girl.

Keep away from Beacon Hills, little girl, or the Hales will destroy you.

–

Or:In a world where the Hales are alive and the protectors of the town of Beacon Hills, the humans politely fake ignorance of their not-really-human status, and they all live happily ever after.

Then Kate comes in.

Well.

Tries to.

Incantation Ink (series) by otter

The tattoo parlor didn’t look like much. The apprentice who was supposed to be inking Derek’s new magical tattoo wasn’t immediately confidence-inspiring either.

I’ll Be Home for Next Year, Darling by crossroadswrite

“What year is it?” he asks, because well. It happened to Marty McFly right? And werewolves are real so-

“Time travel isn’t real,” Derek says immediately.

Stiles huffs because fine he doesn’t want to cooperate Stiles will just have to rub his point all over Derek’s face until he gets it.

“It’s July 12th of 2010.”

“It’s 2003,” Derek counters.

Wolf Back by write_light

Sterek AU with an Evil King and his Loyal Huntsman, men and wolves, loss and pain, mercy and trust, and one very enigmatic Mirror on the wall.

Magical Storm by Electricviolinist & Marbleeyes

A roar reverberated through the air. Not just any roar; a werewolf roar.

“About fucking time!” exclaimed Stiles. He was going to let Scott win when they next played Mario Karts.

The door to his jeep was yanked open and Stiles realised it wasn’t Scott who had come to save him. It was Derek Hale. A very wet Derek Hale. Stiles mind immediately headed south into an ‘R’ rated place; the wet t-shirt Derek was wearing was very tight.

“You’re back,” was all he could think to say.

Derek didn’t reply, because he was an antisocial dick. Instead he asked: “Does this piece of crap still drive?”

“Uh, yes,” Stiles cried, massively offended on the behalf of his beautiful jeep.

“Then drive. Now!”

…

It was a pretty normal day for Stiles, except then there was rain and monsters and witches and Derek Hale. All because Derek Hale’s type is psychotic. And apparently, Stiles is stuck right in the very centre of it.

Mortal Peril On the Side by Brigantine

Stiles and Derek figure things out. Sheriff Stilinski remains remarkably calm. Stiles gets some advice from two of his mother’s friends.

The Coming of Spring by A_Diamond

Snow melts beneath Stiles’s boots as he walks, each step revealing a patch of dark brown beneath the thin blanket of white. He can’t see it yet through the trees, but he knows the cottage is there.

[stranger-harringtons]

what you know.

hi! haven’t written a cheeky little fic in quite a bit, so I thought i’d stretch the muscles on a kastle fic. if you’re not aboard this train, what’s wrong with ya? enjoy! (read on ao3)

Karen Page only manages to get through one therapy session.

It was Ellison’s idea, of course. His constant good-natured quips about getting herself into trouble over and over didn’t seem appropriate after a hostage attempt, a bombing, and then another supposed hostage attempt, apparently. He tried to soften the suggestion of seeing a therapist by saying she’d be no good to him if she kept zoning out, or falling asleep at her desk, but the suggestion was real all the same. Try a therapist. Get some rest. Those were her orders.

But apparently Karen isn’t the therapy type, because she decides halfway through the first session that she won’t come back a second time. It’s not that the therapist isn’t nice—she’s plenty nice. It’s the fact that so much of Karen’s issues are redacted knowledge, piled under cover stories and bullshit she’s told the cops, that she just can’t bring herself to hash it all out with a stranger.

Karen thinks that maybe the therapist—a Dr. Foreman or Freeman or something like that—knew that she was losing Karen during the session, because she had said, “Look, Ms. Page…can I call you Karen?”

Karen had nodded, already tired of speaking.

“Karen, sometimes after a trauma our reality can feel so distant that it’s hard to get a handle on what’s real. But the things from our past, the things that are true to our core…those things will always be true. When reality feels like its slipping away, hold on to those things. You have to focus on what you know.”

The good doctor had lost her after that, and Karen thought it was all pretty much bullshit. But the last part had stuck with her. What did she know?

Karen knows that she likes to read on the subway. She likes wearing heels that click on the sidewalk. She prefers winter to summer, but dislikes wearing pantyhose during the winter. Karen hates exercising but is apparently not a fan of therapy, so she goes running on Saturday mornings. She keeps a .380 in her purse and a pot of dying roses in her window. She has a track record for falling in love with the wrong people. She is fine.

She repeats the list in her head each morning when she wakes up, until her hands stop shaking and the knots in her stomach go away.

It’s only been a month and three weeks when she sees Frank again.

She’d been working in the meantime, after finally convincing Ellison that the Bulletin really wasn’t better off with her on leave. She’d been in plenty of other traumatic situations before, she’d told him. He had glanced at her pointedly and let it go. In her downtime, she’d searched. For Frank Castle. For Pete Castiglione. There was nothing.

Madani had been the one to tell her about Frank’s new identity. “He’s practically a ghost now,” she’d said from the hospital bed. Like he hadn’t been before.

That’s how he reappears, too. Ghostlike.

She’s sitting in a booth at a shitty diner on 53rd on a Monday night, files spread around on the sticky table in front of her. It’s almost eleven thirty, so the streets outside the window aren’t too busy except for the occasional police cruiser and stray pedestrian. She’s still skimming her notes when she feels a presence pause outside the window, but by the time she looks over there is no one there.

 It’s another few minutes before the bell on the door chimes.

He’s let his hair grow out again, but his beard is neater than it was before. He’s wearing a black hoodie totally inappropriate for the cold weather, but underneath that is a green flannel which surprises Karen a little. She’s never seen him in green.

He walks slowly to her booth, and her eyes are on him the whole time. He looks a little apprehensive, which is maybe why he hesitates a little by the booth before sitting down.

The highlighter she’s been holding has bled a bright yellow circle onto the paper in front of her.

“Karen.”

She can’t help the sigh that escapes her, or the sheer relief she feels at hearing her own name coming out of his mouth.

Is this reality slipping away?

What does she know?

Karen likes wearing her hair down. She likes having plants in her house, but she doesn’t like watering them. She likes white roses. She likes crappy disco music and having a gun in her purse. She likes green flannel.

 “Frank.” It comes out hushed.

Her world cracks open a little when he gives her a smirk. “Its, uh… It’s Pete, actually.”

 She doesn’t allow herself to smile. She’s burning with something that feels like anger but she can’t be quite sure. How can she be so happy and so angry at once? “Where have you been?” she says. “I looked for you. After Central Park…”

That makes the smirk leave his lips. “I had to lay low for a while,” he explains. “I was in bad shape… had to get outta dodge.”

“I could have helped you!” Her voice is suddenly loud again, which makes Frank’s eyes scan the diner briefly before apparently deciding her outburst was called for. Karen gives him an apologetic glance. “I was worried, Frank,” she says lower. “I… I missed you.”

God, what is it about this man? Sure, they can make it through harrowing violence and trauma, but simple gestures of affection render her avoiding his eyes.

He says nothing, but she sees his fingers twitch on the table like they need something to hold onto. She hears him suck in a breath.

“Why now?” she asks, finally meeting his eyes again. They squint a little, like he’s thinking hard about something.

 “Seemed like long enough.”

 And she can’t help but smile.

 The diner becomes their designated spot to meet. Mondays, as it turns out, are Frank’s most social day of the week. Curtis leads group at eight, so Frank meets her at the same booth as always when he’s done.

He tells her about the veterans group while they split pots of coffee. He talks about the Liebermans, about Zach and Leo, and sometimes he even mentions his own kids. He tells her about the books he’s reading, the jobs he’s working. Sometimes he holds her hand for a few seconds across the table. He smiles a lot more.

 Karen tells him about the Bulletin. She explains the stories she’s working, and ignores his frowns when she mentions the more dangerous ones. Sometimes she talks about Vermont. She tells him about Foggy and Ellison, about how she’s picked up running. She smiles a lot more too. She doesn’t tell him how much she looks forward to her Monday nights, or that at night she dreams about running her hands through his hair.

 Those thoughts she keeps to herself.

Their routine stays the same for two months until someone sends a crude bomb to the Bulletin and Frank comes to her apartment that afternoon.

 He’s pounding on the door at around three in the afternoon, only about an hour after Karen was given the all clear to leave the hospital and head back home. As soon as she unlatches the door, he’s pushing past her threshold with both hands on her shoulders.

 “Karen, are you hurt?” He’s scanning her for injuries, eyes wild, and she barely has time to process the goosebumps his hands leave behind.

 She swings the door shut behind him. “Frank, I’m fine,” she tells him. “Really.”

 Frank’s hands briefly rest on her cheeks before returning to her arms. “Don’t bullshit me.”

 She rolls her eyes. “I’m not bullshitting you. The package was in the mailroom, nobody was in there. Not even me.”

 Frank seems to relax a little and lets his hands fall to his sides. She feels the loss almost immediately but tries not to let it show, even as she stays close in his space. “Jesus Christ,” he mutters. “What kind of shit have you gotten into now?”

She shrugs. “Probably just some low level criminal who’s pissed about something I wrote,” she says. “Though the package wasn’t even technically addressed to me, so who really knows? Could’ve been for any reporter.”

 Frank smiles wanly. “Doubt that.”

 “Me too.”

 He’s still standing close, so she barely has to move when he drops his forehead against hers like he’d done what seemed like forever ago. Her heart feels like its going to beat out of her chest when she rests her hands on his hips. She can feel a holster at his waist, and in some twisted logic she feels even safer with it under her hand.

Her hands shake.

 Karen Page likes watching old movies. She likes being on her laptop in bed with all the lights off. She likes red wine and black coffee. She likes the smell of gunmetal and she likes Frank Castle under her hands.

 “Can’t keep you safe if you do shit like this,” he says, shaking his head back and forth against hers.

“You don’t have to protect me, Frank.”

 “Of course I do,” he breathes.

 That makes her lean back and look into his eyes. She’s not sure what exactly she’s looking for. But it’s not his eyes that make her kiss him. Its his hands, loosening their grip on her shoulders and sliding up her neck to rest on her cheeks. They cup her face when she finally presses her mouth to his, gentle until she opens her mouth and they move to her waist. He’s holding her so tightly she thinks there will be bruises of his fingertips tomorrow. The thought makes her kiss him deeper.

 After a moment, he pulls away. His eyes look darker than usual as they search hers. “Karen,” he whispers.

 Oh God. “Too much?” she whispers, fearing the answer. She’s never wanted to push him, ever. She takes a step back. “Shit, I’m sorry. If you want to go…”

But he takes a step forward, closing the space she’d created. He brushes a piece of hair from her face, and lets his hand rest there. “No, I don’t… I don’t want to go.”

It’s like he’s afraid of hurting her, of all things. Karen, who has stepped on his heart at least twice and who he’s taken a bullet for anyway. They didn’t lie to each other. They put their shit out on a sticky diner table and confronted their demons, bleeding for each other both literally and not. She’s the one whose always afraid. But not of this.

So she presses a kiss to his jaw and says, “Then stay.”

He does.

When Karen Page wakes in the mornings, her hands still sometimes shake. She still has the occasional knot in her stomach. If she’s lucky, the sun will hit her bed and she allows herself to be blinded momentarily by the warmth of it. She recites her list anyway.

What do you know?

Karen knows she likes to read on the subway. She likes red wine and black coffee. She likes New York City, but sometimes misses Vermont. She likes writing the news, but prefers not to be it. She likes her .380 in her purse and green flannel. She had a brother.

She likes Pete Castiglione, but she likes Frank Castle more. She likes the feeling of stubble under her lips. She likes pressing her cold toes into Frank’s calves when they’re sleeping. She loves when Frank kisses her jaw and when he curses into her mouth. She loves his voice when he reads aloud. She loves the smell of gunmetal. She is fine.

Her hands stop shaking.

The knots in her stomach go away.

He sleepily tightens his arms around her waist.

[avialaeandapidae]

Got my days wrong and ended up alone in a room with my boss and the President of Ireland while I was on ketamine.

Thread by @shockproofbeats

Right, this was when I was eighteen so don't judge me too harshly. Or if you think drugs are cool and I'm a legend, fill your boots. Anyway, at the time I was working through college in Dublin with bar shifts at [redacted] music venue.

One day I get a call on my day off. Way the gig worked, you'd either get Fri or Sat off. This week it was Fri, happy days. My manager, let's call her Dympna, pipes up on the phone: "So, when you come in this evening, just a few things to remember". I'm like, hold on Dympz, I'm off this eve, jog on. She corrects me. "Remember I said you could get all of Saturday off if you just worked 2 hours tonight?".

And of course THEN, I did suddenly remember, she'd said it to me as I was leaving the building and my conscious work brain was doing somersaults to get out of the place. She could have told me I was to have my foreskin tattooed with a harpoon and I would have given her a smile, thumbs up, and a flurry of yeps to get out of the place. I was eighteen. On minimum wage, and - bear in mind this is really saying something - my absolute minimum effort. So, I'm bang to rights and I say "yeaaah, of course, sorry just got my days mixed up, I'll be there no problem" and she says, "this evening will be fine, just the head of the [redacted] and some VIPs, few hours then you can take off".

All good. Except for the one thing. At that very moment, I was in a mate's house on Dame St, relaxing with (I thought) nothing to do for the evening.

Now you have to remember that, before dabbing and fortnite, kids used "drugs" to get high and I was, occasionally, adjacent to them. I was a fairly sheltered kid before college, and didn't even drink til I was well into my late teens, never smoked even. I was very green.

So too, coincidentally, was the homebrew ketamine that said pal was making IN HIS OVEN when I arrived. My pal had gotten it in liquid form and, for some reason, it had been dyed green - he has subsequently told me he thought it was a St Patrick's Day promotion, and I've always thought it a charming entrepreneurial flourish on the part of his enterprising ketamine wholesaler. (Ketamine wholesalers are often vets, and the stuff originally for cats. People always say horse tranquiliser, either to make it sound more sordid or more badass, but ketamine is used on many animals, and vets have more use for cat tranqs than horses. Not quite as sexy is it?)

Anyway, for want of a better idea, I took him up on his offer of a line of this thick, vaguely slightly clumpy bright green powder, knowing I had nothing else to do for the evening. Felt nothing. Had a tiny further bump 10 mins later. It was at this point that my phone rang.

FLASHBACK ENDS, WE'RE BACK IN THE ROOM. So I'm definitely sweating after the call, not like instant come-up, more worried ABOUT the come-up. Never done this in my life, I've no idea how it's going to feel. But, absent any other idea, I get my stuff together and head to work.

On way to work, starts kicking in. You know when the roof of your mouth starts politely folding your brain in half, and your chest flutters like a cathedral filled with bees? I was holding it together but knew if I stopped concentrating for one second, I would become time itself.

By the time I reach work (twenty mins later) I am sweating like microwaved bread, eyes on hinges, convinced my fingernails owe me money. I have an overwelming urge to yawn, just to get the memories out WHEN in comes Dympna with the rota for the evening.

D: Thanks again, know it's short- oh, you look a bit hot and bothered, did you run here ha?"

Me: Hmnnnnnyes, I did - the dids is"

D: OK, just you tonight and the top man, he's showing the President what's going on for the next while"

[one beat]

Me: Sorr din you sez de presddyen?" D: Yes, Mary McAleese is in to see this season's programme of events.

Me: Hmmnggg

D: All you need to do is stand in the corner and offer them drinks every fifteen minutes.

Me: Ahhh yesssshnshh

D: Maybe have a wash beforehand So the gig is this: Mary McAleese (the *original* MMA) was to go round this room upstairs which had upcoming acts for the season illustrated with photographs and programme notes. The director of [redacted] would walk her around and say "fricken great, Madge innit?" or whatever.

My role is pretty weird, I have to stand in the corner and then every 15 mins, INTERRUPT this live-wire pair to offer them drinks, which protocol dictates they must refuse. I have barely processed any of this before I'm grabbing a tray and heading upstairs.

The tray, btw, contains a white wine, a red wine, a G&T, a whiskey, a rum and coke and some mineral waters. Always found that mix weird. Imagine the President of Ireland seeing the rum and coke and going "oooooh nice one, ta - now tell me about this Latvian choir again".

Right now I can hold it together when stimulated, when the adrenaline and fear is keeping me just ticking over - I'm weird but with it.

Problem is, my job is now to stand silent and motionless in a room on my own until the President of Ireland arrives. Time passes on my own. Empires crumble and glaciers dissolve, stars die and oceans melt, out on the dusty planes of mother earth, hot bursts of young love gift the miracle of life; children are born, raised, stricken infirm and die of old age.

And then Mary McAleese walks in. By now, having been alone with my thoughts for the entire Cretaceous period, I am no longer mildly weird but deeply, extravagantly deranged. As the President of Ireland walks in, with my boss's boss's boss's boss, my first impulse is to greet them like I own the place. It would be rude, surely, to not acknowledge their presence? Out of order even. Best thing to do would obviously be to say "hello guys" like it's my home and I live there, in this big white room, where I stand in the corner, alone, holding a tray of drinks, like you do, at home.

Me: hello guys HELLO GUYS

Anyway, by the divine grace of the infant Christ, they somehow do not hear me say this, and begin their itinerary round the room. I clench my entire head and focus on not shouting across the room to let them know that they should always feel at home here in this room of ours.

I become extremely aware of my hands, and how I haven't felt them in a very long time. They're detuned to static , which would be worrying even if they weren't holding a tray of drinks filled with noise and judgement. I hold no faith or creed other than "do not drop these plz".

Just when dropping everything seems to become less urgent, I realise it's time to go over and offer these motherfuckers some fucken drinks, let's get this party started wooooooo I begin walking over to them and I move so abruptly that the glasses clink and they turn to look at me.

I did this too fast.

Now I'm thinking wooooah slow down there martina hingis, so I self-correct to a much slower speed. Watching my breath, nice and casual, you got this buddy. Guys. GUYS. Now, I'm moving far too slow. I started at this speed and I'm to embarassed to change and now it's gonna take me like 5 mins to cross the room. They are watching me, frowning and sweaty, traversing the 5 foot between us like it's a wooden plank on the Crystal Maze. I'm moving so slow my legs are cramping. I think they're wondering why it's taking me so long. It's way harder than walking at normal speed. I'm shaking so the drinks are making noise again. For what feels like minutes.

Anyway, I offer them the drinks and they say no. Do this another two times - how long was this presentation anyway, is this what the President does all day? Give her a brochure and a carryout ffs - and they say no.

By the end, I've calmed down a bit in physical side (sweating, shaking) but I still feel completely batshit. At one point I clearly remember believing that my mind had escaped my body and was watching me hold the tray of drinks from the wallspace behind my head. Only out-of-body experience I've ever had.

At the very end, they do accept a drink. It was at this point she spoke to me. Just some inane pleasantries, to which I reply with some off-the-hook pablum about work and college, at which point she says;

"Oh, is that a Northern accent I detect?"

Dawgs, you know I'm down for the Nordie solidarity vibe, but this is the last thing I need right now. "Yeeerrrsh" I say, with a goalkeeper's glove in my mouth. She starts talking about her experience coming down to study here, how it can be a real scenic change, but the making of you if you keep your eyes open to new experiences.

I can tell she definitely means green ketamine. She's a lovely woman, and very open and generous with her time, giving me ample space to answer her questions which I mostly do with sheepish, one-or-two-word answers. Finally, she asks me if Dublin is everything I thought it wou-

Me: YES I LIKE IT I THINK IT'S GOOD

I'd been paying such fierce attention, I'd mis-timed my reply AND badly modulated my volume. She actually recoiled a little. I think the head of the venue actually stepped back and said "jesus!". Mary McAleese flinched for what seemed like half a second, then flashed her best your-mum's-sound-mate smile and replaced her white wine on my tray.

The boss man nodded at me, they walked out of the room and I waited a few seconds before making my way downstairs to the kitchen. So at this point I'm thinking, wellll, I'm definitely fired but this will one day make a great story on an Nazi-riddled microblogging platform.

I make my way to the staff area, wipe my sopping face and check my phone. I had only been in the room for 35 minutes. Dympna pads in all smiles, thanking me for my help at short notice. She sees that I'm a bit freaked and says, almost with a wink, "you could have told me you'd be like this, by the way" I'm thinking, of course, Dympna gets what's up, it's the service industry, people mistime their vibes, I bet this isn't the first time she's seen some-

"I had no idea you were such a huge fan of Mary McAleese"

I'm sorry what again was that did you mean The boss man had indeed related the events upstairs to Dympna, but rather than a frightened waif hepped up on cat tranqs, he'd seen a political nerd deeply, irretrievably starstruck by contact with the 8th President of the Irish Republic, Mary McAleese. Presumably a political nerd with a gland problem, and low-grade artritis in both legs, and a tendency to welcome people into their workspaces, but a political nerd all the same.

Me: Oh, yeah well, you know, it's embarassing. She's, just amazing.

And you know what, she kinda is. She was always very nice to me each of the subsequent times we met - me doling out the drinks, her asking me how Dublin was getting on, all the while the other staff eyeing me to see how I was dealing with such close contact with my hero. I'd gurn and fret, play up to it when she'd be coming in, "oh what am I like". I'd bat away suggestions I fancied her from the more ribald members of the changing room, and laugh along with the usual jibes, safe in the knowledge my nerdy affect had saved my bacon.

So take ketamine at work, it's great.

END.

[babelrpg-blog]

below the cut, you will find admin Christine’s sample application for Billie Weasley to give you an idea of what we’re looking for in an app. applications will not be posted in full, when we post acceptances.

OUT OF CHARACTER:

Name: Christine Age: 24 Pronouns: they/them Timezone: GMT Activity: medium/high -- I’m a full time grad student but am usually on to do replies at least every other day Triggers: [redacted]

BASICS:

Character name: Billie Arthur Weasley Gender and pronouns: transgender woman, she/her Date of birth: 29 November, 1970 Occupation: Curse Breaker Former Hogwarts house: Gryffindor Boggart: muggles, she’s heard, call it claustrophobia, the sense of the entire room closing in around you, pushing in until you can’t breathe, but for her, it’s just strange, now -- when she was younger, her boggart had been a giant, oversized spider, its legs clickclacking as it moved towards her, but now... ever since she returned to England, it’s the feeling of being trapped, of not being able to breathe, of being buried alive.

PERSONALITY

A true Gryffindor at heart, Billie is courageous and a little reckless, and despite a fairly laid-back exterior, she’s always searching for some kind of new adventure. However, before all else she is principled and determined, never compromising her own morals or beliefs or desires for anyone else’s sake. She always sees the best in others, even when it means she ends up expecting too much or misjudging someone’s motivations. When she doesn’t get her way she can be incredibly obstinate and hold grudges.

HISTORY

one. She grows up surrounded by war. You wouldn’t know it, though. She’s eleven when the war ends, just starting her first year at Hogwarts, and the only influence of the entire thing on her life is a double funeral, the second-hand black dress robes her mother leaves on her bed the morning before, a dreary churchyard in Ottery St. Catchpole. She didn’t know her uncles Gideon and Fabian well -- at one point, her mother had been close to her older brothers, but the war had pulled them apart when the twins joined the Order and Molly distanced herself in order to keep her children safe.

She never thought it stuck with her; a simple fact of the world was that the world had been at war when she was young, and that then it had been over. That war happened, it ended, and things got better. She’s sheltered from it; which, she thinks now, is exactly what her parents wanted. What business does an eleven year old have, understanding the intimacies of war? Only, not every eleven year old is so lucky.

two. Hogwarts is easy, when she puts her mind to it. She likes learning, she makes friends with ease. She is the kind to set her mind to work easily, to get things done well, and she takes to magic fast, particularly adept at Charms and Defense Against the Dark Arts. Her life there is, for all intents and purposes, simple; she becomes a prefect; she becomes Head Boy. She plays quidditch, for two years, and then leaves the team after a repetitive stress injury in her shoulder  in sixth year makes catching difficult and Keeping impossible.

This is not the interesting part of her story.

She meets and exceeds the expectations before her; that’s just what is done. She is driven, but not to anything in particular. Not by anything in particular, except that she is the eldest, and she is to provide a good role model for her brothers. People -- her parents, her professors -- set expectations in front of her and she does the only thing she has ever known to do. She feels a vague discomfort, sometimes, that she doesn’t understand. She kisses a few girls. She kisses a few more boys. She is generally well-liked, generally unobjectionable. But she discovers no great passion; she feels restless, for seven years.

She looks through a list of possible post-Hogwarts jobs and the required OWLs and NEWTs to get there. She thinks Curse Breaker looks fun, looks adventurous; it’s a job with a tangible goal, and it’s very, very far away from England.

three.  Molly is... well, a bit suffocating. Even with six other siblings, Billie’s Hogwarts years are filled with the constant fretting and doting and scolding, a mother’s love, sure, but honestly, a bit much, what with the Bill, darling, don’t you think it’s time for a haircut, and we’re so proud of your OWL scores, dear, only-- don’t you think Curse Breaker is a bit... well, dangerous?

It takes moving to Egypt for three years to give her the space she needs to be anything other than the child her parents wanted, the brother her siblings looked up to. The Curse Breakers she works with are a rowdy lot -- overachievers, like she had been at Hogwarts, but mellowed by time and adrenaline and the easy skillfulness with which they navigate the cramped tombs and sidestep certain death. Young and beautiful and reckless and brilliant, they inspire her, teach her how to be a little more free than she’d ever let herself be.

One, in particular, a handsome wizard a few years her senior with hair dyed and shaved like he ought to be in a muggle punk band, takes a liking to her, and Billie Weasley falls in love for the first time. Around everything else, they spend hours lying in bed talking about the world, about their world views, and he’s a strong believer in reinventing yourself without the influence of parents who expect too much of you. She doesn’t know if she agrees that her parents expected too much of her, but she does start thinking about the places where her heart doesn’t meet their expectations of her.

four. She comes out to Charlie, first. They were always the closest, their shared drive for adventure keeping them in a lockstep through most of their childhood. She came out to him first, too, when she came out as being bisexual, at sixteen, and that feels... harder, than it is now. Harder than it is to write him a letter saying, Charlie, I’m a girl.

She doesn’t know, for a long time, how to tell the rest of her family. Charlie accepts her without question, of course he does, he’s always been the type. Fred and George couldn’t care less, tell her she’s got to make her name something that still begins with B or else all those jumpers will go to waste. Ron doesn’t seem to notice that anything is different; he’s much the same as their father, that way, adapting in a slow and halting way to pronouns and the like, harmless and well-meaning. Percy thinks it’s all daft, rolls his eyes, doesn’t speak to her much at Christmas.

Ginny, eight and lonely, is ecstatic to have a sister, insists on braiding her hair and sharing her jewelry and talking about boys late at night and all the things she’s always wished she had someone to do it with. Billie humors her, holds her close, doesn’t let her notice that when she presses her face close into her sister’s hair, there are tears in her eyes.

Molly... tries, bless her. Not hard enough. But she tries, in her own way. It’s almost enough not to hold it against her. It’s enough to pretend not to.

five. She comes back to England after three years in Egypt. Temporary leave, they call it, but what it is is a bloody desk job. She can’t be trusted to do her job anymore. No, there was a tomb, just outside of what was once called Thonis, a tomb they weren’t supposed to go into -- too dangerous, one of the senior curse breakers had said, forget about it. He’d wanted to go in anyway, asked her to come, and she’d thought: it’s not safe. And in the tomb, there was a trap he didn’t notice, a rogue curse. The Healers tell her it severed his jugular, that it likely took several minutes for him to bleed out, alone in there, before he stopped breathing.

What she hears is: if you had been in there, you could have saved him. If you hadn’t been a coward, he would be alive.

She comes back to England a shell of the person she was when she left, a hollow thing. She moves back into her bedroom at the very top of her parents’ tall, tall house. It had been Percy’s, after she left, so he could have a room to himself; she doesn’t redecorate.

It is the first time she sees what has become of Britain. The first time that she, as an adult, fully wraps her head around what her world has become. And about what she has become, in her parents’ shadow. She goes to work every day, at a little desk in a back office in Gringotts; she reads the paper, every day. Starts to see the news about executions. Adjusts without much difficulty to the presence of muggles in their formerly closed-off world (he’d been a muggleborn, showed her his Sony Walkman and a handful of CDs one of their first nights together, told her about telephones and televisions and tele-everything, and it’s all she can think of when her dad buys one of each, every gadget he can get his hands on, a brand new Macintosh Classic that costs enough that Molly swats him across the head with her Witch Weekly when he tells her how much he spent).

She drifts.

six. No one can be stagnant forever. It festers.

It turns from depression to resentment, before she realizes it. And one day, sitting silently at dinner with her parents and Ginny -- it’s September, and Ron’s eleven now, so he’s started Hogwarts, and Fred and George and Percy too, and Charlie’s still in Romania with the dragons -- she snaps. She isn’t listening to the conversation but her father says something banal about an argument he overheard at work, something about the executions and the Minister, and her mother says well you wouldn’t want to get involved in all of that, save your own skin while you can, and something inside of her breaks.

She doesn’t remember what she shouts, hands shaking, as she stands up from the table, but when she thinks about it, it sounds a lot like maybe if you stood up for anything in your bloody joke of a life and she doesn’t mean it at the time but when she finds herself sitting in a pub in Diagon Alley an hour later next to Mary MacDonald, she thinks maybe she did mean it.

She thinks maybe there’s got to be more to life than saving your own skin. There’s got to be something worth fighting for, some adventure just around the next corner if only you’re willing to stick your neck out and take a risk.

She thinks maybe, maybe, there’s a reason the hat put her in Gryffindor after all.

INTERVIEW

Describe the recurring dream you’ve been having lately.

    ‘I’m, ah. I’m in Egypt again. Merlin, this is going to sound so bloody cliché. Right, Bill, bloody buried alive, how original--’

She runs a hand through her hair, then gets fed up halfway through, extracts it, pulls an elastic off her wrist and loops it quickly through the long mass of red, missing a few strands here and there.

    ‘Right, sorry. Ah, so I’m in Egypt, headed down into one of the tombs, and the tunnels are narrower than usual, like, barely broad enough across for me to stand without scraping my shoulders on the stone of the walls, so I can’t have my wand drawn as I make my way through them. And every time I reach the end of the hallway, there’s a fork, and every time, no matter which way I turn, it’s the same bloody hallway -- I can tell, the hieroglyphics are the same. But when I focus on the hieroglyphics to see if I can read them, to see if they say anything, they’re, well, they’re not hieroglyphics. They keep changing. First they’re, dunno, cyrillic probably? Then they’re Chinese characters, then they’re English but the letters don’t make up real words. And every time, as soon as they turn to English I hear someone screaming, from down the hallway, and it’s someone I know, but I can’t run because the hallway’s too narrow, and I can’t reach them because every time I turn I’m in the same hallway, and I must just exhaust myself, running in circles like that, because every time I wake up, I’m out of breath, and I never remember who it was screaming when I try to think about it...’

She’s quiet, for a moment, then clears her throat and leans back in her chair, only just realizing that she’s moved to the edge of it, dug half moons into her palms where her nails have grown too long for that kind of nervous gripping.

    ‘Sorry, bit morbid. But, er, that’s... been once or twice a week, now, for the past couple of months.’

What’s the most convincing lie you’ve ever told yourself?

    ‘That one person can’t make a difference. My mum used to say that kind of thing a lot, you can’t change the world on your own, all that. I think maybe she felt guilty, sometimes, after her brothers died, that she hadn’t done anything to help. Or maybe it was the opposite, maybe she was still mad at them for putting themselves in danger to try to make things better when they would’ve been safer at home. I don’t... know, for sure, why she did anything she’s done, but what I decide to do matters and if I keep hiding forever because I think I don’t matter, that I’m better off saving my own skin, I’m going to end up like her.’

What has been the most beneficial aspect of the Statute of Secrecy being abolished? What about the greatest deficit?

    ‘Well, my dad’s pretty chuffed about it, isn’t he? I’ve got to admit, having some muggle things around the house have been pretty nice -- the telephone, CDs, pencils are bloody brilliant. Muggle fashion’s amazing, too, much better than robes and all that. But, in all seriousness, I think we’ve gone about things all wrong -- none of this is about trying to make two worlds that have been separate for all this time coexist. It’s about building a world that works for everyone, even if that means starting from scratch. And I don’t think it’s working, this way. I don’t think it’s enough.’

Ten years ago, where did you see yourself today? What would you tell your younger self, if you could?

    ‘Ten years ago? I was twelve, I saw myself becoming a professional quidditch star, just like every other twelve year old whose ever ridden a broom. I know that’s not the point of the question or whatever, but it’s true; didn’t exactly have a remarkable sense of self at that age. What I’d tell myself, though? That’s a better question. Would’ve been bloody convenient to have realized I’m a girl before all of that puberty business, wouldn’t it?’

EXTRAS

inspo tag

details:

    wand: maple, unicorn tail hair, 11″, sturdy

    amortentia: sun cream, cider, cinnamon

    patronus: falcon

future plot ideas:

one of the things I’m primarily interested in exploring with Billie is the idea of a blind idealist who sees a sort of heroic, dramatic way of “revolution” or “saving the world” as the only way to make a difference or do something important; there’s a tension between her and Molly -- whose existence is a much quieter, more practical thing -- that I’d love to see come to a head, and see how that affects her interactions with characters like Atticus and Mary, for whom things like revolution are unavoidably a life-or-death situation. I want to see her realize she’s not entirely right in her worldview, to be forced to see things from the points of view of some of the other characters and have to come to terms with the fact that these things she believes with her entire heart aren’t necessarily as true as she thinks they are

expanded personality:

MBTI type: ENFP, the Campaigner

The Campaigner personality is a true free spirit. They are often the life of the party. More than just sociable people-pleasers though, Campaigners read between the lines with curiosity and energy. They tend to see life as a big, complex puzzle where everything is connected – but see it through a prism of emotion, compassion and mysticism, and are always looking for a deeper meaning. Luckily, Campaigners know how to relax, and they are perfectly capable of switching from a passionate, driven idealist in the workplace to that imaginative and enthusiastic free spirit on the dance floor, often with a suddenness that can surprise even their closest friends. Being in the mix also gives them a chance to connect emotionally with others, giving them cherished insight into what motivates their friends and colleagues.

enneagram type: type Eight, the Challenger

People of this personality type are essentially unwilling to be controlled, either by others or by their circumstances; they fully intend to be masters of their fate. Eights are strong willed, decisive, practical, tough minded and energetic. They want a lot out of life and feel fully prepared to go out and get it.

zodiac sign: Saggitarius

Your adventurous personality is accompanied by a straightforward and optimistic attitude. While others may take comfort in the familiar, you are always seeking to escape it. You are energized by new experiences, environments, and people, which explains why you are always moving towards something new. Your friends and family enjoy your adventures, but they truly appreciate your positive outlook. Your loved ones never fail to be uplifted by your ability to take the best out of any situation or person.

[astralmouseart]

2018 Book Haul

So, 2018 is over and the new year sucks so far, so it’s time to take a look back at it. Was writing it since January and only now I got to finishing it XD .

I managed to rebuild most important parts of my military history/science library after selling 90% of it in 2017. 

Books that I finished reading are marked by / and books that I re-bought for my military history library are marked * .

So, when it comes to books, in 2018, I bought:

February

24 February

Hitchcock / Truffaut - Francois Truffaut.

This was after I sold some of my comic book albums - Incal, Metabaron saga and Castaka. Actually I wonder what I did with the rest of the money. Oh, I know. I bought a collector’s edition of Torment: Tides of Numenora for 1/5 of the original price. Sold them because I considered them decadent. Regretting selling Incal now.

Original post about it.

March

20 March

J.R.R. Tolkien Artist & Illustrator - Wayne G. Hammond

Got it on my birthday. That’s something that was on my to-buy list for a few years.

Here are my two posts about it. post1  post2 .

April

In April, I started the course. Also, I got my first smartphone since there was a new phone deal and my mother still haven’t started using hers from the last one so I finally got one as a part of the new deal.

April was when the contracts finally started and also the course/internship thing started for me. So, I started having some money.

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking - Susan Cain

This book really pissed me off because it was a lot about the author showing off her privilege. For example not being subjected to psychological liquidation. So I have sold it.

19 April

The Tale of Kullervo  - J.R.R. Tolkien

May

12 May

Durer - Ruth Dangelmaier

An album and biography of Albrecht Durer. Turned out to be a horrible disappointment because the illustrations were low resolution with visible raster. Sold it immediately.

Delta Venus - Anaïs Nin

Diary 1934-1939 - Anaïs Nin

I don’t quite understand how it happened, but I bought my first Anaïs Nin diary - 1931-1934 in November 2017. I don’t remember how it happened. The era of purity has ended only on 20180426, so it makes no sense. Though maybe I bought it without intention of indulging in decadence. I remembered reading the redacted version of the diaries around 2003 and not encountering anything especially sexual there. Perhaps I bought it out of curiosity or to enjoy her writing once again. Oh, now I remember. I saw that diary on used books market. Then it got sold before I decided to buy it so I ordered it from the internet.

My first incident with damaged book this year. Sold it in used book store because I was too exhausted to report it.

Anyway, apparently I was already reading the diary 1931-1934 because I wrote this on the same day:

link

22 May

This is where I got my course stipend. My mother allowed me to keep it all. I very rarely have this kind of money (it was, like, 100$).

HTML & CSS: design and build websites   - Jon Duckett This book was very helpful for me. It’s very nice and colour and big. I could take it to coffee houses. I got it because I always ended up forgetting the basics. Unfortunately it’s a bit outdated because it was written in the early days of HTML5 and CSS3.

books webpage

Diary 1939-1944, Diary 1944-1947 - Anaïs Nin

Nicoletto Giganti’s The School of the Sword - Nicoletto Giganti

About rapier fencing.

The Flowers of Evil COMPLETE vol 1 - Shuzo Oshimi /

Finally! One of mangas that I actually found monocle got published in 2017! It’s the one after which I named the current era of my life.

June

02 June

Little Birds - Anaïs Nin

Henry and June - Anaïs Nin /

Actually have read it and it was quite messed up and made me feel much worse. Lots of lying and cheating and she was getting worse and worse ideas with every page. From what I understand, the publication of these underacted diaries in 90s made lots of readers/critics turn against her and made her fade into obscurity. I finished reading it on 01 October. My impressions were following:

“Finally finished reading it. It was very interesting, but also very sad and twisted. Anaïs Nin had some serious issues and unfortunately she ended up making some seriously evil decisions basing on twisted way of thinking. From what I understand. From one side it was like watching a trainwreck, from another it was just distasteful, but the third side was seeing the amazing inspiring relationship between two writers - Anaïs and Henry. It was a real tragedy that they couldn't just live together but she was stuck with a wagecuck banker husband, he was stuck with a woman with which they were a horrible anti-inspiration for each other. I guess it was very interesting reading this knowing who Anaïs and Henry were on level of their inherent nature and why that stuff that happened was possibly happening on level of social alchemy. Anyway could be treated as a sordid warning tale about cost of ignorance and degeneracy. Like the level of neuroticism she experienced just from not knowing the human nature, not knowing social alchemy and living in environment poisoned with sexist memes was sad. And add to that childhood trauma and degenerate ideologies by some psychoanalyst and you get a complete trainwreck. The ending was getting more and more disjointed with her getting worse and worse ideas, like every day.”

11 June

Schhneider CA, St. Chamond - Witold J. Ławrynowicz *

24 June

Emperor’s Mercy - Henry Zou /

Pretty nice Wh40k novel about an Inquisitor. Lots of brutal combat and named characters dying left and right.

26 June

Angels of Darkness - Gav Thorpe /

Enjoyed it a lot because of discussions between characters.

War of the Worlds - H.G. Wells

Armoured Platoon of Battalion Zośka - Anna Wyganowska-Eriksson

29 June

Red Tithe - Robbie Macniven /

Another very brutal Wh40k novel.

July

July is when I got my first internship stipend. I received the stipend for three months. Being able to spend 1/5 of the stipend (again about 100$ per month) for myself was what kept me going through the whole internship and allowed me to finish the Responsive Web Design Certification (300 hours) course on freeCodeCamp.

02 July

Renault FT Tank - Witold J. Ławrynowicz *

06 July

Fall of King Arthur  - J.R.R. Tolkien

Bryan Peterson's Understanding Composition Field Guide: How to See and Photograph Images with Impact - Bryan Peterson

11 July

Battle of Monte Cassino - Melchior Wańkowicz

Polish Armour in 1939 - Krzysztof M. Gaj *

This was the most precious book from my military history/science book collection. A PHD paper about organization and equipment of Polish armoured forces in 1939. Amazing stuff. The big blue book - 800 A4 pages. Ranging from detailed tables of organization and equipment prices to information about optics and gun accuracy.

Port Arthur - Tsushima 1904-1905 - Józef W. Dyskant, Andrzej Michałek *

Another precious big book. Sold both of these only because I have quit military history.

13 July

Blackwing: The Raven’s Mark Book One - Ed McDonald /

A nice dark fantasy book written by a HEMA practitioner. Awesome! Recently finished reading it.

The Flowers of Evil COMPLETE vol 2 - Shuzo Oshimi /

It’s What I Do - Lynsey Addario

An autobiography of a war photographer.

20 July

Catechism of Hate - Gav Thorpe /

A Wh40k novella. Quite nice.

28 July

Churchill Vol 1. - Leszek Moczulski

JavaScript & jQuery: Interactive Front-End Web Development - Jon Duckett

31 July

Iran - Iraq War 1980-1988 - Jarosław Dobrzelewski

August

04 August

Infantry Combat - Emile Allehaut

11 August

The First Tank Crews: The Lives of the Tankmen Who Fought at the Battle of Flers Courcelette 15 September 1916  - Stephen Pope

Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-Earth - John Garth

Milton’s Paradise Lost - John Milton, illustrated by Gustave Dore

12 August

Tales of Heresy - Nick Kyme and Lyndsey Priestley

16 August

Japanese-Soviet Conflict at Khalkin Ghol River *

17 August

Tank War - Ludwik von Eimannsberger *

I remember this book especially fondly because it introduced me to the excellent Polish military history/science book publisher - NapoleonV - in 2012, I think. I was looking for new interesting books about WWI in a local history book store and saw the cover with A7V on it and immediately knew I have to have it!

I loved the theories of the author - especially that he predicted the need of massive saturation of infantry units with AT guns. He proposed giving each infantry battalion an organic AT gun company of 6 47mm infantry guns and then attaching even multiple companies of 47mm infantry guns to infantry battalions.

It’s very similar to the American tank destroyer doctrine. 

T-55AM Tank And The Derived (T-55AD-1M, T-55AD-2M, T-55AMS) - Krzysztof M. Gaj *

Another super detailed book by that author. I wish he’d publish more!

28 August

Sketchbook for the Artist - Sarah Simblet

29 August

Warhammer 40000 Rulebook 3rd and 5th editions.

Tanks in The Great War, 1914-1918 - J.F.C. Fuller *

A7V and Precursors Of German Armour - Witold J. Ławrynowicz *

September

In September I got the last payment for the internship.

04 September

Blitzkrieg Legend - Karl-Heinz Frieser *

Nuclear Weapons in Shaping of International Security - Zarychta Stanisław *

07 September

I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft - S.T. Joshi

09 September

Ways of Seeing - John Berger

Fear: A Novel of World War I - Gabriel Chevallier

Raising Churchill’s Army: The British Army and the War against Germany 1919-1945 - David French.

13 September

Mechanicum /, Thousand Sons - Graham McNeill

24 September

Outer Dark - Robbie Macniven

25 September

The Flowers of Evil COMPLETE vol 3 - Shuzo Oshimi /

27 September

Berem and Luthien  - J.R.R. Tolkien

Forever War - Marvano, Haldeman

28 September

Harry Potter and Prisoner of Azkaban - J.K. Rowling (the illustrated one)

29 September

Permanent Fortification - Karol Kleczke, Władysław Wyszyński

Tigers, Sturmeshutzes and Jagdpanthers - Daniel Koreś *

Imperator: Wrath of Ommissiah - Gav Thorpe /

30 September

Spy in a House of Love - Anaïs Nin

Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy and Art - Susan Aberth

October

02 October

Passchendaele the Campaign in Flanders - Krzysztof Marcinek *

03 October

Handbook of WWII German Military Symbols and Abbreviations 1943-45 - Booth Terry

04 October

The Bachman Books - Richard Bachman, Stephen King

This one contains his infamous novella - Rage.

05 October

At The Mountains of Madness - Tanabe Gou /

Amazing manga adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s novella. I only finished reading it in March because when I first started reading it I paid way too much attention to the details of the excellent graphics. When I’ve read it in March it took me an hour or so to finish it.

10 October

Incest - Anaïs Nin

That book was basically the breaking point where I decided I just can’t continue reading that stuff. Also, a big mistake since I already was disturbed by Henry and June.

12 October

Used ebook reader with wifi and working buttons. The cover is cracked but it doesn’t seem to affect its functioning. My old reader doesn’t have wifi and apps and has malfunctioning buttons that work randomly.

It was a great purchase because it allows browsing the internet - which means reading text-heavy blogs on e-ink screen. Also, allows me to do it from bed which puts less burden on my bad back.

I installed Brave browser on it. Have read a lot of internet fiction and blog entries on it. Great stuff. Except that it’s still basically the cheapest ebook reader with wifi and touchscreen with outdated android and is somewhat crude.

I wish more websites would be designed to be ebook reader friendly, though.

18 October

Diary 1934-1939 - Anaïs Nin

25 October

Tirant lo Blanc - Joanot Martorell, Marti Joan De Galba, D.H. Rosenthal

A medieval novel about a knight.

That was the last month where I had larger amount of money because internships and work was over.

November

02 November

Nuclear Weapons and Development of Tactics. Anti-tank Warfare

An old publication of ministry of defence from 1969. Very interesting.

Flesh and Iron - Henry Zou

Blood Gorgons - Henry Zou 

05 November

Sold almost all of Anaïs Nin books I got because of how disturbing the un-redacted diaries were.

27 November

The Flowers of Evil COMPLETE vol 4 - Shuzo Oshimi /

Great manga. Wish there was more stuff like this out there.

December

04 December

T-35 Su 14 - Maksim Kołomyjec, Ilja Moszczański

07 December

Total Sell Out - Brian Michael Bendis

Wanted to see how he draws.

Yoshitaka Amano : Illustrations - Yoshitaka Amano

Another artist I wanted to check out. He seems to be somewhat dysgraphic and draws on ridiculously large formats for the amount of details he does.

He’s the reason why I tried out brush markers.

When it comes to music:

February:

Lana Del Rey - Hollywood

Tove Styrke - KIDDO

October:

Melanie Martinez - Crybaby

November:

Grimes - Art Angels

Grimes - Visions

Send Request - Perspectives

December:

The Pretty Reckless - Light Me Up

The Pretty Reckless - Who Are You Selling For

The Pretty Reckless - Going to Hell

Aurora - All My Demons Greeting Me A Friend

All used except for Kiddo, Who Are You Selling For and All My Demons Greeting Me A Friend and got pretty sweet deals on these. Got Kiddo with a 75% discount.

It’s weird to realise that books got so much less expensive here that if I’d have a minimal wage job, for like two years, I’d fill all of my shelves.

In 2008 a Wh40k novel would cost 81% of daily minimum wage I was earning cleaning in a factory. Nowadays same novel would not only be physically cheaper - the old price in bookstore after inflation would be 44pln and new price ordered and collected in a bookstore within 1 day of order would be 31pln.

So it would cost 40% of today's daily minimum wage. It’s funny how privilege works.

Anyway, when I sold the Anaïs Nin books, I got 1/7,7th of cover price for them. When I was selling my Forgotten Realms books in 2006, I got 1/3 of cover price for them. So, nowadays, selling books essentially just buys shelf space.

Even when I was selling out my military history book collection, in the beginning, I’d get 1/4-1/3 for them but then the prices just collapsed because it would be norm for books to be available for, like 1/2 of cover prices on auction sites.

Additionally, all the cheap bookstores created a bizarre situation where ebooks are more expensive than paper or even hardcover books sent from another end of Europe.

Big problem was fear of missing out due to books going out of print and disappearing from the market. Saw multiple books disappear from stores during the first half of they year, so when I got money, I was buying everything I could.

As a result, I wasted quite a lot of money on Anaïs Nin books because I got all the diaries and erotic stories instead of buying them after finishing previous ones. So, when I gave up mid-first expunged diary/in the beginning of the second unexpunged diary, it turned out I’ll have to sell whole collection. I actually saw some disappear from a local bookstore chain to never appear again and it scared me into buying the whole thing ASAP.

The threat of books disappearing from the market is a big problem with printed books. tfw ebooks are more expensive and also not the same as hardcovers.

It’s generally a big problem because I have literally, like 90 unread books.

Though I’m slowly going through the ones I have accumulated. At least I have something to enjoy when I’m broke.

[vicicicici-blog1]

alright back on this shit

____________________________________________________ 20xx/06/14

I can't do it.

I've tried to call the police over the past few days, and every time I find myself shrinking away from the phone.

I don't know why, I've never felt like this before.

For now, I've made a decision. I'm in a good spot right now, since I've joined the club. I'm going to keep surveying the place, and see what I can do to raise my rank. in the meantime, I'm going to keep making these notes as evidence, and when Alex gets home, I'm going to show him what I've found.

Alex, when you read this: I know people are dying. I know it's silly to get worried about a police call like this. I'm sorry for all of that.

But for now, I think this is the best I can do.

The next meeting is tomorrow.

_____________________________________________________ 20xx/06/15

I'm back from the meeting. It's a little easier to explain what happened this time.

From what I can tell, people don't necessarily go to every single meeting, as there were fewer people there this time. I'm also not sure if, maybe, some of them might've been different people. After all, everyone was wearing those masks.

Today, for the meeting, it was a broadcast from another branch  - 02NS, I think it said. It turns out the floor of the arena also operates as a screen for everyone to watch. How much money has gone into this?

Over the broadcast was another member of the club, wearing a beaver mask, and another woman, wearing a red fox mask, and carrying a gun. She was setting up a drone of some kind, and in barely a minute she'd swapped the perspective over to the drone. In the new image, I could see a black van, and now, the noises of screaming and crying, coming from a separate recording. Everyone in the room began screaming wildly, as the announcer came back on.

"Good afternoon everyone! Today, 02NS Blue Beaver has worked hard with her dear sister 02NS Red Fox, notable sharpshoot [NAME REDACTED] in order to bring us a wonderful hunt!"

From the screen, popped up a few images, all of boys of varying ages, though my best guess is that they were mostly around high school age.

"Start making your bets for parts! After all, [NAME REDACTED] is gonna need to know where to avoid aiming!"

Parts.

It doesn't take a genius to know what that means.

Everyone around me was screaming prices at the top of their lungs, even [NAME REDACTED], and the women in bird masks began typing everything being yelled out. [NAME REDACTED] pointed at one boy, bone thin with curly blonde hair, begging for even just a slice from his neck.

I have no clue what anyone could even want with a neck, let alone a slice of one.

After a few minutes, the announcer came back on, quieting everyone.

"Alright, the top bets have come in! Miss [NAME REDACTED] is all set to go! Now, it's time for the fun! Three... two... one! NOW!"

The back door of the van opened up, and the five or so boys in the pictures were pushed out, all of them either terrified to the point of tears or looking away, quietly but desperately. The second they saw the girl with the gun, they all bolted into the woods. The announcer called it a ten second head start.

Then, the drone flew up high in the air, giving us a shot of the area, a wooded area where it was almost impossible to see where they were going. It was also completely caged in.

Once ten seconds had passed, Red Fox sprinted off, going in the direction of one guy, whose photos and size clearly painted him as a football player of great skill. The drone, seemingly knowing where they all were, zeroed in on him, as he'd already managed to make it close to the gated end from the direction he ran. When he made it to the clearing, he seemed to realize that too - with a better look from his perspective, the gate was imposing, made of barbed wire, and standing roughly fifteen feet in the air. The bar at the top glowed hot red.

Even so, the young man grabbed onto the fence, and started climbing. The barbs already began digging in his hands, leaving his hands a sticky, bloody mess as he kept going. When he finally got to the top bar, he made a quick grab for it, only to recoil in pain, as smoke came off of it, and fell back down to the ground.

"OOOOH! You'd think it was obvious that the bar was burning hot, huh? Sorry for all those muscular hand lovers out there, hoping to take a nice set home!”

I heard a small, disappointed sigh from close by. I'm really glad the mask covered my face, because the face I made would've outed my sickened expression to everyone there immediately.

He rolled over, grasping at his hand, when out of the bushes, Red Fox had come out, gun aimed. He looked up at her, and before he had time to even realize it, she shot him three times in the back. His body slumped over to the side, leaving his surprised face left turned on camera. Once again, the crowd went wild.

She reloaded her gun, and moved on to her next target, the drone zeroing in on the boy that [NAME REDACTED] aimed to get a slice of. He hadn't stopped crying since he ran off. It took her barely seconds before she caught up to him, shooting him square in the back with one shot. I'm not sure if he was even dead when she ran off for her next target.

One by one, she took them all down with ease. The longest one it took managed to figure out a place to hide that even the drone couldn't zero in on, but he ended up being found when he suddenly started choking up. I think he was having an asthma attack. She shot him in the neck. The other two besides that were shot in the side and the head respectively. If any bodies are found grouped together with missing parts and bullet wounds in those specific places, here is your case story.

This time, I stayed for a little longer, looking around at the stuff inside. Those casino-like machines I was looking at before consisted of mostly computers, giving access to videos of past murders and an online shop, and then some actual casino games, which many of the members were lined up to play. After a while I didn't wan't to be there any more, so I left. As sickening as it is, I'm going to try and go back again next week, and this time I'll make sure the hidden mic works.

I also just realized I forgot to take a closer look at the benefits package. Between work and the stress of this investigation, I just left it be. I'm too tired right now, I'll look at it tomorrow. _____________________________________ 20xx/06/16

I took a look in the benefits package today.

It wasn't anything special on the outside, just a thin black fabric bag, adorned with a zipper and a white rabbit on the side. I wasn't expecting too much out of it.

On the inside, it was mostly booklets, as well as a small black box, labelled "LEVEL 1 SURPRISE GIFT". First, it would be best to go over the booklets first.

The first, and largest booklet went over the club activities, what's available from the club, the club's public website (which I am surprised exists) and, most importantly, the ranking system.

It's based on purchases. Every little thing purchased from either the website or at the club directly is directly funneled into your overall rank, allowing access to more things such as a free vpn, free at-home access to the video collection archived at the site, special purchase items, the list goes on.

I checked the site, which requires the branch name, number, and mask type in order to enter the site. I'm only Level 1, so I'm limited to the purchase of innocuous items, like gardening tools and decorative knives. I think when I go to work, I'll leave my login information somewhere for my coworker to find, maybe disguise it as something left behind by a customer. At the very least, I can tip someone off to this that way, instead of trying and failing to call the police.

The next booklet was some sort of showcase for some of their notable contracted killers and corporations. It's pretty shocking to go through, some of these people are legitimately famous, like [LOL I HAD TO GET RID OF THIS HUGE AMOUNT OF INFO SHE LISTED. IM HONESTLY SURPRISED BY SOME OF THIS STUFF TOO A LOT OF THEM ARE PREETY WELL KNOWN FOR DOING GOOD SHIT SUCKS YOU CANT READ THEM BUT AT LEAST YOU GET ONE] the only company that I didn't recognize came at the very end of the book, a company called "FDN". They apparently provide their test subjects for a variety of shows and productions, particularly for this club. The booklet provides no help in explaining what their name might stand for, and the only thing that pops up when I look it up is stuff about the stock market.

The other booklets included just have stuff about methods of death, little magazine-style tests for finding out your preferred death styles, and ideal choices of item brands to use for the express purpose of death. I mostly skimmed through these.

Finally, there was the box. I wanted to save it for last, just in case it was actually a bomb, or a severed finger, or something. It was explained, in the first booklet, that new members get a commemorative item at random, be it something useful for inflicting really small acts of harm, like a tiny decorated knife or a vial of nonlethal poison, or souvenir things like a necklace with a bead filled with a previous victim's blood, or knife tip that broke while stabbing someone. It didn’t say anything about actual body parts or bombs, though it wouldn’t surprise me if it just didn’t need to.

I seemed to get something that was both a weapon and a commemorative item. Inside, wrapped in a neat circle and perched on a silk pillow like an expensive necklace, was maybe about about two feet of thin barbed wire, that looked sharp enough to prick someone's finger at even the softest touch. It was also partially covered in dried blood.

I want to throw it out, but it's important evidence. Alex, I'm putting it and everything else in the locker for safe keeping. ________________________________________________

dumbass bitch this is why your dead i bet

[613526362]

My gum tissue is so eroded I have chronic pain in my mouth but it wouldn't be there if I was dead

8-9-2023 I've loved a lot of people. I've loved a few women. I've sacrificed for so many, for so much. But I truly, truly believe I've never been loved. Pandemos, who loved me of course, was over me in a minute. Maybe a second. Was at the gym on Facebook the next day and deleted our pics and got her brains fucked out a week later. While I was losing sleep and cutting my veins to bleed. I'm counting days and picking my death I leave 8-9-2023 I'm done telling you people No one fucking gets it 223 million views on a video of Montana in Africa for two days And a few of those clicks put $10,000 in an American rapper's pocket. 8-9-23 Eight nine twenty three. I've never been one to get tattoos. But I think if I had it put on my abdomen. I would see it and it would be a constant reminder - "You stupid fuck, if you got this shit tattooed on your body and don't do it, how will you feel about yourself??" I need to start planning it. Six years is enough. It has to be. It must. I'm not trying to get rich anymore. I can't wait for that. I'll be [redacted] soon. Six years. Six years I'll put up with your seductive money grabbers and sports highlights and potato chips and soulless soullessness. Put up with you not giving a fuck about anything but yourself and even doing a bad job of that. Your constant identity crisis in a country with no identity. Fuck you America, I'm not going somewhere more comfortable or safe But six years from now at least I'll be somewhere that is not completely devoid of purpose That is not completely soulless and empty Look into my eyes And you will not see this sick society 8-29-23 Enough years to finish medical school, and do a short residency. Not enough to repay loans. Not enough to get rich in business. Not enough for my father to die from his cancer. He's trying too hard to stay alive to see me become a rich doctor and marry a doctor-chasing model and and have pretty little white babies. 8-29-23 A 74 year old man looks back on half of his life's fruit and says, "Oh my god..... That wasn't a phase." Redacted Dr. K had just told me he had high titers of CMV and EBV when I realized I hadn't met the latest arrival of the clan of 20-year-old black lesbians who just walked in the room. So I went and met her. Way more confident than Gode's daughter. It did weird me out how she said "You're going to show me a good time" when she visits The Big City in a tone like it was a direct order, not a question. Before I'd met his daughter, Gode had talked to me about it as we drove to his office. "She had some bad experiences with guys. She's just so innocent, guys took advantage of her. I was thrilled when she told me she's dating a girl. You know why? A girl can't get her pregnant." That night I would masturbate three times to lesbian videos. I was running two or three a days since I was in the Magical State, feeling a bit on vacation. Feeling a bit like anything is possible. Also I had free wifi rather than the mobile hotspot shit from my phone that drains my monthly data. And the lightning you could see far off, across the water. It was beautiful in the evening and at night. Pandemos' home city, home state. I called her, at 5 on my day arrival. I didn't tell her I was a few hours away from her current nursing assignment at first. We just talked. Then I told her. She was mad. I explained. "I don't know if I can see you. I think you might put me under your spell again." "Oh my god, why do guys ALWAYS say that after we break up." She would remind me the next morning that it might work out for us to see each other. And the next day. My flight attendant is from The Big City. I know the accent now. I'm on the plane about to leave, and she still reminding me that I could have seen her, and should have let her know I was coming. She's one of the three girls who The Magical State brought to me while I was here. Gode had tried to hook me up with his assistant's Puerto Rican friend, but the next day we found out she was pregnant......and married So our trip to the Cheesecake Factory that night was a "hunting session" for Marshall, he told everyone. Sure enough, as we were all looking at menus, he came back from the bathroom and motioned for me to have a word with him back towards the bathroom. I told him I was scared of what was about to happen as we walked. "See you didn't believe that Gode got game. I got my mojo. I'm hooking my dog up." And the two girls whose meal he bought were actually quite pleased to chat with us. And the girl assigned to me liked me, and looked into my eyes, and let me touch her leg. And took my card happily. That kind of went on and on. And hours later as I was on top of my hotel (the construction they were doing was kind of creepy to walk through at night, but I loved it) looking out over the water, I knew she would text me the next day. Because I knew Gode had talked me up and a medical student and brilliant and great and he-would-have-me-date-his-daughterable. But what I didn't know was that when I went back down, the Russian (not Ukrainian, Marshall) front desk worked would tell me what time she got off. Considering I had also called the wrong Gabby and reconnected with an amazingly happy and pretty Asian girl that I would have amputated both fifth fingers in college to have dated..... Considering that, I guess I had four girls in three days. And then in the airport I realized a girl has never loved me And I started writing this I started writing 8-9-23 I wrote an email telling the guy who thinks he was appointed to take over my [redacted] back on the island that I'm coming in November to kick his ass out. CC'd the dean and the current lead. No matter how much love I can show a woman A woman will never love me I like white chocolate I like going to the zoo I like new shoes and I like turkey burgers because they make me feel healthy I like the picture of my dad looking at a squirrel I like being nice to people and surprising them like that I like rainy days and I like infomercials And a woman will never love me And a man will never understand me And I will not sit in this country and try to get rich and try to find love and try to believe I have anything here Goddamnit I will not stay here to give you any peace in your cancer filled intestines father who has always been there for me and deserves heaven And your attempts to impress me have succeeded Gode. I sucketh your dick. Maybe you will take my future. But 23 is coming. I must live life like hell is the earth's gift to me 8-9-23 "As we begin our final descent into the. Big City, look to your right and you'll have an incredible view of downtown." We fly over endless streets of warfare shortly thereafter. Streets filled with blood and murder. I guess I forgot to tell Gode that even though the population of Big City is massive, half that population is dying or killing and probably can't give him ROI. I think I should stop talking to Pandemos By the time I landed, all four girls were gone. My war has resumed 8-9-23 I walk in the door, expecting to be knocked down. I forgot to take the trash out before I left. My Lyft driver home was great. It was a curious situation where I had way more experience with rideshare than him, and he had way more experience with the city. We both had things to tell. One of his was that his girlfriend had applied for Big City Fire Department 15 years ago, and was just today receiving a settlement for extreme gender discrimination they had committed against her and four other women in the hiring process. I slept heavy on the plane. That doesn't happen much. I feel the stress coming back now that I'm here. I see the flashes of light sometimes. How it would feel to come home to a hug from someone who loves you. And then to shower and lie in bed and cuddle with them. How it would feel to have a little two-foot high child run up to your leg and squeeze when you walk in the door. God even a dog who's like "I'm SOOO glad you're back to feed me" would be something. So then, is it okay if I'm never truly loved, as long as I'm hugged, or leg grabbed, or urged to feed? Maybe feeling love from people is just mistaking people's need for you to satisfy their needs. The love I practice is different. It is sacrifice and dedication. 8-9-23 I'm going to rest my eyes now. I guess I'm home.